"We are banking on personal relationships of sales to target competitors", says Mohamed Asiq of Extreme Networks

Mohamed Asiq, country manager, India and Saarc, Extreme Networks talks about the company's data center strategy in India and challenges it faces regarding the virtualized data center network

How has Extreme Networks improved the support and service for its partners?
Support had been a concern when we came to India. It was in the month of May that we announced Extreme's first service depot in India in Mumbai. What this depot will do? This depot will help us go to the customers through the partners and tell them, yes, we can give u an exclusive replacement which means that the replacement can happen at any time and place. We can give a 4-hour or a 40-hour replacement. We can give multiple sets of facilities whatever our customers expect and what our partner community expects we can deliver. So there are two advantages to this. One is to the existing customer, as he will see dramatic improvement in the services, which we are currently offering on the table. That means I will retain all the already existing customers. So I will keep all my customers. What I will achieve is that with the partner community, they will gain more confidence in terms of selling the product and taking their product to the market.

Obviously, the service centre would improve our service and support. But the question is what we see on the networking side and that is one of the reasons why this shift towards SDM is happening. For the products, networking market itself is becoming so increasingly commoditized and for that section of partners, the margins are reduced. There also its becoming a problem for us and having coming from a relatively smaller base and obviously with someone like Cisco being there.

How do you sort of manage the partner or the margin front?
I would put this particular portion in a different way. In India, Maruti and Tata are the largest volume carmakers with multiple regional partners and multiple branches. There is also a segment like the Jaguar and the Land Rover. But still Honda City and Corolla are selling, right. They are also making a good amount of margins. So what I am focused on is that firstly I'd have a set of limited number of partners who will be focused and where I can commit a healthy bottomline and they would be happy doing business with me. The good thing that I have seen in the past 06 years is that the partners whoever have connected with us, we have made them grow and I have made them see an increase in bottomline. They have never left me so all we need to do is that I need to replicate these efforts to increase this base so that I'd get more benefit from the market. And India is a large country. We are not talking about one simple state. It's 29 states with 29 different cultures. It's not an impossible task. It's possible. So when we come to commoditization of a particular market with respect to Cisco or any other competition, every competition is playing on some inheritance. In India, we don't have a large workforce currently to cater to every single deal. So I pick and choose my deals.

The market that I am focused on are the datacenters. The requirements of 10Gigs, 40Gigs or 100Gigs networking hardware where it is not a commodity play but rather a technology play where you need big data being managed and processed and related other things. The second market that I am targeting are the research institutions. We can cater to educational campuses.

For Extreme, the research institutions have been a traditional area. Please comment.
I can't leave my traditional battlefield. That has to be my forte. Today, I have got 14 out of 26 NIITs on Extreme. It's a huge thing that we have and I cannot leave my battleground. Going ahead, we are working out with couple of institutions. Unfortunately, I am not able to reveal those names right now. I am in advanced stages of discussions with some institutions where we will collaborate with them on doing some research. So once it is finalized and I have got an approval from the institutes I can give out these names to the media. So if I go and sell the same old regular offerings like any other competition in the market, it will become a margin play; selling the brand equation. I am not there in that game. I am looking at a play where it will call for technology. Customers will open up their doors because I have some interesting things to offer on the platter, where I give my solutions, which can do identity management, which can do SDN, which can do virtulisation, and much more. These are the areas where I'd like to offer. When it comes to technology play, where I can come to the partners the same way I can come to the customers and I don't negotiate that in 1 dollar or 02 dollar discounts.

Research institutions are one of your core expertise areas. But beyond that, since you are looking at increasing your partner base, which means that you have to look at more number of customers also. So what are the segments or areas that you will be targeting?
The other areas are datacenters like I can say one is dormant focus area, then government organizations with a lot of datacenters. See we are also talking about large enterprise corporate capital datacenters.

Maybe Infrastructure service providers but there are large corporate houses like Sahara who have consolidated all their business groups into one single building and have their own staff. So it can be a unique large customer base in one single consolidated campus and fill their own captive datacenters. In these areas the advantage is that the products are scalable plus we bring in the technology like the SDM and more. Now what people are talking about is how dynamic my network is going to be. People are talking about static configuration and dynamic configuration. It's like giving a reactive approach as opposed to an active approach. So 2 and half years back we came up with the concept of identity management on the platform. For example, when any user who walks into my premise and I really don't know how many gadgets are you carrying. You may have a laptop, a smart phone, and a tablet. There are multiple gadgets, which can understand IP. That's the scenario when you walk into a tiny area. How do you keep the security, how do you give the freedom to the user while securing your network? So we rolled out the concept of identity management, which gave the users information based access, location based access and also the real time management of these users. So today we have a technology, which can tell the customer, what format of device is being used in the premises of the organization.
And otherwise everything is just talking. However, at the end of the day what matters is how many units have you sold in the market. We are on it now we are growing.

