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IBM sees Linux as game changer in India

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

IBM India, the $258 million wholly-owned subsidiary of the $89 billion global IT corporation, is initiating measures to aggressively promote and market Linux technology in the Asean/South Asia region from India.

With Linux emerging as the fastest growing operating system (OS) the world over, IBM has enabled its entire range of hardware, software, middleware and services to operate on the new platform. IBM Inc is investing $1billion to enable its entire software and hardware to run on it.

For instance, in India alone, as many as 40 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are making their operations on IBM Linux platform for mission critical applications. Many companies are moving from Unix to Linux.

Keeping in view the findings of the IDC's server operating environments market forecast & analysis, which projected a phenomenal growth of Linux as the largest OS by 2004, IBM India is participating with the open source community for developing Linux.

"The IBM Linux development centre in Bangalore, which is among the seven such facilities worldwide, will also support business partners and independent software vendors (ISV) in the Asean/South Asian region," declared IBM India managing director and CEO Abraham Thomas.

The development centre brings key IBM enterprise class strengths to Linux, especially in areas such as reliability, availability, and serviceability.

The centre is also developing the OS for a PDA device, the size of a wrist watch to demonstrate the viability of Linux across platforms, be they large enterprise servers, workstations, desktop, mobile computers or the smallest intelligent devices.

"The company has set up a Linux competency centre in Bangalore, the fourth of its kind in Asia to develop standards and embedded software for open source. It also plans to rope in various universities to develop curriculum with applications, middleware, and tools on Linux."

IBM's Linux strategy worldwide head Deepak Advani will be in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore next month to interact with developers and service providers for greater deployment of Linux for increased competitiveness.

To achieve the set goals, IBM India will be investing $100 million over the next two years in expanding its countrywide operations, including software development facilities in Bangalore and Pune and launching a new centre at Gurgaon in Haryana.

Though the company officials declined to reveal the break-up of the investments owing to confidentiality, it plans to induct around 1,700 software professionals this year with the largest contingent being in Bangalore, to take the total number to 4,500 people.

"The long-term objective is to increase the number to about 10,000 employees over the next few years," Thomas affirmed.

The software group will focus on developing and enabling business partners to address the huge Indian market by leveraging its expertise across hardware, software and services. The company is undertaking proof-of-concept, architecture, and delivery for companies in India and the overseas.

"In the domestic services, the company's focus areas for the current year and beyond will be strategic outsourcing, network integration, services, IT consulting and learning services. We are also introducing a PG course in IT at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H), " he said.

Having grown at 27 per cent in revenue during its first year of full-fledged operations, the company is hopeful of maintaining the momentum to register higher growth rate during the current year (2001).

Its revenues from services during the last year were $98 million.

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