Although this time the New Year bash hasn’t been highly refreshing for the Indian IT biz community, many vendors have already decided their plans for 2009, based on last year’s experience. I have just received some information from Naresh Wadhwa, President and Country Manager, India and SAARC, CISCO, on his company’s focus areas for 2009 with retrospective views of 2008. Let me share those with you all.
Focus areas in 2008
In 2008, Wadhwa feels, “CISCO continued to lead in the routing and switching market powering India’s Internet revolution, and further increased focus on Unified Communications (UC), wireless networking, network security and emerging technologies like TelePresence.”
Contextually, in 2008, as per Q2, CY 2008, Frost & Sullivan report, CISCO emerged as the leader in the IP Telephony and Enterprise Telephony markets. According to him, CISCO’s current market share is 19.1% in the Enterprise Telephony market and 28.2% in the IP Telephony market.
He says, “Collaboration technologies, which include UC, videoconferencing, Web 2.0 applications, TelePresence and WebEx, Contact center solutions and Mobility solutions were key focus areas.”
Also in 2008, concepts like alternative and renewable sources of energy, re-cycling, e-waste management, green architecture, green computing, green data centers, virtualization, power management and reducing the corporate carbon footprint gained priority on CISCO’s corporate agendas.
To describe achievements in 2008, Wadhwa says, “One of the highlights of 2008 was the increased adoption of the UC platform across sectors. Through its collaborative tools, UC has brought to life the age-old dream of an office-without-borders. The integration of data, voice and video with mobility over the network has led to the development of technologies like TelePresence, digital media – which have greatly enhanced the collaborative experience.”
Emerging trends
As Wadhwa finds:
UC and its component technologies are speeding-up businesses on their road to going green, as carbon-heavy overheads are reduced.
We have now entered the second phase of the Internet – Web 2.0, which is characterized by its ability for users to organize and categorize content, improve collaboration, open communication channels, and transform websites into computing platforms running full-fledged applications. As a result, the network has become more intelligent and has evolved to become a platform, not only for data traffic but also for all forms of media.
2008 saw the increased trend of organizations implementing data center virtualization and automating resource provisioning. Virtualization capabilities have created ‘Cloud computing’ as an emerging trend for enterprises interested in accessing and out-sourcing data center compute resources.
Possibilities in 2009
According to Wadhwa’s opinion:
Virtualisation will play a big role, as IT organizations morph into more and more of a services management framework.
As the world looks at ways of combating an imminent energy crisis and ecological imbalances, adoption of green practices as a business imperative will intensify further.
The network and communications market will propel the growth of the router and switching market in India.
Wireless for last-mile connectivity in rural India and unwiring our cities will be a focus for us.
Although collaborative technologies and ‘Web 2.0′ have been around for many years, employing them through entire organizations will be made possible only by the intelligent network. 2009 will see more investments in building intelligent networks.
Data Center consolidation will be high on every leader’s agenda to ensure optimal utilization of existing resources and assets. Virtualization will play a big role as IT organizations morph into more and more of a services management framework.
Cisco’s focus in 2009
He informs further:
CISCO is ready with new technologies and solutions. This new class of technologies is designed to enable advanced communications, collaboration and entertainment experiences – through video- and rich media-optimized service providers, business and home-networks, known as ‘medianets’. Streaming video allows for high-quality videoconferencing, which CISCO believes to be a great business transformer, considering the high cost of travel impacting the company’s bottom-line as well as its environmental impact.
In the future, collaboration will move from intra-company to inter-company, creating a safe and secure channel for companies that work together to communicate effectively with each other. The architecture supporting this shift is based on the network, and it is no longer about stand-alone applications like smart applications or videoconferencing, but rather how effectively it is able to integrate all these, towards a seamless collaboration experience.
Virtualization technologies enable businesses to treat all IT resources as a set of shared services, which can be combined and recombined to improve efficiencies and scale quickly.
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