Cisco is targeting the networking growth market of Asia with significant investments, including $32 million over the next five years for a Chinese research center located in Shanghai, the launch of a venture capital firm in India, and the establishment of new financing services for small and medium-sized business customers in Korea.
Cisco will hire 100 employees over the next 18 months in the Shanghai facility, which will focus on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies and other new features for telecommunications equipment, particularly for Chinese telephone carriers. It will open in the second half of 2005. Daniel Scheinman, senior vice president of corporate development for Cisco, noted that China's consumers rapidly adopt advanced technologies, and so the country is a breeding ground for new communications applications.
"By being closer to potential customers, it will help our engineers understand their requirements and react more quickly to their needs," Scheinman said in a statement.
This will be the first Cisco
research center in China, although it has invested heavily through the
years in Chinese startup companies. It has already spend $250 million
in direct and indirect investments in Chinese startups.
