Juniper's city R&D centre expands

IT network infrastructure solution provider Juniper Networks' Bangalore R&D centre has increased its level of contribution towards evolution of global products for the company.

The Bangalore R&D centre is engaged in developing networking platforms, routers and security products. The centre has already developed five fully-owned products.

Recently, Juniper unveiled its new high-performance network infrastructure offerings with a new family of Ethernet switches (EX series).

According to Juniper Networks India Vice President Sridhar Sarathy, 40 per cent of the development of the EX enterprise switching portfolio came from the company's Bangalore R&D Centre.

"A dedicated switching team of 100 Indian engineers was responsible for platform software and layer 2 and 3 protocol software for the new EX-Series Ethernet switches," he added.

The team also developed a manageability software suite, including tools for web-based device management, network management and enablement of third party network management tools. Bangalore-based engineers also wrote the EX's technical documentation and carried out the lab testing programme. The Bangalore switching team started working on the portfolio in June 2006.

Juniper Networks India Director (Engineering) Mohan Satyaranjan said Juniper's EX-series switches help businesses advance the economics of networking by reducing capital and operational expenses.

"The team is now focused on completing the terabit-chassis EX switch, and further enhancing the fixed-configuration and virtual-chassis products. The Bangalore R&D team's contribution in the past and the recent success has prompted the company to hand over critical projects," he noted.

Sarathy contended that any product shipped by Juniper has some contribution from the R&D centre in Bangalore, which accounts for 25 per cent (750) of the company's engineers. Juniper plans to add 300 more R&D and operations staff by mid 2008 in India.

Apart from Bangalore, Juniper's R&D centres are located in the US, China, Canada and Israel. In two years' time, Bangalore R&D centre is expected to handle 40 per cent of Juniper's overall development work.