The Company in a release here said that the Chennai based R and D team with about 265 engineers would be ramped up over the next 12 months to play a critical part for Dell’s networking business.

Dell was planning to hire several hundred new team members in engineering, sales and marketing, and services jobs at the Dell Silicon Valley as well as the Chennai Centres the company said in a release here. Force10’s industry-leading products and technology will greatly complement Dell’s existing Enterprise data centre solutions.

Force10’s Chennai Innovation Centre is the global center of competence for leading-edge core/switch product development, including software development and testing, for Force10’s multiple product lines and multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). Some of the most recent Force10 products were developed at the Chennai Centre.

The Force10 acquisition is Dell’s latest investment to broaden its networking portfolio to deliver its Virtual Network Services Infrastructure. Dell expected the transaction to be accrete to earnings in the second half of next year.