The chief executive officer of ITC's information systems division, SanjayVerma, said these products are "uniquely positioned to extend traditionalcorporate information systems to the wider market place".

He said the association with Infobank had resulted in the development of anew e-com product which would be unveiled globally on March 16 and was meantfor companies having 50,000 to 200,000 e-com transactions a year.

Verma said 'Expandit' will create a "virtual information system outside thecompany's own systems for interactive sessions with the company's customers"and enable the company to speed up its transactions by eliminating severalprocesses from its traditional work flows, thereby making it more simple andcost effective.

These software products will provide company personnel, when they are out ofoffice and in the field, the facility of "secure interface" with the gamutof corporate information systems available at the back end. This interfacecan be enabled through any equipment which can access the Internet, like ahand-held device (palmtop), a mobile telephone or a computer.

This technology has been introduced only six months back in Europe andaccording to the promoter of Expandit Solutions a/s of Denmark, Lars PeterWilhelmsen, his company has 45 business partners in nine countries but itsassociation with ITC is much more important from business point of view.

The three key elements of the architecture of this technology are a clientcomponent, a device in the hands of the company's mobile executive which isused to store relevant data "off-line" and also to access the internetanywhere; a number of connectors linking this hand-held device to thecompany's back office systems and also the marketplace; and a highly securebusiness application server in the office that bridges the client componentand the corporate information systems.

ITC Infotech, with the back-up of the ITC information systems division, willoffer the total service of software development, technology integration,implementation and training for this technology in India and abroad.