Vice President Inaugurates Modernised BEL Software Technology Centre at Bengaluru

The Hon’ble Vice President of India, Mr M Hamid Ansari, inaugurated the modernised BEL Software Technology Centre (BSTC) of Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) here today.

BSTC is a part of the Central Development & Engineering Group of BEL-Bengaluru and is the software development centre of BEL.

The Vice President also visited the state-of-the-art manufacturing / integration / test facilities for the Akash Missile System and the Coastal Surveillance System at BEL-Bengaluru Complex.

After the inauguration of the modernised software centre, Mr S K Sharma, Chairman & Managing Director, BEL, said: “In modern day warfare, software is playing a crucial role. Realizing its importance, BEL has been building up expertise in software for defence applications. The inauguration of the new facility today is a major milestone in our endeavor in this direction. The major strength of this Centre is its capability to quickly grasp the requirements of the Defence forces and develop suitable software application to meet the operational requirements.”

BEL has identified software development and support as a major thrust area and the Software Division, was established within the BEL factory premises. The division performs software design, development and support tasks for complex defence networks and systems.

BSTC presently includes more than 1,000 person years of collective experience in the software field, working for various software intensive systems. The focus of the division is software development and support for software intensive systems and projects for the other SBUs of BEL, Bengaluru. This includes projects for all the 3 defence forces - Army, Navy & Air Force, as well as the paramilitary forces and Coast Guard and also products for civilian purpose such as the Electronic Voting Machine and the Doppler Weather Radar. Additionally, the Division provides software quality services such as testing and validation.

BEL became the first Indian PSU to achieve the coveted SEI-CMM (Software Engineering Institute - Capability Maturity Model), the quality yardstick used to measure software companies, when BSTC was successfully assessed at the SW-CMM Level 4, in September 2004. Presently, the Division is complying with SEI CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integrated) Maturity Level 5, since June 2009. The Division is additionally certified for ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004.