We are investing in our channel now to reap the benefits in the future

With a customer base of more than 500 in india, netAPP is now looking at
the government sector with renewed interest. SEn outlines the company's strategy
and roadmap for 2010

What is the channel strategy for India in terms of coverage? Which cities
apart from metros are you targeting?

Traditionally our business was focused on the enterprises, the biggest chunk
of our business used to come from enterprises which are largely concentrated in
the six metros. We introduced a new strategy called Mid Size Enterprise (MSE).
This strategy is actually a three-pronged approach and we are reaching out to a
much wider market to a much broader set of customers.

WIth the introduction of a different product line, we created a separate
bundle called Fast 2000 Bundles. These were focused on driving demand in this
market. We also needed a different class of partners altogether, who were
focused on doing business in this market because our traditional partners were
more focused on doing business in the enterprise segment. Hence, we introduced a
new kind of partner, a separate partner tier called Silver Partners. Network
Appliance (NetApp) went ahead and recruited a number of partners who were
focused in this market. We have around 60 channel partners of them in India.

What is your marketshare in storage industry and your major customers in
India?

In the last quarter we had 13 percent of the marketshare in India. Talking
about the customer base, we have more than 500 customers in India today. We have
about more than 2,500 systems installed in the country. The company is basically
a horizontal-based company which means that our service base cuts across all
industry verticals. The big revenue generating verticals for us are telecom,
BFSI, IT and ITeS. The verticals which we are focusing on heavily are telecom,
BFSI and government.

As the government sector is on your radar, any word on your possible
association with Unique Identification Program for citizens of India?

It seems to me that this is a storage project. Think about 1.1 billion
people storing information, critical data and linking all of that to one unique
ID. It seems everything else is secondary. We are very very keen and interested.
The talks are on with the government, however, I am not in a position to give
you an official word on that.

It is almost three years now that NetApp started its operations in India.
As a company do you feel the need for advertising your brand?

No, we believe in a focused marketing strategy. You advertise for brand, you
don't advertise in general for a solution. One goes after targeted markets. The
target market is where the business is. If there is a set of customers out there
who have a specific problem that we can address, we will go after them. For
specific problems advertising is not the right way, because we know who our
clients are. But we do advertise about the culture of the company, as to how
great a place it is to work for. We do that because it is going to the wider
space. We don't believe in going and advertising and investing in advertisement
for a solution aspect of it because it doesn't make sense.

NetApp's plans for 2010 in India?

Recovery in the Indian market has been much faster than other markets. This
year we would not touch a double digit growth as per IDC. We are looking at
investing on our channel partners to reap the benefits in the future. And the
government sector and its related projects would definitely be the focus area
for us.

Bharat Sharma

bharats@cybermedia.co.in