IBM continues to be bullish on India

IBM has stated that it continues to be bullish on the Indian market and also on global IT spending. This is despite the recent dull numbers and outlook by a few software majors in India.

Speaking to Business Standard, Shanker Annaswamy, MD, IBM India said: "We are seeing aggressive growth in the entire portfolio of our offerings, be it in the software or hardware. The on-demand strategy is giving us excellent results in the solutions play. In addition to this, we are seeing a pretty good growth in the small and medium business segments."

IBM India at the start of 2005 employed 23,000 professionals and is growing this headcount at a furious pace.

"I will not be able to share a target number about how many people we will employ by the end of this year, but it will be an aggressive ramp-up. To give a perspective on this, we were 9,000 people in the recent past and we are 23,000 today. This sort of growth will surely continue," Annaswamy asserted.

IBM India has also announced that the integration of Daksh, a BPO firm which IBM acquired in India, is on smoothly and is showing positive results.

"The suite of services we offer our clients, along with services from IBMDaksh are tightly integrated and we are seeing good growth in this area also."

Speaking on the emerging areas IBM India is focussing on, Annaswamy said that they are building expertise in RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) "which is expected to be a major driver for businesses".

On the hardware front, IBM India is witnessing good traction in the Intel server range, Blade servers and also on the UNIX platforms.

"The banking industry in India is on a high and we are aggressively tapping this segment in addition to our other focus sectors," Annaswamy highlighted.