Dell to spend more on enterprise solutions this year

CHENNAI, INDIA: With the global data centre and networking market size estimated to be around $7 billion and $20 billion respectively, Dell Inc plans to spend bulk of its $700 million research and development (R&D) budget on enterprise solutions, said a senior company official.

"This year Dell will be spending more than $700 million on R&D globally. A major portion of that will be on enterprise solutions offerings including servers, storage, services and networking," Dario Zamarian, vice president, networking business Unit, enterprise product group told reporters here Tuesday.

He said the global data centre and networking market size is estimated to be around $7 billion and $20 billion.

According to Zamarian, him India ranks fourth after Japan, China and Singapore in the enterprise business segment with an annual market size of around $200-300 million.

Meanwhile Dell has upgraded its 390 strong R&D centre located here into a centre of excellence in networking domain for its global operations.

The centre will now enhance its expertise in routing, switching, network operating system, network management and reference architecture and focus on high-end design and development of Force10 networking switches and routers.

Last year Dell acquired another US based networking company Force10.

Zamarian said it will be better to retain an acquired brand for two years before launching an upgraded version of the acquired products under a new brand name.

According to Sreedhara Narayanaswamy, executive director and centre head, Dell Networking, R&D India, the centre here will be a hub for global networking projects and would involve in end-to-end product development.

"It will now attract senior technical leaders and management while the investment in routing and switching products would increase," he said.

He said 36 intellectual properties have been developed at the centre here last quarter and during the last ten months more than 65 patent applications have been filed out of this centre.