HCL has been working with Vitesse on a turnkey project basis for more than a year and has completed several successful projects. "This relationship is now being taken to the next level, where under the new alliance, HCL Technologies will dedicate a pool of skilled engineers for Vitesse", Mr R Vaidyanathan, executive vice-president, HCL Technolgies said. "The ODC team will be working on next generation networking technologies such as high performance FPGAs, ASIC design and verifications, networking/telecom protocols and embedded software development," he said. He said the centre would be executing seven projects initially for Vitesse which fall under the three generic categories of basic research, hardware and software development and board building. He said, both HCL and Vitesse would be on the programme management council of the ODC and ensure that this ODC complements Vitesse's own engineering resources effectively in meeting the time-to-market commitments to their end customers, he said.

Vitesse is targeting the ODC for execution of many advanced technology projects. These projects ranges from network processor-based high speed optical interfaces, networking protocol stacks and network services software to connectivity for switching fabrics. HCL will also work for reference designs for OEMs, Mr Vaidyanathan added. He said HCL is seeing substantial revenue flow from the project. The main growth areas would be Vitesse's requirement besides servicing Vitesse's clients, he said. He said HCL would serve as a directly connected extension of Vitesse engineering through a dedicated high-speed data link. Vitesse is investing substantially in equipping the ODC with the state-of-the-art tools and system access via communication link.