Third party services have been leased out to companies by players like Satyam Infoway (who prior to becoming an ISP had set up their backbone) and Sprint RPG. According to Sherlock managing director N Muralidhar, his product the Sherin Cyber Office would reduce conventional transaction costs by 50 - 60 per cent and be far cheaper than third party outsourcing.

The Cyber Office allows company officials top transact all their businesses online through the Internet, whether it is in materials management, accounts, inventory, marketing, etc from any centre. Sherlock has an arrangement with Concentric Inc (which hosts Web servers and is a large networking company) to get application server space which is used for Sherlock's customers.

``Depending on our clients requirement of bandwidth, which is dependent on its transactions, the server space is hired and the application software duly incorporated,'' Muralidhar said. The software is married to the clients existing software for operations, so that the same software resides at both ends. Customers are not asked to upgrade existing software unless they volunteer.

The security is strengthened by having two firewalls on the application server and by having the server recognise any machine, including unauthorised ones where particular applications are run. This helps in troubleshooting at the client's end. Apart from this, the network though operating on Internet virtually operates on private domain. Only authorised users are allowed access in various areas with their own specific user ID and password. As the network will not be advertised for browsing purposes, and entry is allowed only for authorised personnel, to that extent security need not be a specific issue, Muralidhar said.

E-mail facility which largely transmit viruses are not provided for in the package. However virtual private network facility for communication is also extended to key personnel in the organisation (like the managing director who wishes to communicate directly with the marketing department bypassing policy). However this is only for specific chosen personnel who wish to have a `hotline' connectivity and will not be visible to others.

The Sherin Cyber Office has been sold to a large chemical trading company called Pure Chemicals (the Managing Director is N Ponnuswamy) which has nine branch offices in the country. The product has also been sold to six other group companies of the same promoter. Sherlock is also talking to Hyundai, Castrol, Clariant and others who are likely to buy it.

Sherlock is an IT product company established in 1997, having more than seven products, most of them recently developed. The Cyber Office is likely to be a hit with large and small industries having large volumes of transactions.

Sherin Cyber Office (as also other products) is also WAP compatible, which means that company executives can access the application through wireless to implement a speedy decision.