"We mentor developers and help them move up the value chain"

With strong roots in India, these talented individuals who have worked in US for all their lives, created a strong business case for their country and are all set to launch a 95,000 sq ft research and development (R&D) facility in Gurgaon. It's a win-win scenario, for their company and their country, they strongly believe.

As the vice president and managing director with Ciena India Pvt Ltd, Neeraj Gulati, will be responsible for establishing and managing the operations of the Research and Development centre for Ciena in India. Dimple Indrajit Amin, vice president, engineering, Ciena India Pvt Ltd., will be responsible for building and leading cross-functional research and development teams to deliver full lifecycle development for Ciena products around the world.

In conversation with Aparna Lal of CIOL, Neeraj and Dimple talk about Ciena Corporation, their product portfolio, the Indian opportunity and more.

Can you tell us about Ciena Corporation?

Ciena Corporation is a global leader in communication network platforms, software and professional services. Headquartered in Maryland, USA, the company started operations in 1992. Ciena's team of professionals is dedicated to providing its customers with application-centric solutions for converged, automated networking, as well as consultative and support services.

Making a modest start with just one product in its portfolio called Core Stream, Ciena today operates in four major spaces, namely service providers, enterprises, cable industry as well as government. The company has about 300 million dollars of revenue and 45% yoy revenue growth. We have a wide base of 170 customers globally; on the service provider side it has been an exciting run, 22 of the 32 carriers are our customers; top 7 cable companies are also with us. In the carrier space we have names like AT&T, Sprint, British Telecom, Singtel, US Department of Defence, Japan Telecom etc.

What is your product range?

Our product range spans across 4 layers, we have products from broadband access, multi-service access, core transport and switching and the HN access. The company started with a product Core Team and then expanded outward from the core and added Core Director. Core Director commands about 80% market share and has a wide deployment. On the access side also we have a strong presence. Our DST equipment are well deployed across large cable companies. We plan to do a wide portfolio of product line out of our Indian facility.

What are plans for India?

We are here to set up a worldclass R&D facility. Based out of Gurgaon, in the NCR of Delhi, it will be a 95,000 sq ft facility with the capability to perform complete product R&D lifecycle. Product conceptualization, chip design, circuit board design, mechanical design, embedded software design, network management design and product verification are few engineering services the centre will perform to help deliver and support Ciena products for its global customer base.

What went into the planing?

Whole life cycle in our thought process started with outsourcing work to India to understand how processes work and get to know the talent better. By outsourcing work to India, we feel we understand the time zone challenges, the language and process challenges in a better way. We visited Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune on a market study trying to understand the aspirations for engineers and what is available for them out there. Most of the engineers want a complete product development experience where as what they get is a smaller sylo in the software feature; they don't get to understand the need of their customers, nor a chance to interact with them. So here we are.

The type of capability we are adding here is very unique not only for this region but also for India. Spanning over 95000 sq. ft, the engineers at our Gurgaon facility will take up tasks from localization of products to development of new products.

Mostly software development work happens out of south of India, what made you choose Gurgaon for your facility?

You are right in saying that most of the development work in India happens out of the south. While we were researching on the cities for our setup, several factors worked in favor of this Delhi NCR. Our research revealed that this side of India has an amazing talent pool but because of dearth of good opportunities in the field of telecom and embedded systems these professionals have migrated to other cities, mainly Bangalore. We wish to tap this huge talent pool through our facility in Gurgaon, plus the competition here is less for us as compared to the south of India where we would have had to compete with players like Cisco, Texas, Alcatel etc.

Other factors that worked in the favor of Gurgaon is the infrastructure and housing facility.

What will be the role of the Indian facility?

The R&D centre in India will be involved in the development of new products for existing as well as new markets. We have 5 development centres in America, this will be the sixth one. We are adding to our R&D strength, and will have around 300 engineers in the Indian facility.

We have an existing base of 170 customers, which is growing in size and so are the demands from our customers. Our team of developers in India will be responsible for developing worldclass products for our global customers.

What is the kind of talent you are looking for?

We are looking for engineers from premier institutes with 3-4 years of experience. We are not looking at specific skill set in embedded systems, but are wanting to take people with strong fundamentals, with experience in object oriented design, C++ and J2EE.

People may not be a perfect match always, but these days we are getting a very close match as far as the basic fundamentals are concerned. We have a well-laid out training plan wherein first set of engineers will be sent to our US development centre for onsite training. This will give them a chance to know about our products, the way we work and our processes.

What is the kind of growth one can expect in working for Ciena?

At Ciena we strongly believe in mentoring our employees and help them move up the value chain. Mostly, it is seen that developers program in isolation, they do not get a chance to interact with their customers, this restricts their thinking process and narrows their horizons. At Ciena, developers get a chance to interact closely with the customer they are building the solution for. This gives them a clear perspective as far as the needs of the client are concerned, and helps them in moving up in the value chain from a mere production house to a knowledge centre. They understand how products are being built across the world, why, where are customer's networks evolving to and what kind of performance and scalability they are looking for.

By when will the Indian facility be up and running?

The premises are in the final stage of completion. We have started the recruitment process and have finalized quite a few candidates. We plan to be operational by summer of 2006.