Satyam Computer Services Ltd. last week announced plans to expand its Chinese software development operations in order to offset rising IT labor costs in India.
Virender Aggarwal, director and senior vice president for the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, India and Africa at Hyderabad-based Satyam, said the IT services firm will open a development center in Guangzhou, China, to build custom software for customers in southern China. A larger office campus will be set up in an as yet undetermined city to serve companies worldwide, Aggarwal said.
Satyam plans to dramatically increase its Chinese workforce over the next three years, according to Aggarwal. "I can't give a figure of the number of staff we will hire in China, but it will be in multiples of thousands," he said.
The company currently has about 270 employees in China at a software development center in Shanghai and smaller facilities in Beijing and Dalian. Offshore outsourcing and IT services firms have little choice but to expand in China because of the increasing labor costs in India, Aggarwal said. However, he noted that Satyam isn't likely to expand its Shanghai facility because personnel costs are rising in that city as well.
-- John Ribeiro, IDG News Service
MySQL Buys Web Tools Vendor, Adds Two Execs
Open-source database developer MySQL AB announced that it has acquired Netfrastructure Inc., a small vendor of tools for building Web-based applications. The price MySQL paid for Manchester, Mass.-based Netfrastructure wasn't disclosed.
Uppsala-based MySQL also said it has hired Netfrastructure founder Jim Starkey as its senior software architect. Earlier in his career, Starkey founded InterBase Software Corp. and developed its namesake relational database. InterBase was one of the first databases to use event alerts and triggers and include support for binary large objects. Starkey also participated in the development of the former Digital Equipment Corp.'s RDB database.
In addition, MySQL named Taneli Otala its chief technology officer. Otala previously was CTO at SenSage Inc., a San Francisco-based vendor of security analytics tools, and he earlier worked as a development manager at Oracle Corp.
MySQL's acquisition of Netfrastructure follows Oracle's recent purchases of two open-source database vendors, Innobase Oy and Sleepycat Software Inc. Both of those firms offered storage engines that can be used with MySQL.
Ericsson Sues Samsung Over License Dispute
LM Ericsson Telephone Co. said it has filed lawsuits in four countries against Samsung Electronics Co. after the two vendors failed to reach a new agreement on royalty payments for Samsung's use of mobile technology covered by Ericsson patents.
"Unfortunately, we had to file the lawsuits because we haven't been able to agree to a renewal of our licenses with Samsung, which expired at the end of the year," said Peter Olofsson, a spokesman for Stockholm-based Ericsson.
The lawsuits were filed in Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K. and the U.S. Olofsson declined to disclose the amount of money that Ericsson is seeking from Samsung, which couldn't be reached for comment on the lawsuits.
The two companies signed a license agreement in 2002 allowing Samsung to use patents held by Ericsson on technologies such as the Global System for Mobile Communications and the General Packet Radio Service, according to Olofsson.
India Looks to Attract More High-Tech Firms
India's government plans to offer a set of financial incentives in an effort to lure more high-tech manufacturers to set up operations in the country.
Indian Finance Minister Shri P. Chidambaram told the country's parliament last week that the government plans to assist high-tech manufacturers by investing in firms and offering "viability gap funding." The latter is aimed at offsetting costs incurred by new ventures because of India's infrastructure problems, which include poor roads, port facilities and communications capabilities.
The incentives will be available for three years, Chidambaram said. Some went into effect last week, while others depend on parliament approval of India's annual budget, which is expected within the next week or so.
Several major chip makers, including Intel Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc., have design facilities in India. But they have been reluctant to set up fabrication plants in the country, partly because of the infrastructure issues.
State Agency Begins IT Integration Project
In an effort to streamline its IT operations, the Department of Education and Training in the Australian state of New South Wales has launched an effort to integrate a mix of mainframes and other systems.
A spokesman for the NSW DET confirmed that the data-integration project is under way but wouldn't provide any details because "the project has only just begun."
A source said the agency began work in January and plans to integrate data from "numerous disparate systems, including older mainframes." The NSW DET is using integration software from IBM and Redwood City, Calif.-based Informatica Corp. as part of the project, the source said.
The project also calls for installing an Oracle 10g database cluster running on Red Hat Linux servers from either IBM or Hewlett-Packard Co., according to the source.
Compiled by Mike Bucken.
Briefly Noted
-- JBoss Inc. has purchased Object-one GmbH, a Berlin-based systems integrator, in an effort to establish a stronger footing in one of Europe's fastest-growing markets for open-source software. Objectone is a JBoss partner that sells subscription and support services for the Atlanta-based software vendor's products. The integrator was renamed JBoss Deutschland GmbH, effective last Wednesday.
-- Oracle Corp. said it plans to set up a business unit in the Asia-Pacific region that will focus on embedding the company's software in home appliances and other products. Developers assigned to the unit will work at existing design centers in several countries. Oracle, which already offers three embedded databases, said it plans to develop embedded versions of its 10g Enterprise data-base and application server software over the next 12 months.
-- Intel Corp. plans to invest $300 million (U.S.) to build a chip assembly and testing plant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Construction will begin immediately on the plant, which will be the first factory of its kind built in Vietnam. It will eventually employ 1,200 mostly Vietnamese workers, Intel said.
-- Sony Corp. and NEC Corp. have agreed to combine their optical disk drive businesses into a single company. Sony will own 55 percent of the new company, which will be called Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. and begin operations on April 3.
-- Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. will spend $110 million to build several IT manufacturing facilities in Tamil Nadu state in southern India, according to Dayanidhi Maran, India's minister for communications and information technology. Taipei, Taiwan-based Hon Hai will manufacture mobile phones and other products in India. The facilities being set up in Tamil Nadu are expected to create more than 10,000 jobs, Maran said.
Global Fact
398M
The number of mobile phone subscribers in China as of January.
Source: Chinese Ministry of Information Industry