IBM Cloud eyes ‘small business’

‘Firms are getting their first taste of IT in the form of Cloud’

In the Cloud journey, we are increasingly becoming very relevant to small businesses, says IBM.

IBM India has announced plans to focus on small and medium enterprises to drive growth in its Cloud business.

“We already have large customers. But now we see very small customers getting into Cloud,” said Vikas Arora, Country Manager, Cloud Business IBM India & South Asia. “We are seeing that there is a whole new spectrum of customers available right at the lower end of the pyramid.”

“In the Cloud journey, we are increasingly becoming very relevant to small businesses which are getting their first taste of IT in the form of Cloud. This is our focus area for now,” Mr. Arora said in an interview on the sidelines of the India Cloud Forum in Mumbai.

Traditionally, the company has a stronghold in the BFSI, manufacturing, retail, telecom and healthcare sectors, but now small enterprises are offering large business opportunities.

“Now, there is a different kind of customer coming on board. The spectrum is growing and is becoming much wider,” he said. The new customers are from the education, fintech start-ups, diagnostic labs and logistics sectors to name a few.

“These organizations are building up capability as they are gearing up to compete with bigger ones and getting powered by Cloud very quickly,” Mr. Arora said.

He said the customer profile is now getting much more diverse and the company is investing heavily to reach out to them.

“In a country like India this is an area that is going to give us more business,” he said. “Here is a huge opportunity for us and we believe that we will enable them using Cloud technology. This is the space where we will have to continue to build muscle.”

Recently IBM has bagged new clients which include Meru Cabs, Aditya Birla Fashion, Titan Industries, and Kalyan Jewellers which are completely different from the company’s traditional clients from the BFSI and manufacturing domain.

Mr. Arora said IBM is working within the ecosystem to make sure that people are trained to take cloud technology ahead. It also providing maximum emphasis on partners to take Cloud to the next level

For example it has entered into a partnership with Pace Automation Ltd, an ERP firm that provides an end-to-end integrated solution to enable local ‘Kirana’ stores to become e-commerce ready.