Hyderabad: Eyeing development centres in Russia, Vietnam and the Philippines, Satyam Computer Services is expanding its global footprint.

The company expects that it can tap the local talent pool for these centres and also helps in mitigating business risks through a global delivery model.

Satyam has opened a global solutions centre (GSC) in Malaysia as a part of this strategy. The centre can accommodate 500 people. The company will open another centre there by the middle of next year to house about 2,000 associates which already employs about 300 people in Malaysia.

"Malaysia will be one of our largest software hubs outside India. We will hire about 500 people at the new facility in a year. The new centre complements our near-shore hub here for our Asean (Association of South East Asian Nations) customers," says B Ramalinga Raju, Founder and Chairman of Satyam.

Presently, the company has a development centre in China and Egypt in the Asia-Pacific region. The company also has four facilities in China, where they have about 500 people, while the centre in Egypt has about 100 employees. "We have plans to ramp up our operations at Nanjing in China to 2,500 in future," said Raju.

Asia-Pacific, Middle-East, India and African regions contributed 18 percent of Satyam's revenues at the end of the first quarter this fiscal. In the future, the company expects business in this region to grow even faster than the U.S.

In the Middle-East, Satyam has facilities in several countries including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman. It is also looking at South Africa as a growing domestic market for new deals particularly in government, banking, oil & gas and telecom sectors.

The company has 120 people across two centres in South Africa. By the end of this fiscal year the company is planning to increase headcount to 300.

Satyam's hiring strategy would be focused on a multi-cultural workforce. According to Raju, the company will be hiring more locals and their services, which will be complemented by Indian engineers engaged in high-end services. At present, about 95 percent of the company's workforce in China, Egypt and Malaysia are locals.