APC augments partner program in India

Mumbai: APC by Schneider Electric is augmenting its varied partner programs under a single aegis to make it easier for solution providers to offer the complete suite of data center offerings to customers from the parent company. This was revealed by David Blumanis, Data Center Advisor-APAC and Japan, APC. The reason why it is doing this is because the company wants to change the way it approaches customers as its wants to position itself from a computer add-on peripheral to a core data center solutions provider.

Talking about the increasing power and cooling challenges that corporate face in their data centers, Blumanis said there was a need to have a channel program which matches the right solution with the right customer at the right time. The yet to be named program will align customer needs with the capability of a partner to address it, through a tiered certification structure for its varied data center product lines.

“This is not something new that we are doing, which means we are not launching a new partner program. Instead, we are augmenting all our existing programs into one which will best address the needs of the customers and thereby benefit partners,” Blumanis noted.

To be able to do this, APC by Schneider Electric will first profile select high-value solution providers in the country to understand the industry segments they target and the value they offer to customers. They will then be slotted into the different product families. This is then cross sectioned into the business environments that partners will operate in, which includes business networks-wiring closets, server rooms, small and medium centers, large data center; and by discipline, which include power and its distribution, racks and enclosures, security and environmental, data center management and lastly cooling.

This will be followed by offering training to the partners' team on the product families they will be selling besides working together on lead-generation activities. “We are developing a channel sales kit which will help partners to talk about the value they can bring to the clients business rather than just talking about our box they can sell to them. We are getting them to get to understand the customers' buying behavior and then match it with the solutions that we have rather than trying to get the customer to buy a particular product, which is the traditional way of doing business,” he said.

He added that this augmented program has been designed keeping in mind the select high value solution providers called 'Elite partners', who have moved on from box pushing to solution providing, especially in the data center space. “We want to work with a select set of partners because this initiative calls for a lot of investment from our end as from our partners as well. By segmenting our offerings around customer needs we will also be able to create the next level of solution providers for the next generation products as well,” Blumanis added.

Interesting, this tiered certification program has been running in the US since 2008, where partners are taught how to go-to-market with different products and strategies based on customers' IT environments, given their different IT cooling and power needs. Blumanis noted that it will be rolled out systematically in India shortly, as this is an evolving market where the company expects better sales traction.

Schneider Electric acquired APC in 2007 and it merged with MGE, but kept the APC brand. In the past it has acquired several companies and now owns a building management systems company called TAC; Clipsal, which does intelligent building lighting; Sarel, which designs and manufactures enclosure systems; MITA which specializes in design and manufacture of cable management systems and industrial support products; Berger Lahr which offers solutions for positioning and automation including comprehensive consulting and engineering services; GET which has electrical accessories and Square D which is a supplier of electrical distribution, protection and intelligent control solution besides high voltage air management.

“All these solutions are apt for data centers which is why we want to identify partners who can position them appropriately in small, medium and large enterprises,” informed Blumanis.