As the world gears up to face fresh challenges to economy, all the large
organizations cutting across verticals are going through a paradigm shift in how
and through what means do they conduct their businesses. Enough is being debated
over why, when, where and how companies should cut costs but quite refreshingly,
they do not see new technologies as the first budget head that requires a
trimming. This was one of the prime findings when PCQuest alongwith its partners
Datacraft and Cisco, stepped out in Delhi at The Park in Connaught Place to
discuss with CIOs of some of the prime organizations in India, on how they plan
to unify multiple channels of communication across their organizations.
The discussion started with PCQuest Editor, Anil Chopra, dwelling on a recent
survey that PCQuest conducted to find out Unified Communication strategies of
60+ key IT decision makers across India. It covered companies across verticals:
manufacturing, ITeS, BFSI, Pharma, government, media & entertainment, etc with
annual turnovers varying from 100 to 5,000+ crores. One issue that came out
boldly was that all organizations face travel budget crunch in varying degrees.
In fact, a quarter of those surveyed, faced cuts upto 50% from the previous
budgets. But this does not mean that business meetings have been cut down. There
is now an extended reliance on various communication channels available: audio
and video conferencing, Instant Messaging, text and voice messages, VoIP, data
exchange, email, landline and mobile calls, fascimile, etc. Another related
finding was the satisfaction levels with these different communication channels
and how effectively are people able to reach the person they intend to. We
really touched the sensitive spot here as the satisfied and dissatisfied people
were equal in number. Most CIOs felt that there is increased pressure in
managing multiple communication channels and a key issue faced was in reaching
the right person at the right time. Another key finding was that IP telephony
was amongst the most popular communication technologies already deployed by
companies and they feel that deploying Unified Communication (UC) in future is
the logical way forward and this is what most people actually have plans for
deployment in future. At the event, most CIOs supported the view but felt legal
restrictions were coming in the way of seamless connectivity IP-based and non
IP-based communication channels.
Anil Chopra, Editor, PCQuest talked about the Unified Communications scenario across India |
Nagi K, GM, Datacraft Asia discussed steps organizations should take to make their UC solutions future-proof. |
Minhaj Zia, Head — UC Cisco India & SAARC dwelled on the technical aspects of a UC deployment. |
Rahul Bhatia, Regional Sales Manager — North, Cisco Capital explained the company's financial assistance policies |
Moving on, Nagi K from Datacraft Asia presented on how an organization could
make its UC solution more future-proof. He started off with a brief background
on Datacraft's role as an implementation partner for Cisco. He touched upon the
need to have the 'right' implementation partner for UC deployments, one that has
years of experience and global expertise of having deployed UC for all types of
industries. He stated that most CIOs today want to cut costs from executing
business processes and systems and instead use that money to fund people. Legacy
systems still lying with companies act as an impediment to this objective so
adopting the latest cutting-edge technologies is the only panacea. Companies
should not just focus on short term goals but look at all possible opportunities
to gain over competition. One of these could be in enabling your workforce to
work from anytime, anywhere, maybe even home. A fine balance is required to be
maintained across systems to successfully implement such a vision. For instance,
data security is critical if say 100 people work from 100 homes and access the
same resources at the same time. You need to carefully evaluate the costs
incurred in adding applications to your existing systems to achieve this goal,
as this is one area that CIOs have to carefully trudge. A good strategy here
would be to convert capex into opex through the use of hosted UC solutions. If
you compare the gains made through the use of UC in the long run, you'll find
that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) has actually reduced.
Minhaj Zia, Head — UC Cisco India & SAARC added on to the technical aspects
of a UC deployment. Some of the common challenges faced by organizations in
moving from TDM to IP-based communications are in choosing the right PBX, codec
and getting protocols to talk to each other. Cisco offers various collaboration
tools for employees, partners, customers and business leaders that let companies
save money over the long run and allow businesses to grow by unlocking the true
employee potential, build robust communication bridges with customers and leap
frog competition. Cisco is already a pioneer in video conferencing of different
hues: from low-res desktop to high-res video conferencing and TelePresence, the
ultimate experience in life-like teleconferencing. Cisco and its partners
deliver collaboration via whatever model that best suits a customers needs: from
On Premise CPE (customer premises equipment) to Managed CPEs to Hosted
Communication Solutions that go all the way upto 'On Demand' solutions such as
SaaS. One of the revelations from the conference was Cisco's latest venture into
funding new equipment purchases by organizations, through its susbsidiary, Cisco
Capital. The company's Regional Sales Manager — North, Rahul Bhatia explained
the financial logic on which Cisco Capital works and how it makes life easy for
corporates who want the latest in technology but want financial support.
Cisco Capital is a captive finance company of Cisco Systems and was
incorporated in the US in 1996 and the APAC & Japan in 1999. It offers different
leasing options: from a Finance or Capital lease to Operating Lease, to
organizations, to buy or lease for specific periods and sell a product back to
Cisco Capital.
Meant to fund only technology, the company offers best interest rates and
even provides funding for equipment maintenance programs. Such finance options
gel well with the theme of converting costs from Capex to Opex that is the focus
of most organizations in these uncertain times.