Oracle mulls opening data centre in India

Oracle Corporation may look at opening a data centre in India in the next few years as it sees greater adoption of technology across Indian companies, said a senior executive of the $37-billion technology major. India, with a 30,000-strong workforce, has been shortlisted as one of the countries where the Redwood City, California-based company could open a new facility as it beefs up its cloud play.

At present, Oracle operates only one data center in the Asia-Pacific region in Australia, while another one is going to come up in Singaporesoon. But the final decision on India will depend on investments that will be allocated globally to this region, Steve Au Yeung, MD (Asia-Pacific), Oracle, told TOI on the sidelines of the company's annual event 'Oracle OpenWorld 2012'. "Although growth has slowed down in India, we have registered double-digit growth," Yeung said. The Indian market is already opening up to innovations in cloud strategy within the telecommunications and banking industries, he said.
Oracle employs 40,000 people across Asia-Pacific, making India its biggest market in terms of employee strength. However, China is its largest revenue generator in this region. The company had spent about $4.5 billion worldwide on R&D in the financial year 2012 and expects to take it up to $5 billion in 2013. At present, the Asia-Pacific region contributes 17% to the overall revenue of the world's largest enterprise software company.

"China and India are our growth markets in Asia — both these economies have significant scale for us. In India, we added thousands of jobs last year and it also houses one of our largest development teams outside the US," said Mark Hurd, co-president, Oracle. "As both new technology and new applications get accepted in the ( BRIC) markets, we will be investing heavily there," he said.


The writer was in San Francisco, California, on an invitation from Oracle Corp.