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Aiming for the cloud

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Avishek
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The emergence of cloud initiated a long-drawn debate between the cloud developers and the solution providers (SPs) with the latter pessimistic about cloud bringing the integration business to an end. The concept, however, was not withheld by the cloud developers. Instead, these developers urged the SPs to gear up for the massive business prospects that cloud was deemed to bring forth, and upgrade their capabilities. Although, major developers like VMware, HP, Brocade, and Microsoft tried to develop their cloud business on the channels line, the SP community at first seemed unprepared and hostile to the change. In that backdrop, since 2008, SPs have come a long way, with some of them braving to take up cloud as a feasible business alternative to services like desktop management, data center deployments, managed services, SaaS and other relative concepts.

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According to QuantM Net Technologies, one of the leading cloud players in India, worldwide revenue from public IT cloud services exceeded $16 bn in 2009, and is forecast to reach $55.5 bn in 2014, representing a CAGR of 27.4%. This rapid growth rate is more than 5 times the projected rate of growth for traditional IT products (5%). The research further illustrates that public IT cloud services are crossing the chasm with modest revenue, but at a very fast growth.

This very fact opens up an entirely rejuvenated and bifurcated business line for the traditional mode of solutions and integration, and some major SPs are looking at it as the most beneficial of all business prospects.

Cloud is poised to play an integral part of solutions business, and SPs have geared up to adopt the process of cloud integration. DQ Channels looks at how some major cloud players have garnered their business prospects, and how cloud is going to emerge as a lucrative prospect for these companies.

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1- Jayessh Mehta, MD, Future Business Tech

The company wasn't majorly into cloud computing till recently with the segment occupying the lowest revenue earner for the company. The figure for cloud computing was as low as Rs 7 crore in 2011, accounting for just 1% of the aggregate topline.

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However, things for Future Business Tech are changing and the company is gearing up its portfolio to emerge as a leading private cloud player in its area of operations. The company has a team of 4 personnel dedicated to cloud computing, which is likely to increase to at least 11 by the end of 2012, as a result of its changing focus.

According to Jayessh Mehta, MD, Future Business Tech, cloud is still an emerging concept, with the SMBs and SMEs still skeptical about the usage or benefits of cloud. A single error or strike on the public server at an unwarranted level may jeopardize entire operations and security of an SME, if it doesn't have a proper attack repelling mechanism in place. Further, the concept of cloud, although quite popular with the enterprise may take time to get familiarize in the SME segment. Given the scenario, Future Business Tech has closed 2 deals recently in the private cloud domain and is enthusiastic about finalizing another 18 deals by 2012.

With the rising focus over cloud, the company is yet to lay down a dedicated business plan for this segment, which is likely to come up by March, 2012. Being a TCS iON partner and a CMS partner for HP, Future Business Tech will be focusing more on the latter, and is likely to come up with a CoE for CMS and HP by the end of March.

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In terms of verticals, its core areas have always been manufacturing and ITeS, and is likely to remain constant throughout the next fiscal. As a business priority, the company will also be focusing solely on private cloud and Mehta is of the opinion that by the end of 2012, private cloud will outperform public cloud in the mid-market space.

With a growth of merely Rs 2 crore in FY11, the company has done projects catering to SMBs after foraying into new solutions such as infrastructure-as-a-service. It is also planning to venture into mobility solutions as an offering from the next fiscal, and is also working on the tie-ups for this venture. Besides catering predominantly to the SMB sector, the company did some business in the public sector amounting

Rs 2.4 crore in infrastructure deployments.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Technical skill; specialized focus area

Weakness: Geographical reach, lack of verticals, lack of definitive business plan

Opportunity: SMEs in Bengaluru may adopt specialized private cloud packages given the adequate understanding of the long-term benefits

Threats: Capex, overlap of verticals with public cloud

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2- Suresh Ramani, director, Techgyan

Essentially known as a strong Microsoft player, Techgyan's core focus on cloud has been over the public variant. In its collaboration with the major cloud vendor, the company is offering Microsoft 365 on the cloud platform and it recently added Windows InTune to the cloud portfolio.

In the Office 365 kitty, Techgyan is working on MS Exchange, Lync and Sharepoint across domains as well as offering Windows 7 on rent. Also, amidst its cloud services range, InTune is lined to cater as a PC security and management solution.

For Techgyan, public cloud is the sole focus area and it comprises 15% of the total revenue till Q3 last fiscal. However, Suresh Ramani, director, Techgyan is optimistic of raising it to 25% of the aggregate revenue by the end of FY 13.

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According to Ramani, public cloud is the sole variant of the concept, and the private cloud sold in majority do encompasses virtualization in a repackaged mode. So far, the company seems to be least interested in focusing over this. Although, one of its key strengths has been cloud computing, it also offers solutions to its clients in a holistic manner, like complementing cloud solutions with managed services or others.

As per the rate card, the company is charging nominally to its customers both for data migration as well as mailbox maintenance, and is generating more than Rs 1.4 lakh business for Microsoft every month in the Office 365 portfolio only.

Further, as a value addition and an innovative marketing approach, Techgyan has made tech know-how video clips on cloud computing accessible on YouTube as well as on the company's website. This move, according to Ramani, has induced a uniform procedure for his sales team and is saving time as the potential client now won't be needing any sales presentation to get to know about cloud computing.

