The ability to adapt to new technologies while supporting critical systems requires a smart network infrastructure. Today, businesses want seamless cloud initiatives, which in turn requires state-of-the-art data-cabling infrastructure to support cloud networking. These solutions need to be able to handle growth, big data, security and performance with ease for end users.
In view of this backdrop, Express Computer, in partnership with Commscope, organised a one-day virtual conclave packed with keynotes, strategy talks, panel discussions, celebrity talk and expert learning sessions. The conclave brought together some of the best IT thought leaders of the Industry sharing their journey of digital transformation, and their lessons from successful data centre and cloud projects.
Connected environment
In his Inaugural Speech, Mylaraiah JN, Enterprise Sales Director, India & SAARC, CommScope, reiterated that change is the only constant in today’s highly dynamic market, and as the world moves towards a digital future, driven by data, CommScope has been responding to each of the technology trends.
In a special address, Matias Peluffo – VP, Building Connectivity Infrastructure, APAC, CommScope, said, “India is a key strategic market for CommScope. One size fits all approach will not be the future. Connected technology will play a more important role going forward. The data centre boom will drive demand for co-location, and CommScope is in a unique position to support your infrastructure needs today and in the future.”
Providing a keynote session on Industry 4.0 : Planning for digital adoption through Covid 19 and beyond, Rajesh Uppal, Executive Director – IT, CIO and CHRO, Maruti Suzuki, shared , “Work from anywhere, anytime is the new normal and collaboration has become the new imperative for us.With touchless approach, digital has now taken the centre stage. The pace of digital adoption has accelerated significantly.”
In a session titled, ‘400G is here, is your DC ready?’, James Young, Global Enterprise Data Center Director, CommScope, stated, “Development scale has driven faster adoption of technology. We see the requirement in changing the way how servers are connected. The traffic between the servers is increasing dramatically and we can support a whole new class of connectivity. New use cases of ML and augmented intelligence have resulted in increased server speeds and fibre optics is becoming preferred choice for server connections.”
Robust architecture
The conference also witnessed an insightful panel discussion on building data centre architectures for today’s and tomorrow’s networks, which was participated by Ashok Srinivasan, Technical Director, CommScope, Amit Saxena, Global Deputy Chief Technology Officer, SBI; and Jagdish Lomte, VP (IT) & CIO – BTG at Thermax.
Saxena said, “There’s an opportunity for all leaders to build future ready systems. We are moving forward to a hybrid cloud approach. We should be able to deploy solutions that allow us to cater to customers quickly. The world is moving towards analytics driven journey. We are making all the new applications hybrid ready. We are taking a micro services approach in case of legacy application. In a couple of quarters, we intend to move everything on hybrid cloud.”
Lomte opined, “During the pandemic, we learned three important things – Technology adoption, user awareness and security. We were able to work effectively from home because of our focus on cloud and security practices. We started our cloud journey three years ago and we decided to move to cloud in a phased journey.”
Sharing his perspective, Srinivasan said, “Remote working is putting pressure on data centre capacity. Organisations need a low latency data centre network with capacity to handle big amount of transactions. Increasing capacity as per need is important. We are providing solutions that help you scale up and scale down your networks.”
In a session titled, ‘Wi-Fi – The Now and The Next?’, Rishi Grover, VP, Wireless Product Management, Ruckus Networks, stated, “The Wi-Fi landscape is rapidly evolving with growing number of use cases. The pandemic has become a great leveller and the importance of high speed, reliable Wi-Fi is more than ever before. High performance Wi-Fi has become a requirement for new applications and services. Capacity, security and coverage are the top three concerns for customers. We have developed ecosystem partnerships with domain experts to build a robust, converged solution.”
In another panel discussion on accelerating the path to a hyper-connected world, Dr. Pradeep Pendse – Dean Academics (PTM) and CTO Prin LN Welingkar Institute of Management (WeSchool); Harish Chandra – CTO, Sarovar Hotels; and Kalyan Chakravarthy – Manager, System Engineering, CommScope exchanged their insights.
Chandra opined that the pandemic is a big digital transformer and the number of devices per access point is increasing. In the hospitality industry, particularly, IoT, along with Wi-Fi is improving guest experiences.
Sharing his story, Dr. Pendse said, “We went online within three days of lockdown announcement. We are now reaching a phase of maturity in terms of delivering interactive experiences. We are also looking at a complete revamp of our Wi-Fi network.”
Adding to that, Chakravarthy reiterated that the need for high speed and reliable Wi-Fi is more than ever before and that Wi-Fi will co-exist with 5G networks.
An interesting highlight of the conference was an inspirational address on leadership in crisis, by Col Lalit Rai, a Kargil war hero. He said, “In times of a crisis, decision making makes a lot of difference. It takes more than just courage and determination to keep moving forward. Lack of resource can never be an excuse to finish your job. Technology is something which can become obsolete quickly. Adapt, adopt and adept – this is the need of the hour in the post Covid era.”