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With second Indian datacenter, eBay goes where the action will be

eBay opens in 16th global datacenter in the fast growing Asian sphere
Written by David Chernicoff, Contributor

Update and correction:

ebay contacted me this morning to let me know that the facility they have just opened (and are hiring for) is not a datacenter, but rather one of their global development centers.

The message stated, in part "... we're not hiring for a data center. We’re looking for technologists with strong product development experience across many functions including research, platform and application development, architecture, quality engineering, product management, marketing, product analytics and big data, user experience and design, and information security.

 In addition, both the Bangalore and Chennai facility are development centers. The eBay Inc facility in Bangalore is our 16th global development center. Our other development center locations include: Austin, Berlin, Boston, Chennai, Netanya, New York, Omaha, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Scottsdale, Seattle, Shanghai, Singapore and Timonium."

 

 

In 2007, eBay took the huge step of opening a major datacenter facility in Chennai, India. The 250,000 square foot facility, which today is home to 5 percent of eBay’s global workforce represented a significant ongoing investment in eBay’s presence in Asia and their commitment to have their services available to the largest and fastest growing segment of Internet based buyers.

The datacenter contains more than just the IT workload hardware; it is a center for other eBay services as well. And the new facility in Bangalore, which currently employees over 300 people, is expected to grow to over a thousand in the next three years. With eBay stating that part of the reason for the choice of Bangalore as the location for the facility being the heavy concentration of software engineering talent, you can be sure that the new facility will be more than just another datacenter hub.

eBay has not disclosed their actual investment in the new 150,000 square foot facility, but it can be presumed to be in line with the general costs that eBay has experienced for datacenter build outs worldwide. This facility is the 16th datacenter eBay has developed and their ongoing efforts to find alternative energy sources (fuel cells and solar come to mind) and build the most efficient datacenters possible has shown how significantly eBay invests in datacenter technology.

The Business Standard quoted Ken Moss, vice president of technology and science at eBay Marketplaces as saying “We invest heavily in the career development of our people. We are hiring technologists with strong product development experience across the functions including platform and application development, architecture, quality engineering, product management, marketing and product analytics, user experience and design and information security.” This statement should give you a good idea of eBay’s plans for the new facility.

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