CA opens $30 mn tech centre in Hyderabad

CA, a global securities management solutions company, has opened a $30-million (around Rs 120 crore) India Technology Centre (ITC) in Hyderabad, its largest facility across the globe.

The ITC is a critical part of the company's global R&D strategy and will be responsible for the rollout of its highest revenue-generating products.

The centre houses over 1,400 IT management developers, taking the company's total strength in India to nearly 1,650.

"India now represents nearly 30 per cent of our 5,800 global R&D staff, further demonstrating the importance of operations in our overall business strategy," said John Swainson, president and chief executive officer of CA, who is on his first visit to India.

The 2.6-lakh sqft ITC, set up at Nanakramguda on the outskirts of the city, features a fitness centre, floodlit basketball and tennis courts, cricket pitch and a 600-seat amphitheatre.

The facility can accommodate 1,600 employees with 155 sqft of built-up area for every staff member on the premises. This includes 112 meeting rooms and a 400-seat cafeteria.

Stating that two of the company's new products, CA Cohesion Application Configuration Manager r4.5 (CA Cohesion ACM) and CA Mobile Device Management (CA MDM) have been designed and developed at the ITC, Swainson said the company's goal was to build its business by developing and acquiring more products.

"We are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to acquire more technology products to complement our product portfolio," Swainson said.

While the CA Cohesion ACM r4.5, a product that automates configuration management was released recently, the DA MDM, which provides large organisations with enterprise level device management tools for smartphone platforms such as Symbian, Blackberry, Nokia and Microsoft, is scheduled for release in November.

CA Cohesion was developed by a team of 30 from Cendura Corporation, a privately-held provider of IT service management and application service delivery solutions. CA acquired Cendura in September 2006 and absorbed its Indian team into the company and released the Cohesion 4.0 version in December 2006.

CA, which had its share of troubles in the last couple of years, was back on track from the last three quarters. It has been reporting a growth of 5 per cent compared with the industry average of 8 per cent.

The company, which posted revenues of $4.1 billion in 2007, invests around 20 per cent of its revenues in R&D and support activities.