CRANES SOFTWARE INTERNATIONAL LIMITED
ANNUAL REPORT 2008-2009
CHAIRMAN'S REPORT
Dear Shareholders,
It is with pleasure that I invite you to go through this Annual Report and
learn how your Company has performed during the last financial year. I am
sure that you will be more than happy to see a robust growth even in the
times of uncertain economic conditions that we are all very aware of. All
businesses around the world have been affected by the global meltdown the
individual analysis is generally restricted to the evaluation of the
severity.
The core business of a Company forms its DNA that also defines its
vulnerability in the face of an onslaught of any epidemic. Choosing the
core business carefully is akin to designing your immune system and as you
can see, our selection of core business in engineering and scientific
software space has held us in good stead.
As any other business, we have been affected by the current global business
climate as well, but the effect has been largely on short term parameters
such as cash flow, rather than on the demands of our core products and
services. In the technology space, every global meltdown since world war II
has, if anything only increased the demands on innovation and technical
solutions. The current financial crisis is no exception. Now there is
increased demand on analytical tools all over the world, in almost every
sphere of human activity, for better assessment of risks, early detection
of signatures of impending disasters, pattern recognition, scenario
planning and incredible amounts of simulations. With three broad divisions
of Cranes-Analytics, Engineering, and Technology-your Company has
positioned itself really well to meet the increased demands from society in
these difficult times and in this process deliver value for your
investments as well.
You are aware that your Company has grown to its current strengths through
a series of acquisitions. All our acquisitions have been, of course, in the
chosen areas of our core business. These acquisitions have thus resulted in
accumulation of quite a few technologies. Our fervent desire is to
integrate these technologies and leverage cross fertilization. In the
software technology space, this is typically a non trivial task as the
basic architectures are many times incompatible. Bringing them on common
architectural platforms requires quite a bit of R & D. This activity
requires investments of both resources and time. This is where I see most
of our challenges in coming years. How well we do this integration and use
synergies to deliver new products is what will define our future path. We
are, fortunately, set on the right path and, with your continued support
and encouragement, we should not only weather the current storms but come
out ahead when the sun shines again in the global business world.
Rudra Pratap
Chairman