IBM opens specialised software and services lab in India

IBM on Thursday announced the opening of a specialised software and services lab, High Performance on Demand Solutions Lab (HiPODS), in India to drive automation and virtualisation in the increasingly complex IT infrastructures.

Globally, IBM has seven such labs, including the one in India, and it replicates client infrastructure so the team can customise solutions for the best performance and business capabilities.

According to IBM, the focus of the lab is to solve key client issues by networking IBM's consultants, developers, engineers and researchers in India and around the world.

The company further said that customers can bring their applications to this dynamic infrastructure lab to validate their performance, scalability and solution needs before deploying them in a business environment.

Said Willy Chiu, VP, HiPODS-IBM, "As the Indian economy continues to grow at a rapid pace, the need for automation and boosting utilisation across IT infrastructures is booming. This lab brings unique, high value skills from throughout India to drive transformation for local businesses." He added that this new lab is essentially a gateway for clients in India to tap the know-how of IBM's hundreds of software, services and research labs around the world.

Commenting on this lab, Harish Grama, VP, IBM India Software Lab, said, "Working with clients, we help develop and implement automation capabilities such as virtualisation, provisioning and orchestration that enable businesses to respond to massive spikes in network and Internet traffic. As a result, clients can effectively manage computing resources by automatically shifting unused computing power to other areas of the enterprise, improving performance and reducing wasted capacity."

He further added that virtualisation allows resources to be manipulated in a uniform and flexible manner leading to automation.

"These tasks can be run 24 hours-a-day with little or no supervision. Provisioning tasks, which previously could take up two weeks, can now be completed with fewer errors in less than a couple of hours. Orchestration has the ability to repurpose and align hardware and software resources to meet fluctuation traffic condition, with no manual intervention," he noted.

Speaking on the growth of India Software Lab, which directly works on core product development of IBM such as Lotus, Tivoli, WebSphere and Rational, Grama said that they currently employ 2,100 developers across four centres in India and historically they have grown by 30 per cent and intends to scale up at the same pace.