Structured cabling to become Rs 1,000 crore market

In the wake of growing need of IT-enabled services across all verticals,
structured cabling has become a key to every infrastructure and is all set to
grow at a phenomenal rate. Nearly 40 percent of its total market is expected to
be driven by the datacenters. According to IDC's research, the industry is
expected to grow at a CAGR of around 20 percent over a period of the next few
years. The SMBs and residential and commercial complexes are fast becoming the
key drivers for its growth. If the industry pundits are to be believed, the
structured cabling market in India, will turn out to be around Rs 1,000 crore
industry by the end of 2010. Copper cables constitute of around 70 percent of
the structured cabling business in India, while fiber has still a long way to
go.

Trends

With the rise in IT/ITeS sector, that includes telecom as well as
datacenter, the trend is encouraging for those who are into the structured
cabling business. Speaking to the DQ Channels, Gaurav Ahluwalia, MD, R&M India
said that fiber optics are getting acceptance due to its pre-polished
connectors, pre-terminated fibers and MPO fiber plug-and-play connection
systems. Fiber optics also aids in easy installation and reduces the risk of
error.

KK Shetty, Director, Tyco Electronics Corporation said that there is a shift
toward converged networks and fiber, which would also play a significant role in
converged technologies. "We see this trend in new township networks where
enterprise as well as telecom networks are getting intertwined to offer the best
converged network solutions to the end-customers. Apart from that, datacenter
implementations have gathered huge momentum and the trend is likely to scale up
even more in the next few years with new government infrastructures and IT
projects getting implemented," said Shetty.

Subhasini Prabhakar, CTM, Dax Networks said that 'Fiber to the home' (FTTH)
is one of the major drivers of structured cabling. According to her, this would
change the way in which residential and commercial buildings are wired with
high-speed connectivity to support voice, data and video. "Tool-less design,
datacenter cabling, field crimpable connectors for FTTH solutions, intelligent
cabling and 10G over copper are the current trends in its adoption," said
Prabhakar. "Installers do not have mental block on fiber termination techniques,
and most of the installers have proper tools and equipments to do the
termination accurately with minimal loss," she added.

Prasanna Kumar, Regional Director-India and SAARC, Leviton said "10G cabling
is used for high-performance computing clusters, datacenters, scaled up and
consolidated servers, real-time video streaming on Web servers, workgroups
involved in data-intensive applications, collaborative activities, and PACS in
the healthcare context," he said. According to Kumar, India has seen a fair
amount of adoption of 10G technology, both in corporate enterprise and the
government sector, and the most significant usage is in the LAN aggregation. "We
estimate the market to grow by about 15 percent in 2010. Also, the newer
technologies like cloud computing are fast emerging within the industry and
would accelerate the growth," said Kumar.

"Structured cabling has witnessed several changes and is becoming an
important deliverable in IT investment. CIO's are looking at installing the
latest technologies like the 40 Gig solutions on copper and 100 Gig solutions on
fiber. Such technologies ensure that the RoI of the enterprise is protected,"
said DS Nagendra, GM-LAN, Nexans.

Solutions

"The fiber solutions that are available, include OM2, OM3, OM4 for
multi-mode and OS1 and OS2 for single mode," said Ahluwalia. The security
solutions combined with intelligent systems reduce downtime, and have detective
controls. These features were first introduced in copper cabling solutions, and
today it is also available in optic fiber solutions. 'Fiber to the home'
Solutions are targeted at large and medium enterprises. It allows system and
network integrators to extend fiber optic broadband all the way to the last
access point," he added.

