When vendors trail through the jungle

They are not employees, they are not the customers, but with changes in the marketplace (particularly in the fast-growing business), SMB channel seems to have become the darling of almost every leading vendor. It is nothing new. Real buzz of this SMB channel started long back in late 1980's and early 1990's whereby a hardware manufacturer used to increase its distribution capabilities by depending on business partners and their respective sales organizations. Many of the IT companies started offering funds to pursue a multi-channel approach to effectively reach the SMB target market. In the current scenario, most of the vendors rely heavily on channel partners to help expand business and sales.

Also, with the IT sector clouding under a second economic slowdown in less than 3 years, most of these companies are planning to redefine their strategy for this segment. Vendors like Symantec believe that SMB segment in India is yet to mature enough to understand the real need of customers and vendors. The company too feels that 2012 is going to be the real test for the segment. "In 2011, there were significantly more natural disasters than previous years. Yet, Indian SMBs are ill prepared to handle disasters. The Symantec 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey revealed that 68 of the respondents did not have a plan in place.

Fifty percent said that it never occurred to them to put together a plan and 17% stated that disaster preparedness is not a priority for them. Organizations who suffered downtime, required corporate spin doctors and dedicated technical efforts to repair their damaged reputations. In 2012, the likelihood that organizations will need to implement their DR plans is greater than ever before and organizations will understand the need to recover faster by automating the recovery process," says Anand Naik, director, technology sales (India and Saarc), Symantec. Like Symantec, Dell too, see a major transformation in the segment, but in different forms. Companies see a major change with globalization effect and even SMB organizations desiring to grow national from being regional players and also growing as a global market player.

INDIA GAINS MOMENTUM OVER OTHER SAARC COUNTRIES

A recent study conducted by Zinnov Consultancy titled ‘Indian SMB ICT Adoption Insights' estimates that the SMBs will contribute to over one third of the total domestic IT spend by 2015. The study also states that the country which is home to around 50 mn SMBs currently, of which 10 mn are technology-ready, shows that there is a huge potential in adoption of technology for growth by the Indian SMB market in the years ahead. SMBs are the growth engines in any emerging economy. As per IDC, the SMB market is projected to grow over 20pts annually till 2014. This presents a picture to all the leading vendors to bet on their business operations in the Indian SMB market. Perhaps, it is all about serious volume. The SMB market has more than 4 mn registered businesses in India. These businesses are diverse in nature and spread across different verticals, across the length and breadth of the country.

Commenting on the Indian SMB market, Suresh Balasubramanian, country manager, South Asia, Intel India explained, "The business in India is higher than the rest of the countries in Saarc put together. The diversity in the country in terms of awareness levels, adoption levels of technology, content demands, languages, etc, make the Indian SMB market very unique from the rest of the Saarc region. The SMB segment is witnessing steady growth, but at the same time, it also faces challenges such as lack of technology know-hows, lack of capital, etc, that needs to be overcome in order to sustain the growth. But at the same time, there is growing understanding among the SMB players in the necessity and advantages of technology adoption for their growth.

It is not only Intel, but several vendors hold onto this similar conviction about the Indian SMB market. "India has the second largest population of small and medium businesses (SMBs) among BRIC countries and the US. SMBs contributes more than 60% to the Indian GDP while their spending on IT is only 30% of India's total IT spending. Many of the SMB owners in tier-2 and 3 cities or rural areas are not aware of existing IT solutions that may solve their problems. Small and medium-sized businesses in India today have unprecedented access to new markets, suppliers, and customers; it's truly a global marketplace today. They are constantly looking at shaping industry conditions and understanding total/holistic solutions that their customers seek in order to help them pursue a quantum leap in value to dominate the market," said Vinay Shetty, country head, component business, ASUS (India).

Rajiv Rao, director, SMB, Lenovo India added that SMBs are the critical focal points for the Indian economy and largest employment generating segment after agriculture. As per a recent study conducted by a management consulting firm Zinnov, SMBs contributes more than 60% to the Indian GDP and the SMB contribution to GDP has been growing at a steady rate of CAGR 12% over the last 7 years. "The difference in the Indian SMB market is that each region/state is dominated by a specific industry. For instance west especially Mumbai region is considered to be a financial hub and Bengaluru an IT hub, which means all these sectors need vertical-solutions that cater to each process on their value chain," Rao affirmed.