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Among its key verticals, the company has BFSI, manufacturing and media companies in its radar and is expected to maintain its vertical concentration. As per its future plans, Techgyan is keeping its options open for cloud partnerships with other vendors specifically for disaster recovery solutions, cloud based CRM application, and would also strengthen its InTune business unit.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Strong Microsoft player

Weakness: Lack of big client accounts

Opportunity: SMB and SME adoption of cloud

Threat: Cloud security perception may deter adoption

 

3- Paresh Shah, director, Allied Digital

For global players like Allied Digital, cloud services have been churning at least Rs 69 crore to its gross aggregated revenue from the last fiscal. The unique aspect of this company is that it offered cloud based services first in the US, before coming up with the same in India.

According to Paresh Shah, director, Allied Digital, the company first ventured into the US with the cloud offering just because the country seemed more adaptable to cloud computing than India. After registering four clients in the US and with a Cloud Center of Excellence in California, the company finally ventured into the Indian market targeting BFSI, manufacturing, and retail as its potential clients.

Working completely on the private cloud model, Allied Digital has made an exception among global solution providers, who are considering public cloud to be the future of computing. For India, it has laid down a cloud-specific business plan hovering around forthcoming licenses, tie-ups and enhancing its own cloud based service upgradation.

Not only the company considered cloud as a mere business proposal which can be sold to its clients, but it went a step further and deployed an internal cloud solution too.

The company has already partnered with HP, Cisco, VMware, Red Hat and some others for strengthening its cloud portfolio and may enter into new agreements soon. However, for billing and support aspect of cloud, Allied Digital has its proprietary Integrated Delivery Services Platform which is soon to be upgraded to accommodate cloud in its functionary. At present, the platform supports more than 25 lakh stations globally.

With the UK next into the radar, Allied Digital has already signed up with a partner for expanding its cloud services in that country. Besides, for its plans with cloud, the company will be shortly conducting an event with its potential client base to explain its cloud offerings and the relative benefits. Further, by the end of FY 12, Allied Digital's Cloud CoE will be fully operational in Mumbai.

The company is built on the philosophy of 3S, viz, smart people, smart processes and smart technology, providing a strong foundation for a best-in-class Integrated Service Delivery Framework which consistently augments its overall value creation proposition to its clients.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths: Well known and reputed global SP

Weakness: Late entry into the Indian market

Opportunities: Single concentration over private cloud; rich client database

Threats: Competition from tier-1 SPs and public cloud players

 

4- Anil Kumar, director, Dhanush Infosol

Experience with public cloud hasn't been pretty good for Dhanush Infosol (DIPL), which registered negligible implementations with TCS iON. Over this partnership, the company took a back seat compared to other public cloud players where Microsoft partners so far have done the best job. However, the company did well over the private cloud portfolio with VMware deploying numerous projects across the SMB segment including RV College.

Projects for DIPL in the private cloud segment encompassed a holistic approach with the SP garnering around 25% of its aggregate revenue from deployments in the stand alone private cloud segment. Projects ranged from server and desktop consolidation to management, virtualization and threat management to maintenance.

Experiencing good traction in its private cloud business with VMware, DIPL has chalked out a definitive business plan for this segment and is considering for new tie-ups with other vendors for the public cloud business. According to Anil Kumar, director, Dhanush Infosol, cloud is poised to feature as one of the key technologies of future, and SMBs will ultimately go for cloud based solutions. With such predictions in mind, Kumar is keen to raise the share of cloud business in his organization to at least 35% in this fiscal.

Although, business from private cloud accounted nearly Rs 1.2 crore of the gross turnover of the company, DIPL is a company to watch for in 2012, as DIPL is considering a vertical expansion spree besides looking for new tie-ups in the public cloud segment.

As part of the corporate strategy, DIPL is poised to focus on the global market to achieve international foot print in terms of specialized services and outsourcing, besides considering acquisitions and expansions. As part of the company's initiative towards new opportunities, development and growth, it is considering new strategic business alliance with the target of maximizing long-term value for existing business. Also, diversification of the solutions and key offerings is another priority for the company.

According to Kumar, DIPL's primary emphasis is offering its services for installation, servicing and support of computer networks, network servers, and workstations. Adopting a holistic approach, post-installation, the company also provides professional support on site and remotely.

 

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Strong consultancy services

Weakness: Failed to garner business from public cloud; highly dependent over partnerships

Opportunity: Newer avenues with the SMBs

Threat: Cap-ex factor

 

5- Uttam Majumdar, director, Locuz

When it comes to solutions and consultancy, Locuz is another frontrunner in bringing cloud solutions own its own, apart from focusing on traditional partnerships.

Although, the company started off with its cloud venture very late, it is garnering about 5% of its aggregate revenue. Its own stack for private cloud solution is poised to bring in at least 25% more revenue contribution to its top line in this fiscal.

According to Uttam Majumdar, director, Locuz, it took about 1-year for the company to come up with the stack. The stack, besides cutting across different bases and portals will provide orchestration, application virtualization, host desktop services and application management in addition to its regular feature of integrated services.

