"The most perceivable current trend in Indian IT organizations seems to be a shift from a distributed IT setup to a more manageable and efficient centralized model." Jaideep Ghosh, Partner, KPMG Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd.

Indian enterprises are realizing a strong correlation between achieving sustainable growth and ensuring astute investments in updating their IT infrastructure. This trend has been due to the need for these enterprises to increase their competitiveness and bounce back strongly from the previous recession that marred growth cycles. Currently, growth in the Indian enterprise network equipment market is being defined by a gradual shift to cloud computing, increasing penetration of social media and consequential new designs for data centers. These new developments have thrown up positive growth projections for this market.

As per current studies, the Indian enterprise network market is expected to rise from Rs. 4391 crore (USD 861 million) in 2012 to Rs. 6120 crore (USD 1.2 billion) in 2016. Servers constitute the largest segment of this market and this sector might show an increase in revenues starting from Rs. 3848 crore (USD 754.5 million) in 2012, to Rs. 4933 crore (USD 967.2 million) in 2016. Despite a fall in revenues in FY 2011-12 for the telecom equipment market as a whole compared to FY 2010-11, the enterprise network equipment market beat the trend by registering an 8.89 percent increase. The most perceivable current trend in Indian IT organizations seems to be a shift from a distributed IT setup to a more manageable and efficient centralized model. This is leading to a consolidation of branch and remote IT resources into a reduced quantity of data centers that are much larger in size. This has been fueled by active investments in large captive data centers and the capacity growth witnessed within the data center service provider space. Indian organizations are mainly focusing on optimizing their infrastructure capacity. They are doing so through virtualization and new ways of data center design. This in turn is one of the factors fueling current growth in the enterprise network market.

Although increasing popularity ofcloud computing and other new additions has thrown up many growth opportunities for the market, it has also exposed certain challenges and shortcomings. Many challenges that have come up to threaten the growth of the network enterprise market in India are not limited to inefficient use of network bandwidth, inability to apply security policies, poor network visibility, lack of control, and inconsistent user experience.

In particular, the cost of cloud computing has dramatically reduced recently. Its strategic value continues to climb because the interdependency of computing and networking has become stronger. However, growth in this field might be getting hampered by current network strategies that have failed to recognize the changing role of networks. Thus, they can prove insufficient to enable a proper shift to cloud computing. The need of the hour is to explore an integrated approach to business and IT strategy. What this means is that enterprises need to recognize that an IT strategy might not be a separate consideration as compared to a business strategy. Treating them as separate factors for fueling enterprise growth might not make much sense in the current business scenario.

All in all, it is important for companies in this market to realize the bigger setting they are in and that setting is India, an emerging market. Enterprises are continually looking to grow, modernize, and become more competitive in the global market. For example, in FY 2011-12 the modem and router industry saw a negative growth. This might be attributed to enterprises demanding modernized and multi-tasking devices like a single device working as a modem, router, and switch. Therefore, it is important not to judge the future growth of this market by any present slowdowns as these could merely be responses for a shift in demand and players must be sensitive to this.