The Indian structured cabling industry has been on a growth phase for the
past few years. From the 38 percent growth it achieved in FY 2006-07, the
industry has managed to grow by 41.8 percent during FY 2007-08. According to
IDC's India Structured Cabling Solutions (SCS) Market Study, mid-CY 2008
release, SCS shipments in the country, comprising copper and fiber cabling
solutions, look all set to cross the Rs 1,000 crore mark in CY 2008. The
increasing copper price hasn't deterred the overall industry's growth, as amidst
the copper price hitting the roof, the SCS industry was able to register an
impressive growth during last year and the momentum is continuing.
According to KK Shetty, Director-Sales, India, SAARC, Tyco Electronics, the
structured cabling industry is growing at a pace of 15 percent YoY. “The growth
will be a continuous one and it may even grow more than 20-25 percent at times.
But still the market for structured cabling is at a very nascent stage and we
still have a huge opportunity to tap this market,” Shetty said. He also claimed
that the total SCS market is worth Rs 1,100-1,200 crore and in eight years time
the market would multiply to touch Rs 5,000-6,000 crore.
Growth drivers
Government and hospitality industry are the new areas where structured
cabling industry is seeing fresh opporÂtunities, with e-governance projects and
healthcare getting prominence across the globe, especially in India. The data
center industry has become the heart of every operation, hence it is the topic
of much discusÂsion.
According to Surjyadeb Goswami, Manager-CommuniÂcations Research, IDC India,
“The India data center cabling market is expected to have a 47.7 percent CAGR
over the five-year forecast period from 2008-13, with the contribution of data
center cabling expected to grow from 17 percent in 2008 to over 46 percent in
2013.”
Embracing challenges |
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Company | Challenge | Solution |
Milind Tamhane VP-Manufacturing D-Link India |
|
Digi-Link has certified Cabling Engineer courses, offered to select SIs, a week long dedicated course on best practices, technologies and hands-on training conducted at its manufacturing setup. It is termed as DCCE (Digi-Link Certified Cabling Engineers). In addition there are courses to update knowledge levels for earlier qualified DCCEs and there are courses for IT teams from corporate customers, this includes constant inflow of personnel from Core of Signal, Indian Army. |
Sudha Jagadish COO, Dax Networks |
|
Dax has brand awareness in the industry/market. Total end-to-end active and passive solutions is a great advantage for channel partners and end users, as Dax is the one-point contact for their active and passive solutions/support. |
Dinakaran, Country Manager, Apsis Technologies |
|
Highly skilled trainers impart training specifically related to key areas where there is general tendency for errors in implementation. Standard procedure for designing, planning |
KK Shetty, Director-Sales, India, SAARC, Tyco Electronics |
|
Launched new automated tools. Training for top SIs once in six months apart from providing certification to over thousands of SIs on a regular basis. |
The other new areas that are fuelling the growth of the structured cabling
industry are building management systems, residential flats, satellite colonies
and educational institutions. Pawan Kumar, Head-Marketing and Communications of
Bangalore-based structured cabling manufacturer, Apsis Technologies feels that
the non-IT segments like retail, pharma and financial services are the few new
verticals that have started to deploy structured cabling solutions.
Vendors in the space
Tyco Electronics' AMP NetConÂnect remains the market leader in the SCS space
with revenue of Rs 299.5 crore followed by Systimax CommScope with revenue of Rs
221 crore; D-Link with Rs 180 crore; Molex with Rs 98 crore and Reichle and De-Massari
(R&M) with Rs 55 crore. There are other companies like ADC Krone, Panduit,
Sterlite Technologies, CDT Belden, Dax Networks and Apsis Technologies, who have
products of all ranges in the SCS space.
Evolution of SCS
The industry has moved towards Cat 6 range of solutions. With constant
innovations and R&D, many companies have started offering Cat 6E, the 10Gigabit
Ethernet solution for bandwidth hungry applications.
Among all these solutions Cat 6 rules the roost. According to IDC figures on
SCS market, Cat 6 cable segment is expected to clock a CAGR of around 22
percent, growing from Rs 365 crore in 2008 to Rs 977 crore in 2013. Cat 6 is
expected to thus remain the biggest market segment throÂughÂÂout the five-year
forecast period. “Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) still has the highest potential
for structured cabling solutions. The bandwidth available today is up to 625MHz,
capable of driving up to 10Gbps. The switches are yet to catch up with this sort
of data rates. At least for the next five to six years, I do not see any threat
for UTP,” said Rajesh Shenoy, Business Head, ES-South Asia, Belden.
