Cisco India, a separate entity

Networking major Cisco, which has had a dream run in the Indian market, hived
off its Indian region, giving it a separate geography status in February 2006.
Though this is the company's internal decision, it shows the growing import-ance
that the company accords to the Indian market.

Speaking to CyberMedia News on the sidelines of its first ITS meet, Rangu
Salgame, President, India and SAARC, Cisco Systems said that the decision
demonstrates that the company has logged the potential of India. “This would
mean that India is a valuable and strategic market and would get more attention
and investment.”

The specific geography status was previously accorded to another high growth
market-China. With Cisco India clocking Rs 2,703 crore in 2005 and YoY growth
rate of over 40 percent, the move was bound to happen sooner or later. Salgame
said that the business verticalization strategy Cisco India had under-taken in
2004 would continue. Cisco has business units for key verticals-enterprise, ITS,
telecom, government and consumer.

He was confident that VoIP adoption in India would spark off with the
government approving the logical partit-ioning of single integrated
infrastructure for Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN) and Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP).

DQW News Bureau New Delhi, June 1