As Dell acquired the US-based Force10Networks in August, the latter's Chennai innovation centre will play a ‘vital' role in Dell's offering of networking products to global customers.

Post the acquisition, the IT major also plans to improve its business in the growing Indian networking market.

Force10's Chennai Innovation Centre is the global centre of competence for core/switch product development. This includes software development and testing for Force10's multiple product lines and 'multi-protocol label switching.'

Dell acquired the $200-million Force10 Networks that will help the global IT major to foray into the networking portfolio and compete with majors such as Hewlett-Packard and Cisco in a global networking market that is pegged at around $6 billion.

“India is a vibrant market in the networking sector,” said Mr said Mr Dario Zamarian, Vice-President and GM, Dell Networking. At present, the market for data centre networking is pegged at around $620 million and annually growing at 15 per cent, he told newspersons.

“Force10 already has clients in India,” he said without revealing further details.

Chennai centre

Meanwhile, Dell will expand the Force10Networks' Chennai R&D team with plans to double the employee strength to around 500 in the next 12 to 18 months.

With revenue of around $1.4 billion last year, Dell India plays a strategic part in driving Dell's transformation globally into a solutions and services enterprise,” said Mr Suresh Vaswani, Chairman, Dell India.

With around 25,000 employees, Dell India is the largest operation for Dell outside the US. The operations include manufacturing, services, R&D, analytics, financial services and information technology, he said.

On Chennai, Mr Vaswani said it is critical growth engine for Dell from three view points; manufacturing, services and R&D. Dell's only manufacturing facility in India is in Sriperumbudur. Further to the acquisition of Perot Systems in September 2009, Chennai is one of the key centres for Dell Services.

“We now look forward to Force10's Chennai R&D team bolstering our foray into networking,” he said.