By Chee Sing Chan
In a bold statement of intent, Samsung has announced its debut in the enterprise networking arena with the launch of its first IP-based convergence platforms aimed at large and smaller enterprises.
'We are aiming for 10% of the enterprise networking market by 2010,' said Young-soo Ryu, senior VP, business management office, Telecommunications Network Business at Samsung Electronics.
Ryu noted that competition is 'needed in a market dominated by a player with 80% share.' In a direct reference to networking behemoth, Cisco, he added that it's never ideal for customers to have a market that is dominated by a single vendor.
Samsung believes that enterprises are in need of convergence technologies that help bring together fixed-line and wireless communications. While development in the convergence of voice, video and data across IP networks is maturing, 'convergence of fixed and mobile communications is in its infancy,' said Ryu.
Feature-rich mobile devices with ever growing memory capacity are being used today by enterprises to access email, applications and corporate data, yet these are not truly integrated with fixed-line communications. Ryu believes companies are missing an integrated routing platform to help them move to a secure and converged communications environment.
Opportunity knocks
The newly-launched Ubigate iBG series of routers will deliver carrier-class routing, switching, security and voice-data integration. Unified threat management is offered with full firewall, virtual private network, intrusion prevention and detection as well as antivirus, anti-spam and content filtering.
The emphasis on security is critical, according to Ryu, as companies move from fixed to wireless communications, the potential entry point for threats grow significantly. Samsung has developed its own security capabilities to be tightly integrated with the routing platform. 'These products must be built with integrated functions in mind right from the start,' Ryu noted. 'With other vendors these capabilities are not as tightly bound as claimed, these features cannot simply be physically integrated in the same box or merely sharing the same housing.'
Ryu believes there are clear market opportunities as Juniper has yet to crack the enterprise market with its J-Series routers and Cisco appears to lack focus with its broadening product portfolio. 'Cisco will only be able to innovate in some areas while investing less on others.'
The Ubigate iBG series of routers includes four models, all of which are now selling in China and Korea. Ryu claimed enterprises have already adopted the products in both markets but could not disclose the customer names. Other markets in the region will see the product rolled out by end of 2006.