IBM on the learning curve

IBM, having grown to over 23,000 employees in India from 9,000 in December 2003, now plans to develop IT talent in partnership with local universities.

"Through our academic initiative we plan to target 200 institutes in India and train over 50,000 students in IBM and open standard-based technologies," Shanker Annaswamy, managing director, IBM India, said.

IBM, which launched its academic initiative in July last year, plans to build a database of people qualified in IBM technologies and open standards (such as Linux), which are deployed in IBM solutions, for its recruitment needs.

"We can expect the current rate of hiring to continue in India. The students who qualify with requisite skills as part of the academic initiative would be put on our global database," Kevin R Faughnan, director, IBM Academic Initiative, said.

The varsities, which would be piloting IBM's initiative, are IIT Delhi, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi, Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, Regional Engineering College, Durgapur, DAV Institute of Engineering & Technology, Ludhiana, Thiyagaraja College of Engineering, Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Kongu Engineering College and Visveswaraiah Technological University, Karnataka.

With IBM seeing a large demand from small and medium business segment globally it is also trying to make sure that it has the talent to make the most of the opportunity.

"IBM India has doubled its marketing spend in targeting business in the small and medium enterprises segment this financial year and trebled its sales force in the same period," Dan Powers, Asia Pacific head, IBM, had said during his recent visit.

Terming India and China as hot spots, Powers had said the company was ramping up investments in the India and was looking at acquisition as well as organic growth as a strategy.

"Somebody with expertise in middleware would be a good acquisition candidate," Powers had said adding that the scouting team would look at organisations who were already working with IBM platforms.