BT Infonet recently announced the availability of its next-generation service
Application Centric VPN, an application-driven MPLS-based IP VPN service, that
helps companies align IT with their business objectives. John Hoffman, BT
Infonet's executive vice-president, tells Goutam Das of Dataquest how AC
VPN's application visibility and control allows for the optimisation of both
applications and the underlying IP network to support critical business
processes.
Will the new features in BT Infonet's AC VPN offering meet user
requirements in terms of response time and security?
AC VPN is a service, so it includes all the elements a customer needs
including the network components, and the additional hardware that needs to be
installed on the customer side. The service allows us to individually control
applications for each user. The customer gets good visibility into how each
application is performing from point to point and how it is performing for each
user. It also gives a much better ability to control their network resources:
which applications are using how much bandwidth, how does the application match
up to the requirements of running a business, and which are the most important
things to generate revenue.
Is the Indian market matured enough for AC VPN?
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Yes, I think so. In fact, the Indian market is our fastest growing market. We
have a lot of customers who are from outside of India but purchase connections
inside India. We have also a lot of business generated out of India. We have
been very successful in the pharmaceutical industry, manufacturing and the
services industry. The products really work across industries. I wouldn't call
India the early adopter of MPLS, but now that they have started adopting it,
it's going very quickly. One of the reasons we have been successful here is
because we showed them how to move from a lease line environment to a shared
network environment, get more cost efficiency and function in the process.
The VPN service offered by ISPs recently became a contentious issue in
India.
We are very happy to be working with our partner enterprises, BT Infonet
India (a division of i2i Enterprise and one of the few companies licensed to
provide VPN, Internet Telephony and ISP services). As the regulations change, we
change with them and license ourselves.
What advantage will you have against domestic leaders like Sify? Where
will the BT's growth come from?
We are giving customers a global IP VPN on one global network. Our offerings
are for customers with global presence. There are over 300 companies that are
doing business with BT Infonet India and all of them are multinationals. Our
growth over the last 12 months was exponential-we grew more than 100% over the
previous year. In the banking sector, for Swift international funds transfer,
forex transfer, we have nearly 78% of the market share. All of them migrated to
the MPLS new generation networks. In the IT, ITeS sector, again, we are very
strong. Now, our focus is moving to the BPO segment. We have the opportunity to
get two types of growth going forward as we penetrate the larger, more
well-known IT companies like Wipro, in terms of serving their total customer
base. The other growth would be to expand to customers not using our services.