CHANNEL STRATEGIES

With every going year, the importance of SMB channel is only growing. It has become very important for any company to understand the language of channel partners than forcing partners to understand the company's tongue. "Our ability to speak to them in a language they understand, with products they need and can afford without compromising on key demands of security and data protection, demonstrates the value we bring to the table as a true partner. As they focus on running their business, what we can do best is to help them optimize their people and money resources to get the best returns on their IT investment," says Suresh Reddy, GM, global commercial channel, Dell India. And, like understanding the language, these companies too have special training programs for partners to enrich the knowledge of products. "We have introduced several channel enablement and engagement programs like ‘Advantage Now' that have helped us to create awareness about our offerings in tier-2 and 3 markets. We have also introduced various other incentive programs to motivate partners. All our incentive programs are well received; the recently concluded ‘Race to Rio' program was one of the most successful - over 2,500 partners from over 160 cities spread across the Saarc countries participated in this promotional program," says Arun Dharmalingam of Cisco.

Similarly Dell too has its own method of strengthening partners' needs. Reddy says, "We, on our part, are constantly engaging with our partners via training programs. We are aligning instructor-led classroom training programs and extending online courses to cover more relevant areas. More instructor-led trainings are planned for other partners for their pre-sale representatives. Incentive plans are being aligned accordingly with much higher incentives for both the partner organization and partner sales representatives for selling enterprise solutions." Company too claims that early last year, it announced Global Commercial Channel (GCC) structure, with its single point of contact for partners, to lead to higher productivity and improved time cycles and enable more customized programs to support the partners in the market. Acer too seems to following similar path. S Rajendran CMO, Acer says, "We believe in supporting our partners through various channel schemes. Ever since we have launched Acer Select Partner Program, revenues of both company and partners have grown comprehensively."

Speaking on the significance of enhancing SMB channel strategies, Reddy of Dell says, "Company recognizes channel as an important growth engine to gain greater coverage and customer access in the Indian market. We work to attain a three-fold objective-stronger commitment, faster response time and overall growth for the partners." A large vendor like Cisco claims to spend a whopping amount of around $100 mn in recent past on the SMB channel segment. Arun Dharmalingam, VP, partner-led velocity and distribution sales, Cisco says, "Recently, we conducted an in-depth study to understand SMB business needs and develop products based on customer feedback. Since then, we have made an investment of approximately $100 mn to develop products for small businesses. Today, we offer a wide variety of products focused on satisfying essential business needs in security, connectivity and productivity. These products are designed to meet the SMB needs and also offer flexibility to scale up when required for SMBs." Small business is a key focus area for the IT vendors and to better address their needs, DQChannels conducted an in-depth study taking the channel strategies of leading vendors in to consideration.

PRIYADARSHI MOHAPATRA, HEAD, EMERGING BUSINESS, SAP INDIA

SAP's strategy to drive growth is by synchronizing investments in 5 market categories including cloud, mobile, applications, analytics, technology and database. Our partner ecosystem plays a vital part of developing, reselling, and implementing along our 5 markets. With more than 11,500 global partners today, SAP provides both local and worldwide support for all SAP markets and solutions to help fuel innovation and provide choice for customers of all sizes. By 2015, at least 40% of SAP's global software revenue will come from partners.

It recently launched the HANA Edge solution in the in-memory space to enable instant access of real time information to emerging businesses by simplifying the IT landscape. One of the major differentiators of SAP's channel strategy is that we are perhaps the only player catering to 24 different industries in India, delivering pre-configured best practices with deep industry-specific capabilities to ensure a solid and cost-effective IT foundation for growth. "SAP India has further templatized solutions into 22 micro verticals such as automobile, sugar, media, rice mills, cement, gems and jewelery, tea, metals, etc, as we believe that one size does not fit all. Currently, SAP has a total of 200 partners (VARs, resellers, etc) in India out of which 24 active partners in India who are referred to as the Business All in One partners. These partners have a significant play in the growth of our emerging business portfolio in India. Apart from the Business All in One Partners, we also have around 50 plus Extended Business Members (EBM) partners who focus on providing our business coverage across India and niche solutions on SAP specific to Industries. We intend to increase the representation in our partner community by at least two fold by business year 2013," Mohapatra says.

He added, "Channel partners are representatives of SAP to our customers and our Partner Edge program is a comprehensive business framework that offers partners marketing and inside sales support, on-boarding and enablement programs, training initiatives to make them self-sufficient. In the current year we would strengthen our partner edge program and emphasize on educating them on our latest technologies. Partners are a part of SAP and rewarded adequately for contributing to the growth of the business. SAP care for partner profitability in the long run and has organized dedicated partner managers and partner service advisers for building strong and profitable relationships with each partner and ensuring that SAP is easy to do business with."

