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Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Monday, 15 December 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
CEO of ITL Durga Prasad
Prem Saigal, Chairman of ITL and Dinesh Malkani, President of Cisco India and SAARC, made the announcement along with Anil Menon, Cisco Deputy Chief Globalisation Officer and President, smart+ connected communities and Durga Prasad, CEO of ITL.
The collaboration between Cisco and ITL will focus on bringing together the best-in-class complementary capabilities of both companies. Cisco’s vision of the Internet of Everything which is the intelligent connection of people, processors, data and things is already revolutionising the way our cities operate, creating a more dynamic digital economy and also brining new richer experiences to citizens. IL&FS’s deep expertise in infrastructure development in India along with ITL’s excellent technology services capabilities strongly complements Cisco IoE architecture and robust vertical solutions.
President, Engineering and India Site Leader Amit Phadnis
The digital India program of the government is focused on the digital empowerment of citizens, where infrastructure would be offered as a utility to every citizen, governance and services would be on demand and citizens would be digitally empowered. The digital India aims to enable broadband in villages, universal phone connectivity, public Internet access points, public Wi-Fi in schools and universities, digital inclusion, electronic delivery of governance and services and job creation. 
Cisco’s vision of smart + connected communities which enables the transformation of physical communities into connected communities has been embraced by more than 90 global Greenfield and Brownfield projects and includes the Delhi Mumbai industrial corridor in India, where Cisco is developing the ICT master plan for four pilot cities in the $ 90 billion flagship public sector infrastructure project.
My 2050 India will add 404 million people to its cities. According to the United Nations while today at 857 million people India has the largest rural population in the world. Cisco and ITL will collaborate to enable the delivery of cost effective and efficient citizen services to urban and rural communities. The collaboration will focus on developing IoE based digital solutions for smart cities, smart villages and the infrastructure sector. Cisco and ITL will pursue joint go-to-market opportunities in India and other countries as required.
The ‘Intelligent Urbanisation: Roadmap for India’ report released by CII and Cisco in 2010 estimated that by 2020 India might have 68 cities with a population greater than one million. In 2013, CII and Cisco released a report titled ‘Smart city in Indian Context’ which stated that India faced a shortage of 600,000 doctors, one million nurses and 1.2 million teachers in government schools.
According to the Cisco Visual Networking index 2013-2018, In India by 2018, there will be 1.5 billion networked devices, including 515 million smart phones, 177.1 million connected TVs and 62.1 million tablets. The internet of Everything collaboration between Cisco and ITL will help the infrastructure sector and smart cities take advantage of the tidal wave of data generated in India and derive more value and greater insights from their existing networks. 
According to Cisco, the Internet of Everything total value at stake in India is $511 billion over the next 10 years, out of which the public sector value at stake is $116 billion which includes creating smart cities and citizen services such as health and education.
Cisco and ITL recognise the unprecedented value to be created in the way in which many services such as outdoor lighting, parking, mobility services, beacons, kiosks, and location based services, sensor-based water defences, physical infrastructure monitoring and control and smart energy grid services are digitised.
The joint digital solutions will use intelligent networks to transform the way cities and communities are designed, built and renewed as well as digitally empowered citizens through the availability of government services in real time, online and on mobile platforms. Cisco and ITL will embrace IoE strategies in existing solutions and radical new solutions to digitise the infrastructure sector, smart cities and smart villages in India.
Some of the solutions that will be jointly developed will focus on urban services and smart city infrastructure solutions such as traffic and transportation, public safety and security, command and control services, e-governance and broader set of next generation urban services such as parking, lighting, traffic and citizen engagement services built on top of Cisco’s city infrastructure management. 
Prem Saigal, Chairman of ITL, said: “We’re pleased to collaborate with Cisco on the Internet on Everything to develop world-class solutions for India’s infrastructure sector and smart cities. We believe that ITL’s deep expertise in this space combined with Cisco’s Internet of Everything vision can help digitise India’s infrastructure sector and smart cities. There is a transformational opportunity to create world-class infrastructure, build cities and digitally empower our citizens.”
Dinesh Malkani, President Sales of Cisco India and SAARC, said: “We’re very pleased to collaborate with ITL and develop digital solutions for the infrastructure sector and smart cities in India. Today only one percent of all the things around us are connected to the network. In India everyday and average of 275,000 devices will be connected to the network. Our vision of the Internet of Everything is that we will live in a world where everything – and everyone – can be connected to everything else. We have the opportunity to embrace the Internet of Everything and help enable a digital India. By enabling a digitised economy we hope to enable safer streets, smarter homes and healthier and better educated citizens. The Internet of Everything will change how we work by delivering more information, better decisions and increased economic value.”
In his presentation about Powering the Digital Economy, Dinesh said that there is a need for taking the next step and having virtualised environments where people in remote areas can access services just as they would in the city. Describing the technology behind it he said, “Software defined networking creates the opportunity to program the network or any other resource that sits on the network in order to develop most value for the user.”
Anil Menon, Cisco Deputy Chief Globalisation Officer and President, smart+ connected communities, said: “India has benefited tremendously from two major industry shifts; the globalisation of IT services and the globalisation of engineering services. We believe the next major wave of growth for India will be the globalisation of urban services which is a three trillion opportunity worldwide. The unprecedented growth in connectivity, data and broadband access has set the stage for India to play a transformational role in this upcoming industry. Together with ITL, we believe we can make India a living lab for urban services that will galvanise innovative thinking into defining and building the next iterations of our cities worldwide. Through our joint efforts we can play an integral role in helping India become an exporter of global urban services such as traffic or water management to the world.”
