BANGALORE and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- NextHop Technologies® Inc., the definitive source for network software solutions, today announced that it has strengthened its worldwide presence by opening an office in Bangalore, India. The new office, headed by director Sampath Napoleon, will house a team of development, quality assurance (QA) and technical support staff working as a team with NextHop’s three other development facilities, as well as handling local business opportunities.

“We are tremendously excited about opening an office in Bangalore. We are aggressively building a team in India that will be able to take advantage of the wonderful skills and resources that are available there, the lower costs, and the opportunity to further expand our Asian reach,” said Ed Cluss, president and CEO of NextHop™. “Sampath brings relevant experience and seasoned leadership skills and we welcome him as a strategic addition to the NextHop team.”

Mr. Napoleon joins NextHop from Airespace, a wireless networking company recently acquired by Cisco Systems, where he was country manager. Prior to that, he was general manager for Technical Product Management (TPM) at Lucent Technologies, helping establish the TPM practice in India. Mr. Napoleon also managed and led Texas Instruments’ worldwide Software Platform Technology Center (SPTC) Architecture Group; was chief architect at Sonim, leading independent provider of VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) messaging platforms, and held several managerial and technical positions at Axes Technologies, providing software development services for Alcatel USA. He started his career in C-DOT. Mr. Napolean holds a bachelor of engineering from Regional Engineering College, Trichy (Madras University) and a master of science in electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

NextHop Technologies Inc.