Armed With A Converged Solution

Commvault, a data and information management software developer, organized its first India channel partner and CIO meet
in Bangkok between Aug 27 to 29, 2008. The vendor-channel meet comprised 42
channel partners, five members of Commvault India and eight members from the
international team.

Besides the partners, Hitachi Data Systems, Sun Microsystems and Inflow
Tech­no­logies were present at the event.

Commvault's prime objective for holding the meeting was to enhance its
relationship with the channel community in India and to eventually establish a
strong ground in the Indian market within a year.

Ross Stewart, Regional Director, Commvault shared that in order to create
visibility in
the market where players like Symantec already have a dominant presence, the
prime focus of the company is to strengthen its channel base. Roping in channel
partners would help further drive the products to the end customers.

In the three-day event, the company focused on various aspects of promoting
Comm­vault to the end customers and providing support on the technical as well
as sales front. It also assured that it would continue to invest in growing its
team to support the local channel in India and its strategic partners.

When asked about the number of partners that Commvault was planning to
appoint, Stewart commented that there is no specific number that the company had
in mind.

“At this stage, our main concern is to strengthen our partners and develop
their confidence to sell our products. Our strategy is not to increase the
number of partners but to empower them with training and support so that they
are able to provide value to the products. We are very selective in appointing
partners. We look for certain criteria in them like they should have a strong
market presence and skills,” commented Stewart.

While interacting with the partners, executives of Com­mvault highlighted the
growth opportunities in data protection market, non-backup products and also
information manage­ment products and services.

Stewart further emphasized that the event is aimed at building awareness
among the partners about the products and services, and promoting marketing
exercises in India.

Further highlighting the strategies, Steven Rose, MD and VP-EMEA and ASEAN,
Com­mvault stated that the reason for being selective while expanding the
channel base is to provide enough space to the partners to grow and to avoid
doing business in a saturated market.

Channel partners present at the occasion agreed that though Commvault has
been late in entering into the market, the availability of a product that is
packaged with multiple solutions like archiving, data protection and information
management would provide them competitive advantage over other brands.

At the three-day event, Commvault engaged partners in various team-building
exercises and updated them with their marketing strategies and future plans to
penetrate into the Indian market. They further spoke about promoting Com­mvault
as a 'must have' solution for end buyers and the importance of making the
dealers understand the licensing procedure.

Suresh Reddy, VP-Technical Service and Support, Commvault gave an overview of
the technical support and professional services that the company provides to its
partners.

The business discussions were followed by interactive team building sessions
that were aimed at breaking the ice between partners and making them comfortable
with each other.

Single mode fiber cable was used for backbone between the proposed blocks

Simon Gregory, Business Development-EMEA, Comm­vault executed business
discussions that revolved around promoting the company as a brand in India and
supporting the channel to harness profitability.

“We will continue adding value to the partners, and provide them all the
support and services. We provide additional resources to the dealers, so that
they can further add value to the service. We don't want to take away the
opportunities from the network of our channel, so we will keep on developing new
areas for them to grow and meet the end user's demand,” added Stewart, while
interacting with the partners.

He further added that the company is in the process
of informing CIOs and
CTOs about the competitive advantage of the product and is gearing up the
knowledge base of the partners by providing them technical learning programs.

Speaking about the chal­lenges, one of the partners present in the event
shared
that customers do not understand the correct method of managing data
information, and therefore waste their resources unnecessarily.

Addressing the issue, Stewart agreed that customers do not understand what
they are trying to achieve, and they do not possess relevant knowledge about how
to manage data information.

“I would like the partners to make the customers understand that through
Commvault they need not buy a whole suite of products for various actions but
they can manage their entire data though one common engine whether they need it
for archival, managing or security,” he added.

“Such interactive sessions will help the partners of Commvault to understand
the company, its objectives and the ways to achieve high penetration level in
different market segments,” shared Venkat from 22by7, a Bengaluru-based solution
provider.

Commvault made its presence in India in 2007 and has a network of dealers in
cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Trivandrum and Ahmedabad. The
partners are further trained in order to demonstrate, configure, install and
supply the range of products. The company has tie ups with Sun Microsystems
and Hitachi Data Systems
as OEM partner and has
recently tied up with Inflow Technologies as its authorized distributor.

AMRITA TEJASVI

amritat@cybermedia.co.in

(The author was hosted in Bangkok)