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Kanwal Jawanda: India Has Huge Potential For R&D
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Kanwal Jawanda, vice president, engineering, Ciena India, shares with ET Ciena's experience in Indian market and its initiatives at R&D centre in India.
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008:
From three to 300 members in just two years, Ciena India has grown tremendously. Founded in 1992 with a mission to radically change the telecommunication network, Ciena today is known as the network transition specialist. It provides services to more than two-third of world's largest telecom service providers including AT&T, BT, China Telecom, Verizon, Sprint and SingleTel, the latest addition being VSNL in India.
Ciena opened its R&D facility in 2005 in Gurgaon, India -- the company's first core R&D centre outside North America. Kanwal Jawanda, vice president, engineering, Ciena India, shares with us Ciena's experience in Indian market and its initiatives at R&D centre in India.
ET. What has been Ciena experience in the Indian market?
KJ. Excellent! Simply great!! Ciena in just about two years since its inception is today one of the largest R&D centres amongst other Ciena R&D si
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tes. The company has grown from just three members way back in 2005 to nearly 300 by 2007-end. Our indigenous work has made its indelible impression on the global Ciena R&D fraternity, and we have been encouraged to grow the team to a larger size. We are now looking at adding another 100 R&D professionals by the end of 2008.
ET. How do you plan to buoy up Ciena's business in India?
KJ. In India, we plan to conduct R&D on emerging technologies and next generation networks. We are doing some great work in India not just independently but also collaboratively on new products and solutions pertaining to access, transport, switching and network management services. Our current contribution to the global R&D capacity of Ciena stands at 40 per cent, and we intend to increase this share significantly as we move forward.
While we have a great deal of focus on conducting R&D, we are with a keen interest analysing the Indian market – not just in terms of the emerging technology trends but also in terms of the futuristic solution needs of the service providers and carriers here.
Ciena very recently deployed its CoreDirector Multiservice Optical Switches on the VSNL network in the country thus making VSNL the first to give to India its first nationwide intelligent optical mesh network. This recent development is reflective of our great interest in the Indian market.
ET. What motivated Ciena to expand presence in India? How do you see it helping the company worldwide?
KJ. India is not only one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world but also has a huge potential for research and development due to its inherent strength - availability of high calibre intellectual capital. Our decision to enter the Indian market for conducting R&D in India is also underpinned by both these market facts which also emerge as key imperatives for consideration for a globalising company.
In a little over six quarters of Ciena going operational, we are today well positioned to undertake research and developmental work on emerging networking technologies and products and solutions related to next generation networks.
ET. How much has been funnelled into the R&D lab in India (vis-a-vis worldwide)?
KJ. We have five R&D Centers of Excellence worldwide -- four being in North America and the fifth one situated at Gurgaon in India. India site roughly constitutes 40 per cent of the global R&D capacity of Ciena and is poised to grow to greater heights. We are about 300 people currently and a majority of these professionals are telecom R&D engineers.
Ciena has heavily invested in state-of-the-art infrastructure spread over nearly 100,000 sq.ft, housing the first core R&D centre of the networking specialist outside of North Americas.
Ciena India is also the only company in the communication network solutions domain to have installed a state-of-the-art laboratory, sand box, tools and repair shop exclusively dedicated to create an ideal eco-system that fosters the spirit of innovation in new and emerging next-gen communication technologies.
ET. What are your market priorities -- fixed broadband or mobile solutions?
KJ. We are well positioned to cater to network upgradation needs across three layers -- Layer 0, Layer 1 and Layer 2 -- which also form the common equipment and solution thread across fixed broadband and back-end infrastructure network needs for mobile/wireless services providers.
We want to bring a transition from legacy to future and next-gen networks. Today we have solutions that form the very core of any service provider/carriers’ network infrastructure needs – from Layer 0 to Layer 1 and Layer 2. Our solutions are not only future ready but also enable clients to reap benefits of lower Capex and higher efficiencies in Opex when deploying and/or upgrading their networks.
ET. How does Ciena cater to the need of telecom operators in India?
KJ. We are not only studying the Indian market and its players’ need very carefully but also working on certain products and solutions across the network infrastructure spectrum that can be used in other emerging markets such as India. Our CoreDirector Multiservice Switch equipment has been a big hit here and increasingly we are being approached for our FlexSelect Architecture based solutions.
ET. Would you like to mention any specific area where R&D is in progress? Where else do you see a scope for R&D?
KJ. Ciena India is currently conducting tests and developing new products and solutions for carriers and service providers on the next-gen platform. We are pursuing independent new product development projects and also working on a real-time collaborative basis with rest of the Ciena R&D sites in the areas of transport, access and switching.
New products and releases that are currently being developed across the various segments are at different stages in the development cycle and will soon see deployment and launch at a global level.
-- By Pujya Trivedi
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