BANGALORE: Global solutions provider for storage solutions, Network Appliance is making India one of its strategic technology center. After announcing the launch of India Technology Center in Bangalore, April this year, the company has sketched out an expansion plan for Rs 75 crore. The investment is to be made within the next 18 to 24 months. The headcount of the center is also to be ramped up from 60 now to 200.

Manish Goel, President-India Technology Operations, Network Appliance, said, "The investment is broadly on high-end equipments that the center depends on, the R & D engineering lab facilities and the staffing requirements. We plan to gradually move our focus towards multi-functional and product management operations "

On the increase in headcount, Goel added, "We are looking at senior people with specific high-end technology skill set and from premier academic institutions. Consequently, the cost involved in hiring the niche professionals are high."

The company employs around 550 employees worldwide. The ramp up is across their engineering, customer support and professional services division. Manish commented, " We plan to have mixed ration of 75:25 between the engineering and customer support staff. Our customer support is an exclusive engineering tech support center addressing both the international as well as global market"

"We also maintain concurrent engineering staffs on both coasts of the United States. We are aiming for IPR products developed here at our Bangalore center. Besides, we have four global support centers across the globe in Europe, Singapore and two in USA,"

CEO of Network Appliance Inc, Dan Warmenhoven, had said in April this year, "We need to be close to the development work, and closer to our customers in all parts of the world. Increasing our investment in India strengthens our leadership position in enterprise storage and expands our global capabilities," He had said that adding engineering resources in India would increase overall engineering productivity for the company by enabling ongoing global development in the areas of solution maintenance as well as leading edge development around Network Appliance’s core intellectual properties.

The company has also broadened its enterprise storage solutions portfolio in India with their new entry-level systems FAS 200 series that provide enterprise reliability, availability, scalability, and performance. The products start at a list price of around $10,000. Expanded Fibre Channel SAN support, SnapLock compliance and SnapLock Enterprise are some of the other entry-level storage products which are part of its unified storage solutions offerings.

The company is also planning to target the Oil and Gas, financial services and the telecommunications segment more aggressively than before in India. "We feel that our products can be of great help in these sectors which requires a lot of data storage and we just want to leverage on these potential growth segments for our products," remarked Manish. Some of its customers include ONGC, ICICI, Kotak Mahindra and GE Capital.

The company's sales operation head for India and SAARC, Anal K Jain, had put in his papers. Company officials confirm that for the moment, Mike Burnie, regional director, South Asia would look after India sales operations and the sales team here would be reporting to him. "It's entirely Mike's decision to decide on the new sales head. But as a senior professional here, I would be providing the necessary help as required by the sales team here," added Goel.

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