IBM Expands Business in Taiwan by Enlarging Taiwan Development Center with More Investment and R&D Staff.

The tech giant, IBM announced to pour more investments in Taiwan in an amount of maintaining or surpassing NT$1 billion at least and also to enlarge the Taiwan Development Center by expanding R&D employee size at the end of 2010.

IBM’s Taiwan Development Center, the first and only center opened outside the US, is significantly positioned as a R&D driver of IBM’s x86-based server and established with a similar product line and even a larger scale as compared with the only other xSeries center located in the US.  Moreover, Taiwan’s complete IT industry chain has also attracted IBM to consider setting up another R&D center of IT Appliance in Taiwan.

When a new R&D center located in Nankang Software Park began operation in September, IBM Taiwan Corp. indicated that IBM’s Taiwan Development Center is of greater significance and its R&D staff will make up 50% (about 1000 persons) of the total manpower by the end of 2010, up from the current 40%.  IBM will turn to IT Appliance (hardware that is software embedded) as its business focus.  If IT Appliance is established in Taiwan, it will sharpen competitive advantages of both Taiwan’s hardware and software providers.

IBM began its R&D activities on software in 1999 and the business of bank solution and e-commerce, set up a development center to devise x86 servers, and then established another laboratory on cloud computing services in 2009.  The Taiwan Development Center will experience a shift from receiving orders and resources from the headquarters to performing autonomous R&D work, so as to cope with the needs of customers over the world.  (2010.09)
/CCS