Spotlight

Heading for the future

Nortel hopes to garner a significant market share in India in the BPO, BFSI, aviation and SMB sectors says Abhinav Singh.

For a company that established its presence in India over fifteen years ago, it has been an interesting journey. Starting its Indian operations in 1991, Nortel India counts South Indian Bank, Allahabad Bank, ICICI Bank and various defense establishments among its customers today. The company has also recently garnered customers in the aviation sector with deployments in airport projects at Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore. These projects are underway and the project scope encompasses the complete data infrastructure including application switching, WLAN, connectivity infrastructure and Wireless VoIP at these airports. Nortel has also played an important role in deploying the backend infrastructure for an emergency services number launched by India’s non-profit Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) in Andhra Pradesh.

The mushrooming BPO sector has also helped Nortel make greater inroads into the market. The company has noticed that customers have started showing interest in its data solutions and it has supplied data solutions to large enterprises including five of India’s top ISPs and virtually all of India’s stock exchanges, with the Bombay Stock Exchange representing the largest installed base of routers for Nortel in South Asia. The company has seven offices in the country.

BPO and UC

In the BPO segment Nortel has 16,000 agents /seats deployed at telcos Bharti Airtel, Reliance, BSNL, MTNL and Tata Teleservices. Ravi Chauhan, Managing Director, Nortel India says, “Our communication alliances with Microsoft, and more recently with IBM, are helping change the face of the enterprise communications arena, bringing together industry leading desktop solution suppliers with voice expertise to define the Unified Communications arena.” Additionally Nortel India has 12 enterprise customers in the UC space. It has sold nearly 30,000 UC licenses in India. Nortel recently entered into a pact with Microsoft, involving joint development of products for enterprise, mobile and wireline carrier customers, cross licensing of intellectual property and deployment of each other’s technologies in enterprise networks. The pact is expected to have a significant impact on the Indian market for Nortel as Dhananjay Ganjoo, Vice President-Enterprise Solutions, Nortel India says,” Through this pact we will be in a position to drive the transformation of networks towards total convergence and help networks become anticipatory and predictive. The aim is to remain connected to the network using different devices. After the alliance we have around seven pilots up and running in India and many more are in the pipeline.”

WiMAX: in demand

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is another high growth area for Nortel in India. The company has found that its enterprise customers are showing great interest in WiMAX technology. Since the technology enables Wireless Broadband Access (WBA) anywhere, anytime, on virtually any device, it is in high demand in the country. Indian enterprises want their mobile workforce to be able to connect from anywhere. Ganjoo says, “Since the technology bridges WBA at home and in the office and allows end users to take the Internet with them everywhere that they go, it is going to become popular in the Indian market. We are talking to service providers in India for our WiMAX solutions.”

Wireless Meshes

Nortel India is also finding takers for wireless mesh networks, particularly in the education sector. Three leading educational institutions are in the process of deploying Nortel’s Mesh networking. Ganjoo says, “We already find that there are a large numbers of takers for Wi-Fi networking who are adopting the Wireless Mesh Network which is becoming part and parcel of the Wi-Fi infrastructure these days. It is a secure and scalable Wi-Fi solution that delivers low-cost wireless broadband for outdoors or expansive indoor areas. We feel that Wireless Mesh Networks which make outdoor Wi-Fi viable will enable a new revenue opportunity for service providers and also help enterprises extend their private WLANs to outdoor areas in India as well.”

Infrastructure for emergency services

Nortel is seeing huge growth in creating backend infrastructure for emergency services in India. The company has been actively involved in the implementation of 911 services in North America. Now Nortel has been instrumental in creating the telecom infrastructure for emergency services which were launched by India’s non-profit Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI). The institute has launched the country’s first ‘Call 108’ (911-style like the US) emergency services contact system. This number empowers people in municipal areas in Andhra Pradesh such as Hyderabad, Warangal, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupathi and others by giving them a single-number that works across fixed-line and mobile phones to provide access to fire, police, medical and other emergency services. Nortel’s solution enables callers to dial ‘108’ from a fixed-line or mobile phone and be instantly connected via a Nortel Meridian Option 61C PBX to a Nortel Communication Server 1000 IP PBX for immediate routing to one of EMRI’s communications officers in Hyderabad using Nortel’s Contact Center Manager Server technology. The caller’s location instantly appears on the screen, allowing the communications officer to verify the address of the emergency and immediately dispatch the right type of assistance. If required, the officer is also able to re-establish contact with the caller. EMRI launched this service in public-private partnership with the Andhra Pradesh state government. Many other states in India have evinced interest in rolling out similar emergency services, which will involve creating a backend infrastructure to run the service, which could well be a substantial opportunity for Nortel.

Nortel has had a long-standing relationship with Indian companies such as Wipro, TCS, Sasken and Infosys for outsourced R&D. The company has also established a Nortel Technology Excellence Center in Bangalore, which focuses on product design, development and testing for global customers. The center is an integral part of the company’s global R&D capabilities, focusing as it does on advanced routers, Ethernet switching, security and VoIP.

The company believes in having a strong bond with its partners—GTL, Ramco and Wipro Infotech among others—who have been instrumental in growing the company’s business in India.

SMBs=growth opportunities

Nortel expects to penetrate deeper into the Indian SMB segment. Chauhan says, “The SMB segment is going through a process of rapid growth and businesses are looking at technology to enable them to grow bigger. We have a complete range of products to meet an SMB’s voice, data, wireless and security requirements. Our key differentiator to be successful in this segment will be support.” Looking forward Nortel sees growth in Carrier Ethernet as well.

Chauhan adds,” Carrier Ethernet builds on the capabilities of the Ethernet technology that has been deployed in enterprise local area networks for over two decades. We have invested in a number of technologies to extend the capabilities of Ethernet to transform it into a true carrier-class technology.”