IBM India is catching up with China in Data centres

IBM will invest $1 billion every year in India for three consecutive years to accelerate its data center growth in the market

 

In 2007, the world's largest IT company, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), said it will invest $1 billion every year in India for three consecutive years, in a bid to accelerate its data center growth in this market. Its global vice-president for site & facilities services (data centers), Steve Sams, says India is catching up fast and is expected to beat China. Steve, one of a cross-company group of leaders specialising in energy-efficient products, in an exclusive interaction he, talks about how IBM is spending the '$1 billion every year in India' and also how green initiatives are helping clients save costs.

 

How is the $1 billion investment in India distributed? How is it accelerating your growth in this market?

 

We expect to exceed our investments in India over $3 billion by May 2010 and double the computing capacity of our global data centers by then without increasing power consumption. In line with this, about 50 percent of our investment is done for building strategic outsourcing sites. The rest is invested to initiate energy efficient technologies, software and services. We saw a double-digit growth last year with 31 data center from 15 in 2007. India is fast catching up with China and China is fast catching up with Japan, which is the second largest revenue provider to IBM, after the US.

 

So, what is pushing up this growth in China and India?

 

For our sector, both of these economies are high growth at approximately 50 to 60 percent. Though in India it is coming from the smaller size data centers, even large data centers of the large telecos are catching up. China is a high capita economy and more so government driven while India is driven by the investments of private sector. Nearly 40 percent of IBM's revenues flow in from the growing economies like Brazil, Central Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and China.

 

Source: The Financial Express