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Business Objects, a provider of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, has opened its India Development Center (IDC) in Bangalore.

"Our Bangalore site reinforces our focus on India and our commitment to tapping India's excellent intellectual capital," said Keith Budge, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, Business Objects. "In addition, it extends our aim of operating on a truly global delivery scale both from a research and development (R&D) and a business perspective."

"The IDC, the latest of our R&D facilities, will enable us to effectively maximize our R&D resources while maintaining our focus on bring localized products faster to the market," said Budge.

"Business Objects has an extensive history and tradition of excellence in research, we have the largest and the most powerful R&D group in the industry focused solely on BI, with a 95% track record of on-time project delivery. These industry-leading statistics attest to the emphasis we place on R&D and we are confident that the IDC will mirror the high standards we have set for ourselves globally," added Budge.

The IDC, located in Salarpuria Softzone, an upcoming IT hub in Bangalore, expands Business Objects' global R&D footprint. Its other three global R&D facilities are housed in Vancouver, Canada; Levallois, France; and Shanghai, China. The IDC currently employees over 300 engineers and plans to add another 200 staff over the next three years.

"The BI market is growing at double-digit rates, necessitating the need for rapid and sustained innovation," said Srivibhavan Balaram, Vice President and Head, India Development Center, Business Objects. "The IDC will play a critical role in enabling us to realize our vision of what we call BI 2.0, or next-generation BI, through the development of cutting-edge products that map to the current global trends in BI and the market evolution we see forthcoming."

Business Objects said that as with its other R&D facilities, the IDC not only contributes to the company's overall research mandate, but also holds end-to-end responsibility for one of its core product lines, the Mid-Market range. All future Mid-Market products for Business Objects globally will be conceived and developed at the IDC. This effectively enables the IDC to take full ownership of the product right from conceptualization to market release.

The IDC is also mandated to deliver critical elements of the manageability framework for Business Objects' Enterprise Platform, BOXI. This includes life-cycle management and the management portal. Also, the IDC is positioned as the .Net competency center for the company'’s worldwide R&D organization.

Business Objects said the IDC is designed to be a center of innovation for the company globally and has a strong internal process to incubate technology and business ideas from ideation-to-delivery. Several patent applications from the IDC are pending validation and the facility also plans to collaborate closely with several top educational institutions in Bangalore to sponsor research in the area of BI.