QoS: Powering Software

A the competition
increases from countries such as Ireland, Russia, and China, it is very
essential that the major software houses in India have high-quality telecom
infrastructure.

Are the current infrastructure facilities good enough?
What are the distinct telecommunication needs of the software exporters? Which
are the areas of services where telecom service providers must improve to enable
their customers in the software/technology sector take on their global
competitors?

To find out the answers to these, VOICE&DATA
conducted its Top View discussion on the subject–Networking India’s Software
Powerhouses. The discussion he ld in Bangalore had on its panel, KS Srinivasan,
GM, Central Bangalore Telecom District, BSNL; S
Srinivas, head (networks), Tata Teleservices; Vasappa Mahesh, joint
director, STPI; Dr Utpal Chattopadhyay, GM (software operations),
Motorola India; Rajgopal Nayar, GM, (technical network services), IBM
Global; G Dhananjayan, (chief of sales and marketing), Bharti Telenet; Ramannkutty
Nair, V-P and chief of business (Karnataka), Reliance Infocomm; AN Rao, CIO,
Digital Global Soft, Ibrahim Ahmad, executive editor, VOICE&DATA, and
Sean Dexter, CEO, Spice Telecom. Excerpts:

Ibrahim Ahmad, moderator: One
is looking at India being able to do software business worth 50 billion dollars
in the next 5 to 7 years. That is the big target and obviously the quality of
communication infrastructure and the quality of services that are offered is
going to play a very big role in this entire plan that we have.

Rajgopal Nayar, IBM: I
would say the first concern normally which people have when they try to contract
project out here is: Is the infrastructure good enough? Do you have very
resilient infrastructure, do you have back-to-back SLAs with the infrastructure
providers so that we are comfortable with giving this task to you?

Dr Utpal Chattopadhyay, Motorola: Naturally,
over the last 10 years the telecom infrastructure in the country, the services
being offered have gone up several notches but the fact is the demand of the
world keeps increasing also. It is only about 2-3 years now that we are actually
developing major piece of handset software in India here in Bangalore. Even a
network jitter that lasts several minutes will destroy the entire synergy that
is being done across the world and will push back our delivery by several days.
No corporation can tolerate having the product delivery dates being shifted by
2-3 weeks.

AN Rao, Digital Global Soft: Of
the six out of nine situations that we are talking about, I don’t think there
are issues on connectivity. Connectivity is not one of the top three parameters,
but the remaining areas continue to be big parameters.

Vasappa Mahesh, STPI: When
we see that industry meets the target of $50 billion or 80 billion that we talk
about by 2008. When we compete with other countries like China or Indonesia,
Malaysia. They don’t talk anything about downtime and all those things. That
is where we need to pay attention to and see that we meet the expectation of the
customers who is sitting on the other side which will help Indian industry to
meet the requirements of their customers.

KS Srinivasan, BSNL: The
availability, the provisioning of network is also one of the issues. As a
service provider from the BSNL, it has been our experience that the last mile
has been the most problematic. As far as the transmission links are concerned,
we may be able to provide a high degree of stability by bringing in SDH rings
within the city, within the state and between the different states.

G Dhananjayan, Bharti Touchtel: I
would say that everyone is going through the learning curve. You start with a
set of learning curve; you grow up in learning the service. Today when we go and
talk to corporate accounts the discussion is not less than 99.999. So the
expectations have gone up because internationally the demands are like this. I
am sure once the learning curve improves among all companies we will able to
give much better service to the corporate.

S Srinivas, Tata Teleservices: The
only activity which needs to be looked is the coordination amongst our own
service providers to ensure that we do not damage each others’ assets. Once
that is achieved the last mile problem will be totally solved. It will be
possible to provide the kind of services which are available in other developed
countries. Other than that, technologically, product-wise, equipment-wise we are
providing the same kind of services which are available everywhere else. So it
is only little bit of coordination and living with each other which are required
to ensure that the customers are kept happy.

Sean Dexter, Spice Telecom: As
a user of bandwidth, it is extremely important that pricing does come down. The
software houses have talked about international business and yet really as I see
it within India there is huge potential for national business and one of the
reason why that national business is not there today is because of pricing,
availability, and unwillingness of corporates to invest.

