The concept of using computers for exploration, geological modeling and mine planning began in India towards later part of 80s. Sandeep Ray presents an evolutionary sketch of development in this field.
The evolution of computer softwares related to the mining industries started towards the late 70's across the world with the need clearly apparent for the operative gold mines. The sustenance of the gold mines depended on accurate prediction of the nature of the deposit along with the grade estimation. This was crucial to avoid any wasteful mining leading to barren faces. Many of the mining softwares were initiated by the existing mining companies and many were off-loaded to universities for development as a project.
The concept of using computers for exploration, geological modeling and mine planning started in India towards the later half of the 80s. Mining Companies started realising the need for such software for a more accurate and faster prediction of the deposit. These companies also realised that with such softwares, it was possible to estimate reserves as well as grades with variable cutoffs much faster and accurately as compared to manual methods. Thus the race to capture the Indian Mining Market had started with international brands like SURPAC, DATAMINE making their presence felt by appointing distributors for India. Not to be left behind were the indigenous software from CMC and later by RAMCO. Every software vendor claimed their software to be the best and the competition was fierce. Though these softwares were originally designed to cater to a specific segment of the mining industry, but were project as a complete solution for the mining industry in India. With colourful demos and high commitments, the vendors sold their software to the Indian mining houses only to later5 realise that a purchase order is not the end of that client. There is something more important after the selling has been made and that is making the software do what it had been promised to do. This is what changed the position of the existing softwares in terms of market share and dependability. Customers were becoming more matured and demanded that benchmarks be performed on their own data and they would judge which software will suite their organisation. Customers were ready to pay a premium for a particular software that they had seen and tested would do the job. Thus software which had the largest user base within India or abroad were not necessarily the best.
A very few distributors did give any importance to after sales service and technical support to the existing clients. Most of them just forgot the clients after selling them the product which at many places were been dumped without actually being utilised. One of the main reason for this was the lack of any specialised technical support team, well trained on the software, with these distributors. Most of the Indian vendors did have a huge software development team mainly to customise their package to suite that of the clients. One of the distributors to emphasise on a strong technical support team was HCL, then distributing Datamine.
Datamine entered India through then HCL Hewlett-Packard Ltd. in 1990 bagging the Hindustan Zinc Ltd. order at Rampura Agucha and then to bag the other 3 HZL orders under the world bank grant. It also picked up the 3 SAIL orders for the supply of the Datamine software. In 1995, the distributorship rights for the Datamine software were shifted from HCL HP to NIIT Ltd. under a new CAD/CAM division. Datamine grew from having a small 10% market share to capture the entire 100% in the 1996 and still holds the major market share of the mining software business of India. With a modest 20 licences in India, it currently holds more than 80% of the Indian market share (1997-98).
The success of the Datamine range of products, has been its technical edge over that of other softwares available in the market. The development of new features, techniques and new competitive pricing were the major points which helped Datamine capture the market. This is the only software which is constantly being developed to incorporate new, unique features based on the feed backs from the existing users essential to the changing mining scenario. Features like UNFOLD, Auto-Blending had never been present in other mining packages before. We at Datamine, do believe that no software is ideal. Every software has been designed for a specific function and that softwares should be able to import and export data from other similar packages to extract the best of each of the packages. This is what is been done by large mining consulting houses like BHP, CRA, etc. Datamine was again the first software to develop import / export drivers to other international mining packages like SURPAC, MOCROMINE, GDM, WHITTLE and also to standard GIS packages like ArcInfo. Today Datatime can import an AutoCAD drawing file directly as a binary file and convert the same into a 3D datatime file.
Thus with the presence of a competent technical team and a powerful software, NIIT entered into the phase of consultancy using the Datamine software for various virgin deposit. It successfully completed jobs for deposit. It successfully completed jobs for M. N. Dastur and Gujarat Mineral Industries Consulting Services Ltd. Besides doing consulting job on its own, NIIT also tied up with various organisations like Indian Bureau of Mines, MECL for jointly performing such jobs.
With the growth in the number of clients and a large potential for consulting jobs, it was imperative that the technical team should be expanded to meet the future challenges. Again the existing Indian clients should get the same level of support for which Datamine is well known globally. All these factors led to the opening up of the first International Mining Software house in India. Launched in the Month of April 1998, this office operates as a branch office to the Datamine International Ltd., UK and is responsible for all sales, support and consulting within India. The long term objective of this office is to expand its territory to cover the entire Asia-Pacific. The reaction of the existing clients can only be proven by the fact that today 80% of the clients have entered into maintenance as compared to 45% before the formation of this branch office. Today Datamine International Ltd., India Branch Office guarantees responses to technical queries within 24 hrs of receipt. Also, all our Indianclients have access to our international technical staff situated across the world. Therefore, with globalisation, where ever a user goes, he / shed has the access to a Datamine technical support person within the same time zone to cater to his / her specific query.
source : Sandeep Ray
Country Manager, Datamine International Ltd.
