Ciena Corp to up India R&D headcount by 100

US-based Ciena Corporation, a $800-million company that specialises in high-performance network systems, software and professional services, will increase the headcount at its R&D centre in Gurgaon by 100, from the present 300, in a year.

"There is a resurgence in the telecom space, especially in the wireless broadband (Wimax) and Wi-Fi networks, which is creating tremendous amount of traffic on the Internet. The expansion of our R&D centre in Gurgaon is in line with this trend," Neeraj Gulati, vice-president and managing director, Ciena India, said here on Wednesday.

Ciena, which started its India operations in mid 2006, has five R&D centres globally, including three in the US and one in Canada. Its Gurgaon centre, which focuses on designing mechanicals, chips and complex application-focused communication networking equipment, software and services to telecom service providers, contributes 40 per cent of the global R&D capacity of Ciena.

In India, the company had recently completed the implementation of its product "� Core Director, a 640-gigabit per second switching platform "� for VSNL. Its other clients in the country include Tata Teleservices and Reliance.

Stating that Ciena is geared up for the big time, when the 3G spectrum allocation is announced, he said the company was currently in talks with a few telecom service providers to offer its products for the same.

"We have a slew of productlines in our portfolio that have been deployed globally, which would be introduced to India when 3G allocation is finalised," he said, while declining to divulge the names of the companies that Ciena is in talks with.

Ciena works with contract manufacturers in Thailand and China for its equipment, and Gulati said 3 to 4 of these are looking at setting up their assembly base in India, either in Hyderabad or Chennai.

"Hyderabad and Chennai are predominantly becoming electronic hubs of India and we expect at least four contract manufacturers to set up shop here, which would give us cost-effectiveness besides shortening the time to market," Gulati said, while ruling out any possibility of setting up their own manufacturing facility in the country.