Recruiting in China

by Antony Savvas
Thursday 6 April 2006

EDS is to open up to three outsourcing centres in China that will hire around 2,000 staff over the next two years.

EDS recently moved its Asian headquarters from Australia to Shanghai, and it is currently identifying locations for the two to three Global Delivery Centres it now plans.

The new centres will offer outsourcing services, including IT outsourcing and hosting, to both multinational and Chinese clients.

The first centre is expected to open some time this year. There are already similar EDS centres located in Malaysia and India.

EDS currently only employs 100 staff in China, so the expansion is a major but not unexpected move.

Earlier this year, EDS said it expected to double the size of its headcounts in India and China over the next two to three years. This comes at a time when the company is axing thousands of staff in the US and across Europe, as it strives to cut costs.

EDS currently has over 15,000 staff in India. It announced up to 20,000 redundancies in the US and Europe at the back end of 2004, which are still being implemented.

Last month, Unisys established an outsourcing centre in Shanghai, which will offer a range of services, including software development.

Over the next three years, Unisys plans to expand this operation by hiring 1,000 workers and potentially setting up similar centres in other Chinese cities.

EDS is also currently trying to buy Indian outsourcing company Mphasis BFL for $380m (£223m), to help ramp up it offshore outsourcing business even further.

Mphasis, based in Bangalore, is a publicly quoted company in India and has both an IT services and business process outsourcing (BPO) business.

The company has more than 12,000 employees, with around 11,000 of these based in India. Mphasis has clients in industries covering financial services, transportation, technology and healthcare.

The Mphasis board views the EDS offer as “favourable”, but it so far hasn’t officially responded to the takeover attempt. Its board will next meet on Tuesday, 11 April.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Feeds/RS/Articles/2006/04/06/215258/EDStohire2,000inChina.htm