Connectivity: A Pipeline Away

Circa 1996, Ramesh, a fresh graduate, tries to float his resume from a
browsing centre for more than an hour and pained by the bandwidth speed, he
quits trying and walks to the company directly. Cut to 2008, seventh grade
students in National Government High School are listening to the
video-con­ferencing seminar on the effects of gravity.

The connectivity was there now and then. However, what mattered was the
bandwidth and its benefits. From the traditional dial-up environment, there was
a transition in the connectivity space with the emergence of broadband, though
at a slow pace. Now the average bandwidth offered through broadband is 256Kbps
and varies according to the demand to up to 11Mbps speed.

Primarily, the demand for bandwidth started coming in with the increased
necessity for connectivity in organizations for both internal and external
communications. Keeping this in mind, Internet service providers (SPs) started
offering broadband services with competitive edge, which eventually benefit the
end-customers. As per IDC, the number of broadband sub­scribers in India is
expected to grow to 9,66,000 subscribers

by 2011, which is a CAGR of 156.8 percent for the period starting 2006.

Communication played a vital role in pivoting the connectivity scenario, as
only the need for uninterrupted com­muni­cation made broadband a reality from
hype. As its adoption increased, broadband solutions became affordable, further
propelling its acceptance. This drop in broadband price and increasing adoption
set the ball rolling for taking high bandwidth communication to new heights.

Solutions that empowered communication with the effec­tive utilization of
broadband and other means of connectivity are generally termed as broadband
connectivity solutions. The growth of organizations and their need for constant
connec­tivity has propelled the emergence of communication solutions like
e-mail, messenger, unified communications (UC), IP-based telephony encom­passing
voice, video, virtual private networks (VPNs), residential and business
voice-over-IP services, and entertain­ment services such as digital video or
streaming media, bandwidth on demand. Major vendors like Cisco, Avaya Global
Connect, D-Link, Nortel, Alcatel Lucent, Airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL),
Reliance, etc too got involved in introducing more solutions which could ride on
this connectivity wave.

Ample solutions

The drop in connectivity costs has actually fuelled the growth of cost
effective communication solutions based on broadband and other connectivity
mediums. Most major service providers like Airtel, Sify, BSNL or Reliance are
offering services like MPLS, IP VPN, IP telephony, IP conferencing, security,
managed services, ASP services, bandwidth on demand,

co-location and hosting services.

Since vendors and service providers have begun offering a wide range of
solutions, enterprises are eying these solutions to avail an effective
communication. With a plethora of solution options pouring in, there are lots of
options for decision makers in enterprises to look in on the cost effective
communication angle. This shows that connectivity solu­tions provide a good
opportunity for solution providers (SPs), giving them yet another source of
revenue.

Not only has there been a constant rise in the demand for broadband, the
industry is witnessing evolution of various private networks and
band­width-intensive applications such as video-conferencing and
video-on-demand. According to Chandan Mendiratta, Country Manager-System
Engineering-Service Provider, India and SAARC, Cisco the adoption of broadband
services and solutions on a mass scale is important for India.

“These services can reduce the barriers of remote locations and low physical
service availability in the country. A variety of applications are expected to
benefit from the comprehensive communication capability of broadband to provide
a wide range of services,” he said.

These services could be offered to various verticals inclu­­ding
telemedicine, e-gover­nance, distance education learning, entertainment,
micro-finance, agriculture and rural occupation, e-commerce, tourism,
information gathering, small business assistance, national security, public
safety and tele-working. He feels that with the growth of the Indian economy,
there is an increase in the enterprise market for both voice and data
connectivity.

“The Indian enterprise market (both for telco and non-telco services,
according to FICCI-Telecom report 2007, was estimated at about $2.4 billion in
FY '06 and is expected to growth at about 25 percent annually to touch about $6
billion by FY '10.

Growth in this segment is primarily being led by the demand for connectivity
from IT, ITeS, government and the financial service segments,” opined Mendiratta.
For the next three to five years, Avaya Global Connect foresees a 25 percent YoY
growth in the customer uptake on the broadband/communication solutions like IP
telephony and unified com­muni­cation solutions, which are globally considered
to be increasing the productivity and profitability.

According to Vivek Porwal, BU Head-Unified Communi­cations, Avaya Global
Connect, “The growth of these broadband, communication solutions would be coming
from collaboration and business communication mobility tools. These could be
tools that emulate conference rooms in virtual space. The end-users could see
these as multi-party conference call capabilities, desktop video-conferencing,
web-conferencing, and live and recorded voice/video/data streaming
capa­bilities,” he averred. He mentioned that the mobility tools could be made
portable and could be accessed from any point. “Like the One-X unified access
solution offered by

Avaya, where the office desk communication environment is made portable and
accessible from a home environment or the mobile phone or even through the
browser, there would be more solutions offered in collaboration and business
communication mobility tools space,” Porwal added. He also said that the
mobility capability would get enhanced further with speech recognition
technologies offering services similar to that of a personal assistant.

What is driving the uptake?

