Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, has stated that the global technology industry's skills shortage will likely persist for the next decade, and that IBM is rapidly expanding in India. 'Every business and government client we speak with is hungry for talent, and there isn't enough of it. That's because every firm, country, and government has realised that technology isn't just a cost of doing business; it's also a basic competitive advantage. So you want to hire technological expertise in-house rather than outsourcing it 'On his first visit to India since taking over as IBM CEO in April last year, he stated in a media interview.

Krishna expects IBM to hire thousands of people in India for R&D and tens of thousands for consulting. The corporation does not break down its employee counts by location, although it is thought to have around 1 lakh people in India, accounting for at least a third of its global workforce. Even after the recent spinoff of its managed infrastructure business into a distinct company called Kyndryl, this could be the case.

In R&D, IBM has big centres in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune, as well as a smaller one in Delhi, according to Krishna. 'The launch of centres in Ahmedabad and Cochin has just been announced. There will be more to come 'The IIT-Kanpur alumnus, who has worked for IBM for 30 years, remarked.

According to Krishna, the only way to address the talent shortage is for businesses to take responsibility for training employees. 'There will never be enough talent in fields like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, block chain, and cybersecurity. Colleges take a long time to update its curriculum. So, we take a theoretical physicist and transform them into a quantum scientist capable of developing use cases in six months 'he stated He claims that IBM devotes all of their CSR expenditures in India to skilling.

. Krishna faces a huge challenge in changing public opinions of the corporation, which has been losing money since its peak in 2011. He's separating Low-margin, low-growth industries and concentrating on two high-growth areas: hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence. He's increasing R&D spending. He's forming alliances with businesses that were once considered direct competitors. And he's making rapid progress in the open source community. 'We can learn to shift from the firm that created vertical closed technology 60 years ago,' he remarked.

When it comes to partnerships, Krishna pointed out that Amazon, Microsoft, and even Indian IT services companies don't compete with IBM in many areas. 'They (Amazon and Microsoft) will not acknowledge multi-cloud or hybrid deployments. But who can do Linux work better than us if the client wants to modernise their applications to Azure but wants to use Linux? 'he stated He claims that Indian IT services companies work with IBM to implement projects using many of the latter's technologies, such as Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Linux.