"We are among the top five in the ISV and travel domain"

What are your offerings in
enterprise testing and how are you helping enterprises mitigate the
same?

In the current market scenario, where
enterprises have adopted Web as a sales channel, face a number of
multiple challenges such as time to market, changing customer
expectations, global expectations, statutory needs and integrity of
transactions spanning diverse business applications and multi-tiered
architectures. All these challenges put immense pressure on the
availability and performance of IT systems, and efficiency of
operations, leading to high costs of quality and business
disruptions.

Organizations need to ensure minimal
downtime of their business-critical applications and streamline their
IT operations in order to excel in competitive environment. They can
do so by adopting a comprehensive quality assurance of which testing
strategy is a key ingredient, so that the potential system
bottlenecks can be identified much earlier before they hit the
business. Sonata's independent testing practice provides
independent validation and verification services to clients globally,
helping them reduce the cost of quality during the entire application
lifecycle management process.

We have three point
strategy-consulting-led approach (aligned with TMMi), IP-enabled
solutions and innovative delivery models. We also leverage our
strategic partnerships and alliances with global technology leaders
such as HP (Platinum Partner), IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and TMMi to
provide the best of breed testing tools, infrastructure and services
to customers. Our customers have experienced 30 to 40 percent
improvement in efficiency, both in terms of cost and quality. Our
industry-focused testing services can ensure that the customer's IT
applications meet the growing business needs with high performance
and availability.

With Sonata's efficient managed
testing services, enterprises can not only scale their businesses to
new heights of success but also save huge costs in their IT budget by
having more test runs per cycle. With our event-based/SLA-driven
testing model, customers are achieving significant business benefits
such as reduced costs, enhanced productivity and improved software
quality.

Why testing is emerging as a high
priority in the CIO's agenda?

With failed missions and adherence to
statutory needs, Web presence nearly driving the agility of
enterprises and zero tolerance of down time, the CIOs can't be
complacent on the quality of expectations. With high levels of cost
and expectation management of the stakeholders, enterprises are
increasingly looking at specialists to address the quality and cost
of quality.

What are your main revenue
generating verticals ?

We focus on the ISVs (Independent
Software Vendors), TTL (Travel, Tourism and Logistics) and
pharmaceutical industry. ISVs need to support different types of
customers who have different deployment platforms and customization
needs. In addition to these elements of non functional testing such
as SOA testing, security testing and performance testing become
critical as these ISVs start integrating their products with ERP.
This needs a high degree of processes for testing and automation
experience. Traditionally Sonata has been servicing a large number of
ISV customers and the need for articulation is very clear.

Pharma companies have the statutory
needs to comply with the FDA needs. Traditional testing models are
time consuming and need a lot of paper work to keep track of the
validations. In addition, pharma enterprises are always behind on the
testing tools leading to loss of support from the manufacturers.
Sonata has marquee customers in the TTL space, where we provide both
independent validations and development. In TTL space, the adoption
of Web technologies is more, so the social networking experience
throws a huge challenge in terms of adoption into the sales channel.
This needs a rich user experience presentation without failure. We
feel the testing for the new technologies and new generation of users
is a big challenge.

What is your market share in testing
and your growth figures from last to current fiscal year?

We are among the top five in the areas
of vertical specialization such as ISV and TTL. Our unique offerings
primarily focused on pharma companies and our growing customer base
will enable us to consolidate our position in the market. style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">
We don't provide forecasts as part of corporate governance.
However from 2007-08 and 2008-09 the growth was 25 percent in spite
of the economic downturn that had an impact on the global economy.
This was driven by organizations wanting to conserve cost, capex to
opex-based services and integration projects with SOA testing
components.

Kindly elaborate on your sales,
channel and marketing strategies

Our sales is driven by focused GTM
(go-to-market) strategy, partnerships led by key tool vendors such as
HP, IBM, Radview, participation in events and cross selling
opportunities in existing customer space.

Which technology according to you
will be the next big thing?

With the recession slowly fading and
enterprise purse strings being loosening, technologies that are very
clear on ROI seem to be the first one out of the blocks. Channel
extensions around mobile, social networking integration are
increasing in traction. In cases of highly regulated enterprises,
adoption of enterprise service bus is becoming a necessity. We see
the inside out happening and that the invested-in technologies are
exploited using the service wrappers. This will necessitate the
entire governance of these services. Sonata has been ahead of the
curve in these areas with specific value proposition around SOA
governance and testing.

Ipad with the sizeable deployment will
make the Web app developers conform with the new form factor. In
India, UID will play a key role.With the cloud reducing entry barrier
for enterprises to adopt technology and collaborate, new age
organizations will develop. These will be tested on their business
model over a period of time. These organizations will need a lot of
help in defining their quality of service.

Your goal and focus for the current
year?

Driven by our commitment to sustain,
and indeed excel, our performance standards, we will work towards
strengthening our partnerships and increasing our customer base
globally through business-focused, tested and proven solutions and
services.