The stack is expected to be rolled out soon and Majumdar has set a target of implementing at least 100 stacks in 2012. Planning for a rather ambitious project with cloud computing, Locuz has a specialized business unit comprising 6 engineers and 12 consultants and on-field personnel and so far, the company has one of the largest teams among the tier-2 SPs.

Locuz has always focused on private cloud limiting itself to specific verticals and bases. This way it has developed specialization in consultancy and implementations for its focused verticals. The main customers it is catering to are from manufacturing, BFSI and education sectors, and implementations are based on its tie-ups with Cisco, NetApp, Citrix and others.

However, as a business strategy, Locuz is sure to move ahead with its own stack besides performing its regular application and desktop integration implementations.

As a marketing strategy, Locuz has already initiated in reaching out to its potential customers and searching for the opportunity. However, according to Majumdar, the main problem is educating the customer as related concepts with private cloud often tend to overlap, while some others seem unprecedented.

As part of its mission statement, Locuz has stated to provide business centric IT management services which enable customers in select vertical industries to take full advantage of IT as a service that is well aligned to their business goals.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Traditionally large player

Weakness: Its own stack will conflict with vendor partnerships in terms of monetary targets

Opportunities: Large scale data center transformation and data migration projects

Threats: Commercial hitch, non-steady marketing efforts

 

6- JB Hooda, CEO, Progression Infonet

Working both in the private as well as public cloud space, Progression Infonet (PIPL) has already garnered about Rs 20 crore from cloud business. Although, cloud services started late in the Indian scenario, PIPL was quick enough to venture forth for the opportunity in not just offering consultancy and deployment services for cloud computing, but came up with its own data center in Gurgaon catering to 450 servers. With its private cloud offerings, it has partnerships with VMware and HP.

In its cloud portfolio, PIPL has distinctively 2 lines of business-consultancy and deployments-for private clouds and cloud based application services including PaaS, IaaS and SaaS hosted in the public cloud variety. Private cloud accounts for 13% of the cloud revenue pie with an even contribution from the application services.

According to JB Hooda, CEO, Progression Infonet, cloud solutions are now emerging as a preferred choice from segments. While in 2008, the theory did not find much traction with security concerns being one of them.

The company in its cloud portfolio has also included cloud security solutions too encompassing server access, firewall, virtual access, physical level of security and other services.

In terms of its customers and verticals, the company has opted to completely focus on the SME and has strictly excluded SMB and enterprises from its targeted segment. It is focusing exclusively over business critical services.

The company is planning to focus on cloud services and solutions in 2012 and has extensive plans in place. According to Hooda, the company will be increasing its data center capacity to cater to 5,000 nodes implying a contribution of at least Rs 15 crore for public cloud revenues in the next fiscal. With its private cloud concentration, it is targeting Rs 25 crore which is likely to come in from consultancy services and deployments.

Progression Infonet was incorporated in 1995 with the vision to provide and optimize IT computing infrastructure. As for the mission statement, the company has laid down its objective to build a globally admired technology powerhouse with a human and ethical face, committed to the growth and prosperity of its customers, employees and society at large.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Large customer database

Weakness: Capital and financial resources

Opportunity: Growing cloud adaptability

Threat: Growing competition in the cloud market

7- Anurag Shah, COO and head, global operations, Omnitech InfoSolutions

Specific to its business strategy, Omnitech is aiming to position itself as a cloud integrator and has a separate unit ‘BTU' (business transformation unit) which, according to the company, will enable customers to work with its existing capabilities and take them on cloud. Although revenue earnings for the company from cloud is not significant at present, Anurag Shah, COO and head, global operations, Omnitech InfoSolutions is optimistic about the forthcoming opportunities and the gradual adaptability of cloud and is aiming for about 20% top line contribution in the next fiscal.

In its business plans, Omnitech is targeting both emerging enterprises and large established enterprises defocusing on the SMB opportunity altogether. However, as of now, it has harnessed over the opportunities in the emerging enterprises only.

From Omnitech's perspective, cloud is one of the most efficient IT service delivery model where various service deliverables can be converged on a single platform to offer customer availability service levels at business function level. Shah sees this as a tipping point of technology convergence, aimed to create incredible value for customer and long lasting relationships. As a result, Omnitech is strongly focusing on launching new cloud services and is also planning to refine its current services bundled with cloud benefits.

As part of its cloud portfolio, the company has recently launched REVIVE, a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) under its cloud offerings. This initial cloud service offers cost benefit in the range of 30-40% on y-o-y basis over traditional DR model. Apart from cost benefits, it delivers all the value propositions that any cloud offerings would offer like pay-for-use, higher scalability and others.

According to Shah, since the solution approach follows an analysis and customized delivery, there is no standard pricing for Omnitech's cloud offerings. However by using cloud technology, he said, companies are able to reduce their costs ranging from 30-40% based on the solution opted for.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths: Uniquely positioned to be a Cloud Integrator and offers a vendor neutral go-to-cloud model to the customers.

Weakness: Not into traditional IaaS

Opportunity: Solution suite tailored for enterprise needs

Threat: Expected entry of various MNC players in the domestic market adding to the competition from local, regional and other global players

8- Pawan Khurana, CEO, QuantM Net Technologies

QuantM Net Technologies has been the DQ Channels' solution champ for cloud solutions for 2011. This necessarily, does not mean that the bulk of its revenue or services accounts comes from cloud solutions; instead only 16% of the aggregated turnover in this fiscal has accounted from its cloud offerings. For Pawan Khurana, CEO, QuantM Net, the company has opportunities in the cloud in various ways, whether through consulting, implementation or traditional reselling.

