'There is now a very positive evolution in the skills set and services we are able to provide,' said Roxas. Whereas five years ago, most outsourcing activities in the country were call center-focused, there now is a much more sophisticated undertaking by the industry, he said, citing a major insurance company that has recently located its financial forensics activity in the Philippines as example. The senator said that this is the direction the country should be taking.

Having been recently awarded a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3 certification for its organizational practices in software, systems engineering, and integrated product development, the GDPC would focus primarily on application outsourcing across SAP, Oracle, and .Net applications. HP GDPC's operations, employing more than 600 employees, would be split between the company's main offices in the Robinson Summit Center in Makati and the new facility, with the new site to accommodate an initial 200 employees.

Nilo Cruz, HP Philippines country managing director, said the new office is a big step towards the growth of their business in the country. Cruz said that they now have around half of the 200 positions for the new site filled up and they are hiring roughly 20 employees every month, mostly for the application services position.

During the GDPC inauguration, Roxas said that application outsourcing companies like HP not only make a financial investment, but an emotional and psychological investment as well by inspiring current and future workers to acquire and develop very sophisticated skills set required for application services positions.

'You now have a good number of people able to operate at CMMI Level 3 and who knows, in the future, maybe even Level 5,' said Roxas. 'The message for us as a country is that these 200 people and those that will be hired in the future, their skills set is not ordinary, creating a community of like-skilled people.' This way, the senator added, it would be easy to integrate with the flow globally and technology transfer would be much easier. 'It moves us up the value chain; it's a good start.'