Airtel, Cisco ink deal eyeing B2B market

BANGALORE, INDIA: Bharti Airtel, an integrated telecom service provider, and Ciso,  a supplier of telecom networking equipments, enter into a business alliance to provide products and services to corporate clients (large, medium and small enterprises) in India.

Airtel and Cisco would appoint a team led by Sanjay Mittal, senior vice-president, Bharti Airtel. The unique products and services offered by this alliance will incorporate Ciscos' Internet Protocol (IP) technologies with the Airtel network services to target the burgeoning Indian managed services market, to be launched in a phased manner. This include managed data services, hosted unified communications, connected branch services and managed telepresence.

Manoj Kohli, CEO and joint managing director, Bharti Airtel, said: "From the B2C market where we already have a leadership, we are shifting focus to B2B market comprising large enterprises, medium enterprises and over six million small and medium enterprises. The timing of the pact is important as the Indian economy is on the threshold of a major B2B growth".

The two companies aim at capturing a slice of the managed services industry, which is touted to touch $4 billion by 2013, from 1 billion today.

Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer and executive vice-president, Cisco Services, said "Building on Indian Government's commitment to rapid broadband deployment of 700 million broadband customers in next five years, we will together create and deliver transformational services for large enterprise and small and medium-sized businesses".