IBM to triple its investment in India over next three years

Bangalore, Jun 6: IBM will triple its investment in India from US dollar 2 billion to USD 6 billion over the next three years, IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Samuel J Palmisano announced this morning.

He was addressing a gathering over 10,000 employees at the sprawling Palace grounds here in presence of India President A P J Abdul Kalam.

He said India and other emerging economies were an increasingly important part of IBM's global success. ''If you are not in India, making the right investments and finding and developing the best employees and business partners, then you won't be able to combine the skills and expertise with those from around the world, in ways that could help the clients be successful,'' he remarked.

He said investments would ensure growth of most of the opportunities besides enabling the IBM to fulfill its vision to become a glob ally integrated company. 'I am here today to say that IBM is not going to miss this opportunity,' he added.

Mr Palmisano said as immediate steps in its increased investment in India, the company would establish the first in a new breed of service delivery centres in Bangalore. It would deploy new processes and technology that would greatly automate IT service delivery to provide clients with enhanced flexibility and incrased worldwide access to skills, service offerings and continuous availability at lower cost.

He said the company would also create the IBM Systems and Technology Group Innovation, Development and Executive Briefing centre in Bangalore, focussed on IBM infrastructure solutions, technologies and innovations and providing performance benchmarking, testing, data migration and competency building capabilities.

Locating a Telecommunications Research and Innocation Centre at its India Research Lab would serve as a key resource to IBM's telecommunications clients around the world, he added.

He said IBM had formed a new Global Delivery Research and Development Organisation that pair researchers from its eight worldwide labs with services delivery experts to reinvent service delivery for IT by creating a virtual global delivery platform unifying IBM's entire network of IT delivery centres. This work was being piloted at the GSD centre in Bangalore, which runs, not just monitors,IT operations from India for more than 225 clients worldwide, providing high value complex services, including security and network operations, service and storage management and hosting, he added.

Mr Palmisano said the new technologies being deployed in India would be rolled out to IBM services centres worldwide. The network of Global Delivery Centres was a key component in IBM's strategy to apply innovation to continually enhance its services delivery model that goes beyond simply lower costs to provide clients with high value business solutions.

He said the IBM STG innovation, Development and Executive Briefing Centre would provide a one stop shop for clients to learn about IBM infrastructure solutions and technologies as well as perform benchmarks for IBM System and Storage products including proof of concept. The centre would also focus on Linux competency as IBM Increased its focus on Linux in India. The new centre would work closely with the Linux Technology Centre. It would also coordinate development of skills and competencies in IBM hardware and software solutions for IBM's business partners and ISVs as it provided support leading to additional sales.

He said the High Performance On Demand Solutions Lab, the first-of-its-kind lab in India connected IBM's top consultants, developers, engineers and researchers in India and around the world, culminating in the most comprehensive skills and resources available in the industry.

He said as part of the academic initiative, the IBM would launch 'The Great Mind Challenge' in which students at the country's engineering institutions would develop software based on various project scenarios. Mentors from IBM would work with students and there would also be training sessions to teach students about solving business problems. The top 20 projects would be put on the internet to be used without charge by the end user and IBM business partners. The programme would commence on June 15 and continue through the end of this year, he added.

UNI