IBM to host Dow Chemical’s IT support in Athens

 Deal paves way for a center supplying services to more multinational companies, offering high-level jobs

By Vangelis Mandravelis

Corporations IBM and Dow Chemical announced on Wednesday a significant deal which is set to upgrade interest in Greece. The two multinational giants have agreed that Dow Chemical will also utilize IBM’s service center in Athens as a base from which to offer electronic support concerning its global activities.

This deal involves the new center that IBM created in Greece with the purpose of supplying big data and business analytics support to its multinational clients.

The announcement of the cooperation agreement took place after senior IBM and Dow officials met with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at the latter’s office in Athens. The premier met with the chairman and chief executive officer of Dow Chemical, Andrew N. Liveris – who is of Greek origin – and the general manager of IBM Europe, Rich Hume.

On leaving Samaras’s office, Liveris hailed the new agreement and was particularly encouraging regarding the course of the Greek economy: “We have witnessed a change in Greece. We have seen a recovery of confidence and credibility. We have seen liquidity return,” he said, praising the prime minister’s role in this direction. “We could have chosen any place in the world, any place in Europe, but we have chosen Greece.”

Hume declined to reveal any details about the agreement with Dow in terms of new jobs, the size of the investment and so on. Market professionals suggest there will be few new jobs but those that are created will be high-profile. They are expected to be for information technology experts, mathematicians and statisticians. The size of the deal is only known by the two partners.

It...