Date:22/04/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/04/22/stories/2005042201860500.htm

Back Avaya expands R&D at Pune

Our Bureau

Pune , April 21

AVAYA India has inaugurated the second phase of its research and development centre in Pune.

The new centre would support Avaya Labs in the development of IP telephony solutions, applications and appliances for the global marketplace.

Speaking at the inauguration of the centre, Mr Ravi Sethi, President, Avaya Labs, said the new centre would also be responsible for developing high-end technologies and introducing competitive products for enterprises globally. He said the centre would be dealing in four major areas, the IP telephony, voice messaging, unified communication system (which includes voice, IP and landline) and call centre infrastructure equipment.

Mr Sethi said Avaya India would be establishing a remote technical support team that would provide services support in converged data and voice, messaging and unified communication system. The intention was to make the Pune centre a hub for the Asia-Pacific region. It would be called as the Asia Pacific Technical Support Group. The company would slowly shut down the other remote technical support teams spread across the region.

Mr Sethi pointed out that Internet telephony has moved way ahead of the landline telephony in the US and that India still had at least four years to catch up.

Mr Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom, who was present on the occasion, said Pune should not go the Bangalore way where the number of IT companies had far outstripped the available space.