At the recently concluded Cisco India Summit 2014 , the company announced partnership with ITL to support ‘Digital India’ initiative. The company also launched new networking products to contribute to the ‘Make in India’ project
Centred around the theme ‘Powering The Digital Economy’, the second annual edition of Cisco India Summit 2014 was held in Bangalore recently. The event highlighted Ciscos’s initiative for playing a bigger role in the developmental programmes like the ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’.
As India is making many decisive moves for empowering its population by making the country a digital economy, Cisco’s top leadership is exploring the possibility of deploying its cutting edge technology in various areas.
Digital India
“India is moving briskly in the direction of being a digital economy,” said Dinesh Malkani, President – Sales, Cisco India & Saarc, during his inaugural address at the summit. In Malkani’s view, India’s IT domestic market is all set to takeoff in a big way.
Quoting Gartner estimates, Malkani pointed that India will be the third largest IT market in Asia Pacific by 2016 and is expected to move to the second spot by 2018. India’s IT spending will be around $73.3 billion in 2015, which is a 9.4% increase from estimated $67.1 billion in 2014.
According to Malkani, the current market trends in India are very positive for the company. Cisco, in his opinion, is all set to play a critical role in various aspects of the Digital India project. Malkani stated that the massive digitisation that is underway would generate more jobs in India and this will lead to improvement inthe responsibilities of the ‘Chief Digital Officer’.
Such developments easily translate into a huge market opportunity for Cisco. In recent years, the company has strengthened its position in eight market segments in India. “Cisco has moved to No.1 position in eight out of 10 categories in which it operates and has substantial market share across segments, including enterprise routing (75%), switching (71%), telepresence (54%), wireless LAN (52%), service provider routing (52% ) and others,” informed Malkani.
Opportunities for private sector
It is estimated that there will be 526 million Internet users in India by 2018 and over 1.5 billion networked devices. Cisco is of the view that the huge surge in mobile devices, Internet connectivity along with digital services both in private as well as government sector will need massive networks and infrastructure.
In view of the market opportunities, Cisco has already expanded its presence in 49 cities and will move into more locations to serve the Indian market through its partner ecosystem comprising of channel partners, system integrators (SIs) and global service providers (GSPs).
According to Malkani, Cisco will engage in public-private-partnership (PPP) models to enable various initiatives of Digital India programme — smart cities, education, healthcare, mobile banking services, etc.
During the summit, Cisco announced a key partnership session with ILFS Technologies Ltd (ITL) – a technology solutions arm of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS). Under this, Cisco will leverage its Internet of Everything (IoE) concept with ITL’s infrastructure capabilities to build digital solutions for India’s infrastructure and smart cities.
Made in India
Cisco is actively participating in the ‘Make in India’ programme by way of collaboration with Covacsis for connected manufacturing initiative.
During the summit, Cisco showcased three networking products, which have been conceptualised, architected and designed in India. It unveiled two routers – ASR (Aggregation Services Router) 920-O and ISR (Integrated Services Router) 800M and MDS (Multilayer Director Switch) 9250i. These products are developed and built by company’s engineering and systems division based in Bangalore.
“Cisco’s belief is that the innovative application of technology can have a positive impact on India’s competitiveness, diversification of its industry base, its ability to create jobs and improve quality of life for its citizens,” said Amit Phadnis, President – Engineering and India Site Leader, Cisco.
“Helping people connect and collaborate is not just core to our business, it’s what makes us want to create and innovate everyday. We are thrilled that the three products we announced today are made from India, made for India and will help enable a Digital India,” concluded Phadnis.
