IBM to triple its investment in India over next 3 yrs

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.

UNI