IBM has done a lot of work in defining, assessing and prioritising emerging geographic markets. The Emerging Markets team builds on this to understand what major initiatives are required for market leadership. The group, by itself, is not very big because we depend on country organisations to execute our programmes. In India, for example, we workthrough Tata-IBM. The software group identifies key initiatives which accelerate revenue growth and build for the future.

There is a whole series of things we are doing in India. We are partnering with the government of Karnataka for starting a School of Internet Studies in Bangalore. We are also working with IIM, Bangalore, IIT, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh university and JNTU. The IBM Research Development Centre on the IIT campus (Delhi) is one of the eight such IBM labs we have throughout the world. We are investing $ 25 million in it over five years. In Hyderabad, Tata-IBM is playing a lead role in establishing an autonomous university at Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIT). Nearly 25 per cent of our budget (for the country) is devoted to these university programs. The objective is to create a pool of professionals whose skills we can draw on.

Yes, we have mapped out a strategy. In fact, we have already signed MoUs with many state governments. In Rajasthan, the state government wants to implement an e-state (automating all the state government's office operations). IBM has already completed the pilot and begun implementation. Andhra Pradesh wanted an e-government -- so we are working on that. First, we find out what the state government wants to focus on and then, work on it. In Karnataka, for example, the government is keen on the internet. So we are doing something on that front. There is a proposal for an intranet connecting all the 75 engineering colleges in the state.

India and China are two most important countries we are focussing on. I have been putting my investments here for the last two years. Out of the total investments for emerging markets (Asia-Pacific) 75 to80 per cent goes into China and India. Although, infrastructure-wise China is better, India is given more importance than Central Europe, Middle East and lots of other countries. Roughly, our investments in both India and China are similar. Investments are also in terms of the technology and training we bring to the country, not just in terms of expenditure.

This year we have done projects for ABB, Domino's Pizza, Malayala Manorama and of course, the best example is the intranet we have in Tata-IBM. The e-business initiative only started early this year. But people are aware in India. E-business changes the way you manage things. A person-to-person banking transaction which costs $ 100, translates to pennies if you put an `e' in front of it. We are bringing the Java Developers Conference to India next month because of the tremendous lot it can do for e-business. Lot ofJava programming is going on in India. The Java Development Centre we have in BITS has developed a distance learning model based on Java and Lotus Notes. India is very important to us. Of the two Java launches IBM did throughout the world, one was in China and the other in India.

In addition to skill building, we are looking at supporting Lotus Notes nd Java in non-English languages. IBM is working on bringing out a Hindi interface for Lotus Notes and Java. Sun is doing the basic development to bring out Java in Hindi. After the Hindi version is out, we are also going to enable it for non-Hindi languages. We were the first to realise the importance of local languages -- IBM was the first to bring out Hindi DOS.