HCL to add 513 jobs in Wake County, NC
SOURCE: Triangle Business Journal
DATE: August 4th, 2008
Mohit Soapbox:
I wonder when Mr Dobbs picks up this news clip. A number of the firms are setting up beacheads in the US closer to their clients. NC counties supposedly offer low cost of operations and given the salary rise in India may be competitive to have some of these roles in NC. This could also be a way for some of these firms to diversify their currency risks and provide globalized locations closer to clients. The challenge these firms will have to overcome is that the centers created globally need to be integrated into the overall company delivery platform rather than act as one off delivery centers which today they probably are.
ARTICLE
HCL Technologies Ltd., an Indian IT services company that brought in more than $1 billion from U.S. clients in its most recent fiscal year, has won state incentives to add more than 500 jobs in Wake County.
Gov. Mike Easley’s office said Monday that HCL America, the company’s U.S. arm, is in line to receive slightly more than $5 million in state incentives if it creates 513 jobs over the next five years and sustains them for 10 years.
Workers are to be paid an average annual salary of almost $47,000, plus benefits, higher than the Wake County average salary of $41,964.
“These jobs are a good fit for our economy and critical to the 513 families who will benefit from them,” Easley said in a statement. “We are working with education and workforce training programs to make sure we can deliver employees with IT skills to companies located anywhere in our state.”
Wake County beat out numerous locations, including finalists in Texas and Arizona, for the project.
The more than 500 HCL workers in the Triangle will be part of the company’s first “delivery center” in North America, says HCL America President Shami Khorana.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based HCL America employs about 3,000 people in 15 states, including 33 in North Carolina. Most of those employees work at the offices of the firms they’re consulting. Workers at the Wake County facility still will do that, but they’ll also be able to provide services remotely, Khorana says.
Jobs there will run “the whole gamut” of HCL’s offerings, Khorana says. Among the tasks to be performed at the new Wake County office include software application development and maintenance, engineering services, research and development, server management and help-desk services.
“You don’t have to burden yourself with providing any facilities or sitting space or any other capital investment,” Khorana says.
HCL’s expansion into North America comes at a time of uncertainty for the U.S. market. But it also comes at a time when companies aren’t simply looking to outsource second-tier IT work, Khorana says. HCL increasingly has found itself working on clients’ bread-and-butter projects, including development of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.
“In that environment, where everything is going up the value chain, it’s important for us to be much more local, to go where the market is,” Khorana says. “And (clients are) looking to us to provide a much higher grade of services than they’ve ever requested before.”
That need to get closer to clients, Khorana says, outweighed concerns about the U.S. economy, which HCL expects to rebound.
HCL Technologies employs some 50,000 people worldwide. Global sales in fiscal 2008, which ended June 30, were about $1.8 billion, roughly $1 billion of which came from U.S. customers. The company posted net income of about $245 million for the year.
The state incentives package approved for the company was one of two such deals made Monday. North Carolina also has approved an incentives package for Time Warner to add 200 jobs in Charlotte. For more information on that story, from Triangle Business Journal sister publication Charlotte Business Journal, click here.
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