FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES IN INDIA
IBM INDIA LIMITED
Background
IBM India Limited, a subsidiary of International Business Machines Corporation Inc. (IBM), was set up in September 1999. IBM entered the Indian market with a joint venture with the Tata Group in 1992. IBM is the only company in the world that offers end-to-end solutions to customers from hardware to software, services and consulting. Since its inception in India, IBM has expanded its operations considerably and currently operates through a network of 14 offices, with regional headquarters at Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.
The Company has interests in sales and marketing of servers, PCs and software products and services. IBM’s businesses in India include the IBM Software Group, IBM Global Services, IBM Consulting Services, IBM Global Financing, IBM Solution Partnership Centre (one among 10 worldwide), Linux Solution Centre (one among 7 worldwide), Software Development Centres, Global E-Business Centre and a manufacturing facility at Pondicherry.
IBM recorded total revenue of US$ 606 million in FY 04 and is profitable in India. It has a workforce of 23,300 including those at its BPO centre, and 34 per cent of the total revenues come from exports. According to internal sources, IBM has invested approximately US$ 10 million in India so far, mostly in year 2000 for labs, and this does not include the Daksh investment.
Leader in notebook and server segments
Market share
IBM India recorded 31.3 per cent market share in the notebooks segment (revenues) to gain the leadership position in FY 04. IBM is a market leader in the servers segment with a 32 per cent market share. In the lower-end server segment, IBM emerged the leader with a market share of 38.2 per cent.
Achievements in India
IBM India was chosen as one of the Top 3 Employers in Indian IT’s Best Employers Survey conducted by
Dataquest - IDC India. The same survey ranked IBM subsidiary, Daksh eServices as the Best Employer in the BPO Sector. IBM was also ranked second in a list of Dream Companies, that respondents aspired to work in. IBM also appeared in the top 3 preferred IT employers in the country in 2003-04, in an IT employer brand perception study by Brand-comm.
IBM Global Services India was awarded the prestigious Gold certification by Cisco Systems, for the relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction, training, support and specialisation requirements set by Cisco.
IGSI was recognised as the “Top MNC Software Services Exporter” in Karnataka for 2003-04 by Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Bangalore
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SUCCESS STORIES In April 2004, IBM was awarded the Golden Rhino Award in the Server and laptop category. The Golden Rhino Award is the channel’s seal of approval for the Most Reliable Product in the market.
IBM stands No.1 in the Portables (Notebook) category in the Customer Satisfaction Audit 2004. The survey was conducted by Dataquest and IDC India among 4000 Enterprise CIOs.
IBM ThinkPad has been chosen Laptop of the Year 4 times over the last 5 years.
PC Quest Users Choice Award was picked up by IBM for its High End Servers.
IBM has also been adjudged Implementation Partner of the Year.
Factors for success
Wide range of offerings
IBM has set the agenda for the industry with ‘on demand business’ – a kind of transformation where an organisation changes the way it operates and reduces costs; serving customers better, reducing risks
and improving speed and agility in the marketplace.
IBM is already working with customers to transform them into ‘on demand’ businesses. IBM is the only company in the world that offers end-to-end solutions to the customers from hardware to software, services and consulting. Linux support further enhances IBM’s e-business infrastructure enabler capability.
IBM Global Services is the world’s largest information technology services and consulting provider, generating record revenues and signings in 2003 of US$ 42.6 billion and US$ 55.5 billion, respectively. Some 180,000 professionals in more than 160 countries, including India, help clients integrate information technology with business value - from the business transformation and industry expertise of IBM Business Consulting Services to hosting, infrastructure, technology design and training services. Leveraging IBM’s unequalled scope and scale, IBM Global Services delivers integrated, flexible and resilient processes - across companies and through business partners - that enable clients to benefit from the ‘on demand’ business model by saving money and making their businesses more competitive.
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FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES IN INDIA IBM’s offerings of hardware and expertise in planning, deploying and maintaining infrastructure of any scale, enable the company to gain a lead in the domestic outsourcing market. With a manufacturing facility at Pondicherry for commercial desktops, low and mid- range servers, IBM is in a position to offer customised products to local customers.
Marketing strategy
Efficient implementation of channel strategy is one of the key factors driving IBM’s success. IBM’s sales grew considerably as a result of the channel infrastructure, programmes and opportunities provided by the Company to its partner organisations.
Reduced price for the Indian market
Realising that India was a highly untapped and fast- growing market, IBM set up operations in all the sectors of its business in the country. IBM reduced its notebook prices, bringing them closer to the desktop models to increase its market share since the laptop to desktop ratio in India is 1:3 against 1:2 in developed countries.
Strong parental support
IBM Corporation provides continuous support to IBM India in terms of global human resources and technology. IBM regularly exchanges its talent pool across countries, and recently shuffled the top management across countries.
Increasing the market potential
IBM has initiated plans to increase the market potential by increasing the awareness on IT among the masses.
IBM has entered the academic sector by providing IT education, thereby expanding the user market. The company has pioneered partner relationships with a number of educational institutions including the IITs at Delhi, Kanpur and Chennai and a number of renowned IT schools in the country.
Leveraging the India Advantage
India as a global sourcing base for BPO operations
IBM expanded the scale of its BPO operations in India with the acquisition of Daksh, the third largest BPO outfit in India with over 6,000 employees. This enabled IBM to have an international presence in BPO operations with big-ticket customers and scale up its telecom, insurance and Internet customers.
India as an R&D hub
India Research Laboratory, Delhi: (one among 8 facilities worldwide): IBM’s India Research Laboratory (IRL) focuses on areas critical to expanding the country’s technology infrastructure. It also has significant initiatives in Services and Sciences, Information Management, User Interaction Technologies, e- Commerce, Life Sciences, Distributed Computing and Software Engineering. Currently, IRL researchers are working on several projects covering bioinformatics, text mining, speech recognition for Indian languages, natural language processing, grid computing, and autonomic computing, among others.
India Software Labs at Bangalore and Pune: The Software Labs in India develop, enhance and support key IBM software products & technologies in
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SUCCESS STORIES collaboration with other IBM labs worldwide.
Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at Bangalore was established at the India Software Labs to allow universities, access to IBM’s leading-edge product development and the supporting infrastructure; while giving IBM the opportunity to work with academic leaders and researchers on research projects.
IBM Innovation Center for Business Partners: (one among 10 facilities worldwide) Independent Software Vendors are encouraged to port their solutions on IBM platforms at this Center and develop Web based applications for Indian customers.
Linux Solution Center, Bangalore: (one among 7 facilities worldwide) The Center supports Business Partners and Independent Service vendors across the ASEAN/South Asia region.
IBM Linux Competency Center, Bangalore: (one among only 4 facilities in Asia) This Center develops standards and embedded software for open source, undertaking high-end research in the area for IBM Worldwide.
Global e-business Software Center, Gurgaon: This state-of-the-art center combines IBM’s global experience and technology expertise to deliver e-business solutions for Indian organisations and the government through the e-Governance Centre.
Engineering & Technology Services Center, Bangalore:
This Center provides technology design services for advanced chips, cards and systems to companies in India and across Asia.
India as a software development hub
IBM also has Global delivery centres in Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon and Kolkata. They deliver “best-of- breed’ technology solutions to IBM customers worldwide covering middleware, e-business technologies, enterprise and Web technologies, data warehousing across functional areas like Supply Chain Operation Services, Financial Management Services, Human Resource Services, Customer Relationship Management, e-Business Integration and Application Management Services.
Future plans
With good success in the country, IBM plans to make the Indian subsidiary a hub for global operations and for its Linux initiatives in the South East Asian region.
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