EMC plans to invest US$1.5 billion in India over the next five years, to expand its research and development and services delivery from the country, a company executive said on Wednesday an article on ITnews.com said this week.
EMC owns VMware, and puts out an array of SAN devices, routers, and various other corporate software applications.
The investment is the largest committed by the company outside the U.S., and is in addition to $500 million that the company has already invested in India so far, David Goulden, EMC's executive vice president and chief financial officer, told reporters in Bangalore.
The company announced in January that it was cutting 2,400 jobs, a move that would reduce annual spending by about $350 million during this year, with savings increasing to about $500 million in 2010. EMC will continue to control costs in the current difficult economic situation, but will also invest in new opportunities, Goulden said.
The R&D facility is three times larger than the previous one, and can house up to 3,500 employees, Goulden said. It will provide an opportunity for EMC's sales staff in India to work more closely with product development teams in the country, to develop products for India and related markets, he said.
Services are an important part of EMC's revenue but the company's focus in the area of services is on helping customers get more value from EMC's products, Goulden said. The company will not get into general systems integration and services as a business like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, he added.
EMC currently employs about 2,000 staff in India. It has another 2,000 staff with outsourced laborers providing services to the company on a variety of projects, Goulden said. The company did not disclose how many more staff it is adding in the country as a result of the new investment.
While the move seems to make sense in terms of dollar signs, it is disappointing to watch all of our tech support flutter over the Indian ocean.
Let’s say you have a Dell personal computer. If there is something wrong with your computer, there is no chance the person who you get on the phone is going to be stationed on the same country as you. The practice of shipping IT help overseas not only drives down American employment, but encourages other companies to do the same in order to keep up with the market trend. This creates a vicious cycle with no clear end in sight, and will only perpetuate the off shore outsourcing of a flourishing industry.
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