India does not have toilets but 21000 Indians work for Oracle in India.
Oracle in India story
The Oracle In India story
In The Beginning
More than fifteen years ago, before India became recognized as the dynamic force in information technology that is known to be today, Oracle was one of the first multinational software companies to set up operations in India. Beginning with a distributorship through Tata Consultancy Services in 1987, the company established direct operations with a liaison office in 1991, and in 1993 formed Oracle India Private Ltd., a whollyowned subsidiary of Oracle Corp., focused on the sales and marketing of Oracle software in India. In recognition of the significant pool of highly educated software development engineers based in India, Oracle opened its India Development Center (IDC) in Bangalore in 1994. This early commitment to the country marked Oracles vision for India as both a domestic market and a center for research and development. The company became the first multinational company to establish core software development operations in India to support its global product development strategy and to address the needs of the local market. Initially, the India Development Center took on development work on a project basis for different development divisions as determined by the companys headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. As word spread throughout the company of the India teams record delivery time of development projects that met the highest standards of quality, the IDC was tasked with more strategic projects and increasingly demanding requirements. Today Oracle has its India Development Centre located at Bangalore and Hyderabad and sales and marketing offices across six Indian cities.
A Turning Point
In 1996, the India development team was challenged with taking on a strategic research and development project. Ultimately the teams success on the project would propel the IDC into the development spotlight at Oracle. The India team was given three months to develop the first version of what would become the basis of Oracles Internet computing technology, driving the shift to simplified, lowcost computing machines which could access information stored on larger, professionally managed servers. With no additional resources, the IDC, having been asked only to show version one of the technology, delivered instead a secondgeneration version three months to the day from the start of the project. Concurrently, the team also met all deadlines and quality standards for the other 16 projects with which the IDC was tasked with at that time. The worldclass development abilities of the India development team were impressed upon the highest levels of the company, garnering praise and recognition from Oracle founder and CEO, Larry Ellison. This became a turning point for the India organization, transforming the India Development Center into a growth engine, integral to the future and vision of the worlds largest enterprise software company. From that point forward the India Development Center was integrated into Oracles global software development organization, working on the latest technology for Oracle customers around the world. At the same time, Oracles increasing success in the country established the company as the dominant provider of database and enterprise software to the government and corporate sectors in India.
Rapid Investment and Growth
In order to leverage Indias worldclass software development skills base and consistent ontime delivery of high quality products, Oracle India underwent significant investment and rapid growth in operations. The India Development Center in Bangalore became an extension of three headquarters development organizations Tools Division, Server Technologies Division and Platform Technologies Division. The Bangalore tools development team specialized in key areas including application development tools, business intelligence, portals, elearning and integration. The server technology team became integral to the development of emerging technologies and new platforms, with responsibility for the entire development lifecycle for database, application server and other products. The platform technologies team evolved to provide automated support for different platforms including Linux, as well as create tools and technologies to support Oracle On Demand the companys offering designed to provide better, faster software service at a lower cost.
In 1998, Oracle established its second development center in Hyderabad . While the Bangalore center continued to focus on the development of Oracles core application development tools, server and platform technologies, the Hyderabad center was dedicated to a newer area of development of growing strategic importance to the company commonly know as ebusiness applications. With an unwavering focus on quality, the team today works on developing all aspects of the Oracle EBusiness Suite, including core business functions ranging from sales and marketing, to manufacturing and supply chain, to financials, human resource management and projects. The team also caters to the needs of specific industries such as healthcare, higher education and public sector financials applications. In 2001, Oracle added another team in Bangalore for Oracle EBusiness Suite product development, working on Customer Relationship Management solutions that integrate people, process, and technology to meet the toughest of customer demands. Together, the Bangalore and Hyderabad applications development teams form the largest group of developers outside of the companys global headquarters, forming a seamless, roundtheclock, qualitydriven organization that delivers a comprehensive suite of business applications for customers worldwide. In addition, this team supports Oracle employees worldwide in their use of Oracle applications, implementing and managing new products and modules of the Oracle EBusiness Suite within Oracle.