GANESAN ARUMUGAM, director, partners, VMware

Currently, there are about 80 active partners with the company who caters to both the SMB market for further business growth. The vendor also conducts training and enablement program every quarter of a financial year to further educate its partners in enhancing its go-to-market strategies even with the high-end products in the price market like India. And, depending upon the sales target they meet, the partners are awarded with remarkable incentives. Recently, VMware announced its Partner Exchange On Tour 2012 for the India and Saarc region. The tour aims to enable partners in the region to learn how to grow and transform their businesses for the cloud era with VMware.

This Partner Exchange On Tour 2012 has attracted more than 1,500 senior executives, sales professionals and technical experts from VMware's community of solution providers, technology alliances, systems integrators, distributors and OEMs in the region. The tour kicked off in Mumbai on April 5, 2012 and will also cover Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Colombo. Partners will have an opportunity to engage and hear first-hand from VMware executives about new partner programs, best practices and training roadmaps to help them successfully deliver VMware virtualization and cloud solutions in the region.

VMware channel partners in India report that their top three business priorities for 2012 are attracting new customers (76%), developing innovative offerings for current customers (67 percent) and business transformation and process improvements (46%). Fifty-seven percent of partners surveyed expect their customers' IT budgets to increase in 2012. Partners also indicate that IT/ITeS (75%), banking and financial services (62%) and manufacturing (53%) are the three industry verticals most important to their businesses.

Partners surveyed believe the most important role of IT over the next 18 months will be to drive increased efficiency and productivity (32%). The majority of respondents identified cloud computing (84%) as one of the technology trends which will have the greatest impact on the business, followed by mobility (66%) and changing risk and security landscape (40%). More than half (51%) of the respondents said desktop virtualization is the top technology investment priority for customers, followed by cloud computing (48%) and virtualization for data center consolidation (48%).

S RAJENDRAN, CMO, Acer

Technology giant Acer India, has built an active partner base and witnessed a steady quarter on quarter growth focusing on new accounts. Currently, there are about 150 active partner base in India. Acer strongly believes in supporting its partners through various channel schemes and has established a strong ethical business practices for its commercial channel partners to run a profitable business. Ever since the launch of the Acer Select Partner Program the revenues have grown consistently proving the loyal partner program to be extremely successful.

Acer, through its various schemes, infused its commercial channel network with high levels of energy and motivation, critical for driving sales and powering the success of the brand. Within a year after the rollout of the program Acer built an active partner base and witnessed a steady quarter on quarter growth focusing on new accounts. Acer successfully grew its commercial business by 100% through its Select Partner Program enabling the company to increase its loyal partner base in size each day. The program has further strengthened the commercial partner network and has helped partners to fully address the requirements of the commercial segment. Acer being one of the largest players in the country witnessed enormous success across the commercial segments like education, government projects and BFSI, post introducing this program.

In the last 2 years, Acer has focused on re-structuring its distribution strategy to bridge the gap between regional distributors and channel partners in B, C and D-class towns. And over the last 6 months, Acer has aggressively ramped up operations across the country and has now increased its footprint from 203 towns to 704 B, C and D-class towns. Acer will also continue to focus on increasing its penetration through Acer Galleries, a novel modern store targeting B, C and D-class towns. Each of these stores will act as a catalyst for Acer; to penetrate deeper into the unexplored markets.

Acer embarked on partner meets as a regular feature to impart appropriate knowledge and created a suitable platform to communicate the developments at Acer. Acer also introduced the concept of one-on-one training programs at partner's place, enabling Acer to build a concrete rapport with the sales team and provide training specific to their requirements. This relationship helped Acer to expand its business across verticals like SMB and corporate from our traditional strength area like government and BFSI.

ANAND NAIK, director, technology sales, India and Saarc, Symantec

The SMB sector as a whole is extremely relevant for Symantec. Symantec's solutions across security, data protection is designed and developed to address specific SMB challenges. It follows an information centric approach for our customer rather than an infrastructure one-this means that all its offerings are designed to protect, store and manage a company's key asset-the information. According to the vendor, its strategy is to secure SMEs against all kinds of threats and data losses by providing comprehensive solutions to take care of their information protection needs.
Some of Symantec's latest offerings for the SMB segment in India includes Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 Small Business Edition-It meets small business needs with the fastest, most effective anti-malware capabilities in the industry.

