“We will be supporting our channel partners through lead generation”

How important is the Indian market
for Brocade?

The Indian market for us is growing at
a very fast pace and DQ Top 20 has put Brocade in the slot of one of
the top 5 fastest growing companies in India. While the entire APAC
region is one of the key areas for us, India continues to grow
financially at a healthy rate. So far, we have concentrated over some
key locales in the country, but with the renewed vigor, we are now
focusing on a holistic geographic expansion including class-B cities.

Which are the key verticals for
Brocade in India?

Education and healthcare remains our
priorities and the growth in India so far has accounted primarily
from these verticals. Also, the government and defense sector
comprises one of our key areas where we have deployed significant
projects. This financial year, besides retaining our focus on these
sectors, we want to concentrate on the BFSI segment in particular, as
it is one of the key growing segments, and animation and media
industry and high-end computing projects in IT and ITeS sectors. The
decision is based on the analysis of key market trends of this and
the last financial year and the product offering compatibility that
we have in place.

What is your channel structure in
India?

We operate our Indian business through
2 national distributors with absolute rights over the entire
geography. They are Redington and G7. Unlike the regional exclusive
distribution model, we do not limit our distributors to local billing
or limit them to any particular geography. In terms of channel
partners,we have 25 partners across the country under several
overheads like elite, premier and other categories. One of the key
focus areas for Brocade is concentration on virtualization tools and
products.

Which are the latest offerings from
you?

Brocade is known for building efficient
data center networks that just work. Ethernet fabrics based on
Brocade VCS technology are highly differentiated, providing unmatched
automation and simplicity compared to traditional, outdated network
architectures. Our differentiation is based on 15 years of expertise
in building high-performance fabrics for world's most demanding
data centers. With this second major wave of Ethernet fabric
capabilities, we are extending our lead in this important
newtechnology category and delivering greater agility to our
customers through superior simplicity, automation and reliability. We
are now in a position to deliver more choice, flexibility and
automation to customers deploying virtualization and cloud IT
infrastructure. Specifically, the company announced enhancements to
the Brocade Ethernet fabric portfolio that utilizes Brocade VCS
technology. These enhancements are designed to increase scalability,
improve virtual machine awareness, further simplifying management and
significantly reducing operational overhead. Brocade has recently
launched the subscription-based network infrastructure pricing.

Could you throw some light on the
key facts of this?

The
challenge
facing IT organizations today is that new technologies such
as cloud computing are coming to the fore and are making it much more
difficult to project and predict workloads. A flexible acquisition
option like Brocade Network Subscription enable organizations to add
and reconfigure resources in a much more compacted time frame.
Brocade Network Subscription is optimized to address the unique
requirements of cloud-based IT environments and represents a viable
new procurement alternative that offers customers the most flexible,
open-ended network acquisition option available today. Brocade
Network Subscription revolutionizes network acquisition by giving
customers the flexibility to scale up and down according to actual
network utilization with minimal risk and no capital outlay. With
Brocade Network Subscription, customers pay for their network
infrastructure on a monthly basis, allowing them to align network
capacity with actual usage and thereby reducing cost and mitigating
capital risk.

How have you implemented the Brocade
Network Subscription model in cloud?

The pay-as-you-grow aspect of Brocade
Network Subscription is particularly well-suited for migration to
cloud IT architectures, as it is the most agile option among
acquisition models, such as capital purchases and leasing. While
organizations of all sizes look to the cloud for different
reasons-from improving business processes and application
availability to introducing new, value-added services- hey all view
the ability to quickly address changing internal and external
customer needs as a fundamental business requirement.

Do you foresee any major changes in
the channel structure or in your strategy this financial year on
account of cloud?

As stated truly, cloud is one of our
key players in business and we have developed a holistic range of
services and products in the space of cloud. However, on account of
this emerging trend, channels need to be addressed considerably.
Cloud computing has indeed smoothened up the IT processes for its
adopters but at the same time, our distributors and partners are
complaining about the loss of scope with the rapid adoption of cloud
and the shrinking space that cloud now provides. To address these
complaints, we must ask our distributors and channel partners to
realign themselves with the trends in place and the obvious future
that cloud is about to bring. For this we have come up with extensive
training and certification program and have invested over $ 50,000
for free partner training needs.

What is your channel strategy and
plans for this financial year and the next calendar year for India?

When it comes to selecting channel
partners, we are very choosy. We tend to avoid partnerships where
partners are not well suited technically or financially to handle the
accounts. As is normal for any vendors, we too want to expand in
India in channels, but we are maintaining a constrained approach in
the appointments. We will be supporting our channel partners through
lead generation and handling as well as during the implementation
stage, but will appoint only those partners who can meet our quality
standards. Training and certification is one of the key
considerations for us this financial year and partner promotions and
account determinations will be streamlined accordingly through
certifications. In India, we are looking for education partnership
with leading institutions for partner certifications and training.