Bangalore: Hewlett-Packard plans to shift its business process outsourcing operations from Sydney to Bangalore and merge it with Digital GlobalSoft''s technical support operations as it aims to consolidate its call centre business to cut costs.

HP told its employees in the Australian call centre unit: "The frontline support for the volume call centre will be centralised to India. This is a region-wide activity that is occurring in all HP subsidiaries across the Asia Pacific, including Australia."

The volume call centre operations and coordination efforts are likely to be integrated to the Indian outfit by September 2003. Confirming such a move, Digital sources say the new expanded outfit will focus on the US clientele to a greater extent.

The sources say outsourcing decision follows an extensive audit of HP and Compaq''s pre-merger call centre operations and to determine how to integrate them. However, the current outsourcing decision envisages a small portion of work to be shipped out of HP''s support presence in Australia.

However, Digital marketing head Bala Mahadevan says the company is expanding the range of products it supports and also the geographies, but declines to specifically comment on the Australian job shift.