The Hindu Business Line : IBM plans to ramp up India team

What the Big Blue plans
The company sees high traction in banking and insurance, telecom sectors.
It will focus on utilities and manufacturing verticals for SOA implementation.

Recently at Jaipur

SOA, and you will reap. The seeds of the five-year-old concept — service oriented architecture — have finally sprouted. IBM, in the bustling Pink City, announced intent to evangelise SOA as a suitable approach for Indian businesses.

The company plans to ramp up the India team to facilitate SOA adoption here. It has eight SOA engagements in various stages in India.

According to Mr R. Damodaran, Vice-President, IBM Software Group & Developer Relations, IBM Global Services India, the company sees high traction in banking and insurance, telecom sectors. The company will focus on utilities and manufacturing verticals for SOA implementation. The company invested $1 billion on SOA last year globally and will repeat the investment this year.

IBM also rolled out new SOA services, tweaked its WebSphere product, and announced an enhanced version of its Master Data Management product.

Biz Nirvana and SOA

SOA is about designing and developing solutions that make businesssense, rather than the technology-centric "packaged" solution approach. SOA advocates use of re-usable software components on a standardised interface.

Using the SOA approach, Harley Davidson integrated its Web site with its financial operations and inventory. Now, the portal allows bikers to pick and choose accessories for a personalised bike. It also offers optimal leasing options to customers.

Hence SOA helped a business increase sales and solve internal issues at the same time. In a language that businesses understand, SOA gives bottom line cost savings and top-line revenue growth.

Viper released

IBM also announced its latest database - Viper, which is expected to boost its market share. IBM is currently behind in market share in India, while Oracle's 10g leads. Viper, version 9 of the company's database DB2 family, "changes the game," promises Mr Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, IBM Information Management Software. Viper sports a unique feature - it can store XML data in a native "tree" format, and can coexist with relational data. It brings 65 per cent reduction in lines of code, 16 times reduced development time and a performance improvement of 100 per cent, said Mr Anant Jhingran, VP & CTO, .

Commending Bangalore for its "significant contribution" to the Viper release, Mr Goyal said consumption was expected from system integrators and developers here. Hyderabad engineers helped design the information integration module in IBM's Information Server (in beta now).