New info-sharing portal for SME

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) plans to launch an information sharing portal aimed at fostering growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), says Business Standard.

The portal will help SMEs and their supporting institutions in sharing information for problem-solving and share best practices in industry, said Ramesh Datla, chairman, CII National SME Council.

Outlining the 10-point CII agenda for the SME sector, Datla emphasised the promotion of climate-friendly energy technologies to enhance the self-reliance on energy and also be responsible towards the environment.

SMEs can revolutionise their business practices by taking advantage of IT outsourcing to make sure applications are correctly installed, says ihotdesk.

Dominic Monkhouse, MD of Itlab, explained that many SMEs store important data on a number of applications which are unable to communicate with each other.

"This is not helping the business and is a bit like every member of a team speaking a different language," he continued. "But if all this data is pulled together in one system, it makes it easier to use, saves time and money, helps with reporting and ensures people can work from anywhere globally."

Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba.com has entered into a tie-up with Intel for a PC targeted at SMEs, says China Daily.

"There are 42 million SMEs in China. However, only a small number of them have launched e-commerce services, which will significantly limit their growth," Wei Zhe, chief executive of Alibaba.com said. "Alibaba sees a significant potential in this market."

According to Wei, Alibaba will embed its new e-commerce platform into the PCs, while Intel will provide support on Internet security and services based on its chip platform.