Circa 1996, Ramesh, a fresh graduate, tries to float his resume from a browsing centre for more than an hour and pained by the bandwidth speed, he quits trying and walks to the company directly. Cut to 2008, seventh grade students in National Government High School are listening to the video-con­ferencing seminar on the effects of gravity.

The connectivity was there now and then. However, what mattered was the bandwidth and its benefits. From the traditional dial-up environment, there was a transition in the connectivity space with the emergence of broadband, though at a slow pace. Now the average bandwidth offered through broadband is 256Kbps and varies according to the demand to up to 11Mbps speed.

Primarily, the demand for bandwidth started coming in with the increased necessity for connectivity in organizations for both internal and external communications. Keeping this in mind, Internet service providers (SPs) started offering broadband services with competitive edge, which eventually benefit the end-customers. As per IDC, the number of broadband sub­scribers in India is expected to grow to 9,66,000 subscribers
by 2011, which is a CAGR of 156.8 percent for the period starting 2006.

Communication played a vital role in pivoting the connectivity scenario, as only the need for uninterrupted com­muni­cation made broadband a reality from hype. As its adoption increased, broadband solutions became affordable, further propelling its acceptance. This drop in broadband price and increasing adoption set the ball rolling for taking high bandwidth communication to new heights.

Solutions that empowered communication with the effec­tive utilization of broadband and other means of connectivity are generally termed as broadband connectivity solutions. The growth of organizations and their need for constant connec­tivity has propelled the emergence of communication solutions like e-mail, messenger, unified communications (UC), IP-based telephony encom­passing voice, video, virtual private networks (VPNs), residential and business voice-over-IP services, and entertain­ment services such as digital video or streaming media, bandwidth on demand. Major vendors like Cisco, Avaya Global Connect, D-Link, Nortel, Alcatel Lucent, Airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Reliance, etc too got involved in introducing more solutions which could ride on this connectivity wave.

Ample solutions
The drop in connectivity costs has actually fuelled the growth of cost effective communication solutions based on broadband and other connectivity mediums. Most major service providers like Airtel, Sify, BSNL or Reliance are offering services like MPLS, IP VPN, IP telephony, IP conferencing, security, managed services, ASP services, bandwidth on demand,
co-location and hosting services.

Since vendors and service providers have begun offering a wide range of solutions, enterprises are eying these solutions to avail an effective communication. With a plethora of solution options pouring in, there are lots of options for decision makers in enterprises to look in on the cost effective communication angle. This shows that connectivity solu­tions provide a good opportunity for solution providers (SPs), giving them yet another source of revenue.

Not only has there been a constant rise in the demand for broadband, the industry is witnessing evolution of various private networks and band­width-intensive applications such as video-conferencing and video-on-demand. According to Chandan Mendiratta, Country Manager-System Engineering-Service Provider, India and SAARC, Cisco the adoption of broadband services and solutions on a mass scale is important for India.

“These services can reduce the barriers of remote locations and low physical service availability in the country. A variety of applications are expected to benefit from the comprehensive communication capability of broadband to provide a wide range of services,” he said.

These services could be offered to various verticals inclu­­ding telemedicine, e-gover­nance, distance education learning, entertainment, micro-finance, agriculture and rural occupation, e-commerce, tourism, information gathering, small business assistance, national security, public safety and tele-working. He feels that with the growth of the Indian economy, there is an increase in the enterprise market for both voice and data connectivity.

“The Indian enterprise market (both for telco and non-telco services, according to FICCI-Telecom report 2007, was estimated at about $2.4 billion in FY '06 and is expected to growth at about 25 percent annually to touch about $6 billion by FY '10.

Growth in this segment is primarily being led by the demand for connectivity from IT, ITeS, government and the financial service segments,” opined Mendiratta. For the next three to five years, Avaya Global Connect foresees a 25 percent YoY growth in the customer uptake on the broadband/communication solutions like IP telephony and unified com­muni­cation solutions, which are globally considered to be increasing the productivity and profitability.

According to Vivek Porwal, BU Head-Unified Communi­cations, Avaya Global Connect, “The growth of these broadband, communication solutions would be coming from collaboration and business communication mobility tools. These could be tools that emulate conference rooms in virtual space. The end-users could see these as multi-party conference call capabilities, desktop video-conferencing, web-conferencing, and live and recorded voice/video/data streaming capa­bilities,” he averred. He mentioned that the mobility tools could be made portable and could be accessed from any point. “Like the One-X unified access solution offered by
Avaya, where the office desk communication environment is made portable and accessible from a home environment or the mobile phone or even through the browser, there would be more solutions offered in collaboration and business communication mobility tools space,” Porwal added. He also said that the mobility capability would get enhanced further with speech recognition technologies offering services similar to that of a personal assistant.

