Cisco's video conferencing solution in India soon

Networking giant Cisco will start shipping its new video conferencing solution to India and other parts of the world, offering enterprises, especially small and medium sized firms, high quality connectivity and at lower cost of ownership.

The “SX10” is a video conferencing all-in-one unit, which can be used with any flat panel display to convert the television into a telepresence unit.
The device is expected to be available for about US$2,000 through different partners of Cisco.

The solution also has Cisco’s proprietary “Intelligent Proximity” feature, which allows using iPhones and Android smartphones as a remote to control the SX10 solution.

The global enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence revenue is expected to grow at a 3 per cent CAGR from 2013 to 2018 as more enterprises opt for real-time connectivity and containing travel costs using video conferencing solutions.

Cisco’s competition in the space includes Polycom and Aavya. The California-based firm leads the video conferencing market with 50 per cent market share. 

Meanwhile, India’s contribution to revenues of networking solutions giant Cisco is poised to grow to five per cent over the next five years on the back of strong demand for cloud and networking services, its CEO John Chambers said.

The California-based firm, which currently derives about two per cent of its global revenues of over US$48 billion from India, is also rooting for a stable government to bring in “predictability” in the country’s business environment.

“Right now, India’s contribution is very small, about two per cent. We are committed to the Indian market. It should be 5-10 per cent of our revenues,” Chambers said.

Asked about the timeline, Cisco Senior Vice President (Worldwide Field Operations) Chuck Robbins said it should be 5 per cent in the next five years.

“We should grow over 20 per cent every year over the next five years,” he added.Cisco employs over 10,000 people in India across cities like Bangalore, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Hyderabad. Of these, 8,000 people are part of the R&D set up."
“We are excited about the elections. Hopefully, it will bring in predictability...Stability is what we are looking for. Its like the US... even though our government was not taking decisions, our economy picked up. Once we get predictable in India in terms of making some decisions and people know which way its going, investors will be willing to go,” Chambers said.

He added that the company will continue to invest in India.

Chambers said he hoped the new government would focus on predictability as it will help boost investor confidence in the country.

“Companies won’t invest if they are not sure about the predictability. They will not bring in FDI if they are unsure. As basic as it sounds, once the US got predictable, for whatever reasons, you saw stock market going up, investment started to increase, jobs were being created." “Getting predictability back in India is crucial. We are committed either ways, but predictability will help,” he added. 

The present move by the networking giant is an indication of the strong traction that new technologies like cloud and mobility are gaining as clients move from a capex to opex model, investing on services rather than on owning hardware at huge costs.

Its biggest competitor in this space would be Amazon’s Web Services.