Cabling Solutions–Losing its Originality?

Structured cabling business seems to lose its originality. The business, a decade before, had only the system integrators as the deciding factor, right from the purchase of material to the installation.

However, in recent days, the scenario is turning worst as the builders or architects, who are into construction, decide everything. Many of them with almost no knowledge over the technology make decision only on the materials which are available cheaper in the market. On top of that, the biggest challenge faced by the partners in the vertical is the payment. Many partners rate the builders as ‘not-so-good-pay masters'. As a result, companies have reduced the number of deployment in this space. According to the industry veterans, if there is any need for cabling solutions for any deployments, the partners take that and otherwise, they purposefully neglect such orders. Also, the other key issue in the business nowadays, is huge number of known and unknown vendors creating a chaos in the market ending in unhealthy competition.

The expectations from the partners towards the vendors in the companies are, to bring a regulation in the entire business model like all the other vendors in networking, cloud computing space does. Another challenge is the availability of skilled manpower for the right job. And this issue has been taken as the issue to be sorted out first in the coming years with a long-term vision.

Navin Jacob Mathew, divisional manager, communications, 3M, says, "The major factors for our success has been meeting customer delivery timelines, innovative products, good understanding of customer and channel needs. We are able to generate interest in our products and also made customers change from existing vendors." "We are the latest entrants and building our footprint in this market. 3M management believes that investing in this business will help its customers and also be part of the growth currently in the infrastructure space. We are investing in partners steadily and training and certification program is a continuous activity.", he further added.

Martin Isaac, Marketing Manager, Molex Premise Networks, Molex India, says that there is a great transition among the customers' choice on selecting a product. "We estimate market size at around Rs 1,000 crore. The market in India will continue to be a growth market considering it to be a developing economy. It is still one of the high growth markets from a global perspective. Cat 6 system in copper forms the default choice of the customer with Singlemode & OM3 seeing increased deployment. Customers are also aware of need to deploy higher spec solutions e.g. Cat6A to future proof their network for high speed applications such as 10 G (on copper). Datacenters are driving the growth for high speed solutions. We also see an increased interest in intelligent cabling systems.", he says.

For D-Link, FY12 brought a lot of positive energy, as the company witnessed 74% growth in revenues and 106% growth in net profits for overall product categories, with structured cabling making significant contribution. "Our structured cabling business achieved good growth in terms of revenues, customer acquisitions and renewed partner confidence. Moving ahead, we expect to build up on this confidence shown by our partners and customers. Our wide product range combined with premium quality & excellent brand re-call, helped us generate good confidence amongst our partners and customers towards our cabling solutions. We also introduced a wide range of fiber products and accessories to provide complete structured cabling solution to our customers. We are the only vendor to be able to provide a complete solution to our customers including the active and passive range of products.", says Tushar Sighat, CEO - D-Link (India).

Recently, structured cabling vendors are also keen on promoting their brands among the college-going students. Leading player in structured cabling business TE connectivity, aggressively creating awareness on their brands among the college students. The vendor had started tie-up with many engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu and provide opportunities for the students to get hands on experience with their wide range of products. R Murugesan, country sales Manager, India and Saarc, TE Enterprise networks, said, "We have tied-up with renowned institutions like Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, and Kalasalingam University, Virudhunagar and let the students work on our latest product portfolios."

"Instead of just speaking on the product, we want to make the students get trained on that and for training the students, we our own team to train the faculty members of the colleges. Today's students are the decision-makers of tomorrow. We always want to differ our competitors.", Murugesan added.

Shailendra Trivedi, director, operations and channel development at R&M India, says, ". R&M's innovative, Swiss-quality cabling products and solutions have really gathered momentum. The product quality and technical features help channel partners and installers to offer a greater degree of differentiation and value to the end customers. Next, our efforts to augment our reach has led to the appointment of 6 regional distributors who managed different regions like Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. We will be appointing more regional distributors soon. This has helped us improve our reach in tier 2 and tier 3 cities as well. Partners in these cities have improved access to our products and solutions due to our regional distributors' efforts.
Even though the distribution has been keen focus for all the vendors, there seems to be no compromise in the education programmes of the partners. "We have trained over 100 partners across the country in the last fiscal. We have a direct touch model with end customer & route the orders through the channel partner/distributor. 70-80% of the deals is through Channel and balance through customer. Speaking on our presence, We have presence in North, West & South. We have very strong clientele in North, West & South. And on the verticals, the following are the verticals that gives major revenue- Infrastructure-Airports- High Growth Vertical, Government-High Growth Vertical, IT/ITES-High Growth Vertical, Hospitality-Hospitals/Hotels, Education "

B SWAMINATHAN/(bswaminathan@cybermedia.co.in)