ARMONK, NY--(MARKET WIRE)--Oct 17, 2008 -- IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) today announced new client agreements in growth markets across the Asia Pacific region, reflecting IBM's strategic focus on delivering technology and services to help businesses in growth markets solve complex business problems, as well as tough industry and societal issues.

To tap market opportunities in high potential markets worldwide, IBM has formed a "Growth Markets" organization based in Shanghai with regional headquarters in Dubai and Sao Paulo. It covers about 50 countries across Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Today's announcements by IBM include:

• Bharti Platinum, India's largest private telecom services provider, signed a strategic outsourcing agreement in September to further enhance its customer service experience for its top-end Platinum customers. The six-year contract for outsourcing of its contact services to IBM's Managed Business Process Services (MBPS) unit will involve augmentation of Bharti Airtel's sales, customer service, and back office capabilities. IBM Daksh Business Process Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM, also will provide a suite of services covering both voice and such back office operations as customer service, collections, customer retention and other relevant customer services for Bharti Airtel's Platinum customers from its centers.
• Kookmin Bank, Korea's largest financial services institution, awarded a contract to IBM in September to implement its Next Generation Banking System (NGBS). To be completed in 2010, this bank-wide NGBS project will consolidate all of the company's different business units around the world, providing a highly flexible platform to transform Kookmin Bank into a leading global bank. This implementation agreement includes 20 projects in such areas of Application Integration, Application Management Service and System Integration.
• Philippine National Bank (PNB), a government-owned banking institution, signed a three-year contract renewal in September. As part of the agreement, IBM will provide remote and onsite help desk and IT equipment support services for PNB's hardware. This project ultimately will help achieve excellence in IT operations by creating a stable, dynamic, flexible and efficient IT environment for PNB.
• Tianjin Economic Technological Development Area (TEDA) Administrative Commission, China, awarded an e-Learning contract to IBM in August. This three-year project will see IBM training 3,000 selected graduates from six universities in Tianjin City to become IT service professionals for mainframe and Java-based systems. Such training will enable the TEDA ePark to tap into a pool of talent to provide outsourcing services in areas such as software development, financial back office services, financial outsourcing, administration and human resources. Using the Saba e-Learning Management System, virtual classroom training will be provided via the Internet.
• In September, Vietnam Technology and Telecommunications Joint Stock Company (VNTT) signed a contract with IBM to build a cloud computing environment using IBM software, services and hardware. IBM will build a cloud computing center using IBM System x, BladeCenter and System Storage managed by IBM Blue Cloud technologies. In addition to data center services, VNTT will provide its customers with cloud-based collaboration services such as email on Lotus Domino, intranet service on WebSphere Portal Express and company server on Lotus Foundations, managed by Tivoli software. VNTT's clients will be able to take advantage of a more flexible, cost effective infrastructure, but still access computing resources and services at any time -- just as they use other shared services.

As announced, in the third quarter of 2008, IBM's revenue was up six percent year over year in Asia Pacific and up thirteen percent in growth markets.

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