Expert View

Private sector needs to put more emphasis on price-performance

Convergence Plus Team

Agilent Technologies Inc. is a global, diversified technology company focusing on the high-growth markets of communications, electronics, chemical analysis and life sciences, respectively. It operates three businesses - test and measurement, semiconductor products and chemical analysis, supported by a chemical laboratory.

Agilent in India was established in November 1989 under Hewlett-Packard India Ltd. and was registered as Agilent Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. in November 1999. It also has an R&D facility in Kolkata and a calibration center with mobile calibration facility in Bangalore.

Convergence Plus recently spoke with Kewal K. Khanna, President, Agilent Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.; and his colleagues Mombasawala Mohmedsaeed, Telecom/Datacom Consultant, Communications Solutions & Services Department; and Shankar Roy Chowdhury, Market Development Manager, Multi-industry Business Unit, South Asia Pacific, to determine their perception of the T&M situation in India. Excerpts from an interview:

What are the prevailing trends in T&M in India?

Kewal K. Khanna: As far as the technology is concerned, the trends are apparently the same worldwide. India is no exception. However, we are not making any instruments specifically for this country. As for the other trends, a number of changes are taking place in the country that is being driven by a singular trend - privatization, competition or deregulation. I draw an analogy between this trend and Project Tiger, which says; “if the tiger is safe, the rest of the ecosystem is automatically saved.”

Similarly, the outlook has changed. Now, people talk about solutions, support, consulting, etc. Earlier, price alone used to be the single-most important factor. People have also started talking about price-performance and upgradability or preservation of their technologies.

As you can see, the mindset is rapidly beginning to change. Today, there is very short turnaround time. For example, no one is willing to wait for quotations till tomorrow. These are wanted today. Traditionally, we were used to procurement cycles of several years. Now, all that is changing.

On the technology front, India is catching up very fast. Except manufacturing, my estimate is that within a year or two, India will compete on all kinds of technologies.

Are the various networks here able to offer 99.99999 or five nines type of availability or performance and what is your role in this context?

Mombasawala Mohmedsaeed: A close study of the existing basic system structure shows that presently, there is a mix of technologies in the basic operators’ segment. There are both legacy systems as well as new technologies in place. Obviously, the legacy systems are not engineered to offer 99.99999 kinds of availability and quality of services. However, the systems that we are buying are definitely supporting 99.99999 type of availability. The networks need to be properly engineered and monitored. We play a major role as far as the monitoring part is concerned.

India generally looks at the 99.99 per cent availability of networks and not at the six-digit figure. If you look at the trend in the switching industry, a downtime of two hours per 10 years is allowed anywhere internationally. The ratio comes to around 99.99 percent. This is for the network’s downtime, and not the switch’s, including the time required for upgrading the software, etc. Since such figures are required, we have the solutions in different segments. We categorise the data segment to include ISPs, high-end data circuits or the carriers’ carrier, etc. Since the users perceive data, it is on the user interface side.

The fiber-optic bandwidth providers come next - that is the network operators, followed by the mobile segment. When you talk about the mobile segment, it focuses more on the user interface side. We have different solutions for different segments.

If you look into the data side, we have the devices or monitoring tools that capture and co-relay the data and help in base lining of networks. By base lining of networks, we mean that the devices or monitoring tools determine the ultimate parameter that a network can support. They can pump in additional information and even stretch the network to the limit to find out the level of ultimate support that can be given for availability on the subscribers’ base.

For example, there is an IP network. If you want to find out the maximum IP traffic it can take, we have the testers and monitoring devices to take care of that. Using those, you can pump in the additional traffic and find out what would be the effect on the quality of services. The effects are categorized in terms of delay, packet drops and availability. These are the broad classifications regarding the quality of services. Besides, you can continuously monitor your live networks.

Shankar Roy Chowdhury: You can do two things with our solutions. One, find out the network’s base lining parameter, and two, continuously monitor it to see that the networking is within the base lining parameter to give certain QoS guarantees.

Though you are a T&M vendor, do you monitor networks as well?

