Dell has announced plans to open the Dell Silicon Valley Research and Development Center, a new facility that will support Dell’s strategic expansion of solutions capabilities, including the areas of networking design and development, storage development and cloud computing. The new site complements Dell’s Israel Research and Development Center, announced last month in Ra’anana. Dell believes that with recruitment of additional staff, its workforce at the Silicon Valley site will grow to more than 1,500 team members over the next five years.

The new facility will allow Dell to consolidate much of its current Northern California operations in phases over the next several quarters. It will combine the operations of several area companies Dell has acquired, including Zing (Sunnyvale), Ocarina (San Jose), Scalent (Palo Alto), and Everdream (Fremont) into approximately 240,000 square feet of leased space in two adjacent buildings on Great America Parkway in Santa Clara. The campus will also include customer solutions and briefing centers, a cafeteria, and fitness center.

“This will be a first-class facility that our current team members will enjoy and find to be an invigorating atmosphere,” said Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Dell Enterprise Solutions Group. “We also want it to attract new and vital talent to help create industry-leading solutions for Dell’s customers. Silicon Valley is a center of technological innovation and we are looking to tap the great talent pool here.”

Dell is making significant investments to deliver technology solutions for its customers. In addition to strategic acquisitions, Dell expects to hire several hundred new team members in engineering, sales and marketing, and services jobs at the Dell Silicon Valley R&D Center.

Occupancy will begin in the second half of the year. Dell expects approximately 700 team members to be working there by the end of the year. Dell team members will move to the site in phases over the next two years. Ultimately, Dell projects 1,500 team members will be working in the Center within five years.