Adaptec scripts $25m spend

Adaptec Inc, the $ 540 million US-based storage solutions provider, plans to ramp up its Indian operations by investing $ 25 million over the next four years. A large part of the proposed investment is expected to be spent on the company's Hyderabad development center.

The US major plans to set up engineering laboratories and test facilities at Hyderabad and Bangalore to expand its 24-hour engineering operations.

Announcing this at a press meet here today, Ram Jayam, the vice -president and general manager of Adaptec's storage and networking group, said that a comprehensive test lab in Hyderabad would test hundreds of different network storage configurations and applications in all varieties of stimulated environments including Microsoft, Linux and Novell Netware operating systems.

The lab will be equipped with HP and Dell's high-end servers and will be operational within the next three months, Jayam said. The labs can be remotely accessed by any of our development centers worldwide, he added.

Talking about their growth plans, Robert N Stephens, the president and chief executive officer of the US major, said that the present team strengths at their Hyderabad and Bangalore, currently at 75 and 35 respectively, would be doubled in the next one year.

The company's Hyderabad center focuses on ASIC development, while the Bangalore center develops embedded software for the chips designed by the former.

The company has a global team strength of 1,500, of which about 600 are at its manufacturing facility in Singapore. "We are bullish on the storage solutions market, and expect $ 60 million and $ 100 million revenues respectively from this segment alone in the current and next fiscals," Stephens said. The company expects to clock a total revenue of $500 million for the current fiscal as against $ 440 million posted for the last fiscal.