» Rapid Connectivity Rollout Future Generali
Enterprise Infrastructure
» Enabling Speedy Ramp-Up HDFC Bank
» MPLS, the Game Changer Agility In Association With
DECEMBER 31, 2009 | DATAQUEST IT CASE BOOK |
partner Lt Col H.S Bedi CMD, Tulip Telecom
“Today, 99% uptime is not enough” Says Lt Col H S Bedi, CMD, Tulip Telecom and tells DATAQUEST how his company is delivering a higher uptime Last year Tulip Telecom had reached over 1300 cities in India. What are your new achievements? The year 2009 has been a good year for Tulip Telecom, as the company witnessed substantial growth in business, and we also saw growth in our customer base. The core focus area for this year was the fiber roll out, which saw the completion of Phase 1 rollout in Commercial Business districts (CBDs) of 10 major metros of the country, the goal is to expand to 100 key commercial districts within the next two years and build fiber networks wherever it is required by the customer for higher bandwidth. Besides this, we also continued to plan and execute projects in the Managed Services space. Subsequently, we have also expanded our network reach to 1,450 cities in India. We also launched our eLan solutions and Value Internet for our enterprise customers.
Key Achievements in 2009 • At Tulip Telecom we witnessed revenue of Rs 491.03 crore during the quarter ended Sept 30, 2009 against Rs 378.53 crore in the corresponding quarter for the previous fiscal, registering an increase of 29.72%. • Metro Ethernet fiber rollout in Central Business Districts (CBDs) of 10 large cities in India has been successfully completed. This allows Tulip to provide additional Data Service offerings to its customers including IPLC, DLC, Corporate Internet, as well as VPN on fibre.
• Based on the fiber infrastructure, there has been a considerable traction with enterprises and revenue generation from fiber-based services has started. • Tulip completed its fourth Level 3 data center in Bangalore. The other data centers are located in New Delhi, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai • Some of the key customers that were added in the current quarter include Tata AIG, Etisalat, TCS, Jammu Kashmir Bank Ltd. etc
Awards and Recognitions • Tulip has been awarded the prestigious Frost & Sullivan Market Leadership Award in the MPLS/IP VPN segment for 2009 for the third consecutive year • DQ–IDC ranked Tulip as one of the best employers in the country. Tulip, ranked 12th scored high on “preferred employer” and “HR practices” parameters • Tulip also made it to the Economic Times List of top 500 companies • Tulip Telecom stood at 89th position at Business India list of super 100 companies in terms of earning growth for the year ended March 2009 What was the impact of recession on your company? The slowdown acted as a boon for Tulip Telecom, as companies looked to strategize and control their IT and telecom related costs through optimum resource utilization and the right investments. As companies
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reduced travel by use of increased video and brought in additional areas of business under increased automation, Tulip gained from in creased bandwidth revenues. Reduction in Capex by customers resulted in a reduced spend on network equipment which was in line with our plan to reduce our focus on network integration which is a low margin business. Tulip also put in place processes to bring in better efficiencies into its system by increasing stress on variable pay so that actual performers gained the most. Great turnaround time (TAT)…that seems to be the mantra at Tulip. How do you ensure that? Our business enables us to deal with organizations/enterprises who run their business critical applications viz SAP, CRM, ERP etc on our network. Since, any business cannot afford to have downtime or an error below a certain point, Tulip’s services team works continuously towards achieving higher uptimes and TAT for its customers. The company has over the years developed a robust services infrastructure, which enables us to achieve what we call the “valued customer experience”. “Today, 99% uptime is not enough.” A 1% downtime would translate to 3.65 days in a year the customer’s business is down. No one can afford that. Tulip due to the robustness of its network and strong processes is able to achieve an average uptime of 99.9% giving a very good customer experience. t
Future Generali INSURANCE Ashish Shah Assistant Vice President – IT Future Generali
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We were looking for a partner who could help us with the connectivity in a really short span, and handle the project management for us as well
Rapid Connectivity Rollout Future Generali’s ambitious plan of connecting 93 new branches in five months was successfully achieved by Tulip
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uture Generali is a joint venture between Future Group, India’s leading retail house, and Generali Group, the Italy-based insurance company. The JV operates in the life insurance and non-life insurance businesses. Future Generali is active through 93 branches across 84 cities. The company has over 36,000 licensed advisors. The company also offers insurance solutions across 163 Future Group outlets. In March 2008, the company decided to set up 93 branches across India and have them up and running by the year end. Setting up the IT infrastructure was not a huge issue, but connecting the branches was. Future Generali already had its data center set up in Mumbai. “We were looking for a partner who could help us with the connectivity in a really short span, and handle the project management for us as well,” says Ashish Shah, Assistant Vice President – IT, Future Generali.
