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IBM upbeat about Indian server market

International Business Machines Corp aims to increase its dominance of the Indian server market with the launch on Thursday of a modular system capable of being expanded as capacity demand warrants.

IBM, the world's largest server maker, says the system features revolutionary architecture which delivers the power of mainframes at the price of a server.

The x440 architecture makes it possible to link up to four servers, each with four Intel Xeon processors. The system is designed to use industry standard technologies to handle the core applications that power e-businesses.

"The IBM eServer pioneers a new 'building block' style that allows customers to pay for computing power incrementally as they need it," IBM India Ltd said in a statement.

"We see this as a game-changer in this market," said Jyothi Satyanathan, the IBM India head of Intel-based server operations.

Avtar Saini, the South Asia head for chipmaker Intel Corp, said: "This new platform can boost system performance for high-end server systems by more than 30 per cent versus systems using the Pentium III Xeon processor."

India is the fifth-largest server market in the Asia-Pacific region, behind Japan, China, Korea, Australia and Taiwan, IBM India head Abraham Thomas said.

Satyanathan said IBM has about a third of the overall server market in India, but only about 21-22 per cent of the Intel-based server market, which is dominated by Houston-based Compaq Computer Corp.

The Indian market for Intel-based servers was estimated to be worth $150 million to $160 million in calendar 2001, and is expected to grow 5-6 per cent in 2002, according to market researcher IDC.

REGIONAL MARKET

The x440 servers, which were launched on Wednesday in the United States, could also give a boost to IBM's sales throughout the Asia-Pacific region, where Intel-based servers accounted for more than 90 per cent of the market in the third quarter of 2001, according to IDC.

Some 24,985 servers were sold for a total of $237.3 million in a seven-nation bloc of that region that quarter, according to IDC. That bloc included India and six Southeast Asian nations -- Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The new product should also boost revenue at Intel, where the Asia-Pacific region ex-Japan accounted for 35 per cent of Intel's fourth-quarter revenue of nearly $7 billion in the October-December quarter.

IBM India recently began selling the x360 server, which also has four Intel Xeon microprocessors. But the x360 can't be linked.

Satyanathan said IBM expected to begin shipping the x460 "in several months" and had not yet set prices.

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