The Hindu Business Line : Ciena earmarks 30 pc R&D spend for India

Ciena, a US-based networking company, has lined up a slew of initiatives for its Indian operations, including bringing 30 per cent of its global investments in research and development to its Indian centre over the next year.

The company, which has products for next generation networks, is also mulling a manufacturing plant in India as part of its strategy to make inroads to the world's fastest growing telecom market.

Ciena will be taking its headcount in India from 150 to 350 by the end of next year.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Phil Moser, Vice-President (Sales Asia), said: "India is not just a big market for us but also a key part of our global expansion strategy as far as investments are concerned."

Ciena has set up an R&D centre in Gurgaon spread over 95,000 sq ft.

The facility is Ciena's first core R&D centre outside of North America.

Mr Neeraj Gulati, Vice-President and Managing Director of Ciena, said that the company's Gurgaon centre will soon get a major part of the company's global spend on R&D.

"Manufacturing is part of our growth strategy in India and we are evaluating the market and various locations such as Chennai," said Mr Gulati.

"Our Gurgaon development centre will enable us to capitalise on the significantly strong engineering resources in this region, and will establish Ciena in one of the fastest growing communications equipment markets in the world."

Ciena supplies application-focused communications networking equipment, software and services to telecommunications service providers, cable operators, Government and enterprise customers across the globe.

A worldwide staff of 1,500 provides network solutions for more than two-thirds of the world's largest service providers, including AT&T, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless, France Telecom, Korea Telecom.

In India, Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices are leveraging advanced optical Ciena networks, gained through the acquisitions of TyCom and FLAG Telecom respectively.

Ciena's Gurgaon R&D centre's focus is on technologies such as storage extension and optical transport, including ultra long-haul, long-haul, regional and metropolitan applications, as well as multi-service switching, broadband access and network management.

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