CA to increase R&D headcount by 1,000

CA India, the domestic arm of global information technology giant CA, is ramping up operations at its India Technology Centre (ITC). The campus, which has the capacity to house 1,500 employees at present, wou-ld be expanded to accommodate 2,500 people in the coming three years.

The ITC, which was set up in 2004 as a cost cutting initiative, has emerged as the premier research and development (R&D) centre for CA. Presently, the unit is responsible for 28 per cent of all R&D work taking place in the company. This figure is set to rise to 70 per cent over the next three to five years, according to William Bauman, senior vice-president and general manager.

“Like all multi-national IT companies, we had started our India operations to reduce costs. But over the last five years, operations here have come a long way and are making major contributions to the overall R&D in the company,” he told Financial Chronicle.

CA spends about $700 million designing and supporting software that will govern, manage and secure IT environments. The company invests about 20 per cent of its revenue in R&D. “More than 25 per cent of CA’s globally-distributed R&D workforce is already in India. With an additional 1,000 people this percentage will grow to over the global tech industry R&D average,” Bauman claimed.

A total of 43 ideas were gathered from various CA centres all over the world by July 2009, of which seven were shortlisted for integrating with the company’s existing products. The company also decided to fund two more ideas which could be translated into separate business plans.

Bauman asserts that the success of the ITC project shows how effective outsourcing of IT talent has been for US IT majors. He believes that the profits made by American companies through outsourcing would defeat any protectionist policies that the present government may be planning to implement.

“Talking of moving jobs to Buffalo from Bangalore may sound nice. But one has to consider if Buffalo has the same kind of IT manpower to take care of US companies’ IT requirements,” Bauman sums up.