NTT DATA more than ready for Cisco360

“NTT DATA understands the genesis of what Cisco have been trying to do with the new program and their focus has been to make sure that they are ready”, says Kiran Bhagwanani, Executive Vice President, Technology Solutions, Asia Pacific at NTT DATA.

A Cisco partner for more than three decades, NTT DATA believes the new Cisco360 partner program is a good stead up from the existing program. According to Kiran Bhagwanani, Executive Vice President, Technology Solutions, Asia Pacific at NTT DATA, the company is probably the most credentialed partner in terms of the certifications as they are gold and master certified partner in 34 countries across the world.

“In Asia Pacific alone, we have 17,000 plus black belt certifications. Our investments in skills and technology and development of talent with Cisco have been very strong over the years. What the new partner program does and we've kind of invested significantly ahead of time to make sure that by the time it is officially launched; we are not just ready but more than ready in all the countries we operate in,” said Bhagwanani.

Specifically, Bhagwanani believes the new partner program places a lot of emphasis on the way clients are consuming technology. He explained that it's more around driving adoption of technology right so that people buy multi-year large-scale enterprise agreements and so on. He also feels that the program is about selling a capability portfolio to a client, and the client then has to, with the help of partners like NTT DATA, consume each of those technologies as they look to implement them and deploy them.

“We have to drive the adoption of those over a multi-year life cycle. So, what the new program does is that at the core of it, it's no longer a one-time sale, and then you turn up for renewal after 12 months or 24 months. It's more of an ongoing engagement with the client where we deliver outcomes to the client. So, what we've done is firstly, we developed a services portfolio which we call NTT DATA SDI (software-defined infrastructure) services. It's a services portfolio which is completely outcome oriented,” explained Bhagwanani.

NTT DATA SDI

NTT DATA SDI services are a suite of IT services, often delivered in partnership with vendors like Cisco, helps organizations modernize their infrastructure using AI and automation. Key offerings include AI-powered reliability to reduce downtime, AI-driven license management to optimize software costs, and business-focused technology to align IT with strategic goals. The services cover the full lifecycle of modernization, from advisory and strategic sourcing to managed services.

According to Bhagwanani, an example of the capabilities of the SDI platform is that it will basically give the client inputs on their carbon footprint with the new technologies as they are being implemented and the trends on the carbon footprint. For example, it will give the clients function or business ROI metrics based on deployment of technology.

“So, we combine the SLA ULA and the VLA conversation with the client into an outcome success plan and today all our conversations with clients are driven around outcome success plans or OSCP as we call it. So, the client is signing up at the outset saying based on the technology which they have bought, these are the use cases which they want to implement over a two-year three-year lifecycle. And then every monthly service review with the client is on how we are tracking against that. So, the whole conversation is shifting from just a plain SLA and availability conversation to an overall outcome conversation with the client,” he added.

For Bhagwanani, NTT DATA understands the genesis of what Cisco has been trying to do with a new program, and their focus has been to make sure that they are ready. Bhagwanani also pointed out that NTT DATA has a high PVI and is more than ready to adapt to the new program.

“Our aim is that by the time it's officially launched, we want a PVI not just in any one or two technologies but all their four or five technologies in all our 34 countries. So that's something at the heart of the program that together Cisco's technologies with entity services can create more value if it is outcome based and not a sell and then renew relationship. We've got that and our investments have gone in that direction and we are ready,” said Bhagwanani.

Cisco Unified Edge

Following the unveiling of Cisco Unified Edge at the Cisco Partner Summit, Bhagwanani highlighted that it responds exactly to what the market needs, based on the trends that NTT DATA has been seeing with their clients, especially with the mass adoption of AI.

Cisco Unified Edge delivers a systems approach for distributed computing by bringing infrastructure to the data, enabling real-time inferencing and agentic workflows from edge to core. It is an AI-ready system that goes beyond servers offering fully flexible designs for maximum agility in tackling tomorrow’s unknowns.

As many companies have gone beyond the pilot stage or the proof-of-concept stage, Bhagwanani stated that many of them have now gone into mainstream adoption and what everyone has realized is while it's good to have AI and use cases, none of them can really come to life unless they have a strong resilient underlying digital infrastructure.

This is why he believes the infrastructure modernization or what NTT DATA refers to as a renaissance moment of IT infrastructure is cool again and given that the nature of work which NTT DATA is doing for clients today revolves around infrastructure modernization.

“That's a key play in order to make it AI ready or what we call AI ready infrastructure. We are seeing that on the large enterprise side. We are also seeing that on the government side. Looking at the geopolitical developments that have happened in the past couple of years, there's a bigger shift in governments towards sovereign AI because each government is looking at how do they make sure that the data of the country remains in the country,” he said.

As everyone wants to lead the AI race, Bhagwanani feels that because of that, the focus of many governments is toward modernization.

“We've seen that in Europe, whereby many governments have come out with RFPs and ask for creating an AI factory which is sovereign in nature. We are also seeing that in a few countries in APAC as well,” he added.

As such, there's a massive AI readiness wave that's happening in the market which starts with having AI ready infrastructure.

“When you look at AI ready infrastructure, it not only has a data center piece. The edge becomes very important as well. The collation and analytics of the data to the edge is where having a strong core or a strong AI ready data center footprint is important. And equally important is to have AI readiness at the edge and which is where Cisco Unified Edge I think comes in very strongly,” he explained.

For Bhagwanani, the value that NTT DATA is seeing is that it goes beyond just the compute piece to also include the network in the cyber resilience.

“A beautiful strong AI ready core along with an AI ready edge together with combined entities capabilities around the connectivity piece and the services around that become a complete story for the customer,” said Bhagwanani.

Building security capabilities

Given the increased interest in AI, Bhagwanani said that NTT DATA is finding there are two topics which are very heavily boardroom driven. First, AI is the hot topic of discussion for every board member as they want to know what the company is doing on the AI front. Second, is security, which has been there for the last 15 plus years as a boardroom conversation and remains so.

“I think that's one technology which has been the longest in boardroom conversations since we had the cloud wave and the internet wave. Now there's the AI wave, and the security conversation has continued to be there for the last two decades as a boardroom conversation. I don't think it'll ever go away,” he said.

Bhagwanani explained that when it comes to organizations, security is not just about cybersecurity. There's a lot more to its supply chain and so on and so forth.

“Risk and security are critically important, and NTT DATA has been a very active player in cybersecurity across the world. We are a leading player in cybersecurity and with Cisco, the uniqueness is that we have created networks for clients. What Cisco is trying to do now is embed security at the core network level. That again becomes a key differentiator and a lot of announcements that we have seen in the past maybe 12 months including Cisco Hypershield, AI Defense and such only makes the Cisco security more future-proof and ready as AI becomes mainstream,” added Bhagwanani.

As both Cisco and NTT DATA continues to build on their partnership to offer customers all these capabilities, Bhagwanani believes that NTT DATA’s future with Cisco will be a critical vital ingredient from an infrastructure perspective as companies go through the entire AI transformation.