And, Symantec Backup Exec 2012-Powered by Symantec V-Ray technology, Backup Exec 2012 enables visibility across both virtual and physical environments for fast and efficient backup and recovery while eliminating the need for specialized point products. Backup Exec 2012 also provides true single file recovery, deduplication and backup management for VMware, Hyper-V or physical servers in a single product enabling significant storage and management savings. In addition, Symantec Endpoint Protection.cloud offers a comprehensive hosted security solution designed to meet the needs of small to medium sized businesses. 

Symantec is a partner led company and its partners drive the business across our portfolios of both security and storage solutions. The vendor's Enhanced Symantec Partner Program focuses on equipping partners with skills and knowledge to leverage the key growth areas in the industry. In evolving consulting services to a partner-led approach, the Master Specialization categories will be available to eligible partners who specialize and maintain an active consulting practice, and complete business and technical assessments in each solution area. Symantec's Enhanced Partner Program is designed to enable partners to be at the forefront of the market and provide them with opportunities for predictable, profitable business growth. The threat landscape is changing so dynamically; that it becomes essential for Symantec's go to market channel, its partners to be experts in the latest technologies to combat these sophisticated threats.
Symantec has focus on driving business with a focus on core technologies and services by way of subscription based or cloud- based services to broaden our portfolio. This will enable the vendor to address challenges in mobility, big data or high- availability, data management and security challenges.

RAJIV RAO, director SMB, Lenovo India

Lenovo is on a continuous surge to innovate and introduce products in tandem with changing market trends. Lenovo's focus on channels is driven by the need to develop a core channel partner ecosystem in India, replicating the company's highly successful model in China. "We consider our channel partners as natural partners in profit and constantly work towards fortifying our channel relationships to nurture a long-lasting, mutually beneficial bond. Lenovo's channel structure has its channel partners and distributors which include SMB RDs, VARs and retail. We have outlined a clear strategy to focus on our retail business, enabling deeper penetration in to the channel as well as tier-3 to 5 markets. Also, we are laying special emphasis to strengthen our channel partnership and are planning to add more to the existing partners in a bid to connect with the SMBs. With our winning suite of products and strong channel partnerships, we expect to achieve sustainable, incremental growth in 2012," says Rao.
The vendor is going quite aggressively on its channel strategy. Currently, for the SMB segment, it has a partner strength of 40, who are regional distributors and in the last few months Lenovo has added more than 100 VARs. Retail space is another growth driver, and Lenovo has so far leveraged on its consumer retail space. Out of the total 1000+ consumer stores, Lenovo has its SMB corners in 250 stores which targets SMB customers.

Its SMB product offerings include the all-in-ones (AIOs) for SMBs. The latest product offerings for the consumer segment are IdeaPad K1 tablet, IdeaPad A1 tablet, IdeaPad U300s and IdeaPad U400 Ultrabooks. For Lenovo, SME is an exciting and one of the most promising segments today. Rao says, "We believe in understanding the needs of the segment and developing tailor-made product range with competitive pricing which will enable us to be on an edge. But this would not be possible without support from our channel partners. We are laying special emphasis to strengthen our channel partnership and are planning to spread across the key geographies and add more weight to the existing partners in a bid to reach out to the target segment. We will continue our strategic investment in key growth markets, especially in tier-3 to 5 cities. With our winning suite of products and strong channel partnerships, we expect to achieve sustainable, incremental growth in 2012."

SURESH BALASUBRAMANIAN, country manager, South Asia, Intel

Intel India works with a huge gamut of channel partners, local OEM's, ODM's, SI's, VARs, MNC's, etc, to drive IT adoption among all sections of customers (consumers, SMB's, education, enterprise, government, etc). It has a well established partner program and engine in place through which we engage with our partner ecosystem. Currently, it has over 6,000 active channel partners, though it has systematically reached out to close to 10,000 partners across the country. It plans to expand their footprints by reaching out to 700 cities in the tier-3 and tier-4 markets in the country in the next couple of years.

According to the vendor, channel partners play a vital role in the go-to-market strategy as they contribute to approximately 50% to their revenues. According to the Indian ‘SMB ICT Adoption Insights' study conducted by Zinnov Consultancy, the number of SMBs using PC s is expected to double itself by the year 2015. This is mainly due to factors such as increasing technological innovations, growing importance of SMB's role in contributing to the economy and increasing adoption of technologies by the segment, which are providing a huge potential of growth for the channel partners in this segment. The SMB segment is witnessing steady growth, but at the same time it also faces challenges such as lack of technology know-how, lack of capital etc. that needs to be overcome in order to sustain the growth. But at the same time, there is growing understanding among the SMB's players in the necessity and advantages of technology adoption for their growth.

