Mumbai : TechGyan has launched a web portal www.officeserver.in, with the help of Microsoft India. The portal will be helpful for companies using five to 300 PCs, which can't afford an expert IT department. "Officeserver.in is a public forum, which is by the people for the people and from the people. This is a one-point contact and one-point server for the users," said Suresh Ramani, CEO, TechGyan.

Ramani feels that in developed countries, whenever any online product launch happens, communities have their full participation. In such forums, vendors will not contribute any content to the blog. "Since Microsoft is launching Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008, we thought of utilizing the situation to start a public forum in server space. We requested Microsoft India to provide us the required infrastructure as well as support. With the help of Microsoft India, we started the interactive website. To ensure more participation we kept the registration free," said Ramani.

Abhishek Kant, Community Program Manager, Microsoft India is coordinating with TechGyan for running the portal. Kant explained, "This portal will run under the leadership of TechGyan. We are only there to provide a platform to the portal. The portal is running on Microsoft technology. The idea of having the portal is to educate the Indian mass about servers available from Microsoft and other companies. Microsoft is not officially sponsoring the website but is providing TechGyan the required infrastructure to run a portal. The idea is to share learning amongst the community itself, which is very valuable. What we feel is community contribution is very essential."

The portal has different sections like events, discussion, one common section for all participants, and one confidential section for partners, and case study section.

Events section will carry the launches and information about server space in India and abroad. This section will focus mainly on community events held across India. Ramani said, "There will be information on events like the launch that happened on Nov 13. All registered partners can view the online product launches, learn more about the product and how it works, etc. We have requested someone from Microsoft to do the product presentations. I will be doing more of a business presentation, like what the product can do for the users."

In the case study, the companies who have projects on servers will participate and share the work they have done in that space. "We are providing hosting space and the software part of it," said Kant.

An important aspect of the portal is that there will be a discussion forum where people can post queries like difficulties with the product, get help, technical licensing issues, etc which would be answered by the people who are registered and experienced. In this way people from all over the country as well as abroad can contribute.

Ramani is confident about the special section, which is exclusive and confidential for partners. "There is also a provision for general section where customers can also participate and send their queries. This will be answered by the other readers and subscribers of the portal," he shared.

In the initial stages of the portal launch, participation may be minimal but both the companies are expecting considerable amount of registration in the coming days.

Sharing his ideas on how to popularize the online portal, Ramani expressed, "I am the President of India West Chapter of International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners ( IAMCP). There are 25 to 30 members in the association and I have asked them to register on the portal. Being in IAMCP, I have the advantage of being able to contact of people from other countries and request them to participate in the community blog. And we are also contacting the customer companies to register. Till date, 20 people from the customer companies have been registered. Today it's national and tomorrow we can talk of international. Once people understand the power of the community blog will actively participate and definitely get answers to their questions."

Ramani and Kant feel that the process will be very slow and can't happen overnight. But they are expecting a large number of participants from the community one to two years down the line.

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