A Toronto software development house that works with enterprises on their application is significantly expanding its presence, with plans to up its staff by five per cent a year over the next decade.
Pivotal Labs, which is majority controlled by EMC (it owns 80 per cent of the company), said Thursday it has just moved into new offices downtown that are twice the square footage of its former premises and is hiring more developers, part of $300 million it is planning to spend here over the next 10 years.
It already has 300 on staff here, one of nine offices around the world.
“Toronto is very well known for having amazing talent, for having an amazing ecosystem, especially when we’re talking about mobile development, app development, custom development,” Farhan Thawar, vice president of engineering and director of the Toronto office, said in an interview.
Pivotal came to Canada last year when it bought Xtreme Labs for $65 million. “We’re core to the tech ecosystem here,” Thawar said, “so it made a lot of sense to open up a large offering here and to work with many clients in Canada and around the world.”
“Pivotal’s mission is to transform the way companies build software,” he said, working side by side internal development teams on engineering, design and quality of applications and Web sites. “Over time we’re not just throwing something over the wall at them –‘Here’s your application’. We’re changing the way they think about software development, and their team’s capabilities are being upgraded as we build.
“On our side we’re learning more about their business to be better partners in the future.”