In terms of its cloud portfolio, it has private cloud solutions from its data center like ERP, BI, CRM and other business Apps. It also hosts applications from its ISP partners and has 3rd party package services. However, it has its own cloud offerings like business continuity services in cloud, back up as a service, IaaS, backed by on-demand DR as primary sources

The company will be tying up with value-added developers (VADs), and become a new breed of cloud SP to hit the market that will make the cloud easier and make it do more. The majority of VADs are start ups that offer some form of service to ease moving Apps into the cloud or offering a different service around the cloud.

Some of the offerings envisaged are joint initiatives with some ISVs to roll out their applications on Qloud. On-premise enterprise software vendors will make a push for an off-premise cloud that would mimic the behavior of a private cloud.

According to Khurana, this will essentially be a packaging exercise to sell more on-premise software bundled with hardware on hosted model. This flavor of cloud will promise the cloud benefits delivered to a customer's door such as pre-configured settings, improved life cycle, and black-box appliance.

The company has a dedicated cloud team consisting system architects, delivery team, marketing and sales team which integrates with the SI team of QuantM.

QuantM has also invested in a dedicated facility for Qloud computing by introducing India's first carrier neutral data center by a tier-2 SI. QuantM's new data center-Citadel-focuses on cloud computing and will help its clients to take full advantage of integrating cloud computing into their IT and business strategy.

For the company, cloud computing is critically important for two key reasons, viz, market growth and leadership disruption. The cloud model will propel IT market growth and expansion for the next 20 years and will help the industry to rapidly penetrate SMBs. As this happens, industry leadership ranks will certainly change. Additionally, with many CIOs planning for adopting cloud computing shows that IT customers are excited about the cost and agility advantages of cloud computing.

The company plans to leverage the fast developing cloud computing market that has the potential to create significant value for customers in terms of scale, flexibility, reducing time to market, environmental efficiency and given the economic climate, perhaps the most important feature of reduced capital expenditure.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Established cloud player with integrated service offerings

Weakness: Vertical assimilation of target industries and sectors

Opportunity: Tie-ups with vendors may boost integrated service offerings and adaptability

Threat: Growing competition from large scale cloud developers and integrators

9- S Sriram, CEO, iValue InfoSolution

Essentially a government player in the cloud segment, iValue InfoSolution has always focused on this segment, since its inception in the cloud space, which according to S Sriram, CEO, iValue InfoSolution, is giving ‘good results' to the SP. However, in terms of its earnings, the BFSI vertical still tops the cloud charts.

According to Sriram, in a matter of 3 years, the market has started to look at cloud as one of the most viable IT opportunities and essential for business functionality. Private cloud, of course, has been the pioneer for the company in this aspect with a variety of cloud registering the first adoption at the enterprise space and is still continuing to show impressive growth. However, for the company, public cloud adoption by SMB and SME is gaining traction gradually.

Under its business strategy, the company has initiated multiple telco/ISP/MSP pilots and partnerships to address SME/SMB public cloud needs through an ‘aggregator of cloud' services approach through channel focused teams. Besides, it has specialized cloud teams at each of its locations to drive private cloud business.

iValue InfoSolution has relevant and compelling offerings for state data centers to SME's needs on cloud and traditional models in the data, network and application management area. It has also partnered with NSI/RSI and LSI along with telco/MSP/ISP partnership to meet different customer segments. Close to 35% of its revenues come from data center solutions used as private or public cloud.

Further, opting for a customer centric approach, the company has created a Value Maximizing Services (VMS) team focused on consultative sale of emerging technologies which is proven in developed markets and compelling to its geographies. The company uses Customer-Life Cycle Adoption framework to suggest right offering at the right stage to each of its customer based on vertical and size.

Another Value Added Services (VAS) team is focused on offering consulting, auditing, compliance, design and deployment across digital asset protection and management areas.

For its mission and vision statement, the company wants to bank upon ‘intelligent information' mostly in form of ‘digital assets' (as coined by company) to protect, comply and grow its client's business. For the vision part, it is maximizing value of technology investments, in line with business benefits, for its customers.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Multiple domain player

Weakness: Dependent on OEM partnerships

Opportunity: Increase in awareness about public cloud

Threat: Big players and SPs are developing own cloud solutions

 

10- Sudarsan Ranganathan, CEO, Veeras Infotek

Marking a clear cut division between cloud reselling and deploying, Veeras Infotek has a list of impressive cloud partnerships. Offering Office 365 on cloud from Microsoft, it is also a VMware partner, a Netcore implementer besides being a Symantec SP.

The company has a complete list of cloud services and not just a focus area like platform services or limited to application management; the reason behind this is its strong partnerships.

The percentage of cloud services including virtualization, private cloud and reselling cloud services accounts for 24% of its overall revenues.

Having started the cloud business recently, Sudarsan Ranganathan, CEO, Veeras Infotek is of the view that it is only recently that he is witnessing a good demand for cloud in the market; which otherwise would resort to data protection and security lapse prevention techniques.