"Office network solutions today range from Cat 5 and Cat 5e to Cat 7a in
copper and OM1 to OM4 in fiber; this spectrum addresses low bandwidth to 10G
networks. For high speed, high bandwidth networks especially datacenter and
disaster recovery centers or 10G applications, we find Cat 6a STP gaining
momentum because of the advantages they have over 10G UTP. Fiber installations
have also gone up but their use is mainly limited to backbone cabling," said
Shetty. "Fiber cabling is only a little more expensive than copper cabling
systems, the cost of active components for fiber networks makes the entire
network extremely expensive," he added. Shetty further said, "Knowledge centers,
BPOs, software development centers with data centric environments require
technologies that allow IT managers to track MACs in real-time while offering
security, better asset management and RoI; the intelligent infrastructure
management system offers all these. In addition, high density connectivity
management systems that include factory terminated plug-and-play connectivity
products like MPO, MPOptimate and MRJ21 and AMP Sigma Link cabling systems,
allow faster installation and MACs; high-density cabling platforms are also in
vogue as with increased port density these also offer, smaller datacenter, real
estate footprint and allow for better utilization for real estate."

"Nowadays, structured cabling technologies are designed to cater to all the
demands of a typical datacenter. The 10G solutions that are available on both
twisted pair (Cat 6a-shielded and unshielded) and fiber are effective for
bandwidth hungry applications. While twisted pair is the norm in most Indian
network infrastructures, technologically fiber is a more superior solution and
today's datacenters adopt both twisted pair and fiber, singly or in combination
to derive most effective solutions for their needs," said Prabhakar. "10G over
copper, use of newer single mode fiber in LAN, products and technologies
suitable for FTTH, entire range of products specifically designed for data
centre applications, then there are hybrid products for residential
applications," she further added.

"There are end-to-end structured connectivity solutions including all
solutions like Cat 5e, Cat 6 and Cat 6a in copper solutions, OM3 and OM4
solutions in fiber, cable management solutions, intelligent PDUs, Wireless and
POE, besides high performance for datacenter solutions," said Kumar. "Moreover,
the solutions extend to homes, lighting, wireless and power," he added. "All
types of cabling prevalent in India, such as UTP and STP on copper and single
mode and multimode, are available on fiber. Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 6a and Cat 7 are
the kinds of prevalent solutions," said Nagendra.

Challenges

"Today, fiber optic 10GB solutions are more prevalent than copper. One
reason is simply because the supporting active component market is more mature
with fiber. The 10GBA SE-T standard was released in 2006 and we started seeing
active components with this technology integrated in late 2008. As this market
grows and prices fall, we will see more copper installed to support 10GbE
applications. Cost is a factor, but also flexibility, overall robustness and
familiarity play a role," said Ahluwalia.

"With the new trends in Copper, the installation has become more difficult
and stringent with new parameters which have made field testing more complex
such as equal-level far-end crosstalk (ELFEXT), Powersum equal-level far-end
crosstalk and Alien Crosstalk, for which we need highly skilled installers who
can actually analyze these parameters especially when there is an issue," said
KK Shetty. "For Cat 6 (1G) & 10G, quality of the installation becomes more
critical where the engineers must use the best of the tools available in the
industry which can deliver quality terminations, since any termination which is
not up to the standard can downgrade the quality of the network and can render
the best of the active devices useless. Apart from the terminations of the
jacks, further care is required with reference to the cable pull tension and
bend radius maintenance, which is one of the critical parts that affect the
overall performance of the cabling system," he added. According to Shetty, this
is important especially for 10G on UTP system, because of the Alien

Crosstalk issue which is a critical factor and cannot be canceled by DSP
technology; and can only be mitigated by a shield, space or glass. "10G Ethernet
is possible over single-mode and multi-mode fiber, and the Cat 7 STP solution.
Since Cat 7 STP is a fully-shielded solution, its installation is difficult than
a UTP solution. The difficulties that exist in installation of Cat 7 lead to the
development of 10G Ethernet over UTP," Prabhakar said. "Factors influencing
adoption of 10G solutions are technologies like Power over Ethernet, Voice over
IP, Security over IP etc. In fact, 10G adoption is growing at a rate of 10 to 15
percent per year due to already published standards by IEEE and TIA. Demanding
users, new applications and lower prices drove higher demand for Gigabit
Ethernet and will soon make the 10G Ethernet a necessity in the enterprise
backbone network. This will only increase further adoption of 10G into the
horizontal installations," said Prasanna Kumar. According to Nagendra of Nexans,
Cat-6A/10GE installations need more precision installation technique to derive
the optimum performance of the cabling. "One needs to ensure minimum separation
distances from electrical cabling, minimum sheath removal, and minimum pair
untwist at the termination end and also proper bundling of the cables. This will
be more stringent for UTP solutions as it can be prone to EMI very easily.
Shielded cables can protect from EMI and crosstalk from one cable to the other
in a much better way," he said.

