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partners, learning partners, consulting partners, technology partners, independent software partners, IoT partners, colonel partners, distributors, SI & Solutions and cloud partners. He showed that these partners are mainly looking for growth to expand their businesses, customer loyalty to allow up-sell and cross-sell, differentiation to remain competitive and profitability.
He further presented a few of Cisco’s significant statistics from last year, illustrating how enablement drives profitability and growth. He mentioned that there was a 50% growth of premier partners, 14% growth in gold master specialised partners, 21% higher growth among partners who are investing in architecture practices and 8696 partner individuals from partner companies trained across 488 trainings.
The Daily FT met up with Malik to discuss how Cisco has involved Sri Lanka in its initiatives. Following are excerpts of the interview:
Q: To what extent is Sri Lanka involved in Cisco projects?
A: We started a project two years ago which we internally call ‘Project Renaissance’ which is typically focused on SAARC countries. SAARC for us over the last 5-7 years has grown at a rate of over 35% year-on-year and this is extremely healthy. But three years ago was when we realised that we’re reaching that inflection point where we see a lot of growth in SAARC countries. 
From Sri Lanka’s perspective firstly we needed a proper establishment. We now have our business centre in Galle Face. We moved into a fully-fledged office at the World Trade Centre. We said we’re going to invest in technologies which are going to be available there for customers to see. We also have a small briefing centre and technologies like tele-presence over there.
In Sri Lanka, I think the real business growth will come next year onwards. It has been growing faster than other areas. We see a lot of potential and the big growth areas are in the hospitality sector. The areas we want to focus on are those given by the president’s directive. Some of the projects we are planning now are extremely large in scale. Some may not go through but some will. The ones which will go through will be of a scale which Sri Lank has not seen before.
From a gaming perspective we talk about some of the largest casinos in the world and giving them technology. Also, for the largest hospitality chains, Cisco’s been a partner. The latest stuff we talk about is smart connected cities. These are like mini-cities with residential, gaming and hotel areas. From a technology perspective, what we’re seeing is that Sri Lanka is always at the forefront of adoption of technology because customers in Sri Lanka are a lot savvier in terms of awareness of technology.
In Sri Lanka we don’t have to invest much on creating that awareness of what technology can do for you. The part we have to play is telling them how technology can impact their business directly so they can articulate that internally within their organisations. Also, we work with some of the largest data centres in Sri Lanka.
The big chunk of growth in Sri Lanka is acting on infrastructure. For example, ports are going through a lot of modernisation, we’re in the early stage of port automation but we feel that is the next space. Right now it’s purely around connectivity but discussions are happening. Smart cities will also happen but not in terms of cities but in terms of these mini-cities.
Q: What are you focusing on in the SMB sector?
A: SMB is growing fairly fast in Sri Lanka. The challenge has been ensuring that we have an adequate number of partners. Quite a lot has been spent on the enablement of partners in Sri Lanka. We have a top end of partners who are well enabled and probably cutting-edge but the next rung of partners is required to go off the SMB.
Those days most of the businesses were absolutely based in Colombo but now it’s coming down because businesses are moving away from Colombo. Once you ensure partners are enabled, SMB is a very large space. We cannot touch it directly and we can’t close deals at every SMB, so we have to lead through the partners.
Q: What industries do most of the partners in Sri Lanka represent?
A: The biggest business is obviously service providers. The next rung of partners is public sector and financial services. These two areas play the majority of the part and then comes manufacturing. Overall, the biggest partners are from these three areas.
Now there are projects coming up in education, the public sector and defence. Earlier defence was not in the area of adopting technology but now it’s changing.
Q: What measures have Cisco taken to enforce security in the systems of the SMB enterprises in Sri Lanka?
A: The good part about the Cisco framework is that security is practically enclosed in the fabric of our network. It’s because we build security at all levels and all price points. Today if you’re an SMB kind of business, you get a small firewall from Cisco which addresses your business needs and when you keep on growing you can look at other solutions from Cisco.
From a security perspective, we don’t offer a bandage kind of approach where a problem is just fixed when found. Security for us goes through the entire fabric of the network. For instance, today our switches are secured, routers are secured and we put security at the firewall level.
Q: At the summit we heard that Cisco spends a lot of money to train their partners, are there similar plans for Sri Lanka?
A: A lot of training dollars have gone into countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. These are the emerging countries for us in SAARC. The scale which we are coming from right now is small and the percentage growth in these countries will be much higher than the growth that we would be seeing in India.
Training is going to be one of the most important needs because what used to happen earlier in 10 or five years probably happens in five months now. There is so much rapid change that things we’re talking to you now, weren’t there two years ago and maybe next year when we meet, we will be talking about something totally different. We have to evolve because our partners are evolving and so this training is very critical.
Q: Could you tell us something about your workforce in Sri Lanka?
A: We have around eight people in Sri Lanka. They are certified engineers in terms of Systems Engineers (SE) who can take on some of the most complicated articulations. We have a very capable team there. Every quarter they have something new happening. We take them through a lot of training. Some workshops are face-to-face and virtually there is something happening on a daily basis.
It’s up to the individual to choose what program he needs to attend. In Cisco, there is very big focus on learning for every individual and it’s on self-learning and taking the initiative yourself because everything is available.
Q: If you take the IT industry in Sri Lanka, what do you think are key challenges we’re currently facing?
A: One of the biggest challenges we see and not in our control is that capital expenditure getting tied up in Sri Lanka and it’s not very easy to get funding. Otherwise, from a challenges perspective they are all emerging and have aspirations to do something really big.
Some of the manufacturing houses, especially textiles are updated in world-class manufacturing facilities. The moment they get the budget, the first thing they would think of is technology and this is very different from most other countries. This is different from some of the Indian areas as well. The awareness level in Sri Lanka is much better than some of the other countries.
Q: What kind of investments have you made in Sri Lanka?
A: We have invested in creating value for our customers in terms of what skill sets we have, in terms of articulation in technology and the partnering we have with them.
Another area we have spoken to the Government about is virtual healthcare. Cisco has very strong solutions for this. This is basically where people living in remote areas where there is a shortage of doctors can be examined by doctors residing in the cities using technology to communicate interactively.
This is more than just telemedicine because unless it feels like real, patients will not rely on it. People, especially the elderly, may not react to this very well but confidence can be built over time. However, in areas which have a shortage of medical professionals, there is no other option either.
Another area we are looking into is virtual education where the same level of education in Colombo can be delivered to rural areas as well. The point of virtual education is to add value to what you learn. It’s always better to learn from a qualified teacher virtually than to have some teacher sitting in the classroom who is not sure of what he is teaching.