Reaching Tier-2, 3 Cities Not only was the project challenging because of the strict time constraints, it was even more complex as the company aimed to set up branches in tier-2 and 3 cities across India, where fiber had not even been laid. At that time, Tulip Telecom suggested that the company could go with the wireless network. The insurance com-
pany agreed with the idea and decided to go with Tulip Telecom as they were able to find the right solutions needed for the ambitious company roll-out. Future Generali decided to go with a two-vendor set up for the connectivity, with Tulip Telecom bagging the majority share. The primary and secondary connectivity to Future Generali’s data center has been provided on high-capacity fiber.
Speed, the Essence When the branch administrators of the insurance company in-charge of setting up their branch offices across India gave the go-ahead for the connectivity linking, Tulip Telecom’s teams rolled out the branch connectivity project. “It helped us a great deal that Tulip Telecom has a pan-India presence, which meant that several teams were working together simultaneously to set up the branches. This was a key reason that helped us meet our deadlines” says Shah. The deployment was not that easy though, as certain challenges were faced because of the rough weather. However, all the branch offices were made operational as per the planned date.
Benefits “The fact that we could have our branches up and running in some of the tier 2 and 3 cities without fiber through Tulip Telecom’s
wireless solutions is definitely a huge benefit for us,” says Shah. “This helped us reach even remote locations without any major challenge,” he adds. Setting up 93 branches in five months was a critical business requirement for Future Generali. Speed was of absolute essence, and that is what Tulip Telecom was able to deliver. Future Generali’s business requires that its offices, network of advisors, and customers stay connected all the time. The company did face some downtime issues in initial stages but post deployment the network has been stabilized. t
Results » Tulip Telecom has provided connectivity to Future Generali’s 93 branches in five months » Successfully connected branches in tier-2 and 3 cities of India, including remote areas where fiber connectivity as not available. » Rapid rollout by Tulip Telecom enabled Future Generali to adhere to their ambitious ramp-up plans
DECEMBER 31, 2009 | DATAQUEST IT CASE BOOK | 11
banking HDFC Bank Ajit Tiwari Deputy Vice President (IT) HDFC Bank
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Tulip has always maintained a good turnaround time in terms of feasibility and circuit delivery
Enabling Speedy Ramp-Up Tulip Telecom’s connectivity presence across 1,415 cities, enables HDFC Bank’s aggressive expansion plans even in remotest of areas
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DFC Bank was incorporated in August 1994, and has its registered office in Mumbai. HDFC Bank commenced operations as a Scheduled Commercial Bank in January 1995. It currently has a nationwide network of 1,506 Branches and 3,573 ATM’s in 635 Indian cities. For the halfyear ended September 30, 2009, the bank earned a total income of Rs 10,136 crore. HDFC Bank has been expanding its branches aggressively in metros, smaller cities and remote areas. The bank was facing challenges in terms of connectivity in many of these remote areas. Since, they had to ramp-up their branches in a short time, the deployment had to be rapid as well. Therefore, the bank was looking for a service provider who could help them connect their 500 branches spread across the country. “In several locations, Tulip Telecom had the edge over others in terms of feasibility and delivery,” says Ajit Tiwari, Deputy Vice President, HDFC Bank. HDFC Bank deployed Tulip‘s MPLS VPN solution in 425 locations, including A and B-class cities on fiber and wireless on the last mile in the remote areas. Now HDFC Bank avails Tulip’s metro-ethernet networks for their high bandwidth requirements on fiber, for connecting their B and C class locations also. Along with
this, Tulip has provided high bandwidth on fiber for the bank’s offices and branches located in the metros. A 20 Mbps fiber link has been provisioned connecting the bank’s head office to their data center located in Mumbai. Two backhaul links, each of 60 Mbps have been deployed on fiber, one in Bangalore and the other in Mumbai. Tulip has also provisioned an 8 Mbps link on fiber connecting their branch office in Vijaywada over MPLS. The engagement with Tulip Telecom started over four years ago. Since then, HDFC Bank has been banking on Tulip Telecom to manage their connectivity links. “Tulip has always maintained a good a turnaround time in terms of circuit delivery,” says Tiwari. HDFC Bank has also signed an SLA with Tulip for the maintenance of the circuit.
