[Technology]

Cisco’s Lankan operations double in two years

by Gamini Warushamana

[email protected]

The global network solution company, Cisco said its Sri Lankan operations have doubled during the past two years. The business is growing rapidly in all sectors, Cisco Country Manager Natarajan Rajakumar told the Cisco Media Off-site at the Heritance hotel in Ahungalle recently.

Cisco’s sales office in Sri Lanka targets four business segments, large corporate sector, telecommunication service, banking and SME sectors. Today all four segments are growing, he said.

Among the countries in the region Sri Lanka is always ahead in technology. Telecommunication and banking industries are well ahead compared to others in the region.

Tele-density and mobile penetration in Sri Lanka is significantly high and Sri Lanka is the first country that introduced certain technologies. Therefore, the demand for network infrastructure is growing fast, Rajakumar said.

Small advances in technology leads to great improvement in the lifestyle of the people. Connectivity is the most important development and networks have connected people across the globe. Today technology is used by ordinary people such as farmers and rickshaw drivers and they achieve significant productivity improvement.

Cisco is the leader in network hardware such as routers, switches and services. He said that Cisco is behind all the connectivities that people use today. But it is not seen because Cisco is at the back end of the network.

There are no competitors because Cisco is the only company that produces all the network hardware and provides services in all business segments. The main advantage of Cisco is our single unified platform, he said.

Cisco provides a total network solution for our clients and with our global experience we can provide a total business plan. For example we helped the SLT to develop its advanced network plan. We have brought a great deal of experience to Sri Lanka. In this third phase of globalisation, connectivity is building among individuals.

Today the playing field is levelled and the world has become flat. Earlier, there were different networks such as data, telecommunication, mobile and entertainment. The convergence of networks has become crucial to give the best user experience. Cisco has built a platform by integrating all networks.

A single network is easy to operate and manage irrespective of different elements. Convergence of all form of elements makes a network of people. It enables the use of any device, any application and use at time anywhere, Rajakumar said.

Lankan graduates head global IT company

Sanjaya Karunasena

Samisa Abeysinghe

Sanjaya Karunasena and Samisa Abeysinghe have been appointed Director Services and Director Engineering of WSO2, the well-known open source software company.

Abeysinghe who graduated in 2000 has seven years’ experience in the industry. He joined WSO2 in September 2005. As Senior Architect he headed the WSO2 WSF/C and WSO2 WSF/PHP projects.

Abeysinghe has been a committer of the Apache Web Services Project since May 2004, and initiated the Apache Axis2/C project. He has over seven years’ industry experience mainly in research and development.

He holds a BSc in engineering from the University of Moratuwa and MSc from the University of Colombo School of Computing.

Abeysinghe said that university education was the main drive of his career. Apart from the academic knowledge the practical experience and exposure to the fast changing software industry provided by the university helped us to achieve these positions. The final year project was a real experience to practically implement the knowledge and experience we gathered, Abeysinghe said.

Karunasena, will take primary responsibility for all WSO2 customer facing work including development support, production support and development services. Karunasena, also a graduate of the University of Moratuwa is an Enterprise Architect with over 10 years of industry experience specialising in C/C++, Java and Microsoft Technologies.

He was a senior Software Architect of the WSO2, prior to his new position. Before joining the WSO2 he was a senior software architect in Virtusa. He has a BSc. honours degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, and completed reading for an MSc. in Computer Science.

The appointment of Karunasena and Abeysinghe as directors of a reputed global company shows the talents of Sri Lankan IT professionals.

Karunasena said that the new position is a great challenge because WSO2 has to compete globally with software giants such as Microsoft. Being a director of a global company is a great opportunity and the WSO2 gave us the experience, exposure and the confidence to hold this position.

This is not only recognition of our personal talents but also proves that the graduates who pass out from our local universities are second to none.

WSO2 has entered a new phase in the business. Earlier we were in the R&D stage. Now the whole platform is in place and the business has started to grow.

Today we have clients in healthcare, trade and financial industries and our service oriented solutions can apply to any industry. Our solution is not restricted to any technology platform and the users have a wide choice and it can be used in any platform, Karunasena said.

WSO2, an open source SOA Company founded by pioneers in Web services is a member of the Apache Software Foundation Web services community. The company is delivering a new, entirely open source middleware stack that is optimised for Web services and SOA. The company is backed by Intel Capital and maintains operations in the United States, United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. GW

Microsoft Lanka Help Desk

The Microsoft Sri Lanka Help Desk will provide Customers and Partners with bilingual assistance for inquiries regarding Microsoft products, Technologies, genuine Microsoft software and their vast suite of Program Offerings. The Help Desk will also function as the central point of contact for licensed customers to escalate technical issues with regard to products purchased within the guarantee period of one year.

The Help Desk is staffed by well trained IT Professionals who can provide assistance on Microsoft Products and Technologies in any local language. Their knowledge is updated regularly through refresher training programs conducted by the Microsoft Technical Team.

Country Manager of Microsoft Sri Lanka Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne said, “The Microsoft Help Desk in Sri Lanka provides us with a platform to propel our customer service to the next level. The objective in creating this call centre was to extend our service offering by providing support to all our customers and partners”.

Mobitel unveils M-Zone

Mobitel launched the latest addition to its broadband product portfolio, ‘M-Zone’ - the WiFi zone that travels. Unlike traditional WiFi hotspots, M-Zones have the power to travel with WiFi users in a moving coach, making it a vital connectivity service, especially for blue suit nomads and globetrotters.

What differentiates M-Zone from its contemporaries is that the solution is backhauled by truly mobile High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology, which can deliver downlink and uplink speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps and 1.98 Mbps respectively.