IBM 100 YEARS
IBM turns 100 today. Very few companies manage such longevity, less so now when changes in market and technology environments are so rapid. Anticipating and managing those changes is complex.
And yet, that’s what the $100-billion computing giant’s done. And it’s been visible in India too over the past decade, in its phenomenal success in turning the country into its primary global delivery services centre, replicating the model pioneered by Indian software companies, and its equally extraordinary accomplishment in winning by far the largest share of the Indian IT services market.
TOI reported last year that IBM is one of India’s biggest employers, perhaps bigger than even Infosys, though lower than TCS (IBM does not divulge country numbers). We had said the employee strength could be upwards of 1.2 lakh. Wikipedia now puts it at over 1.3 lakh, just a little less than a third of IBM’s global employee strength.
In the domestic services market, IBM is estimated to have an over 50% share, with TCS, HP, Wipro and HCL
at a fraction of that. Its landmark deals with Airtel in 2004 and with Vodafone, Idea and BSNL subsequently, to manage their entire backend IT operations reflected a vision that many others lacked.
The Economist magazine said last week that the secret of IBM’s longevity has less to do with machines or software than with strong customer and societal relationships. When TOI spoke to IBM India MD Shanker Annaswamy last week, that’s exactly the sense he conveyed.
“IBM stays connected to the community. My role, as also that of others in my position, is to develop strategies that have an impact on the national agenda. The idea is to have an impact on telecommunication, healthcare, banking. It not only helps India to move forward, I participate in the growth agenda.”
IBM’s large services organization works closely with customers to co-create products and new business models. The Airtel model of IT outsourcing, for instance, was novel at the time, and thanks to that model, IBM technology now supports over 400 million mobile subscribers in India.
Community connect Annaswamy lists a number of community connect programmes. “We identify projects that can have a lasting impact on society, and our best qualified people will go and give their time, skills and tools to make an impact.
We have a vibrant on-demand community for this. They have had a big impact on many NGOs and institutions. This centennial month, more than 50% of IBM India’s employees will pledge 8 hours of their time for such projects.”
There’s also the corporate service corps, under which employees are pulled out from their jobs for 4-6 weeks and sent to different countries to work with governments, academic institutions and NGOs. Over 1,000 IBM India employees have participated in projects in Indian cities, as also in countries like Ghana, Kenya, Vietnam, South Africa, Malaysia and Brazil. In Ahmedabad, the team has worked with the state government’s tribal development department. In Brazil, it has worked with the city of Rio de Janeiro on how best to use sustainable technologies for the 2016 Olympic games.
“In 2011, we will be doing this work with more IBMers, and cover more cities in India. We have now also created an Executive Service Corps, comprising of people with higher levels of talent,” Annaswamy says.
Education programmes starting from the pre-primary level is another major relationship building exercise. Government schools are provided with special computer hardware and software to help children understand digital technology. There’s a programme, conducted by its women technologists, to create interest in science and mathematics amongst 9th standard girls.
There is a university relations programme that covers more than 300 universities. Annaswamy says these programmes have touched more than 2.5 lakh primary school children and over a lakh undergraduate and graduate students.
“If I partner with so many universities, with so many people using IBM technology, they will either join me, or join somebody who uses IBM technology,” he says, indicating how much all of this contributes to creating a sustainable business. THE EARLY DAYS
IBM entered India with a manufacturing facility in Bombay in 1951. The business did well, but in the mid-1970s, when the Indian government required IBM to reduce its equity ownership to 26% under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, the company chose to cease its operations and exited India in 1978. It returned to India in a joint venture with the Tata Group in 1992, when foreign investment rules were relaxed. In 1999, it acquired the Tata stake and became a fully-owned subsidiary of IBM Corp.
IBM pioneered information storing, from punch cards and magnetic tapes to disk drives and memory chips. It created the first disk drive, it created Fortran, the first widely used computer language, and it developed the first relational database. Watson, the super computer that it has just built, has beaten the champions in the American quiz show Jeopardy!, triggering debates about how close computers have become to human beings.
