Washington, Aug 4 - Indian outsourcer HCL Technologies has acquired its first data centre in the US from one of its customers, a report here said. HCL actually acquired the data centre in October but delayed announcing it until this month pending the upgrade of the facility.

HCL also took over the data centre's staff and other operations, R. Srikrishna, senior vice president for sales for the North America business of HCL's Infrastructure Services Division, was quoted as saying by PC World.

The data centre, located in New Jersey, fits into HCL's strategy to offer some services from locations close to its customers, Srikrishna said. The data centre will in part be used to serve the unnamed customer HCL purchased it from, as well as offer services to other HCL clients.

HCL has already invested US$15 million to upgrade the 35,000-square-foot centre to support eco-friendly technologies, virtualisation, cloud computing, business continuity and mainframe management services.

HCL already has co-location arrangements with SunGard Data Systems for six other locations in the US, and will continue this arrangement, according to Srikrishna.

Customers want data centre services delivered from locations close to them, he was quoted as saying.