Cisco Invests in Asia-Pacific

Cisco Systems has opened a 10,000-square-foot lab in Singapore to gauge how its Internet protocol networking hardware and sofware will perform in large deployments.

The facility is packed with $40 million worth of Cisco gear and will focus on advanced technology such as IPv6, data, voice and video integration, service provider Voice-over-IP and mobile wireless.

It’s one of six such facilities around the world (the others are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Italy) and will be used to vet products for China Unicom, Japan’s NTT and SingTel.

In addition to working with Cisco customers, the lab will develop local technical talent through cooperative training programs with the country’s economic development agency and area colleges and universities.

“The labs play a very important role in Cisco’s ability to support our customers,” said Ed Carney, vice president of Cisco labs. “Cisco’s customers can see the solutions actually working in a real world environment before they deploy it.”

The move is also seen as an additional commitment to doing business in the area. Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif., currently has administrative and manufacturing operations in the country.

Telecom vendors are increasingly eyeing opportunities in Asia-Pacific as those countries move to upgrade older systems. In other news from the region today, Nortel Networks said it won a deal to supply packet voice equipment to service provider China Railcom.

The deployment will allow the carrier to supply converged voice, data, video, broadband and multimedia services. Financial terms were not disclosed.