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30 Minute Interview
“Organisations have neither the time nor the money to struggle with complex technologies”
Greg McClement, Co-Founder and VP, Net Integration
Technologies, Worldwide, and Yatin Kantak, Regional Director, India /
South-East Asia Middle East, NET-ITECH Asia-Pacific India, on the advantages
of Nitix Linux and other important issues.
Nitix and IBM are collaborating on a product. What are
the key features of this product?
 Yatin
Kantak: We wanted to give our customers a scalable, robust messaging and
collaborative solution, one that’s simple and affordable. We intend to
make technology as simple as we can for small and medium businesses to use.
IBM has partnered with Net Integration Technologies with a version of Nitix
that includes IBM Lotus Domino Messaging Express or IBM Lotus Domino Collaboration
Express. The solution is called Nitix with IBM Lotus Domino and it is priced
at $598. Nitix’s role is to provide value adds to the customer’s infrastructure
in terms of firewall, VPN, backup and DR.
In India we are looking at companies with 250 users for this product. However
this product can scale up to 1,000 users. As of now the market is not as open
in the SMB space as compared to the enterprise segment. Presently we have about
30 partners. We are targeting only SMBs and have tied up with IBM, for which
we plan to appoint an additional 30 to 35 partners in the next one-and-a-half-month’s
time to promote this product. As of now we have 60 to 70 installations in the
Indian market and these customers are satisfied.
| Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Net Integration
was formed in 1997 with a clear focus on the SMB segment and then opened
an R&D centre in Montreal in January 2002.
The company started its Indian operations in September
2004. It has tied up with majors such as IBM, Sun and Wipro for expansion.
The company relies on its channel business completely. It has more than
2,000 reseller partners across the globe and plans to add more for its
latest offering ‘Nitix for Domino.’
The company’s flagship product is Nitix, a Linux-based
server operating system, that provides networking, collaboration, file
and storage, security, and application services in one environment. Other
than this the Net Integration product family includes the Nitix Autonomic
Linux-based server operating system and Nitix-powered Net Integrator Micro,
Net Integrator Mark I and Net Integrator Mark II and has almost 14,000
to 15,000 customers globally. Nitix is a self-healing and self-maintaining
server OS and can seamlessly integrated with Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux
desktops.
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IMRB conducted a survey on IT installations among
medium and large enterprises across India. The survey was conducted for
Express Computer and Network Magazine and revealed some interesting facts.
One of the facets of technology adoption that was covered in the survey
was Linux usage among Indian organisations.
- Approximately 48 percent of the services enterprises
are using Linux
- The usage is highest among services (71 percent) and IT / ITeS (62
percent) segments
- 66 percent of respondents said reliability and 47 percent said low
cost of acquisition are top two reasons for using Linux
- 23 percent of respondents voted for low TCO as the main reason in
opting for Linux
- 63 percent said preference for Windows and 24 percent said lack of
application support are the top two reasons for not using Linux
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Is there a reason as to why you do not target large enterprises
as well?
 Greg
McClement: We don’t intend to switch our focus to the enterprise. The
reason why we are focussing on SMBs from our inception is that the technology
is getting complicated, difficult to use, with too many features. It was getting
to a level where the person who designed it couldn’t use the technology.
We have been constantly focussing in making our products more scalable so that
our SMB customers continue using Linux as they grow.
Initially, there were lot of challenges with regard to
Linux such as cost and user-friendliness. How did Nitix manage to overcome them
and establish itself in the Indian market?
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Penetration of Linux in India as
compared to worldwide was happening only at the enterprise level. That’s
the reason why we decided to target SMBs
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McClement: Penetration of Linux in India as compared
to worldwide was happening only at the enterprise level. That’s the reason
why we decided to target SMBs. The key reason why Linux was initially famous
only at the enterprise level was because of complexities associated with it.
It required specialised skill sets. Simplicity is one big reason why we were
able to penetrate and grow in the Indian SMB market.
Speed of technology adoption in India is increasing for the past couple of years.
Adoption of Linux at the server level is also increasing. Today organisations
don’t have time and money for struggling with complex technologies. Everyone
wants technology that is simple to use and Nitix Linux fulfils this demand.
Tell us about the IBM partnerships as well as about your
other tie-ups.
McClement: We plan to do a joint marketing programme
with IBM in the future. I foresee acquiring 400 to 500 customers in next 12
to 18 months through this alliance. Domino is already growing tremendously in
the Asia-Pacific region and IBM has a good marketshare here. We expect good
business out of this partnership. Our marketshare is approximately 1 to 2 percent
in India.
We are also working with Sage Systems, which makes accounting software. Nitix
and Sage Accpac India have come up with the Sage ERP business management system
for deployment on Nitix Linux.
Initially we are practising this in the North American market and as we grow
there, we will continue in other regions as well. Worldwide we have 2,300 partners.
Traditionally India has been a Unix country. Of late, the
Windows Server has become popular even in mid-range deployments. How will you
deal with this?
McClement: Leading IT companies in India are looking
for advancement in technologies and they are finding it difficult with Microsoft
Windows. Many CIOs are happy about the Nitix product. I feel that the leaders
in the industry will adopt Linux first, and that others will follow the trend.
We as a company intend to make technology easy for people to embrace it. The
mass adoption of Linux relies upon the people becoming comfortable with it,
especially at the desktop level. Currently we have 14,000 to 15,000 customers
worldwide and plan to tap more.
—Megha Banduni
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