Kewal Khanna: We do not undertake any turnkey jobs or monitor networks. We do not undertake outsourcing work anywhere in the world. Consulting is very different from undertaking jobs. We have rendered consultancy. We provide tools to our customers to enable them to be successful. Our role is not to jump into gap areas, but help service operators do their jobs more efficiently.

What is your role in the monitoring and QoS of the various optic-fiber networks?

Mombasawala Mohmedsaeed: Fiber is in plenty in this country and worldwide. Even competitors are now going to use each other’s fiber in the backbone. Service-level agreements reflect the terms of availability and performance, which is where the QoS is measured for optical fiber. We have a fiber-management system that continuously checks the health of the fiber in different pieces.

To further elaborate, all the links in the network are continuously checked for their health and failure conditions. Let us assume that if the availability would be some amount of time, or the repair time during a condition of failure is eight hours, then you would really need to get going fast. You should know about the failure fast, have a thorough knowledge about where and how it is happening, and finally, how you are going to track the repair process. We keep on doing the measurement, report it to the central location and start tracking the entire repair process.

Shankar Roy Chowdhury: The system is network-independent as well, and can be put in long-distance networks, cities, and metros. It is transparent to fiber length and type, as well as to applications. This system can be used for DWDM, PONs, SDH, etc.

Currently, what is the main issue plaguing the T&M industry in India?

Kewal Khanna: The main issue is that manufacturing of products is not taking place in this country. T&M, from my perspective, serves the manufacturing sector, which provides a major customer base. However, manufacturing does not exist here, and there are two reasons why it is not happening.

The first reason is government policies. You cannot get a better example than handsets. Today, it is much cheaper to import handsets into India than to manufacture them. With such a large demand for GSM handsets here, nobody is contemplating manufacturing GSM handsets in India, compared to that in China.

The second reason is the sheer economics of manufacturing. You do not start planning to manufacture on either irregular or uncertain demand patterns as you are probably depending on only one customer, for example, the DoT.

Apart from the issues mentioned above, the third biggest problem is of the T&M industry’s own making. Somehow, there is always a tremendous desire to commit hara-kiri or harm one’s own interest. Vendors keep coming and going. Compare the list of vendors in T&M five years back and today. It has been going on for so many years, but the vendors have not yet learnt their lessons. They want to somehow get the business, for which they are willing to cut corners, reduce their prices, etc. The industry seems to be hurting itself in this manner.

We are servicing the private sector, where price alone is not the main criteria. However, the customers’ mindsets have also not changed. They still want to talk only of price with that same private vendor. Therefore, customers just do not get the kind of value-added services that they should be getting. For example, we set up our calibration center nearly a decade back. Today, every customer realizes the importance of calibration and is asking for it.

What are your strategies to overcome these problems?

Kewal Khanna: As far as manufacturing is concerned, we cannot do much. We are hoping that the right sense prevails and the government takes the right decisions regarding duties, etc. On the environmental side, the demand patterns will improve over time.

As the Airtels, Reliances and Tatas of this world come in, there may be more incentives to manufacture. Next, we soundly believe that once the private sector starts putting more emphasis on price-performance, people will automatically start realizing that price is not the only factor.

Customers opt for us because of the additional values we provide. Once other vendors realize this, we hope they will change their game plan and things will improve.

Are you developing T&M equipment for Bluetooth, 2.5G/3G, WLANs etc., specifically?

Kewal Khanna: We are offering all that is available worldwide in India as well. Bluetooth is just taking off here and
we have so far received a couple of inquiries - mainly from software developers and some government agencies.

There have been some hot inquiries in 2.5G, but 3G is completely out of question for now. In WLANs, we hope the deployment will happen gradually. We have the tools, right from design to post-deployment, but the market is not ready yet. We believe that the telecom sector in India will be a shining example in another two years.

Finally, when will the troubles in the telecom sector end?

Kewal Khanna: There will be a different set of competitive issues in the future. The traditional difficulties of doing business in India are already on the way out.

Today, our legislation is one of the finest. We are more deregulated than any other country we can think of. It is a free-for-all scenario in the telecom sector. The way GSM is taking off is quite similar to how it has taken off in China. We are also moving rapidly from a government-owned monopoly to a competitive environment.