How will the tie up with Lenovo help Extreme Networks?
In mid-this year, we had made an announcement, a Global reseller announcement with Lenovo, which is the No.1 computer maker. So this will give us more bandwidth and leverage to go into the market This will help us reach out to more customers.

But what will be the dynamics. How will you work together? In one sense, considering the product range Lenovo has, it contradicts the position because as you said you are focusing on 40Gigs and 100Gigs and then you are approaching a primarily PC vendor. One normally assumes that you will be targeting the mass-market through this venture?
The large 40Gigs / 100Gigs stuff need the technology play to be sold. In the commodity market, it can go as a commodity. When I am going to have a more grand reward without putting in more energy. The computers, laptops go everywhere. And then it becomes a big play. What we are seeing is this can help us in terms of having brand recognition. At Extreme, it comes along with the solutions.

I agree the brand recognition part, but having said that as you said always extreme has brand equity in terms of being a higher end niche player. There it might not be as you said a huge market share but a dedicated market share. I can understand the deal with Lenovo but now it is very difficult in the mass market, its impossible to compare with Cisco, and then in the mass market here are smaller players. I am not talking about the Netgears and the D-Links and the likes who will come into the picture. So isn't it sort of a brand perspective also.
If you talk about the brand perspective, there is only 1 thing I can comment. I may not be right. But I am going ahead to take over someone who is No 1 because he has done certain things right in the market. So obviously this will definitely give us a better tools to play. That's what I think because if I have to address the big market, then I need to have a different channel strategy. Having one big partner who is no.1 that will ease certain particular challenges. To answer your question, will this affect the eco system where you are trying to play with the high-end technology play and mass market simultaneously. At the end of the day when someone weighs whether in terms of being no 1 or no. 2, it is always not the technology that they plays but also on the number of equipments that is sold. So I think somewhere it will balance.

This partnership will open up arenas into some large opportunities where Lenovo is strong and precisely Lenovo's strong market foothold in some other geography in this point in time that will help.

However, Extreme's focus will always be there on niche high-end technology and innovation. That will always be there. If you are asking me of the dilution in terms of the brand equity we have been known as a niche player. This will only help us to gain market share. But focus will be on the 40Gigs and 100Gigs. See what happens is when you look into a large opportunity, large players, they come in and offer their strategy. I might not have much to offer. So this will help me be a part of a large opportunity. However, citing example of EMC partnership, now we are a solution provider for EMC. So all Extreme platforms are EMC, DSPA certified. This helps us to complete the portfolio - the compute, the storage and the network.

Definitely all companies expect to grow in any market. And in niche technology you always ensure that there are a sustained number of customers that you have. But growth is also an important factor. So when it comes to identifying newer market, so you have research institutions right now. Will it be on those lines only or will you explore newer other enterprises also.
What we have done is that the team has selected 25 accounts where we want extreme's involvement. This includes corporate customers. This we are driving one on one. The more I am with the customers the more I am on the field the more is the feasibility and interaction.

It's a very primitive stage. It's like when cloud came in. What has happened is what we need to say. I think SDN will bridge the gap between cloud and network. Whatever apprehensions the customers had in terms of if the cloud is the secure, if the application that is used is secure, I think SDN will solve these problems. That's my personal opinion.

In terms of distributors, like Inflow, do you plan to add more influential national distributor?
Currently, I don't have any plan in terms of adding a distributor. But once I have my priorities set when the business grows to a certain number and it needs one more distributor, then maybe.

What are the locations that you have direct presence in India, the number of employees and how is Extreme placed in India?
We have offices in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, and New Delhi. In Chennai, we have R&D center. It's a large organization as that is our Global R&D center. We have customer studio there. In all the offices we have got sales force.

Who is you biggest competitor in India?
In the market today when we talk about customers, some customers say we want only X. There is no point in again fighting that battle. When I get to work on an opportunity, customers may categorically say there is some specific requirements See it is not the brand. At the end of the day, it is the sales guy and the personal relationship. That's how I'll put it. Don't target the brand, target the guy.
At the end of the day its all relationships. In today's market everything is based on relationship. Last thing is the brand name. However, brand plays a role but it is at second level. I am carving out my own niche in this market and as of now, I am not aiming at a 70% or 80% of market share.

When it comes to other countries, say Sri Lanka, how is the market scenario?
Sri Lanka is now developing. Unfortunate part is that the economy right now is struggling. But once it is more revised. Maybe. We you have a small niche over there, such as big players who are looking for big investments. In Sri Lanka, investment on infrastructure and tourism is going big. Now the whole country is open and lots of investment on infrastructure and tourism is happening. We do see consistent business there.

How about Bangladesh, Mauritius, Pakistan?
In Bangladesh, there are only two markets. Banking and service sector segments. It is all primarily driven by international flow of money. Bhutan is a small country. We will get some business there, but not now.
So overall India would be having your 90% or 80% of the business share.
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