Releasing eMPOWER-IT at a press meet in the capital, NIIT managing director Rajendra S Pawar said this marked a shift in the company's focus towards offering complete training solutions for the domestic market.

Though NIIT has provided training solutions to corporates before, launch of eMPOWER-It could mark the beginning of a much more aggressive foray into corporate training for the Rs 648-crore IT major. A full-fledged marketing plan is yet to fall in place, however. According to Pawar, it is a while before the company could get down to fixing a standard pricing, configuration and chalk out a positioning strategy.

While it will begin to market eMPOWER-IT from Saturday targeting top 500 enterprises, the company will allocate a separate budget and fix well-defined targets for its newestproduct from the next financial year. The package will be launched globally soon as a branded product. NIIT will soon move to win a patent for it.

Put together after gathering the best components and models of its training, eMPOWER-IT is aimed at tackling human resource development problems of large organisations. The company has branded this technology as eMPOWER-IT in sync with its new thrust on e-Commerce and the Internet.

In response to a query, Pawar pointed out that NIIT had gathered enough experience as it had taken up creating training software modules built around their respective software technologies for the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and Computer Associates.

A key component of this strategy is the creation of an integrated enterprise-wide information technology training solution. At least 16 years of experience has gone into the making of eMPOWER-IT and it has already been tested in 25 countries.

NIIT has provided such training through what it calls corporate learning centres whereby itsets up few multimedia machines in the corporate's offices loaded with its licensed software and posts a full-time mentor or a teacher.

Through numerous customised modules to suit the corporate's needs, it has imparted training to organisations like Boots, Mukand Ltd, Escorts, Citibank, Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Satyam and Software Technology Parks of India.

NIIT's launch of eMPOWER-IT does have a swadeshi touch to it. Other IT training companies like Tata Infotech and Aptech too offer solutions such as CBT's models and J-3, respectively, but they are neither indigenous nor have the instructional multimedia design capability, a company official pointed out.

A much more advanced and comprehensive eMPOWER-IT will address the complete IT needs of an enterprise through technology training tools created by NIIT's in-house research and development departments.

According to Pawar, eMPOWER-IT will help corporates plan their IT needs, how to develop them, deliver them and then apply across several locations. Mostimportantly, NIIT will also help them formally certify and manage these training solutions through its enterprise learning management system (ELMS) proprietary module which helps a corporate in coordinating the learning process.