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ShareBangalore: Networking giant Cisco Systems, which recently made an entry into the data centre business wants a piece of the action from India's multi-billion dollar Unique Identification (UID), project.
The $36 billion multinational has kicked off talks with UID chief Nandan Nilekani for a share of the data centre implementation and connectivity part of the project, which according to some estimates, could cost upwards of Rs10,000 crore when complete.
"Yes, we are in talks with Nandan Nilekani for being a part of the Unique Identification Project in India," Padmasree Warrior, chief technology officer (CTO), Cisco Systems, said on the sidelines on BanagaloreIT.biz on Wednesday.
The firm is also stretching itself for a larger part of the cloud computing market. Warrior said Cisco was looking aggressively at the software as a solution model (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Cisco had recently tied up with salesforce.com to deliver complete contact centres on the cloud. Cisco will also look at partnering with major telecom service providers in India like Bharti, power utilities and IT firms to increase its footprint in the country, she added.
Cisco is also targeting the healthcare and education markets to take services into remote areas, leveraging on its telepresence technologies. Cisco has started trial runs in telepresence in some of the rural areas in Karnataka.
Emphasising on the need for a higher broadband penetration in India, Warrior said although India is among the top 15 nations with extensive broadband connection, it is still way behind countries like Netherlands and the US. Industry statistics prove that a 10% increase in data penetration would lead to 1.3% growth in the GDP, she said.