India Development Center Critical To A Global Team
Today, the combined resources of the India Development Center in Bangalore and Hyderabad contribute to core software development across the entire Oracle product family, including Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Application Server 10g, Oracle Collaboration Suite and Oracle EBusiness Suite. The work carried out in India includes new product design, development, technology and feature enhancements, quality engineering, documentation, curriculum for instructorled and online training, integration, as well as support and maintenance of existing products. The IDC has made major contributions to the research and development of key focus areas for the company including the future of grid computing, technology and applications deployment on Linux, security, Java application development, XML, and Warehouse Management Systems, to name a few. The IDC also contributes significantly to Oracles online developer community, Oracle Technology Network, showcasing new technology, best practices, sample applications, discussion forums, white papers and through participation in global events.
Working handinhand with their counterparts on the other side of the globe, the U.S. and India development teams work on joint projects roundtheclock, taking advantage of the 12 and a half hour time difference between India and the US to pass development, support and consulting projects between teams overnight. In essence, Oracles computers never sleep. When developers in the U.S. retire for the night, their development colleagues in India take over. The result is greater quality assurance, more innovative products and the ability to deliver new technology to market faster. This joint cooperation enables the company to operate as a global organization in a "follow the sun" model, effectively accomplishing two days of work in one.
While some multinational companies outsource work to teams in India on a project basis, Oracle takes a different approach. The India development teams belong to the same organization as their U.S. counterparts, and have as much input into product design and direction as developers at the companys headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. There is no distinction between developers in the U.S. or India when it comes to working on the latest cutting edge technology and strategic development that is critical to the continued growth of the company.
In addition to growing its employee resources, the company is expanding its Bangalore and Hyderabad development centers. The Bangalore facility spans 213,000 square feet of space with an 11storey multilevel car park, a modern cafeteria that accommodates more than 500 people, recreational facilities including a gymnasium, table tennis and a billiards room, and a fully stocked and computeraccessible library. In Hyderabad, expansion plans include a 500,000 square foot, stateoftheart campus complete with a multilevel 1,000 car park with recreation and library facilities on ten acres of land acquired at HITEC city in Hyderabad. The first phase of construction of this campus was completed in 2005. An important center for Oracle India, Hyderabad presents considerable opportunities for the growing local team to continue with the creation of the high quality, global products that have been the hallmark of Oracles success.
Transformation to a Global Organization
In addition to providing software development for the entire Oracle product family for Indian and global markets, Oracle India has become host to a number of other functions critical to Oracles operations as a global company. Through the six facilities of Oracle India Private Ltd., headed out of Gurgaon near New Delhi, the company offers sales, marketing, consulting, education and support to local customers. Additionally, Oracle India hosts a number of global operations that make it possible for the company to conduct 24 by 7 consulting, finance and administration, support and sales operations, in addition to software development. Oracle India represents the only organization outside Oracles headquarters in California to represent so many divisions and lines of business, effectively mirroring Oracles global operations.
Global Support Center
Servicing Oracle customers worldwide, the Global Support Center in India is one of four Global Support Centers in the world offering technical support for the entire range of Oracle products. Through 24 by 7 coverage, Oracle has the ability to provide critical support to customers and to deliver higherquality, more efficient technical support regardless of time zone. The global support team in India helps provide faster response to customers worldwide by leveraging the technical and functional skills available in India, and enabling 24 by 7 support for critical service requests. The India team is involved in global programs for knowledge management, service automation and proactive support to improve customer experience through increased selfservice capabilities. The Global Support Center in India also helps manage Oracle On Demand customers worldwide, providing them with better maintenance and administration of their Oracle software at a lower total cost.
OracleDirect
OracleDirect conducts direct Webbased sales by using technology, applications and services to meet specific customers requirements in different geographies. By enabling customers to see firsthand how Oracle can increase the integration, reliability, security and costeffectiveness of their information technology, OracleDirect allows customers to "See your business in our software". Originally located primarily in North America, OracleDirect has extended its presence in India to better reach global customers, and leverage the abundant pool of local technical skills, especially in the area of Java technology. With the advantageous time difference, Oracle can effectively extend its daily sales cycle and enhance its ability to develop customized solutions that help customers around the world better understand Oracles business value proposition. The OracleDirect team in India works closely with customer requests from North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific region.
