The ALPM s were in fact
Answer on the basis of the following passage.Microsense, the parent company that N.V. joined, started operations in 1982 as a manufacturer of PCs in Hyderabad under the ALPM programme for banks. For the uninitiated, ALPM is an acronym for Accounting and Ledger Posting Machines, When Banks in India were computerized in the early 1980s, there were strong objections by the unions, which feared loss of jobs. The very word 'computer' was anathema to them.
The banks thought of a novel way of introducing computers through ALPMs, which were, in fact, stand alone computers capable of handling SB (saving bank account), CA (current account), OD/CC (overdraft/cash credit), advances , term deposits, outward clearing, DD(demand drafts) and back office operations. The introduction of ALPMs provided a great opening for enterprising software entrepreneurs in India, and Mircrosense cashed in on his opportunity. It was a project approved by the public sector banks, and since the banking industry in India was enormous, business was smooth with continuous orders. After some time, however, Microsense got out of manufacturing, for various reasons, and decided to get into data communication, a relatively new area at the time.
They began as distributors for data communication products from companies like US Limited(VSNL), the first (any only) government-run Internet service provider in India at the time. Today, Microsense provides specialized Internet services to hotels and the hospitality industry. They have established a leadership position across that segments, with about 120 hotels as customers in India, Befast, Mauritius and Dubai. Their flagship product is billing and authentication system that is in use in all the system for guests staying in (or passing through) the hotel to use the Internet and bills them according to their usage.
The product has also been sold as an enterprise version to companies like Airtel,Vodafone, Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) and Infosys, albeit without the billing component. These companies use it as a secured guest access system for providing Internet access to guests of the company, but don't charge them for it. The authentication for usage is mandatory under the India penal code and does not permit anonymous browsers. So the software N.V. produces is able to track the actual users of the Internet, if needed, along with their usage details.
There is fairly large and growing demand for this software from both hotels and airports. Many people who have travelled through the recently constructed airport in Delhi have used this system to access the Internet.
