SAP president (product & technology) Shai Agassi in Bangalore on Monday. (AFP)

Bangalore, July 4: SAP Labs India will recruit 2,000 software professionals over the next 18 months as part of its third-phase expansion in the country.

German IT conglomerate SAP has already announced a three-phased euro 40-million expansion plan for India, which it rates as one of its top eight strategic markets.

The company has already invested euro 20 million in the first and second phase development of its India Development Centre in Bangalore, its largest development facility outside Germany and has announced another euro 20-million investment for the third phase expansion of SAP Labs campus in the silicon city.

On his first visit to India, Shai Agassi, president of the product and technology group and member of executive board of SAP AG, announced the hiring of 2,000 more techies.

“With over 700 customers in the enterprise segment and 1,500 installations, India is not only one of the fastest growing markets for our products and solutions in the region, but figures among the top eight strategic markets for us globally.” Agassi said.

“As part of our third phase of expansion (in India), we are ramping up operations at an investment of euro 20 million. The expansion includes doubling the headcount to 4,000 engineers by 2006,” he added.

SAP’s Bangalore development centre is one of its four such centres worldwide and accounts for one-fifth of the company’s global headcount of 10,000 engineers.

The Indian subsidiary contributes to all areas of the company’s product value chain, including research and breakthrough innovation, product development, production and global services and support solutions.In order to help its Indian vendors design the services-oriented architecture for global corporations, SAP opened its first NetWeaver Centre of Excellence at its Bangalore campus today. The centre of excellence will assist its partners in India and Asia Pacific region in faster adoption of the enterprise services architecture on the NetWeaver platform.

SAP NetWeaver is an open integration and application platform that supports business change, growth and innovation leading to reduction in cost of ownership and complexities.