Intel Eyes Public Sector Banks To Propel Growth

Intel, along with its key partners -- TCS, Infosys, I-flex, Compaq, IBM, among others -- is targeting the computerisation in the public sector banks to drive its growth in the country.

The company is looking at a revenue growth of around 50 to 60 per cent for the year, of which a significant portion will come from the banking and finance sector.

"Compared to other industries, the banking and finance sector is growing at a faster pace," Intel Asia Electronics general manager (Internet solutions group) G B Kumar, said.

Intel's presence in the country is chiefly in the areas of banking and finance, manufacturing, telecom and e-governance. Within the banking sector, Intel's focus is on the public sector and new generation private sector banks, targeting its 64 bit Itanium servers and 32 bit Xeon Servers.

"Intel supplies building blocks to computer manufacturers to enable a wide range of choice to the end user. It acts as the technology advocate for the banks as the market is going through a dynamic change," Kumar said.

As public sector banks go in for total branch automation, they need one server with around 8 to 10 computers, he said.

Further, these banks are also going for cluster banking, wherein the computerised branches of a particular region will be linked up with one another," Kumar added.

Intel is also looking keenly at Internet banking. "We have a 50 per cent market share among private sector banks and we want to replicate this in public sector banks as well," Kumar added.

Intel is also looking at co-operative banks. According to Kumar, "co-operative banks offer a huge opportunity. We are working at the ASP (application service provider) model for this sector".

Within the banking sector, Intel is eyeing core banking, data warehousing and enterprise integration application (EIA). In the EIA sector, it is looking at integrating the databases of corporate and retail sectors so that banks can cross-sell products.

Intel is also looking at the replacement market. "After three to four years, a new set of applications may be required by banks to stay competitive, which may prove to be difficult on the existing servers," said Kumar.