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With telecom spending by enterprises predicted to rise, operators are offering end-to-end services to get business

Wireless and mobility are the buzzwords among the enterprises. With no exception, be it large, medium or small, every organization is realizing its communication requirements and is willing to spend more. According to reports, enterprises, the world over, were willing to increase their telecom or communication budget by almost 10-15 percent in fiscal year 2005-06.

According to a Gartner report on India, of the $22.88 billion to be spend in 2005 on enterprise ICT, almost 73 percent or $16.7 billion is expected to be on their telecom requirements. This is a 15.5 percent increase from 2004 when the spending was $14.46 billion.

Gearing up to the communication requirements of the corporate houses, service providers have also created separate business units to cater to this high value segment. The idea is to give one stop end-to-end solution. They have also realized that the corporate requirement has moved beyond the voice solutions. Also the business houses are spreading across geographies and they want seamless connectivity across all the centers. The platform used may vary from MPLS VPNs to VSATs and even leased lines.

Upgrading to IP based networks and network security was high on shopping list for corporates in FY 2004-05 and this trend is expected to continue in the current financial year too. Add to this, 802.11 wireless LAN equipment and better storage solutions, the CIOs are gearing to handle the high data flow and making their office free from wires.

A major shift last financial year was towards managed services. The network managers and the CIOs were not merely buying plain vanilla connection. They are now looking at the service level agreements more seriously and demanding end-to-end management of their networks in place. This prompted telecom operators to join hands with network integrators to bid of deals jointly and offer services in specific area of expertise.

Last year also saw lot of corporate applications being put on mobile handsets. The mobile operators joined hands with handset makers to modify the screen and put corporate specific applications on them. With the corporate networks increasingly being accessed from these devices, security of corporate data and the networks became important. Handsets specially targeted towards enterprise users like Blackberry, Sony Ericsson P910i or Nokia 9300 were introduced. The telecom operators initiated corporate e-mail over mobile and SMS based applications.

With broadband services on the roll and increased emphasis on MPLS-based VPNs, corporate are likely to evaluate these with ISDN leased lines or VSATs. Though VPN services by Internet service providers is under regulatory cloud, ISPs like Sify have gone ahead to serve almost 1,000 corporate customers. Similarly within months of its fiber backbone supported broadband launch, Reliance is claiming to have 400 of top 1,200 corporates in its kitty.

Recognizing the potential, Bharti launched its MPLS service last year and bagged some good orders from the banking sector. The acquisition of Comsat Max on the VSAT side indicated its plans to strengthen its enterprise business. Even Tata Enterprise Business Unit of Tata Teleservices and VSNL are pitching with newer solutions and services. All these companies are eating into the customer base of BSNL and MTNL. On other hand, with Railways and oil and gas companies like Gailtel entering into fiber connectivity for long distance communication, the choice for the enterprises has just become wider.

Anurag Prasad