For the telecom sector FY 2004-05 was the year of consolidation, following a frenzy of activities the previous fiscal. Since 2003-04 saw all telecom service providers deploying a plethora of IT solutions to support the growing amount of subscribers and launching of new value-added services, this year it was natural that the speed slowed down as all telcos focused on RoIs. As any sort of IT deployments in a service provider environment are usually such large-scale affairs that even a comparatively tranquil year saw 53% growth in IT consumption by the telecom sector-at Rs 6,665 crore it accounted for 15% of the total domestic IT consumption maintaining its second place behind BFSI.

Though heavy-duty IT implementation was a fairly common event amongst service providers, the telecom sector still remained under the shadows of the momentous Bharti IT infrastructure outsourcing deal inked with IBM towards the fag end of 2003-04. In March 2004, Bharti signed a 10-year $750 mn contract with IBM. Under the deal IBM would maintain its hardware, software and IT services, including billing, CRM, data warehousing, e-mail and intranet services. IBM has also consolidated Bharti's datacenters and IT helpdesks and enhanced its disaster recovery capabilities.

Outside of outsourcing, storage was perhaps the most sought after domain for the telecom industry during the year. As most leading storage vendors would agree, that while large scale deployment amongst SMBs gave them visibility and volumes, the margins were brought by typical large multi-SAN implementations by the service providers. Even as others in India Inc hesitated on costly SAN deployments or thought about alternatives like NAS or IP-SAN, the sheer scale of data, owing to a large subscriber base, necessitated the SAN deluge amongst service providers.

Even as telcos continued to grow in size, deployment of new enterprise applications or replacement of existing ones was a recurrent phenomenon. Integration of OSS/BSS applications with ERP, CRM, BI, data warehousing or even billing applications was a common trend noticed across the industry. Idea was one typical example: its AP circle was on SAP while the recent acquisition Escotel was on Ramco Marshall; during the year both migrated to Oracle. In fact, SAP, which was the undisputed numero uno in ERP and CRM related enterprise apps thoughout the year faced its first roadblock in the telecom sector, where Oracle found a few significant takers including the likes of Bharti. It seems that Oracle's RDBMS expertise carried the day as most service providers required large databases to support their voluminous data. Infrastructure management applications were also not left behind.

Heavy-duty IT implementation was a fairly common event amongst service providers

Talking about telecom service providers, it is quite natural that networking infrastructure cannot be far behind. Again, Idea was a good example: its ambitious Project Galaxy, aimed at connecting all its different hubs and circles into one network, required tremendous investment in network infrastructure investments and subsequent setting up of complex processes. Idea's smooth and successful rollout of EDGE was only possible owing to this network being in place.

In an initiative to bolster its support to mobile customers, the CRM wing of Hutch, 3 Global Services, deployed a heterogeneous network, comprising routing and LAN switching solutions for their support centers in India. The networking equipment used included Cisco 7200 Series routers, Cisco Catalyst series of LAN switches, besides PIX firewalls and Cisco IP phones. On the networking side, videoconferencing was another services that caught the eyes of telcos this year. While Reliance offered videoconferencing services across its webworlds, BSNL entered the fray towards the end of the year. MTNL had also started the service in Mumbai and Delhi.

Networking was also crucial to support the increasing broadband rollout in the country during the year. Cisco helped VSNL deploy one of India's largest broadband Metro Ethernet solutions for Tata Indicom broadband services. It provided Tata Indicom's enterprise and residential customers with broadband services of 10/100 Mbps connectivity, with a capability of connecting over a million customers. The deployment will enable VSNL to deliver bundled services like voice over IP, broadcast TV, video-on-demand for residential customers and IP VPN, videoconferencing services for enterprise customers. The deployment was in line with VSNL's endeavor to provide 'triple-play' (Voice-Data-Video) Tata Indicom broadband services across eight cities in the country, in the first phase.

Another area where IT usage was on the upswing was the maintenance of datacenters by almost every large service provider. Not only did these datacenters support the value-added services to retain customers, they also acted as third-party hosting services for large enterprise customers. In fact, the impressive Reliance datacenters at Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City or the VSNL ones at Vashi hosted large enterprises like BSE, Mahindra, ESPN, TCS and JP Morgan amongst others.

Just like many other industries, going open source way was another visible trend. Bharti successfully deployed Linux on multiple critical applications, under a massive Rs 8 crore IT initiative, managing to breakeven in a record span of six months flat.

Rajneesh De