Global Consulting
A part of Oracle Consulting, Global Consulting comprises two specialized teams of consultants that deliver rapid, cost effective solutions to Oracle customers worldwide. Forming a center of expertise located at Bangalore, Global Consulting provides offshore consulting services encompassing the full range of Oracle products. Services offered by Global Consulting span functional and technical areas of development, customization, migration and implementation across a broad range of industries, including automobile, biotechnology, energy, education, government, pharmaceutical and telecom. While traditional consulting groups provide onsite implementation, Oracles highly skilled Global Consulting teams specialize in providing remote consulting services, leveraging their proximity to the India Development Center and the Oracle Support Center teams to provide innovative and efficient consulting services to customers around the world. Global Consulting has a strong focus on quality, with a Quality Management System that is ISO 9001 certified, and which has been assessed at Level 4 of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) of the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
Global Financial Information Center
The Global Financial Information Center (GFIC) based out of Bangalore comprises two different groups. The first group handles Financial Planning and Accounting (FP&A) and provides internal financial planning and analysis services such as forecasting, budgeting and reporting for Oracles incountry operations across the world. The second group is the Shared Services Center providing transactionprocessing services covering Revenue Accounting and Customer Operations. The Shared Services Center is one of four Shared Services Centers that support Oracles internal operations. While the other Shared Service Centers in Dublin, California and Sydney are regionally focused, the Bangalore center is unique in providing backoffice services to all Oracle subsidiaries.
GFIC plays a key role in streamlining Oracles financial and accounting operations around the world.
Oracle University in India
Oracle University in India offers certified Oracle courses across Oracle technology and applications. These courses are run by Oracle at its own education centers across the world. In India, the Oracle Education Centers are located in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. The Oracle certified courses are also offered to students in India through more than 500 centers of over 25 Oracle Authorized Training Partners and Oracle Workforce Development Partners across the country. Oracle also runs a highly successful program at the Oracle School of Advanced Technology at IIIT at Hyderabad. Oracle University has a Global Shared Services center based out of Bangalore. It provides Global Oracle University employee and customer community with Sales Call Center, Systems Operations and Business Operations services to support a 24 by 7 global business operation. The curriculum and production team of Oracle University in India edits and creates course content and material for various courses that Oracle University offers to its customers across the globe.
Oracles Fourth Largest Market A Jewel in Oracles Crown
Since coming to India, Oracle has played a key role in shaping the information technology industry inside the country and has established a footprint unmatched by most of its multinational competitors. Today, India is Oracles fourth largest market in Asia Pacific in terms of revenue, up from tenth a few years ago, and boasts the largest research and development investment outside the U.S.
Oracle continues to build a strong domestic business in India, engaging in sales and marketing of Oracle software and services including consulting, education and support of all Oracle products. With offices in Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gurgaon and 17 growth cities, Oracle India operates in all 28 states and works with leading companies in the telecommunications, banking, insurance, manufacturing and utilities industries, in both the government and private sectors. The Oracle Database 10g supports transactions and interfaces in 13 major Indian languages including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Telugu and Tamil.
Oracle currently has 6000 technology and over 600 applications customers in India, and counts some of the most important government and private organizations amongst those using Oracle software and services to reduce costs, increase productivity and innovate business operations. Oracle is also committed to the Indian market through its extensive network of more than 200 channel and alliance partners who are part of Oracle PartnerNetwork. These include companies such as iFlex., Infosys, Satyam, Sonata, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro.
India holds great promise as a domestic market for Oracle software solutions. The midmarket segment makes up 40 percent of Oracles current customer base in India. Oracle expects small, local companies in the region to drive the future growth of Oracles business. As Indian companies seek to expand their businesses to new markets in and outside of India, they will need to invest in information technology, including databases, ebusiness technologies and applications that provide real business value the core competency of Oracle.
To address this opportunity, Oracle has charted an aggressive growth plan to rapidly expand its presence in India. Known as the "Emerald India" initiative, the plan is intended to fully leverage the potential of the highly skilled Indian workforce to take advantage of new opportunities in a variety of industries. From this commitment to and investment in the Indian market, the company expects to dramatically grow its domestic business while contributing further to the burgeoning Indian economy and the advancement of the information technology industry.
Oracles commitment to India is reflected in its USD 2 billion investment in five years since year 2001. This includes a large investment in iflex Solutions, the Indiabased global software leader in core banking solutions. Oracle owns majority stake in iflex Solutions.
