New Delhi: IBM says it will make substantial investments in India with the objective of becoming the leading IT solution provider in the country in the next couple of years.

“The company will make investments in people, facilities and technology,” says IBM Corporation senior vice-president and group executive Michael Lawrie. He, however, does not disclose the amount of investments IBM will make in India. “It will depend on the company’s business prospects.”

Lawrie urges Indian IT businesses to invest in open systems and clog into the global information network in order to participate in knowledge building. “The process of integration is difficult but it is essential to have effective return on investment and cost-effectiveness.”

“Customers are driving demand for e-business,” he adds, while explaining how different phases of e-business have been changing over the years. “While in the late sixties and seventies, the mainframe era of e-business was limited to administration and back-office operations, in the early nineties it was expanded to client and server era. From 2000 onwards, it has become the main network era.”

IT secretary R R Shah says India’s huge population is an asset in achieving the digital challenge. “A new chapter of intellectual partnership between India’s skilled manpower and IBM should be opened up.”