We have shot down the prices of our products and made it more user-friendly

The recession has not affected Aruba Networks as it was focusing on niche
clients. Singh informed that the company would like to go for alliances with
more channel partners. excerpts from the interview

Do all solutions cater to only the large enterprises or do you have offerings
for SMBs as well?

We are working on a concept called virtual branch networking where, an
individual can log in whereever he wants on a seamless network which is also
secure. The effective price for this product would be $ 834, and with this we
can cater to large enterprise as well as SMB customers, because we are also
offering lifetime warranty.

What are your target customer verticals currently?

We are targeting education, retail, government and corporate sectors mainly.
We are also developing a client base in the datacenter sector. This aside, we
have OEM tie ups where we reach out to a wider client vertical indirectly. As we
speak, some IBM personnel are getting training on Aruba and we have similar
alliances with Dell and Datacraft too.

Shalendra Singh Director-Sales, Aruba Networks

For a long time now, Aruba has been facing intense competition from vendors
like Cisco and Motorola. How will you position your brand strongly in light of
this threat?

We have shot down the prices of our products and made it more user-friendly
but this does not mean we have compromised on our quality. Even though we are
cost-effective, we still have our profit margins and we are optimistic that this
year the growth will be much higher. As for competition, we believe in doing
what we do the best and letting the customers decide for themselves about their
preferences.

Has this strategy helped you during the ongoing slowdown?

Yes, the reason is largely because we always targeted a niche audience. When
the recession hit the industry, the weak players in the market were eliminated.
This reduced unnecessary competition and paved our path to success. Thus we were
pretty comfortable in the market.

Aruba has always worked with the tier-1 SPs. Do you have any plans to include
tier-2 systems integrators to your network?

Yes. We plan to conduct roadshows and set up demo centers to enable our
existing channel partners to undergo training so that they are aware of the
product specifications in detail. We intend to have a wide network of system
integrators in India. Lot of SI's who were with Cisco and Nortel are now
choosing Aruba.

Not only do we wish to cater to tier-1 we also plan to include tier-2 cities
since there is a wide market to be tapped in these cities as well.

How will Aruba select the right set of channel partners?

Since Aruba's go-to-market model in India is primarily through the channel,
we will select partners who have strong domain knowledge in our focus vertical
like education, retail, healthcare, government, financial services and
manufacturing.

Our partner selection criteria will be based on the partner's geographic
presence and competency in networking/infrastructure segment. We believe that
partners who have an established networking, storage or security practice will
find it easier to position Aruba's WLAN and remote branch networking solution in
their installed base.

We recently launched a channel program where a reseller can go and register
on at our website. We will recruit both global system integrators with
pan-Indian presence and regional system integrators who may only have regional
presence across metro and non-metro locations.

What support will you extend to these partners?

We have a comprehensive channel partner program in India. Aruba invests in
training partners' sales/pre-sales team on positioning our products and give
technical hands-on training. We also provide our channel partner dedicated
access to Aruba's partner portal for downloading product collateral and other
product related information.

We assign dedicated channel partners for our premium partners who help
develop joint go to market strategy. Periodically, we hold joint marketing
events with our partners to discuss Aruba product launches and positioning in
the market.

REVATHI RAMAN

revathir@cybermedia.co.in