Bangalore’s IT Sector Sees Some Big Investments

Bangalore’s IT Sector Sees Some Big Investments

EMC to invest $1.5 b in India TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Bangalore: EMC Corp on Wednesday announced a $1.5 billion investment in India over the next five years, marking a big bright spot in the IT sector that has been one of the most badly hit by the global recession.
Making the announcement in Bangalore, the $15-billion company’s CFO, David Goulden, said the investment represents a three-fold increase over the investment made by EMC in India over the previous five years. The information infrastructure company has invested $500 million between 2006 and now, mostly in Bangalore. “This is the largest investment that we have committed outside the US,” Goulden said.
The new investments will go into three areas: expanding R&D infrastructure at the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bangalore; increasing EMC Global Services capabilities at the CoE; and adding more technologists to drive deeper levels of engagement and support for local customers and partners.
On Wednesday, the company inaugurated a new 4.95 lakh sqft facility on the outer ring road near Marathahalli that will not only bring together operations that currently function out of four separate locations, but also create additional space. It has the capacity to seat 3,500 people. EMC India currently has a little over 2,000 employees.
In a measure of the importance EMC attaches to its India operations, Goulden was accompanied in his visit to Bangalore by Sanjay Mirchandani, chief information officer, Mark Sorenson, senior VP (storage software group), Jack Mollen, head of HR, Gary Baty, VP (HR) for Asia-Pacific & Japan, Steve Leonard, president of Asia-Pacific & Japan, and John Herrera, VP in the office of globalization. EMC focusses on next generation virtualized data centres, cloud computing, virtualized desktops and clients, and next generation backup, recovery and archive solutions. The Bangalore R&D centre, EMC’s largest outside the US, has particular strengths in software for storage management, network management and content management. Sarv Saravanan, MD of the India Centre of Excellence, said the centre has filed about 40 patents, some of which have been cleared.
Commenting on EMC’s fresh investment, Aman Munglani, principal research analyst at Gartner, said the announcement is in line with some of the other leading technology and engineering companies who have identified India as a key centre for technology innovation and global support services.
Cisco expands in Bangalore Anshul Dhamija & Sujit John | TNN
Bangalore: In what is said to be one of the largest commercial space expansions in South/South-East Asia following the global financial collapse last year, Cisco India is adding two additional office blocks totaling a floor area of 700,000 sqft.
This expansion will happen around its 1.2 million-sqft campus located at Cessna Business Park on the Outer Ring Road in Bangalore. While this deal has recently been finalised, sources said Cisco also plans to take an additional 2.2 million sqft of office space in Bangalore in the coming years.
Some realty analysts say the 7 lakh sqft expansion is by far the biggest in the commercial space market in this region in the last one year. Cisco declined to say anything on the expansion, but issued a statement that reiterated past positions: “We have designated Bangalore as our Globalization Centre East and indicated that we will have 10,000-12,000 employees based here over the next three to five years. The idea is for 20% of the top talent in Cisco to be based here.”
Cisco has around 4,000 employees in India currently. The networking major has been amongst the most aggressive MNCs in trying to build a strong base of R&D and support staff in India. Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer, who relocated to India in 2006, was recently quoted by India Knowledge@Wharton as saying: “The Globalization Centre East was established as a second headquarters for Cisco — you can think about it as “Cisco East”. We set up this centre to explore how to globalize talent, innovation and growth. The Globalisation Centre is much more than a sales centre or an R&D centre. Every function at Cisco is represented here, at every level, from individual contributor to executive vice president.”
He said Cisco chose India for a number of reasons, “including its proximity to 70% of the world’s population within a five-hour flight; a growing young, English-speaking population; strong engineering talent; an open, partner-friendly government; and a strong partner ecosystem. Also, being 12 and a half hours ahead of Cisco’s San Jose headquarters allows us to conduct business on a truly 24/7 basis.”