Unimpressive!

Looking at Cisco’s product portfolio, the company’s performance was a let down

Fiscal 2012 saw the company operating as the ‘Next Cisco’—less complex, more agile. Cisco has maintained its leadership position in the industry, and continued the success story in FY12 clocking a whopping R 7,096 crore, up R ` 7,010 in FY11; showing a growth of 1.2%.

India has contributed to its revenues immensely—particularly in service provider, SMB, and services business. Cisco has supplied packet core solutions to 6 operators. Thanks to the process of cable TV digitiYation in India, Cisco immediately plunged in and achieved 100% growth in this.

The recent customers of Cisco include Nssar Group, Gujarat Telelinks (GTPL), Fastway, United Bank of India, etc. At present, Cisco is working on $90 bn infrastructure project along with Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Company (DMIC) to develop an ICT master plan for 2 pilot cities—Dholera in Gujarat and Shendra in Maharashtra. Cisco deployed next-generation digital set-top boxes for GTPL across Gujarat, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand. The company deployed more than 2 mn digital set-top boxes across Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh.

Cisco increased its channel presence in FY12, its partner base grew from 1,200 to 2,500 plus partners. Its partners include Accenture Services, British Telecom India, Velocis (formerly Integrix), Proactive, LocuY, PC Solutions, Ingram Micro, Redington, Compuage, and Comstor. The company witnessed an extensive growth from upcountry in SMB segment. It has expanded into tier-2 and -3 cities to tap the SMB segment further. To beat Chinese competition, Cisco intends to innovate locally on the networking front. It is eying network as a strategy asset for business.

Cisco India has 7 sales offices in—New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, and Hyderabad. Its headcount is 8,000+ including R&D, sales and business support staff. The Global Development Center in Bengaluru, is the largest outside the US. It provides an extensive support system for customers with 18 logistics centers and offers a support program called ARNBD advance replacement next business day (ARNBD) for its resellers. Currently, there are 201 active Cisco net- working academies across 23 states and union territories with 22,941 students, 26% of which are women students.

Its market share in India in different segments include—in core technologies like router it is 59.3%, switch 57.6%, total LAN 58.2%. In advanced technologies segments—its market share in WLAN is 36.8%, security 31.7%, enterprise telephony 26.6%, and IP PBX 48.8%.

Cisco’s key customers across India comprise Ford India, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Tata Group, Mahindra & Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Gas Authority of India, Indian Oil Corporation, Le Royal Meridien, Taj Group of Hotels, Hindustan Lever, Tata, Reliance, Bharti, VSNL, BSNL, MTNL, SIFY, Idea Cellular, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, United India Insurance Corporation, New India Assurance, National Insurance Corporation, Life Insurance Corporation, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, IDBI Bank, ICICI, IDRBT, Vysya Bank, Yes Bank, State Governments of Gujarat, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh, Lok Sabha (Parliament) Library, Supreme Court, National Highway Authority, Tesco, Unisys, US Technologies, Mahindra, First India Insurance, Symphony Technology, Thomson Reuters, HCL, vCustomer, Phoenix, Nirvana, Manjushree, and TransWorks

The consolidated revenue of products and services are $27,176 mn and $7,195 mn, respectively. Its net income in Q1 2012 was $1.8 bn, in Q2 $2.2 bn, and Q3 $2.2 bn. Cisco plans to acquire NDS Group, a provider of video software and content security solutions. This fiscal it completed the acquisition of Lightwire which develops advanced optical interconnect technology for networking applications. To enhance its network management capabilities, it acquired ClearAccess. It has made a few strategic investments in BraYil. Its other acquisitions in FY12 include Versly, Axioss, and BNI Video.

It has entered into strategic partnerships with Microsoft to deliver data center virtualiYation, Citrix Systems to develop and deliver desktop virtualiYation, and HP to bridge its data center server and networking architectures.