Army's IT Advisory Board Holds First Meeting

New Delhi, Apr 5: Well into establishing a strong IT infra-structure incorporating fully automated and networked information systems, the Army today held the inaugural meeting of its IT Advisory Board aimed at harnessing the skills of the Indian IT Industry and Academia.

Addressing the meeting here, Army Chief JJ Singh stressed the need for closer cooperation between the Army and the IT sector whose leaders - through their vision and entrepreneurial acumen - had enabled India emerge as an IT giant on the global scene.

Observing that IT occupied The meeting, chaired by Vice Chief of the Army Staff Lieutenant General S Pattabhiraman, was attended by senior officers of the Army and Defence Ministry besides academicians and industrialists in the field of IT.

Acting in an advisory capacity, the Board will, on a regular basis, address macro-level issues and render advice on IT-related aspects including future technologies, infra-structure development, equipment maintenance and obsolescence management, security, and Human Resource Development besides achieving synergy by identifying areas of cooperation.

The members of the Advisory board include Mr KS Viswanathan, VP - Strategic Sales, Wipro; Mr Tanmoy Chakrabarty, VP&Head, Global Government Industry Group, TCS; Mr Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman, NIIT; Lt Gen Baldev Singh, MD, R Systems(I); Maj Gen D Khurana, Director General, AIMA; Mr Satish Kaura, Chairman&MD, Samtel; Prof N Balakrishnan, Chairman, Division of Information Science, IISc, Bangalore; Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor Engineering, IIT, Chennai and Mr Ajit Sirohi, MD, Radix International.

The special invitees to the meeting were Mr TS Darbari, Director Corporate Strategy, HP; Mrs Neelam Dhawan, MD, Microsoft, India; Mr Atul Tayal, Joint MD, Rolta India; Mr Bhaskar Pramanik , MD, Sun Microsystems and Mr S Sen, Deputy Director General, CII (Defence Division).

UNI