Visakhapatnam, the port city of Andhra Pradesh, on Monday had another jewel in its crown with the new office of IBM inaugurated by Managing Director of EISAI Pharma Sanjit Lamba. It is a part of the massive expansion plans of IBM, to increase its presence in the key growth markets. Vizag is slowly gearing up to its new look, as several IT giants are evincing keen interest to establish units here. If the beeline of IT companies continues, Vizag may soon emerge as Tier - II destination. Even State government has announced to develop the city of destiny as the ideal base next only to Hyderabad for software and BPO units.

With this, the number of branches opened this year by IBM in India has gone up to six. The company has plans to increase its presence by establishing branches in over 40 cities across India/South Asia by 2013. An IBM release stated that Visakhapatnam was an important port city in South India. It had experienced rapid economic growth in recent years due to the development of petroleum, steel, fertilizer and IT industries. IBM has been present in the city since 2007 through its global delivery centre that provides IBM services to clients around the world.

"The opening of the new branch office in Visakhapatnam will give a boost to IBM's business in the region, enabling it to strengthen relationships with clients and partners and provide solutions and services in high growth areas such as information management, IT security, cloud computing and business analytics," the release stated.