Satyam opens fourth Australian solution centre

Satyam Computer Services has opened a solutions centre in Brisbane, mainly to support Queensland clients with a focus on enterprise application solutions.

The Indian company's country manager, Deepak Nangia, said the 500m2 solution centre was the fourth in Australia. Satyam already has two in Melbourne - focusing primarily on business intelligence capacity - and one in Sydney - focusing mainly on managed services.

"Each centre tends to be slightly different, and they have three broad services offerings in the market," Nangia said. "They will be cross-leveraged across the country."

The national solution centre framework would replicate roughly, on a smaller scale, Satyam's setup in India, he said.

He said Brisbane was chosen because of its proximity to two universities with the right expertise, and because Satyam's research had shown a drift of appropriate IT talent towards Queensland.

"Talent is the heartbeat of our business," Nangia said.

Satyam has two customers in Queensland so far - one in government and one in financial services. So the new centre allowed the service provider to serve its Queensland customers better too, he said.

The centre had 40 staff and expected to employ another 50 before the end of this year - due to expanded relationships with its current customers, although the company certainly sought more contracts, Nangia said.

"[Queensland's] population of four million, that's almost equivalent to Singapore so it's a very viable economy today. And then there's the resources boom," Nangia said.

The new centre was opened by the company's managing director, B Ramu Raju and India's consul-general, Anita Nayar.

"Satyam is already well established in Australia and the announcement reinforces our ongoing commitment to collaborating with customers, wherever they need us, to transform their organisations," Rama Raju said in a statement.

The company's Asia-Pacific senior vice president, Virender Aggarwal, said the Brisbane development centre would serve local government, finance and insurance clients, while addressing other sectors, including mining.

"A significant proportion of Satyam's Australian development will also take place at the new facility, [especially] the development of future enterprise applications for both Australian and multinational clients," he said.

Satyam has about 1200 associates serving Australia with 800 based here. About 42 per cent of associates in Australia were local nationals, the company said in its statement.

Satyam has offered India-based scholarships to about 100 university graduates, some of whom hail from Queensland. Nangia said it was hoped that some would work in the Brisbane solutions centre after their tenure ended.

"But there is nothing in the scholarships that binds them, either to an operation or a location," Nangia said.

Sandra Rossi contributed to this story

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