The future of the SMB channel is closely linked with the SMB industry. There's a clear mindset shift happening in the SMB's; they are now starting to view IT as a strategic investment decision to enable them to compete effectively in the local and the global space. SMB's have been at a disadvantage of not receiving right and timely information on good biz practices, governance, IT usage/deployment and financial matters. The SMB industry needs a lot more support from the government to make them capable of competing in the domestic market as well as on the global stage. As mentioned earlier, there's a huge headroom for growth of IT penetration in the SMB segment, and as the SMB biz grows the SMB channel will grow and prosper as well. The key focus area for the vendor in the year 2012 is to increase our footprint in the tier-2 and tier-3 markets across the country. Another focus area for us during the current year will be towards increasing penetration and adoption levels of all-in-ones through channel partners in the country.

VINAY SHETTY, country head, component business, ASUS (India)

ASUS India has entered desktop segment in India in March and although they are currently focusing on consumer segment some products are a good fit for SMB space like the CM6830 desktop. Also the TUF series Sabertooth motherboards with 5 years warranty, superior reliability and military grade components are well suited for small workstation and server applications. The vendor has many engagement programs to directly interact with end-tier of channel partners for Tier-2 and 3 cities. ASUS itself does not stock and sell with channel partners but sells on a back-to-back basis. We also understand that the small businesses, especially less than 20 employee size companies use retail channel for their PC purchases. For their lower mid-market customers, they encourage their channel partners to sell on a solution based approach.

In the last 2-3 years, the channel market has faced competition from LFRs and more recently online retail and has thus become even more competitive than before. It is very important for partners today to add value to their services and offer the customers the best products range and solutions to their customers. ASUS has always relied on the strength and support of its channel partners and ensured their profitability and growth in business. ASUS is also one of the few brands that has a complete product portfolio ranging from PC components to media players, LCDs and now even desktop systems. In the current scenario, having a diversified product portfolio will help partners to grow business and profitability and ASUS is a well established and trusted brand in the IT channel in India. It would like to co-work with more partners to help grow business. It has 1st tier program of incentives in terms of slab structures and 2nd tier programs of smaller slabs and encouraging them to buy regularly in place. Some other offers in place are on bundle offers of pen drive, backpacks and channel enablement program where the vendor gives cash rewards to top performing partners.

Currently, it has about 600 1st tier partners and 12,000 2nd tier partners. "We look for a modest 15-20% growth every year in expanding our channel reach. At the same time, our key focus is on growing profitability and business of our existing partners. We will continue to grow our market share and aim to occupy a 40% market share for motherboards and 30% market share for graphics cards in 2012. Apart from our core business of motherboards and graphics cards, we will also look to strengthen our presence in other segments like ODD, LCD monitors, media players and wireless routers.

PRADEEP KHEMANI, country manager, ESSN channel and SMB sales, HP India

HP overall has approximately 22,000 certified partners in APJ and thay sell products/solutions across business units. These partners are certified based on the ability to sell products and solutions. HP's key markets are (priority wise): China, Japan, Australia, India, and Korea.

HP has close to 200 plus partners in India. Channel partners are integral to HP's go-to-market in India and play a very key role in the business growth of the company. Partner's ability to deliver products and services to customers is a key parameter for HP's success in the marketplace. Hence, partner enablement and education is a key aspect to this. Today HP's channel partners deliver a complete solution stack rather than a product approach alone.

Recently, HP launched HP ProLiant Gen8 servers, the industry's first self-sufficient servers which deliver a breakthrough in business acceleration for partners to develop and sell new revenue streams to now sell and deliver services across the solution life cycle. HP backs its superior technology solutions with the PartnerONE program - last year HP (the enterprise business) invested over $1 bn in programs to help partners win business working with HP. PartnerONE is a program through which HP manages various partner resources and offers and initiatives for its reseller and distributor partners. HP PartnerONE includes three levels of membership based on partners' levels of participation and engagement. The levels include - Business Partner, which provides basic partner benefits including promotions, HP financing, support and training. Preferred Partner - Includes the HP Business Partner benefits as well as access to sales rebates and other financial benefits, marketing support, special growth incentives and more. Elite Partner - Includes the HP Preferred Partner benefits as well as dedicated channel sales support, enhanced HP end-user-focused marketing support, priority leads, partner locator support, strong rebates and up-front benefits. Elite partners can earn additional benefits in high-demand, high-growth business solutions and technology areas such as PC and workstation blades, thin clients, virtualization, Microsoft Unified Communications, office printing and public sector - allowing them to showcase their HP expertise to win new business.

