The buzz of borderless network architecture (BNA) enabling enterprises and small and medium businesses to work across multiple devices like laptops, iPads and iPhones besides the office computer has triggered a new wave of opportunities in networking business, said Mahesh Gupta, vice-president, borderless network, Cisco (India and Saarc). ?With an exploding range of communication devices, it is not just office work but also doing business with customers through interactive medium like video, voice and web that is increasingly gaining currency amid security concerns. The opportunity here for a networking company like Cisco is to build compatible architecture that is scalable, secure and manageable,? he said while talking to S Saroj Kumar of FE.
What are the factors leading to the evolution of BNA?
The most dominant factor is the multiciplity of communication devices like tablets, iPhones, iPads, laptops, other smart devices, among others that need a safe, secure, scalable and manageable architecture to communicate with one another. This trend is visible across segments like enterprise, SMBs and small office home office (Soho).
Video conferencing and voice chat under borderless network architecture are not new. How do you term it as the new trigger in the networking business?
Undoubtedly, the tools of voice and video conferencing is quite known to the enterprise, SMB and Soho communities, but you would be appalled to know that video traffic is just taking 5% of the network bandwidth indicating a stark low penetration of tool among tech-savvy business houses. Encouragingly, the 5% is expected to zoom to 60% with the proliferation of devices like iPad, iPhone and other smart devices, creating a need for safe and secure borderless network architecture to enable processes like video conferencing, e-learning, e-business conferences and exchange of vital financial and other confidential data over a private network of an enterprise.
What is the indispensable role of BNA in a network of an enterprise ?
There are many activities robustly streamlined in a BNA network. To give you an example, video conferencing is a bandwidth intensive application at a time when there are thousands of users who want to initiate a conference over the network. It could be in scenarios like briding a video call between a sales team and their potential client or a training division setting up a video call to impart e-learning modules to select group of employee or head office catching up with branch offices located in multiple geographies ? it is only BNA that could manage the network when thousands of users across various device platforms hit the network at a time.
How disruptive is BNA?
To set a visual context, there are 3 major disruptions predicted in BNA. Globally, networks are going to be increasingly without borders, engendering new concepts and phenomena in the enterprise, SMB and Soho ways of functioning like anywhere office or work from home. The second trend is networks designed to function in device agnostic environment breaking the compatibility barrier among iPad, tablet, PC and laptop–kind of smart and networked devices. The third trend in BNA is application going borderless like possibility of business applications existing in cloud, on-premise and at third party locations that are easily accessible by BNA devices.
How is Cisco going about BNA implementation ?
In India, we work with close to 1,623-odd partners. Cisco, through its reselling partners, sells network hardware devices like routers, switches, enterprise telephony, IP PBX.,etc to its clients. We have system integrators like Infosys, Wipro and TCS that design the network architecture that suits the specific business requirements of the clients.
What is the role of BNA in e-governance and telemedicine ?
We are currently running a pilot at Tumkur district of Karnataka. Cisco has an MoU with Apollo hospitals on telemedicine. Our future goal is to create a smart connected communities using the BNA technology.
