|
|
|
|
| Read more articles on: |
|
|
 |
|
NEW DELHI: Enterprise convergence has created incredible number of opportunities for the next generation of enterprises today. Being an important aspect of enterprise technology, convergence is now a next step in the domain.
Recognizing the need for CIO's today to deal with challenges put forth by convergence, Frost & Sullivan is organizing an eight-city conference on "The Coming Age of Enterprise Convergence" from August 19 to September 28, 2005.
The conference series, which starts from New Delhi on 19 August 2005, has eight power packed sessions by leaders in enterprise convergence in India. Each session has been thoughtfully planned, to address challenges faced by CIOs in dealing with enterprise convergence in totality.
The traditional Internet layer that has been used for delivering convergence experience to enterprises has been found wanting on a number of aspects such as scalability, security and reliability. Before an enterprise can gain full benefits of enterprise convergence, the first
element that an enterprise needs to address is that of their networks.
The 'next-generation networks' (NGN) will develop many new services with much more flexibility than what traditional network offers, and also address some of the constraints that plague existing networks.
The development of new techniques for delivering VPN services over public networks continues to be one of the most active areas of innovation in telecom. A VPN can be defined as the 'emulation of a private WAN facility using IP facilities' (including the public Internet, or private IP backbones). The last few years have seen the rise in deployment of VPN services and network architectures based on a variety of technologies, including combinations of TDM leased lines, Frame Relay, ATM, IP, and more recently, MPLS.
Like Internet telephony and other applications, IP-VPN is the result of the evolution of the Public Internet (the Internet) and technological advances associated with the Internet. VPN is one of the requirements for the delivery of all new world services. Emerging services like e-commerce, application hosting, and other multimedia applications could be best provided using MPLS VPN.
Currently, organizations are faced with an ever-increasing need to connect across many sites, both within and outside the country. Enterprises with offices that span across large territories get connected with their counterparts using the VPN to aid uninterrupted flow of information
critical to their operation.
Indian IP-VPN market to grow 31.6 percent
The IP-VPN market in India is estimated to have witnessed a growth of 24 percent in the year 2004. Frost & Sullivan anticipates a growth explosion in the year 2005 with MPLS driving the IP VPN market, largely due to its ability to offer frame relay features with lesser-cost incidence. The growth rate is likely to stabilize from 2006 through the forecast period growing at a CAGR of 31.6 percent between the year 2003 and 2009.
"At the broader level, data currently dominates around 90 percent with voice accounting for 10 percent. This pattern is likely to shift in favour of voice once most verticals embrace IP VPN with voice traffic going up to 20 percent, by the end of 2009. Though FMCGs, BPOs, and healthcare companies spearhead IP VPN in India, the market is yet to see the banking vertical adopt IP VPN despite the growth in online banking and e-commerce," says Alok Shende, Director, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, India.
Globally, IP-VPN services will gradually play a larger part in the network landscape as more businesses become aware of its inherent advantages. The estimated market size of the global managed IP-VPN market is likely to grow to an estimated US $20.506 billion in 2005. The IP-VPN market in the Asia Pacific region amounted close to US $2.1 billion in 2004 and is likely to grow at a CAGT of 20.4 percent to reach US $5.15 billion by the end of 2009.
"Across industry verticals, Enterprises are today focused on managing, enhancing and maximizing IT business value through automational, informational and transformational efforts. Next-generation IP services providers will provide this edge by integrating a converged MPLS IP-VPN core with a suite of managed network, security and hosting services in creating a true service-oriented infrastructure, which will help meet the diverse yet rapidly evolving needs of the enterprise though virtual, autonomic networks based on open standards," says Arvind Mathur, general manager, Enterprise Business Solutions, Sify Ltd.
VPN has several advantages. The biggest is cost -- it offers network managers a way to reduce the overall operational costs of wide-area networking through reduced telecom costs. The second advantage is that VPNs can provide the highest level of security using advanced encryption and authentication protocols. The third is scalability -- VPNs enable organisations to connect remote users to their corporate networks via a local ISP, instead of expensive long-distance calls to resource consuming modem banks.
However, the most common concern of a user is how secure is the connection? Is there any threat to the data over the Internet? Users continue to perceive that there is a very low level of security and data integrity. However, this is bound to diminish when there is widespread
adoption of the IP VPN service.
The potential of VPNs in India is huge. With corporates building their WANs and network expansion on the anvil, VPN is expected to take off in a big way. The major segments for potential use of VPNs are finance and banking, the marketing arms of manufacturing or service industries for connecting various regional offices and logging in sales figures, online bookings and order-processing through major distributors. Frost & Sullivan estimates the Indian VPN service and equipment market slated to grow to US $86.2 million in 2005.
|