Veritas Software's research and development (R&D)
centre in Pune, India, will soon be the company's largest
worldwide, according to a company executive.
While the company's US labs typically focus on a single product
line, product development work at the Pune centre cuts across
several of the company's storage and utility computing product
lines, according to Jose Iglesias, vice-president of Veritas'
international engineering group. The company sells storage and
utility computing software.
The R&D centre in Pune currently employs about 900 staff,
according to Iglesias, who added that more staff would be added
next year. Veritas currently employs about 3,000 staff worldwide
for R&D. The company is however not moving R&D jobs from
the US to India, Iglesias added.
"We are seeing growth across all locations," he said.
In September Veritas set up a lab in Beijing and in October it
also announced it was also setting up a lab in Tokyo. However,
unlike the Pune lab, the Beijing and Tokyo labs will initially
focus on addressing the local requirements of these countries,
Iglesias said.
One of the Beijing lab's first roles, for example, is providing
support for Red Flag Linux on Veritas' products, as it is key to
doing business in the Chinese Linux market, according to Iglesias.
China-based Red Flag offers a version of Linux.
The Tokyo lab will let Veritas work closely with Japanese
computer manufacturers to ensure better and quicker support for
their equipment in Veritas' software, he added.
The lab in Beijing will grow to about three dozen staff, while
the lab in Tokyo will have about two dozen staff, Iglesias
said.
"The main reason for opening up these centres in Beijing and in
Tokyo is to grow revenues in these countries by meeting the
requirements of these markets," said Iglesias. He added the
availability of low-cost computer programmers in India fostered
Veritas' expansion in the country.
Veritas invested about $50m in the Pune center this year, and
plans to invest another $50m next year, according to Steven
Leonard, Veritas' senior vice-president and general manager for
Asia Pacific and Japan at Veritas.
The company will add staff at the Pune center at the rate of 50
employees a month, Leonard said. The indications are that the
company will hire between 450 to 600 new staff next year.
John Ribeiro writes for IDG News Service