Mumbai: IBM India has announced that they have been awarded the prestigious Gold certification from Cisco Systems, for relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction, training, support and specialisation requirements set by Cisco.

IBM Global Services, the services arm of IBM India Ltd, has yet again demonstrated its leadership in the system integration market.

The certification is also testimony to IBM India’s expertise in implementing Cisco solutions in India. IBM India has been Cisco’s partner for the last several years. IBM is among the only three companies in India to be certified as a Gold partner.

Says Cisco Systems (India and SAARC) vice-president (channels and business development) Jangoo Dalal: “IBM India is a key partner for Cisco in India. The Gold certification shows IBM’s commitment to Cisco business. This provides greater opportunities for Cisco partnering with IBM and together grow and evolve the Indian networking market.”

Says IBM India country manager Ashish Kumar: “This certification is a testimonial of our strong commitment to bring the best-of-breed solutions to our customers by building customer-focused technology, skills and processes.

“Being one of Cisco’s largest sales and support partners in India, the customers will immensely benefit from this gold partner certification. As a gold partner one needs to specialise in different areas of networking, and IBM specialises in the areas of IP telephony solutions, wireless solutions, and security and VPN solutions.”

IBM Global Services is the world’s largest information technology services provider, with 2001 revenues of approximately $35 billion. Services is the fastest growing part of IBM, with more than 141,000 professionals operating in 160 countries.

IBM Global Services (www.ibm.com/in) integrates all of IBM’s capabilities — services, hardware, software and research — to help companies of all sizes realise the full value of information technology.

The Cisco Gold certified partner designation offers the highest level of credibility in the marketplace. In fact, many governments and large corporations require Cisco Gold certification as part of their requests for proposal.

Gold certified partners deliver the highest level of support, have to gain expertise in three specialisations and should have achieved a measurable level of customer satisfaction. As a Cisco gold-certified partner, the partner is entitled to receive a wealth of sales and marketing information, tools and support.