In its range of services, the company provides hosted email solutions, Office suites and desktop variations. On the security front, Veeras Infotek is well equipped to handle data concerns with Symantec.

Like most other companies, the company has a dedicated special business unit to handle cloud enquiries and deployments focusing primarily on the enterprise sector in the BFSI and manufacturing verticals.

Veeras Infotek is the only partner in India with all three competencies from VMware winning the Best Solution Provider for VMware for the past 3 years in succession. The company is also the sole partner in India with a virtualization competency in NetApp. It has bagged the largest order in India for VMware as well as the largest Office 365 order in South India for Microsoft. Among other achievements, it has been the Best Partner for South India for Citrix 2011.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Only VMware partner in India with all its three competencies

Weakness: Brand awareness, southern player

Opportunity: Global market expansion

Threat: Diluted partner interaction with customers on cloud services reselling

Epilogue:

Although cloud seems to feature among one of the least priority businesses for some SPs, hardly crossing the 25% revenue share mark, companies are gearing up for a better ‘cloudy tomorrow'. Among these, Visesh Infonetics, a minor player in the cloud space is gearing up for acquiring a cloud developer company and is keen to develop in-house cloud solutions, much to the angst of the tier-1 cloud developers.

However, the focus on cloud is poised to continue and SPs are on roll to develop in-house cloud solutions, the dependency on the tier-1 cloud developers is here to stay, at least for sometime until specialized solutions addressed to horizontal segments turns to reality.

11- Pradeep Rathinam, CEO, Aditi Technologies

Based out of Bengaluru, Aditi Technologies (AT) has pioneered the cloud scenario crossing the international landmark with the acquisition of Cumulux. This acquisition will help the company to offer cloud solutions to customers such as Swiss Bank UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Nomura and Barclays Capital. The acquisition gives the company two very clear advantages in the market. First, it is now positioned as the leader in cloud driven transformation, and second, it gives the company the capability of driving innovations on social, mobile and digital markets.

One of the partners of Microsoft India, the company provides technology consultation and outsourced product development, with core strengths in product conceptualization, design, development, and leverage of emerging technologies in Microsoft and web 2.0 space.

The company enables customers to scale product development capacity, improve R&D economics, and accelerate new technology adoption in ways that enrich product functionality, user experience (UX), and user benefits.

Mainly focussing on BFSI, web start-up companies and independent sosftware vendors (ISV), the company develops new products and enhances existing ones to ISVs, BI suites, enterprise collaborations and enterprise cloud.

In customer base, the company claims to have the world's largest ISV, social gaming company, mobile service provider, investment banking company, insurance company, information services provider, second largest social network and largest book maker.

Betting on the cloud segment, AT is expecting over 50% of its revenue to be generated from its cloud portfolio. Further, the company has not just limited cloud as a solutions option for its customers, but is also doing internal cloud transformation to bring in efficiency.

To increase the speed of adoption of cloud computing, Aditi Technologies will invest $5 mn in Azure Acceleration Lab, an Azure based rapid application development offering. It will also hire around 130 cloud developers to create a cloud services platform.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Strong Microsoft player

Weakness: Weak hardware partnerships

Opportunity: Growing specialty client base

Threat: Increased competition in the global cloud market

 

12- Praveen Dwarkanath, co-founder and director, MN World Enterprise

Having a topline of Rs 30 crore, Bengaluru based MN World Enterprise has many collaborations in place for its cloud offerings. The pack ranges from Checkpoint, Google, VMware, NetApp and climbs up to SonicWall and Cisco.

So far for the company, Google has been the most important client with selling more than 5,000 user accounts for Google Apps.

For its cloud venture, the company recently jumped into this offering as a strategic move while evaluating its existing portfolio and market potentials. The company in its cloud initiative has focused on SaaS implementation for messaging and collaboration.

In the last fiscal, the company has grown by 50% owing to its current focus on cloud computing. However, with the success it has registered on the Google front, the company is now expecting to reiterate another success story with InstaCRM this fiscal with special focus on the SMB front.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths: Key telecom and networking solution player

Weakness: Local presence in Bengaluru and Hyderabad

Opportunity: Networking market growing strong in the region

Threat: Alliances concentrated to limited vendors

 

13- Sanjiv Gupta, chairman, Bodhtree Consulting

Another company with a strong partnership record, Bodhtree Consulting (BC) has grown to nine locations across India. Primarily a Salesforce player, the company has tie-up with Oracle, SAP, Red Hat and Microsoft as well.

True to its allegiance, the company invested into Salesforce creating a team for the vendor's product and solution range. Now, the team comprises 40 members of which 30 are certified by Salesforce. Today, Bodhtree Consulting is a Salesforce select partner.

The success mantra in cloud for the company came in from its entry into new domains. The recognition of being an established IT consultant further added momentum to its new strategy. In its cloud venture, the company offers data management, service-oriented architecture consulting, business intelligence, share point consulting, and product engineering apart from minor consultancy services. In its customer portfolio for cloud, it has 30 regular global customers with a topline of Rs 40 crore.