The Cat 6 solution remains the most preferred among Indian enterprises.
Voice&Data estimates suggest that around 70 percent of the deployments in the
structured cabling industry are dominated by Cat 6 followed by Cat 5E with 25
percent deployments, while Cat 6A deployments are still at a nascent stage.
Sudha Jagadish, COO, Dax Networks feels that the industry has started to
focus more on Cat 6 range of solutions. “The current market is focusing more on
Cat 6 and Cat 6A. The current application requires more bandwidth, secured
connectivity and high-speed data rate. To meet customer requirements on
performance, Cat 6 is the soluÂtion, which satisfies the customers demand with
zero bit error free performances and 100 percent assured performance,” she said.
A major transition is happening in the structured cabling industry, where most
companies are moving from Cat 5, 5E to Cat 6 solutions due to its ratification
by the TelecomÂmunications Industry AssociaÂtion (TIA) and other bodies.
Limitations in UTP
Even though large scale of deployments are happening in the Cat 6 front,
there are few limitations due to its unshielded nature. The industry has slowly
started feeling the need for going for shielded copper over unshielded, feels
Shetty. “UTP has its own limitations. In UTP the installation quality has to be
to the best and the margins are also very less there. However, in shielded even
if there are no proper installations, we have so much headroom that can take
care of it. Even we have started recommending shielded soluÂtions, as there
won't be any wastage in bandwidth due to improper installation,” he said. Tyco
is recommending 10G-shielded solutions for their customers for a perfect
lifetime of the SCS and bandwidth requirements.
Shenoy of Belden too felt that the industry has started to feel the need for
Cat 6A solutions. “Industry has moved beyond Cat 6. The new cabling standard of
Cat 6A is making a big entry, with lots of clients showing interest. This new
standard is capable of driving 10Gbps to desktops making the industry
revolutionized. Belden, with its patented technologies is already making waves
in the developed markets,” Shenoy claimed. Dinakaran, Country Manager-AamberNet
Range of Networking Products, Apsis Technologies, strongly believes that
enterprises of any range must have default technologies like 10GE for competing
in the global market. “Enterprises, medium or large, should have the latest
technologies at least at the data center level, to be more competitive.
Enterprises planÂning or working on ERP/CRM which are bandwidth hungry
applications, should go with Cat 6E technologies as this can support higher
bandwidth with low loss margins,” he averred.
Need for intelligent cabling
Every vendor in the structured cabling arena feels that the Indian
enterprises are feeling the need for the intelligent cabling solutions,
predominantly in the data center space. “We have done as much as 50 data center
instaÂÂllaÂtions in the past one-year and in most of the data centers we have
enabled intelligent cabling, as only in the data center the customers feel the
value of intelligent cabling solutions. The need for intelligent cabling
solutions is predominantly felt among data centers. If something goes wrong then
they get an SMS or e-mail alert. From the back-up point and the security point,
intelligent cabling is the only solution for the data center operations,” Shetty
informed.
Role of SIs
System integrators (SIs) play a vital role in deploying SCS. The vendors
feel that the perfectly integrated cabling solutions would be able to exist for
a maximum of 25 years. Shetty of Tyco Electronics said that 70 percent of the
problems that exist in the structured cabling arena are pertaining to the
networking errors. In order to solve these issues, Tyco is conducting a
seven-day certification program for system integrators every two months at its
centers in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi on how to design, install and
certify the network. “Even though we train thousands of SIs, we still feel the
necessity to have more certified SIs to tap the huge potential existing in this
space,” Shetty informed.
Milind Tamhane, VP-Manufacturing, D-Link India said that the SIs need to
adhere to certain installation practices for providing best of integration to
their customers. “Commercial complexes are governed by two standards-EIA/TIA
568-B.2 and ISO/IEC 11080, however in applications that ask for residential
places the standards are EIA/TIA 570-B-2004. Similarly for data center
applications the dedicated standards are TIA-942. And there are standards for
fire stopping, grounding and even labeling,” he informed.
NR Sethuraman
sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in