EMC announced the second phase of its significant investment in the Chinese market. EMC officially opened its new R&D center in Beijing and committed to double its planned investments in China over the next five years.

The investment of US$500 million announced in June 2006 is now expected to double, reaching approximately US$1 billion through 2012. The additional investment will be spent on expanding EMC’s R&D operations, growing its partner community, strengthening its sales and service capabilities and more effectively serving the rapidly growing Chinese market.

The addition of EMC’s Beijing R&D Center expands its overall presence in China and complements EMC’s Shanghai R&D Center that opened in June 2006. The Shanghai R&D center, which evolved into an EMC Center of Excellence (COE) in January 2007, has grown rapidly since it opened and today employs more than 250 employees.

EMC’s Centers of Excellence in China are part of EMC’s network of R&D centers around the world, including centers located in Russia, Ireland, Israel, India and the United States. These centers are a core element of EMC’s Innovation Network, which along with researchers from universities around the world, form a global, collaborative community that drives the exploration, discovery and application of new technologies that will shape the future of information infrastructure.

The new center in Beijing, located in Zhong Guan Cun, known as the Silicon Valley of China, will house over 200 engineers and concentrate on the company’s core technologies including information storage, virtualization, security, resource management and content management and archiving. The center will also include EMC Research China, the first EMC research lab to be established outside of the United States.

“The Asia Pacific & Japan region now includes 4,700 EMC employees, which reflects the talented global workforce that EMC is leveraging to better serve customers and partners around the world,” said Steven Leonard, President of EMC Asia Pacific and Japan.