Think Business Networks' focus on telecom, e-business

By P. Narasimhan & S. Varadharajan

CHENNAI, AUG. 12. ``Telecom industry across the globe has been expanding at a rapid pace. The need of the hour is to put in place an efficient network management,'' said Mr. Arun Ulag, President, Think Business Inc.

Think is headquartered in Silicon Valley - Fremont, California - with its software development and research arm in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. The company develops cutting edge solutions for U.S. based customers in telecommunications and the fast emerging e- business market. It has successfully applied its extensive domain knowledge improve the time to market for its customers while reducing the software development expenses.

Speaking to The Hindu, this young entrepreneur said ``Through our early relationship with Ceon Corp.(formerly American Telecorp), we had the opportunity to develop advanced solutions based on Nortel's DMS 100 range of switches. Solutions developed by us have been deployed by leading global carriers such as British Telecom and Telecom Australia. The solutions encompass service management, business management and operations support functional areas.''

Working with network equipment vendors such as Nortel Networks, Nuera Communications and Cosine Communications has allowed them to gain a significant knowledge base on traditional switches as well as the newly emerging next generation network (NGN) architectures.

The next logical step was to leverage on their knowhow by developing a set of reusable components that cover the different functional areas of network management. These components can be assembled to develop a tailored solution to meet customers' network management needs. As the components are pre-integrated and pre-tested, development time is shortened reducing development expenses considerably, Mr. Ulag said.

The worldwide deregulation of the telecom industry has prompted huge investments as well as many significant innovations. However, after a lot of investment in plant, property and equipment (PPE), service providers are now focusing on solutions that differentiate their services from their competition. Differentiation can be achieved by providing new features or by improving the overall customer service. It is in these areas that network management and service activation software developed by companies like Think plays a significant part.

Think has also been quick to take advantage of the fast emerging web services market. While the most prominent among such initiatives is Microsoft's .Net (pronounced dot net) platform, Think through its strategic partnership with Kinzan Inc., of San Diego, California, has been an early adopter of this technology. Think has helped Kinzan develop it's Core3 platform that provides Kinzan a patented Adaptive Web Services framework. The exposure to this new world over the last 18 months has helped it gain a profound insight into web services architecture and issues relating to its application for large e-business initiatives.

As for future plans, Mr. Ulag said, Think has been working actively towards SEI CMM certification. ``While defining and implementing processes along the lines of SEI CMM, we took the unique approach of building a digital nervous system (DNS) that automates all aspects of the processes adopted through an Internet based system. This DNS will interconnect our U.S. and Indian employees as well as our customers and partners. This will provide us with a strong competitive advantage in making distributed software development work and provide a clear and effective communication platform with our customers.'' he said

Over the next two quarters, Think plans to offer its telecom components to the U.S. and Indian service providers and take InfoShare, its proprietary knowledge management system to the U.S. market.

Started 5 years ago by a team of young entrepreneurs, Think had revenues of $3.2 million for the year ending December 2001.

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