IBM is known for its quality of delivery and innovative excellence and this is the example which David Barun Thomas, regional manager of Learning Services, ASEAN/ South Asia, IBM Global Services, plans to translate in India. He speaks to Punita Jasrotia about IBM’s future initiatives, the market opportunity and the challenges ahead in the e-Learning space

What is the role of IBM’s Learning Services?
Learning is something that has been a focus area with IBM since our inception and has also proved to be a major differentiator for us. The purpose of the ‘IBM Learning Services’ is to help the organisations build the right skill levels among the workforce to support various IT projects, which means that it covers a range of domains to address all training requirements of corporates. These range from application development, RDBMS to networking & transaction management, servers & operating systems, Internet applications, e-business solutions and products to even professional development courses. The Indian chapter was started five years ago, wherein besides delivering the ‘Corporate Training programs’ (it helps in assessing the training needs of an organisation and then designing, developing, delivering the training solutions), the LS also designs online education programs. The purpose is to help the organisations use the Internet and other technologies to deliver cost-effective, easy-to-use training for their employees. Under its kitty is also the course delivery of the ‘basic IT courses’ and ‘Career courses’.

How big is the e-Learning market in the APAC region?
As per our survey, the market in the APAC region is still at a nascent stage. Though the opportunity is said to be as big as $233 million by 2005 with a CAGR of 25 percent, the current slowdown has affected growth as many price-sensitive organisations have cut their training investments. However, countries like Australia, Korea, China and Singapore show great potential.

How important is India for IBM?
India is a growing market and is expected to be somewhere around $16 million by the year 2005, growing at a CAGR of 17 percent, which only showcases its future potential. And for us the approach is a concentrated and well-defined one. Our Indian Learning Services program presently has a channel network of 60 franchisees, which we plan to use extensively for delivering education. The importance of India gets reflected through our opening of a ‘knowledge factory’ in the country last year. (India is only among the few countries having a knowledge factory and servicing all IBM’s global bases). The basic focus of these knowledge factories is to understand the content need of the market, devise innovative learning technologies and solutions and address the designing need of the learning market.

In its second phase, we are planning to introduce the ‘Instructional Design technology’ on e-Learning capabilities. Offered under a four-tier blended system, which includes delivering through web-based information downloads interactive education, collaborative learning and classroom training, the purpose of this technology is to help the organisations understand more about the development and implementation (delivery) part of the curriculum. Presently, the technology is being used for our e-Learning initiatives and would soon be available commercially as a separate way of delivery model for e-Learning.

What trends do you foresee in the e-Learning space?
IDC expects e-Learning adoption in the Asia Pacific region to experience the greatest growth from 2004-05 as that is time when market will mature enough. There would be increasing governmental intervention and confirmation of standards, increased Web security and emphasis on branding and lastly a more flexible pricing by the vendors.