According to internal sources, Oracle currently has around 3,200 people in India and is hiring around 100 new employees every month. Most are being brought on board to fill Oracle’s new seven-acre campus in Hyderabad, which is expected to be fully operational early next year.
Even Oracle CEO Larry Ellison realizes the sensitivity of the issue. Speaking to a group of officials in New Delhi via satellite phone, Ellison is reported as saying I know that globalization is controversial in some spots in the world. People protest it regularly.
However Oracle officials defended the move, saying that the additions in India will not preclude further development of the workforce back home. Nor do they consider the move as primarily cost-driven.
Oracle will continue to hire software engineers in the US and elsewhere, even though it will hire more aggressively in India, said a company spokesman. He added that hiring in Asia will allow the company to set up 24×7 development teams, with worker shift changes that constantly move from east to west time-zones.
India is set to become the database and enterprise application software marker’s largest research center outside of its Redwood Shores headquarters. Oracle has two additional development centers in India; one in Hyderabad and another in neighboring Bangalore. Last Thursday, Oracle also announced a joint initiative with Hewlett-Packard Company Inc to open an ‘e-governance’ applications showcase center near the Indian capital.
India is tipped to be one of the fastest-growing technology markets over the next five years, due to a vast, relatively untapped skilled labor pool for IT software development engineers and low labor costs. According to research group Gartner, the Indian market is projected to grow 23% over the next three years.
Oracle joins a growing number of US and European companies that are shifting their development work to off-shore markets such as India. US chip-maker Intel Corp and German business applications provider SAP AG recently announced aggressive expansion plans in India.
Source: Computerwire
