Cisco plans to foray into e-gov, defence projects space

Cisco Systems (India) Private Limited, a leading networking solutions provider, plans to foray into the e-governance and defence projects space.

Rangnath Salgame, president (India and Saarc), Cisco Systems (India) Private Limited, told Business Standard that the company verticalised its operations into four different areas including the government and defence sector a few months ago.

"The company, which is already a technology partner in many states for the e-governance projects, has set up a separate practice to handle the government and defence projects," he said.

The company is holding talks with many state governments to provide network products with high security, best practices and solutions from across the world, he added.

"We have successfully participated and implemented e-governance projects in states like Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat. Now we are targeting projects ranging from local area networks, department-wise network to statewide network connectivity in cooperation with leading system integrators in India," Salgame said.

According to him, though the company's products are yet to make a direct presence in the public-government interface, Cisco has already tied-up with service providers for technology partnership.

"In addition to this, we have a tie-up with UNDP and the National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG) for integrating the National e-Governance Action Plan," he said.

"We have also been witnessing a phenomenal growth, particularly from sectors like IT, ITeS, banking, telecom and broadband services in the last few months after we have verticalised our operations," Salgame said.

Speaking about some of the other initiatives, Salgame said that the company would like to replicate the success of the enterprise networking in the governance projects.

"Cisco has also decided to assist Indian companies by setting up network academy centres in all the states to inculcate the importance of networking technologies and implementation aspects since e-security has become more relevant and a challenging aspect for the economy to grow," he said.

Cisco feels that the three key areas which are more important to take on the security aspect include implementation of Firewall applications, intrusion and detection technologies, and creating virtual security tunnel for public internet leverage.

"We are committed to set up at least one centre in every state to enable institutions to approach us and take the necessary help in this regard as it is necessary for an organisation to embrace the networking technologies to succeed in the Internet economy," he said.

The company in this regard has recently made a multi-million dollar investment in Bangalore to create a separate network logistics centre, which would help companies to source Cisco's expertise in this domain.