IBM fourth facility to employ 3000 professionals

Kolkata, Sept 21: IBM India today announced expansion of its global delivery capacity here by opening its fourth facility in the city.

Located in the DLF IT Park at Rajarhat, the facility would house over 3000 new employees once fully staffed, IBM India managing director Shanker Annaswamy said.

The new facility in Kolkata would augment the vast global delivery network of IBM spanning across countries. The facility would deliver high value solutions to help IBM clients innovate globally, Mr Annaswamy said.

Inaugurating the facility West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said the new facility would help IBM significantly ramp up presence in the city.

''IBM already employs 4000 people in its other facilities in the city. The new facility with additional employment of 3,000 professionals would make IBM significantly increase its presence in the state,'' he said.

Bhattacharjee urged IBM to start a training centre in the state so that professionals could be trained in accordance with the industry requirements.

''Altogether 250 IT companies are operating in the city and employing 45,000 professionals and it will grow. We need more trained professionals,'' the Chief Minister said.

IBM's vice-president consulting and application services Amitabh Ray said IBM is enabling the Burdwan University to design its curriculum in line with IT industry requirements.

IBM's long standing relationship with IIT Kharagpur led to the setting up of a Deep Computing visualisation lab and research grant of US000, Ray said.

Additionally, IBM would for the first time in India roll out IBM appropriate Continued Education programme that would enable Bachelor of Science students in the state to train with IBM to receive a Master of Science (Technology) degree from the Mysore University over a period of four years, he informed.

UNI