Pain Points

Ahluwalia believes that the aggressive price war waged between companies to win
large projects have today, removed the focus from delivering quality product and
solutions to customers. "Structured cabling constitutes of just about five
percent of the total cost of the network infrastructure. While earlier most
enterprises did not give much importance to structured cabling, now with
increase in bandwidth intensive application coupled with demands for higher
network uptime, price has come into play in most networks with performance
taking precedence," said Shetty. "The price trend varies from vendor to vendor
as per the current raw materials, and results in cost fluctuation. At Dax, we
design solutions as per customer requirements, and offer them the best with
affordable price compared to our competitors' products and solutions. The
fluctuating global copper prices have not had a significant effect on the
pricing structure. Since cabling is a part of the entire IT infrastructure
spends, such price differences do not have any major impact on the adoption of
structured cabling solutions," said Prabhakar. Price is a very important
criterion in a customer's decision making process, but majority of customers
look for real value for money. While they want nothing but the very best, they
also want the solutions to be affordable," said Kumar. "Today with cabling we
see a lot more issues with reference to cabling, as the copper price is
oscillating both ways. Apart from that, currency is also fluctuating," said
Nagendra. "The distributors and the SIs understand the changing scenario and we
are explaining the same to the end users which is being understood by the
decision makers of the enterprise," he added.

Adoption

According to Ahluwalia, the adoption is boosting up with investments made by
the government sector. "The rise in datacenters has scaled up growth of the
structured cabling industry; however, trends indicate that there are several
other factors that would contribute to its adoption in the years to come. These
are growth infrastructure projects both private and public, government
enterprises, development of new townships, SEZ projects, consolidation and
growth in manufacturing, expansion in BFSI and telecom networks," Shetty said. "SMBs
are aware of the critical nature of structured cabling and would even adopt it.
But it is important to note that it is not the cost of SCS network that is the
road block but the cost of the entire IT infrastructure. While it is easier for
large enterprises to absorb IT costs, the same is a challenge for SMBs. With
cloud computing gaining momentum, we foresee SMB business picking up as this
would allow them to deploy simple computer networks without the headaches
associated with large IT infrastructure in terms of managing and maintenance,"
Shetty further added.

"The prolific area where structured cabling is expanding horizontally is
datacenters. This new niche market is fast developing and can provide renewed
growth for structured cabling system suppliers. Datacenter cabling is a new
developing growth market for both the fiber and the copper SCS worldwide," said
Prabhakar. According to her, structured cabling continues to be a vital link
connecting the components of IT infrastructure. IT infrastructure connectivity
has come a long way from wired copper lines and fiber lines to wireless
technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMax etc. However, despite the advent of these
wireless technologies, cabling, especially structured cabling continues to be
the backbone of IT infrastructure. "The penetration and education is the key
here in addressing the SMB segment. Vendors need to constantly innovate new
ideas to make the solutions interesting and relevant to this segment. While
there has been a significant growth in this segment over the years, there is
still huge potential," said Kumar. Nagendra said that, the adoption of
structured cabling in the SMBs is high.

The Roadmap

"Manufacturing segment has also contributed to a large portion of our
business and we continue to see investments from this sector in the future as
well," said Ahluwalia. Shetty believes that, the industry would grow in tandem
with commercial expansions in B, C and D-class cities in India which are gearing
up to set-up IT infrastructures. Cloud computing would result in more and more
Internet datacenters that require specialized structured cabling technologies.
"The key verticals would be telecom, manufacturing, ITeS, aviation and PSUs.
From an applications perspective, it is clearly the datacenter requirements for
which India is seen to have a larger potential compared to rest of the world,"
said Kumar. The cabling industry is on a road of revival as IT investments are
picking up.

Muntazir Abbas

muntazira@cybermedia.co.in