“India a promising market with tremendous opportunities”

Considering the global markets, how significant is India as a market for Brocade?
Indian subcontinent is a significant market for us and it contributes to about 15-20% of overall global revenue. We expect to grow as we have invested a lot into this market. As compared to mature markets like USA and EMEA, which are harder to grow, here there is enough opportunities which we intend to tap.

Last year, we had committed about $100 mn for APAC region and this is not going to stop here. What we see in the APAC market is commendable growth wherein we tripled the IP market in last 3 years. In terms of SAN business, we have been growing above the market rate.

During your interaction with the CXO community, what were the pain points or challenges they highlighted?
At a high level, they have pain around many areas, one being resource availability and budget allocation to run an organization. They are just getting pounded with new requirements like for example what is your cloud strategy, plans for virtualization, mobility strategy and more. It is not very easy for customers to rationalize their priorities and keep within the budgets. The CXOs have to work to hard to manage the balance between CAPEX and OPEX. So its all about cost, cost and cost which will be the number one challenge. Available network bandwidth is another pain point as the existing networks were not designed to cater to the needs of this age as the usage has increased drastically.

For mid level enterprise CIO, the change would be even more challenging as the company already has an infrastructure in place, and the company has already invested money. So do such companies accept change easily or is it taken with friction?
It all depends on execution. In this context, we come in and recommend a evolutionary approach and not revolutionary. We don't ask our customers to rip off the existing infrastructure, we recommend partial upgrades in tandem with their existing setup. Ironically, we win more projects because we ask them to keep their existing system if it works and address wherever the problem resides and then. Our strategy is well received because we are not advocating a replacement, we are advocating an upgrade and enhance.

What brings in more revenue for Brocade, fresh implementations or upgrades?
It is all about size wherein sometimes add-ons can be larger than new ones. It is always exiting for us to do new implementations because we can build the overall architecture. To put it figuratively it would be better, if we term it as existing versus new accounts. In terms of IP business, over the last couple of years we have seen 50-70% overall revenue generated from the new accounts.

The primary markets remain the same and so are the primary verticals. What we are seeing now is that companies that are doing hosting services are now becoming prominent. These are companies which are signing up for our subscription models. Other than that, innovations around Campus Network provider, our partners have got a new market to explore which they did not have in the past.

In general terms, the data is exploding and its a massive opportunity. No one can get rid of anything, one needs to keep data for legal purpose and many other factors. The market for this has an insatiable appetite which bring us and our partners a wide gamut of opportunities.

What is the role of a channel partner in the business ecosystem?
The role of a channel partner is the most significant one because of their local relationships but nothing like having the ownership of IP knowledge. In short it is all about collaboration and there will always be a collaboration which is also part of our business model.

It is critical so we firmly believing in teaching our partners how to deal as impacting factors include size of the deal which influences a lot of other factors. We educate them on the upcoming technologies, trends and coping with newer age challenges. However, with regards to Campus Network solutions that is where we are hoping partners can act more independently. We will support them through marketing events and materials. While, in case of larger project for example government projects we are involved from the initial stage itself. In this region, government is a key focus sector. Our preference is to involve our partners as early as possible in sales process because we both are providing joint credibility.

Keeping aside the large SIs, how do you support the tier-2 and 3 SI partners?
Our strategy has been clear and we follow a two-tier distribution model and we expect our distribution partners to play their role and we support them. Currently, we have Redington and Iris Computers as our key distributors in India. We work closely with them in terms of supporting mid size VARs and for partners in tier-2 and 3 cities, the practice is the same wherein we work along with distributors and support them at each and every step as and how required.

 

What are the key focus verticals for Brocade? What will be the roadmap ahead?
In India, our focus is on the FSI and IT/ITeS segment primarily while we are also exploring education and healthcare as potential segment. We are attacking these segments with specific business plans. Another vertical where we are working is media and entertainment. Reliance Animation produced India's first stereoscopic 3D animated feature film, that has been digitally produced on Brocade's high performance network.

India to me is a huge market and to garner the best out of this region, I have placed my best guy in this region, Edgar Diaz. He has extensive experience in this line of business and in this market. Currently, the team is revamping the entire Indian go-to-market strategy. We building and enhancing the talent pool. All said, we will continue to invest in India. We are also mapping very key partners who intend to bring on board with us to cater to the requirements of this region.

In a nutshell, we are going to overhaul our entire India strategy. This will require extensive work both internally and externally wherein we plan to add more partners. We have been focused in this market in the past but now with newer offerings in terms of products and solutions, we plan to strengthen our marketshare and presence in the country, thus taking the business to newer levels.