IBM is opening new offshore outsourcing centers in India. But it may face the challenge of finding qualified people to staff them. It's not a problem unique to IBM in a country where finding and retaining quality IT talent has become more difficult in recent months. IBM announced Tuesday that it has opened another global delivery center, this one in the city of Noida, located in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and is planning another center in the area by mid-2008. Both centers will employ about 3,000 people, IBM said. With the addition of those two, IBM will have six global delivery centers and will employ more than 70,000 people working out of facilities within some 10 cities in India.
IBM says it will hire technology graduates and IT professionals with skills in IT strategy and architecture, business consulting, enterprise software (SAP, Siebel, and Oracle), testing, and business intelligence, for the Noida centers. But it's also going to make some changes in how employees' skill levels are certified.