It is an established fact that demand drives growth. Similarly, a
significant driver in the growth of broadband or communication solutions is the
increasing demand for bandwidth intensive applications including inter-office
business applications and need for converged solutions. With more enhanced
connec­tivity being offered by SPs, more solutions are being introduced to
enable users to avail the benefits of these services.

S Natarajan, VP-R&S Business Development and Planning, DLink India, feels
that features like mobility, unified communication along with convenience and
cost savings are increasing the uptake of the communication solutions. Porwal
opined that there are a couple of factors that are driving the uptake of
communication solutions. He said, “First of all, the need to enhance ease of use
across complex and multiple modes of communications is driving the uptake. This
coupled with the need to be quick, efficient and effective in responding to
customers is the key factor in the increased uptake of these solutions.
Secondly, the movement towards Green IT would see a strong push towards adoption
of collaboration tools.”

While Porwal opts for ease of communication, Mendiratta of Cisco attributed
the reason for rising demand to customers. He feels that empowered consumers are
increasingly demanding to have a say in the products and services they purchase,
and are sharing their views, perspectives, personal experiences and product
reviews through various social networking platforms. “In such a milieu, SPs are
faced with the challenge of creating new ways of interacting with consu­mers to
increase sales and productivity, which requires innovative offerings in the
broadband space,” said Mendiratta. The other driver according to him is the
Government of India, which needs to sustain India's economic development and
respond to the market demand to bridge the digital divide.

The drop in broadband price and increasing adoption set the ball rolling for taking high bandwidth communication to new heights

Emerging solutions

Ninety nine percent of vendors and SPs feel that IP-based bandwidth intense
applications like unified communications, voice over IP, video over IP, IP
telephony, VoIP, managed Internet gateway, managed router and managed LAN,
collaboration tools, mobility led applications are the key communication
solutions that enterprises today are looking for. IPTV, DTH, telepresence, FMC
are a few that are expected to be popular in the near future. With the
advancement of technology, customers are becoming more aware, and new forms of
services and features are being created to address their needs. Mendiratta said,
“Cisco offers expertise that can help SPs to optimize their business. With this
expertise and backing, Cisco is more than placed to cater to the trends that
will steer the SP market forward in the near future with the solutions.”

The solutions includes data growth driving network architec­tures;
integration of Web 2.0-based applications with mobility; IPTV, VoIP, WiMax for
last mile broadband access with mobility and quad play services; hosted
application services; managed enterprise services; unified communication in
enterprises; and collaboration, virtualization of IT resources, especially in
data centers.

Unified communications is another area, which most vendors highly bet on. As
a leading provider in unified communications solution, Cisco and Avaya Global
Connect closely compete with each other and provide exuberant solutions to their
customers. According to Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager-Unified
Communi­cations, Cisco India and SAARC, “Unified communications aim to bring
about a sea change in the way businesses communicate and collaborate. “As the
boundaries defining office workstation, home, etc, are blurring, communication
cannot be restricted to desktops only. For effective collaboration anytime,
anywhere independent of the devices used, Cisco is evangelizing the concept of
'Unified Workspace',” Zia claimed.

Scope for SI/SP

Porwal of Avaya feels that there are immense scopes for the SPs in the
communication solutions space. “Unified communication with integrated play
across collaboration and communi­cation tools both real time and non-real time
tools like e-mail, IM and web-streaming applica­tions, have opened a significant
opportunity for SIs to provide customized solutions for environments needing
expertise in integrated environments,”

he claimed. He informed further that there is another major area opening up for
system integration and business consulting experts, where the business processes
are capable of being integrated into com­munication environments-CEBP at Avaya.
Even Natarajan supported Porwal's thought on SIs role in unified communi­cation.
“IP telephony needs good level of integration expertise. SIs/SPs have the
greatest opportunity to add value in this domain. Introduction of new solutions
such as OCS from Microsoft increases these opportunities,” opined Natarajan.

Kannan, Director-Product Management, SupportSoft quipped that SIs have a
special role to play in the broadband solutions arena. “ In addition to the
hardware, software and services aspects of core delivery of broadband services
is one area that plays an interesting role in the overall adoption, utilization
and sustenance of broadband solutions, and effective installation and customer
support. In this regard, SIs can leverage support automation solutions as a part
of their overall solution to the broadband market to go beyond delivery of base
broadband into improved customer acquisition, retention and experience,” opined
Kannan.

Beyond broadband

Today, all major SPs have started deploying next-generation networks to
deliver enhanced and converged broadband applications in the future. There is
already a shift happening from conventional point-to-point leased lines towards
MPLS networks and managed services as these offer better control and network
efficiency to enterprises. Enterprise networks are moving away from traditional
TDM-based private CUG network to MPLS-based IP VPN CUG network. Any enterprise
network can grow by just patching up their new central/regional/branch offices
and agents to an MPLS SP cloud with a local loop WiMax, as the next big thing in
broadband services.

With so many services in the pipeline, the enterprises will look at richer
applications with the increase in bandwidth. Due to this, vendors and SPs will
further look at offering more services and solutions for their customers, which
will again set off a chain reaction.

NR SETHURAMAN


(sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in)