V.C. Gopalratnam, President, IT and CIO, APJ&C & Chief of Strategy, Planning & Operations of Cisco India, during his presentation on Technology Transitions and Role of CIOs in the Digital Economy highlighted that “IT is no longer in the expense column but in the business enabler”.
On the second day (9 December) of the event, there was a showcase of three products conceptualised, architected and designed in India that will help enable the vision of a digitised nation.
ASR 920-O: This next generation Aggregation Services Router (ASR) is a full-featured converged access platform for the cost-effective delivery of wireline and wireless services and is optimised for mobile backhaul, residential and business service applications. Conceptualised and architected in India, and designed for the Indian environment, the ASR 920-O is a temperature hardened, high-throughput, small form factor and low-power-consumption router.
According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, 2013 – 2018, mobile data traffic in India will grow 24-fold from 2013 to 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 88%. This explosion of demand for mobility from citizens, to small and large companies, to the government, will require a robust mobile Internet network and powerful enterprise connectivity.
In a Digital India, the rapidly growing mobile network requires a multi-gigabit fast, reliable and temperature-hardened access network while enterprise connectivity needs a dense and fast aggregation network. The ASR 920-O addresses both these requirements, connecting data to people to processes and things, enabling new business models to emerge, and leading to better decision-making and richer customer experiences.
ISR 800M: As India becomes more connected, routers will play an increasingly integral role by providing secure connectivity to everything from retail stores and bank branches to manufacturing plants and small offices in a highly secure environment. Conceptualised and architected in India, and designed for Indian environment, the Cisco 800M Integrated Services Router (ISR) is cost effective, is easy to deploy and simplifies large-scale wireless wide-area networks (WAN) deployments.
Designed for flexible and multiple access options, the ISR 800M provides connectivity over both GSM and CDMA technologies, making the router ideal for microbranches, remote offices of large enterprises or government services across the country. With a modular platform that makes it 4G compatible, the ISR 800M is designed with an intuitive graphical user interface allowing non-experts to deploy the product swiftly and cost effectively.
The ISR 800M is one of Cisco’s first routers to provide an open, extensible environment for developing and hosting applications at the network edge for local processing right in the router. This is enabled by the Cisco IOx framework, which allows customers to develop custom solutions that require real-time, local data collection and analysis such as retail kiosks, vending machines, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and M2M sensors in other applications.
MDS 9250i: The Multilayer Director Switch (MDS) 9250i is Cisco’s next generation Storage Area Networking (SAN) services switch that was conceptualised, architected and designed in India. According to the EMC Digital Universe Study with research and analysis by IDC, April 2014, data produced worldwide will grow 10 times by 2020, from 4.4ZB today to 44ZB; 32 billion Internet of Things devices will be connected to the Internet; 40% of data will be touched by cloud; and enterprises will have liability and responsibility for 85% of all data.
With the digitisation of India, there is an ever-increasing demand for storage with efficiency and cost effectiveness, at a premium, from industries, such as e-commerce, to citizen services, to the government. Companies, both large and small, require high performance connectivity, application uptime, reliability, disaster recovery and data backup capabilities. The MDS 9250i is the SAN industry’s first multiprotocol capable services switch that enables a cost effective “SAN in a box” consolidation in small enterprises while providing high performance replication and disaster recovery capabilities to large enterprises.
Strong pipeline of innovation from India
Innovation is a core part of the Cisco culture, and annually $5.9 billion is invested in R&D worldwide. For Cisco, 830 patents have been filed from India and 500 patents issued for innovations across all technologies. The ASR 920-O, ISR 800M and MDS 9250i are the latest in a line of industry award-winning products and solutions from India.
A recent innovation, to be recognised, from India was the Autonomic Networking solution, which has won the Pioneer award, Cisco’s highest company-wide recognition of engineering innovation. The three products continue Cisco’s tradition of ‘reverse innovation’ where engineers in India design products to address the requirements of emerging countries like India but end up developing products that are globally attractive and competitive.
The ASR 920-O, ISR 800M and MDS 9250i represent how Cisco India’s innovation engine can enable the digitisation of a country and empower companies to be more innovative, agile and efficient. As more devices capture more data, interact with more people and change the processes by which we live, learn, work and play, the Internet of Everything will have a profound impact on India.
The foundation for a Digital India will be intelligent networks which will transform the delivery of citizen services from transportation, utilities and security to entertainment, education, and healthcare. Cisco is leading the way in India to deliver the benefits of virtualisation, management and software-defined networking-based advances by enabling the government and businesses to deliver voice, video, data, and mobility services for citizens and customers.
On the topic ‘Innovation for a digital economy’ Amit Phadnis, President, Engineering and India Site Leader, said “The world is changing at an unprecedented pace. In 2014 an estimated 77 billion apps will be downloaded worldwide while our digital universe continues to double every two years. In India an average of five million people join the Internet every month. More than ever before, the Internet of Everything can play an integral role in driving growth, innovation, and productivity in industries such as healthcare, retail, ecommerce and education. Cisco’s belief is that the innovative application of technology can have a positive impact on India’s competitiveness, diversification of its industry base, its ability to create jobs and improve quality of life for its citizens.
Helping people connect and collaborate is not just core to our business, it’s what makes us want to create and innovate every day. We are thrilled that the three products we announced today are made from India, made for India and will help enable a Digital India.”
