Cisco CEO John Chambers says he wants to add more than 5,500 new jobs at the Research Triangle Park, which would give Cisco 10,000 employees at what Chambers called its East Coast headquarters. Also coming to RTP: a $100 million data center/development hub for strategic technologies.From a newsobserver.com article about Chambers visiting RTP for the 15th anniversary of Cisco's facility there:

In an interview Thursday, Chambers called the RTP site Cisco's East Coast headquarters, and said the global technology company has not abandoned its original growth aspirations in the area. He wouldn't provide a timeline for when it might happen but said the company is poised to grow.

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"We usually, over time, get to our plans," Chambers said in an interview in his suite at the downtown Marriott City Center. "Clearly we have the capacity for twice the people here. It could be one of our fastest-growing sites in the United States," he added. "The data center is the first move."

At its peak, Cisco's RTP facility employed 4,500 workers, and currently has about 4,300 workers, the article said. The $100 million data-center project is expected to open next year and "will showcase the company's advances in cloud computing, virtualization and other technologies," the newsobserver.com article said, adding that Cisco's RTP team handles sales and customer services, technology development and data services for the public sector.

For Chambers, the RTP expansion is a strategic element of the company's plans to continue growing at 10% annually a target that most companies would find impossible during the global economic downturn. But as Chambers told the newsobserver.com:

"We've been the most aggressive we've ever been over the last two years."