Structured Cabling to become Rs 1000 crore market

In the wake of growing
need of IT-enabled services across all verticals, structured cabling
has become a key to every infrastructure and is all set to grow at a
phenomenal rate. Nearly 40 percent of its total market is expected to
be driven by the datacenters. According to IDC's research, the
industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 20 percent over a
period of the next few years. Structured cabling is widely sought in
sectors like IT, BFSI, telecom, manufacturing, healthcare and
government. In addition, the SMBs and residential and commercial
complexes are fast becoming the key drivers for its growth. If the
industry pundits are to be believed, the structured cabling
market in India, will turn out to be around Rs 1,000 crore industry
by the end of 2010. Copper cables constitute of around 70 percent of
the structured cabling business in India, while fiber has still a
long way to go.

Trends:

With the rise in IT/ITeS
sector, that includes telecom as well as datacenter, the trend is
encouraging for those who are into the structured cabling business.
Speaking to the DQ Channels, Gaurav Ahluwalia, MD, R&M
India said that fiber optics are getting acceptance due to its
pre-polished connectors, pre-terminated fibers and MPO fiber
plug-and-play connection systems. Fiber optics also aids in easy
installation and reduces the risk of error.

KK Shetty, Director,
Tyco Electronics Corporation said that there is a shift toward
converged networks and fiber, which would also play a significant
role in converged technologies. "We see this trend in new
township networks where enterprise as well as telecom networks are
getting intertwined to offer the best converged network solutions to
the end-customers. Apart from that, datacenter implementations have
gathered huge momentum and the trend is likely to scale up even more
in the next few years with new government infrastructures and IT
projects getting implemented," said Shetty.

Subhasini
Prabhakar, CTM, Dax Networks said th style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">at
'Fiber
to the home' (FTTH) is one of the major drivers of structured
cabling. According to her, this would change the way in which
residential and commercial buildings are wired with high-speed
connectivity to support voice, data and video. "Tool-less
design, datacentre cabling, field crimpable connectors for FTTH
solutions, intelligent cabling and 10G over copper are the
current trends in its adoption," said Prabhakar. "Similarly
the acceptance of fiber optic connectivity is also increasing. Now
the installers do not have mental block on fiber termination
techniques, and most of the installers have proper tools and
equipments to do the termination accurately with minimal loss,"
she added.

Prasanna Kumar, Regional Director-India and SAARC,
Leviton said that 10G as a market segment is fast evolving, and
acceptance of the technology is growing among customers in India.
"Typically, 10G cabling is used for high-performance computing
clusters, datacenters, scaled up and consolidated servers, real-time
video streaming on Web servers, workgroups involved in data-intensive
applications, collaborative activities, and PACS in the healthcare
context," he said. According to Kumar, India has seen a fair
amount of adoption of 10G technology, both in corporate enterprise
and the government sector, and the most significant usage is in the
LAN aggregation. "We estimate the market to grow by about 15
percent in 2010. Also, the newer technologies like cloud computing
are fast emerging within the industry and would accelerate the
growth,” said Kumar.

"Structured cabling has witnessed
several changes and is becoming an important deliverable in IT
investment. CIO's are looking at installing the latest technologies
like the 40 Gig solutions on copper and 100 Gig solutions on fiber.
Such technologies ensure that the RoI of the enterprise is
protected," said DS Nagendra, GM-LAN, Nexans.

Solutions:

style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">"The
fiber
solutions that are available, include OM2, OM3, OM4 for
multi-mode and OS1 and OS2 for single mode," said Ahluwalia. The
security solutions combined with intelligent systems reduce downtime,
and have detective controls. These features were first introduced in
copper cabling solutions, and today it is also available in optic
fiber solutions. 'Fiber to the home' Solutions are targeted at large
and medium enterprises. It allows system and network integrators to
extend fiber optic broadband all the way to the last access point,"
he added.

"There is a range of solutions available in
structured cabling that can be customized. Office network solutions
today range from Cat 5 and Cat 5e to Cat 7a in copper and OM1 to OM4
in fiber; this spectrum addresses low bandwidth to 10G networks. For
high speed, high bandwidth networks especially datacenter and
disaster recovery centers or 10G applications, we find Cat 6a STP
gaining momentum because of the advantages they have over 10G UTP.
Fiber installations have also gone up but their use is mainly limited
to backbone cabling," said KK Shetty of Tyco Electronics. "Fiber
cabling is only a little more expensive than copper cabling systems,
the cost of active components for fiber networks makes the entire
network extremely expensive," he added.

