"India is a critical market an imminent R&D center for us"

What is the scope that you foresee for DTN-X, that was unveiled recently in Singapore, in India?

In India we see an average of 24% internet penetration where the rest of the world average is 30%. ROW was connected via wired connection, so as we see India deploy 3G and then move to 4G we expect broadband users to be added very quickly. We expect low cost smartphones and tablets to emerge allowing the consumption of rich media cloud services by these connected users at increasingly high data rates.

All of this will happen with significant pressure on ARPUs because of the large number of competitors in the Indian market. As access speeds and the number of users increases, the core must scale and become more cost effective from a capex and opex perspective, irrespective of whether the content is local or outside of India. The DTN-X is the essential platform to scale the core transport network. It is not too big for the Indian market, and especially applicable for the larger cities like Mumbai, Delhi, etc. We have worked with Reliance Globalcomm and we are also working with a number of other customers.

Your plans for your R&D center?

Infineras R&D center in Bengaluru is the companys largest R&D center outside of its Silicon Valley headquarters. The Infinera India Technology Center is one of the best places to work for engineers as it offers challenging jobs and a very exciting technical career path. The center has made significant strides in developing technologies and making contributions to the award-winning Infinera DTN product family since its launch
in 2004.

The team in India played a leading role in critical Infinera software packages, including the IQ Network Operating System, Network Management Suites, and Network Planning System. Infinera India has also been a key contributor to the industry-leading GMPLS network intelligence in the Infinera digital network and to Infineras own ASIC silicon chips. We currently have 250 employees in the center and plan to increase our headcount.

What is your global R&D spend?

Our long term business model requires an investment of 20% for R&D when the company is at scale. Our actual R&D expenditures for 2010 were at 23% of revenue, but R&D was close to 30% in the first half of 2011.

And your future plans for the company?

With increased adoption of cloud based services and virtualization, we expect good portential for our offerings. There is going to be an increased requirement about understanding the data center built out because of the requirement to ensure proper connectivity. High between data centers is the biggest requirement to ensure that the customer experience in relation to cloud computing is a success. We will be working in the direction of providing better infrastructure to ensure better user experience.

Japan is the strongest market from the APAC region and we intend to leverage on our investments made in Hong Kong by opening a new office and expanding our Russia based headquarters. India is a critical market and an imminent R&D center for us. We intend to scale up our customer base in India aggressively. We are currently chalking out a market strategy for the Indian market and will execute it in 2012. We intend to focus on the designing and launching of new services.