The move comes as a bit of a surprise from Softtek, which has made a name for itself be serving the Latin American market and providing services to US clients from Latin America. It has also taken this nearshore model to Europe in recent years, where it serves primary UK clients, as well as some French, German, and Swiss companies, from its delivery center in Spain, according to Beni Lopez, Softtek’s CEO for nearshore services.
But Lopez told Computer Business Review that several of its Fortune 50 clients have asked Softtek to establish delivery capabilities in Asia, a region in which many of them are expanding, particularly in China.
IT United offers a combination of servicing companies’ subsidiaries in China–most of the global firms are expanding in the country, Lopez said. And it’s also servicing some of the multinationals with offshore delivery from China, although that’s not the emphasis.
Softtek wouldn’t disclose how much revenue IT United pulls in, but Lopez did say that the company has a headcount somewhere below 200. The bulk of its work is in applications development and maintenance. Like most of the Chinese companies, including many of the larger players such as Neusoft, the company still focuses on the software services space and hasn’t made the breakthrough to package work, infrastructure management, and BPO that the Indian companies have expanded into with good results.
IT United’s customers include notable global brands such as Dell and HP, which is also currently a Softtek client. IT United also supports the Chinese operations of automakers BMW and GM, plus several pharmaceutical firms, Lopez said. But it doesn’t have any specific industry focus, instead specializing in Chinese delivery for MNCs, he said.
With a manageable headcount, IT United should be fully integrated by the end of the year, Lopez noted. The company’s headquarters in Beijing will now be the site of Softtek’s eighth worldwide delivery center, and it plans to start hiring in China next month. It already has plans to start serving three big clients from its new Chinese operations, although Lopez couldn’t disclose their names.
The deal brings Softtek’s total headcount close to 6,000. The company doesn’t have any other immediate acquisition plans; Lopez mentioned the possibility of a move into Eastern Europe sometime in 2008 or 2009 to take advantage of the language capabilities in the region. Softtek currently has 20 to 30 employees in Romania, but the office isn’t one of its eight delivery centers.
Softtek is opening a second development center in Spain later this year to support European customers, Lopez said.