Shetty further said,
"Knowledge centers, BPOs, software development centers with data
centric environments require technologies that allow IT managers to
track MACs in real-time while offering security, better asset
management and RoI; the intelligent infrastructure management system
offers all these. In addition, high density connectivity management
systems that include factory terminated plug-and-play connectivity
products like MPO, MPOptimate and MRJ21 and AMP Sigma Link cabling
systems, allow faster installation and MACs; high-density cabling
platforms are also in vogue as with increased port density these also
offer, smaller datacenter, real estate footprint and allow for better
utilization for real estate."

"Nowadays, structured
cabling technologies are designed to cater to all the demands of a
typical datacenter. The 10G solutions that are available on both
twisted pair (Cat 6a-shielded and unshielded) and fiber are effective
for bandwidth hungry applications. While twisted pair is the norm in
most Indian network infrastructures, technologically fiber is a more
superior solution and today's datacenters adopt both twisted pair and
fiber, singly or in combination to derive most effective solutions
for their needs," said Prabhakar. "10G over copper, use of
newer single mode fiber in LAN, products and technologies suitable
for FTTH, entire range of products specifically designed for data
centre applications, then there are hybrid products for residential
applications," style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">
she further
added.

style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">“There
are
end-to-end structured connectivity solutions including all
solutions like Cat 5e, Cat 6 and Cat 6a in copper solutions, OM3 and
OM4 solutions in fiber, cable management solutions, intelligent PDUs,
Wireless and POE, besides high performance for datacenter solutions,"
said Prasanna Kumar. "Moreover, the solutions extend to homes,
lighting, wireless and power," he added.

style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">"All
types
of cabling prevalent in India, such as UTP and STP on copper
and single mode and multimode, are available on fiber. Cat 5e, Cat 6,
Cat 6a and Cat 7 are the kinds of prevalent solutions," said
Nagendra.

style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">Challenges:

"Today,
fiber optic 10GB solutions are more prevalent than copper. One reason
is simply because the supporting active component market is more
mature with fiber. The 10GBA SE-T standard was released in 2006 and
we started seeing active components with this technology integrated
in late 2008. As this market grows and prices fall, we will see more
copper installed to support 10GbE applications. style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">Cost
is
a factor, but also flexibility, overall robustness and familiarity
play a

role," said Ahluwalia.

"With the new trends
in Copper, the installation has become more difficult and stringent
with new parameters which have made field testing more complex such
as equal-level far-end crosstalk (ELFEXT), Powersum equal-level
far-end crosstalk and Alien Crosstalk, for which we need highly
skilled installers who can actually analyze these parameters
especially when there is an issue," said KK Shetty. "For
Cat 6 (1G) & 10G, quality of the installation becomes more
critical where the engineers must use the best of the tools available
in the industry which can deliver quality terminations, since any
termination which is not up to the standard can downgrade the quality
of the network and can render the best of the active devices useless.
Apart from the terminations of the jacks, further care is required
with reference to the cable pull tension and bend radius maintenance,
which is one of the critical parts that affect the overall
performance of the cabling system," he added.

According to
Shetty, this is important especially for 10G on UTP system, because
of the Alien

Crosstalk issue which is a
critical factor and cannot be canceled by DSP technology; and can
only be mitigated by a shield, space or glass. "10G Ethernet is
possible over single-mode and multi-mode fiber, and the Cat 7 STP
solution. Since Cat 7 STP is a fully-shielded solution, its
installation is difficult than a UTP solution. The difficulties that
exist in installation of Cat 7 lead to the development of 10G
Ethernet over UTP," style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">
Prabhakar said. "Factors influencing adoption of 10G
solutions are technologies like Power over Ethernet, Voice over IP,
Security over IP etc. In fact, 10G adoption is growing at a rate of
10 to 15 percent per year due to already published standards by IEEE
and TIA. Demanding users, new applications and lower prices drove
higher demand for Gigabit Ethernet and will soon make the 10G
Ethernet a necessity in the enterprise backbone network. This will
only increase further adoption of 10G into the horizontal
installations," said Prasanna Kumar.

