Daniel Alex, president, telecom business, Sify Technologies
For Sify Technologies, a leading information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider in India, the enterprise segment has emerged as the mainstay. Daniel Alex, president, telecom business, Sify Technologies, talks about the changing requirements of enterprises, emerging technology trends and, the upcoming opportunities for the company in the enterprise segment.
How have the ICT requirements of enterprises changed over time?
Every enterprise has a wide range of ICT requirements covering a spectrum of hardware, applications and communication services. All these aspects are currently undergoing transformation in their own way. On the hardware side, the IT demands of enterprises are changing from an ownership model to a shared or usage-based model on cloud. In the application space too, enterprises are witnessing a major transformation, primarily because their landscape and demand for ICT have changed. Until sometime back, the information needs of an enterprise were served from one single point that remained, typically, within an organisation. However, today, there are multiple sources of information that go beyond the enterprises. With the advent of the cloud, information is no more residing at one point within the enterprise.
From the communication infrastructure perspective, telecom infrastructure typically was being delivered through a hub and spoke model so far. Under this, there was a central location where servers were installed and information was stored. This location was connected to multiple offices, suppliers, end-customers as well as the ecosystem that supports the enterprise. Now, the same communication infrastructure is getting distributed into a multi-tiered model. Enterprises have ceased to have just one data centre. Instead, there are multiple data centres with different cloud providers in addition to the data centre within the enterprise, bringing in complexity to the infrastructure.
What are the key focus areas for Sify?
Sify largely operates in the enterprise space. We have structured ourselves in five distinct business verticals – telecom, data centre, cloud and managed services, application integration services, and transformation integration services. While the first two business verticals are infrastructure-led, the other three are practice-led. Through these verticals we cater to the entire IT and communication infrastructure demands of enterprises across a diverse user segment including enterprises in the banking and financial, manufacturing, retail, pharmaceuticals and entertainment sectors. Of these, financial and retail verticals have got a higher growth potential.
What technology trends are likely to be witnessed by the enterprise sector?
With such rapidly changing scenarios, the communication infrastructure of an enterprise is becoming multi-modal, with a customer being served by several players. As such, the networks are becoming more complex. Service management and security have emerged as key factors in making an enterprise solution a success. This is forcing providers who are currently serving customers from a communication infrastructure perspective to become service-led as against infrastructure-led. For instance, a provider that was earlier offering point-to-point connectivity will become irrelevant in the emerging scenario because enterprises are demanding much more than connectivity.
Sify, has always kept itself ahead of market expectation and, as part of its telecom infrastructure business, has always been delivering fully managed services to its customers. We are now delivering a suit of network services to address the SMAC (social, mobility, analytics and cloud) needs of an enterprise.
How are the telecom requirements of enterprises expected to evolve, going forward?
The telecom requirements of enterprises will eventually start transforming from the traditional subscription-based model to an outcome-based model. This is expected to change the entire business model of the communication service provider. It can no longer focus on just providing infrastructure, but will have to provide services that ensure the outcome is delivered efficiently. However, transforming the existing networks is cumbersome and takes a lot of time, effort and resources. We support enterprises in their journey from the legacy model to the next-gen model, ensuring seamless transformation.
What opportunities do you foresee from programmes like Digital India?
Digital India is creating a lot of opportunities for telecom infrastructure providers in terms of building communication infrastructure to support the e-governance initiatives of the government. Our collaboration with the Department of Posts can show how an organisation like Sify can play a key role in government programmes. It is a flagship project in this space under which, Sify, along with one more service provider, has rolled out a network to connect 30,000 post offices across the country, supported by SLA-driven services for the next seven to eight years. The project is to aid the department to provide alternative banking services. With the government realising how automation can expedite the provision of social benefits to marginal sections of society, I see Sify standing to benefit as our entire gamut of services can then be put to use.
