IBM team visits AU, Gitam

A 12-member IBM team headed by Ms Amanda Garland director, strategy, IBM growth market and Mr Anuj Malhotra, strategy leader, IBM global business, held a meeting with registrar of Andhra University Prof P.V.G.D. Prasad Reddy and vice-chancellor B. Satyanarayana here on Tuesday.
According to sources, the IBM team is here to conduct a survey on the availability of human, knowledge, so-cial and technical resources in the city.
Professor Prasad Reddy said, “They (IBM team) enquired about the history, infrastructure and knowledge base of Andhra University. I informed them on the curriculum of the university and the national and international seminars being held here on a regular basis.”
The team later visited the EEE, CSE of the Engineering College and the management block and interacted with students present.
Sources said that they enquired into the quality of school-level education avai-lable here and also wanted to know about the road and traffic conditions in the city.
When asked if their response was positive, Prof Prasad Reddy said “I cannot really comment. Their response seemed to be enthusiastic.” The IBM team later visited the Gitam University campus and interacted with the vice-chancellor, Prof. G. Subhramanyam, pro-vice chancellor Prof D. Harinarayana, senior faculty members and students. According to Gitam officials, they (IBM team) were quite impressed with the infrastructure and the quality of human resource available.
Meanwhile, district collector Mr J. Shyamala Rao who had a meeting with the visiting IBM team, STPI officials and representatives of IT association here on Tuesday, said that Visakhapatnam is most suitable for developing into an IT hub.
He told them that the city was very peaceful and people-friendly to make it an ideal place for investments.
The city has good rail, road and air connectivity to important cities in the country. The international air services have shown interest to operate services from city to Dubai, Singapore and Colombo.
Efforts are also on to extend the night operations shortly. The IT industries and tourism has been the main sectors in the city and if IBM opened its centre, the industry could completely utilise the local human resources. The graduate have been migrating to Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Chennai and if better companies began its operations, the migration could be checked to a large extent.
“We have plenty of water, power and transport facilities and the quality of life is much better than many cities in the country,” the collector told the visiting officials of the IBM.