We see WiMax as a major growth area

S Santhosh, MD & CEO, Calsoft

What is your relationship with IXIA? What are the reasons for such an

alliance?



Ixia has signed a five year product development contract with Calsoft and

both the companies will make a joint investment to establish an Ixia CoE in

Chennai, India. The CoE will be an R&D lab focused on jointly developing

solutions for the global market. It will be equipped with the latest Ixia IP

test hardware and applications and will be staffed by Calsoft development,

quality assurance, and support engineers.

Calsoft will staff the center with 100 engineers over the next twelve months.

This is a mutually beneficial relationship between both the companies as they

look to expanding revenue opportunities for IP test products and the test

services business. For Calsoft this partnership means a committed business over

the next five years. It also enables us to open up a new practice around the

Ixia product line and access to over 6,000 Ixia customers worldwide.

What is Calsoft doing to make networks safer through its expertise?



We have helped our customers make their network devices rugged. We have

developed innovative products like threat protection systems and intrusion

detection systems for leading equipment vendors. In addition to addressing

traditional network security threats, we feel that in India there is a need to

put additional emphasis on user level security and authentication, identity

management systems and content monitoring and filtering on public networks. With

an ever-increasing number of wireless subscribers and the use of mobile networks

by terrorist organizations to exchange information, these issues have become

very important.

India as a market is still on the growth curve for Internet and wireless

products. How do you see the market patterns evolving?



There are currently 3 mn broadband subscribers in India. This figure is

expected to grow to 16 mn by 2012. This is possible only through wireless in the

Indian context because of lack of wired infrastructure. We therefore see WiMax

as a major growth area. We have already built a WiMax base station for one of

our customers. We are also looking at developing low cost access devices for our

customers, used in DSL networks.

Mehak Chawla



mehakc@cybermedia.co.in