Big Blue Eyes Acquisitions In India

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Mumbai, Aug 6: : The Big Blue is said to be scouting around for acquisitions once again and this time around it’s in India.

IBM, which completed 12 acquisition deals worldwide last year, has now approached Polaris Software Lab and MphasiS-BFL for acquisition, sources said.

Officials at both Polaris and MphasiS-BFL, however, denied any such development. An IBM official, when contacted, said the company did not comment on speculation.

The mandate for this, the source said, has been given to Salomon Smith Barney. Officials from Salomon Smith Barney too declined to comment.

It may be recalled that IBM, in 2002, had struck 12 acquisitions deals worldwide. According to the company’s latest annual report, the acquisition deals amounted to $3,958 million.

The source added that IBM executives who were in India also met with both the analyst as well as the investor community.

During the analyst meet, the executives provided an overview of its global sourcing model, touched upon its business transformation outsourcing (BTO) initiative, on the company’s latest e-business on demand initiative. BTO is part of businesses, quality solutions from IBM Business Consulting Services (IBM BCS). IBM BCS is the newly established consulting arm of IBM Corporation, formed after the merger of erstwhile PwC Consulting and IBM globally in 2002.

In addition, the executives spoke about the research and development work being undertaken in India and on a possibility of remote application management that can be done from here.

Industry sources added that executives spoke about the India as being one of the largest global delivery centres for IBM and how the centre for BTO could also function as the company’s disaster recovery capability. FE, in its edition dated June 26, 2003, had reported that IBM, which has selected India as its first site for BTO, plans to increase the headcount in this division from the current 200-300 to 1000 by year-end.