BANGALORE, INDIA: Out of the total global strength of about 3,500 R&D workforce in Juniper Networks, close to 30 percent of the engineering workforce will be based in India doing research across all the product line.

Now with India among the fastest-growing region in Asia pacific, the networking equipment major plans to invest $400 million in next five years in India mainly for R&D activities.

Talking to CIOL, Hitesh Sheth, executive vice-president & general manager of Ethernet Platform Business Group of Juniper Networks says, “India has the largest workforce for research & development globally and we are very bullish about it. Juniper has some major contribution from the R&D centre in Bangalore and plans to add 300 more R&D and operations staff by mid 2008 in India.”
 
In fact, since the strength of the team is expanding rapidly and will touch 1000 in India now, we are also expanding on our office premises here at the Bagmane Tech Park in Bangalore, he adds.

Juniper has major centers across the globe, headquartered in of San Jose, the company has other R&D centres in Westford in Massachusetts, Beijing, Canada, Israel and Bangalore, where the teams works in a matrix environment, says Sheth.

Lately the IT network infrastructure solution provider has increased its level of contribution towards evolution of global products for the company. 
 
In fact, the Bangalore R&D centre is engaged in developing networking platforms, routers and security products, switches and JNOS, the operating system. The centre has also developed fully-owned products. 
 
Recently, Juniper unveiled its new high-performance network infrastructure offerings with a new family of Ethernet switches (EX series).  “The team is now focused on completing the terabit-chassis EX switch, and further enhancing the fixed-configuration and virtual-chassis products. The Bangalore R&D team’s contribution in the past and the recent success has prompted the company to hand over critical projects,” he noted. 

Narendra Venkaswamy, managing director of India & SAARC at Juniper Networks, Bangalore says, “the company will invest in research, engineering, switching products, security products. Globally our switching portfolio is largely focused here and we are also growing our sales team in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and other cities.”

The company is focused on Internet protocol (IP) solutions market in India and it is expecting major market opportunities with telecom service providers rolling out their network infrastructure. Juniper India has around 1,250 employees and has invested $200 million in the last three years.

Juniper is also seeing major opportunity in the area of 3G equipment and infrastructure mainly routers, switches, WAN acceleration and security products to major service providers.

Reacting to the future of Juniper in India, Venkaswamy says the company has a $2.8 billion turnover for the year 2007 with Asia-Pacific contributing 23 percent. Besides telecom, Juniper India is also focusing on the segments of government, BFSI, IT and manufacturing.

“3G is one of the areas that has given us great growth in other parts of Asia. The future in 3G drives switching which drives routing and security. We are partnering with all major tier 1 service providers in India, who will be rolling out their 3G networks,” says Sheth.

India has world’s second largest mobile subscriber base which is expected to touch 737 million by 2012 from the current level of 300 million.

It has already completed a state wide area network (SWAN) project with Himachal Pradesh, which connects the various districts of the State, Juniper is working on a similar project in Bihar.

Venkaswamy said it has ongoing 10 government projects and recorded 100 percent growth in the year 2007.