Spotlight

Sify: sitting pretty

Sam Pitroda encouraged the telecom industry to reach out to the common man. Sify is trying to do something similar not only with the Internet but also with everything related to the cyber world. Priya Jain reports

Sify iWay provides a secure environment for customers with the convenience of a roaming account and billing by the minute. Today, we have 2,700 outlets across the nation Rustom Irani CTO Sify

Sify has come a long way in Internet, network and e-commerce services in India with end-to-end solutions and a comprehensive range of products delivered over a common Internet backbone infrastructure across 99 cities in India. Today, it has alliances with global players like Verisign, Cisco Systems, Global Crossing, Asia Netcom, Btn Access, and Refco.

The company has many firsts to its credit. To begin with, Sify developed India’s first TCP/IP network between major cities in the country. Rustom Irani, CTO, Sify, says that before this the only networks in India were low capacity X.25 networks with limited functionality. Next, Sify took the innovative approach of offering multiple services on this common backbone infrastructure for an integrated Internet, networking and e-commerce business model.

Tech innovation

Sify is an apt example of how technological innovations can be tuned to business needs. States Irani, “Sify iWay provides a secure environment for customers with the convenience of a roaming account and billing by the minute. Today, we have 2,700 outlets across the nation.”

Sify is cautious despite being branded as an aggressive player. When broadband was introduced and optic fibre cabling being adopted, many players were ecstatic over the opportunity that broadband would generate eventually. Sify took its time in letting the market mature and then moved in with hybrid point to multi-point technology that not only addressed the home user but also office goers and students, among others.

Whether it is the education sector, corporates, government or the home user, Sify has repeatedly proved that a little bit of innovation in applying technology can go a long way towards making a good business model.

Integrated model

Irani believes that stand-alone businesses in any area of the Internet are difficult in terms of return of investment. Sify does not face this problem because of its integrated business model. In addition, the cost of the Internet backbone is shared across businesses and has multiple revenue streams, making the growth and development of the company cost-efficient.

Thanks to its end-to-end solutions, Sify has been able to attract many corporate clients. For instance, its corporate service’s end-to-end model has clients such as Ranbaxy, Oracle, Perfetti van Melle, Hutch, GE, Jet Airways, UCO Bank, Oriental Insurance and Wipro over its national backbone.

Serving corporates

A few years after it commenced commercial operations, Sify progressed in key lines of business. Its services include monitoring of critical elements of a company’s IT infrastructure such as servers, applications, routers, switches, caching servers, load balancers and any other SNMP-compliant device.

Notably, Sify’s corporate services accounted for over 53 percent of its Rs 361 crore turnover in 2004-2005. “The credit goes to Sify’s enterprise solutions, a major part of the corporate services that we offer: managing the design, operation and maintenance of end-to-end integrated networks and IP-based solutions for large enterprises, both public and private, across India. These include enterprise network services, enterprise applications services, and enterprise security services,” says Irani.

The company’s network services, data centre operations and customer relationship management processes have been certified for ISO 9001:2000. Irani believes that Sify is the first and only service provider to receive this certification. He feels that the certification comes as a validation of the trust placed in the company by its corporate clientèle who run business critical applications as diverse as SAP, Baan, Oracle, CRM and ERP solutions on Sify’s backbone network.

With the growing needs of the enterprise segment, Sify has been able to add more to its service profile with accuracy and variety. It co-opted its iWay chain of cyber cafés to automate the supply chains of organisations. Within six months of this development, Sify had seven clients: Gillette, Ranbaxy, Intas Pharma, Transasia biomedicals, E Merck, Google and WeP.

The other major revenue builder for Sify has been its supply chain management solution—Forum. A part of the corporate services initiative that contributes about 50 percent of Sify’s revenue, Forum has grown by 100 percent annually with over 2,000 installations, 4,000 more in the pipeline, and a presence in about 300 towns.

Connecting home

After launching broadband connectivity services for corporates, Sify did not forget the huge untapped market in the residential segment for fixed wireless broadband technology. The company is a major provider of broadband services, both directly and through cable operators, and currently has over 62,000 home users availing of its service. The iWay chain of cyber cafés also comes under this umbrella. “This initiative is helping bridge the digital divide with an ever-increasing number of Indians accessing the Internet for information, communication and entertainment in a cost-effective manner,” Irani states. Sify has set up international gateways and continually adds bandwidth to ensure faster downloads.

Global ambitions

With success at home, the company is geared up to take on global markets. “Based on our experience in India, we have launched global infrastructure management services aimed at international corporations with a global IT infrastructure,” says Irani.

Sify’s offerings include remote monitoring, management of networks, servers, applications and managed security services. The company’s services are based on a customised onsite or offshore delivery model that aims at minimising the risks of offshoring infrastructure management processes while achieving targeted objectives such as cost savings, process improvement and service level enhancements.

“We are into managed services. Our global delivery model provides our customers with offshore assistance to manage their servers. We help our customers with monitoring systems and network management across the globe. We are in a position to do this because of our expertise in IT infrastructure,” adds Irani.

Looking ahead

Comfortably placed, Sify seems to be poised to capitalise on Indian and international growth opportunities. According to a recent IDC report, the Indian IP VPN market is growing at a CAGR of 31 percent and is expected to touch $181 million by 2008. The Confederation of Indian Industry predicts that the broadband subscribers’ market will grow to 3 million by 2007 and above 10 million by 2010. Reveals Irani, “We are aiming to make the most of every opportunity. We are also looking at the international infrastructure and IT services market in the US, mainly in the financial and manufacturing segment. In India, we are planning more innovations like sales force automation and Forum which extend beyond the networked enterprise.”

priya@expresscomputeronline.com