This year’s Indian central budget has been watched with special care by a number of international technology providers – none more so than Motorola – the US-based communications leader. The commitment of serious money to take forward the ambitious Unique Identification (UID) project and the resolve to put in place a national Goods and Services Tax (TAX) by 2011 has the company convinced it is in the right place at the right time:.

For company’s Raleigh, North Carolina US)-based Vice President for the Industry Solutions Group, Mark Self, it was literally so – he was in India to scout the market and evangelise enterprise mobility solutions as the secret sauce or ‘mantra’ as we say here, for making businesses more agile and customer centric.

Self and his team work to help managements make best use of their most expensive assets: real estate, merchandise, work force and equipment. The tools they offer include advanced data capture, mobile computing, wireless communication (inside and outside), private radio and RFID technologies. He believes Motorola has something of an edge here because they are arguably the only player who can offer every piece of an end-to-end solution for enterprise mobility.

It was not happenstance that Self and India-based Business Manager Ramesh Sundararaman, met IndiaTechOnline in the Bangalore headquarters of Symbol Technologies -- a Motorola company acquired three years ago. Symbol is the world’s largest maker of both Retail scanners and RFID readers, having made a smooth transition from barcode technology, which it still offers to many large customers. It is a brand leader in enterprise mobility solutions, wireless infrastructure and mobility management.

So if enterprise mobility is its mantra, the Symbol range and expertise is Motorola’s agni astra or secret weapon as it addresses the retail, logistics, transportation, security and healthcare markets in India. Add government to that: “ The increasing adoption of IT for governance (including the recent set up of Unique Identification Authority of India and Technology Advisory Group for Unique IT Projects), the proposed rollout of Goods & Services Tax by 2011 and the increasing awareness & adoption of Payments Cards Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS) by Indian wireless carriers for mobile commerce are some of the recent developments that would fuel adoption of Motorola's enterprise mobility solutions" Self says.

Recent re structuring at Motorola has seen the consumer business of mobile phones and home networks, separated from its enterprise-oriented offerings by way of mobility and network back end solutions. For people like Self and Sundararaman, that means the freedom to concentrate on doing what they believe they do best: making enterprises mobile to make them more productive and customer friendly.   Pick up that RFID gun and saddle fresh horses pardner, the  posse rides at dawn.
-Anand Parthasarathy, Bangalore March 7 2010