Credit Suisse, the Swiss banking giant, will open a new IT Development Centre for which it will recruit up to 250 staff between now and the end of 2011. The new IT centre is based in the Quartier de l'Innovation at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

The centre will open on 1 January next year. The bank said that it still is too early to say what exactly it will produce, but it will include a wide range of leading-edge solutions that meet the increasingly demanding expectations of the bank's clients and commercial partners. This may include security issues, cloud computing, mobile technology and more.

"Information technology is key to the bank's development and is of strategic importance to Credit Suisse,” said Karl Landert, member of the executive board and chief information officer of Credit Suisse.

“I am convinced that our IT development centre at the EPFL will become a platform for creativity. It will give rise to innovative projects and solutions that will help set us apart from the competition," he added.

Hans Martin Graf will manage the IT Development Center. He joined Credit Suisse in 2006 as head of business management IT operations Switzerland. Graf said that the project fits in with the Credit Suisse commitment to improving professional IT training in Switzerland.

Numerous scientific cooperation projects with the EPFL are planned. One specific area is cloud computing – IT architecture in which programs and data are shared across a remote network of servers, the firm said.