HITEC City

The Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy City

The Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy City (HITEC City) is a state-of-the-art technology township being built, marketed and maintained by L and T Infocity Ltd., a joint venture of Indian engineering giant Larsen & Toubro Limited (which owns 89 percent of the venture) and the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) Limited (which owns the remaining 11 percent). Constructed on 151 acres (0.6 km²) of land and at a cost of about $375 million USD. HITEC City is a self-reliant business park designed to leverage Hyderabad's advantages IT training and superior quality manpower. The Andhra Pradesh government has designated 5,000 acres (20 km²) around Hitec City as "Cyberabad" in order to give a boost to the development of IT infrastructure.

HITEC City comprises of the following...

• Cyber Towers - Phase I of HITEC City.
• Cyber Gateway - Phase II of HITEC City.
• Cyber Pearl - Phase III of HITEC City.
• Residential area in which IT professionals may live in relative luxury.
• A star Hotel
• Hyderabad Convention Centre by Emaar Properties of Dubai.
• HITEX Exhibition Center
• CII - Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre

Cyber Towers

The Cyber Towers is the phase one of HITEC City. It is awesome and impressive. Opened in November 1998, this office park was 100 percent occupied in just 14 months. Today, such major corporate names as Microsoft, Oracle and GE Capital operate offshore development facilities or call centers in this four-quadrant, 10-story tower.

The Cyber towers building is divided into four quadrants with a huge fountain residing in between the quadrants. The receptionist at the help desk, on the ground floor can guide you to the appropriate quadrant, just in case you forget which one. On the ground floor, you would notice several banks, ATM's, courier services, book shops, gift shops, snack bar and "The NEW Windows of the World" restaurant. The ground floor becomes a break-out area in the evening for many employees who had a hard day at work. Many of them come and relax for some time on the ground floor, before trekking back to work. The nearest local train station is around 4 kms from here.

Cyber Gateway

The Cyber Gateway is the phase-II of HITEC City, and it offers all the facilities offered in Cyber Towers. The giant arch in front of the building stands as a gateway to the rest of HITEC City and hence the name. It offers over 866,000 ft² (80,500 m²) of office space spread across 8 acres (32,000 m²) of land with an impressive glass façade, landscaped gardens, and a plush waiting lounge.

The Cyber Gateway is a special facility designed for ITES and BPO services with multiple redundancies for connectivity and power. Large offshore processing operations operate out of this building. Dell, Inc., General Electric, Capitol Records, and Microsoft were the first companies to start operations at the Cyber Gateway. They were soon followed by Oracle and others. Soon the companies grew in size and operations and started to build their own built-to-campuses.

The Cyber gateway is very elegant and spacious. It has spacious amphitheatre located near the first block. Many IT professionals use this amphitheatre to unwind after a hard day at work. There are several small fountains placed at various places in order to create water sound effect which helps to soothe tired nerves. A large cafeteria which operates round the clock is also present.

Cyber Pearl

Cyber Pearl, the third phase of the HITEC City project in Hyderabad was inaugurated on 13 October 2004 and has a built-up area in excess of 1 million square feet (90,000 m²). It is the first project by LTIAL, a joint venture between L&T Infocity and Singapore based business space provider Ascendas. Cyber Pearl is the first venture of Ascendas in Hyderabad.

Incidentally, Cyber Pearl would have been named `Cyber Oasis', but since Hyderabad is associated with Pearls, Pearl at the end is more appropriate.

Cyber Pearl enjoys in excess of 80% occupancy. The companies located at Cyber Pearl are:

• HSBC
• Keane
• Nipuna (A SATYAM BPO initiative)

HITEX Exhibition Center

Hyderabad International Trade Expositions Limited (HITEX) is the newest and state-of-the-art venue for international exhibitions, conferences, trade shows and corporate events in India. It was conceptualized by leading German architects. It was inaugurated on January 14, 2003 by Commerce Minister Arun Shourie and the Trade Fair Office Building by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.

HITEX is the corporate hub of happenings in the Hi-tec city and is India's most modern exhibition centre. HITEX is located strategically at the most happening part in the city of Hyderabad, at Madhapur (near HITEC City), the emerging business and technology hub. This magnificent facility spread over nearly 100 acres (400,000 m²) is the star attraction of Hyderabad, a city that is already a sought after destination.

Some of key factors that make HITEX the best expo centre in India are:

• It's the most modern and state-of-the-art international exhibitions venue, designed on the lines of expo centres in Germany having some of the best infrastructure & service facilities.
• Hyderabad is well located in the centre of the sub-continent and almost equidistant to all major metros in the country and serves as a link to the developed Eastern Nations and the Middle East.
• Hyderabad is one of the fastest developing cosmopolitan cities in India
• HITEX is promoted and managed by a dynamic Government and private joint venture, with the involvement of local civic bodies and State Tourism Dept.

