Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu held a news conference in the city to announce a "significant economic development."
Edwards announced that DXC Technology, based in Virginia, is expected to expand its business to the Crescent City.
"Louisiana's greatest days lie ahead and DXC technology, their strong presence right here in the Central Business District of New Orleans represents a bold powerful new step in that direction," Edwards said.
DXC has also established more than 250 industry-leading global Partner Network relationships, including 15 strategic partners: Amazon Web Services, AT&T, Dell EMC, HCL, Hitachi, HPE, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Micro Focus, Microsoft, Oracle, PwC, SAP and ServiceNow. DXC is a publicly traded information technology company created last year, after acquiring parts the Enterprise Services segment of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The company is promising to locate 2,000 new jobs to its new digital transformation center to the city, with the first 300 by the end of next year.
The state is putting up a $120 million package of incentives to lure DXC to New Orleans. The package includes $25 million to train potential DXC employees at Louisiana universities and community colleges. Some of the training would take place at LSU, UNO and Delgado.
University of New Orleans President Dr. John Nicklow says they've been a partner in this deal. He could not be happier about what this means for his students.
"We are engaged with our STEM, science technology, engineering and math fields, our computer science department, our accounting and finance and business. We've engaged all of those individuals and they're already prepping," Dr. Nicklow said.
Krista Lawrence is the department chair for Computer Information Technology at Delgado.
"On the books, we have 350 declared majors," Lawrence said.
Within those majors, the school is preparing their students for industries like DXC. Many of their students, Lawrence says, have a lot to offer.
"We do have the traditional student, but the non-traditional students, they bring so much to the table as well. So, they may already have life experiences, worked somewhere else in a different field, or may have been in the military and they come here to Delgado and they bring all of that to the table. And they're ready to go," Lawrence said.
One source told the Advocate, the business expansion represents "the most permanent jobs" for a single (LED) Louisiana Economic Development project in state history.
One business source told WWL-TV, the city and state have been working on this project for more than a year and it is a big win for New Orleans.
Tech sector jobs are among the highest paying and highly sought after.
Urban redeveloper, Dr. Eric Johnson calls this announcement a game changer.
"You can't rest on your laurels and say ,'What we did in the past is going to always work for us. You have to constantly evolve, and I think this is the example of the potential evolution. Adding to an economy, which has been known for hospitality, tourism as the baseline. But, it provides opportunity to really diversity. What it does is sends a signal again to the rest of the world and the rest of the country. That New Orleans is the place to invest," Dr. Johnson said.
According to DXC's corporate profile, the company has 155,000 employees in more than 70 countries, serving some 6,000 clients.