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India is one of Quantum's two fastest growing markets in Asia-Pacific and a
very competitive market as well. Steve Dalton claimed that over time his company
has successfully sold everything from SMB entry-level solutions to its largest
solutions for India's largest commercial and government institutions, which
underlines the tremendous potential of the country
What are some of the plans on Quantum's anvil for the Indian market?
India is of prime importance to Quantum and we will continue to invest in
the country. We are currently recruiting sales, marketing, and service
professionals in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Our biggest
investment in India so far has been the establishment of Quantum India
Development Center (QIDC) in Hyderabad. We currently have 17 engineers on board
and will gradually recruit about 75 more within 18 months and this will
represent a $10 million investment for Quantum.
What are the storage industry trends worldwide? How different is it in
India?
Backup to disk is growing at over 100 percent CAGR globally. Data
de-duplication such as the Quantum patented technology found in our DXi and
StorNext solutions is going to accelerate that even more. The role of tape is
changing from a backup target to an archive target.
In tape automation, the midrange solutions are growing while the other areas
are flat or slightly declining. LTO-4 is becoming the standard tape choice.
These are all global trends and it is more or less the scenario in India as
well.
Data growth averages 50 to 100 percent per year for organizations. This
creates a large demand for experts who can help a company not only protect its
valuable data but to retrieve it as required. This is where Quantum can help.
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Steve Dalton
Senior VP-Engineering, Quantum Corporation |
How do you see continued proliferation of data impacting Indian companies?
Data requirements in India are constantly increasing with new breeds of
applications. In the recent past, the storage industry has witnessed a rapid
growth in application domains like billing, banking (core, trade and the
Internet), e-Biz, and e-Governance, along with customer care applications.
Companies in all verticals like telecom, banking, financial services and
insurance, manufacturing, and the emerging ITeS sector largely depends on data
storage and retrieval, which is really a critical issues. These issues are
driving the growth of networked storage industry.
India needs a very large number of storage networking professional to meet up
the requirements of the industry. Tape storage is a very real part of most
datacenters and is hailed as the greenest storage technology available.
According to the IDC Asia-Pacific estimates, Indian disk storage systems are
growing at 67.5 percent CAGR from four pet bytes in 2003 to 52.7 pet bytes in
2008. Overall storage market is growing at over 17 percent per year, and the
storage software market, at 33 percent per year.
What is Quantum's USP?
We see ourselves as the backup, recovery, and archive specialists. Unlike
other companies that do many things, but perhaps not very well, we are experts
in data protection. This is borne out by IDC reports showing that we are the
world leader in tape automation.
Since 2002 we have used our leadership position to also be a pioneer in
disk-based backup such as our DXi-Series of appliances, which included our
patented data de-duplication software layer.
Have you created these products keeping in mind the Indian customers?
We design our solutions to be global in nature. We are often asked if India
is a step behind other markets. We don't see India that way. India is one of our
two fastest growing markets
in Asia-Pacific and a very competitive market as well. We established a sales
office in Bangalore some years back. In that time we have a proven record of
success selling everything from SMB entry-level solutions to our largest
solutions for India's largest commercial and government institutions.
What prompted the setting up of a development center in India?
The primary reason behind setting up a development center was to tap the
highly skilled pool of engineers to allow Quantum to accelerate development. The
Quantum India Development Center engineers will work side by side with our
engineers in the US and Australia.
What are some of the challenges of operating in the Indian market?
Quantum does not see the Indian market as being significantly different
from other markets. Like any other market, when a company like Quantum wants to
invest quickly to grow quickly it can be challenging, albeit a fun challenge!
What according to you is the future of tape storage?
With the advent of backup to disk appliances the role of tape is changing
from one of a backup target to one as an archive target. Tape has several
distinct advantages over disk: cost per gigabyte, removability, and longevity
(30 years shelf life).
Companies are also starting to examine the total cost of ownership. Unlike
disk, tape does not need much power or cooling. It can sit dormant until needed
and reside in normal room temperatures.
How is your Indian channel strategy different from the global one?
Quantum uses the same go-to-market structure globally. We have always been
highly regarded for choosing to be a channels-based company. Our award-winning
channel program, Quantum Alliance, is in its seventh year.
The focus of this program is simple: helping our channel partners maximize
their sales of Quantum backup, recovery, and archive solutions.
What kind of customers are you working with through your channel in India?
Quantum has recently expanded our midrange and enterprise offerings such as
our Scalar 50 and i500 tape libraries as well as disk-based backup appliances
with built-in data de-duplication.
What about the support infrastructure?
Quantum has built-in technology like StorageCare Guardian that can alert
customers (and Quantum if the customer chooses) before a service call is needed
so as to prevent downtime. But if one is needed, Quantum operates a 24x7 call
center.
If an issue cannot be fixed remotely then Quantum offers various levels of
onsite support including 7x24x4 (4-hour response time all day, every day). In
the QIDC, we create all types of software development in tandem with our other
development centers and all of our software layers and software applications are
the products that would be developed and the technologies that would be used to
develop these products at QIDC.
Pooja Sharma
poojas@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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