the success of an it company depends on its innovations no wonder top mncs pump billions into their rd centres around the world but whats interesting is that a number of these centres are coming up in developing countries with india emerging a hot favourite the pace of action has been fast in our backyard check this out bangalore is home to rd centres of google yahoo intel ibm adobe microsoft and many other top it companies mobile phone giant nokia is planning to set up an rd hub in india some of them have more than one centre for example ibm has two in delhi and bangalore microsoft in hyderabad and bangalore adobe in noida and bangalore an economist intelligence unit survey some years ago said as a large asian country where english is spoken wages are modest and western education is available india has quickly grown as an rd powerhouse certain reports suggest that nearly 25 of fresh global investments by it mncs are now being channelised towards their indian rd centres but just how much research and product development is actually happening here heres a look at four it giants and their indian experiments microsoft indiamicrosoft has two separate research facilities in india the first microsoft india development centre msidc in hyderabad is the companys largest development centre outside the us our excitement is how to make the i in india stand for innovation and how to apply this innovation to emerging markets says ravi venkatesan chairman microsoft india started in 1998 the hyderabad facility employs over 1200 people who are working on over 50 products and technologies as of now at msidc teams have endtoend responsibility on products based on cutting edge technologies every product team deals with all aspects of software development development testing and program management says vp and mp srini koppolu the fact that the india team is actually handling products from conceptualisation to incubation and development indicates the real shift in maturity feels venkatesan in hyderabad a team of engineers is working on windows vista and longhorn server and has fully developed the data protection manager in india similarly the virtualisation team recently released virtual pc 2007 and is now working on the next release of virtual server 2005 they have added many significant features to visual studio visual studio team system windows one care live mscrm office live developed platform components for msn and have expertise on real time collaboration they also demonstrated their expertise in integration of ms office applications with backend erp systems by fully developing microsoft dynamics snap and duet for microsoft office and sap in addition the teams have full responsibility for office mobile which includes word excel and powerpoint sql mobile now called sql ce visual studio for devices and office communicator for mobiles msidc is a leader in creating intellectual property from india and has filed over 100 patents in the last two years says koppolu microsofts other centre microsoft research india mri was established