SKYLARK INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES: Focus On Technology, Not On Boxes

Starting as a reselling company, this Chennai-based business house has moved
away from box-pushing to concentrate more in the technology space.

Skylark Information Technology has completed a decade in the channel business
and the credit for this success goes to its MD, Johnamalraj.

Johnamalraj started his career working with Modi Olivetti and soon shifted to
becoming a reseller partner for the vendor. He then tied up with Digital
Equipment India in 1995. Gradually, he started adding more vendors to his kitty.
Currently, Skylark deals with most big brands like Cisco, HP, Sun, Microsoft,
Oracle, Citrix, D-Link, 3Com etc.

Though Skylark started as a pure-play reselling company, it soon forayed into
other businesses as well. Today it

addresses three business streams–networking, systems integration and software
development, with technology and service being the main focus areas.

JOHNAMALRAJ Proudly grabbing major orders for software development

DREAMING BIG ON SOFTWARE

Though Johnamalraj states that the software development division is still in
its nascent stage, he is proud that Skylark managed to pick up a major order for
software development from Neyveli Lignite Corporation.

Called Online Integrated Material Management System, this project involves
the online integration of Neyveli’s three comp-

lexes-Material Management Complex, Mines Substores and Permanent Control Stores.
All these complexes, which are at a distance of four kilometers, have been
connected through fiber cables. 



"In the Neyveli project we were involved right from laying the fiber cable
to finetuning the database," says Johnamalraj, who

used Wipro as his constant inspiration.

Yet another feather in their hat in software development was working for
Inlotte Technologies for designing their online lottery system. For this they
have placed two servers at Bharti Towers in Santhome and connected to 600
terminals through out India. Shortly they will be appointing software
consultants in US and UK.

PULLING ALL STOPS

Besides Johnamalraj, S Kumar and R Karthikeyan are also partners of Skylark.
The duo were Johnamalraj’s colleagues from Modi Olivetti and the association
has held firm for over a decade now. Each of the partners look after specific
sections of the business, which helps in the seamless functioning of the
company.

Today, Skylark has a team of 70 plus people comprising experienced engineers
for implementation of NetWare, Solaris, iPlanet, Lotus Notes, Microsoft
Exchange, Oracle & MS SQL database products and networking products.

Last fiscal, Skylark garnered revenues of Rs 18 crore. Now that it has
identified technology and services for better servicing their customers, it
hopes to generate a revenue of Rs 50 crore.

Nisha Kurian