It's a good time to be an entrepreneur or an SME. Governments are supporting them, industry bodies are promoting them, financial institutes are helping them and educational organisations are training them. We present snapshots showing how players across verticals are reaching out to the SMEs. "The SME initiative will be our biggest product rollouts in India. Indian SMEs are evolving and they are looking at technology to enable them to grow bigger. They are looking at something designed for them; a consolidated voice and data solution from a single source. We aim to be the one. We have even set up an independent contact centre for addressing the issues of our SME customers. Basically, we have established a long-term strategy to cater to specific needs and challenges of this segment." - Ravi Chauhan, MD, Nortel India Manufacturers have started adopting Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to eliminate waste and build on efficiency. SMEs face some unique challenges with PLM including the need to change business processes and lack of resources. Fortunately, software vendors are now addressing these needs by offering solutions that felicitate PLM adoption. These include predefined workflows, data configuration templates, and industryspecific functionality, which provide a starting point for creating and automating processes to improve product development performance. We, for example, are playing a major role here." - Suman Bose, Country Director, Dassault Systemes, India. "It requires robust & scalable infrastructure to protect critical data and manage operations efficiently. SMEs usually do not have the resources to manage network security equipment. Without any proper guidance, they face complex challenges in choosing and managing the right equipment. That’s where we can help them." - Shailendra Sahasrabudhe, Country Manager, Aladdin Knowledge Systems "SMEs are constantly looking at improving operational efficiency with various available solutions. We have formulated the Five 'C' concept of creating, collaborating, controlling, configuring and communicating product and design information across the teams. With our Product Development System (PDS) and PLM solutions, we wish to support India's SME growth spurt." - Rohit Biddappa, Mktg Manager, PTC, India –Coordinated By Niranjan Mudholkar