Sierra Atlantic rapidly growing in enterprise applications space
13 July 2004
The company has extensive R&D relationships with enterprise software leaders, and is among Oracle's most preferred integration partners. A profile by Mohini Bhatnagar
Hyderabad: The prevailing calm and peace at the plush offices of Sierra Atlantic Software's facility in the city is deceptive. Make no mistake, the centre is a hive of activity and the work done here caters to companies spread over the US, UK and Europe.
This year Sierra Atlantic Software, the Indian subsidiary of US-based Sierra Atlantic Inc, completes 10 years of operations, having been set up when offshoring was a relatively new word in business lexicon.
Today, Sierra Atlantic leverages its offshore centre in Hyderabad, India, to provide a full portfolio of enterprise application management services, from designing and building to deploying, integrating and managing applications in areas like manufacturing, process manufacturing and the financial segments to a whole host of companies in the US, UK and Europe.
Sarath Sura, the unassuming managing director of the Indian subsidiary, says, "Sierra Atlantic began operations in 1993-94 to provide enterprise application services when the word BPO was not even thought of. In fact, though Sierra is an offshore company the work we do is in the realm of high-end enterprise applications."
Seventy per cent of the company's clients are in the US while the rest are spread over the UK and Europe. India at present does not figure in its plans as the market here is small but a beginning is being made and things should start happening here in the next two to three years as a number of IT companies are setting up their facilities here, he says.
The centre which began by employing less than 100 people now has more than 650 people on its rolls, most of them engineers and systems professionals, and the company plans to have more than a 1,000 people on its rolls by the end of next year.
Sura reveals that Sierra Atlantic employs a number of chemical and mechanical engineers since many of the projects undertaken by the company are in process engineering and manufacturing "for which it is essential to have engineers from the concerned industry."
Sura says, "Sierra Atlantic has extensive R&D relationships with enterprise software leaders - Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft and Siebel. We are Oracle's most preferred integration partners. We also provide consulting, implementation and integration services around PeopleSoft's PIPs (PeopleSoft Integration Packs)."
An Oracle-certified partner, Sierra Atlantic has a strategic relationship with Oracle, covering engineering, implementation and support activities, nearly since Sierra Atlantic's inception. This provides the company with a skilled resource base to effectively execute Oracle application implementations on time and under budget to a global customer base.
Last year Sierra Atlantic entered into partnership with PeopleSoft to deliver packaged integration solutions called Business Process Integration Packs (PIPs) that addressed customer demand for pre-packaged integration solutions between PeopleSoft and other ERP applications (SAP and Oracle). Each PIP automates a specific business process between PeopleSoft and SAP or Oracle, with dramatically lower costs, complexity and risks than traditional custom integration methods.