ARUN DHARMALINGAM, CMO, VP, distribution channels, Cisco India and Saarc

Cisco India has made an investment of approximately $ 100 mn to develop products for small businesses. "Today, we offer a wide variety of products focused on satisfying essential business needs in security, connectivity and productivity. These products are designed to meet the SMB needs and also offer flexibility to scale up when required for SMBs," says Dharmalingam.

The most recent addition to the SMB portfolio from Cisco is the Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000 (UCM BE 3000), designed and developed for India by the company's engineering team based here. According to the vendor, each and every market has its own unique flavor and this is true of the SMB markets spread across the Saarc region. In India, the vastness of the country, different languages, cultural differences add its own color into each regional engagement. "However, we feel that adoption of technology among SMBs across country is directly dependent on bringing down the total cost of ownership and increasing ease of use. Our growth strategy primarily involves customer centric innovation and being 100% partner-led. We are always listening to our customers and studying market transitions. This helps us bring out products and solutions that are relevant to our customer and address their business need," Dharmalingam says. For Cisco, partners play a decisive role in their go-to-market strategy and the way they engage with their partners defines their success. It has more than 1,800 channel partners in India currently. "With the right mix of solutions and strategy, we are focused on opportunities to grow the business for our partners and will make the investments needed to accelerate growth and effectively address this market. The SMB market is one of the fastest growing segments for Cisco in India. This segment represents a huge opportunity for us and comprises a significant portion of Cisco's customer base," Dharmalingam says. While a significant number of SMEs are still at a basic technology adoption level, others are moving to more mature levels. There has been a clear change in the mindset of small businesses who now view IT investment as a strategic decision enabling them to fulfill their business needs. More so, when they are looking at adopting technologies that will help them scale their business and give them a competitive edge, especially in a global arena.

SURESH REDDY, director and GM, global commercial channel, Dell India

The SMB segment is a major growth driver for Dell in India and this can be credited to the country's entrepreneurial spirit. In the past several years, SMB growth in India has been outstanding. With a maturing economy and a burgeoning middle class, the story will only get more interesting. Its ability to speak to them in a language they understand, with products they need and can afford without compromising on key demands of security and data protection, demonstrates the value we bring to the table as a true partner. As they focus on running their business, what we can do best is to help them optimize their people and money resources to get the best returns on their IT investment.

"The last 2 years has been significant for Dell from a go-to-market perspective. From previously being just a hardware vendor, we are today a solutions provider. This transformation has enabled us to be a one stop shop for all IT needs of SMBs. Dell recognizes channel as an important growth engine to gain greater coverage and customer access in the Indian market. It works to attain a three-fold objective-stronger commitment, faster response time, and overall growth for the partners," says Reddy. The vendor is enhancing and strengthening its product supply, manufacturing and go-to-market networks so that Dell can deliver the highest-quality products and services at the right place, at the right time and at the right price. While the vendor's competitors can match pieces of our supply chain, only the new Dell will feature the flexibility to simultaneously deliver on price, innovation and customization.

Longing to be the vendor of choice for their channel partners, Dell is determined to support the channel in whatever way possible. Very early last year Dell announced a new GCC (Global Commercial Channel) structure, with its single point of contact for partners, to lead to higher productivity and improved time cycles and enable more customized programs to support the partners in the market. Dell has also doubled its channel sales force. Dell India is constantly engaging with its partners via training programs. It is aligning instructor led classroom training programs and extending online courses to cover more relevant areas. More instructor-led trainings are planned for other partners for their pre-sale reps. Incentive plans are being aligned accordingly with much higher incentives for both the partner organization and partner sales representatives for selling enterprise solutions. Currently, it has over 2,300 channel partners in the Indian market. It is continuously looking for opportunities to increase its reach and is keen on working with partners who are keen to offer customized technology solutions.

