Brocade to double India workforce by March '10

NEW DELHI, INDIA: In a bid to increase its market share in Fibre Channel Storage Area Network and IP networking, networking solutions providerBrocade Communication Systems has announced that it would double its workforce in India by the end of March 2010.

According to Ian Whiting, Brocade's senior vice-president, worldwide sales and marketing, India is of strategic importance for the company.

“Though the US is a big market for us, maximum growth is now coming from Asia and we are seeing aggressive adoption of IT and Telecom in India. We are going to double our workforce here to cater to the demand that we are receiving from Asia, including Indian market," said Ian.

Brocade has two research and development centers located at Bangalore and Pune. Both these centers focus on SAN applications, FCoE/CEE applications, IP networking and ASIC design and testing.

Brocade has 173 engineers in these two R&D centres. In addition to this, 300 engineers of Brocade work at HCL Offshore Development centre and it has a separate sales team of 12 people in India.

The existing workforce of the company will be doubled and there is a possibility that the number may even go up to four times the present workforce in the next 18 months.

"We are bullish for Indian market and we love to annoy our competitors. Our new strategy will not only help us in retaining our leadership but will also increase our market share," added Whiting.

Citing IDC figures, Whiting said that the company has 87 per cent market share in India Fibre Channel SAN and the company has recently entered in to IP Networking space where the share of Brocade is in single digit.

"By investing heavily on labs, we have been able to roll out products faster than competition and even achieve certification in pretty less time than our competition,” he said.

“Nearly 40 per cent of our employee are engineers who quickly understand the requirement of our client and help us in shaping this need into product. Increase in workforce will help us in bringing out new and innovative product. Expansion of workforce in Indian R&D will contribute to our overall development of products.”

At present, Bangalore R&D centre is the biggest R&D centre of Brocade which alone employs 165 engineers.

Brocade is in process of finalizing a national distributor for Indian market and is hopeful that it would be done within a month's time.