An exclusive interview with Mr. Ninad Desai, District Chair, BICSI India reveals his strategies for business in India .
Vikash Gupta:- Being at the helm of BICSI India, what will be your immediate priorities / initiatives?
Mr. Ninad Desai:-I am eagerly looking forward to draw on the collective strength of ICT professional’s community to take BICSI India to its next level. My immediate priorities over the next 2 year period are:
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Continuing on the good work that we have been doing as an association on the Skill Development initiative, It will need to be taken to its logical end, which is to establish and deliver India-specific training & certifications in association with the industry skill sector councils and their partners pan-India.
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Mandating a National Building Code for communication cables, which among other things mandates ICT cabling standards in areas of installation and product performance by working with the various Government Agencies.
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Finally, make BICSI India seen as a vibrant and the singular body addressing the comprehensive needs of the Information & Communications industry, by bilaterally networking with other relevant Industry Associations.
Needless to say, we at BICSI INDIA will continue our focus on relevant technical content that delivers value to our members and the ICT professional’s community at large which is our core strength as an association. Obviously all of this cannot be done alone! Besides working with the volunteer community on various issues regularly, I would also be reaching out to the industry on a regular basis to share our experiences with them and in turn receive constructive advice and observations from them to help us learn and grow stronger.
Vikash Gupta:-Please elaborate on the initiatives taken by BICSI to address the existence of skill gap in the industry and deficit of networking professionals?
Mr. Ninad Desai:-We at BICSI INDIA are working on a Learn to Succeed programme which is nothing but a five-step action plan that includes the following steps-
Step1: Conduct awareness campaigns to communicate the advantages of skilling and building careers in areas of Enterprise Structured ICT infrastructure, outside plant and Premise Telecommunication networks in particular.
Step2: Divide the respective training programs into short-duration workshops & align them to the industry relevant education requirements.
Step 3: Ensure that completion of such training is recognized, for example, through skill sector council certifications and certifications from industry recognised bodies.
Step4: Collaborate with businesses to identify their talent requirements and gain partial funding for such trainings from the industry to increase reach & affordability.
Step 5: Keep bringing newer learning avenues and communicate these up-skilling opportunities to trainees on a regular basis to ensure continued learning.
Through strategic programs and collaborations, we at BICSI INDIA are working closely with government bodies, educational institutions worldwide and the ICT Industry, to create partnerships between the industry and academia. To fill the global demand of high quality networking professionals, BICSI is committed to address the skill gap with high eminence education and training that would accelerate productivity, opportunity and growth.
Vikash Gupta:-Your views on the future of Indian Networking industry, in the current context of Smart Cities and Digital India?
Mr. Ninad Desai:-The government with the vision of Digital India and SMART Cities seems committed to build high speed broadband highways. The digital communication infrastructure which is the prime constituent of Digital India & Smart Cities needs high speed broadband as a key enabler which in turn would primarily be driven through a robust and performing fibre network infrastructure.
The National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project has set the stage for providing broadband access to every corner of the habituated country’s geography. This involves laying more than 600,000 km of fibre across the country which is in itself a mammoth task.
The participation of private players which constitute the enterprise networking and the Telecom industry is very important factor here for faster rollout of the optic fibre networks across the length and breadth of a vast country like ours.
The competition from industry players has not only brought efficiency into the processes but is also helping in bringing the much needed enthusiasm and double digit growth in the networking industry. Moreover, the innovation in marketing, operations and business processes driven by quality standard operating practices and performance driven standards are in turn helping in even faster and greater adoption of high bandwidth services and resulting in even higher revenues and growth to the ICT industry.
Vikash Gupta:-BICSI India association with TSSC (Telecom sector skill council) can be an important step in developing the ICT skill sets and boost growth and productivity in the Telecom Sector. Please elaborate?
Mr. Ninad Desai:-TSSC is an industry-led apex body, jointly set up by The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Indian Cellular Association (ICA) and Telecom Centres of Excellence (TCOE) to ensure adequate availability of skilled manpower to boost growth and productivity in the Telecom Sector. BICSI’s global reach as an association in the ICT industry covers the spectrum of voice, data, electronic safety & security, project management and audio & video technologies. We provide information, education and knowledge assessment for individuals and companies in the industry and serve nearly 23,000 ICT professionals globally, including designers, installers and technicians. The challenges facing the ICT community increasingly require programs and initiatives jointly-developed by leading organizations most importantly with a local flair.
We at BICSI INDIA understand this natural synergy between both our organizations which would help spur technology innovation and advance the overall ICT community as a whole. The ICT center of Excellence in Mumbai currently offers the Optical Fiber Technician skills certification programme which is a TSSC skills certification programme under the National skills certification framework to ICT industry professionals and plans to extend it in the northern regions of India in the near future. A programme on ICT structured cabling installation is also in the pipeline and will be offered in the very near future benefitting ICT professionals in the field of Data, Voice, Audio, Video & Optical Fiber, making it a comprehensive vendor neutral ICT training programme of its kind offered anywhere in the industry.
Vikash Gupta:-What are the upcoming trends in networking?
Mr. Ninad Desai:-One of the most important trend is the digitisation era coming too fast too soon to the manufacturing industry. Termed as the Industry 4.0 it’s the next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector, driven by the astonishing rise in data volumes, computational power, and connectivity, especially new low-power wide-area networks coupled with the emergence of analytics and business-intelligence capabilities & new forms of human-machine interaction such as touch interfaces and augmented-reality systems aided with improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world, such as advanced robotics and 3-D printing. It’s changing the way manufacturing processes existed in the first place and the way they were networked and communicated with each other in the past.
Most of these digital technologies have been brewing for some time. Some are not yet ready for application at scale. But many are now at a point where their greater reliability and lower cost are starting to make sense for industrial applications.
The other important upcoming trend is an open source cellular wireless network that can help connect the unconnected or creating more immersive experiences that require better connections. With video and Virtual Reality consumption on the rise, larger, better networks are needed. This is an incredibly large challenge, and in the coming years we’ll all need to work together to understand the specific connectivity challenges and develop new technologies and processes to address those challenges.
With tremendous growth in mobility and increased adoption of unified communications, cloud computing and collaboration services the demand for network bandwidth is increasing exceptionally and to support the user demand and applications the LAN and WAN cabling is seeing higher than average growth. HD video, voice and data services plus remote applications seem driving the infrastructure growth.
