The technology consultancy NTT Data inaugurated this Monday its new headquarters in Barcelona, located in 22@, with which it centralizes the ten work centers it had dispersed in the Catalan capital, Mataró and Sant Cugat del Vallès. Of all of them, only the NTT DATA Living Lab, located on Pedro i Pons street, near Plaza Reina Maria Cristina, will coexist with the new location. With more than 20,000 square meters, the offices will become the second largest the multinational has in Europe and Latin America, after those in Madrid. This geographical area is led within the Japanese company by the former Everis, absorbed by the group in 2014.
The project for the new headquarters began to take shape four years ago, says Xavier Rovira, partner and director of NTT Data's Barcelona office. The promotion of the building has been carried out by Meridia Capital and the technology company has signed a ten-year lease agreement. Meridia sold the property to Allianz Real Estate for 180 million in 2021. In addition to the building now occupied by NTT Data, there is a second building that integrates the complex, known as the Sea Towers.
The office director explains that the space has been conceived as "a 21st-century building", where not only work will be done, but also interaction with other employees. With the advice of companies such as CBRE and Savills, open spaces with plenty of natural light have been designed, as well as meeting rooms that can be adapted according to needs. Hybrid work is also contemplated, taking into account that company employees can telework up to 60%, a commitment they had already started before the pandemic and has now accelerated.
In terms of services, NTT Data's headquarters in 22@ includes a canteen ---on the top floor, the twelfth, with city views---, changing rooms and a parking lot with spaces for bicycles, scooters and electric cars. Located on Avenida Icària, it is a few minutes' walk from the beach. It has capacity for 2,500 workers and the forecast is to incorporate 1,000 new workers this year.
The multinational has been present in Barcelona since 1997, a city it nods to in the new building, dedicating each floor to one of its most well-known places, such as Paseo de Gràcia, the Gòtic, or the Sagrada Família. It has a total of 4,000 workers in the city, to whom it added 700 last year. Not all of them will be located in the NTT Data Tower, taking into account those who telework and those who are directly installed in the work centers of the consulting firm's clients, as well as those who will remain in the NTT Data Living Lab. From the Catalan office, services are provided to large firms in most sectors in which the Japanese company operates, such as banking, insurance, energy, industry, the public sector, and health, with the exception of telecommunications companies, which are more attended to from Madrid.
In Barcelona, the European headquarters of NTT Data's global center of excellence in Artificial Intelligence has been located since 2019. It was the first space focused on this technology that the company opened outside of Japan. More than 100 engineers and data scientists work in this center, with projects such as using AI to detect kidney diseases in collaboration with the Puigvert Foundation. Xavier Rovira does not rule out the opening of a new international center in the Catalan capital.
At the state level, NTT Data has a workforce of about 20,000 employees, distributed in about twenty cities. Spain represents a third of the turnover recorded in Europe and Latin America, about 3,000 million euros in 2021 ---the fiscal year runs from April to March---. Globally, the company billed 20,000 million euros in the last fiscal year, with a total of 140,000 workers distributed in 50 countries.