Chennai: IT services firm UST Global is planning to reshuffle its operations. Founded in 1998, UST also plans to hire close to 8,000 professionals across all centres over the next one year, reports Shyamala Seetharaman from the Financial Chronicle. Currently, the company’s practices are divided based on target markets and geographies. Now, they are planning to align the operations by verticals. "Our major task this year would be to align our operations by verticals," the report quoted Stephanie Moore, Chief Marketing Officer, UST, as saying. "By 2011, our sales and technical staff will be organized by healthcare, retail, utilities and banking and financial services. A reasonable change will happen in our sales teams and we would also hire new domain experts rather than just aligning the existing workforce," said Moore. The company is also planning to set up an 8,000-seat facility in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, which is expected to be operational in 2011. Over 95 percent of the company's revenue comes from the U.S. Operations were divided as west coast, east coast and central U.S., besides Europe and Asia. "Earlier, vertical operations were not cost effective, but it is time to change as we plan to reduce dependency on the U.S. market," said Moore.