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NetApp accelerates focus on Indian SMEs

15.10.2008
NetApp has comprehensive plans to tap the buoyant SME market in India. As a realigned go-to-market strategy, the vendor is keen to add a focused set of channel partners for this segment. "In India, almost 95 percent emerges from enterprises for our offerings, mainly from BFSI, telecom, IT/ITES and manufacturing. Media and retail are the emerging verticals. We'd continue to extend our value proposition to SMEs, which are witnessing IT spend on effective storage solutions," said Surajit Sen, Director -- Channel, Alliances & Market, NetApp India. The vendor has initiated a month-long roadshow at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Cochin, Coimbatore, Vizag, Trivandrum to tap the 'SME Savvy' partners. "The event will consist of two seminars, one each for channels and customers highlighting our offerings and services for the SME segment. The next phase will cover North, East and Western parts of India by March 2009," revealed Sen. At present, NetApp offers 'S family' (S550) and FAS 2000 products for this segment. "We would enhance our product range with new channel alliances and more markets gradually," he added.

With its focus on the enterprise segment, NetApp launched a six-month 'NetApp Guarantee' program. Explaining the details, Sen said, "Our professional services team is monitoring the new storage procurements of enterprises. Under the program, the enterprises will have to purchase only 50 percent of their storage infrastructure in virtualized environment. If the results are unsatisfactory, NetApp will provide the balance 50 percent free of cost to enterprises." Initially, the offer is valid for VMware environments, which will be extended to Citrix and Hypervisor. With SMVI (SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure), there is a decrease in the server count, lower cooling, power and space requirements, and reduction in manageability costs," he said. Virtualized set-up with NetApp SVMI also reduces TCO to approximately 39 percent more than its competitors. The vendor is also optimistic of its de duplication offerings resulting in almost 50 percent savings on primary storage requirements.

Apart from Inflow Technologies and Redington as distributors, NetApp has a channel base of 10 silver partners, 20 gold partners and 2 star partners (Wipro and APARA). Unlike its competitors, the vendor has a limited channel ecosystem. Sen reasoned, "Being a technology company with 100 percent sales through channels, we believe in ensuring enough business opportunities and profit margins for our partners."The road shows for SMEs are aimed to add silver partners (entry-level partners). "We are looking for partners (VARs/SIs or solution providers), who also have expertise in service-related fields. SME customers prefer their partners to cater to their service requirements than interact with vendors," he said. The vendor is initially limiting itself to appoint one or at the most two partners per city to cater to the SMBs.

The interim findings of the 'Data Explosion Survey' conducted by Nielsen and NetApp revealed that IT applications like ERP, CRM, Database and Email and Attachments are chief sources of rapid growth of data amidst enterprises. Continuos access to data and email traffic are the key storage challenges for CIOs today, he commented. NetApp also has 10 plus partners offering the vendor's services including support, consultancy, data migration etc to customers under categories -ASP (Authorized Service Partner), APSP (Authorized service Professional Partner), CDP (Contract Delivery Partner) and TPM. "Apara and Wipro are APSPs. Two additional partners are in line for this label. Services model is additional and more profitable that partners can add to their existing NetApp solutions," said Sen.