The Past and the Future

On the path to recovery

Cisco: In 2010, post the slowdown, markets were trying to get a firm foothold. In the New Year, we are sure that the market will stabilize and there will be an emergence of new market demands. In short, we definitely see a rise in demand in the forthcoming year.

Emerson: Though we are seeing some signs of recovery, it is not a hockey stick effect. The market will take some time to gradually recover. On a general perspective, some banks are going back and forth on credit disbursement. This will have a peripheral impact on the IT space even though these are not directly related to business.

AMD: From the channel perspective, in our business, the sales-out of the mid to hi-end processors has improved dramatically. AMD and its channel partners will benefit significantly, as we will witness new product launches by OEMs, which will improve business opportunities for AMD and its channel partners.

APC: Indian market has already shown signs of recovery. There are a whole lot of SMB organizations, who have just adopted IT or haven't at all. There are miles to go and we see it continuing not only in 2011 but in coming years as well.

Cyberoam: As we all know, 2008-09 had turned out to be a tough year for Indian enterprises due to the global meltdown; it changed the growth oriented objectives of Indian businesses.

IBM: Indian economy is recovering and picking pace with increasing GDP figures. Indian IT industry has not been left behind in this growth. It was reflective of the gradual positive shift in the economy, customer buying behavior, and overall optimism across the globe and in India.

Analyzing revenue contribution

APC: Around 20 to 40 percent is our transaction business, which includes home, SMB, and SME. On the other hand, the enterprise business consists of BFSI, government, and retail amongst others. In terms of break up, home, SMB, and government segments have contributed maximum revenue to our business. Region-wise contribution to our business is — South (37 percent), North (28 percent), West (24 percent), and East (12 percent).

Lenovo: We are at the 2nd in the enterprise segment, 3rd in the consumer segment and growing significantly in the SMB segment. Our enterprise business has always been our stronghold and is our major revenue contributor. Our consumer business and SMB presence are strong growth engines and contribute significantly to our overall business.

Cyberoam: The education vertical contributed nearly 35 percent to our business. The breakdown of other verticals include — manufacturing (15 percent), BFSI (6 percent), IT/ITeS (18 percent), and government/defence/PSUs (18 percent). The region-wise break up is — West (29 percent), North (31 percent), South (25 percent), and East (15 percent).

IBM: We have seen a significant adoption of our technologies, and clients from across industry verticals, including BFSI, telco, government, and public sector, have derived substantial benefits by the adoption resulting in better RoI and efficiencies.

Emerson: In terms of ranking, government holds the top position, BFSI is ranked second, and RFL (Retail, FMCG, and Logistics) is the third vertical, which has contributed maximum revenue. We are looking at power, oil and gas sectors for the next year. Since government sector has the highest contribution, northern region can be put at the top.

Technologies that created impact

AMD: Our 6-Core CPUs really set a high benchmark on both high performance and affordability. It has given the channel partners the best possible product to focus on, as it offers maximum performance to customers at a real affordable price point. Also the line of our AMD Radeon graphic cards really took off in 2010, as it gave the latest technology in graphics, at affordable prices while being energy efficient.

Cisco: The year 2010 saw the advent of the cloud in a big way, as it has the potential to impact operations in every single vertical. Cloud-based solutions which can be quite versatile and flexible lend themselves to usage across the board in a way that significantly benefits organizations — be it small, medium, and large. TelePresence took videoconferencing to the next, ultra high-definition level in a way that allowed the omission of many weaknesses. TelePresence, both on premise and hosted, was extremely well received this year.

Emerson: Cloud computing will bear direct impact on our business as well as general businesses. With virtualization becoming a reality, we are seeing change in footprint of datacenters. The deployment of high density architecture is also on the upswing, as it leads to saving of space as well as energy.

APC: Barcode scanners deployed in LFRs and standalone retail outlets have seen significant growth. Enterprise document management is getting the push. Since everyone is talking about virtualization and cloud computing, these technologies are here to stay. But there is a lot of hype surrounding it. Most companies are trying to push cloud since they are offering something in that space. At the end of the day, customers need to adopt the technology.

