Indian Outsourcer Opens IT Service Center In HungaryIndian Outsourcer Opens IT Service Center In Hungary

Indian IT company Satyam Computer Services has opened a facility in Budapest, Hungary, with an eye to providing low-cost computer services to businesses in Western Europe.

The Satyam Hungary Development Center, located in Budapest's InfoPark campus, features 6,000 square feet of floor space and dedicated high-speed telecom links to customers and to other Satyam locations around the world. The company said Tuesday it will initially place 60 IT workers in the facility and plans to add hundreds more. Satyam also recently said it plans to open a service center in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Hungary is becoming an increasingly popular destination for IT service providers as it allows them to offer near-shore services to Western European companies at relatively low cost.

IT salaries in Hungary are higher than those in India but still considerably cheaper than in Western Europe. The average annual salary for a programmer in Hungary is $10,500, compared with $24,500 in Ireland, according to outsourcing advisory firm neoIT. The average salary in India is $7,500; in the United States it's $65,000, the firm says.

Hungary's cost advantages, combined with its large pool of tech-savvy workers, has led a number of IT services firms to set up shop there. Among them are Tata Consultancy Services, EDS, and IBM.