KHWAJA SAIFUDDIN, senior director, sales, Middle East, Africa and South Asia, WD

Channel contributes the majority share to its sales in India. Their other big contribution is the favorable word of mouth they help generate for brand WD. WD is going to consistently deliver great products that let channel partners gain more traction in the consumer and enterprise markets as well as earn better margins. As WD gears up to introduce newer technology, especially storage products for small businesses, channel partners can leverage it as an opportunity to sell higher volumes in that segment. While many partners might not have acquired the skill sets to vend enterprise drives for commercial or critical applications, our new intelligent data storage and collaboration products will provide an easy opportunity to make inroads into the SMB segment.

WD's go-to-market strategy is based on a strong distributor network and partnerships supported by programs aimed at imparting quality training and benefits. Channel partners are faced with the challenge of evolving with customer demands and go-to-market strategies of leading vendors. But there is also an opportunity for them to step up and cater to the huge demand with a sensitively-priced basket of storage devices for all needs. Its distribution network allows the vendor to squarely address the demand from SMBs. However, WD has also appointed specialist distributors who have an expertise in pushing products in the enterprise segment that we are leveraging to target small businesses.

WD has more than 4,500 channel partners in India. It has tie-ups with 5 national distributors who help them address the demand from metros and smaller cities through their country-wide partner bases. Over the last 1 year, WD consolidated its channel structure in India and appointed several new partners. While Global Infonet was brought on board as a national distributor for branded products (external drives and media players), its partnership with Ingram Micro was extended to cover WD's entire product range sold in India. To support its range of personal cloud and wireless streaming devices, WD will ensure presence in all leading LFRs within the next year.

It is also going aggressive with training programs in tier-2 and 3 cities that will help WD bring more partners into the fold. On a q-o-q basis, it organizes about 40 such engagement activities in different cities.

GURUDUTT M, Director, Home and Business Networks, APC by Schneider Electric

APC by Schneider Electric is planning to increase its partner base to 50 from existing 18 partners. It is also planning to train and increase partners in data centers and professional services. The major objective is to leverage the channel reach in order to tap the 3-phase IT mid-market space.
The company has a program-India for India-which looks specifically into the challenges and situations of Indian customers As much there are unique challenges here, the market is aware, big and growing. The company is focused on R&D, as India is a large manufacturing hub for them. There are specifically-designed solutions that are cost-effective for the market.

The idea is to have at least two HPP partners present in each state. In order to tap the potential of 3-phase IT mid-market in each state, APC by Schneider Electric is in the process of identifying the type of industries present there. Then the vendor would identify and align partners, who are currently servicing these industries. Apart from sales and annual targets, training would help them build funnel and do a joint performance management in order to ensure a high conversion rate.

Meanwhile, APC by Schneider is also planning to add 20 partners in its Elite Data Center partner program, and currently it has only 28 DC certified partners across India. The company has also launched professional services suite assisting the customers in preventing DCPI downtime, reduce time to recover, save energy, enhance operational excellence and provide recommendations for handling future growth. iGATE, Religare and LSI Logic are some of the few customers. A new activity training of 10,000 channel partners has also started, which is aligned with the transaction business of APC by Schneider. APC is also organizing training programs, which would enable channel partners in the home, SOHO and SMB segments to enhance their go-to-market strategies for all its product ranges. There are 20,000 IT partners, whereas 10,000 partners are currently being addressed through its national distributors. However, rest of the channel partners are not addressable, as distributors does not extend commercial terms with them. And, through this program, APC intends to bridge the gap.

ANOOP NAMBIAR, country manager, business partner organization, IBM India

As part of company's channel expansion strategies, we will be having our presence in over 47 cities, and this will enable us getting good business from our partners. Offering breadth of technology and help them tailor solutions to best fit market they cater to, IBM does a lot of testing to ensure that solutions and combinations work in that market. IBM is focusing heavily on enhancing partner skillsets across multiple cities in the Indian SMB market. According to the vendor's partners, the customer satisfaction will increase if IBM opens its office in places, wherein it will also enable customers to get real-time demonstration of all the products.
IBM's roadmap for 2013 is to expand in 47 cities across India. It currently has a direct presence in 22 cities. The company has expanded its presence in cities like Guwahati, Indore, Dehradun, Coimbatore, Vizag, Nagpur, Udaipur, Mangalore, Mysore amongst others. However, partners do feel that their direct presence will bring them in advantageous position, but the actual benefit could be traced only after 6-7 months. Recently, IBM has also launched Cloud Starter Kit, an entry-level private cloud offering that is simple to deploy and easy to use. According to IBM, it enables quick deployment of self-service provisioning of virtualized workloads. It also allows quick and easy transition to a cloud-based infrastructure. This model includes partners like Quantum, Persistent, Avnet, and Pentagon amongst others.

