ADC Krone is expanding its channel base in the country. The company, which is
on an aggressive growth path, is banking on channels for its success in the
market. It began reaching out to the enterprise channel only last year. While
earlier it was selling directly to the telecom carriers, it is now seeing the
benefit of taking the channel route. The company recently held a series of
channel engagement seminars during which it went all out to educate its partners
on its products and go-to-market strategies. And it promises that the channel
can expect a lot more from the company over time.
“This year, our channel base would be increased from the present 250 to 300
and both, metro and upcountry would be our focus in the current channel drive,”
said Sony Bhandwalkar, Marketing Manager, ADC Krone.
The company recently bagged a major campus networking order from TCS, for its
facility in Siruseri, Chennai. This campus would house over 30,000 people and is
the second largest facility of its kind, after the one owned by Microsoft in
Seattle. ADC Krone conducted a seven-city roadshow across the country to educate
its channel partners on its latest offering and trends in the industry.
Betting on IP convergence
With the emergence of IP convergence, ADC Krone is betting big on its
structured cabling solutions and sees a huge opportunity in the market. The
company is targeting IT, ITeS, BPO, education, BFSI, defense, government and
manufacturing sectors, among others. It is especially gung-ho about the latent
opportunities in datacenters.
At the channel event in Chennai, Bhandalkar pointed out, “The datacenter
market is growing exponentially and companies need more robust solutions. Though
cabling constitutes only two percent of the total IT spend/budget in the
company.”
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Dilip Kumar, Product Manager, ADC Krone, giving a presentation to channel partners during the event held in Kolkata |
Participating partners had varied queries regarding the products from ADC
Krone and also ways by which they can better implement and manage their customer
datacenter and LAN networks. However, most partners shared a consensus on the
fact that to a large extent ADC Krone products were cost-effective and had an
edge over competitions.
Better understanding
Speaking to DQChannels, Debashis Mallik of Netwings, one of the participants
during the Kolkata roadshow said, “The presentation helped us to brush up our
knowledge base. It helped us to learn more about latest products and solutions
available with the ADC portfolio.”
Navin Jacob Mathew, Sales Director, Enterprise Networks India, Krone
Communication said that the main objective of the roadshow was to understand the
channels expectations from ADC and then to fulfill. He stated, “What partners do
is that they convince customers to go for certain solutions depending on their
budget. Whereas networking infrastructure is a one-time investment where quality
and not price should be given priority. Through this workshop, we are trying to
educate our partners about the importance of providing best solution that gives
contentment to customers in real sense.”
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Kumar giving a demo of the products to channel partners in Bangalore |
One of the attending partners appreciating this gesture from ADC said, “This
is the first time that ADC Krone is interacting with partners on an extensive
scale. It gives us a sense of importance when a vendor comes to partners
directly and exchanges projects and plans. Moreover, it also gives us an
opportunity to know about the company with which we are dealing. We are
expecting such workshops to be organized regularly.”
Getting technical
Focused training on technical areas, segmented technical sessions, more
knowledge on technology aspects and participant-tailored language were some of
the suggestions that trickled down from channel participants at the ADC Krone
meet in Pune.
Balaji Iyer, a system integrator , felt that the language and presentation
mode at the event was very high-end which did not suit a majority of
participants who were from lower tiers. “That explains why there were no
questions from the audience. They were stifled at the perceived gap and thought
it would be dumb to ask questions from people who stand on a much higher
pedestal. And even if they asked, they could have been given some jargon-packed
answers,” he complained.
Channel Incentive Program |
eSys Information Technology has launched a channel incentive program for ADC Krone in A-class cities where they have to bring leads and take away cash for each lead. Leads are divided into three slabs: Rs 5-10 lakh, Rs 10-20 lakh, Rs 20 lakh and above. Incentives for these have been fixed at Rs 250, Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 respectively. Partners expressed that |
Another participant, Vijaykumar Kothalikar from Avi Electronics and Networks
found the topic of intelligent networking very interesting besides the other
sessions that he felt were informative as well.
On the business side however, Kothalikar remarked that the company has to
shorten its delivery period. “At times, opportunities are built but
lost and shifted to another brand when a panic situation sets up. While
technologically, ADC could be better, but given the pressing project times, one
has to go to D-Link where availability is not an issue. ADC Krone misses out on
the link between active delivery and order placements,” he noted.
In a presentation given by Neeraj Lijhara, National Channel Manager, ADC
Krone, the channel in Mumbai were informed about the three training programs
that the vendor is currently pursuing, viz, master installation training,
physical layer management training, and datacenter training. partners would be
awarded a certificate on successful completion of ADC Krone training program.
Bhandwalkar from ADC Krone was upbeat about further channel expansions in
India. “The year 2007 has a expansion focus for us. We would dig deeper in the
channel breadth and depth with more A and B-class cities,” she claimed.
Inputs from Amrita Tejasvi,
S Gopikrishna, Piyali Guha, Pratima Harigunani, Subbalakshmi BM