Read full article on TOI dated 16th June 2011.
And yet, that’s what the $100-billion computing giant’s done. And it’s been visible in India too over the past decade, in its phenomenal success in turning the country into its primary global delivery services centre, replicating the model pioneered by Indian software companies, and its equally extraordinary accomplishment in winning by far the largest share of the Indian IT services market.
TOI reported last year that IBM is one of India’s biggest employers, perhaps bigger than even Infosys, though lower than TCS (IBM does not divulge country numbers). We had said the employee strength could be upwards of 1.2 lakh. Wikipedia now puts it at over 1.3 lakh, just a little less than a third of IBM’s global employee strength.
In the domestic services market, IBM is estimated to have an over 50% share, with TCS, HP, Wipro and HCL
at a fraction of that. Its landmark deals with Airtel in 2004 and with Vodafone, Idea and BSNL subsequently, to manage their entire backend IT operations reflected a vision that many others lacked.
The Economist magazine said last week that the secret of IBM’s longevity has less to do with machines or software than with strong customer and societal relationships. When TOI spoke to IBM India MD Shanker Annaswamy last week, that’s exactly the sense he conveyed.
“IBM stays connected to the community. My role, as also that of others in my position, is to develop strategies that have an impact on the national agenda. The idea is to have an impact on telecommunication, healthcare, banking. It not only helps India to move forward, I participate in the growth agenda.”
IBM’s large services organization works closely with customers to co-create products and new business models. The Airtel model of IT outsourcing, for instance, was novel at the time, and thanks to that model, IBM technology now supports over 400 million mobile subscribers in India.
Community connect Annaswamy lists a number of community connect programmes. “We identify projects that can have a lasting impact on society, and our best qualified people will go and give their time, skills and tools to make an impact.
We have a vibrant on-demand community for this. They have had a big impact on many NGOs and institutions. This centennial month, more than 50% of IBM India’s employees will pledge 8 hours of their time for such projects.”
There’s also the corporate service corps, under which employees are pulled out from their jobs for 4-6 weeks and sent to different countries to work with governments, academic institutions and NGOs. Over 1,000 IBM India employees have participated in projects in Indian cities, as also in countries like Ghana, Kenya, Vietnam, South Africa, Malaysia and Brazil. In Ahmedabad, the team has worked with the state government’s tribal development department. In Brazil, it has worked with the city of Rio de Janeiro on how best to use sustainable technologies for the 2016 Olympic games.
“In 2011, we will be doing this work with more IBMers, and cover more cities in India. We have now also created an Executive Service Corps, comprising of people with higher levels of talent,” Annaswamy says.
Education programmes starting from the pre-primary level is another major relationship building exercise. Government schools are provided with special computer hardware and software to help children understand digital technology. There’s a programme, conducted by its women technologists, to create interest in science and mathematics amongst 9th standard girls.
There is a university relations programme that covers more than 300 universities. Annaswamy says these programmes have touched more than 2.5 lakh primary school children and over a lakh undergraduate and graduate students.
“If I partner with so many universities, with so many people using IBM technology, they will either join me, or join somebody who uses IBM technology,” he says, indicating how much all of this contributes to creating a sustainable business. THE EARLY DAYS
IBM entered India with a manufacturing facility in Bombay in 1951. The business did well, but in the mid-1970s, when the Indian government required IBM to reduce its equity ownership to 26% under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, the company chose to cease its operations and exited India in 1978. It returned to India in a joint venture with the Tata Group in 1992, when foreign investment rules were relaxed. In 1999, it acquired the Tata stake and became a fully-owned subsidiary of IBM Corp.
IBM pioneered information storing, from punch cards and magnetic tapes to disk drives and memory chips. It created the first disk drive, it created Fortran, the first widely used computer language, and it developed the first relational database. Watson, the super computer that it has just built, has beaten the champions in the American quiz show Jeopardy!, triggering debates about how close computers have become to human beings.
Read full article on TOI dated 16th June 2011.
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