SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 4, 2012 — US- headquartered Global 3-D design and engineering leader, Autodesk has acquired a ‘made-in-India’ enterprise social collaboration software, “Qontext”, to add a layer of social capabilities to the cloud based service version, of its flagship CAD product, Autodesk 360.
Qontext flows from the innovation of Hyderabad and Mountain-View (California, US)-based Pramati Technologies, a pioneer in the area of enterprise-class web technologie,s who attracted international attention in 2001, with the Pramati Application Server, the first product anywhere in this class, to attain Java Standards certification.
By bringing its combo of collaboration and social networks awareness to Autodesk’s products like AutoCad, Qontext will now give engineers and designers and architects, the ability to search, view, visualize, simulate and store design data while collaborating in real time across an enterprise and its social outreaches, anytime, anywhere .
Says Vijay Pullur, Pramati’s US-based President and co-founder:“Autodesk’s acquisition of the Qontext technology is a testament to the Pramati strategy. This transaction is a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to incubate and build companies that address the rapidly changing needs of business through highly innovative technologies.”
Adds Amar Hanspal, Autodesk senior vice president of information modeling and platform products: “Mobile, cloud and social computing are dramatically changing the way engineers, designers and architects work. The addition of the Qontext technology to the Autodesk portfolio will lead to new technology innovations that help our customers embrace these disruptive technologies and leverage them for competitive advantage. It was great to work with the team at Pramati who have demonstrated a great capability in incubating disruptive businesses."
Pramati was founded in 1998 by Vijay Pullur and his brother Jay Pullur ( the Hyderabad-based CEO of Pramati ) and quickly became a respected name in middleware. In recent years the company has seamlessly morphed into an incubator of innovative software solutions whose repertoire ( in addition to Qontext) includes thedeveloperpPlatform, Pramati Studio ( acquired by Progress Software in 2005); SocialTwist, a social referral platform launched in 2011, Cloud JEE, a Platform as-a-Service offering and Imaginea, a software services company. Before it as acquired by AutoDesk, Qontext was adjudged a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner in the context-aware computing category.
See our Tech Video spot on the home page www.indiatechonline.com for a brief explanation of Qontext