IT major Dell on Tuesday said it will invest over USD 700 million globally for research and development this year.
The company also announced converting of its Research and Development Centre here into a Centre of Excellence in Networking for Dell, a move aimed to push "sales in the enterprise business," according to a company official.
"This year, the company will be spending more than USD 700 million on R&D globally, the vast majority of which will go toward enterprise solutions," Dell India said.
Dell Networking, Vice-President and General Manager Dario Zamarian, declined to reveal the figures when asked how much they have allocated for R&D in India.
"Globally, there is now a USD 7 billion opportunity in the data centre market and a total of USD 20 billion in networking. With the integration of Force10 into Dell, we have expanded the market," he told reporters.
Observing that the data centre market in India was valued at USD 200 to USD 300 million, Zamarian said India is the fourth largest country for data centre business, after Japan, China and Singapore in the Asian region.
Dell Networking, Research and Development, Executive Director and Center-Head, Sreedhara Narayanaswamy said Chennai has become R&D hub for Dell's networking business post their acquisition of Force10 networks in August 2011.
As a Centre of Excellence, the Chennai Development centre would enhance the company's expertise in routing, switching, network operating system, network management and reference architecture.
It is the third centre for Dell after the ones in Texas and San Jose in the United States.
"There is no overlap. We do it as part of a team," Zamarian said, adding that the Chennai centre would focus on high-end design and development of Force10 networking switches and routers, in collaboration with the company's San Jose Development Centre.
Some of its competitors include Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and China-based Huawei, he said.