Benefits Tulip’s connectivity solutions are highly scalable and can be provided as per the customers requirement. Tulip’s team spread across the country lay down fiber and make the customer’s sites feasible in a short time span. Tulip has also maintained high uptimes with industry standard SLAs. This ultimately results in improved business efficiency and better productivity. Because of the fact that Tulip Telecom always
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delivers as per the planned schedule, the bank was able to go forth with their expansion plans in A and B-class cities, and even to the remotest parts of the country. Now Tulip caters to the bank’s high bandwidth requirements on fiber in B and C class cities also. Tulip Telecom’s pan-India presence in 1,415 cities is a key enabler for this. t
Results » Tulip Telecom has been a trusted connectivity data connectivity provider for the bank and has helped them with their expansion plans across the country » High uptime results in improved business productivity » Tulip has provided high scalability to the customer and has made the sites feasible in short time-frames
Agility Logistics
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Suresh Shreedharan National Manager – IT, Agility
Tulip Telecom was chosen because of the 100% feasibility at all our branches which was possible because of their pan-India presence. They also had the lowest timelines for implementation
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MPLS, the Game Changer Tulip’s quick MPLS connectivity setup for Agility’s new warehouses in remote areas has powered the company into the top ten logistics service providers
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gility is a global company which offers an integrated portfolio of logistics solutions supported by a comprehensive network of warehousing facilities, transportation and freight forwarding management services worldwide. Agility India is operational since 1998. Agility India has more than 1,200 employees. It has 24 offices and 68 logistics centers in over 45 cities. The annual revenue is over Rs 1,000 crore. When Agility started operations in India it was mandatory for the company to get its international and domestic connectivity services from the company’s global telecom partner. This partner had tie-ups with the Indian service providers who delivered the point to point leased line connectivity for the 8 offices at the time. While things went fine for a few years, challenges started cropping up. The uptime of the leased lines was an issue which impacted the performance of the various ERP solutions and applications that Agility was using across its offices. And since multiple service providers were involved, problem resolution became a huge issue. Also, network configuration was an issue and this impacted the performance of the WAN. “The business of Agility is dependent on quick setup of new warehouses, or shifting warehouses to new areas to suit a cus-
tomer’s requirements,” says Suresh Shreedharan, National Manager – IT, Agility. Leased line connectivity did not match this dynamism that the operation demanded. In 2005, the company decided to move to MPLS. “We evaluated many service providers for MPLS connectivity. Tulip Telecom was chosen because of the 100% feasibility at all our branches which was possible because of their pan-India presence. They also had the lowest timelines for implementation as well as were competitive in their rates,” says Shreedharan. “Warehouses have to be often set up in remote areas, where wired access was not always available. Tulip was able to provide RF access in such areas,” says Shreedharan. Going with wired options in these places would have led to business loss, he adds. “We have Tulip as our domestic MPLS service provider. For major locations, fiber connectivity is primary and wireless RF is the backup, while the rest have wireless RF connectivity without any backup.” Initially, Agility had its main data center in Mumbai at the corporate office, but now have changed this to their DR center. The main data center operates out of Chennai. Tulip delivers a 10MB fibre and 10MB RF to the Mumbai center, while Chennai is linked by 4MB fiber and RF links. “The deployment has been fast and seamless. It was a challenging project to
get all MPLS links up and running keeping in mind the remote sites that we operate from. There were teething issues at the time of integration, but it was manageable,” Shreedharan says.
Benefits “Ours is a customer service business. With Tulip’s connectivity we can provide a customer with clear and real-time visibility about his inventory, vehicle movement, and shipment status,” says Shreedharan. Branches and warehouses update the status of the goods and vehicles on a realtime basis. The customer can check the updated status anytime. With this kind of customer service, Agility has catapulted into the league of top ten logistics service providers in India. With Tulip managing the links proactively on a 24x7 basis, the Agility team does not have to worry about the uptime and availability of links. With uptimes maintained as per SLAs, productivity has improved. t
Results » » » » » »
Improved productivity. Improved ROI Low TCO Among top 10 logistics providers Managed services Compliance with business
DECEMBER 31, 2009 | DATAQUEST IT CASE BOOK | 13