Banking, infra to be big focus areas in India: IBM

Technology giant IBM today said banking, infrastructure and public sector will be the prime focus areas for its India operations apart from telecom, which has been a key focus sector.

The largest technology services firm already has a strong presence in India's telecommunications sector with customers, including Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular.

"We are now also focusing on several other sectors like banking for their core banking solutions and public sector including Railways and Income Tax departments and in infrastructure space, particularly in the airports and energy utility area," IBM India Managing Director Shanker Annaswamy told reporters here.

IBM has already bagged contracts from State Bank of India (for data warehousing), Indian Railways, Delhi and Hyderabad international airports among others, he said.

The company will also look at geographical expansion outside metro towns besides building its presence in a number of smaller cities, where it sees growth, he said.

IBM's operations in India include providing hardware, middleware and technology services, back-office services, consulting and research and development.

IBM India which joins other IBM offices around the world for celebrating the company's centennial on June 16 with a year-long initiative will focus on three themes: Reinventing the modern corporation-how to build a new kind of organisation and sustain it over time, Pioneering Science of Information- how to capture the opportunity of enterprise computing and Making the World Work Better-how to apply technology to transform companies, industries and societies, he said.

IBM India, as part of the centennial celebrations will align itself to a global initiative wherein tens of thousands of IBMers around the world are volunteering their time and talent throughout 2011 in support of Smarter Planet initiatives.

On June 15, IBMers, retirees and partners will participate in a range of service projects in communities around the world. In India, over 50% the employees will pledge a minimum of eight hours of voluntary service and work with over 100 NGOs.

IBM's 2015 global roadmap has a heightened focus on emerging markets, business analytics, cloud computing and Smarter Planet.

The company's priority was to expand IBM's reach to over 47 cities in India/South Asia, establishing presence in new small cities, while deepening presence in high growth cities with new branches, Shanker said.