Brief

Gigabyte enters the server business in India

After carving a niche for itself in desktop motherboards, Gigabyte Technology, the computer hardware product manufacturer, is making an entry into the server market, says Megha Banduni.

Gigabyte’s recently-launched range of server motherboards are targeted at the entry-level and mid-range segments. The potential of the market can be seen from its growth rate. In 2004, 67,000 servers were sold in India, which was 29 percent more than in 2003. This market is expected to grow at a rate of 30 to 32 percent in the next couple of years.

We are expecting 7 to 8 percent marketshare by the end of this year. We see great potential in India, specially in the BFSI and SMB segment Amod Phadke General Manager, Servers Think Client & Laptop Sales Gigabyte Technology (India)

Says Amod Phadke, General Manager, Servers, Think Client & Laptops Sales, Gigabyte Technology (India), “We are expecting 7 to 8 percent marketshare by the end of this year. We see great potential in India, specially in the BFSI and SMB segment.”

Other than BFSI, the organisation will be concentrating on the government, corporate and SOHO markets. With core banking becoming a necessary component in banking, the number of servers required will increase considerably, and hence Gigabyte is all set with its high-end servers for this sector.

Explains Phadke, “Nationalised banks, medium- level banks and small-sector banks generally make purchases on a tender basis, hence they go as per CVC guidelines according to which they cannot mention the make of the server or the motherboard.” For Gigabyte this comes as a major benefit and helps them to work with SIs and OEMs such as HCL, PCS, Wipro, GES, Spicenet and the MNCs that manufacture in India using its server boards.

The other vertical that the company is looking at is the government. Phadke says that this vertical primarily purchases through tenders or rate contracts and state-level rate contractors. The decision-making on specs and sizing is driven by the government. Since consultancy firms like NIC, NICSI and others are big players in this segment, the company is focussing on them for the acceptance of their motherboards.

For the corporate and SOHO segment, the company plans to have a different strategy. Phadke believes that there is lot of scope in these verticals as their desktop motherboard is the most accepted brand in this segment. Their principal focus remains on creating brand awareness in these verticals. The company plans to invest in hardware as well as create a server zone where they can display their server products and provide technical information. The only concern for them is to get SAP certification.

When asked how Gigabyte will tackle the competition, Phadke says, “Gigabyte is known worldwide as a technology leader for desktop and server motherboards. In India we have successfully launched desktop motherboards and we are confident of replicating the same success in the server, barebone and storage server market segments. We hope to capture over 5 percent marketshare in our first year of business.”

The range of products offered by Gigabyte are rack mount servers, server/workstation mainboards, storage arrays and storage servers. All Gigabyte server products are bundled with Gigabyte Server management tools with features like IPMI 1.5 compliant firmware, ICMB & IPMB support, system health monitoring, platform event filtering and management, remote management and configuration management.

Phadke emphasises that all the servers are validated on almost all the possible operating systems available, and are ready for upcoming technologies. The pricing policy, he says, are competitively suited for entry-level and high-end users. “The focus of the company is not on end-users but OEMs and large system integrators,” explains Phadke. Its main competitors are Intel and Asus.

Internet and data storage applications demand powerful server solutions. Gigabyte is confident that its servers will demonstrate competing values in all departmental server applications, Internet infrastructure and network storage.

megha@expresscomputeronline.com