'I don't think we are getting into a recession'

Dan Warmenhoven, CEO of Network Appliance (NetApp), the $3 billion network storage solutions provider is bullish on India and the growth of the company despite the slowdown in the US. With an overall headcount of 750 people in India, the company plans to scale it up to 2,000 in the next three to five years. NetApp has spent approximately Rs 500 crore in India till date, and expects to spend between $250 million and $300 million (around Rs 1,000-1,200 crore) over the next three to five years. He spoke to Shivani Shinde on the company's growth plan and India focus. Excerpts:

How important is India for NetApp?

Our facility in Bangalore is, in fact, a mirror image of our headquarter in the US. Besides, from a market point of view too, India is very important. We have done well. Our market share globally is about 10-11 per cent but in India it is close to 20 per cent.

How much have you invested in India?

Our investments in India are more from the perspective of people. We are not an asset-intensive company. We are not into manufacturing or any such activities. Our investments are in the form of an engineering and testing equipment lab and the people that we have in India.

How is the R&D centre in Bangalore contributing to NetApp's product portfolio?

It is quite important. The contribution from the Bangalore team ranges across the product line. I would also say, we would not have been growing the way we are without the contribution from the Bangalore centre.

Currently the Storage Management & Application Integration (SMAI) work is being worked out of India. Our biggest technology property asset is our file system 'Waffle'.

There is a Waffle engineering team right here in Bangalore working on it. As of November 2007, the SMAI group had filed five patents on storage management with another 50 new invention requests (NIRs) waiting to become patents.

It's just not about products. We have a team in Bangalore that is focusing on NetApp's go-to-market strategy. This is going to be the backbone of our marketing strategy globally.

What trends do you see in the storage space, especially in a market like India?

We believe that the issue around growth of storage, management of data and storage is becoming increasingly complex and expensive for the customers. This gives us an opportunity to bring to the market newer, easier and less expensive form of storage.

Do you think IT budgets will be affected due to the slowdown?

I don't think we are getting into a recession. Yes, there are a few verticals that are under pressure. If you have seen our results, we have missed a quarter that is because the financial vertical has seen a slowdown. But that's not a generic statement, the other verticals are doing very well for us. We are going aggressively out in acquiring customers.