The Hindu Business Line : Keane bullish on India; to hire 5,000 more

Keane Inc., the $1-billion IT services provider, is bullish on India and plans to ramp up its headcount from 3,000 to 8,000 people within 2-3 years and invest about $100 million (Rs 450 crore) to support its expansion drive.

The Chief Software Architect, Keane Federal Systems Inc, Dr. Thomas J. Mowbray, told Business Line that the company currently handles about 30 per cent of its global work out of three delivery centres in India based at Hyderabad, Noida and Gurgaon. We expect to change this to 70 per cent over the next three years.

"The New York Stock Exchange-listed company, which serves about 1,200 clients from its global delivery centres in the US, Europe and India, provides technology services for the likes of JP Morgan, Fidelity, Pfizer and Morgan Stanley. With this expansion plan, we expect a significant part of offshore work to move to India," he said.

On a visit to India to take part as a keynote speaker at Architecture World 2006, he said: "a tenth of those we expect to induct in India would be pure architects. Making a distinction between software engineers and architects, he said architects typically abdicate their responsibility of managers and continue to pursue their passion for technology work. These would be software architects and later go on to become enterprise architects."

"There is huge demand for those who serve as architects. Enterprise architecture is a hot topic in the US, which has been fuelled by the Federal Government with a mandate from Congress and support budgets. This has provided a critical aspect of funding large projects. What started with the Federal Government also mirrors the large Fortune 500 corporations, who continue to allocate large budgets for enterprise infrastructure," Dr Mowbray.

Of the 10,000 people about 3,000 work in India. India has emerged as a strategic differentiator for Keane with a large talent pool to tap into. While Keane Consultants work on site, the seamless delivery approach of the company will leverage Indian resources. The Indian delivery has allowed the flexibility of working round the clock with development teams in the US, he said.