Global Franchise Architects (GFA) is a Switzerland based group which franchises seven food service brands across the world. Pizza Corner and Coffee World are their most popular brands in India. D. Venkata Subramanian, vice president - IT & Projects, GFA India talks to Radhika Nallayam of CIOL about the broadband infrastructure in GFA.

CIOL: What are the applications that need higher bandwidth?

Presently, most of the organizations are spread across the country/globe. They need to get connected to their branch offices. Thus, broadband becomes a basic need for enterprises. Apart from that, broadband connection helps enterprises to make use of voice and video applications for communication. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution is the most bandwidth intensive application and it's been deployed by a whole lot of enterprises, especially in India. Other services like global help desk support based on the web-enabled application require a good amount of bandwidth to communicate with their clients.

CIOL: What technology do you prefer to access broadband and why?

We prefer DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). We have found this technology to be commanding and clear-cut. It's a flexible solution for today's enterprises and gives the highest speed.

The best thing about DSL is that it helps to reduce cost in an enterprise because there is no need to implement expensive infrastructure and for infrastructure upgrades. There is no need for new phone lines or new equipments. As I mentioned earlier, most importantly, it delivers data in blazing speeds. We feel, DSL is the best way to transfer digital video and data to businesses.

Apart from that, DSL is easy to use. So, we need not give additional training to the users. It gives a better option instead of depending on the unstable dial up connections. DSL makes telework programs happen easily. DSL is already deployed and accepted by numerous enterprises and is thus emerging as a standard.

CIOL: Have you found any disadvantages with DSL?

I don't want to say that DSL is a perfect solution in all manners. There are certainly some disadvantages. The one disadvantage that we have found is that DSL is distance sensitive. So services are decided based on the distance between the customer's and the service provider's offices.

It's the service provider's call to give connection to distant locations. Of course, most of the metropolitan areas are provided with DSL. But, when it comes to rural areas, distance from the service provider's office becomes an issue.

CIOL: What is the 'need of the moment' for enterprises? And what will be the future demands?

Enterprises are demanding more and more bandwidth and they need to be connected all the time. So, the need of the moment is to get maximum uptime.
The future demands compel the need for good and consistent speed, secured connection and affordable price.