KOLKATA, India -- 30 August 2001 -- The Chatterjee Group (TCG), a US$1 billion global private investment company, announced the expansion of its investments into the IT sector in India with plans to set up a state-of-the-art Internet Data Centre in East India. TCG Group's new Data Centre will deliver high-end, fault-tolerant hosting services over a networking infrastructure solution from global internetworking leader, Cisco Systems.

Shome Sengupta, VP (E-Commerce), TCG Group said: "In today's digital economy, where communication depends so heavily on the Internet, we pride ourselves on being able to offer an extensive fault-tolerant Internet Data Center to provide hosting services and infrastructure for our customers. We realise that East India has tremendous potential to grow as an IT destination – and more and more IT majors are turning their sights to the market. Our choice of Cisco as our preferred technology provider was logical. Cisco is the only company in India with the end-to-end expertise to deliver a secure, redundant Data Centre solution to best meet our clients needs."

This highly secured infrastructure will enable TCG to provide services such as daily backup of the critical volumes of data, server load and content management, monitor bandwidth utilization and web site traffic statistics.

TCG will also be able to provide Integration and Deployment services to their customers. Moreover, the company will be able to conduct security audits for every site that the Data centre supports – including 24x7 network monitoring and support. TCG will also be in a position to offer system software support, consultancy for e-commerce deployment, domain registration & site certificate and SSL implementation.

Sudhir Narang, VP-Sales, Cisco India said: "The TCG Data Centre project is one of the challenging projects we have undertaken. TCG wanted a solution that would help them deliver comprehensive services to their customers – scalable, redundant, secured, dedicated bandwidth. I am glad that we were able to work with TCG to provide them the comprehensive networking solution that they were looking for."

The TCG Group, which has so far concentrated on providing offshore solutions to the US market, is poised to leverage its technical expertise into the domestic arena by providing Indian corporate houses with international standard Web applications and services.

Given the estimated demands from the TCG Data centre, there was a requirement for high-speed Internet Bandwidth with unlimited upgradability. Two high-end Cisco routers were set-up and installed in a redundant configuration to terminate the Internet bandwidth. The security infrastructure was implemented using PIX firewalls and on-line intrusion detection system. Further, a dedicated and secured storage cabinet was installed for servers. Two Cisco Catalyst 6500 switches formed the core of the network providing 10/100 Mbps connectivity at the desktop. The services also included a Cisco Server Load-balancing capability on each network port.

About The TCG Group

TCG Software is a leading IT, e-business, and telecom services company providing solutions to blue-chip and Global2000 companies across the globe, and promising technology start-ups. We offer a full range of services, across a wide spectrum of technologies, and in multiple industries. The Chatterjee Group (TCG) is a global investor with a long-term investment horizon and a commitment to providing sustained strategic assistance to its portfolio companies. With approximately US$1 billion in capital under management, The Chatterjee Group's primary investment focus is in technology, communications and information technology services.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco news and information are available at www.cisco.com.

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