Oracle: An Ideal EGovernance Partner
Oracles association with governments goes back to 1977, at the inception of the company and its work for the U.S. government, the companys first client. Today, Oracle is involved with more than 2000 Government projects around the world and over 100 such projects in India. Oracle India works to help government create a complete architecture for EGovernance. Partnering with government bodies, Oracle assists governments in creating citizen relationship management services, transforming government workers into knowledge workers through employee management services, and simplifying business interaction while reducing costs through process automation. Through various EGovernance initiatives at the central and state levels, Oracle is helping to move India forward into the modern economy by streamlining government bureaucracy and helping to develop new business models to better serve Indias citizens.
EGovernance Center of Excellence Gurgaon
In addition to providing a complete technology and information architecture for EGovernance, Oracle India has teamed up with HewlettPackard India to set up an EGovernance Center of Excellence at Oracles head office at Gurgaon. The center supports the EGovernance initiatives of central, state and local government bodies in India. The center also provides a platform for the development of model EGovernance applications and showcase successful EGovernance applications currently used by various Indian and global government bodies, as well as EGovernance applications by Oracle, HP and their partners. The showcase has a particular emphasis on enhancing security, operations continuity, availability, scalability and optimization for lower total cost of ownership. In addition to offering technical consultation and proof of concept services, the center creates awareness amongst decision makers at the central and statelevels to help them effectively define and implement EGovernance initiatives.
Ready For The Future
Recognized by the Business Today Hewitt Survey 2002 and the Hewitt Survey 2004 as one of the best employers for top talent in India, Oracle today employs more than 21000 people in India. As the company continues to expand development, education, consulting, support, shared services and direct sales activities, it expects to further grow its headcount outpacing the growth plans of any other global software company in India. Oracles aggressive efforts to grow its Indian workforce is part of a longerterm plan to tap the brightest talent from the more than 250,000 technology graduates that Indian universities turn out each year. India is home to more than 500,000 members of Oracles online developer community, Oracle Technology Network, and boasts the highest number of certified Java architects in the world. Oracle continues to recruit these experts with the aim of gaining the largest concentration of certified Java architects inside any software company worldwide.
To this end, Oracle has embarked on an aggressive recruitment strategy and conducts an average of more than 50 recruitment fairs per year. With the excellent pool of talented IT skills in India, Oracle prospective employees undergo a competitive evaluation process. The company extends employment offers only to those candidates that meet rigorous quality standards and have excellent qualifications, skills, aptitude and passion. Oracle received applications from more than 200,000 candidates over an average 18month period. Seeking the best the industry has to offer, Oracle hires less than one percent of the applicants. Ensuring a challenging and rewarding environment, Oracle India offers an unparalleled opportunity to define the next wave of technology and business innovation. New recruits are inducted into Oracle India with comprehensive technical and soft skills training, including team building and managerial effectiveness. Committed to employee development, Oracle India makes every effort to make employees successful through a range of innovative programs including professional development, internal focus groups, worklife balance initiatives, and employee focused health programs. Through these initiatives and a continuing focus on the latest technology and learning, attrition rates are less than half the industry average.
With modern networks, highly skilled, Englishspeaking software engineers work within their own country whilst enjoying competitive salaries and benefits and working on the latest cutting edgetechnology. As opportunities to contribute to this exciting future have grown within Oracle India, the company has experienced a return of talented employees who began their careers with Oracle and other companies in the U.S. and have chosen to return to India to continue their career growth. As these returnees demonstrate, Oracle India provides global opportunities right at home.
Oracles decade and half long investment in India has made the company a significant participant in the countrys development and prosperity. Oracle has contributed to creating an IT savvy workforce in India by providing its software free of charge to over 100 higher education institutions in the country at an estimated grant value of USD 250 million. Oracle also provides it Think.com interactive education platform to over 1112 schools in the country. Over 3,53,952 students in India already use Think.com making India the largest Think.com country in the world.
Oracles continuing partnership and growth plans in India are indicative of its ongoing commitment to the country, not only enhancing the companys ability to operate as a worldclass global organization, but also benefiting employees, customers and the market in India. Along with China, India represents one of the two key thriving economies and large domestic markets expected to fuel Oracles growth in the Asia Pacific region. The company continuously adds value to the Indian infrastructure, economy and community through its aggressive growth plans and its involvement in the development of people and businesses in India. Oracle India is truly a jewel in the Oracle crown, shining light on a bright future of growth and innovation.
