IBM launches Work Area Recovery Center in India
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 31 January 2008, 17:56 IST
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Bangalore: IBM today announced the launch of a Work Area Recovery Center in Navi Mumbai, India. The center offers a solution to help clients minimize the effects of disruptions to existing workplace and productivity of their workforce. The center, which is primarily targeted at the captive contact center operations of companies in the financial services sector and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) space, is spread over an area of 25,000 square feet. Initially the center will support a capacity of 2,500 seats per year, and offering work force continuity for its clients, and can scale up to a capacity of 3,500 seats. The center provides a workplace area to help support general business, trading floor, front office and back-office operations, and call center operations. It also offers an array of options to suit a client?s business and its business continuity needs. "This is a very unique offering now being made available to Indian clients who recognize the need to mitigate continuity risks that their businesses may be exposed to. IBM?s WorkArea Recovery Center helps clients focus on the human side of business continuity to ensure that employees can remain productive even when they cannot access their workplace in unexpected events of floods, terrorist threats, large-scale power outages, fire or other instances of IT infrastructure outages," said Nipun Mehrotra, Director, Global Technology Services, IBM India/South Asia. A 2006 study on workforce continuity by Forrester Consulting found that business interruptions such as site closures due to fire, natural disasters, transit strikes, and severe weather potentially leave the data center unaffected, but can displace employees from their workplace -significantly impacting the productivity of the employee and in turn, financially impacting the company. The Forrester study indicated that a 5,000-person enterprise would suffer a $1.36 million (Over Rs 5 Crore) productivity loss as a result of a three-day workforce disruption. "With forty years of global experience in the business continuity space and more than 150 Business Continuity and Resiliency Services recovery centers worldwide, IBM has deep industry-specific knowledge and a broad range of major clients and leading services, for an unmatched end-to-end portfolio. Our new service is a logical next step to 'operationalize' a continuity strategy to allow people to work, communicate and collaborate from anywhere they have access to a PC and an Internet connection," said Bhaskar S Anand, Country Executive, Integrated Technology Services, IBM India/South Asia. "This investment reflects the company's commitment to the Indian market. Based on the response to this center, IBM may explore the possibility of opening similar centers in other regions of the country," commented Anand. The new Work Area Recovery Center offering from IBM will provide end-to-end solution that helps clients to operationalize a business continuity plan - in that it spans people, processes and technology. Owing to its stability both from power perspective and seismic zone footprint, Mumbai has been chosen as the preferred location for this center.

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