IBM, i-flex extend partnership globally

Circuit EC / Bangalore

Deepak Ghaisas

Big Blue and i-flex have had a partnership in India for two years. Now i-flex has become the first Indian ISV to be a global alliance partner of IBM. i-flex sees this alliance as a means of offering greater choice to banks. Its ultimate goal is to port FLEXCUBE and Reveleus onto IBM’s hardware platforms.

The duo will be targeting the $49 billion global market for banking software that’s growing at 10 percent annually and is expected to touch $60 billion in 2005. IBM will be the consulting and systems integration partner. As part of this alliance, i-flex will start by porting FLEXCUBE for Retail Banking onto WebSphere and DB2. The port should be available by Q3 2004. “Having our software run on platforms such as IBM’s zSeries mainframes will help us address Tier-1 banks,” said Deepak Ghaisas, CEO (India Operations) and CFO, i-flex solutions.