Today Linux is no more an option, it is a necessity

Mitra talks about Red Hat is committed on creating a personalized partner
enablement program and supporting this with appropriate market development
funding. excerpts from the interview

Has Linux truly make inroads into the enterprise segment or is it just
hype?

We have seen more adoption of Linux in the mainstream applications, by which
I mean that there are various initiatives that customers have taken across
verticals starting from banking, financial services, telecom and government.
Open source has made tremendous inroads into the enterprise because of its very
nature of business model.

Our services model talks about innovation and collaboration. And
collaboration every time does not bring out the best in technology. What helps
in collaboration is that it spurs the growth further. That has been there since
the success story.

We have always taken initiatives in the technology we endorse and are
committed to the technology track that we have embraced, whether it is
virtualization, clustering, database management, etc within the enterprise.

In the past as well as in the current strategy where we penetrate more in the
enterprise space, Linux is more relevant for the customer in terms of the total
ownership and return on investment (RoI). We always embrace technology which
will give customers a choice at the end of the day and which brings down their
capital expenditure. That has been one of the reasons why Linux has seen such a
phenomenal growth today.

And what is the role play of the channel in this success story?

From an Indian perspective, we have very strong channel. We have routes
across enterprise, mid-tier as well as the low end part of the market. We have
not done entered into the consumer business space.

We have close to around 75 channel partners which are the foundation of the
tier two solution providers. They are primarily working in the commercial space,
which is the mid-market space which also contributes 80 percent of our business,
while 20 percent comes from the larger enterprise. The commercial market has
been growing phenomenally over the past couple of years, annually.

Typically the solutions which get sold are the edge of the network servers,
infrastructure solutions, data centre solutions, etc. Even today in the SMB
space, customers are looking at redundancy of data in terms of cutting down
their costs.

These are the solution areas that channel partners are focusing. We are very
committed in creating our partner enablement program and supporting them with
market development funding.

Since Red Hat's business is largely around solutions, does a national
distributor which is more of a fulfilment agency do complete justice to your go
to market strategy?

Ingram Micro has been a great value added distributor for us for the last
three years. They signed up with us to drive predictability into the commercial
and mid market space. They are coming to the terms of giving us not only the
reach or the breadth but also in creating more depth within the channel.

But with the emergence of the more value added distributors who sell
technology rather than products, do you plan to align with them as well?

Yes, you are right. Each of these value added distributors who have come up
in the recent times have identified a technology track to focus on. We are
looking at a couple of them because our kind of technology circumvents around
giving software as a solution and service.

We are in the process of discussing alliances with them, but Ingram continues
to act as our national distributor. They are typically not functioning as a
fulfilment agency. They have deployed resources in terms of managers who are
responsible for the technology evangelization and promotion in the channel as
well. They are also helping us in spreading out to B and C-class cities and
reaching out to partners who are very niche in terms of catering to certain
verticals.

The reason we are looking at these VADs is because there are varying dynamics
and partners are looking at value addition from their distributors and not
merely expecting them to be logistics supplier who offer credit. They have
larger expectations from the distributor investing and helping them to reach out
to more customers. There is an element of competition which has come in terms of
large scale of distribution vis a vis a VAD. So that's where the need comes in
to look at distributors who are keen to create more awareness in the channel.

When you talk about channel awareness, what new things do you do to train
the partners other than your calendar training programs?

It is very important for a vendor to understand what a partner needs for
their enablement because each channel partner is different in terms of their
skill sets, go to market strategy, their captive customer base, etc.

Fundamentally there are three things we are doing. Firstly, we have started a
survey across APAC in terms of looking at partner skills through our online
partner centre. We encourage each partner to go through this survey as it gives
us an overview on their need for a training requirement.

This gives us great flexibility in tiering our channel. But this does not
mean we do not have partner levels, because we already have three tiers in the
form of primary, secondary and tertiary channel. But this attempt helps us
understand that the partner has the right skills.

Secondly, we do lead management where we work closely with distributors and
partners to generate leads and close them. So if I am a channel partner and I
get more than two leads from my principal then it is more than what I can
expect.

We have a system where we call up customers in the mid-market space to create
a demand. Then we work along with the channel partner to help the customer
decide on the right product. Partners see a great value in terms of the support
we are offering therein.

Is this is a new initiative?

No, this is something we have been doing for some time. But what we are
doing through the partner centre is adding lead management portfolio to select
partners in the enterprise and SMB market.

The third initiative is where we get the partners on board, we then figure
out the skills they need to have from the technical and sales perspective. Then
we sign up the business plan with them where we get a dive into the resources
they will invest, the numbers they will achieve and the support they will need
from our end.

We are very actively involved in this go to market strategy and it helps us
understand the partner and their aspirations better. This is a very key as it
gives us the right idea on who can be a primary, secondary or tertiary partner.

These are the initiatives we started a year ago. As we further grow, we need
to give more impetus to more qualitative parameters to make sure that our
partners have a value proposition and not just a volume transaction.

VINITA BHATIA

vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in