The Hindu : Business : Oracle to expand India operations

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Thursday, Jan 12, 2006

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Business

Oracle to expand India operations

Anand Parthasarathy

The country will account for a sixth of its global manpower

MUMBAI: Oracle will expand its Indian operations from the six metros to nine secondary towns, including Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Indore, Jaipur, Kochi, Lucknow and Pune. In tandem it will increase its workforce from the current 8,600 to 10,000 within eight months, which will then account for a sixth of its global manpower, the company's California based President, Charles Phillips, said on Wednesday.

The logic for the rural focus is the realisation that e-governance applications — and the thousands of small local traders — will constitute what Derek Williams, Executive Vice President, called `the next wave of opportunity,' not just a burgeoning market, but a `test bed' for innovation in people-oriented information and communication technology (ICT). India was already one of two fastest growing markets for the company in the Asia-Pacific region, something triggered by the release last year of an India-specific and more compellingly priced version of its flagship e-Business Suite.

Gearing up for Internet

Cannily reinventing itself for the Internet decade, the company told 2,000 IT geeks and head honchos at the Asia-Pacific edition of Oracle OpenWorld 2006 that it was not a product company now and it was an information solutions company.

While the products that came with the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards takeovers are now positioned to deliver a left and right hook in the customer relations and small business applications arena, Oracle held up the Indian brand `Flexcube' — a banking and financial services product created by iFlex — as its `secret weapon' to even more tightly embrace its nearly 9,000 customers in this sector.

eGovernance awards

To further cement its relationship with dozens of Indian e-governance and citizen-centric initiatives, Oracle on Wednesday announced its "Excellence in e-Governance Awards'' to 22 meaningful projects carried out in India.

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