Bernard Trudel chose to pull out this Mike Tyson quote for a glued audience of 400 at Bangalore-"Every one has a plan, until he gets hit." Trudel was in the garden city to present at the Cisco Showcase 2004. He is principal consultant (security), advanced technologies, APAC, Cisco Systems.

Network security is tactically high on Cisco's agenda these days, even as IP continues to remain the company's strategic mantra.

Cisco had placed its big bet on IP early enough, and waited. Now, with IP-based applications gaining wider and faster acceptance, it's time to reap benefits. Or is it?

The Spoilsport
Security-related issues threaten to spoil the party, or pale it, at least. And more the number of apps using IP, greater the threat is, thanks to the openness of the protocol.

Consider the voice-over-IP application. A denial-of-service attack, for instance, can effectively bring down a VoIP network in no time. To complicate matters, entry into a VoIP network can happen through numerous endpoints, viz. servers, PCs, and VoIP phones.

Now, that's not something users of telecom services will accept and pay for. The proprietary nature of legacy telephony protocols virtually shuts out all software-based threats for them.

The onus to make IP networks more robust and reliable lies on vendors and service providers-in their own interest. The interest, incidentally, is a $2 billion global IP telephony opportunity by the end of this year, as projected by market research firms.

In India, according to IDC, the market will be $60 million this year, as compared to $30 million last year. It is expected that the Indian IP telephony market will clock a CAGR of 60 percent over the next 3–5 years.

Cisco is keen to realize the huge opportunity and grow it, possibly. The company is estimated to have shipped more than 2 million IP phones globally in 2003 and enjoyed more than half of the handset market share.

The competition in the handset space came mainly from three players-Siemens, Nortel, and Avaya.

In India, however, the story is somewhat different. Here, according to Voice&Data estimates, Tata Telecom (bought over by Avaya) held 45 percent of the enterprise-wide IP market share in fiscal 2003-04, as Cisco trailed at 40 percent.

Tata's approach of offering hybrid solutions instead of pure-play IP earned it the dominant position. Equations in the Indian market may change once the dampeners-security-related-on IP are removed and enterprises put more trust in IP-only systems.

Putting up Safeguards
Trudel said Cisco spent 10 percent of its overall R&D budget-$300 million in figure terms-on security-related R&D.

Also, the company has made some key acquisitions in various areas of network security to complement its own offerings, over the past one-year period.

Only last month, Cisco announced the intent to acquire Perfigo, Inc for $74 million in cash. Perfigo's CleanMachines solutions helps build self-defending networks by permeating endpoint policy analysis, compliance, and access enforcement capabilities. It evaluates the security posture of the endpoint, scans for vulnerabilities, and helps clean the endpoint.

The solution enables Cisco IOS routers to enforce access privileges when an endpoint device enters a network. The support will be extended for the company's Catalyst switches and VPN concentrators in the first half of 2005.

Another buy was of Twingo Systems, for a small sum of $5 million. Cisco hopes to plug the gap in the happening space of SSL VPNs, a technology that has proved particularly effective in the area of remote access.

Cisco plans to incorporate the acquired technology into its existing WebVPN solution. To begin with, the Twingo solution will be featured on the VPN 3000 Concentrator series.

In March 2004, the acquisition of Riverhead Networks, for $39 million in cash, added a DDOS prevention technology to Cisco's security portfolio.

A more interesting technology that Cisco acquired through the buyout of Okena in early 2003, is already being put to good use across several Cisco offerings. The technology takes a behavior-based approach towards protecting networks against possible threats.

The Super Six
Network security is among the six 'advanced technology' areas that Cisco is focusing on today. The other five are-IP telephony, wireless LAN, home networking, storage networking, and optical.

Together, the above six techs already contribute over 20 percent of the company's worldwide revenues. (Network security revenues are often a component of other product revenues, determined internally through a complex accounting process.)

Talking of storage networking, Cisco entered the space just two years ago globally, and one-and-a-half years ago in India.

Sanjay Kharade, regional manager, system engineering (enterprise), west, Cisco India, who's busy touting the merits of IP-based SANs to potential customers, is very upbeat on the tech's uptake. "We are leveraging all our expertise in the LAN space for SANs," he says.

In the storage networking space, the competition comes from the likes of IBM, HP, Hitachi, and EMC. Cisco will most likely gain some market share as the shift from fiber channel SANs to IP-based Ethernet SANs takes place.

"We are already No. 2 worldwide in director class switches," says Kharade. Director-class switches are the ones that have in-built redundancies for three things-power, CPUs, and ports. (Other switches have redundancies for one or two factors only.)

Typically, fiber channel SAN switches are preferred today when it comes to reliability. "The fact that a storage network should never drop the traffic necessitated fiber channel switches," Kharade says. "The next shift is towards IP-based Ethernet SANs," he adds.

The adoption of IP-based SANs could gain momentum once Cisco starts shipping switches that support 10G-over-copper, as this would significantly reduce the total cost of ownership for enterprises. It's noteworthy here that recent advancements in structured cabling have made 10G speeds over copper a reality.

Enterprise-only?
Well, that's how Cisco has been known as a vendor. No more. It's already entered the service provider space and has been trying hard to impress with its spoils.

That didn't seem to have given John Chambers enough peace of mind; the company is now looking at the home networking space too. That brings Cisco close to end-users, a community Cisco hasn't directly addressed so far.

Will the existing channels work when it comes to addressing end-users' needs? "We will continue to use the existing distribution model. There are no immediate plans to change that," Ranajoy Punja, V-P, marketing, India and Saarc, Cisco India, stresses.

Apart from home networking, IP telephony will also open up the mass market for Cisco, particularly after the regulatory hurdles get lifted.

The focus on enterprise communication is not lost though. Cisco has keenly initiated the concept of triple-play conferencing, aka IP-based audio, video, and Web conferencing, for enterprises.

Mathew Varghese, principal consultant, Cisco India, loves to speak endlessly on this emerging opportunity. Cisco MeetingPlace is the solution for holding these collaborative conferences. "We have implemented the solution in-house and the results have been wonderful to say the least," says Varghese.

Carrying on with the Core
Around 80 percent of Cisco's revenues continue to come from its bread-and-butter lines-switches and routers. The most premier switch series continue to be 6500 and 4500.

In the router category, the focus today is on the integrated services router (ISR). "ISRs are today's answers for enterprises' tomorrow's networking needs," Suprabhat Chatterjee, national business manager (enterprise), India and Saarc, Cisco India emphasizes.

Historically, routers formed Cisco's most important business line in India. In the last quarter of 2003-04, however, switches outperformed routers, according to Voice&Data 100 survey.

India has also been a feather in Cisco Asia's cap. Gordon Astles, president, APAC operations, Cisco, lauded Ranganath Salgame and his team for achieving more-than-the-Asia-average market share in India, amidst the clap of a 400-odd audience.

Not that the competition is not a threat in India, but setbacks for Cisco have not been serious. On the contrary, in China, the largest telecom market in the APAC region, Cisco was in for a big disappointment early this month. The hit came from Juniper Networks, which claimed that China Telecom had selected the company's routing platforms exclusively for ChinaNet Next Carrying Network (CN2), the carrier's next-generation IP network.

Looks like the cruise on the IP way will get rougher. A strong sail (read security) could make a difference then. Does Cisco have the strongest one? It better has.

Deepak Kumar

Next Page :

"Cisco's converged networks will enable solution providers deploy

Page(s)   1  2