What is driving the uptake?
It is an established fact that demand drives growth. Similarly, a significant driver in the growth of broadband or communication solutions is the increasing demand for bandwidth intensive applications including inter-office business applications and need for converged solutions. With more enhanced connec­tivity being offered by SPs, more solutions are being introduced to enable users to avail the benefits of these services.

S Natarajan, VP-R&S Business Development and Planning, DLink India, feels that features like mobility, unified communication along with convenience and cost savings are increasing the uptake of the communication solutions. Porwal opined that there are a couple of factors that are driving the uptake of communication solutions. He said, “First of all, the need to enhance ease of use across complex and multiple modes of communications is driving the uptake. This coupled with the need to be quick, efficient and effective in responding to customers is the key factor in the increased uptake of these solutions. Secondly, the movement towards Green IT would see a strong push towards adoption of collaboration tools.”

While Porwal opts for ease of communication, Mendiratta of Cisco attributed the reason for rising demand to customers. He feels that empowered consumers are increasingly demanding to have a say in the products and services they purchase, and are sharing their views, perspectives, personal experiences and product reviews through various social networking platforms. “In such a milieu, SPs are faced with the challenge of creating new ways of interacting with consu­mers to increase sales and productivity, which requires innovative offerings in the broadband space,” said Mendiratta. The other driver according to him is the Government of India, which needs to sustain India's economic development and respond to the market demand to bridge the digital divide.

The drop in broadband price and increasing adoption set the ball rolling for taking high bandwidth communication to new heights

Emerging solutions
Ninety nine percent of vendors and SPs feel that IP-based bandwidth intense applications like unified communications, voice over IP, video over IP, IP telephony, VoIP, managed Internet gateway, managed router and managed LAN, collaboration tools, mobility led applications are the key communication solutions that enterprises today are looking for. IPTV, DTH, telepresence, FMC are a few that are expected to be popular in the near future. With the advancement of technology, customers are becoming more aware, and new forms of services and features are being created to address their needs. Mendiratta said, “Cisco offers expertise that can help SPs to optimize their business. With this expertise and backing, Cisco is more than placed to cater to the trends that will steer the SP market forward in the near future with the solutions.”

The solutions includes data growth driving network architec­tures; integration of Web 2.0-based applications with mobility; IPTV, VoIP, WiMax for last mile broadband access with mobility and quad play services; hosted application services; managed enterprise services; unified communication in enterprises; and collaboration, virtualization of IT resources, especially in data centers.

Unified communications is another area, which most vendors highly bet on. As a leading provider in unified communications solution, Cisco and Avaya Global Connect closely compete with each other and provide exuberant solutions to their customers. According to Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager-Unified Communi­cations, Cisco India and SAARC, “Unified communications aim to bring about a sea change in the way businesses communicate and collaborate. “As the boundaries defining office workstation, home, etc, are blurring, communication cannot be restricted to desktops only. For effective collaboration anytime, anywhere independent of the devices used, Cisco is evangelizing the concept of 'Unified Workspace',” Zia claimed.

Scope for SI/SP
Porwal of Avaya feels that there are immense scopes for the SPs in the communication solutions space. “Unified communication with integrated play across collaboration and communi­cation tools both real time and non-real time tools like e-mail, IM and web-streaming applica­tions, have opened a significant opportunity for SIs to provide customized solutions for environments needing expertise in integrated environments,”
he claimed. He informed further that there is another major area opening up for system integration and business consulting experts, where the business processes are capable of being integrated into com­munication environments-CEBP at Avaya. Even Natarajan supported Porwal's thought on SIs role in unified communi­cation. “IP telephony needs good level of integration expertise. SIs/SPs have the greatest opportunity to add value in this domain. Introduction of new solutions such as OCS from Microsoft increases these opportunities,” opined Natarajan.

Kannan, Director-Product Management, SupportSoft quipped that SIs have a special role to play in the broadband solutions arena. “ In addition to the hardware, software and services aspects of core delivery of broadband services is one area that plays an interesting role in the overall adoption, utilization and sustenance of broadband solutions, and effective installation and customer support. In this regard, SIs can leverage support automation solutions as a part of their overall solution to the broadband market to go beyond delivery of base broadband into improved customer acquisition, retention and experience,” opined Kannan.

Beyond broadband
Today, all major SPs have started deploying next-generation networks to deliver enhanced and converged broadband applications in the future. There is already a shift happening from conventional point-to-point leased lines towards MPLS networks and managed services as these offer better control and network efficiency to enterprises. Enterprise networks are moving away from traditional TDM-based private CUG network to MPLS-based IP VPN CUG network. Any enterprise network can grow by just patching up their new central/regional/branch offices and agents to an MPLS SP cloud with a local loop WiMax, as the next big thing in broadband services.

With so many services in the pipeline, the enterprises will look at richer applications with the increase in bandwidth. Due to this, vendors and SPs will further look at offering more services and solutions for their customers, which will again set off a chain reaction.

NR SETHURAMAN
(sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in)

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