General Motors Corp. said Friday it is creating a 500-person information technology center in Austin as part of the company's push to use computer know-how to actively transform how the giant carmaker does business.
GM is believed to have leased a former Dell Inc. building in the Tech Ridge area of Northeast Austin. Dell sold the building last year to a real estate investment firm. The site was one of three that the automaker looked at. GM expects to hire a range of computer-related professionals, including software developers, project managers, database experts and other specialists.
Randy Mott, GM's chief information officer, said experts in private cloud computing might also be among those hired.
"It really covers the waterfront," Mott said. "We are trying to drive innovation in factory systems and product designs. We are driving across that broad skill set."
Mott, who formerly was chief information officer at Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., said the Austin center will be the first of four IT innovation centers that GM announces over the next year. All will be located in areas that have many information technology workers and large university programs in the field.