IBM Opens Giant India Data Center for Tulip Telecom

IBM, the No. 2 computer services provider, took the wraps off a 900,000 square-foot data center in India for Tulip Telecom, one of that nation's fast-growing telecommunications carriers.

The Bangalore center, a year in the making, cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars, IBM VP for global sites and facilities services Steve Sams said in an interview. He declined to be more specific.

The center is India's biggest and Tulip Telcom has already invited in the chief information officers of India's top 150 companies to show them its capabilities, Sams said. Morever, another leading U.S. technology company, which he refused to identify, is also conducting operations in the IBM center, he added.

Armonk, N.Y. based IBM is far from the only U.S. information technology company with many personnel and officers in India. Others including Hewlett-Packard, Accenture, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Oracle have Indian operations, some for outsourcing for multinational clients but now increasingly to serve Indian customers.

Tulip Telecom, which provides business-to-business services rather than focus on the consumer, approached IBM for a long-term partnership more than a year ago, Sams said. Tulip CEO and founder Hardeep S. Bedi said he had chosen the 101-year-old U.S. company for its global expertise in designing and building innovative energy efficient cloud data centers that should support our needs now and in the future.

Besides Bangalore, the heart of the Indian IT sector, New Delhi-basedTulip may ask IBM to build another data center in Mumbai, the country's financial center, the IBM VP said.

Only about half of the ultra-modern center's space will be used for computing services, Sams explained. The other half will be for support services, including an extremely efficient power system designed with redundant services.

Sams, who said he has a staff of 1,000, including mechanical engineers as well as IT professionals and electrical engineers, said more such centers are in the works. One that has been announced is an IBM complex in China for Range Technology, intended to be the largest cloud computing complex in Asia.

IBM shares rose 53 cents to close at $193.35 Tuesday. They have gained 5 percent so far this year. Shares of Tulip closed down 6 percent at 108.2 rupees in Indian trading Tuesday.