California-based Informatica Corp, a leading worldwide provider of data integration and business analytics software, on Thursday opened a research and development lab in Bangalore.

The lab, which would staff up to 60 people in the first year, would focus on research and development across Informatica's entire family of software products for data integration, data warehousing and business intelligence.

Gaurav Dhillon, president and chief executive officer of Informatica, said the centre here was of strategic importance to its global operations and would develop critical components that would further enhance its entire suite of integration and analytics software.

Informatica spent $48 million on research annually, 10 per cent of which would now be through the centre here by 2004, Dhillon said.

Dhillon said Informatica would further expand its relationship with India's leading system integrators - Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro Technologies.