border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4">Gary Workman, president,
Asia-Pacific operations, Cabletron Systems.
To spearhead its growth in
Asia-Pacific, Cabletron Systems has appointed
COLOR="#016077">Gary Workman as the president of
operations in the region. As the head of the management team, he is responsible for
defining, developing, and implementing business strategies for Cabletron in the
Asia-Pacific region. Soon after taking over charge, in his first interview with any Indian
press, Workman spoke to Satya Prakash Singh
SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000">about Cabletron’s overall strategy for Asia-Pacific in
general and India in particular. Excerpts ...
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What
will be your role as president, Asia-Pacific?
Cabletron
is world famous for its intelligent switching and enterprise network management solutions.
With all the changes and opportunities in the networking industry, I am excited to join
Cabletron.
My objective in this role is simple: build
on Cabletron’s success and continue to grow the business in Asia-Pacific. In 1999, we
intend to strengthen Cabletron’s channel policy in Asia-Pacific and duplicate the
success the company has had with services in the US, to provide a higher level of support
for all our enterprise customers in the region.
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Cabletron India aspires to
be the #1 networking company by the year 2001. How do you plan to achieve this?
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We are
already #1, according to IDC reports, in switching in India. The switching market in India
is the most important market today as it is growing at greater than 50 percent. With our
SmartSwitch router range of WAN products, we plan to aggressively capture a significant
portion of the WAN market. We are also increasing our focus on the network management
market to add to the networking hardware revenues. Also, this year, we have grown at
greater than 80 percent each quarter as compared to the corresponding quarters of the
previous year. The significant contributor to this has been our relationship with Compaq
and specifically the revenue from Digital networking products. I am confident that we will
accomplish our vision of being the numero
uno networking company in India going by the current growth trends.
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Over the past one year, Cabletron India has taken a lot of
initiatives in terms of having a "proof-of-concept-centre and training centre"
and "spectrum development centre", etc. Are you going to have a 100-percent
Indian subsidiary in India in order to further your commitment?
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Yes, we are definitely planning for the
formation of an 100-percent subsidiary during the financial year 2000. We will make
strategic investments required to be the number one player in the Indian networking
industry. We have a good opportunity to achieve this as we are the #2 vendor in the first
year of our full-fledged operations. As I mentioned earlier, we are also first in
switching and we will leverage on this leadership.
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face="Times New Roman" size="4" color="#000000">We are definitely going to protect our |
It seems Indian
networking market is going to be dominated by Cisco and Cabletron. But, Cisco is on an
advantageous position on the internetworking front. How do you plan to address this issue?
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Yes, it is encouraging to note
that our only competitor in India is Cisco. We are already ahead of Cisco in switching.
With a renewed channel strategy and aggressive focus on WAN, telecom, ISPs, and network
management, we are going to overtake Cisco.
With Internet proliferation on the cards,
where do you want to put your investments in: LAN or WAN?
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We are definitely going to
protect our leadership in the LAN switching market with adequate investments. At the same
time, our world-wide focus on the WAN market will ensure us bring in additional
investments required for India specifically. Our investments in the "proof-of-concept
and training centre" and "spectrum development centre" are some of the
strategic investments already made for capturing market share in WAN and NMS markets. We
will also add more competitive and cost-effective products in the WAN space.
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What is Cabletron’s position in
other parts of Asia-Pacific?
In most markets in Asia-Pacific,
we are a very strong player. In some countries, economies have been struggling and it is
very difficult to comment about our strengths there. But I can say that we are growing
very rapidly in most countries with right focus on right markets.
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How do you compare the Indian networking
market with that of China?
Obviously, China and India are
the two biggest markets for us in Asia-Pacific. On the technology and the installed base
curve, I would say that China would be slightly higher than India. But, I would believe
that in the next two to five years, we would be having a greater opportunity in India than
in China. We will continue to make a lot more investments in both the markets. All I can
say is that India is catching up with China very rapidly and I am very bullish about
opportunities in India.
Global trends indicate that convergence
is driving the acquisition of datacom companies by telecom companies. Lucent acquiring
Ascend is a case in point. What are your comments? Do you think convergence will take off
in the near future?
Convergence of voice, data, and
video makes a lot of sense. But, commercial applications of convergence hold key to the
success of this technology. Making money out of this is critical.
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Over the last one year, Cabletron has
acquired five companies in order to expand its product range. Are there any more merger
and acquisitions in the offing?
If we
believe that we have the right companies and right technologies in front of us, we will
continue to grow aggressively by making acquisitions
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