Starter Kit for Cloud is a solution that builds upon IBM PowerVM virtualization and IBM Systems Director VMControl. It enables rapid scalability by allowing additional servers or blades to be added to the cloud infrastructure. It also includes basic workload metering to support a "pay-per-use" business model. Clients can also progress from Starter Kit for Cloud to IBM's more advanced cloud offerings such as IBM Service Delivery Manager. Starter Kit for Cloud allows Power Systems clients to quickly and easily start the transition to a cloud-based infrastructure and prove the benefits of a cloud delivery model.

SANJOY BHATTACHARYA, product group marketing head, LG India

With display manufacturers becoming more and more focused on LEDs, manufacturers' commitments for LCDs seem to be on the wane. LG appears to be phasing out its LCD monitor line, shifting its emphasis to LEDs completely by H1, 2012. Moreover, for monitors and optical drive product line, LG is shifting all its gears to deeper pockets of towns. Currently, its dealers are present in 1,200 towns, which the company will be expanding to 2,000 by adding another 800 semi-urban/rural towns in July 2012. Apart from this, LG will be putting focus to do more dealer management programs.

Moreover, for monitors and optical drive product line, LG is shifting all its gears to deeper pockets of towns. Currently, its dealers are present in 1,200 towns, which the company will be expanding to 2,000 by adding another 800 semi-urban/rural towns in July 2012. Apart from this, LG will be putting focus to do more dealer management programs. Over the next couple of years, LG India's focus is to increase penetration in small cities. For this, it is spending one percent of its revenue on System Builders Development Officer (SADO). Over the past 6-8 months, it has deployed 175 on-field people and their job is to engage with the system builder community in small cities and towns in order to understand their needs, and to equip them with training on system building and LG products. Moreover, the vendor is looking at adding 300 more SADOs.

On its newly introduced notebook, LG remained slow to lure metros, but it has gained unexpected response from some of the pockets like Rajasthan, Orissa, Mumbai upcountry, Punjab, Gujarat, Coimbatore, Madurai, etc. Thus, the company has identified these cities for a pilot project and will be exclusively hiring manpower and putting investment on marketing resources to drive its notebook business. Likewise, it will get into 20 new markets for the notebook. On another product line in which LG is making its foray is ultrabook category. LG is scheduled to launch its two models of ultrabooks in the mid of March, 2012.

The company will be rolling out its Intel based ultrabook in top 9 cities through large format retailers. According to the vendor, LG India will be focusing high on ultrabooks in top 9 cities- Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Pune, Bengaluru, and Chennai.

RAJESH JANEY, president, India and Saarc, EMC

The channel is critical in several aspects for EMC as they are customer-facing. Right from educating customers about the benefits of cloud computing and virtualized storage, to deploying EMC storage products and implementing architecture and design solutions, the role of the channel is central and critical. For EMC, the channel has worked as a prime growth engine for its go-to-market strategy and has helped shaping up EMC's objectives. One of the focus areas is to make it easier for its partners to do business with EMC. It has reorganized internally as unified channel organization so that channels can access our portfolio including EMC VNX, Data Domain and Isilon portfolio.

Apart from the product portfolio enhancement, the company is also focusing on partner enablement. In line with this, it is adding a unique EMC staff force called Partner Technical Consultants (PTCs) to mentor the partners to have the right skillset, the right learning curve about the industry scenario and product information. PTCs also play a critical role in creating a pool of specialized partners to give the best solution set to their customers. In addition, the company is also making it easier for their partners to sell, implement and support EMC products. To achieve that, it has started implementing a new deal registration process which ensures partner protection for registered deal opportunities via incremental discounts.

Also, it provides incremental discount support in winning new accounts with EMC and significantly improves speed of DR process through internal process improvement. According to the vendor, it sells almost everything through channel except some global accounts which needs direct selling. Further to Velocity program, EMC is also investing in pre-sales partners' training, accreditation and certification. This has been proven mutually beneficial and we have grown depending on our channel partners. Above all, it is keen on developing a pool of specialized partners who can do as much as system installation and implementation. EMC is looking forward to empower its partners to deliver high-end products like Symmetrix, Greenplum and Isilon (big data and analytics solutions). It will be replicated in tier-2 partners also. Worldwide, EMC added 1,700 new partners to sell EMC products and solution in 2011. They generated slightly less than half of the channel growth for EMC WW. The large increase in new partners wanting to sell EMC is a testimony to the success of the EMC product range and channel program.