The company has niche strength in building and managing a business oriented IT environment with rich experience in technology incubation, product engineering, business intelligence, data management, SOA consulting, CRM consulting, analytics, data warehousing, sharepoint consulting. Other offerings comprise customized solutions and services in SOA, BPM, enterprise architecture, offshore advisory services, and e-commerce. Claiming to provide high-end reliable and cost-effective IT services to global organizations, its customer base includes Fortune 500, Fortune 250 and Forbes 200 small companies. The company is in collaboration with well-reputed software vendors of the silicon valley for implementation and development of solutions.

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The company maintains high level of certification for migrating and deploying SaaS applications for Salesforce, Microsoft, and Oracle. The company's proven methodology includes industry's best practices for implementing email, collaboration, customer relationship and service management, and RIM services workloads in the cloud.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Dedicated specialized teams across product segments

Weakness: Focus in 3 key service category areas

Opportunity: Surge in global market

Threat: Capex

14- Manoj K Sharma, CEO, MM9 Information Technologies

MM9 Information Technologies has been one of the earliest adopters of cloud in the tier-2 segment which has put the company at the forefront compared to the current market scenario. Even at a time when the very notion of cloud was still shabby and customers tend to be hostile to cloud adaptability, the company made the strategic move to leap into the cloud domain in the enterprise segment.

Not only did the company limit itself to offer cloud solutions to its customers, it implemented cloud solutions in the internal company framework to understand the cloud transition better.

The advantage with the company was that it was one of the first breed of SPs to offer cloud, MM9 enhanced its relationship with Netmagic, Microsoft, VMware and others during the initial phase after which it entered into a new partnership with TCS for iOn solutions.

After the iOn sign-up, the company now has 2 routes to offer cloud service, viz, plain vanilla cloud from TCS and application based cloud from Netmagic. Its key partners include HP, Cisco, Cyberoam, Microsoft, Netmagic and TCS with the company offering cloud solutions in security, storage and servers as well.

Although servers and connectivity solutions remains on top, security and storage solutions have been another key revenue generators for the company. Apart from its focus on solutions and the cloud segment, the company is also an HP partner for consumables and printer range.

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Additionally, the company is targeting SMB customers to offer cloud services. Apparently, a major chunk of the company's revenue comes from the SMB segment. The company is also able to better understand the requirements of SMBs and hence better positioned to offer flexible solutions from its product portfolio. It further believes that SMB customers offer greater potential for repeat business vis-à-vis the traditional enterprise customers. Commitment to customers, commitment to suppliers and team spirit are the most important values that form the foundation of MM9.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Wide selection of vendor partnerships

Weakness: Growing competition in consumer segment

Opportunity: Growing client base especially in enterprise segment

Threat: Non-proliferation in cloud segment could underplay its cloud focus

 

15- Neeraj Mediratta, CEO, Ace Data

When it comes to public cloud, Ace Data has been a late entrant in this space with the company started focusing on cloud portfolio for the past 4 months. While private cloud in terms of virtualization has been consistent with the company, back-up solutions over cloud has been its forte.

Private cloud accounts for about 20% of the company's aggregate turnover with the solution list mostly centered on telecom and manufacturing clients. However, Backup Vault is the prime offering for the company.

Ace Data claims Backup Vault to be unique in its own respect in India amidst cloud back-up solutions. It is a cloud optimized architecture which concerns the users in terms of bandwidth utilization, data security and recovery. The module helps import initial backups manually and subsequent backups de-duplicated and compressed locally before moving on the cloud. Bandwidth can be throttled for backups and recovery. Data is encrypted in-flight when it leaves the source system and reaches the cloud infrastructure. The encryption keys are unique for each setup with the last aspect of data backed up locally can be recovered locally. For larger recoveries, data can be recovered on premise from its data center and shipped to the local site avoiding bandwidth usage for recoveries.

Backup Vault is going to be the prime consideration for the company in this fiscal and at least Rs 4.5 crore are expected to be generated from this sector. The integration of public cloud to the overall portfolio is expected to bring in a sweeping change in the company's revenue structure.

Ace Data has been consistent in maintaining partnership with important cloud enablers like HP, EMC, Brocade and NetApp.

With SMEs poised to drive cloud growth in the short run, Ace Data will be focusing strongly in this segment. Although, according to Mediratta, it will take at least another 2 years for cloud to become popular in the mid-low market segment. As for its cloud focus, the company is already into aggressive marketing mode with a recent event which was organized in Bengaluru and other such events are poised to follow shortly.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Large format client player with 12 years of industry presence

Weakness: Growing clientele focus from large cloud players

Opportunity: Large market canvas once cloud acceptability increases

Threat: Vendors can overplay potential leads

16- Rahul Swarup, MD and CEO, GoIP Global Services

GO IP Global Services, a Delhi based IT solution and services provider, is striving to make big in the cloud services domain. Though the company has just forayed into this space by setting up the platform this quarter, it is quite bullish about the whole cloud ecosystem.

The three key cloud offerings of the company include standard Infrastructure-as-a-Service, wherein it provides virtual machines and servers to its customers that are compatible with both Linux as well as Windows OS. Secondly, GoIP is looking at providing Platform-as-a-Service which is focused on VAS operators. And the third offering is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) where it will provide services to verticals like healthcare, retail and education.

According to Rahul Swarup, MD and CEO, GoIP Global Services, in SaaS space, GoIP will align its services with software service providers which will provide the domain knowledge, then the company will take these services to the customers at large through its service partners.

