University of Peradeniya emerges victorious at software competition

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

The University of Peradeniya was declared the winners of the Inter-University Enterprise Mobility Software Development Competition 2011 Finals held last week at the University of Colombo where 16 undergraduate teams from all across the island showcased their innovative applications in mobile software.

Organised by Motorola Solutions in collaboration with SLASSCOM, the competition was held for the second consecutive year for over five months, during which a panel of judges selected the finalists from the 49 initial entries.

The team from the University of Peradeniya emerged as the victors with their mobile solution application on Agricultural and Livestock Assistance. The runners-up team was from the Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT) with their mobile solution ‘Agri Techno’ and the third place was jointly shared by the University of Ruhuna and the University of Jaffna for their ‘Authoritative Postal Mail Tracking System’ and ‘On the Spot Accident Reporting System’ respectively.

“SLASSCOM is delighted to be associated with Motorola Solutions in this important annual event which not only enhances the IT skills of undergrads but also prepares them to become IT entrepreneurs in future,” stated SLASSCOM Chairman Sujiva Devaraja.

“These dual goals are key objectives of SLASSCOM’s capacity and entrepreneurship forum. Events such as these serve to sharpen the innovative skills of Sri Lanka’s IT talent which has already acquired international recognition in this respect. Mobile technology is a niche which is very much the focus of SLASSCOM’s mobile and telco centre of excellence which seeks to showcase Sri Lanka’s capability in this rapidly advancing domain.”

The inaugural competition held last year started out as a pilot project and this year expanded to include entries from the whole country and the organisers were keen to note the increasing number of participants the second time around.

Guest of Honour at the finals, US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives Patricia Butenis expressed her delight at being present at the event and praised the organisers for providing the students with this invaluable experience that would go a long way in making Sri Lanka a top software destination in the future.

“This software development competition provides an opportunity for undergraduates to gain invaluable experience in developing software solutions and to showcase their solutions to the judges. Perhaps more important is what happens when these students graduate from universities. The country will have a growing pool of innovative developers who are readily employable. In time I believe that they will help make Sri Lanka one of the top software development centres in the world,” she said.

A total of 16 undergraduate teams from 12 universities and university affiliated colleges in Sri Lanka made it to the finals and included the Universities of Peradeniya, Ruhuna, Kelaniya, Jaffna, Colombo, Uva Wellassa and Rajarata, the Open University of Sri Lanka, NIBM, APIIT, SLIIT and IIT.

Each team demonstrated their unique enterprise level mobile application developed over the past five months. All applications addressed the needs of different industry verticals such as healthcare, tourism, plantation, retail, warehouse management, transportation and public organisations like railways, postal, energy and utilities.

Motorola Solutions Director and Country Manager Anuradha Tennekoon said: “It is evident from these applications that with proper guidance and coaching, our undergraduates are capable of developing world-class solutions. These youngsters are the future of our IT industry and they will drive Sri Lanka to a very strong position in the world’s IT and mobile landscape.”

Speaking to one of the four groups representing the University of Peradeniya, third-year undergrad Kaveen Liyanage expressed his enthusiasm at the opportunity given to them through the competition.

“The seniors in last year’s batch who took part last year told us that the competition is very interesting which encouraged us to participate this year. It’s been a great opportunity as we have gained a lot of knowledge and experience and got to work with equipment that we previously did not have access to,” he expressed.

First time participants representing the University of Jaffna stated that they were honoured to be the first team of four to represent the university.

“It has been a good experience and we are honoured to be the first to represent the university. We have done our very best and we would like to thank the organisers for making this possible,” said one of the undergrads, Ranjith Subramanium.

It has been a long process for these students who had to make frequent trips from Jaffna to Colombo over the five month period to meet with their advisor from Motorola Solutions in order to iron out the kinks in their application which was an on the spot accident reporting system.

As per industry sources, mobility represents an important element for today’s organisations across the world. Mobility is now considered a vital component for infrastructure and software applications across enterprise markets. It is estimated that ease-of-use for mobile computing devices and technological advances in wireless software platforms and applications will in turn stimulate the global mobile computing market to reach $ 328 billion by 2015.