GROWTH DRIVERS
Future is promising with the expectation of a good traction in the network integration space as the network complexity is increasing. Growth rate of approximately 30-40% in 2007-08 in the network integration space may be achievable without any hurdles.

The prime growth drive gaining momentum today, is aligning an organization's connectivity objective with business objective. Deploying enterprise applications like ERP, SCM is becoming a norm, thus leading to increased adoption by all enterprises, including SMEs in remote areas. Further, consolidation and expansion of networks by organizations that have already deployed a network may be in the offing.

Multinational companies establishing their presence in India will start setting up connectivity between their domestic offices. Many state governments, PSUs and banks have realized the importance of IP networks and are planning for huge network rollouts, either replacing the existing TDM links with IP-VPN links or rolling out a fresh network altogether. This sector has the capacity to push the average network growth rate to 45%.

Newer networking technologies and applications are driving organizations to deploy networks of the scale and complexity never seen before. The pressure to reduce costs amongst budget constraints and competitive pressure is making organizations search for innovative ways of designing, building and managing networks. A key driver of growth is the emergence of converged networks, bringing along a new set of capabilities and deployment and management issues. Another driver is wireless, with WLAN and other deployments rising exponentially. The upgrade market, organizations that deployed their existing networks a few years ago in the networking boom is also hot, with rapid migration to MPLS for wide area networks, and wireless and gigabit Ethernet for LANs.

Large network rollouts by the banking, insurance and financial services sector has seen a significant jump in the overall network integration business. As large PSU banks are getting into their third and fourth phases of network rollouts, a lot of rural branch connectivity projects are in the pipeline. The smaller banks have also aggressively set up WAN networks and data-centers to ensure compliance to regulatory requirements like computerization with centralized core banking solutions and competitive pressures to increase the presence in the ATM market.

The other fast growing sector has been the IT/ITeS vertical, which continues to see a positive growth both in terms of expansions by existing players and greenfield projects being deployed out of India. The sector has seen the tier-2 cities such as Pune, Hyderabad, Mysore, Chandigarh developing as upcoming IT hubs thus spawning a whole new industry in these cities.

Government-led initiatives like the state WANs, state datacenters, e-Governance will lead to new avenues for growth in the network integration industry. Also, with the de-regularization of the insurance industry, a spurt in the growth of the insurance sector is in the offing that will definitely translate into NI business growth.

TRENDS
A significant trend is the approach toward vertical specific solutions. Customers are asking for customized solutions that address their pain points specifically. The open standards used by the leading technology companies are making the task possible using the domain knowledge and the system integration experience.

On the technology side, IP networks are already being rolled out and one might finally see convergence of voice, data, and video happening on a single network. Bandwidth prices have crashed and are expected to go down further. Wireless networks and access points have proved their usefulness. Remote management will remain the mantra for the years to come. Device and hardware sales will also continue to increase steadily. A build-operate-manage-transfer (BOMT) model is expected to evolve. Enterprises are increasingly focusing on outsourcing the network management in totality.

Main trends are driven by customer demands. Customers are asking for Opex models, looking at application deployment for increasing their return on investment, and consolidation of vendors/suppliers. They want service providers for their CPE requirements, looking at outsourcing the infrastructure management, and are deploying applications that enhance the productivity of employees and also increase customer satisfaction, while almost all the major technology vendors are looking at the SMB space for growth. SMEs are opening up to embrace connectivity that is flexible, scalable and secure. The move towards deploying the IP infrastructure is also gathering momentum.

All verticals are expected to maintain their contribution to the integration business. The emerging areas that are likely to be deployed are wireless LAN, collaboration applications, network security, self-service applications, WAN optimization for improving application response time and reducing bandwidth on WAN links, campus wireless networks to improve productivity for mobile workers, mobile connectivity (CDMA/GPRS or hot spot connectivity provided by SP) for extending the enterprise applications at all locations, tele-working by employees with wide spread availability of high speed broadband Internet (DSL, cable, Ethernet), etc. MPLS VPNs and wireless (Wi-Max/Wi-Fi) technologies are rapidly emerging as the hot choices for enterprise organizations cutting across business segments.

CONCERNS and SOLUTIONS
Product lifecycle for IT and network devices have reduced because of the new technologies getting introduced at a rapid rate. Customers have become cautious thereby asking for commitment of product lifecycle for a longer period. This is seen especially in the SMB market for ensuring better RoI. Security and manageability has been one of the pertinent problem areas in regard to network integration. The enterprises face numerous challenges including managing and controlling communication costs, building technical domain expertise along with retaining them and managing technological changes while protecting investments and providing continuum to existing infrastructure. As new technologies emerge and branches are added, the task of maintaining the networks becomes challenging.

Shortage of staff is also a major concern. Skilled manpower is a scarcity, although number of CCNA is going up rapidly in tangent with the demand. However, high-level experts such as CCIE are still few and have a heavy price tag attached. To reduce cost of training, more and more institutes with government and industry initiative should be opened which bring down the high cost of training and more labs should be made in India.

Network integration helps reduce overall TCO of enterprises. Irrational undercutting of costs by some players leads to market instability and deteriorates QoS. In the networking domain, bandwidth prices have come down heavily. But Indian prices are still three times higher than that of Australia, China or the US. Therefore, it is imperative to reduce Internet bandwidth prices further for widespread coverage.

Wireless is a low-cost investment with high RoI. It's better to migrate high-speed links to Metro Ethernet and go for WAN optimizers after understanding traffic applications of your network.

Both enterprises and operators are armed with solutions for the issues they face. The major hurdles they face include spectrum availability for regular wireless connectivity requirements and Wi-Max especially, last mile availability issues for some remote areas, low penetration into rural territory, threat of GSM/CDMA based data network replacing Wi-Max/Wi-Fi networks at the edge, etc.

Amongst many solutions, the proven ones are building enterprise intranets over the public Internet using secure technologies. Also, while planning for a network infrastructure, there are some important things that should be taken into consideration: detailed planning for network migration or expansion since networks is now the lifeline of the company; utilizing consulting services to get quality advice from people who have relevant experience and expertise; not revamping unless you have a clear RoI for network enhancement; identifying "what is old is the first step the IT department should carry out, as this is primarily a business-driven exercise for eventual cost justification, etc.

REGULATORY ISSUES
Some of the regulations and guidelines brought forth in the recent past leave some amount of ambiguity and sometimes fail to address the holistic picture. There are still few hurdles for the Indian corporates from implementing the CUG network along with VoIP and reap the full benefit. For instance, TRAI, the telecom regulator, has issued a circular to all enterprises/corporates allowing logical partitioning between their VoIP and public trunks. However, enterprise customers still continue to invest in two different PABX to avoid paying hefty consultancy fees for getting the clearance. There is no framework laid by DoT or TRAI for corporates to help them save on their network and obtaining approvals from the local BSNL circle offices. As technology develops rapidly, regulation and regulatory methods need to be constantly updated.

For more than a decade, leading wireless carriers, equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprises have trusted talented and trained engineering professionals to design, deploy, optimize and manage, and secure their critical networks, ICT infrastructure, data centers and enterprise applications. The trained and skilled manpower of offered assured quality to their customers through integrated end-to-end services. Though the bargain for more solutions at cost effective prices will continue, this sector will grow rapidly in the wake of Indian economy showing signs of further growth in coming years.

Baburajan K
baburajank@cybermedia.co.in