Bangalore: Giving an added heft to its India operations, U.S based IT firm Novell, which delivers interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software, has opened its India Development Center (IDC) at Bagmane Tech park in Bangalore.

Housing numerous facilities that will keep the employees refreshed and empowered, the new center occupies 10 floors and has the capacity to accommodate 700 employees. The center has under its floor a canteen, gymnasium, table tennis, global security centers, 33 meeting rooms, two video conferencing rooms and two training rooms among others. Entered Indian market in 1994, Novell IDC will finish an investment of $100 million in the country in the next three years. With 5200 customers and 8400 partners, the company employs 4100 employees globally.

The Novell IDC will support the company's global engineering initiatives with responsibilities for several products and technologies, including SUSE Linux enterprises, ZENworks, identity and access management solutions and Novell's Open Enterprise Server.

Commenting on the new center, the CEO of the company Ron Hovespian said, "This will become a corner stone of our product development, engineering and testing, and build-out of our solution to support the company's strategy of delivering the best engineered and most interoperable Linux and IT management software."

"The Novell IDC has development and management responsibilities for several products and full ownership of components of other global products. This signifies the importance of Indian facility," said Naresh Shah, Managing Director of Novell IDC.

The Country Head Sandeep Menon said unlike in the past when we offered two choices to the customers, the company presently gives out three choices to them as they can choose between Open Source, Proprietary and Mixed servers.