Sam Palmisano- Come and gone

BANGALORE: When the world’s richest man-Bill Gates came calling to India, the media welcomed him with overflowing publicity. His philanthropic intentions and possible investment plans were showcased clearly by one and all in the media. Now, what rings a bell in our head is that the man himself, Sam J Palmisano, Chairman &CEO of IBM has come and gone without saying a word to the media.

Now that IBM head honcho made an almost clandestine visit, it leaves many questions unanswered-there could be no investment plans or may be there are, the picture is not clear.

IBM Chairman, Samuel J.Palmisano flew down to Bangalore and met the chief minister of Karnataka in the morning, SM Krishna, where a closed-door meeting was held between the two. It is learnt that the Karnataka government has requested the Big Blue to "help" set up a Linux development center in Hubli. While the government informed that it was a confidential meeting and furnished no other details about the meeting, IBM officials in India shrugged such a high profile visit with just a mere "no comments" statement for every question asked.

After Palmisano refused to address the waiting media during his first visit to Bangalore, the head quarters of the company’s Indian operations, the chief minister briefed the waiting media. "The state government has told IBM to look at Hubli in North Karnataka to set up a Linux Development center as the STPI has established a techno park for start-ups and new IT companies," he informed.

Interestingly the Karnataka state government has been pro-Microsoft and openly rejected any offer to go open source during the recent visit of Sun Microsystems chief Scott McNealy to Bangalore.

Although the IBM officials have made ‘no comments’, on the Chief’s itinerary in India, sources reveal that he would be addressing more than 4000 IBM employees in the country. Most of them, engineers in IBM Global Services India operations, the largest facility outside the US. Palmisano would be meeting the IT Minister, Arun Shourie in the capital tomorrow.