BANGALORE: B2B software maker Ariba's South Asia (SA) managing director, M Ganesh, has quit to join back IBM. With the company fighting to stay off the red globally, the SA sales operations is speculated to be headed by Pramod Murari, who heads the company's India development operations.

Talking to CIOL over the phone, Murari said, "The structure of the company and its sales operations plans should be announced in a couple of days. I am already overlooking the company’s development operations here. While the sales office reports to Singapore, development operations report directly to the US headquarters. Probably by the weekend the Singapore office should report the change in structure of its sales operation." It is unlikely that the India operation is getting a head for its sales operations. Speculations are also high about the company's closure of its Indian operations.

Meanwhile, Ganesh who has officially joined back IBM two weeks ahead of schedule, after an 18-month stint in Ariba, said, "It is a challenging opportunity to head the enterprise server group of IBM. It is quite an opportunity to be back in IBM and interacting with the industry. I will be overlooking the company's entire server range. I have always wanted this sort of a challenge and there is nothing personal in me quitting Ariba."

Ariba had reported a fiscal fourth quarter, ending October 2001, operating loss of $ 27.7 million, while revenues falling 50 per cent from a year earlier. Ariba’s fourth quarter revenues fell to $ 62.6 million from $134.8 million in the third quarter of 2000.

Ariba, once a highflier in the business-to-business software market, has seen its share price tumble as it got hit by a triple whammy of the dot-com meltdown, the downturn in the US economy and the virtual standstill in corporate software spending. Since then, the company has cut a third of its staff, called off its key merger with Agile Software, warned repeatedly of lower earnings and changed chief executive three times.

Ariba's current CEO, Bob Calderoni, was appointed to the position from chief financial officer. Calderoni replaced founder Keith Krach, who was interim CEO after Larry Mueller, who took over as CEO in March, stepped down at the end of the third quarter. Before that, Krach had been the CEO.