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Ericsson is stepping up its presence in India aimed at its enterprise customers. For the company, areas such as multimedia, enterprise and systems integration are expected to grow faster. The company is building on the strong competence it already has. Urban Gillstrom, president, Enterprise Business, Ericsson, who has extensive experience in the telecom industry within the operator, enterprise and consumer segments, is responsible for growing the enterprise unit, leveraging Ericsson's mobile leadership, global presence and large customer base in the enterprise area. In an interview to VOICE&DATA, Gillstrom talked about Ericsson's expansion plans in India and many other things. Excerpts:

India is a key market for several telecom companies. Which would you say, are the trends here?
The market is just starting to ramp up as broadband connections accelerate. Enterprises and telcos are starting to realize the vast advantages of VoIP, and are beginning to deploy VoIP solutions. And the legacy PBXs are moving toward digital analog connections.

India is a unique market in that it is growing at an amazing speed while at the same time more advanced services are being launched. In many other countries, those phases were more separated in time. Some say that Indian operators do in six months what European operators did in six years.

In terms of consumer behavior, we see India as an inquisitive audience for entertainment and media content. Music services like ring-back tones quickly gain foothold and will accelerate even more when 3G comes. Additionally, India has a culture where relationships are very important, so communication services that bring people together are naturally appealing.

Likely deployment of the commercial take-up of 3G mobile telephony services should provide potential for growth in data services. As a result, we would also see need for operators in India to leverage on promotions and unique end-user packaging schemes in order to encourage higher uptake.

Urban Gillstrom, president, Enterprise Business, Ericsson

And the enterprise trends in international markets?
The industry is moving toward unification. Enterprise and carrier networks are overlapping in functionality. The way forward in such a scenario is to offer comprehensive solutions catering to different market segments like carrier and large enterprises. Extensive customer reach backed by high quality service support will be a differentiating factor. IP converged network is a basic requirement of an enterprise now. Real-time IP applications on converged networks will revolutionize the enterprise communication market.

Can India become a key market for companies like Ericsson in the enterprise space?
India has been a preferred outsourcing location because call centers in India offer a wide variety of advantages that other countries don't offer, and this India has the potential to become a key market for Ericsson in the enterprise space.

3G maybe a reality soon. Does this excite you?
3G certainly brings a lot of potential for enhancing communication and meeting consumer and enterprise needs-indeed it is very exciting! The great thing is that we now have accumulated quite a large set of experiences from launching 3G applications around the world and can see where the money is made and what users want. Indian service providers can save a lot by learning from the mistakes and success stories from around the world.

What are your expansion plans in India?
Our Indian operation is growing fast. Multimedia, enterprise and systems integration are expected to grow faster. We are building on the strong competence we already have, for example in contact centers and revenue management solutions. Here we will clearly use a combined approach of building on those areas of strength and expand into new ones, like IPTV via our Tandberg Television acquisition, and billing via our LHS acquisition. Though we are expanding our presence in India, we are not in a position to reveal our investment plans.

What do you-think are the key demands of enterprise?
Many CIOs looked at voice solutions as a way to help them reduce rising administrative expenses, extend business reach, boost productivity, and realize measurable returns on their infrastructure investments.

What are the main challenges in the country?
The PBX industry is witnessing a drastic change on the technology front. With the introduction of technologies like IP telephony, the definition of enterprise communication itself has changed. So, continuous enhancement of product lines is taking place to cater to the latest IP technologies, while simultaneously decreasing price levels are the main challenges faced by the PBX industry.

Also, many more customers are looking for pure IP deployments but the prohibitive costs of IP terminals restrict large deployments of pure IP systems.

There is very little awareness among users about the advantages of IP telephony in terms of total cost of ownership (TCO). They need to be educated. Another challenge is that the government regulations do not allow connectivity of PSTN and CUGs. Although termination of both on PBX systems is now allowed, it needs to be logically portioned. This, more or less, cancels the benefits of IP for the enterprise.

From a consumer application perspective, many people are just getting their first mobile phone so building the awareness of what you can do with your mobile phone is key. To do this, we are building consumer behavior expertise and drive toward constantly improving the user experience. The same goes for the fixed networks, where the IPTV user experience now is so much more than just the traditional broadcast TV and we believe that this kind of interactivity will be a key driver.

What will be the role of multimedia in your India success story?
The interesting part here is that in India, today's advanced handsets and services mean that users are starting to demand cool and innovative applications and entertainment as well as productivity applications long before the market reaches saturation. With 3G, this development will accelerate quickly and probably move faster than in other countries due to the many proven 3G services that now exist globally.

Multimedia will clearly not only become a growth engine for Ericsson in India, it will also broaden our customer base and put us even more in the forefront of innovation and forming the user experience. For example, by acquiring Tandberg Television, Ericsson got over 2,000 new customers including several prominent media brands here in India. This is an indicator of how multimedia will propel the growth for Ericsson.

Baburajan K
baburajank@cybermedia.co.in