CXO Speak
‘Service providers will be one of the important channels for Cisco in this decade’ With enterprises undergoing digitalisation and getting prepared for future-ready network platforms, networking major Cisco believes that India needs fiberisation for congestion-free transport networks. A healthy service provider industry is the bedrock of the whole digital vision. In conversation with Sandhya Michu of CRN India, Sanjay Kaul, President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Service Provider Business, Cisco Systems Inc shares how the company is reinventing service providers for tapping new business opportunities The story of the Indian telecom industry is under consolidation. How do you view this consolidation from the lens of a major telecom network provider? Right now we have a problem in the service provider industry because it is under stress. But I think we are at the end of this misery. Consolidation has happened, now it is four players. That is the right structure for the industry. Four partners and over 1.3 billion people, they all can be healthy and can make good business. The last decade was the lost decade. When we enter 2020, we are entering a digital era where there will be new normals, there will be new entrants and participants. But there will be new revenue opportunities and new business models. The new opportunities are that when you move into 4.5G or Wi-Fi 6 and5G, features like low latency and slicing, give you ability as an operator to use your network that I was talking about as a platform, so you can extend it to an enterprise vertical. Let us say that the enterprise vertical is a factory making cars. So if a car manufacturer’s cost of production today is 100 rupees, I believe by bringing this platform to them and
automating the entire factory, we can reduce that cost by at least 40 per cent.
With the high rate of digitisation in enterprises, how does Cisco look at the digital wave unfolding and the challenges ahead? I think we thrive with big customers. However, the thing that still needs to be developed is fiberisation, because as consumers our consumption has increased multifold in recent years. Today, I think the consumption is at least 20 GB. The average consumption in India is approximately 14 GB, and right now, we are still using standard video and HD video. I was in Japan recently on a tech forum there. They were displaying an 18K video. So, a one-minute clip that you watch on standard video, if the same was 18K, the data consumption would be 120 times more, which means that if you consume1 GB to watch a movie, then you need 128 GB to watch the same movie. Hence, making sure that we have networks that are end-to-end secure, that security is on the termina, how do we turn the business into cloud services. India has 60 million microbusinesses, micro SMEs. These are companies ranging from two-three
26 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I MARCH, 2020 I crn.in
employees to 100 employees. There are 60 million of them, and they all want to get digitised. And if you offer them monolithic services, they will never take them. So, you have got to give them a plug and play kind of offering. I need offering, which is coming to me in a box, I plug it in, itself-configures, and I’m in business. For that, these three broader things need to be sorted for India to thrive in this digital era. SPs are the foundation for digitisation, and we need a healthy service provider industry because they become the bedrock of the whole digital vision. Having said that, we need fiberisation; we need congestion-free transport networks. That is a challenge for India because we are still only 35-40 per cent fiberised. A lot has happened in the last couple of years. Jio is playing fibre now, Bharti and Vodafone to an extent. There are some new players emerging in the market, but there is still a long way to go. Hence, I believe more than 5G, I think getting the transport networks right is a priority for India.
How is Cisco helping service providers to reduce the business complexities and challenges that
