The Indian subsidiary of German business software solutions provider SAP AG will hire 2,000 engineers in the next 18 months to double its staff strength to about 4,000.

"We are ramping up the operations of SAP Labs India at an investment of euro 20 million (Rs.1 billion) as part of our third phase of expansion," SAP AG executive board member Shai Agassi told reporters here Monday.

"The expansion includes doubling the headcount to 4,000 engineers by 2006," he added.

The German IT major has already invested euro 20 million in the first two phases of setting up and scaling SAP Labs India. This is SAP's largest development facility outside Germany and its fourth such globally.

"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 rates among the top eight strategic markets for us globally," added Agassi.

As part of its blueprint for a business-driven approach to services-oriented architecture (SOA), the subsidiary has involved the Indian developer community and partners in adopting its NetWeaver platform and the Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA).

"The Indian developers had contributed substantially to the global success of the NetWeaver, the first appli-structure platform for enterprises across the verticals. The SAP Labs India team is one of our most important development teams for NetWeaver worldwide," Agassi stated.

To help its Indian vendors design the SOA for global corporations, SAP has opened its first NetWeaver Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the Bangalore campus. A global team of experts will help its partners develop innovative solutions for their enterprise customers on the NetWeaver platform.

"India is at the forefront of setting benchmarks for the industry with world-class IT development. Its impressive talent pool is marching ahead in identifying newer opportunities," said Agassi.