Several outsourcing industry deals last week show that the world of business technology is indeed getting flatter–but also that tech globalization is a multidimensional thoroughfare, not a one-way street out of the United States.
The biggest deal is Wipro Technologies’ $600 million acquisition of Leonia, N.J.-based Infocrossing, planting the huge Indian outsourcer firmly on U.S. soil, complete with expansion and hiring plans. Infocrossing operates five data centers in the United States, providing hosted and managed IT services. As Wipro extends its U.S. footprint, including opening software development centers in Atlanta and three other cities, the company says it’s looking to hire hundreds of Americans with associate’s degrees in tech-related fields, train them, and pay for the best to earn bachelor’s degrees in technology–much like it does with tens of thousands of locals back home.
It’s by no means a U.S. hiring spree for Wipro, whose employees in the States are mostly Indian nationals, notes senior writer Marianne Kolbasuk McGee in our cover story this week. But it’s at least a sign of long-term investment in the domestic market.
And those expansion and hiring plans aren’t just opportunistic PR for an offshore company (and industry) that strikes fear into the hearts and minds of the American IT rank and file. They’re also smart business, as Wipro appeals to U.S. customers as a full-service IT outsourcer rather than a bit player that merely picks off low-hanging business and ships it back to India. Before it had U.S. data center and development operations, Wipro was probably a legitimate option for two in 10 U.S. companies, says Dean Davison of consulting firm NeoIT, while now it’ll be an option for seven of 10 companies.