HCL Technologies and Cisco Systems today announced a royalty model of partnership where Cisco has licenced to HCL the intellectual property (IP) for one of its network management products, and HCL will be responsible for enhancement of the product.Addressing a press conference in Chennai this morning, Shiva Nadar, founder of HCL, said the team strength at the Cisco centre in Chennai had grown to 1,100 employees from around 30 in 1996. The centre was rated as high as the product development centres of Cisco in the US. Over the years, the Cisco offshore development centre at Chennai, which was staffed and operated by HCL, was undertaking software development work for Cisco's network management products.The new annoucement came as the two companies marked the completion of 10 years of partnerhsip. Under the new partnership, HCL will be reponsible for the engineering of Cisco's network management product and it is expected to realise revenue through the IP it adds to Cisco's product.The capability, scalability and knowledge were the key drivers for carrying out product development activities in India by Cisco though costs were going up by 20% per year, Nadar said, adding HCL's relationship with Cisco had moved from projects to products to revenue sharing.Cliff Meltzer, senior vice president of Cisco, said it would be a business partnership rather than engineering of product relationship. The scope of the relationship was not just sub-contracting, but much more broader for product development to improve the quality and customer focus.
