The Attachmate Group, the new owner of Novell, has selected South Yarra in Melbourne as it Asia Pacific headquarters.

The US-owned company is in the process of hiring 40 new staff.

The Attachmate Group includes Attachmate, NetIQ, Novell and SUSE which will be brought together in the new Melbourne office.

"The Asia Pacific is a very important region for us and a huge growth area for the company," Boris Ivancic, Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, The Attachmate Group said.

He added that Victoria was selected as the regional HQ due to its proximity to major multinational clients in Australia, New Zealand and the region.

The lure of Attachmate to Victoria followed the state government’s unveiling of an $US85 million blueprint to turn the state into an ICT hub. The Victorian strategy seems to be working; recently, Chinese outsourcer VanceInfo also tagged Melbourne for its regional headquarters.

Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips said "this is a globally important technology company that has, individually, revolutionised information and communication technology (ICT) in areas such as operations management, open source, end user computing and collaboration, and cloud computing." ®