Juniper consolidates India operations

BANGALORE: In a bid to consolidate its Indian operations Juniper Networks is moving its 40-member security products group, formerly known as NetScreen Technologies, from Hyderabad to Bangalore next month. Juniper currently houses around 80 employees at its Bangalore center.

The re-location of the security development to Bangalore follows the company's acquisition of security hardware provider NetScreen for $ four billion in April this year. Explaining the rationale behind the move Juniper security products group VP and GM Krishna Kolluri said, "We want to co-locate our operations in the same location so that we can take advantage of the cross product synergies to integrate both our routing and security solutions."

He added that the company's immediate roadmap would include development of hybrid solutions similar to the J series router that was introduced by the company in June. The company is also planning to expand its development team.

According to Kolluri, "We are quite aggressive about investing in India and we expect to double our headcount by the year end. The current strength of the development team, which is around 120, is projected to touch 250 by December 2004."

He, however, declined to comment on the investment that would go into the ramp-up and added that the company would focus on marketing its VPN and firewall products directly as well as through channel partners.

While most of the demand for Juniper's products come from North America, Japan and South Korea, Kolluri said that India and China were also becoming huge markets for the company.