GITEX Hyderabad, is the annual IT&C expo organized by the Dubai World Trade Center in association with the Department of IT&C, Government of Andhra Pradesh. Numerous companies that exhibited at the event were extremely pleased with the outcome of their participation. Throughout the exhibition, agreements were continuously exchanged, reflecting the significance of Gitex Hyderabad as an important platform for professionals from the IT sector.

CII - Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre

The Green Business Centre (GBC), has come up on an area of 5 acres (20,000 m²) near HITEC City in Hyderabad, and was launched as a concept during the then U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to the city in March 2000. The Green Institute entered into a strategic partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industries to establish the Green Business Centre (GBC) at Hyderabad for promoting "Green Activities" in India. The GBC has been constructed and occupied and has become the basis of an ongoing partnership with the Phillips Eco-Enterprise Center (PEEC), a project of the Green Institute.

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is a non-government, not-for-profit, industry led and industry-managed organisation. Founded over 100 years ago, it is India's apex industry association with a direct membership of over 4150 companies from the private as well as public sectors and indirect membership of a large number of sectoral organisations. CII represents over 80% of India's organised industry, with 30 offices in India, 9 abroad and working relationships with 191 counterpart organisations in 92 countries. CII serves as a reference point for the Indian industry and the International business community.

Hyderabad Convention Center

The Hyderabad Convention center is being built by Emaar Properties of Dubai. The Hyderabad Convention center with 4,000-seating capacity will be India's largest and the most technologically advanced convention facility. It is an integrated 291,000 square foot (27,000 m²) facility with a 300 room capacity business hotel covering 15 acres (61,000 m²). This air-conditioned centre can be configured to increase seating capacity to about 6,500. It is equipped with several automated features to facilitate diverse utilisation, including all facilities and amenities that a world standard gathering would ever have.

Mindspace IT Park

The Mindspace IT Park was envisioned by Raheja Corp, who were the first to identify the need for a world-class environment and ecosystem to foster great business ideas. This vision was translated to "Mindspace", a new-age philosophy of working and living, conceived to make corporates feel at home, even while they are at work. It is a world-class habitat with a commercial heart that includes residential, recreational, entertainment and retail spaces. It sets new benchmarks in aesthetics and convenience with thoughtfully designed spaces to enable a stress-free work and living environment. It was designed with the help of global consulting expertise and attention to the minutest detail in order to create a thriving, state-of-the-art business environment.

Spread across 110 acres (445,000 m²), this layout also provides about 40% open space with excellent telecom and civic infrastructure, wide roads and ample greenery. It is not surprising therefore that the district witnessed an instant success, with over a million sq.ft built and occupied in just 14 months of starting the project. Some of the leading corporates at Mindspace Hyderabad include Bank of America, CSC, Qualcomm and Oracle to name a few.

The Mindspace IT Park comprises of 8 buildings

• Building - 1 - Accenture
• Building - 2 - Accenture BPO (under construction)
• Building - 3 - IBM
• Building - 4 - Under construction
• Building - 5 - Bank of America (Continuum Solutions)
• Building - 6 - Oracle, Amazon.com and Qualcomm
• Building - 7 - Computer Sciences Corporation
• Building - 8 - Under construction

Vanenburg IT Park

The Vanenburg IT Park is spread across 20 acres (81,000 m²) and currently has three multi-tenanted buildings with gross floor area of 850,000 ft² (79,000 m²) having close to 100 % occupancy.

With over 10 acres (40,000 m²) of open space it is a Green township (landscaped gardens) that is friendly to the environment. Most of the large rock formations have been left untouched, with the buildings designed around the natural landscape adds to the beauty of the landscape.

It boasts of a highly efficient office space, minimum lighting due to lots of open space, separate cafeteria building and fully-equipped training class rooms.

It's about 10 km from the city center and 14 km from the airport, both being within an hour's drive. The nearest local train station is around 4 km from this campus.

The Vanenburg IT Park is comprised of four buildings

• Mariner
• Auriga
• Orion
• Fourth phase...

About 7,000 IT pros work in the campus that hosts Cognizant Technology Solutions, Computer Associates, Baan, C3i, Deloitte, Invensys, Surgical Information Systems, SSA Global, Motorola and market research company TNS.

The fourth building will expand campus space to more than one million sq ft (90,000 m²). The fourth building puts all the pieces together and completes the entire IT park.

RMZ FUTURA IT Park

RMZ FUTURA is an exclusive independent/built-to-suit facility set amidst HITEC city, adjacent to Cyber Gateway. The state-of-the-art structure comprises of 3 independent blocks spread across the entire site.

The RMZ FUTURA IT Park is comprised of three buildings. Two buildings have been occupied and the other is under constuction.

• Google
• Deloitte Consulting
• Coming soon...

