EMC Corp to double R&D team by year-end

EMC Corporation, the $8 billion information storage major, plans to double its software development team in India to 1,000 from the current 500 by end of 2005.

This expansion is part of EMC's plans to invest $100 million in India over a period of five years between 2003 and 2007.

Speaking at the launch of EMC's new development centre in Bangalore which was inaugurated by Karnataka chief minister Dharam Singh, William J Teuber Jr, executive VP and CFO, EMC said: "The EMC India software development and support centre will play an important role in EMC's international growth and will help get our storage management solutions to market faster to expand our global reach. Currently we have 500 developers here in Bangalore and we intend to double the strength by end of this year."

The India centre, the largest outside US and the only one in Asia-Pacific for EMC, will house software engineers from diverse product development teams within EMC and will participate in the entire lifecycle of product development, enhancement, sustenance and testing.

In addition to housing its software centre in India, EMC is also betting big on the Indian market.

"In the fourth quarter of 2004, EMC earned 43 per cent of revenues from international operations. In the next couple of years, we want to grow our international revenues to 50 per cent of our total revenues and India is high on the strategy," Teuber noted.

According to EMC, India is one of two key strategic markets identified by EMC worldwide and is also one of the fastest growing. IDC for the year 2004 stated that EMC leads the external disk storage market in India with a 28.6 per cent market share.