The Internet of Everything –the networked connections between devices, people, processes and data—will change businesses forever. At the Cisco Partner Summit 2015, John Chambers, Cisco CEO, stressed on this, saying every company, city and country is becoming digital and thus focussing on innovation. CEOs need to fundamentally rethink their businesses and innovate.

Cisco sees a huge opportunity for IOE in emerging countries, particularly India.

“Emerging countries are about 54 per cent of the world’s GDP, and in that context, they can be a large share of the total consumption of technology,” says Chambers.

“The issues and objectives in these countries are such that technology can help them achieve their goals much faster,” says Chuck Robbins, Senior Vice-President, Worldwide Field Operations.

Asked about the growth opportunities in India, Chambers said they are particularly optimistic about the potential in India. “We feel India is poised for an explosive growth. We have a new leader in India and he has a very comprehensive plan. If there is one emerging country I would double down on, that is India,” said Chambers

Within IOE, no single company can provide solutions to customers. Cisco is looking to develop a more robust partner ecosystem and there is a broad-based growth in both developed and emerging countries, says Irving Tan, President for Cisco Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ). “We see a lot of opportunities for IOE in the emerging markets particularly India, where the government is investing a lot in digitisation and national broad band type initiatives,” says Tan.

“In emerging countries, if we look at key cities where the infrastructure is robust. If we take India for example, you have Mumbai and Delhi which have world class infrastructure. But how do we bring that capability to unbanked rural India? That is where the government is focussing— bringing digitisation to remote areas,” says Tan.

Cisco is trying to help the government lay down the foundation, deploying the national broadband facility, adds Tan.

“We started building capabilities in India, where we started identifying independent software vendors (ISVs), master system integrators, non-traditional partners. Then we have the traditional partners, who bring in the IT capabilities. So IOE is implemented by bringing together IT and OT (operational technology) to drive business outcomes,” says B Raghavendran, Director, Partner Organization, Cisco India and SAARC.

Cisco is engaged in the Delhi Mumbai Corridor, putting the entire ICT framework.

The role of consulting is very critical and the company is seeing it change in the Indian market.

“We are building partnerships in a couple of areas. First is the management consulting community. Interestingly, Wipro has developed deep industry expertise. And the others are Accenture and Deloitte. All three are regional players. We are working very closely with them to develop IOE solutions,” says Ruma Balasubramanian, Vice-President, Partner Organisation, Asia Pacific &Japan.

“The second area is to build relationships with OT players,” says Ruma.

(The writer is in Montreal on Cisco’s invitation)

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