IBM India plans to add 1000 channel partners during this year and strengthen its presence in over 25 cities to expand its business in the server market.

Addressing a press conference here, Jyothi Satyanathan, country manager - pSeries & OpenPower, IBM India, said that the company already had 1000 channel partners through its five distributors.

The company is also planning to expand its business in smaller cities.

"We have presence in more than 50 cities, but we are active only in 27 cities," he said, adding that the company would invest, without disclosing the amount, to strengthen its presence in the remaining cities.

Quoting IDC reports for Q2, 2005, he said that IBM grew by 62.8 per cent in the overall server market in terms of revenue while the market grew by 23.8 per cent.

Satyanathan said that the total market size for servers in India was estimated at about $550 million (about Rs 2,500 crore) for 2005.

Low-end server market accounted for about 63 per cent of the total server market.

 However, he said that the high-end server market (enterprise servers) was expected to grow in near future as the telecom segment, which was the largest contributor to the high-end server market, was in an expansion mode along with the government and manufacturing sectors.