It’s been five years since U.S. computer technology corporation Oracle opened its Mexico Development Center with just 14 employees near the Andares Plaza on Avenida Acuedcto in Zapopan, originally to develop future versions of Oracle Database and Oracle Enterprise Manager.
Fast forward to 2015 and the workforce has grown to 700 people involved in multiple tasks.
Oracle directors this week laid the first stone of a new Mexico Development Center, an ambitious project that could create as many as 4,000 jobs when complete.
The second-largest software maker by revenue after Microsoft, Oracle is pumping 86 million dollars into the new development center, one of only two the company has set up outside the United States.
The center’s aim over the past five years has been to provide research, development, and production support across Oracle’s product line. Oracle produces both software and computer hardware products and services but is perhaps best known for its database management systems.
Jalisco and Zapopan officials highlighted the wealth of “human capital” available in this state compared to other parts of Mexico that convinced Oracle to expand its operations here.
At the stone-laying ceremony, Mexico Development Center Director Erik Peterson stressed the importance of the successful relationships the company has forged with local universities that provide the vast majority of the center’s workforce.
Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval, however, was at pains to highlight the need to improve the level of English of engineering graduates, especially those studying at the public Universidad de Guadalajara.
Sandoval said Oracle’s new investment is further evidence of this state’s consolidation as Mexico’s most important technology hub.