Campuses around HITEC city

Several companies have opened built to suit facilities in and around HITEC city. Some of them are listed below...

• Computer Maintanence Corporation (CMC) Campus
• Convergys Campus
• DELL Campus
• E-Park IT Campus (Currently leased by TCS)
• HSBC Campus
• Kanbay Campus
• Infosys Campus
• Infotech Enterprises Campus
• Microsoft Campus
• Oracle Campus
• Polaris Campus
• Satyam Cyber Space Campus
• Sierra Atlantic Campus
• Soft Sol Campus
• SQL* Campus ( Currently leased by CSC)
• Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Campus (Deccan Park)
• Value Labs Campus
• WIPRO Campus (Before Cyber Towers)
• WIPRO Campus (Manikonda)

CMC Limited Campus

CMC was incorporated on December 26, 1975, as the Computer Maintenance Corporation Private Limited. The Government of India held 100 per cent of the equity share capital. On August 19, 1977, it was converted into a public limited company.

CMC is located in Gachibowli, around 15 km from Hyderabad. CMC Hyderabad is surrounded with many educational institutions and universities like Hyderabad Central University, International Institute of Information Technology and Indian School of Business. The R&D facility is also housed in Hyderabad campus, and develops advanced solutions in areas such as real-time systems, embedded systems and pervasive computing.

During the year 1978, when IBM wound up its operations in India, CMC took over the maintenance of IBM installations at over 800 locations around India and subsequently, maintenance of computers supplied by other foreign players.

CMC visualized the need for total IT system solutions in 1980 and thus aligned its focus with the government's thrust on IT development activities. 'Project Interact' (International Education and Research for Applications of Computer Technology), a United Nations project involving design, development and systems-engineering of real-time, computer-based systems dedicated to applications in the areas of power distribution, railway freight operations management and meteorology was a significant milestone in CMC transition from a hardware maintenance company to a complete end-to-end IT solutions provider in Hyderabad.

Later CMC forayed into systems integration, interfacing, installation, commissioning, software development, as well as education and training, on a ongoing basis. CMC's R&D facility was set up in 1982 at Hyderabad, to undertake competency development in niche areas in the frontiers of technology.

In tune to reflect diversified business activities, CMC renamed itself to 'CMC Limited'.

Microsoft Hyderabad Campus

The Microsoft Hyderabad development center campus is spread over an area of 42¼ acres (171,000 m²) and is the corporation's biggest facility outside the U.S. and the first one in India.

The campus houses employees across its three units

• The India Development Center (IDC),
• The Global Delivery Center India (GDCI) and
• The Sales and Marketing organization.

Apart from development labs, the campus also features a sports facility as a recreational area for employees.

Microsoft India Development Center (IDC) commenced its operations in 1998 and is recognized today as a strategic center for developing products that are critical to Microsoft. Since inception, the IDC has released several Microsoft products including Services for Unix (A key product in Microsoft's Unix Migration strategy), Visual J#.NET (A Java language development environment) for the .NET platform and MSN connector. Currently, the Windows Group in the IDC is developing technologies for Windows R2 Server and Longhorn client and server. The Developer Division Group is working on the next version of Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team System.

Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corporation, with Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, Honorable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh participated in the official inauguration ceremony of Microsoft's Hyderabad Campus on November 15, 2004.

Steve's transcript "Our India Development Center plays an important role in contributing to innovation at Microsoft. The inauguration of our new campus in Hyderabad underscores our commitment to deepening our relationship with India and partnering with Indian governments and developer communities to create new opportunities for customers and for our industry"

• The Microsoft Global Delivery Center India (GDCI) started operations in 2002 and is the delivery center for developing mission critical applications that support Microsoft businesses worldwide and manage Microsoft's world wide IT infrastructure. The GDCI's service delivery involves firstly managing Microsoft's World Wide IT infrastructure which consists of over 7000 servers and 300,000 client devices spread across 400 locations world wide and being used by 89,000 end users.
• The GDCI focuses on developing applications using pre-ready-to-manufacture Microsoft products and technologies like: VB.NET, ASP.NET, SQL server, Yukon, XML web services, SOAP and BizTalk Server with continuous process improvements using six sigma and TSP/PSP.

The TCS Deccan Park Campus

The Deccan park is the single largest global development centre of the Tata Consultancy Services. The facility was designed by world-renowned Swiss architect Mario Botta. The Deccan Park has been set up with an estimated investment of 15 billion INR with recreation and sporting facilities, which houses more than 2,200 professionals. The centre has been set up in 11 acres (45,000 m²) of land, with a built-up area around 320,000 ft² (30,000 m²) on 9 floors.

This global development centre is the centre of excellence in domain areas such as telecom, e-governance, biological sciences, ports and shipping and also deploy cutting-edge technologies including .Net, opensource billing and bioinformatics.