Role of telecom service providers sees major change

Role of telecom service providers sees major change

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20060814/market11.shtml

The role of telecom service providers (SPs) has undergone a sea change in recent times. No more are they just providing landline connectivity but also taking care of internet connectivity, mobile phone services (voice and video), and Web application hosting.

This change was highlighted at the recently-held Cisco Networkers’ Solutions Forum, which saw the participation of telecom service providers from across the country.

The panelists included Alin Jayant, Senior VP, Planning and Implementation, VSNL; Ajay Krishnan, Head Business Solutions Group, Airtel Enterprise Services; Jiten Israni, Head, Enterprise Solutions, Reliance Infocomm; Sandeep Kolwadkar, DGM (Business Development), BSNL; and Sudhir Narang, Sr Vice-president, Service Provider and Government, Cisco Systems.

Managing services

With changing needs of the consumers, the job of a SP is not limited to delivering the services but also includes management of application, security and storage based devices. Hence, telecom providers are slowly moving into the segment of managed services.

Jayant described this change thus, “Consumers are looking at the SP as a strategic partner.” He felt that earlier SPs were only selling bandwidth but now they were into core services like storage and security.

Kolwadkar explained, “Consumers are not just looking for connectivity. When they approach an SP they are looking for a plethora of services such as connectivity, hardware and security.”

According to Israni, monitoring is the foundation, hence managed services are a necessity but at the same time they have to be affordable and help the consumers in augmenting their networks.

Best for SMBs

SPs feel that the managed services model best suits for SMBs as it gives them the option to have their IT needs taken care of by another party instead of paying the on-site staff.

While the platform is provided by vendors, a managed SP is a company which utilises these platforms to provide IT services to end-users in the SMB sector. According to analysts and market experts managed services are rapidly growing and will continue to grow as costs to keep IT in-house increases.

With growing bandwidth and network requirements many feel that managed services are a necessity. Explained Narang, “Businesses of all sizes today face increased network complexity, changed bandwidth needs, and reduced budgets. Nevertheless, they often find that the traditional solutions to these challenges distract them from their core business strategies. In the current economic environment, focussing on core competencies is the key to survival and success.”

Krishnan felt that since SMBs have budget and skill constraints, partnership with an SP makes sense.

Israni said that managed services were the first-of-their-kind and instrumental in bringing about a paradigm shift. “SMBs are adopting more managed services than their enterprise counterparts. They are outsourcing the process and documentation as they are looking at investment,” added Israni.

System Integrator v/s SP

With the main service providers getting into providing end-to-end solutions the role of the systems integrator (SI) is being questioned. Though many argued that SIs haven’t done much in terms of growth for the end-user, there were some who believed that SIs have the ground level expertise in understanding the needs of the customers.

Jayant felt that SIs haven’t done much in terms of reducing the cost to the end-users. However a service provider who would be managing the systems from his end would be able to share risks and help the company in garnering revenues.

But Kolwadkar said, “SIs have expertise that may help the SPs when it comes to deploying a certain solution. So depending on the customer’s needs we look for the SI as it is difficult for the SP to fulfil all the requirements.”

Both the models have their advantages, the market is open to both and it ultimately depends on the consumer’s needs. Agreed Narang, “Ideally, the SP should understand each of its customer’s business objectives as well as network requirements.”

— Vinita Gupta