Juniper Network’s CIO forecasts bright future for Indian companies.
Bureau Report
SAN FRANCISCO: Mobile technology is more advanced in India than in the United States from a consumer usage standpoint, says California-based company Juniper Network Inc.’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and senior vice president Bask Iyer.
“I honestly believe mobile is more advanced in India than in the US. India has really leapfrogged on that front from a consumer usage standpoint,” said Iyer in an interview to Live Mint in Bangalore, remarking that Indians are taking a “leadership” position in mobile technology. “Indian companies have to go through another revolution where they evolve from being an India-based global company to being a true multi-national player. I think there will be another evolution with Indian companies.”
Iyer was responding to a question on his perception as a customer of how the Indian IT industry has changed. According to him, “the labor arbitrage game is over now, so people have to differentiate technology. It’s not the Y2K kind of work anymore. It’s now really intelligent work and you have to move up the value chain.”
Juniper Networks Inc. is the world’s largest maker of networking equipment after Cisco Systems Inc., but has been facing competition from newer rivals like China-based Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd at a time when telecom service providers around the world are clamping down on costs.
Asked the challenges he faced as the CIO when he joined Juniper in 2011, Iyer said that most CIOs are generally concerned about cloud computing, social media, Big Data, mobile, computing or enterprise resource planning, putting SAP together.
“When I came to Juniper, I focused a little on the network. And one thing I found out is Juniper did not have proper networks,” he said. He said he convinced the company to re-lay the new architecture within two-three quarters.
“Everyone assumes that since we’re a networking company we’re able to do it faster. But I still work with the same budget that everyone has, I have to pay for the networking gear, even though Juniper makes them,” he said to Live Mint. “Despite what people say about IT spending, my budget hasn’t gone up year-over-year. It’s typically gone down. Unfortunately, most people look at IT as a cost center. All the CIOs are fighting this battle. If I have a dollar to invest, I would invest it in IT, that’s a differentiator.”
According to Iyer, the “advantage Juniper has is that most places we go into already have Cisco. So, we’re used to co-existing with other large providers. Being an underdog and a challenger, we have to innovate to survive. And that’s where we differentiate ourselves.”
Asked of the key investment priorities for the near term, Iyer said: “The cloud is very real for us. It’s happening faster than expected. Say every time we do systems, we look at it and say, “Why can’t it be on a cloud?” Our email went to the cloud, our human resource systems have gone to the cloud. In most cases it’s hosted by Juniper, so it gives me pleasure putting it on a cloud.”
He added: “Our ERP systems are going to go to a cloud. We also focus on are areas like security and compliance. It’s an uphill task as it’s far easier to hack your system than to prevent them.”