The Siemon Company has launched new cabling solutions to address the key challenges faced by data centre managers in India. Carrie Higbie, director, Global Data Centre Solutions and Services, Siemon, highlights the major benefits of these solutions and also names the target growth areas for the company in India.

What are the latest trends in the cabling space?

Cabling systems are increasingly getting intelligent, especially the ones deployed in the enterprise space. These systems provide for real-time management of the physical layer, which enables immediate troubleshooting of problems, if any, besides optimum utilisation and efficiency. The intelligent structured cabling is able to track IP-based devices such that the network manager can access, control and manage them from one central location.

Besides this, there is a growing trend towards interoperability and providing higher security to the user as well. Technologies such as 10G TERA, blade patch cords and intelligent cabling systems which provide optimum utilisation and efficiency, besides real-time management are now talk of the town. Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) is also gaining momentum, as there is an increase in wireless access points and deployment of VoIP in the country.

How big is the market for structured cabling in India?

The structured cabling industry in India is really catching up. The country is among one of the fastest growing regions for most vendors, not only in Asia, but also across the world. The Indian market has been growing at CAGR of 25-30% for the past two-three years. Besides, IT-driven enterprises such as data centres, knowledge centres, BPOs and disaster recovery centres are fuelling the growth of structured cabling in India. High-bandwidth and high-speed demands are pushing the limits of data transmission in LAN networks. The demand for advanced applications such as fast Ethernet and gigabyte Ethernet are pushing cabling solutions to reliably transfer voice, video, and data information.  

How will your solutions benefit data centre managers?

We have just launched our data centre solutions in India. Now the trend is moving towards shielded systems. Targeting the future demand for cabling, we have launched Category 7/Class F TERA copper cabling system, 10G 6A augmented category 6 UTP and F/UTP copper solutions and XGLO fiber optic solutions. As Indian enterprises are undertaking a lot of initiatives towards Green Consortium, these solutions will help them overcome the pain points of the data centre related to heating.

In the recent past, we've seen some early deployments of 10G Ethernet in data centres and for applications that require large bandwidth. Moreover companies use their networks for voice, video and data by introducing more IP devices on the network, which leads to a demand for the next-generation Ethernet technology. As the customers want to future-proof their networks, this technology is going to gain momentum in the next couple of years.  Our MapIT solutions including copper and fiber cabling, analysers and iTrack software will help the managers to overcome their major challenges with regard to cabling infrastructure.

What are the target growth areas for The Siemon Company in India?

We are seeing a lot of traction in the VoIP space and virtualisation is also a major growth area for us. Now enterprises are going for multicity DR rollout, which is also an area of interest for us. As government is a major IT spender in India, we are planning to enter this segment. Apart from this, IT/BPO, BFSI, telecom, education, financial institutions and health are the key verticals that will rule the cabling space. Further with the opening up of FDI, new areas have widened for cabling vendors in retail and real estate. Siemon has a good acceptance in the BFSI space and we have three major customer acquisitions in India in this space.