The company, which has already secured the contracts of the state wide area network (SWAN) projects in Himachal Pradesh and Bihar in partnership with HP and TCS respectively, is looking at bagging similar contracts in states like Punjab, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

The size of these contracts varies between Rs 45 crore and Rs 150 crore, where the networking components of Juniper play a role, constitutes about 25-40 per cent. Juniper has also partnered other large Indian and global system integrators in bidding for projects, which are expected to be awarded during the next one year.

Traditionally, Juniper Networks is quite strong in the telecom service provider markets in India, by serving most of the top telecom service providers. Banking and Financial Service Industry (BFSI) and ManufacturingôITeS were also two other growth areas of the company in the Indian market.

"However, we notice the government and defence sectors are major areas of growth for us. We are expecting a major overhaul of network within the Indian defence over the next few years which can possibly open up opportunities for us over the next 36 months," said Nagendra Venkaswamy, MD, India & Saarc, Juniper Networks.

Meanwhile, the company has opened a second R&D centre in Bangalore, which is capable of accommodating 1,200 people. This makes the company's Bangalore facility its largest R&D centre outside the US.

Juniper's R&D team in India has grown from a small team of 13 persons in April, 2003, to a team of 900 engineers and support staff as of today. The company has invested $250 million over the last five years, towards expanding its Indian R&D operation.

Globally, Juniper has 3,100 R&D engineers located in six centres located in the US (Sunnyvale and Boston), Canada, Israel, China apart from Bangalore.

"A quarter of Juniper's engineers are based in the Bangalore R&D facility and they contribute to all stages of product development and to all product lines. It will continue to grow rapidly as the company invests in R&D," said Sridhar Sarathy, MD, India Operations, Juniper Networks.

The networking market in India is estimated to be about $900 million and growing at about 20 per cent, year-on-year. Juniper is growing at 31 per cent year-on-year, which is ahead of the industry, according to the company.