John Ribeiro

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has set up a contact centre in Bangalore that will offer post-sales support to U.S. customers of its consumer products, according to an executive of the Palo Alto, California-based company.

Xansa PLC, a Reading, U.K.-based IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) company, is to increase its staff in India by 400 by April this year, taking the total number of staff in the country to about 2,000, according to an executive of the company. The company is also building new services delivery capacity in the country.

In a step toward establishing collaboration between the software industries in India and Pakistan, a 20-member IT delegation from Pakistan is for the first time participating in a conference in Mumbai this week hosted by India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM).

A bill recently passed by the U.S. Senate restricting federal government contractors from outsourcing work overseas is unlikely to have a significant impact on India's software and services companies, according to an executive of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in Delhi, India.

Network Appliance Inc., a vendor of network storage products, is increasing its software development and support centre staff in Bangalore from 65 employees to 300 by the end of next year, the company said recently. The additional staff will shore up the centre's software development and global support operations.

Accenture Ltd. announced early this month that it is more than doubling its staff in India to 10,000 by next December.

Storage software vendor Veritas Software Corp. recently announced that it plans to expand its research and development (R&D) operations in India by hiring 300 new staff at its Pune facility over the next year.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) announced Sunday its decision to make an offer to buy the publicly held shares in Digital GlobalSoft Ltd., its software development and services subsidiary in Bangalore.