Platinum Technology Inc yesterday revealed ambitious plans to boost its services division by doubling the number of staff and adding new offerings throughout 1999. The Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois software company said it plans to add an extra 1,500 consulting staff to its services arm, Platinum Global Consulting Organization, bringing the total to 3,000. We want to get to the point where services make up a third of our revenues, Craig Mullins, VP marketing and operations told ComputerWire, at the moment, they’re just 20% so our target might be a bit aggressive, but we’re confident we can up that percentage by the end of 1999. Mullins said Platinum would bring in some of the new staff via recruitment campaigns but the majority would most likely come through a series of acquisitions. He added that the company was already looking around for suitable services companies to buy up and said announcements would be made in the not too distant future. As well as doubling the number of employees, Mullins said Platinum planned to introduce a host of new outsourcing services across all areas of its business, focusing primarily on its systems and database management group and its data warehousing offerings. We won’t walk into an organization and offer to run everything, he said, it will be more like out- tasking where we manage certain pieces of the infrastructure remotely, like the database administration for example. Mullins said Platinum would set up a number of remote expertise centers to run the service, and that it was currently looking for suitable premises. We want to be seen as a solutions company, not just a software vendor, he said, we want to get to the stage where we can offer services for everything we do.
