Indian Businesses Spending IT Security Budget on Wrong Things: Ixia

Pradeep Chakraborty Oct 24, 2017

Ixia provides testing, visibility, security solutions, network testing tools and virtual network security solutions to strengthen applications across physical and virtual worlds. In a conversation, Bhaskar Agastya, Country Manager- Sales, Ixia India, talks about the benefits TaaS offers to enterprises. Excerpts:

BW CIO: Please elaborate on Ixia’s growth story in India.

Bhaskar Agastya: Ixia has been in India for close to a decade now. We entered the India market with the acquisition of Catapult Communications in 2009. Catapult had a legacy office for R&D in Kolkata, India which is still maintained. Following the growth in Asia markets and demand from strategic accounts we decided to setup our sales and support office in Bangalore.

Today, we are a team of strong 250+ professionals spanning across R&D, Support, Sales and Marketing professionals. We have had our success in test market with many clients setting up their strategic and critical development centers in India. Ixia, thus have grown leaps and bounds serving its clients.

Following the acquisition of BreakingPoint, Anue Systems and NetOptics. Ixia grew into a full-fledged security and visibility company catering to enterprises with more relevant offerings for data centers and service provider’s networks.

Today, we are proud to serve 15 out of top 15 network equipment manufacturers. Nearly all service providers are our clients, and we are seeing explosive growth in our enterprise space adding new logos at a rapid speed.

BW CIO: How has been your journey after and since Keysight's acquisition?

Bhaskar Agastya: Ixia was acquired by Keysight early this year. The journey after the Keysight acquisition has been very smooth. The integration of both companies is still in process, but by far this has been a very comforting transition. Regular employee meetings, announcement about upcoming changes are all notified well in advance.

There have been no surprises. Keysight repeatedly said that it acquired Ixia for the kind of company it is and therefore, it demands maintaining the core DNA of the organization with its people, processes and resources.

BW CIO: What will be the business focus for Ixia in India?

Bhaskar Agastya: Our focus has been to play on our strength, continue dominance in the test space and momentum in our enterprise and service provider strategy. We are doing some very exciting work in the government space, financial sector and enjoy great equation with regulatory authorities and service providers to help them develop world class infrastructure and provide amazing customer experience for their users.

Whether it’s Smart Cities, Digital India or other strategic projects, we see great demand for cyber security professionals in future, and are committed to creating cyber warriors of future. We have been training new talent and upgrading skills of experienced professionals via our Cyber Range offering.

The financial industry has been really receptive to our products, owing to the nature of business and level of trust they deal with.

BW CIO: What challenges are you facing in the India market?

Bhaskar Agastya: The Indian businesses are spending their IT security budget on wrong things. Though, there is an increase in spending on security there is very limited budget allocated for network visibility in specific. Many organizations lack established organizational knowledge of detection and response strategies in security because preventive approaches were the most common tactics for decades.

However, this provides enough opportunity for companies like Ixia to grow and provide businesses with best solutions and expertise.

BW CIO: Do you have specific plans for SMBs?

Bhaskar Agastya: For SMBs, we will continue to develop cost effective products that help our customers eliminate network complexity, offering ease of use, deployment and maintenance, and of course working with our channel partners to deliver solutions that meet their needs.

BW CIO: What are the various benefits that Ixia offers to enterprises through testing as a service offering?

Bhaskar Agastya: Ixia’s Testing as a Service (TaaS) delivers a fast, repeatable and an accurate approach. Ixia’s professional assessments help in supplementing customer’s technical staff with Ixia test experts, minimizing project risk by performing real-world testing, offer an easily expensed service (capex vs. opex), creating an easy, “lightweight” approach and delivering actionable insight into the infrastructure.

With TaaS, Ixia provides access to world-leading test equipment, proven & repeatable test plans and highly experienced test experts. Testing as a service improves RoI, while reducing the strain on internal resources and helps keep high-profile deployments on track, ensuring end-users’ ultimate quality of experience (QoE).

Along with standardized test plans that ensure efficiency and repeatability, TaaS assessments feature timely expert reporting and analysis that increases the reach and value of results.