Wednesday, 16 August 2006

Google to Open Billion-dollar Data Center in India

Google is planning to set up back-office operations at a special economic zone in Andhra Pradesh. Government officials said Google’s investment into the venture could be as high as USD 1 billion. The company’s operations, which will be spread over 1 million sq ft, comprised one of the foreign investments into an SEZ cleared by the Board of Approvals today. Some other foreign investments cleared included Dell’s and Accenture’s. Dell’s investment is also likely to be made in Andhra Pradesh, while Accenture is likely to make its investments in Karnataka.

These are the latest in a string of big-ticket investments in India by global IT and telecom giants. The list includes Cisco, SAP, Intel, and Microsoft committing USD 1billion-plus investments, and AMD’s proposed USD 1-billion investment. State government representatives who attended the BoA meeting said the proposals of several top Indian information technology firms for setting up SEZs were also cleared, including two zones of Infosys in Pune and Mysore, and proposals of Wipro, HCL, Cognizant and NIIT. A knowledge city being set up by Technocrats in Bangalore was also approved.