On Thursday, June 16, IT major IBM celebrates its 100th birthday. On the occasion Mr Jeby Cherian, Director, Strategy for IBM India and South Asia, outlines for Business Line IBM's role in India and how the company sees its engagement with the country shaping up in the future. Excerpts:

In which areas do you see the maximum opportunities in India and how will you be tapping into them?

As IBM is charting its course into the next 100 years, emerging markets will remain key to its transformation and success. Over the past several years, IBM has been making significant investments in emerging markets including India, Africa and Brazil. These investments are paying off as we remain focused on developing smart citizen-centric solutions for specific industries, including government… Our clients have been engaging us in transforming their traffic management, smart grids, water systems, healthcare, and currency risk management for the world's top banks…We have invested $14 billion in 25 analytics acquisitions.

IBM has a special focus on e-governance in India. Could you tell us exactly what the company is doing in the public sector arena?

IBM India is heavily focused on developing smart citizen-centric solutions for specific industries, including government… Take, for example, the potential of the IBM's Spoken Web. People can create voice sites using a simple telephone, mobile or landline. The user gets a unique phone number which is analogous to a URL and when other users access this voice site they get to hear the content uploaded there. Interestingly, all these voice sites can be interlinked creating a massive network, which can work like the World Wide Web.

IBM and Karnataka Vocational Training and Skill Development Corporation (KVTSDC) have teamed up to leverage cloud computing, the mobile Web and the Spoken Web to help citizens find work using their mobile devices. Another interesting case is the way IBM helped Indian Railways implement a biometrics-enabled crew management system to automate the day-to-day management of staffing on board its trains. When there is a crew shortage, the system generates alerts that enable the supervisor to step in and take necessary action.

IBM has recently forged collaborations with the IITs. What work would it be doing with them and how will it make the difference?

IBM Research-India has established a “collaboratory” with several leading institutes, including the IITs. For instance, we are working with IIT Bombay and NID in the Mobile Web space for the development of new designs for mobile device interfaces. We also have a research collaboratory with Indian School of Business (ISB) in the area of service science.

We have signed research collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and IIT Kharagpur to help power grids become more efficient and resilient.

IBM has been working on the Smarter City project. Why are you executing it, and what will it mean for India in actual terms?

IBM's Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities helps cities to gain a holistic view of information across city departments and agencies…

This new solution allows cities to use information and analytics to make smarter and more timely decisions, helping local leaders manage a spectrum of events, both planned and unplanned, such as deploying water maintenance crews to repair pumps before they break, alerting fire crews to broken fire hydrants at an emergency scene, or anticipating traffic congestion and preparing redirection scenarios...

While every city is unique and a complex network of intricate systems, leaders in emerging markets like India face similar challenges…

Forecasts up to 2020 say that 97 of the 100 fastest growing cities in the world are in growth markets. Eight are in China… 11 are in India. By 2050, 70 per cent of the people will live in cities.

The smarter they become - the better for humanity…

In the future how do you see your various verticals in India performing? Which one do you feel will yield the best results?

Our ability to both innovate and integrate globally… sets us apart. The telecom success in India is a best practice for the company globally. Look at what we did with Bharti in Africa.

IBM was selected by Bharti Airtel to run the IT systems that power Bharti's mobile communications network that will span 16 countries across Africa.

IBM is successfully replicating its phenomenal success and expertise in business model transformation in other emerging sectors such as banking, insurance, infrastructure, healthcare, travel and transport and emerging industries such as media and entertainment.

IBM has won key deals across a number clients… including RBI, State Bank of India, HDFC, Canara Bank, Jet Airways, Bharti Retail, Eureka Forbes, DIAL. We helped transform the co-operative banking sector with Managed Disaster Recovery Services and Scalable Modular Server Rooms – more than 10 banks were signed up in 2009 and 2010.

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