The evolution of computer softwares related to the mining industries started towards the late 70's across the world with the need clearly apparent for the operative gold mines. The sustenance of the gold mines depended on accurate prediction of the nature of the deposit along with the grade estimation. This was crucial to avoid any wasteful mining leading to barren faces. Many of the mining softwares were initiated by the existing mining companies and many were off-loaded to universities for development as a project.
The concept of using computers for exploration, geological modeling and mine planning started in India towards the later half of the 80s. Mining Companies started realising the need for such software for a more accurate and faster prediction of the deposit. These companies also realised that with such softwares, it was possible to estimate reserves as well as grades with variable cutoffs much faster and accurately as compared to manual methods. Thus the race to capture the Indian Mining Market had started with international brands like SURPAC, DATAMINE making their presence felt by appointing distributors for India. Not to be left behind were the indigenous software from CMC and later by RAMCO. Every software vendor claimed their software to be the best and the competition was fierce. Though these softwares were originally designed to cater to a specific segment of the mining industry, but were project as a complete solution for the mining industry in India. With colourful demos and high commitments, the vendors sold their software to the Indian mining houses only to later5 realise that a purchase order is not the end of that client. There is something more important after the selling has been made and that is making the software do what it had been promised to do. This is what changed the position of the existing softwares in terms of market share and dependability. Customers were becoming more matured and demanded that benchmarks be performed on their own data and they would judge which software will suite their organisation. Customers were ready to pay a premium for a particular software that they had seen and tested would do the job. Thus software which had the largest user base within India or abroad were not necessarily the best.
A very few distributors did give any importance to after sales service and technical support to the existing clients. Most of them just forgot the clients after selling them the product which at many places were been dumped without actually being utilised. One of the main reason for this was the lack of any specialised technical support team, well trained on the software, with these distributors. Most of the Indian vendors did have a huge software development team mainly to customise their package to suite that of the clients. One of the distributors to emphasise on a strong technical support team was HCL, then distributing Datamine.
Datamine entered India through then HCL Hewlett-Packard Ltd. in 1990 bagging the Hindustan Zinc Ltd. order at Rampura Agucha and then to bag the other 3 HZL orders under the world bank grant. It also picked up the 3 SAIL orders for the supply of the Datamine software. In 1995, the distributorship rights for the Datamine software were shifted from HCL HP to NIIT Ltd. under a new CAD/CAM division. Datamine grew from having a small 10% market share to capture the entire 100% in the 1996 and still holds the major market share of the mining software business of India. With a modest 20 licences in India, it currently holds more than 80% of the Indian market share (1997-98).
The success of the Datamine range of products, has been its technical edge over that of other softwares available in the market. The development of new features, techniques and new competitive pricing were the major points which helped Datamine capture the market. This is the only software which is constantly being developed to incorporate new, unique features based on the feed backs from the existing users essential to the changing mining scenario. Features like UNFOLD, Auto-Blending had never been present in other mining packages before. We at Datamine, do believe that no software is ideal. Every software has been designed for a specific function and that softwares should be able to import and export data from other similar packages to extract the best of each of the packages. This is what is been done by large mining consulting houses like BHP, CRA, etc. Datamine was again the first software to develop import / export drivers to other international mining packages like SURPAC, MOCROMINE, GDM, WHITTLE and also to standard GIS packages like ArcInfo. Today Datatime can import an AutoCAD drawing file directly as a binary file and convert the same into a 3D datatime file.
Thus with the presence of a competent technical team and a powerful software, NIIT entered into the phase of consultancy using the Datamine software for various virgin deposit. It successfully completed jobs for deposit. It successfully completed jobs for M. N. Dastur and Gujarat Mineral Industries Consulting Services Ltd. Besides doing consulting job on its own, NIIT also tied up with various organisations like Indian Bureau of Mines, MECL for jointly performing such jobs.
With the growth in the number of clients and a large potential for consulting jobs, it was imperative that the technical team should be expanded to meet the future challenges. Again the existing Indian clients should get the same level of support for which Datamine is well known globally. All these factors led to the opening up of the first International Mining Software house in India. Launched in the Month of April 1998, this office operates as a branch office to the Datamine International Ltd., UK and is responsible for all sales, support and consulting within India. The long term objective of this office is to expand its territory to cover the entire Asia-Pacific. The reaction of the existing clients can only be proven by the fact that today 80% of the clients have entered into maintenance as compared to 45% before the formation of this branch office. Today Datamine International Ltd., India Branch Office guarantees responses to technical queries within 24 hrs of receipt. Also, all our Indianclients have access to our international technical staff situated across the world. Therefore, with globalisation, where ever a user goes, he / shed has the access to a Datamine technical support person within the same time zone to cater to his / her specific query.
source : Sandeep Ray
Country Manager, Datamine International Ltd.
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