Keells Business Systems Limited (KBSL) together with IBM conducted a seminar for its customers, coinciding with a 20 year partnership. The event which was held at Waters Edge was well attended by KBSL’s customers. IBM flew in their respective product/solutions experts specially to brief their customers and share the road map on current as well as future technology directions.

KBSL is an advance business partner for 3 product portfolios; IBM System P Servers based on IBM UNIX operating system AIX, IBM System X based Windows/Linux systems and IBM Total Storage Solutions. KBSL possess the largest installed base of IBM System P servers in the country. The 20 year IBM/ KBSL partnership has been well rewarded with KBSL consistently winning many accolades over the years from IBM.

KBSL Chief Executive Officer and Vice President Thusha Weerasooriya gave an introduction to the programme while highlighting the importance of the partnership of KBSL and IBM. He reiterated the commitment from KBSL towards IBM, being the premier partner in offering high-end Server/ Storage solutions to the Sri Lankan corporate market. “Now, our direction at KBSL is to focus more on the customer end, with the strategic intention of delivering solutions to customers to increase their market share and profitability. The strength of the partnership between IBM and KBSL is ever so important to move in to greater heights,” Mr. Weerasooriya added.

IBM Sri Lanka Country Manager Systems and Technology Group Sivakumar Nallathamby made a presentation on Delivering Business Value through industry standard innovation. During his presentation, he articulated the three key initiatives of the IBM Systems Agenda, ‘Collaborative Innovation,’ ‘Openness,’ and ‘Virtualisation,’ and explained how they have helped IBM to transform the open X86 architecture based Server technology into IBM System x servers that provide the required, Reliability, Availability and Scalability, features of today’s on demand computing environment. IBM’s decades of experience in developing server technology and the client insight IBM has gained over the years have paved the way to make these Systems suitable for mission critical applications while the cost IT infrastructure of IBM customers is kept to a minimum.

KBSL – a wholly owned subsidiary of John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH) was established in 1987 and a member of the IT sector of JKH. As a leading Systems Integrator it has demonstrated over the years, it’s capability of handling complex and large projects, especially rolling out technology solutions for the telecom and banking sector. This is amply demonstrated by possessing a customer base consisting of leading industrial enterprises in Sri Lanka. It has many ‘firsts’ under its belt, which include Logical Partitioning of Hardware Infrastructure, providing fully featured Distributed Call centre, Signal Transfer Point (STP) in IMS (IP based Mobile Subsystems) for Mobile and ISDN based private wide area networks. KSBL is strengthened by strong alliances and partnerships with a large portfolio of industry leaders, which include IBM, Avaya, Tekelec NGN, Oracle, CISCO, HP, Foundry and Iflex-Core Banking Solutions.