India creates an innovative environment for emerging technologies due to unique consumer demands and a large market with rapid adoption rates. These factors will greatly impact network architectures and protocols, which support social networking, security, and e-commerce. "There is enormous opportunity for innovation in terms of scale, cost, and ease-of-use in the Indian context that could then emerge as solutions in other geographical regions. Those executives and professionals who understand these emerging trends could be the next major players in the networking industry," says Andy DiPaolo, Executive Director, Stanford Center for Professional Development, and Senior Associate Dean, School of Engineering, Stanford University.
It is against this backdrop that eight eminent professors from Stanford University flew down to India and provoked thoughts of Indian technical leaders on innovation and research developments at 'The Stanford Engineering Symposium - India', organized in association with siliconIndia on December 18 and 19, 2008 in Bangalore.
The focus of the symposium was on innovations and research developments in the Internet, data-center networking, wireless, social networking, and enabling technologies such as silicon design and manufacturing. The program also featured thought provoking panel discussions and feature keynotes by Indian business and technology leaders.
Aravind Sitaraman, Vice President and Managing Director, Cisco Development Organization, Cisco Systems India during his inaugural address said, "The time has come for the initiation of solution based technologies in place of product based technologies. We are looking at networking as a means of transforming technology based solutions."
Over 180 delegates attended the two-day symposium, which also saw participation of technical leaders from companies like Intel, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Texas Instruments, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Akamai, Adobe, and McAfee among others. "What I like about this conference is the depth of the content. I would like to see more of such conferences happening in India," said Viswanathan Ramaiyer of RSA Security.