"India is an important growth engine for IBM

20 October 1999

Recently global IT industry pioneer and giant IBM took full control of its joint venture with the Tata group. Tata IBM Ltd is now IBM India Ltd. So how does IBM look at India now? To find out, domain-B's R Ramasubramoni had a chat with IBM's Vishwesh Padmanabhan, vice president, software and solution developer marketing, IBM India, Joaquin E Quintos IV, general manager, software, Asean/South Asia and Hwang Kuo Wei, manager, software solutions, Asean/South Asia software. Click here to read more about them.

domain-B: Can you tell us something about IBM's new focus, perspectives and plans now that IBM India is a full subsidiary of IBM?

Padmanabhan: Basically there is no change, internally or externally. But as we enter the Indian market as a subsidiary, we find that the Indian market has great potential. We are very bullish about the Indian market, which, along with China, is now a significant growth engine for IBM.

We are keen to develop solution partnership centres for expertise in core areas like database technology, java-based software and voice interaction technology. Other key areas include java certification, hardware certification for our Netfinity platform of servers, where we certify solutions that run on Netfinity servers. While we offer our solutions development centre for software vendors and developers to enable them to develop solutions with IBM software, support and services, we also extend this facility to non-IBM platforms like HP's UX, Solaris, etc., and we expect to increase this business.

Now that we have launched our India operations, our next aim is to expand our coverage of the market and leverage local capabilities and talent for the Asean region as a whole.

domain-B: IBM has a stated focus on e-commerce. What is the worldwide trend here, according to you, and what do you see happening in India?