Dated May 21, 2001
THE HINDU group of publications on indiaserver.com

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), has won the 'Best Computer Package in Hindi' award from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) for its ISM 2000 package.

The ISM 2000 incorporates some very intuitive Indian language features such as font/clipart previewer, figures to words conversion, data and time formating, C-DAC Executive Director, Shri. R.K. Arora, has said.

It supports features such as mail merge, Indian language spell checking and administrative language dictionaries in MS Word, besides allowing the smooth transition of data from a different format into its own format, he added.

According to Shri. Arora, ISM 2000 has been able to bag this award in just two months since its launch in March. Speaking to Business Line, Shri. Arora said that using this package, it was now possible to develop applications in any Indian language.

A special set of fonts called Web fonts are also available with ISM 2000 for Windows-based browsers.

Apart from Hindi, the package supports Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit.

Shri. Arora also said that C-DAC's proposed corporatization plans were still on, and expressed the hope that it would be completed this year itself.

We are currently in the process of appointing a consultant to chart out a plan. We are in discussions with a few of them, including some leading firms.

The restructuring plans of C-DAC, currently a society under the MIT, also envisage roping in venture capital funds to invest in the new entity, with the Government holding a minority stake.

Headquartered in Pune, C-DAC is known for its PARAM series of supercomputers.

The restructuring is aimed at bringing in more autonomy and flexibility to C-DAC, thereby reducing the employee attrition, which currently hovers around 20 per cent annually.