Collaboration will drive infrastructure

Polycom is riding high on the transformation of the enterprise technology scene in India, riding on the back of the stark changes in government policy that encourages innovative technologies. The future looks bright for Polycom as well as most sectors of the economy, says Minhaj Zia, Managing Director, Polycom India & SAARC

How do you think the Digital India initiative is driving education sector innovations?

The digital India and Make in India initiative   is driving a huge number of technology innovations. Digital   India will enable services on the go, especially for areas that are not connected right now, like many rural and far flung areas of the country.

We have a number of challenges facing our education system today. there are schools in villages as well, but the quality of education that gets imparted is very low- it is of no level to get them a job.  Government provided education suffers from low quality of content with sub standard teachers. They are far far behind city students, and they are not less intelligent or talented. Technologies that enable good content and its delivery in an efficient manner can help bridge this divide, also ensure scalability. There are some projects that are driving quality in education, and we are part of those project as well, one of them is for K12 schools, a program which is being driven through ERNET project in 7 states, 3500 schools, where they are trying to be connected through teaching studios, where there are teachers who will be imparting education.

Each of these studios may be connected to 20/30 odd virtual classrooms. The content these experts will bring in will help these students to come up to the level of the students and education available in the city.

That’s a very good initiated as a pilot, this covers 3500, and if this can be scaled to 1.4 million schools which are there in India today, it will be massive. You can have this concept only where teaching, good teachers and experts can be virtualised and made available at the same time to multiple schools … you get interactive sessions, and since the whole concept of education is interactivity, it helps in improving education quality massively.

There is lot of collaboration needed between industry and a good higher education institute.

What are the most significant technologies you think of today for citizen services?

One of the biggest drivers is the broadband reaching 500,000 villages in the country. The task is that by 2016 they have to reach 2,50,000 villages in the country of the Ethernet connectivity of at least 1 gigabit. What do you do with this network? Citizen services will be the best utilisation of this technology drive.

In healthcare it is not only about delivering primary care to the sick person but also reaching out to rural areas. As per law, all medical students need to practice in rural areas but no one wants to go,

Primary services that can be delivered are education and healthcare. Many doctors who are required to go to villages and practice do not do that, and we also have a shortage of doctors in the country, we could utilise technology to bridge that gap.

What technologies do you think can make a difference?

Today, collaborative technologies are the way to go. An increasing number of businesses are trying to manage customers and provide the best experience through use of technology. The Make in India is an initiative that needs infrastructure that will make Indian more competitive, and be able to gain investment into the country. The challenges of manufacturing are also to do with lack of collaboration, so   that is where I think technology innovation is headed.

And that is also where we come in. Video collaboration is useful across verticals, specially where distances are involved.

Telemedicine is also being explored as a huge scope for usage of technology for medicine and education is not far behind. A number of doctors across the country are utilising collaborative technologies like video conferencing to provide services.  In medicine specially, there are no laws about tele consultation, so hospitals face a dilemma about how prudent it will be to use it. But with video conferencing, telemedicine becomes more justified. Collaborative measures are more needed here as well.

So an increasing number of businesses are trying to manage outcomes through the use of technology. Earlier business models for IT/ITES were about increasing team sizes for additional skills. Today, coding automation is coming in as well. Workers need not do repetitive jobs any more. Opportunities can this be maximised, while efficiency can be increased, and costs lowered

How are government policies helping this development?

The development of the Optic Fibre lines will be the biggest boost the governance can give to this initiative. The targeted 2, 50,000 villages under broadband connectivity will mean a huge surge in collaborative technologies usage. Besides, this project will bring a number of related projects under one umbrella with the proliferation of 4G, there will be many new operations launching on national level. With more than 70% of the country launching new projects based on wi fi connectivity, collaboration will certainly take the forefront.

Our Prime Minister uses video technology for tracking the progress of government projects, cutting back on travel expenses by almost 20%. The PMO drives this initiative. Polycom has partnered with DGS&D, in getting a standardised suppliers and price contract, for providing the video conferencing service to any government agency. The number of user agencies is huge and increasing fast.

So which sectors stand to benefit most from collaborative technologies apart from manufacturing and medicine?

I have already spoken of education and health. Traffic congestion is a global phenomenon. Remote working teams are fast becoming the norm rather than the exception. According to a survey we did in enterprises, the number of organisations that are opting for remote working is going up steadily, and not many believe in the log in culture.  In our survey, almost 77% of the companies say that they are giving options to employees to work remotely. That will also get them good talent like their female employee show need to work around family times at some stage in their career. So, the workplace of the future will consist of technologies that drive Mobility- which allows people to work from anywhere, experience which is as important as efficiency, and integration of the workflow into the business flow. In fact I think the workforce should itself drive the business objective into a seamlessly integrated work flow,

How do you see your competition? What advantages do you think Polycom has over them?

We have three big value propositions:

Firstly, while most of our competitors offer video conferencing as a siloed product, we offer end to end support. Their focus is to drive networking more, so more bandwidth is consumed. For us it is the efficiency in bandwidth. We believe in interoperability, and use it a s a driver to transform the infrastructure. We don’t have interoperability issues with other brands, while most of our competitive products do.

Secondly we are looking at expanding the market for video collaboration in the SMB sector and mid market segments, so affordability is a big issue, we try to reduce CAPEX cost as far as possible.

Thirdly, we are very strong in audio collaboration; we offer extremely good quality, in any area. While we are good with video as well, audio efficiency is our USP. Since we started as an audio technology company, it is still our biggest strength. Our Bubble technology cancels out all environmental noise from our transmissions and every sound except the human voice is eliminated. This is our unique strength.