In this endeavor, the company had also announced a public cloud infrastructure for SMB customers in India that will be built in technology partnership with Dell. The cloud services to be offered by GoIP will be based on Dell's 11th Generation PowerEdge Blade Servers, Dell Force 10 Switches and Dell EqualLogic and Dell Compellent Storage Arrays, all deployed in a high availability mode.

In the first phase, the services will be rolled out in the 1st quarter of this year from GoIP's Global Managed Services Center in Noida with more centers coming up in near future.

The company has also announced its Cloud's Ubiquitous Service Partner (CUSP) program, where it intends to leverage its more than 500 channel partners to jointly address the ever growing needs of SMB customers in India.

GoIP will jointly work with and through its channel partners to deploy and support its cloud based services.

The company intends to traverse the learning curve of the cloud based services along with its channel partners and continuously empower them to create the first-of-its-kind knowledge based partnership in the emerging space of cloud computing.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths: Good understanding of the environment and right DNA of service delivery

Weakness: Identifying sweet spots will definitely be a challenge

Opportunities: Both customer buying and OEM's selling pattern have changed with more on demand and pay-per-use model being adopted

Threat: A large global player foraying in to the company's domain might be a threat

 

17- Ravi Verdes, MD, Frontier Business Systems

Bengaluru based Frontier Business Systems has emerged as one of the strong cloud service providers in the country. This is supported by the fact that TCS has chosen the company as one of the Cloud Service Partners (CSP) for its ‘iON', a fully integrated SMB service solution. So far, Frontier has managed to clinch 15 clients for TCS iON. And though majority of these clients are based out of Bengaluru, it has few clients in Chennai and Kerala as well.

Apparently, in the last fiscal, the company managed to clock almost 100% growth in its cloud computing related initiatives. Frontier has also been actively participating in the TCS SMB CSP Enablement Program, which is designed for CSPs who are looking to add TCS SMB cloud service products to their vertical or specific solution offerings.

By deploying iON at the clients' end, the company has been quite successful in addressing the entire spectrum of its customers' technology needs, which range from business solutions like HR, finance, inventory, sophisticated domain based ERP solutions to basic applications like email, document management, and website services.

The company, however, believes that there are a lot of challenges in terms of sales, as the implementation part takes time. According to Verdes, these delays sometimes slow down the sales process. It still remains a sale concept because the number of implementations gone live still takes time. On the other hand, the SMB segment in India can use the power of cloud services to build their business advantage and compete on the global stage.

Today, Frontier is actively working towards shifting its focus on cloud services, as it believes in staying relevant to its customers at all times. In this endeavor, the company has been actively looking at what it needs to do different and what would differentiate it as an organization.

Nonetheless, the company is scaling its competence to offer data center design, build cloud services and total transformation outsourcing services. It is focused on consolidating its presence in the West India market and will also expand its overseas service business.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: iON has done lot of business from completely new market

Weakness: The target segment is not very well organized

Opportunity: In expanding across key geographies, the company will start operations in Mumbai

Threat: Market is different and not very IT savvy

18- Ganesh Mahabala, senior VP, Valuepoint Systems

For Bengaluru based Valuepoint Systems, cloud has bought in new ways of doing business and service. The company believes that as a solution provider, cloud has helped it to truly position itself as a partner to ‘journey to the cloud'. Today, the company is seen as one of the major cloud service partners for TCS iON.

In fact, by offering a whole stack of cloud services to its customers, the company has been able to migrate itself from VAR and SI status to the next stage as cloud solution provider (CSP). The company, moreover, believes that this needs a true experience of being a VAR or SI to be able to provide a valid cloud solution to its customers.

According to Ganesh Mahabala, senior VP, Valuepoint Systems, an experienced CSP will be the best choice as adviser and companion for customers' journey to the cloud. It is strongly believed that customers will be ready to pay good amount to make right choice of solution to this new wave of computing and IT infrastructure solution and services.

Through assessment, design, architecture, solution, implementation, migration, cloud management and monitoring services, the company has been able to garner more revenue in this space.

Its cloud service offerings cut across various layers. Its portfolio of cloud services include:

Cloud Discovery and Journey Services: It helps customers in identifying and assessing opportunities to move on to a cloud environment in order to gain significant business benefits. Provide consulting services such as Cloud Discovery and Journey services help customers adopt the right set of cloud services systematically and profitably.

Private Cloud Services: The company has experience in infrastructure virtualization, data center and migration services to provide implementation and migration to customers from existing environments to a private cloud environment.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Rich experience in end-to-end infrastructure solutions

Weakness: Defining the right business model and identifying hotspots is a challenge

Opportunity: Money to be made in both public and private cloud depending on the business model to support it

Threat: Rising penetration of big players in the SMB segment

19- Edward Jeevan, director, Binary Systems

Although, cloud hasn't been a significant revenue puller for Binary Systems (BS), contributing just 4% of the annual turnover. However, the experience with cloud has been beneficial for the company.

The company started its journey into the cloud space one and a half years back with a TCL partnership, which was further augmented by the inclusion of TCS iON and IBM into the cloud vertical.

TCS iON has been particularly advantageous for the company with the portfolio contributing significant cloud deployments. The company offers a holistic range of cloud services starting with private cloud over IBM to the public variant inclusive of the hybrid model.

