''We plan to generate awareness about the security components within our networking offerings''

Sanjay Jotshi is happy with the brand recall Nortel has generated in the
networking space. He now wants to make enterprise buyers aware of the other
converged products that complement the company's offerings. He tells Channels
India how Nortel is actively seeking solution providers, specializing in
security and storage, to partner with.

Do you have plans to have proof of concept centers in India?

Any project where the investment of the customer is very large, before he
makes this investment, he would like to see that it works as the vendor claims.
So there is a need for a proof of concept center.

We have many such centers in Canada and the US. We often take customers there
and simulate the whole setup for them with our solutions. Sometimes, we do it
on-site and integrate our products with their existing systems and show it
running.

We don't have a proof of concept center in India, but we do on-site trials
for them. We could have such a center if we are talking only about a particular
group of technology.

But Nortel's portfolio encompasses enterprise and service provider
solutions. So from our perspective, it will be a very expensive endeavor to go
for a proof of concept for all these solutions. If the business warrants for the
setting up this infrastructure, then we will go in for it.

What are the various solutions that Nortel provides?

We have the enterprise portfolio which comprises voice, data, call center
and converged products, which includes security. In the service provider
segment, we have portfolios like wireless, VoIP and optical. So, we offer the
entire plethora of networking solutions.

After maintaining a low portfolio, Nortel stepped up its activities last
year. But even then it has been focusing on its high-end networking products.
Why have the other components of your portfolio not been highlighted?

In the case of service providers, we know who are our buyers and we go to
them regularly. We do demonstrations and trials for them. So the need for
talking to these buyers in not very high, as we are directly in touch with them.

But when it comes to enterprises, we are dealing with a large number of
unknown potential buyers in large and small cities. And all this business is
done through partners. We know the large customers, but majority of the orders
come from small and medium size businesses. Therefore, the need for
communication is higher there and this is why you notice that we are focusing
more on the enterprise product offerings.

Is security part of your networking portfolio or is it a different product
stream?

Security is part of our networking portfolio. All security components
eventually sit somewhere on the the network. We come from networking, but we
have integrated a lot of security products to make the offering complete.

Yes, we are not talking enough about it, but we plan to remedy it. We are
going to evangelize these security components, so that whenever a customer
thinks about networking, he thinks about Nortel. Our second aim is to create
mindshare for our converged portfolio.

Do you think that Indian enterprises acknowledge that security is an
important aspect of their network?

Yes, whether people like it or not, security is a core issue, whether it is
financial, government or a small organization. You can't overemphasize on
security. It can't be tackled from a device perspective. We can't go to a
customer and tell him that you buy this box and every threat under the sun will
be taken care of.

When you want to talk to your customer about security, it has to be from a
top to down approach, from a consultancy point of view. This is where it is
important that the solution partner should have very strong security practices
in place.

We have partners, like HCL Comnet and Ramco, who are strong in their own
security practices and can therefore educate their customers better on adopting
similar measures. When solution partners go to customers, they should not talk
about products. They should instead talk about security policies.

That is why we partner with those people who have the full basket of
offerings when it comes to security products. They are the people who go to
customers and do vulnerability assessment, security audit and educate the
customer on the threats they are likely to encounter. In the end, there are some
boxes which can be plugged in, by default.

How many of your partners offer these kind of solutions?

All our partners who sell all kinds of products. But there are some partners
who are focused on selling security solutions, like HCL Comnet, Ramco, Global
eSecure and Wipro.

But are you also partnering with tier-two partners?

Yes, we are also looking at tier-two partners who have some specialized
niches. Because we understand that what when they go to a customer and give a
Nortel box, it goes with a lot of other services as well. Therefore the
applicability and utility of the box within the environment is much higher.

When we talk to a partner, we see the kind of installations they have
deployed and the certifications they have undergone. This gives us an idea about
their potential as Nortel partners.

How do you empower these partners?

We have invested very heavily on training them. We have monthly sales and
quarterly hands-on training for these partners. These are over and above the
online training and certification programs.

VINITA BHATIA