SL at the edge of the IT curve – IT Experts
Kochi, India – California-based networking company, Cisco Systems has added 200 customers to Cisco START, a new initiative tailor-made to help Sri Lankan Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) to build their digital foundation and become globally competitive, a top Cisco India official said.
V.C. Gopalratnam, Cisco's Chief Information Officer (CIO) for its International Operations speaking at the Cisco summit.
Cisco India and the SAARC Managing Director Sudhir Nayar told the Business Times in an interview alongside the sixth edition of the Cisco India Summit (CIS) 2019 titled “The Power of Alliances” on July 29 that 200 customers were added in the past 12 months. “We presented a buffet offering for Sri Lankan customers and we trained all our partners in Sri Lanka to install Cisco START,” he said. According to data, some 52 per cent of Sri Lanka’s GDP comes from SMBs. They use a labour force of over a million people making it one of the most crucial high-growth segments in the country.
With Sri Lanka looking to drive growth through digitisation, SMBs have become a critical factor of the country’s digital transformation journey.
Cisco is bridging the gap in challenges that SMBs face such as access to right technology, lack of skills sets as well as high entry cost that limit their ability to scale and seize opportunities provided by digitisation, Mr. Nayar explained.
Cisco, known for making networking equipment that moves big volumes of data around the internet, is the leading technology partner for Lanka Government Network (LGN) to build highly available, high speed, secure, reliable and centrally managed dedicated government network to link all government institutions to a single digital infrastructure. “With LGN we already connected more than 70 locations outside Colombo,” Mr. Nayar added. The second phase of LGN is under a tender process.
“Sri Lanka is open to new technology. Now with a lot of upcoming hotels and properties, the country needs state of the art tech,” Mr. Nayar said noting that Sri Lanka is at the edge of the curve in implementation of technology. Cisco has implemented security systems for the local textile industry along with banking and finance companies. Tourism Ministry data data shows that new investments in the hotel sector amounts to US$ 2.8 billion in the next three years. Classified tourist hotels in the 1 to 5 star categories have the highest inventory of 12,828 rooms. Mr. Nayar added that Cisco will be working with new hotels and apartment complexes in Colombo to deploy end to end security systems.
WSO2, which is a portfolio investment for Cisco, is a perfect example of Cisco partnerships working together in application programming, interfaces management and in exchanging data, Pankaj Mitra, Director, Cisco Systems Investments Ltd noted to the Business Times on the sidelines of the Cisco India Summit. Cisco Investments Ltd operates as a venture capital firm. The company invests in digital media, security, cloud, data center, and other technology companies.
“WSO2, an open-source technology provider founded in 2006 is the biggest investment in the region for Cisco. We are always open for new opportunities in Sri Lanka,” Mr. Mitra said.
During the Summit, Cisco and Google announced plans to roll out free high-speed Wi-Fi zones across India with Google’s gStation platform, initially in Bangalore. “We will be connecting 1.3 billion Indians to the digital economy and are coming together to bring free, open, high-quality Internet access to everyone in India. This also represents a significant growth opportunity, the demand for public Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to go up by 100X over the next three years, creating new markets for Cisco and our partner,” Sameer Garde, President, Cisco India and SAARC told media. He said these Wi-Fi zones will be in high-traffic areas in the city. The locations include public spaces like bus stops, hospitals, government offices etc. Already such zones are implemented across 25 locations in Bengaluru.
This also embodies a significant growth opportunity as the demand for public Wi-Fi hotspots should climb by 100 times over the next three years, bringing new markets for Cisco and its partners, Mr. Garde added.
India aims to connect about 1.3 billion citizens to the digital economy. The project will roll out to an additional 200 locations by September 2019, and another 300 locations during the second phase. Existing business models will cease to be adequate or efficient in this age, with transformation led by intelligent software, Mr. Garde said noting that ‘digital’ is the new world order.
“For all these things to happen, for software to enable growth and data and these go-to-market strategies (GTMs), we need last mile connectivity.
If that does not happen all of these get affected. It is critical to ensure we get the mile connectivity. Today we expect seamless video calls, or when you want to search for something which is immediate; you want availability of seamless data. Therefore, we are announcing a Cisco and Google partnership – the first country in the world to do so.”
Across the world, there is a 3.5 billion population that is not on the Internet and there are 2.5 billion people who live in the age of 3G and 4G network but do not use the Internet, he went on to say adding that the broader aim is to bring this population into using the Internet.”That beginning has been made from India. I feel that the success of digitisation is closely linked to high speed Internet access.”
It will run on https environment — the same environment in which you do online banking transactions, Sajith Sivanandan, Managing Director and Business Head, Google Pay and “Next Billion User Initiatives”, India said reiterating that the service will be secure.
At the summit Cisco also announced the expansion of its Networking Academy programme to train one million students in India by 2025. This commitment is aligned to Cisco’s goal of positively impacting 50 million people in India by 2025 and is aimed at creating a pool of highly-skilled technology professionals who will accelerate India’s digital transformation.
Cisco Networking Academy in India is one of the largest programmes for Cisco worldwide. Across 583 academies nationwide, more than 350,000 Indian students have been trained since its inception. The skills-development programme is a cloud-delivered, scalable, high-quality program that helps students learn how to design, build, secure, and maintain digital infrastructure.