Feeling Customers Pulse

CIOs and IT managers from hundreds of IBMs key and prospective customers
converged in Goa for the Indian version of Pulse 2009. The event aimed at
showcasing the capabilities of IBMs Tivoli offerings.

IBMs main pitch throughout the event was how the company can help
enterprises overcome the current crisis through its service management
capabilities. IBM drove home the pointhow dynamic information through service
management will help integrate business and IT for delivering services. Guests
were welcomed by Gaurav Agarwal, country leader, Tivoli. Pradeep Nair, GM, IBM
software group, India/SA discussed how IBM can partner with companies to create
a smarter planet. The common theme that emerged was how IBM can help enterprises
in creating dynamic infrastructure which is intelligent, instrumented, and
interconnected.

Joao Perez, vice president, worldwide sales, Tivoli addressing the gathering at Pulse 2009

The open house session was an interesting part of the entire event, wherein
customers shared their experiences as well as grievances with IBM executives.
One interesting question posed by one of the attendee CIOs of a company which
has outsourced its entire IT to IBM was, whether they should reach out to IBM
for any problem they face or should they go to their integrator. Another
customer invited the IBM technical team to have a look at their data center and
provide an insight into it. A representative of NISG wanted to know how IBM can
help the organization to prepare a better RFP. Yet another attendee wanted to
know if IBM can provide them with a competitive analysis of different products
which can help in better decision making vis-a-vis vendor selection.

Joao Perez, vice president, worldwide sales, Tivoli commented, With IBMs
integrated architecture, our service management offerings can help enterprises
reduce their costs and increase efficiency. These offerings become more relevant
during the present challenging times as there is pressure to limit IT budgets.
Mehul Shah, CIO, Bharti Telemedia, provided a detailed insight into how IBMs
Service Delivery Platform helped the company scale its operations and provide
better customer satisfaction. Kalyan Kumar, global practice director,
infrastructure services division, HCL Technologies spoke about ERP for IT and
how a service delivery platform can transform a CIOs portfolio by integrating
applications and infrastructure operations. Sudev Bangah, senior market analyst,
IDC Asia Pacific commented on how dynamic infrastructure extends into the
smarter service management.

Sudesh Prasad

sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in