Cisco unveils India campus, to house 10,000 professionals by 2010

Bangalore, Oct 30 (UNI) Global networking giant Cisco today unveiled its state-of-the-art Globalisation Centre East (GCE) which will house more than 10,000 professionals by the year 2010 as part of its Dollar 1.1 billion India initiative.

Former President A P J Abdul Kalam and Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers were present at the impressive ceremony which saw Cisco also announced a Global collaboration for integrated health solutions with Indian IT services major Satyam with a funding of 100 million dollars.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Chambers said that the development centre would have 20 per cent of the company's top talent in the next three to four years to support the growth of its global business.

The IT leader at present has more than 3000 professionals on research and development working on its latest technologies including path breaking Web 2.0 in its facilities in India and the GCE would accommodate 1200 professionals to start with and by 2008 it can accommodate 3500. The CEO also announced an additional 100 million dollar venture capital funding to expend investments in early-stage Indian companies as part of its overall 1.1 billion dollar investment plan in India.

The GCE would house an advanced global briefing centre to showcase Cisco's latest technology solutions and provide an environment for closer collaboration with the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The campuses also had the largest data centre outside the US and provide a focal point for demonstrating next generation virtualization technologies and services oriented network architectures that support customers' global environments, he added.

He said by locating the GCE in India, Cisco was decentralising to capitalise on the inflection point in business models. "Several factors work in India's favour like high economic growth, the world's largest democracy and free market, strategic location, large talent pool of skilled English-speaking people, fastest growing young population, solid education system and supportive government," thus went on his listing by Mr Chambers.

He said the company did not come to India for mere labour arbitrage but to develop disruptive business models and drive emerging market strategy. For Cisco, India was a partner for life, he said.

Mr Kalam in his inaugural address said for competition innovation was the capital and the country need to build a huge talent pool and prepare them for doing newer innovations which can power India to get be a developed country by 2020.

Complementing Cisco for making substantial investment for setting up development centre and deciding to create a pool of 20 per cent of its top management out of India, Mr Kalam said that 'law of development' was that a developed country like the US should market its products in developing country to remain developed and developing country like India had to develop such technology to become a developed country. "This is coming true for India especially in the ICT spectrum," he said.

UNI