'India is the fastest growing data center structured cabling market'

Entering the wireless domain, CommScope is acquiring Andrews

Corp, a leading player in the global communications infrastructure market. It

has also upped its ante by defining India as a hypermarket for data center

infrastructure needs. In a free wheeling interview with VOICE&DATA, Mark

Peterson, senior VP, Global Marketing, Enterprise, and Ispran Kandasamy, VP

& MD, Asia Pacific, share their vision on trends in the structured cabling

industry

One of your bold moves has been to move from wired to

wireless by acquiring Andrews Corp. Can you tell us more about that?



Mark Peterson (MP): The acquisition will be closed by the end of the year.

We feel Andrews is a good fit with CommScope. We will be a $4 bn company at the

end of the acquisition. Together we can emerge as a global leader in

infrastructure solutions for communications networks, including structured

cabling solutions for the business enterprise; broadband cable and apparatus for

cable television applications; antenna and cable products, and network solutions

for wireless applications.

Do you see other vendors also taking a similar route?



MP: It will be interesting to see how others react. To be honest, I don't
see any other acquisition of this volume. Others do not have bandwidth and

footprint as wide as we do in order to pull off such a sweet deal as we have. We

have a more complimentary and synergistic relationship with Andrews as our

carrier and broadband business divisions are well integrated with Andrews'

portfolio and resources.

Do you see structured cabling business transforming into

services from just a solution?



Dr Kandasamy (IK): Our go to market model is through channel partners. There
is a hope that with infrastructure becoming increasingly important, there's a

good scope for value added services to be attached with the physical layer. A

lot of our partners are looking at post installation maintenance type services

already and it will be a good thing to see more services being added. One

significant trend in the cabling business is increased interaction with

architects, consultants and engineers, or ACE as we call it.

How are you transforming your relationship with business

partners?



MK: Business partners are key to our business. We are extremely focused on
choosing the right partners to be able to offer innovative solutions and

services.

IK: As infrastructure becomes important, we understand that

channels play a sophisticated role in delivering it to the market. As customer

requirement expands, we are moving to face-to-face and web-based training that

we continually upgrade. As business partners are critical to us, we are raising

the bar of quality for business partners. We are expecting a churn of partners

as we concentrate on quality rather than quantity.

You have defined India as a hypermarket, what way do you see a

surge in data center cabling?



IK: India is undoubtedly the fastest growing market in the Asia Pacific
region with a CAGR of 46% in the data center structured cabling market. In

comparison, the overall structured cabling market in the country is expected to

grow by a CAGR of 22.1% for the same period.

How is CommScope poised to propel itself further in the

structured cabling domain?



MP: As a leader, it is on us to take the industry beyond a plateau and for
this we are focused more on applications. We are interested in partnering with

other industries. We are also confident of leveraging our rich R&D

background to come up with unique product features. We have always adopted a top

down approach, looking at the problem first and then working our way to a

solution.

What are some of the key trends you see?



MP: Reading some of the trends, we find a lot of buzz around green
initiative and that gives us scope to propel intelligent cabling for increasing

productivity. Another trend is personalization of applications. Today, one can

choose a personalized web setting, portal and user interface. This is soon going

to percolate down to personalized office environment, leading to more innovative

cabling solutions.

IK: It is interesting to note that around 14 bn devices will

be connected to the Internet by 2010. In the Apac region alone, the structured

cabling market will be $1.5 bn in 2020, of which data centers will contribute

$500 mn. The average growth rate of structured cabling market globally is 11%

and the CAGR of Apac is 32.8%. ss

Malovika Rao





malovikar@cybermedia.co.in



The author was hosted in Australia