According to Nagendra
of Nexans, Cat-6A/10GE installations need more precision installation
technique to derive the optimum performance of the cabling. "One
needs to ensure minimum separation distances from electrical cabling,
minimum sheath removal, and minimum pair untwist at the termination
end and also proper bundling of the cables. This will be more
stringent for UTP solutions as it can be prone to EMI very easily.
Shielded cables can protect from EMI and crosstalk from one cable to
the other in a much better way," he said.

Pain Points:


style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">Ahluwalia
believes
that the aggressive price war waged between companies to win large
projects have today, removed the focus from delivering quality
product and solutions to customers. style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">"Structured
cabling
constitutes of just about five percent of the total cost of
the network infrastructure. While earlier most enterprises did not
give much importance to structured cabling, now with increase in
bandwidth intensive application coupled with demands for higher
network uptime, price has come into play in most networks with
performance taking precedence," said Shetty.

"The
price trend varies from vendor to vendor as per the current raw
materials, and results in cost fluctuation. At Dax, we design
solutions as per customer requirements, and offer them the best with
affordable price compared to our competitors' products and
solutions. The fluctuating global copper prices have not had a
significant effect on the pricing structure. Since cabling is a part
of the entire IT infrastructure spends, such price differences do not
have any major impact on the adoption of structured cabling
solutions," said Prabhakar. Price is a very important criterion
in a customer's decision making process, but majority of customers
look for real value for money. While they want nothing but the very
best, they also want the solutions to be affordable," said
Kumar. "Today with cabling we see a lot more issues with
reference to cabling, as the copper price is oscillating both ways.
Apart from that, currency is also fluctuating," said Nagendra.
"The distributors and the SIs understand the changing scenario
and collectively, we are explaining the same to the end users which
is being understood by the decision makers of the enterprise,"
he added.

Adoption:

According
t style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">o
Ahluwalia, the
adoption is boosting up with investments made by the government
sector. "The rise in datacenters has scaled up growth of the
structured cabling industry; however, trends indicate that there are
several other factors that would contribute to its adoption in the
years to come. These are growth infrastructure projects both private
and public, government enterprises, development of new townships, SEZ
projects, consolidation and growth in manufacturing, expansion in
BFSI and telecom networks," style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">Shetty
said.
"SMBs are aware of the critical nature of
structured cabling and would even adopt it. But it is important to
note that it is not the cost of SCS network that is the road block
but the cost of the entire IT infrastructure. While it is easier for
large enterprises to absorb IT costs, the same is a challenge for
SMBs. With cloud computing gaining momentum, we foresee SMB business
picking up as this would allow them to deploy simple computer
network style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">s
without the headaches
associated with large IT infrastructure in terms of managing and
maintenance," Shetty further added.

"The prolific
area where structured cabling is expanding horizontally is
datacenters. This new niche market is fast developing and can provide
renewed growth for structured cabling system suppliers. Datacenter
cabling is a new developing growth market for both the fiber and the
copper SCS worldwide," said Prabhakar. According to her,
structured cabling continues to be a vital link connecting the
components of IT infrastructure. IT infrastructure connectivity has
come a long way from wired copper lines and fiber lines to wireless
technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMax etc. However, despite the advent of
these wireless technologies, cabling, especially structured cabling
continues to be the backbone of IT infrastructure. "The
penetration and education is the key here in addressing the SMB
segment. Vendors need to constantly innovate new ideas to make the
solutions interesting and relevant to this segment. While there has
been a significant growth in this segment over the years, there is
still huge potential," said Kumar. Nagendra said that, the
adoption of structured cabling in the SMBs is high.



The
Roadmap:

"Manufacturing segment has also contributed to a
large portion of our business and we continue to see investments from
this sector in the future as well," style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">said
Ahluwalia.
Shetty believes that, the industry would grow in
tandem with commercial expansions in B, C and D-class cities in India
which are gearing up to set-up IT infrastructures. Cloud computing
would result in more and more Internet datacenters that require
specialized structured cabling technologies. According to Prabhakar,
the key verticals that would drive the growth in this space include
telecom, manufacturing, ITeS, government and PSUs with a major chunk
accounting for airports and infrastructure development companies.

"The key verticals would be telecom, manufacturing, ITeS,
aviation and PSUs. From an applications perspective, it is clearly
the datacenter requirements for which India is seen to have a larger
potential compared to rest of the world," said Kumar. The
cabling industry is on a road of revival as IT investments are
picking up; with major segments that include infrastructure, IT,
ITeS, BFSI and retail as well as government is considered as a strong
driver for its growth