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Setting storage trends
Among the pure storage players, Network Appliance has been
the leader in NAS all along. Abhinav Singh says the company is targeting telecom,
energy and government sales this year
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According to George thomas, NetApp is now looking
at telecom, energy and government to drive business in India during the
next few quarters |
Network Appliance Systems (India) (NetApp) is one satisfied storage vendor
having captured 14 percent of the external storage market in India (As per IDC).
Over the past four years NetApp has won some large storage deals in the recent
past with 250 customers using their storage solutions. ICICI Bank, Sasken Communications,
Aviva Life Insurance and HDFC Standard Life are some of the marquee clients
that the company has signed up. It’s recently closed deals with Tata Teleservices
and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) give NetApp a foothold in the telecom
and energy space respectively. The Indian market has been a happy hunting ground
for NetApp contributing roughly 12 percent of its Asia Pacific revenues.
NetApp’s Fabric Attached Storage (FAS) FAS900 Series and FAS200 Series
has been a significant component of its Indian sales. George Thomas, country
manager, Network Appliance Systems, (India) Limited says, “We are confident
that our expertise in providing unified storage, near line storage and iSCSI
solutions will help us grow steadily in India. Having done substantial business
in the BPO and BFSI segments, we are now looking at telecom, energy and government
to drive our business in India during the next few quarters.”
The company has penetrated the Indian enterprise market through system integrators
Apara Enterprise Solutions and Wipro Infotech. Its reseller model has helped
it expand its reach across the country and bag new customers. NetApp is also
looking to expand its system integrator base in the country to broaden its reach.
System integrators provide the first level of support and service to NetApp’s
customers in India.
Spare parts depots for faster delivery
Its three logistics depots in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore are managed by logistics
major, UPS Logistics. These depots have spare parts for the NetApp product range
and spares can be rushed to a customer site at short notice. These depots work
closely with NetApp’s global support centre in Bangalore. Customers log
on to NetApp’s Web site and register their requirement by entering a product
number. The global support centre immediately notifies the depot to rush the
required spare part to the customer. Delivery is undertaken by UPS Logistics.
The delivery time depends on the nature of the Service Level Agreement (SLA)
which NetApp has with its customer. Sandeep Dutta, director-Strategic Partnerships
& Marketing, Network Appliance India says, “When we approach a new
customer our spare parts depot raises the satisfaction level of our prospective
customer, which makes them more confident about doing business with us.”
Focus on ILM, iSCSI and unified storage
NetApp feels that Information Lifecycle Management (ILM),
iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) and unified storage (NAS-SAN
convergence) hold considerable potential in India. The company is in talks with
a number of customers for ILM deployment. As part of its worldwide strategy
to offer ILM solutions, NetApp has a strong relationship with Veritas and IXOS
and allows its products to seamlessly integrate with the products of these two
vendors. Dutta explains, “We have an Application Programming Interface
(API) for integrating our products with Veritas and IXOS.” NetApp is the
only storage vendor in India that has an installation for its iSCSI solution
at Sasken. Polaris Software Labs and Ranbaxy have deployed its SAN and NAS solutions.
Additionally NetApp is confident that its near line storage solutions (the NearStore
R200 which can scale from 8 Terabytes to 96 Terabytes) are bound to make inroads
within Indian enterprises as many of them are looking for online backup rather
than tapes for backup and retrieval.
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According to Sandeep dutta, the objective of the proof
of concept centre is to demonstrate the capability of NetApp’s products
in a simplified way |
Enterprises focus to continue
NetApp will continue to focus on the large enterprise segment and as of now
it has no plans to enter the Small and Medium Business (SMB) segment. It is
looking to get some customers in the government sector and has appointed a person
in Delhi who will be responsible for signing up customers in this sector. Telecom
and energy will be other major segments for the company in India in 2004. It
already has bagged Tata Teleservices in the Telecom segment and ONGC in the
energy vertical in early 2004. NetApp is also planning to set up sales offices
in Hyderbad and Chennai this year to expand into the regions.
Crash test before buying
NetApp is all set to shortly unveil a proof of concept centre in Bangalore,
which will help showcase its technology prowess to prospective customers. Until
now NetApp had to ship its products to the customer and give a live demo at
his site to convince prospective clients. This was a cumbersome and time-consuming
task. Dutta says, “The objective of the proof of concept centre is to demonstrate
the capability of our products in a simplified way. The prospective customer
will have the freedom to simulate his real time environment and test the ability
of our products the way he wants.”
NetApp’s recent foothold in the telecom and energy verticals and new focus
on government deals is expected to drives its market share in India. The company
is expected to grow faster than the Indian storage market rate in revenue terms,
which is growing at 30 percent CAGR.
| NetApp’s India Technology centre, which operates
out of Bangalore, is now more than a year old. It carries on world class
development for the company’s global operations. Though small, it has
80 people, 10 percent of Net App’s R&D work is carried out from
Bangalore. The company plans to ramp up head count to 250-300 people in
the next 18 to 24 months. NetApp had earmarked Rs 75 crores for the expansion
of its technology centre in India. It has contributed significantly to the
development of NetApp’s NetCache product line. The centre has reached
a stage where it will be responsible for the complete development of the
newer version of NetCache. Two-thirds of the Bangalore team is engaged in
engineering and development initiatives and the remaining team is into technical
support. NetApp has over 600 engineers in its global development team. It
has four development centres in the US and one in India. |
| Employees |
15 in sales and marketing and more than 80 at its
India technology centre. |
| No of deployments |
500 deployments in India |
| No of customers |
250 customers out of which some prominent names are
ICICI Bank, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Sasken Communications,
Aviva Life Insurance, HDFC Standard Life and Tata Teleservices. |
| Major vertical focus |
BFSI, BPO, telecommunications, energy and government
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| Market share in the Indian external storage market |
14 percent (As per IDC) |
abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com
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