According to Edward Jeevan, director, BS, even though cloud is the buzzword around the SP community, the concept isn't taking off effectively in monetary terms as cloud based models are confined to the pay-per-use structure. It will take at least 3 years for the concept to evolve and mature with SMBs poised to lead the way.

The SMBs account as the largest contributors to cloud deployments in terms of numbers, although the enterprise segment still holds its 'numero uno' position in monetary terms. Last year, BS undertook an ERP implementation and migration project which it converted to a cloud lead. It happened with a pharmaceutical company which on the process of ERP implementation opted to go for the cloud model. In another instance, BS transformed an entire IT infrastructure on the cloud platform for a manufacturing company.

Although, these implementations so far haven't been huge revenue generators and the first project is contributing a meager Rs 20.2 lakh topline to BS, the ongoing interest in cloud is what BS is eyeing for.

Recently, it bagged a cloud implementation project from a college for campus management solution, whereby it will cater to the entire records, induction as well as track records for about 5,000 students.

BS has also implemented an internal private cloud solution and most importantly it is using it for direct business gains. For instance, it is allowing the use of its private cloud on VMware platform to a company for accounting and Tally integration on a pay-per-use basis.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Strong industry alliance

Weakness: Low topline contribution from cloud

Opportunity: Growing SMB market

Threat: Big players eyeing the SMB cloud segment

 

20-Atul Gosar, director, Network Techlab

Aggressively focusing on the cloud computing and virtualization solution market, Mumbai based Network Techlab has proven its mettle and presented its benefits. Its growth has always been anticipated from small-to-midsize businesses, and it's in this segment that the company has a good chance to build a customer base.

"These days, there is a huge demand for solution providers to display their services in strengthening other small and medium enterprises or large corporate houses in uplifting their IT infrastructure with respect to their fast track growth of the business metrics. As a cloud computing solution provider, we contribute about 8% to our overall revenue structure," said Atul Gosar, director, Network Techlab.

It is noted that cloud computing has formed an important part of the company's strategy as its service portfolio strengthens and customers get more mature in future. The added services yielded good results in terms of significant increase in the customer base. The domain expertise has given confidence to the company to claim that by the end of this fiscal, it would be generating an overall revenue of about Rs 46 crore as compared to the last fiscal's Rs 38 crore. Recently, the company bagged

Rs 3.5 crore virtualization and cloud computing deal from EMC.

According to the company, virtualization and cloud computing solution have dramatically improved the efficiency and availability of resources and applications in its customers' organization. "Broad investments are being made to offer customers a set of virtualization solution that will be more dynamic and will fuel the Network Techlab's overall virtualization strategy," concluded Gosar.

Extending its technical expertise in providing cloud computing solution across SMBs, Network Techlab has financial customers witnessing 50-60% Cap-Ex savings. According to Gosar, virtualization customers typically save 50-70% on overall IT costs by consolidating their resource pools and delivering machines. Having been a value driven organization, these values continue to direct company's growth and businesses, Network Techlab is further expected to register 70% growth on y-o-y basis in the cloud computing space.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Technical expertise

Weakness: Marketing strategies do not have their own data center

Opportunity: Investing big on SME segment

Threat: Not so known in the South India market

 

21- Col Balwinder Singh, director, Targus Technologies

For Delhi based Targus Technologies, the cloud business presently accounts for about 3%, but it has been increasing ever since the company started off with cloud computing services. In fact, the company has set up a special business unit for cloud services.

Some of the key cloud offerings of Targus include HP Converged Infrastructure, Hitachi Cloud System, Oracle, and IBM Cloud Computing. For the company, the key verticals of the cloud are telecom, BFSI, and enterprise sectors. The vendor tie-ups that it has done for the cloud are HP, Hitachi, Oracle, and IBM.

In the last fiscal, it bagged projects worth Rs 2 crore from Dish TV, and a Rs 5 crore project from MTS, where it deployed HP P9500 and 3Par-T400 enterprise storage solutions for mission-critical telecom application and databases, and Superdome 2 solution for tele-compass application and cloud computing solution with HP Blade Matrix.

In this space, Targus has managed to carve a niche and place for itself not because it has solid backing of product knowledge for selling but also for providing the complete integration of the turnkey projects and solutions that are designed keeping in mind the long-term functionality and upgradability.

According to Col Balwinder Singh, director, Targus Technologies, the company envisions a plethora of opportunities in terms of extending its services in the cloud computing space. Besides, other kind of services that the company is dealing with are infrastructure, integration services, maintenance and consultancy. Like for example, it has looked after the requirements of the multiple components of data centers of MTS in Chennai and Jaipur.

Singh added that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a viable model for enterprises today whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. Opex models like SaaS will be eventually accepted by most enterprises. Besides, customers are very price conscious and for a growing company like Targus, it is essential that the company charges its customers for the professional services that it provides. Yet, smaller companies are able to be more price competitive and the clients sometimes compromise on quality for price.

SWOT Analysis

Strength: Impeccable standards of operational excellence and seamless integration of project aspects

Weaknesses: Indian IT infrastructure of a typical enterprise yet to be ready for high-end services like SaaS

Opportunity: Opex model like SaaS to be eventually accepted by most enterprises

Threats: Rubbing shoulders with large SIs

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