Polaris Software gets CMMI 5 rating

Chennai: Banking and financial sector software major Polaris Software Lab Ltd has became the first company in the world to get the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) 5 certification.

CMMI 5 is the latest model developed to rate software companies. The existing CMM certification will be phased out by December 2003. “This gives us a head-start over other software companies and with this quality certification under our belt, we will be in a position to bid for projects that are five times larger than what we handle now,“ says Polaris Software CMD Arun Jain.

“With the combination of strategies falling in place like organisation redesign, world class infrastructure, progressive management team and widespread global reach, the CMMI 5 certification has pushed Polaris's growth synergies towards a tier-one stature,“ he says.

“The new certification process is business-goal driven and is focused towards attaining business objectives, higher return on investment and gives higher productivity at a lower cost and in the process eliminates defects in the system,“ says vice-president (quality) Sudha Ramesh.

While the existing CMM tends to look at activities and processes in isolation, CMMI 5 is a more comprehensive model with emphasis on quantitative and statistical methods, both at the organisational level and in the actual implementation of projects, she says.

The company hopes to attain its target of reaching the Rs 1,000-crore turnover target by 2004. Speaking about the company's geographical distribution of business, Jain says the company's exposure to the US market is less than 50 per cent, and the rest comes from European, Asian and Gulf markets.