Computers Today, May 1-15, 1999 Chief Guest

May 1-15, 1999 CHIEF GUEST

"India is adopting the PC in leaps and bounds when it is just about to fade out"

Unlike other MNC country chiefs, the 48-year-old Bhaskar Pramanik, MD, Sun Microsystems India, worries less about sales growth. His main task is to usher the network computing era in the country. In a chat with Computers Today's Atanu Roy, the ex-Digital India VP gave vent to his frustrations and successes. Excerpts:

What is Sun's focus in India?

We have two objectives as far as India is concerned. One is to grow our market share. The other is to create next generation applications utilising the software resources of India to be able to fuel the network computing era. In fact I spend 50 percent of my time on planning about embedded devices, scouting for the kind of organisations and companies which have software personalities and can start designing products based on Java. We're talking about how we can sustain them, nurture them and help them to go to market.

Did you form a time-frame?

It's an ongoing process. But one of the benchmarks we have is to see a product designed and developed in India and push its use on a mass scale. My belief is that the first one would be some form of the set top box. It could be a cash register too. It started off with mindshare and interest and then from mindshare and interest, it is likely to get translated into a computing paradigm.

You'll soon find that there is nothing like a product or a service. It's a combination of the two-the service will have more and more value, the product will have less and less. So, what does Sun offer? Sun offers a product but it is actually network computing. And the product is one portion of it. The value proposition is the network computing part.

Will Java play the key part in the development process?

Bhaskar Pramanik Java has many different forms. The simplest, and what everybody understands, is as a programming language. So everybody is using Java as a programming language. The shift that we would soon see happening in India is towards better devices or appliances based on Java.

You can right now see it in a company called Encore, which is going to be a boutique designer using Java. They do a project for you and create and design a product for you. It could be anything from a set top box to a cable modem. They will tell you the story of a co-operative bank in the interior of Maharashtra. Here, people go and disburse money to farmers. At the end of the day they have to figure out how much they have actually disbursed and then feed it into the computer system. Now they carry a very simple Java device. When the money is being disbursed, the person just keys it in and when he comes back to the office, it gets zapped into the computer system. LG is also working on such devices. We are talking to a number of other companies and are looking at the application of Java towards information analysis. In applications we are basically talking about the front-end browser base and the embedded Java devices. For this, I came across a company in Bombay called Plexus technologies. They have done good work for the Times of India which is again based on Sun platforms but they have also used an application called Net Dynamics which enables you to interface with legacy applications using browser based capabilities. And it's all done with Java. In fact, Sun Developer Connection programme looks at how to get these applications, which are being created in India, to the world. We help them develop those applications, and after that, we co-market them.

But without a good communications infrastructure how would these systems work?

Bhaskar Pramanik Today if you look at the connectivity-it's improving by leaps and bounds. Previously we only had VSNL for Internet, now you have Satyam, MTNL, Bharti BT, and so on. If you look at the exchanges in the city of Bombay, most of the electronic exchanges are connected with 2 Mbps link. So I don't think bandwidth is going to continue to remain a limitation. The issue today is not a question of if, the question is how and when. I think the when is happening very fast. Of course, I'm not too sure whether there are enough organisations in this country who know how to use this bandwidth even if it were available tomorrow.

The world that you talked about-why is it still in small pockets?

It is coming. No technology has adopted that fast a pace. Normally any technology has about a 15-year life cycle. We're in the third year. It's still in the adoption curve, we haven't reached anywhere near the peak. The peak is in the seventh or eight year. Then you'll look back and say how you could have lived a life without...

The PC is 18 years old. The tragedy is that India is adopting the PC in leaps and bounds around the time when it is just about to fade out. This has always been the problem with India. We always assume that the future is based on the past. In the West you never look at success based on what happened in the past. You create a new paradigm for yourself and you look towards that paradigm. That is what has made Silicon Valley great. That is why India is always a follower, never the leader.

How are you wooing the developers to work towards this paradigm?

