Cisco to invest $ 20 million in India–opens a R&D center in Bangalore

Cisco Systems, Inc. has announced a major market expansion

in India that will include an increase in the company's Indian staff strength expanding

headcount by over 250% in the next one and a half years. A Global Engineering Development

Center and further R&D activity will take place in Bangalore. The company also

announced the opening of a Global Engineering Development/R&D Center in Bangalore.

This center will complement extensive development agreements already in place with local

partners.

The center will conduct development and testing of Cisco

IOS software (the common platform that transforms a network into a mission-critical

resource and delivers best-of-breed functionality to build scalable networks), network

management software, ASICs, and other technologies like ATM and VOIP (voice over Internet

Protocol) in Bangalore.

The company's representative office status will be

converted to a wholly-owned subsidiary, Cisco Systems India Private Limited

(CSIPL). The

first phase of the expansion plan will involve investments of over $US 20 million.

"The Internet market in India is developing very

rapidly and we have been extremely impressed with the rate of growth that the market has

seen in the last several quarters. We are making these investments because Cisco believes

that the market will continue to expand dramatically as the telecommunications and

Internet Service Provider (ISP) markets are further deregulated," said Todd Abbott,

Managing Director for Asia, Cisco Systems.