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NewsPortwise bullish on India
Stanley Glancy / Mumbai
In a bid to tap the increasing demand for secure remote access solutions in
emerging markets like India, China and Russia, Sweden-based PortWise, a leader
in the secure socket layer virtual private network (SSL VPN) space, has announced
plans to invest $10 million in these markets over the next one to two years.
The company is especially bullish on the Indian market, which it has identified
as a high growth region. Said Kaushik Thakkar, co-founder and vice president
of strategic new markets, “India has developed very good network connectivity.
There has also been a huge increase in the usage of mobile phones. Hence we
plan to develop India as the hub for our Asia-Pacific operations.”
In keeping with this focus, PortWise plans to invest close to $5 million in
a global support centre (GSC), which will provide round-the-clock support services
to its global customers. The centre will actually be a profit centre, as PortWise
plans to hike its retaining fee for the additional service by June 2004. The
company plans to reinvest the revenue generated in India for further expansion
in the country. The GSC will employ between 80-100 people by the middle of next
year.
The security solutions provider is also contemplating setting up a research
and development centre in India by the third quarter of next year. The centre
will basically be a testing facility and will test product integration capabilities
with other platforms
The company, which works only through channels, has already appointed Select
Technologies as its distributor in India. Select will market three main products—mID,
for authentication, mVPN for secure access and mControl for better authorisation.
The company has identified four main sectors for its solutions—BPO, banking,
insurance and telecom.
In the short period since it has set up office in India, PortWise has already
managed to garner three major customers—ICICI OneSource, SVC Bank and Comsat
Max. Other than this, the company also has pilots running in more than 25 companies.
The company aims at sales of $2.5-3 million by next year.
Network power downtime cost pegged at Rs 22,000 crore
THE findings of the MAIT-Emerson Network Power (India) study on network power
downtime reveal that India Inc. could be losing over Rs 22,000 crore in the
year 2003 in direct losses. This loss is significantly higher compared to last
year’s loss of Rs 20,000 crore. The study was carried out by Feedback Consulting
during November 2003, covering 302 Indian firms, and spread out over six cities
and is the second such survey conducted to map the impact of downtime in the
industrial sector.
Commenting on the findings of the study, Vinnie Mehta, executive director,
MAIT said, “Contingency planning is part of an organisation’s mindset,
based on traditional experiences with infrastructure limitations. This trend
will continue in the light of global power failures encountered in Western countries.
Firms will need to pay more attention to maximising uptime if they are to remain
competitive in a globally networked economy.”
Key highlights of the study:
- Nearly 50 percent of the firms polled are extremely dependent upon IT and
automation.
- Contingency planning is now a part of the Indian business psyche—over
85 percent firms have a power source other than grid supply.
- Delhi records the highest level of daily power disruption at 28 percent
of sample base. This is followed by Bangalore (22 percent). Firms in Kolkata,
Mumbai and Hyderabad experienced fewer power disruptions.
- A mere 20 percent of the respondents feel that blackouts in New York and
Europe have prompted them to reconsider their power contingency measures.
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