Adaptec to expand India engineering efforts

Storage gear maker Adaptec plans to expand its research and development operations in India.

Adaptec, based in Milpitas, Calif., plans to pump $25 million into its centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore over the next four years. The company said this week that the move is intended to help it meet "aggressive development schedules" for products including new chips and Internet Protocol storage and external storage wares for its manufacturing customers in North America and for those in other regions--Europe, Asia-Pacific and Australia--that account for 65 percent of Adaptec's revenue.

The new investment will see doubling of management and engineering teams at the two existing centers, up from a total of about 75 employees currently, and construction of new engineering labs and test facilities.

Adaptec is among the large number of companies that have begun developing new products and technologies in India, taking advantage of locally available engineering talent and India's proximity to markets in Asia and Europe. Recently, Google and America Online have been making plans to set up engineering centers in India.

"India has become a technology center that enables us to work much more closely with key partners and (manufacturers) such as Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems," said a statement from Raghu Allamsetty, managing director of Adaptec's India operations. "