NetApp global centre of excellence opened in Bengaluru

Storage and data management company NetApp today announced the opening of its Global Center of Excellence here with an investment of more than Rs 1,000 crore, aimed at further innovation in data management for the hybrid cloud era.
The new engineering facility in the technology hub of Whitefield, is home to one of the company's largest R&D teams, and also houses its first startup accelerator program, called Escape Velocity, that will help nurture technology startups, senior company officials said.
"We had a presence here in India for a long time. It was led by our R&D center and the success we had leadingglobal teams and building breakthrough innovations from herein India has caused us to invest much more broadly towardsthis entire business center based here in Bangalore," NetApp CEO George Kurian told reporters here.

He said it not only includes expansion of our R&D center, but also substantial investments in expansion of other capabilities like global shared services center, customer support center, global service delivery centre and others. "So it is a substantial expansion of our footprint in India and it is our commitment to take our business from a single function to broad based center of excellence across all of our business systems here in India..." he added.
The NetApp Global Center of Excellence was inaugurated by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
Responding to a question, NetApp India Managing Director Deepak Visweswaraiah said about Rs 1,000 crore investment has gone to the Global Center of Excellence which can hold about 3,300 people.

"This building holds about 3,300 seats, we have filled in about 2,000 right now and rest as we grow..." he said.

NetApp has been in India for about 15 years now and has about 10,000 employees globally.
The company today also announced the new NetApp startup accelerator programme, 'Escape Velocity', where it will house and help nurture technology startups.
"We are announcing this startup accelerator so that we can bring our expertise and our infrastructure to enable a range of storage and data management capabilities... Through the startup ecosystem here in India; we have funded this project, we are about to start to recruit startup companies," Kurian said.

"On this facility with our world class employees and talent and the ecosystem that we have built through the relationships and partnerships that we have here in India we believe that we can come up with next breakthrough ideas for how to make the digital world through data management better, faster, cheaper and more differentiated," he said
The company officials said they will soon announce the investment and details about the programme as the startup accelerator programme is in the design process.