VMware Pumps Funds Into Indian R&D Center

VMware is furthering its presence in India, investing $100 million and rolling out multi-year initiative to expand its India-based research and development operations. The virtualization giant already has offices in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai.

"India is also one of our fastest growing markets and where we have increasingly important system integrator partners," said president and CEO Diane Greene in a statement. "For these reasons, we are now substantively increasing our investment in India."

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company's plan calls for the investment of funds in India by 2010 to build a new 82,000 square foot development center in south Bangalore. The initiatives will double the company's India-based engineering organization to more than 1,000 people in the next two years.

VMware first entered the Indian market in 2004, and now has more than 300 customers, over 160 channel partners in the country, and 700 employees. The company has alliances with local universities such as IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, NIT Trichi, NIT Surathkal, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the RV College of Engineering.

VMware reported $1.3 billion in 2007 revenues, and has 100,000 customers and more than 10,000 partners in 36 countries. The fast-growing virtualization market has seen a ramp up in partnerships with server giants, such as Hewlett-Packard.

VMware reported $1.3 billion in 2007 revenues, and has 100,000 customers and more than 10,000 partners in 36 countries.

The fast-growing virtualization market has seen a ramp up in partnerships with server giants, such as Hewlett-Packard. Just last week, HP unveiled HP ProLiant iVirtualization, a server that integrates virtualization technologies from Citrix XenServer, and in separate versions, VMware and Microsoft into the ProLiant platform. Microsoft has been generating buzz with its Hyper-V, its virtualization hypervisor which is now in beta, slated for an August release, but some vendors have already criticized the product for lacking platform features such as resource management and memory over commitment.