DHL to open €500m center in Prague
The courier company DHL plans to invest €500m (US$588 million)in a new regional information technology operations center in Prague, the company announced.
Plans call for the Prague center to be fully running in 2005 and to employ up to 1,000 people by 2006, making it a significant foreign investments into the Czech capital.
The center will serve as the key IT facility for DHL in Europe. The company has similar operations centers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
Stephen McGuckin, DHL’s global chief information officer, told reporters that the decision to relocate the IT center from facilities in Britain and Switzerland was made partly because the Czech Republic is capable of handling such a large operation at lower cost.
DHL, based in Belgium and owned by Germany’s Deutsche Post World Net, operates in more than 220 countries and employs 170,000 people worldwide.