Ibrahim Ahmad: IT-enabled
services, for example, is seen as a big growth area, and the key issue here more
than any other sector will be quality of telecom infrastructure. If that gap is
not filled up very fast then there is always the chance that we may lose out.
Especially when the competition is coming up from other countries.

Rajankutty Nair, Reliance Infocomm: India
has got 2,000 Mbps of international bandwidth while China has 500,000. So there
is a big gap. I am talking about past six months’ figure. China’s figure
would have gone far ahead of that. China is slowly becoming a competitor of
India in terms of software. So it is very important that we should cover this
issue.

Whether the services will be available on demand.
Whether it is 99.99 percent reliable. Unless the infrastructure is properly
placed it would not be possible to achieve this. I think all these concerns are
being addressed. Within a few months, you will see a sea change in telecom
scenario.

AN Rao: Please try
and understand our business needs per se. I have been saying this to systems
provider as well as service providers. Don’t come to tell what you have, ask
us what we need. Come to me with solutions. That is the expectation I have. Mere
infrastructure does not resolve my problems. Fiber is not connectivity. That is
not what we are talking about. We are looking at setting up a customized
umbilical between us and customers oversee to deliver.

Dr Utpal Chattopadhyay: If
you talk about software industry going to be $50 billion, it is no longer an
issue of availability of pipes or cutting down prices. Cutting down prices does
not help us at all. I would request service providers to benchmark against our
competitors. We are losing business; we are going to lose business to Russia
soon. What kind of infrastructure they have, what are their jitter
characteristics. So rather than saying that we are working on it we need to
understand what is the gap. In an international setting what is the gap between
us and China, and our nearest competitors and how can we make sure that we
reduce the gap rather than having a vague sense that we are doing better than
before. That is very important.

Vasappa Mahesh: We
heard that a lot of service providers are interconnected to many cities but
looking at the ground level they reach the cities but they don’t get
distributed in the cities. All the operators reach the central stations, but how
do they distribute from there? They don’t have an answer. It should be looked
at seriously.

KS Srinivasan: As
regards SLAs, they are shortly likely to be provided by us. We (BSNL) have
already tried to have a practical model which is realistic and within our
capabilities and to that extent services are bound to improve. As regards
connectivity beyond the hub, connectivity is there right up to the remotest
corner in the state and I am sure the situation is exactly the same in other
states as well.

Rajankutty Nair: SLA
was never used as a terminology in India for the international network, the
bandwidth, and that will come and the customer is going to be the king and they
are going to dictate the terms especially with respect to SLAs and it is going
to happen very shortly. Second is the issue with respect to coordination between
systems integrators and service providers. It is a very serious issue. We will
soon get it resolved. That will be a thing of the past.

G Dhananjayan: Over
the period of two to three months probably all the monopolistic or restrictive
trade practices will go away. Integration of systems providers and service
providers have to take place. And that can happen only when there is no
restriction in regulation, and absolutely no regulatory confusion.

S Srinivas: You
have to sit with the customers, understand their requirements, what sort of
solutions they want. At Tatas, we believe that we don’t sell readymade
garments; we tailor it for individual corporate customers.

AN Rao: The
questions we are asking service providers here are no different from the
questions we face internally. If you really see the balance score card today we
are measured on improvement of customer satisfaction. An enterprise may have
couple of hundred projects, there is interaction of customers, we deal with
individual customized SLAs with projects.

Dr Utpal Chattopadhyay: Somebody
mentioned about eight locations in Bangalore. It has become a menace. We have
one location in Hyderabad, another in Bangalore, the ISDN link between Bangalore
and Hyderabad is very temperamental. You cannot imagine the anguish we have if
we have a major customer visiting one center and he wants to talk to the other
center. Somebody spoke about 99.8 or 96.8. The world is moving to five 9s, which
means two hours downtime a year. We cannot be a $50 billion industry unless
these things are solved in toto. Our major task is not to figure out whether the
network is running or not. Our major task is to know how to increase
productivity.

AN Rao: If our
customers require ten times the bandwidth what they need or what we are using
currently, if that is the requirement, we have to be with them and service
providers have to be with us. The current technology allows us to do that. Those
are the things which will help us to cater to business on demand. We have to
address customers’ requirements and demand fluctuates a lot.

Dr Utpal Chattopadhyay: I
would want service providers to knock at our doors periodically every quarter,
asking what needs we have.

Nareshchandra Laishram