"Both small scale or large enterprises can deploy our data information suite" - Ross Stewart, Regional Director, Commvault

New Delhi

How do you see yourself positioned in the Indian market?

In India, we started our business in 2004 with the opening of our research and
development center in Hyderabad, and in 2007, we started our sales operation in
Mumbai.

Today we cover three centers for sales operation-Mumbai, Bengaluru and
Delhi-where we have placed our supportive pre-sales team.

We have three categories of partners-Sun Microsystems, Dell, Hitachi Data
Systems and EMC as the OEM partner; Inflow Technologies as the distributor and
third category is of base resellers. Our resellers execute business through OEM
partner or distributor but we maintain a direct relation with them as well.

What are your marketing strategies for India?

We reach customers through our channel, and the after-sales support and services
is provided either through the channel or us. However, we do not intend to take
away the service providing opportunities from channel. We have got our team in
India who provide support to the partners in building the customer base. Also,
we try to maintain a difference in technology and sales operation.

Our go-to-market strategy will remain the same. We will promote our channel
to add value to the services they provide to the end customers so that the
service level is consistently enhanced. If required, we also give additional
service to the partners. We can go for business dialogues directly with the end
customer but the solution will be deployed only through the medium of channel.

What are your plans for channel expansion?

We are always open for new partnership but are very selective in adding new
partners. Our intention is not to saturate the market by appointing large number
of partners but we aim at providing business opportunities for the existing
partners.

We will hire more partners only where we find a need. We may appoint
vertical-oriented partners who have attained specialization in particular
segment-be it finance, telecom or banking. However, we believe that while
appointing new partners, we would be reducing the business opportunities for the
existing ones.

While selecting the new channel, we look for skilled business partners who have
reasonable business presence. Their selection may depend on the geographical
locations where we do not have partners.

What is next for Indian market in your agenda?

Our prime action would be to find and develop a right team of channel, train
them to launch Commvault products to a large scale and motivate them to add
value to the solution. Our partners have to be trained to develop skills so that
same knowledge can be transferred to the end customers. For this we provide
training and certification to our partners.

Don't you think that you have to be louder in reaching to the customers?

It is true that we have to be louder but we have decided to penetrate into a
phase-wise manner. We are confident about our products that can be deployed by a
small scale or large enterprises together. As data back up is growing
drastically and exponentially, we cannot manage it unless there is systematic
mechanism. Moreover, enterprises are interested in spending on back up or
archival and recovery, and it is logical for them to spend on such product.