RAMCO SYSTEMS: Making a steady growth

Ramco Systems' Secure Converged Networking (SCN) division had registered
only a modest growth of 17% over the previous fiscal. But this division per se
has contributed nearly 31% to the company's total turnover of Rs 220 crore.
SCN is a key business unit of Ramco, focusing on turnkey solutions in network
integration, security, contact center and enterprise services.

In 2004-05, the company made a turnover of Rs 68 crore, as against the
previous year revenue of Rs 58 crore. The company however posted a reasonable
growth in services, which grossed Rs 9 crore. It grew by 32% here, while last
year, the revenue from services was just Rs 7 crore.

As in the previous fiscal, Ramco was heavily dependant on Nortel's
products/services in 2004-05 too, which contributed more than 70% to the SCN
division turnover. The company however added another leading brand-Juniper
Networks, to its portfolio over the last year. This is being done with a
conscious decision of not depending too much on Nortel and offer choice to its
customers. Simultaneously, Ramco is quite comfortable carrying Nortel products
with it in the market as it offers exclusivity for them in the market.

Storage is the new area where the company ventured into with Intransa IP SAN
solutions. Basically, the company decided to go for IP SAN in storage, since it
had specialized in IP infrastructure solutions such as WAN and MAN. In the call
center space, the company added a new brand called SER for outbound solutions.

Some major projects executed over the last year were information security
solution for Tata Teleservices and Hutch, call center infrastructure solution
for Aegis (earlier known as Swift Response), data networking solution for Delhi
Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and Indian Bank. DMRC project was claimed to be
more challenging to the company as it was an on-stream implementation.

The company also got aggressive in the security space and its security
consulting practices, which was started about two years back, paid off well.
Ramco provided security consulting to many companies, right from framing the
policy to vulnerability test to third party auditing and BS779 certification.

The company is focused more on large enterprises. Last year, the company
reopened its Kolkata office, while appointing resident engineers in Chandigarh
and Baroda. Now, it has direct presence in six locations across the country.

IT and ITeS continue to be the major segments in business, contributing 20%
each in the total turnover, while telco and BFSI share 30% equally. The
remaining comes from other verticals.