Business Objects has announced the opening of its India Development Centre (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 an R&D and a business perspective. The IDC, the latest of our research and development facilities, will enable us to effectively maximise our research and development resources while maintaining our focus on bring localised products faster to the market."

The IDC currently employees over 300 engineers and plans to add another 200 staff over the next three years.

According to Srivibhavan Balaram, vice president and head, India Development Centre, Business Objects, "The IDC will play a critical role in enabling us to realise 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."

IDC 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. Additionally, the IDC is mandated to deliver critical elements of the manageability framework for Business Objects' Enterprise Platform - BOXI. Also, the IDC is positioned as the .Net competency centre for the company's worldwide R&D organisation.