Fifty percent of our goals, objectives, time, energy and effort has been towards this. How do we create the application developers? How do we excite the white goods industry, the consumer goods industry, the telecommunications companies to look at network computing? How do we make sure that the customers start looking at the next generation of applications which are Web-enabled? The Java Solutions Centres which we have set up are examples of that endeavour. If I look at Sun India from a traditional market point of view-I have no problem. I'm growing much faster than the usual 35-40 percent industry growth. But I will not be able to grow at this rate for the next two or three years, unless something is done to stimulate the market. I can wait for the government to reduce the duties to zero, which I believe will still not make a difference. I can wait for the economy to grow at 8-10 percent, so that all of a sudden 50 percent of your growth is funded by pure economic growth. Or I can go out and try to create a new kind of market-which is what we are doing. I have a firm belief that this year will see a great peak in ERP, and that will continue till mid-2000. Two reasons: one, everybody's scared of Y2K; second, costs have come down. People are saying that even though times are bad, if I invest now, I'll be ready for the good times to come.

What after this ERP wave gets over?

Once that gets over, the next wave would be Internet enablement. Already the companies which are very strong in IT like Bajaj Auto and Hindustan Lever are taking to E-commerce. When you talk of E-commerce or Net-enablement you are talking about how to change the way you do business, new ways of accessing customers and then you start looking at what technology can do for you.

E-commerce is basically four areas for us. It starts off with what I call content-just publishing information. The next side is where you start using it for workflow. E-mail, workgroup computing, vouchers and things like that. The third phase is when you start looking at it in terms of transaction, but again it is focussed on disseminating information, capturing transaction and it is within the organisation. It's more in the intranet space. Then you go to the fourth area. That involves the supplier, vendor and that is the ultimate as far as E-commerce is concerned. Different companies in different stages of evolution in respect to this. The Times of India, for example, is more in one and to some extent in stage three. Rediffusion is in the fourth stage. Bajaj, Telco and Hindustan Lever want to get into the fourth stage.

You mean E-commerce is happening in India?

It is happening. According to the Government of India statistics (I don't know where they got it from) last year Rs 15 crore worth transaction took place over the Net. They expect it to grow to something like Rs 300 crore in the next two years, and go to Rs 1,00,000 crore by 2008.

What are the main pointers to this ongoing paradigm change?

I think it's all moving in the right direction. Networks are becoming bigger and cheaper. Costs are coming down from network traffic point of view. You are now going to have computers at every single location and move data back and forth. Then you have applications which allow Web-enablement to happen. The browser era is coming in very clearly. Everybody's got a Hotmail account, so you don't have to do E-mail from your PC, you can do it from any PC. Businesses are starting to invest in the next generation of applications, using their own intranets and the Internet. Take the case of Bajaj. Previously if they wanted to send an invoice to a dealer, they did it through dial in phone and network. But now they've converted that to an intranet. So all the things which are required are happening one by one. Sun is not the only one saying there should be a network computing age. That's what Cisco, Oracle and IBM are also talking about.

Even Microsoft talks about it.

They do in a different way. Microsoft's concept of a digital nervous system means that everything that is Microsoft works better. What the others are saying is that if it is open technology, it works that much better. We don't believe in plug and play. Plug and work is what Sun creates. Try looking at it from another point of view. We say that we are going to give all this technology away-free. Microsoft can't do it. If they gave it away free, there's nothing left for them. Where would their revenues come from?

How should a company manage the changes in computing technology?

It's just like managing a business. If you ask the CEO of a company if he's finished whatever he's needed to do in IT, a lot of them will say, yes. Then you ask him if he's completed his business strategy, if he's reached the ultimate in what he wants to do, he'll say, no, it's constantly evolving. Same thing with IT. IT is just a tool. It constantly evolves. What is important is not the hardware you've invested in because you can write it off in two years today, even in India. But it is your intellectual property, which is in terms of the knowledge which you've created or the applications which you've created, that is more important. Companies today are slowly understanding that IT is also like their business. Business transforms, IT infrastructure transforms. Eight years ago when Digital won that Hindustan Lever contract, Dr. Ashok Ganguly asked why should he spend Rs 8 crore in going ahead in computerising, when he bought Kissan for Rs 7 crore. Times have changed, they understand that now it is different. You can't put a value to it. In India IT is still unfortunately considered a separate industry. That I think is one of the biggest challenges: the mindset.

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