Global information technology giant IBM is fast spreading its wings in smaller cities. It has set up half-a-dozen centres in smaller cities with plans to reach nearly 40 locations in the next one year.
IBM has opened branches in Indore, Guwahati, Dehradun, Raipur, Coimbatore and Kochi over the past one year. Next target is Madurai and Tiruchi, said Girish Vasudevan, Branch Manager, Chennai, IBM India/South Asia.
Local talent
Opening branches in smaller cities is to mainly attract local talent. “We try to be as local as possible. When we look at a smaller place, we simply do not want to send resources from another city. We rather have local resources from that city, supporting that branch,” he said.
While everybody will be IBM employees, each centre can serve customers’ requirement on hardware, software and servers. The centre will typically have 20 seats, he said.
“In smaller cities, the vibrancy of a client from an IT perspective is really music to us. From an IT complexity, there is a gap we are trying to fill. Once you work for us, and like the environment we provide for you, you will be able to deliver a better solution to the client. We will train you but at the end of the day, the client should benefit.
“The goal is to address the SMB segment, which is huge, by bundling various offerings to suit the SME. It could be infrastructure (server), system management software or a basic analytics package, Vasudevan told Business Line .
Roadmap
The expansion to smaller cities was driven by the need to grow the market. IBM’s 2015 roadmap says that market expansion will happen by tackling different geographies. . Its resource concentration has been so far in larger cities. Substantial markets exist beyond the big cities. . It just makes it a little more difficult to access that potential, if you are located in a big city, said Vasudevan.
“We realised that we had inadequate presence in smaller cities and also inadequate capabilities in those cities to be able to provide a wide range of services. That was the driver to move to smaller cities,” he said.