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Spotlight
Spearheading IP SANs
Intransa has bagged some customer wins within a few months
of its operations commencing in India, says Abhinav Singh
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Since the skill-sets required for IP SANs are not
so complex, mid-sized organisations are expected to adopt them readily B
Chandrasekhar country manager, India Liaison Office, Intransa |
Intransa Inc entered the Indian market on Kumar Mallavalli’s
suggestion in March 2004. Six months later, the company has bagged four key
deployments for IP SANs from Wipro Spectramind, L&T, Satyam Computers and
In-reality, with an average deal size of Rs 25 lakh. Intransa’s entry and
success are an endorsement of the growing popularity of IP SAN technology in
India. Indeed, the company says there are eight more deals in the pipeline this
year.
Growth through partners
The company has expanded its sales and marketing efforts through partners. It
has two principal value-added distributors, Ingram Micro and SES Technologies.
In turn, these distributors have resellers who are trained by them to deploy
Intransa products. The company is also scouting for specialised system integration
(SI) partners, and plans to align them with its value-added distributors. It
already has ICICI Infotech, Ramco Systems and HCL Infosystems as specialised
SI partners.
Says B Chandrasekhar, country manager at the company’s India Liaison Office,
“We have had successful customer acquisitions through our partners. SES
Technologies helped us get L&T and Spectramind. Our core focus will be to
work with our value-added distributors and SIs to ensure that they are able
to focus on IP SAN-based system integration and distribution.” Intransa
expects that it will be able to further expand its channel base. It plans to
go in for road shows and solution caravans to popularise IP SAN technology in
the country. The company spends an average of Rs 20 lakh on a five-city event
every quarter.
The mid-sized market
Initially, Intransa will continue to focus on mid-sized companies, especially
mid-level banks and those having at least an 8-10 node network. It believes
that many mid-sized organisations are scouting for an IP SAN as it works out
cheaper compared to a Fibre Channel (FC) SAN, and also because the amount of
their data has grown enormously.
Notes Chandrasekhar, “Operating costs are lower on an IP SAN network since
no skilled manpower is required. In an FC SAN, the total cost of ownership is
quite high because it is a complex piece of technology and doesn’t have
volumes. This has forced FC SAN customers to depend on vendors for professional
services. But FC SANs will continue to be popular in the high-end market since
they can afford complex professional services to integrate and manage the FC
SANs. Since the skill-sets required for IP SANs are not so complex, mid-sized
organisations are expected to adopt them readily.” Intransa is hopeful
that once 10 GB network interface cards are available, they will enable greater
bandwidth and faster accessibility of data on IP SAN networks, and help large
organisations go in for this technology. The company is also banking upon the
low price tags attached to IP SANs; for every 1 TB increase in data capacity,
an IP SAN costs about $10,000, whereas the same capacity increase would cost
$125,000 for the same level of scaling on an FC SAN.
Vertical-specific focus
The eight new installations are expected from verticals such as BPO, BFSI and
media. Of these, SES Technologies will get five deals; the remaining three will
come from Ingram Micro.
Going forward, Intransa will look at leveraging its partner network, and will
aggressively hunt for customers in the ITeS sector. The company is aware that
ITeS organisations have their entire service on IP-based Ethernet networks,
and that most of them start small but ramp up quickly, and may not want to go
in for the complexities of the FC SAN network. It anticipates that India will
contribute at least 20 percent of its global sales.
| The Deployments |
| Customer |
Deployment & purpose |
Storage capacity |
| L&T |
IP 5000 Storage System used for SAN deployment for
applications based on Microsoft technology. Later, L&T is planning to
add Solaris on the system |
6.4 TB |
| Wipro Spectramind |
IP 3000 Storage System used for nearline storage.
Another IP 5000 Storage System is used for onlinestorage for enterprise
applications based on Microsoft technology |
5.2 TB |
| Satyam Computers |
IP 5000 Storage System used for SAN deployment of
a Microsoft application |
3.2 TB |
| In-Reality |
IP 5000 Storage System (SAN) for Linux and Microsoft
applications |
7.2 TB |
| Intransa's IDC |
IP 5000 series (SAN) used for software
development, e-mail and database-oriented software development tools on
Linux. It is also using this for its DR site for the company's global operations |
12 TB |
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Source: Intransa Inc
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| Intransa's India Development Centre (IDC) at Pune
focuses on three core areas-product development, solutions engineering and
escalated support to the company's global customers. The IDC also focuses
on developing next-generation IP SAN products for high-end customers. The
solutions engineering team is concentrating on customising solutions with
a vertical focus. Broadly, the team is tailoring IP SAN products to suit
the requirements of organisations from different verticals. The escalated
support team is providing different levels of support to Intransa's global
customers, and helps solve their product-related problems. Its value-added
distributors provide the initial level of support on site. In case they
are unable to solve the problem, level-2 and level-3 support is extended
from the IDC. The company plans to increase its IDC headcount from 20 engineers
to 100 by the end of next year. |
abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com
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