Germany-based SUSE, an open-source solutions provider, supporting the high-availability ops of the National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) new IT applications, senses opportunities across the government sector.
According to Josep Garcia, General Manager, Asia-Pacific, SUSE, the Indian government is keen on using open-source technologies, which can be costeffective.
“Our big value comes from making open-source projects ready for enterprises and governments, to use in a secure and scalable way. That’s our business model,” he said.
In January 2023, NPCI’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) facilitated over 8 billion transactions. This was supported by its offerings, including Rancher, a Kubernetes-native platform for managing multi-cluster containers, and NeuVector, a security solution designed to enhance its operations.
Garcia explained that governments are particularly interesting clients, noting that his company works with them in the US, Singapore, and Australia. He added that the Indian government, both at the federal and state levels, is keen on adopting open-source technologies due to their potential to drive innovation and cost-effectiveness. In India, where projects tend to be massive, the technology infrastructure needed to support 1.4 billion people is substantial. “When they work, they demonstrate the technology is reliable, foolproof, and scalable,” he said.
In India, projects like Unique Identification numbers for a universal ID, and the GST projects are built on open-source technology. “It’s impressive how the Indian government has had a huge adoption, particularly for these large projects. These are massive applications, with many users.” However, because of the size, the projects also become complex, taking longer to be implemented, he added.
The company is also sensing interest from telecommunications providers in Asia Pacific and India, “It’s an area we will be focusing on, along with the retail and manufacturing space where a lot of innovation, particularly outside the data centre and at the edge of the networks, is happening.”
Retail companies are building kiosks to improve customer service efficiency or smart AI-based solutions to evaluate consumer preferences by tracing which area they frequent in a mall/store. Manufacturing companies are introducing technology to the assembly plants to improve the production process or quality assurance.
BMW, one of SUSE’s big customers, is using its edge technology to drive efficiencies in the assembly plants building their cars. These cars, as they’re being assembled, run through the production line using self-driving technology. The software built on SUSE’s edge technology detects if there’s someone in the way to ensure they don’t hit them.
“We see opportunity, particularly in India, because of massive retail, manufacturing, and companies wanting to improve productivity, efficiency, and the quality of products,” Garcia said. The company also provides solutions to over 1,000 Indian customers, including Indian Oil Corporation, the Kerala Police, ONGC, and Mahindra.
“All the functions of the organisation are based out of India - from the support centre, R&D centre, cost centre,” said Rajarshi Bhattacharyya, General Manager for SUSE in India while addressing a media roundtable. He added that the company has over 100 employees in the country.
Garcia added that the company also has employees for engineering and product-related roles, all of which are global.
“They’re supporting products for customers globally and are helping develop the technology.” He added that SUSE is also hiring for R&D, support, and engineering roles.