Case study : Cisco - Networking Giant

Cisco Systems India Pvt Ltd, a part of Cisco Systems, Inc, commenced operations in 1995. The company is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. With sales and marketing operations spread across key cities in India and a software development centre in Bangalore, Cisco leads the networking market in core technologies of routing and switching, as well as WLAN and network security. India, as a region, is part of the APAC region. Cisco’s business from APAC region contributes to about 11 per cent of the global revenue. The list of clientele includes Ford India,

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Tata Group, Mahindra & Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Gas Authority of India, Indian Oil Corporation, Le Royal Meridien, Taj Group of Hotels,  Hindustan Unilever, VSNL, BSNL, MTNL, SIFY, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, ICICI, IDRBT, Future Group, National Highway Authority, Infosys, Wipro, IBM, Adobe, Intel, Cognizant Technologies, vCustomer, Phoenix, Nirvana, Manjushree and TransWorks.

Cisco has designated Bangalore as Globalisation Centre East and has the plan to have 10,000-12,000 employees based at the centre over the next three to five years. The idea is to have 20 per cent of the top talent in Cisco to be based in the city. Plan is to generate $1 billion revenue within three years, from the centre.

 Case Study  

Future Group is one of India’s leading business houses with multiple businesses spanning across the consumption space. While retail forms the core business activity of Future Group, group subsidiaries are present in consumer finance, capital, insurance, leisure and entertainment, brand development, retail real estate development, retail media and logistics.

With aggressive growth projections for the next 3 - 5 years, Future Knowledge Services team had to adopt a strategy that would allow them to rapidly scale the network from 100 outlets to several hundred outlets. Reliability, security, manageability, performance and availability were very important considerations as the business would rely heavily on its network infrastructure. Future Group relied on an integrated network composed of multiple solutions - they had a distributed data center operation.  Existing solution did not provide industry best practices and required flexibility for dynamic business growth.

Solution provided

The Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) is Cisco’s architectural approach to designing advanced network capabilities into the infrastructure. SONA provided Future Group with guidance, best practices, and blueprints for connecting their network services and applications to enable business solutions.

Benefits

Implementation of Cisco SONA, which is an open framework for network-based services, allowed Future Group to achieve a service oriented data center; consolidation, virtualisation and business continuity; optimal performance and low power consumption; ability to turn on services instantly, and operate those services at line rate without compromising with network performance or availability (service on demand); scale to include all SBUs (Strategic Business Units) and meet future growth projections; scale to manage hyper growth; ability to roll out a highly efficient and effective service delivery; mobility and uniformity of experience; security and compliance; responsiveness, flexibility and resilience; better Time-to-Service; simpler manageability; and boost up their green initiative.      

“After implementing Cisco’s service oriented network architechture, Future Group was able to easily integrate access to information for every user, including employees, customers, and suppliers, security, management, rich connectivity, video, media, mobility, voice, and identity services. As a result, we could provide users with access to the information and people that they need, at any time and with any device. This also enabled us to execute new retail strategies and implement new applications far more rapidly, easily, and cost-effectively than ever before.”

Parakh Dave, Head - Technology Services, Future Group

 “We are very pleased to work with a pioneer like the Future Group, on such a significant deployment. It is a great example of how technologies can help improve operational and employee efficiency while delivering capabilities that can change satisfied shoppers into loyal advocates.”

Anil Bhasin, Senior VP, Cisco India & SAARC