Bangalore: India's leading Infotech company, Wipro and world's largest server firm, IBM on April 4 inked a stategic alliance agreement to address customer needs in India and Asia Pacific Region.

IBM's Asia Pacific region president, Kakutaro Kitashiro and Wipro chairman, Azim Premji signed the agreement and announced the alliance at a press conference in Bangalore.

As part of this alliance, Wipro will market and integrate IBM's wide range of server and storage products in India. These products include pSeries (UNIX servers), xSeries (intel based servers), iSeries and zSeries.

In addition, IBM's full portfolio of storage products covering enterprise Storage Systems (ESS), Liner tape Open (LTO), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and iSCSI products will also be offered.

Kitashiro, who flew into the city from Tokyo, to sign the alliance agreement remarked, "It is a unique alliance, and first of its kind in India".

He said, he met Premji recently and was impressed by the achivements of Wipro, which has focussed on quality customer service and added "IBM also has the same culture".

Kitashiro hoped that the alliance would going to turn out to be a successful one in India and Asia Pacific.

Premji, said it was obvious that the alliance was important for both Wipro and IBM and this has been demonstrated from the fact that Kitashiro has flown from Tokyo to announce the alliance.

Premji said IBM is a $ 85 billion company and more than 20 per cent of its revenue comes from Asia Pacific.

He said Wipro and IBM would work together to address opportunities in solutions and server markets, besides expanding the market shares.

Premji refused to divulge the revenue sharing pattern agreed to in the alliance agreement, but added, "We expect significant business to come".

He said IBM's market share has also been growing.

Wipro, Premji said, despite the slowdown gained higher market share ahead of its rivals last year.

When asked about reports that Dell planned to establish a manufacturing unit with a tie up with Wipro, Premji, declined to comment.

Wipro Infotech president, Suresh Vaswani, answering to a similar query earlier, spiked it as, "Only report and nothing more than that".

IBM (India) Managing Director, Abraham Thomas said the alliance is very significant for his firm and biggest benefitter would be the customers in India and abroad.

The alliance, he said would prove to be a watershed for IT industry in India.

The alliance further enables Wipro to further enhance its proposition to its customers by offering a wide range of services and solutions based on IBM platforms.

PTI