The Tidel Park GTSC will initially entail an investment of $2-3 million, which might be increased later, Mr Wang said. The GSTC will provide CA's clients with high quality technical support through a mix of advanced IT infrastructure, proven expertise and a team of highly skilled software engineers. According to Mr Wang, to begin with, 100 software professionals will be working in the centre which would be expanded to 600 in the next couple of years.

Mr Wang pointed out that out of the proposed $100 million investment by CA, nearly $55 million had already been invested in India in various projects, including sales and support offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Calcutta and two joint venture development centres (CA-TCG), one in Calcutta and the other in Delhi. The CA chairman said the company looked at India as a high potential IT market which could form the critical development base for e-business solutions.

The chairman of the six billion dollar company however declined to hazard a view on the revenue contributions of Indian operations in the e-business solutions market. Mr Wang spoke about e-business being a component of IT and how CA was working for seamless integration of e-business in the entire IT spectrum including main office, back office and Web business. CA was, he empasised, the largest revenue earner and the largest software solutions provider on the Internet. Mr Wang said CA had 26 different joint ventures in Asia including the ones in India, China and Taiwan. He hoped that the company's Indian operations would provide the software development support for export of software solutions throughout the world.

Reluctant to divulge revenue projections, Mr Wang said 25 to 40 per cent of the company's business came from main frame related work and worldwide some 15 per cent of total revenue was accounted for by e-business solutions.