NetApp expands design center in India

Network storage products vendor Network Appliance Wednesday announced that it is expanding a development center in Bangalore, India, that develops and supports some key product lines, including its NetCache caching product.

The center is also likely to run the worldwide information systems for the Sunnyvale, Calif., company, Shekar Nair, president of NetApp’s Indian operation told reporters in Bangalore.

In order to increase its engineering staff in India, NetApp has set up a new 180,000 square-foot development facility in Bangalore that will house about 750 engineers over the next two years, said Dave Hitz, co-founder and executive vice president of NetApp. The company also plans to spend over $150 million in India over the next two years on capital equipment, employees and other resources, he added.

The company has the option to expand the new facility to house a total of 1,200 staff, Hitz said.

NetApp currently has about 270 engineers in India out of a worldwide engineering staff of about 1,200. The company is increasing the number of its engineering staff both in India and the U.S., said Hitz. The expansion in India is not at the expense of expansion in the U.S., he added.

NetApp’s Bangalore center started off with product development and support in 2003, and is involved in the product definition and architecture of a number of NetApp products including NetCache, and its storage management, application integration, and virtual tape libraries products, Nair said.