Post 'Rishtey 2006', its annual channel partner meet, Bangalore-based Select Technologies is geared to increase its focus on rapid geographic expansion this year. S Sriram, CEO, Select Technologies believes that such platforms enhance partner-vendor interaction and help to speed up the company's endeavor for growth.

What was the main purpose of Rishtey 2006 and how is it different from its predecessors?
Rishtey is an annual partner event that helps our partners to grow their business since it provides them with an overview of the prevailing market trends and existing solutions. It is a platform, which helps partners to understand new solutions being offered and map the same to their customer needs in security and storage. The biggest benefit our partners get through the meetings is that it enables them to share and learn from other partners across geographies and interact with technology partners, to cash in on newer opportunities. From this year onwards, Rishtey will be a national level event for our partners.

S Sriram CEO, Select Technologies

Talking of technologies and trends, what is your take on the partners' know-how and preparedness as regards providing security solutions to their customers?
Unlike any other IT space, the trends in the security space are ever changing. Different segments have different needs as far as security solutions are concerned. These needs could vary from infrastructure solutions to point product kind of solutions. So channel partners need to be provided with continuous education so that they are updated on the latest in technology and can come up with the relevant solutions for their customers. Select Technologies as a policy educates and trains its channel partners to be well equipped with
the most relevant customer solutions.

According to you what are the biggest drivers in the security and storage space and what are the adoption trends that exist today?
The drivers of security and storage adoption are the compliance to standards like BS7799, Sox, HIPPA; the fast evolving threats and the need to stay ahead; the increase in the net banking initiative by MNCs, national and co-operative banks; desktops becoming powerful due to a knowledge driven economy leading to utility payments and ticket purchase through the net besides an increased Internet adoption by the SMBs.

As far as the trends in adapting to these solutions go, from anti-virus and firewall to intrusion prevention and UTM, customers are on the look out for solutions that would enhance security and ensure that a growing enterprise has its data in safe custody. High on the adoption wave are solutions that cater to intrusion detection and prevention, spam prevention, identity and access management, vulnerability, patch and policy management, end point security, secure remote access, a single window management of various security components and data encryption.

What kind of opportunities do channel partners and vendors have as far as security solutions go?
The security solutions market is growing rapidly both globally as well as in India. While security solutions are being adopted across the board, we would definitely see a more rapid growth in the UTM sector in the future, especially in India. This is because the SMB sector is growing rapidly here, and these are the biggest customers for UTM solutions. With broadband connectivity increasing very rapidly, SMBs and mid-size organizations are looking for robust security solutions like the UTM to ensure the security of valuable data. Enterprises also look to scale up their UTM solutions, but SMBs would be the key drivers of this market. Point products and solutions will continue to exit especially since identity threats are on an increase and a lot of data is getting accessed from outside. Managed services will see considerable growth in the future. While India CFOs are still not open to outsourcing security services, the next couple of years may see some positive change in them. This means a huge opportunity for the vendors and the channel partners.

The year 2005 was a year of expansion for you. What were the most significant milestones for Select last year?
With a focus on expansion into B class cities we have increased our presence from five to 10 cities across India last year. In addition we managed to add four new solutions to our basket. The result of that effort is that we now have a pre-sales resource team in Delhi and Mumbai along with sales coordinators at Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. While aligning our pre-sales team with the marketing team, we invested significantly in partner trainings across geographies last year. In addition we conducted regular events across the country to enhance our visibility, create awareness and generate leads and managed 60 percent growth in revenues. significant among our sign ups last year were those with Sonicwall, BigFix, Aventail and Pointsec.

What are your strategies and plans for business growth in 2006?
We want to exceed from 60 percent growth rate to around 80 percent this year. To help us get there, we would go global and open operations in the SAARC market as a first step. Our Colombo operations are ready to be rolled out soon. We also would look at direct dollar billing option at Dubai and Singapore.

Part of our agenda for 2006 is to help our partners get a better RoI by acquiring new customers for them. We would work along with our partners in business development and provide all required training on pre and post-sales on various solutions so that they can leverage on the available opportunities.

Would you appoint new channel partners to help in the expansion? What criteria are you looking for in the likely
candidates?
We are looking to add around 150 partners into our fold by the end of this year. As far as the criteria to sign up go, we believe that security is a very specialized area and therefore we would need partners who are specialized in selling security solutions.

SUBBALAKSHMI BM

Page(s)   1