DQC Poll : VMware's Arumugam Best channel chief

In the latest DQ Channels Poll asking the solution providers about their choice in electing the most proactive channel head, Ganesan Arumugam of VMware has been selected as the hot favourite of channels across India bypassing his other colleagues in the industry by a mammoth margin.

Ganesan Arumugam, director - channel & alliances, VMware secured a comfortable 62% vote having an absolute majority while the second runner up Sanjoy Bhattacharya, head - IT, LG India managed a 16% favourable votes. Praveen Sahai, VP - Channels of EMC India bagged the third slot at 9% overall votes.

Interestingly, most of the other prominent channel heads of IBM, Samsung, Dell, Asus, HP. Norton, Cyberoam and Xerox bagged a meagre 1% each of the total votes cast. Also, Cisco's Pramodh Menon, president - PBG, who so far seemed very popular with the networking partners bagged 4% overall.

When the DQ Channels probed the voters about their preference and votes, partners unanimously echoed about the growth, support capacity and the channel structure which Arumugam has put into place which made the majority of the solution providers voting in favour of Arumugam.

According to the revelations of the partners, VMware's transactions with the channel has been pretty straightforward and smooth which has helped it warn the trust of the channels and an regular routine of partner engagements has helped Arumugam convert major sales leads into deals. Also, Arumugam's focus on developing its SMB focus helped VMware put up one of the finest shows in cloud and integration and virtualization solutions.

 

Bhattacharya was lauded by the solution providers for his strategy in maintaining LG as the leader in the monitor segment and introduce new products in 2012. Although the Bhattacharya is now on the lookout to maintain its existing channel base, LG is planning to feature in the 4th rank in the laptop category by the end of this FY. However, what helped Bhattacharya bag the 2nd slot was LGs positioning itself as a channel friendly company where partner complaints (both after-sales issues and back-end commission issues) are less heard of compared to competition.

Although Sahai bagged the 3rd slot making EMC as one of key choices for the channels, the introduction of Partner Velocity Programme has been the key factor which partners considered while voting for in EMC's favour.