IBM expands its innovation centre

BANGALORE, INDIA: IBM announced the expansion of the IBM Innovation Centre in Bangalore for start-up companies, software developers, independent software vendors (ISVs), IT professionals, and academics.

The centre will help them grow their IT skills, create new software and hardware applications and services and deliver them to the global marketplace. The new advanced facility has been established in response to the demand for IT resources by the growing technology community in India.

The innovation centre will provide technology, education and consulting support, as well as access to IBM sales and marketing experts. The centre offerings will help business partners test their solutions for compatibility and scalability before introducing them into the market. Additionally, the centre will provide companies with access to on-site facilities for hands-on support from IBM. 

“Our company was launched in 1996 and we have been associated with IBM ever since. The IBM Innovation Centre has helped us in every phase of our growth. By making such facilities available to the ecosystem, IBM is unleashing its technical knowledge and infrastructure to help the young companies create success stories”, said, Romil Turakhia, director and chief operations officer, Automated Workflow Group.

The new centre will be equipped with new labs and infrastructure for latest technologies – RFiD, Pervasive and SOA and for providing System z support. Business partners will also be able to test, develop and demonstrate their Software as a Service (SaaS) business model and even conduct proof of concepts.

The centre also boasts Remote Access Facility services. The VPN service is designed to allow business partners to connect from their office or workstations over an Internet connection to the facility. Companies can also use this service to host their solution at the centre and demonstrate it to customers at any location. One of the additional focus areas for this centre will be to provide hands-on-support to the growing number of start-up companies in India. 

Pradeep Nair, director, Software Group, IBM India, said, “Building a high performance ecosystem is of huge significance to IBM. Our approach is to enable and engage the IT community in India in every possible manner to help them productise assets and build relevant open-standards based industry solutions for our clients. This new centre will ensure that the stakeholders in the ecosystem benefit from our sales, marketing and technical expertise to expand and grow into new, global markets.”

The centre will also serve as a resource for local academic institutions to connect with business partners and clients to ensure IT professionals are developing the skills needed to remain competitive in today’s global marketplace.

Through this new centre, IT professionals will now be able to tap into the expertise of seamlessly connected global network of 38 IBM innovation centres around the world.

IBM has invested more than $250M globally in the IBM Innovation Center initiative till now. In the year 2007, the IBM Innovation Centers have assisted the completion of more than 4,000 technology enablements and helped more than 9,500 developers build skills on IBM technologies around the world. The numbers continue to grow this year.