RSA: RSA expects acceleration in the journey to the Cloud environment. Solutions which could work in physical as well as the virtual world, helping customers migrate seamlessly into the cloud will be in focus. Security and compliance in the cloud will continue to be of most importance with a built-in rather than bolted on approach to be more effective and popular. 2011 will also see integrated solutions to minimize gaps in the layered security structure. Users will want all their solutions can be integrated together, a built-in approach; allowing each security component to understand what is happening in other areas giving a consolidated view of each environment thereby allowing correlation of activities and events, while also managing compliance.

HDS: Cloud will be accepted as a valid infrastructure model. Although some hype will still be associated with “cloud,” there will be enough proof points to prove the concept. On-ramps to the cloud will facilitate the acceptance as well as management tools and orchestration layers that provide the end to end transparency to ensure service level objectives and chargeback. Server virtualization has matured beyond the cost reduction phase of consolidating print, file, test, and development servers and is currently poised to support tier 1 application servers.

The Channel focus

Cyberoam: Our channel partners including resellers and other solution providers are increasingly becoming aware of designing/delivering solutions designed around security products. In keeping with the prospect of huge opportunities, we have created large prospective client databases - enough information for partners to focus on. There is a strong need on the part of channel partners to educate and convince the customers that UTM is about reduced complexity without comprising on performance, which translates into high RoI for customers.

Lenovo: Lenovo believes channel partners are fundamental to its business and treat them as our natural partners in profit. Our growth is directly proportional to our partners' growth. We will fortify our channel strengths; work even more closely with partners to develop a mutually beneficial, long-term bond and offer them all possible training, support. We have restructured our entire channel operations to ensure that our partners get ample opportunitiesto leverage the opportunities available and exhibit a good performance.

Cisco: Channel partners are an extremely critical part of our business focus in India and we have various programs around the needs of partners to help drive growth, engagement and loyalty. We are also focusing on driving architecture adoption within out partner community, effective relevant training and incentive programs and building the requisite ecosystem to drive vertical solutions, which will help us meet Cisco India business objectives in the marketplace, in terms of both depth and breath.

IBM: The biggest challenge for partners is to move beyond their comfort zones. They need to look at new opportunities beyond their areas of expertise, focus on a solution led approach and they need to focus on constantly enhancing their industry/market knowledge and skills. IBM is working hard globally, to develop plans that provide deeper skills, specializations and industry focus which will help business partners build out their capabilities to more effectively participate in high growth areas.

AMD: Channel has shown a lot of confidence with the new programs launched by AMD India, especially the SMART Channel Program and we are pleased with their focus especially on our quad and six core products.

Optima Infotech: The situation has really deteriorated today when it comes to trade practices. The vendors are only bothered about numbers and nobody takes care of partners' profitability.

Extreme Networks: In the era of consolidation , in my view Solution providers needs to pitch a best of breed solution based on open standard to their customers, This will really help both customer and partner to get latest technology, easy to deploy , great TCO and off course margin.

2011: The future outlook

IBM: Essentially there are about three key trends in terms of technology and business that will impact the spending in 2011 — cloud computing, focus on smarter planet, analytics, workload optimized systems, and continued rise in mid market focus beyond tier-I and II cities.

Lenovo: Mobility, heightened performance, style, easy operation, retail availability and ample entertainment features are some of the key factors expected to entice Indian consumers. 2011 will be a dynamic year for Lenovo India; we feel this is an opportune time, to aggressively pursue growth and expansion.

APC: After SaaS, the next thing will be hardware as service model. We are seeing lot of demand for all-in-one devices. Today, customers want datacenters, UPS, rack, and power distribution — all rolled into one device. Alternate sources of energy are also coming up in a big way.

Optima Infotech: Covergence products or the fusion of technologies will impact the IT industry in 2011. Products like HP's DreamScreen, which is an icon-based digital device with touch enabled intuitive interface and is an ideal media center for home and will dominate the coming year.

C-Dot Systems: The technology trends that are expected to dominate the business in 2011 include IT services, that include infrastructure management, and server and datacenter management services.