The Tamil Nadu government along with the Confederation of Indian Industry will organising Connect 2003. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalaithaa will inaugurate the show in September.
Unlike the last two years, where the government promoted the whole state as a destination for infotech projects, this year, it has been decided to promote the state capital Chennai alone, a la Bangalore in Karnataka and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.
Though Chennai has the presence of almost all the IT majors, it does not have the image that Bangalore or Hyderabad enjoy.
"Other than the World Bank back-office, we have global processing centres of several other international banks too. Other prominent investors include XANSA, Office Tiger, Computer Associates, EDS, Verizon, etc. to name a few," Vivek Harinarain, secretary for IT to the Tamil Nadu government, said.
"We have many more here such names, but we have not publicised them. We are slowly but surely moving ahead in making Tamil Nadu the epicentre for sourcing ICT skills. That is the reason why we have decided to use Connect 2003 as a platform to promote Chennai as the most ideal destination for IT and IT-Enabled Services," he said.
"Connect 2003 also will showcase Tamil Nadu's strengths in BPO (business process outsourcing), especially the state's domain knowledge in accounting, automobiles, engineering design and healthcare," he said.
Connect 2001 had 300 participants. Connect 2002 was the figure go up to 640. The organisers expect more than 800 participants this year. The number of exhibitors also grew from 48 in 2001 to 80 last year which they expect to go up to 125 this year. The number of visitors rose from 10,000 to 50,000 in 2002, and they expect more than 80,000 visitors this year.
According to the IT Secretary, Connect 2003 would also focus on the IT opportunities in the state, e-governance in the other Indian states, opportunities in value-added BPO in Tamil Nadu and on enterprise verticals. A four-day international exhibition and an international conference are expected to be the major attractions.
The e-governance pavilion will not only focus the e-governance opportunities in Tamil Nadu, but other states too.
According to the organisers, a pavilion has been created to offer 'a tremendous forum for companies to showcase their expertise and capabilities in e-governance and explore opportunities for executing e-governance projects in the participating states.'
Other than the e-governance pavilion, there will be exclusive pavilions for state governments, communication and networking, IT services, etc. Delegates from the United States, Europe, Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the Asia-Pacific region are expected, the IT secretary said.
Because of the high profile nature of the event, the Confederation of Indian Industry too has decided to have their annual CIOs' summit in Chennai as a part of Connect 2003.
More than 200 CIOs and CTOs are expected to be in Chennai during the summit, the CII spokesperson informed.
