IBM Opens Fifth Software Center in India

[HenryTo]

Quote: IBM currently employs 23,000 people in its four Indian centers at Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon and Calcutta. This is a pretty sizable number, folks - even though IBM has nearly 350,000 employees worldwide.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday June 15, 10:02 AM
IBM Opens Fifth Software Center in India
IBM Corp. on Tuesday opened its fifth software development center in India and announced plans to hire 1,000 programmers in the new center by the end of 2005.

"We are very excited by the skills and talents and the productivity that come from our team in India," Frank Kern, IBM's vice president for Asia-Pacific said, inaugurating the center in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

IBM currently employs 23,000 people in its four Indian centers at Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon and Calcutta.

Companies such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard use the offshore business model to provide low-cost software development services to their clients worldwide. India is among a handful of countries where wages are low and skilled workers plentiful.

Kern also said India is rapidly becoming an important market for IBM's services.

Last year, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company acquired Indian back-office services firm Daksh eServices for an estimated US$150 million (euro125 million).

IBM, long known as a computer maker, has increasingly become a services company and sold off its personal computer business to Chinese firm Lenovo in a deal worth $1.75 billion.