GM Opening New Atlanta Data Center By JEFF BENNETT

By
• JEFF BENNETT

General Motors Co. GM +0.89{55c62a160aea5bee5d76a19365e3361029a738c4d965c149016a5c45fc39a61f}will hire about 1,000 high-tech workers starting this year to staff a new center it plans to open in a suburb near Atlanta as the auto maker intensifies its push to take back the work it once gave away to help save money.

The auto maker is immediately seeking software developers, project managers, database experts, business analysts and other computer professionals to work in what will be its third of four information technology centers across the U.S. Its Atlanta Innovation Center will be located in the northern suburb of Roswell and concentrate on research and development rather than everyday processing.

GM has been on an IT binge during the past six months as it looks to take more control of the work it now deems proprietary after years of farming it out to contractors around the world. The auto maker expects to fully staff the Roswell, Ga., center over the next three to five years.

It has opened new tech centers, moved some call center work back to the U.S. from overseas and, in its biggest change, hired 3,000 Hewlett-Packard HPQ +0.82{55c62a160aea5bee5d76a19365e3361029a738c4d965c149016a5c45fc39a61f}employees who were handling the auto maker’s technology work but weren’t on the company payroll.

“I think one of the worst things this company did in its post World War II era was outsourcing and letting others manage all of our IT,” GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson said in an interview earlier this week. “We said we don’t need it, we are car guys. Well that’s like Wal-Mart WMT -3.48{55c62a160aea5bee5d76a19365e3361029a738c4d965c149016a5c45fc39a61f}saying we’re retailers.”

GM wants to bring 90{55c62a160aea5bee5d76a19365e3361029a738c4d965c149016a5c45fc39a61f} of its IT work back in house to direct new developments and reduce the overlap of current services. The auto maker has already hired more than 700 IT workers to staff innovation centers in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Mich. A fourth site, of similar scale, will be announced later this year.

“Our strategy is to reach the top talent in the US market and tap the nearby universities,” GM Chief Information Officer Randy Mott said on Thursday. “These are going to be the best jobs in the IT industry over the next five years since GM is on a transformation journey. They will work on everything from design of vehicles to high touch for the consumer to what is offered in our vehicles.”

At one time, the bulk of GM’s IT work was done by Electronic Data Systems, which it acquired from billionaire businessman and former presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1984. GM spun off EDS in 1996. H-P bought EDS in 2008 and has been cutting jobs ever since.

“You just assumed that a company of our stature, our size, our complexity, our global reach, that we had to have a 21st century IT infrastructure,” Mr. Akerson said. “We didn’t. We are attacking that on a scale that is prodigious. We are making great progress but it is going to take three or so years to get it done minimum. It took us 30 years to miss the train. It is going to take us three to four years to catch up.”