'3G will come in two flavours in India'

These are both exciting and interesting times for people in the
communications domain. And Oracle Communications, global business unit
senior vice-president and general manager Bhaskar Gorti is having a
good time facilitating the technological change across the media and
communications space. He moved to Oracle after heading Portal Software
as its CEO for four years when Oracle acquired Portal in 2006. At
Oracle, Gorti looks after strategic planning, product development,
sales, service and support for Oracle’s Communications products. In an
interview with Surabhi Agarwal, Gorti outlines the changes, challenges
and commerce that 3G will bring in the country. Excerpts:

The department of telecom has recently released its guidelines for 3G
in India. What potential does 3G unleash for companies like Oracle?

The potential is huge. We have been providing technologies to global
operators to rollout 3G whether it is in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan,
Western Europe or Northern America. These markets have saturated in
terms of new subscribers, so they have to rollout new things. We see a
lot of opportunity as markets open up. In India, 3G is going to come
in two different flavours. Firstly, existing operators with 2G or 2.5G
technology are going to upgrade to 3G. And secondly, many new
operators and some foreign players are also going to enter the market
with 3G. Everybody knows that per minute revenue on voice services
will go down and that from value added services (VAS) will increase.
We designed our billing and rating and revenue management platform for
VAS 5-10 years ago. We had designed these platforms for real-time, IP
and internet. Those days, you couldn’t guess what somebody might use
it for. So, we have built our system with those fundamentals.

How can operators upgrade their tech platform from 2G to 3G?

There are two sides to it. The biggest piece is t heir whole network,
the network and bandwidth that they have to upgrade. For instance, we
announced a relationship with Bharti for their 78,000-km fibre optic
network. As you rollout networks, you need to get the most out of
them. It has to be optimal and offer very high efficiency and
integrity. As different devices connect to the network, you need to
know what they are since security is a major issue. When you have a
network of that huge length, knowing everything that connects to the
network is a very expensive task. We have built technology that helps
you know what’s on your network. All this translates to better
customer service.

How long will it take for 3G to start will be decided by a combination
of networks and the towers that have to be upgraded. You also need a
platform that supports different applications. The third piece you
need is actually the applications.

Everybody talks about 3G for cool music. But a ve ry large chunk of
users, who are actually professionals, use the device for business
applications like checking staffs, inventory, performance news breaks
or announcements. So, we have released a whole set of business
indicators for free on the Apple store.

Out of the total applications that you have, what is the break up
between business and entertainment applications?

We have two categories of applications. First are the applications
that Oracle builds inhouse. These are applications that help customers
manage networks, whether it is DTH or IPTV. So, we build applications
to manage any kind of network, services like voice, content, gaming
etc. We have also set up applications that manage customer touch
points, whether it is consumer business over the network, over the
phone, in the store, etc. Then we have a service delivery platform,
which we build and sell. That helps the applications community out
there to build appli cations on top of it. These are pre-integrated,
open and certified technologies. We not only want to provide our
customers the infrastructure, but also ways to monetise it. The way
you monetise that infrastructure is to bring a whole suite of
applications, that people can use the network for. For instance, you
get a 3G phone, and if you are using it only to make phone calls and
receive SMS, what’s the point? One of the key things that we do is
applications that help you do commerce or financial transactions. The
service delivery market on a global basis is $5 billion and that is
only scratching the surface.

Operators here are getting 10% of their revenue from non-voice
services. That is still dominated by SMS. If you take voice and SMS
out, very little is left. As those revenue start going up, there is
going to be a huge market.

3G is also going to bring many foreign operators to the country and at
a global level, Oracle is providing the technology to most of them.
Are you going to leverage the existing relationship with them?

It’s going to speed things up. Even if a foreign operator forms a tie-
up and brings 3G, they still will have to rollout the network and
focus on services that are important for the country. You can bring
the best practices and processes, but will still have to focus on the
applications that the Indian market needs.

Apart from 3G, what are other growth drivers for Oracle in
communications?

VAS is definitely one. IPTV and DTH are also going to pick up. Oracle
already has players that are providing DTH and newer players like
Reliance and Bharti have stated plans for it. As communications go to
the rural markets, the cost consciousness of people will become more
acute. Therefore, the need to provide high quality service at a more
economic cost will become important. This will create a need for more
standard packa ged applications.

Markets like the US and Europe are slowly reaching a saturation point
in terms of penetration. What does India as a market mean to you?

Most people believe that as those markets are reaching saturation, the
importance of this market has gone up for us. That’s not the case. Our
business today is pretty well balanced on a global basis. Different
markets have different dynamics. In those markets, there may be
subscriber saturation but there is no service saturation. Services
like 3G, WiMax and IPTV are rolling out there. Just because people
have two cellphones there, doesn’t mean that the market is closing for
us. On the other hand, in India, two things are happening
simultaneously. It’s a double growth factor here. In some of those
economies, there was first a subscriber growth and maturity and then a
services growth and maturity. In India, both are happening at a
parallel level, which is an extremely go od thing.

How do you compare the technology platform of telcos?

It’s not necessarily an Apple to Apple comparison. It is more about
how you can increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) by providing
more cost effective applications. Some of those markets have reached a
potential, where ARPUs are flatting or going down so, its more about
being efficient. Ten years ago, telcos used to say how many options do
you have? But, now, every country has so much choice and competition
is driving innovation. Wherever we talk to an operator today, we
always ask themâ€"are you a media company or are you a communications
company? That thing is converging today.

How big are enterprises as a market for Oracle?

It is a very large market. Their requirements are security, different
things at different hierarchies, because different people have
different needs in an organisation. Enterprise customers are a large
market and we call them corporate customers. We sell communication
needs to our corporate customer through our telecommunication
companies. So, if your company is using our voice over IP (VoIP) then
it is going to come from one of your operators here.

Source: Financial Express