“Besides government and education, we are targeting about 25 micro-verticals. We also have plans to appoint about six to seven ISVs to take care of them”

Paul Miller was recently in India to promote the latest server of HP's
stable-the DL 180. This server range has been designed specifically for India
and he is excited about the business opportunity that India presents for the
product. He also revealed that HP would build a team of partners who can handle
datacenter products and work with vendors like Microsoft and Intel to provide
special training in this regard

What are the exclusive features of HP's DL 180 server and does it make
sense for business houses to go for it?

It has been designed exclusively for Asia Pacific market, and is powered by
the new dual core and quad-core Intel Xeon processors. It features essential
management, redundancy and sufficient power to handle complex business
requirements. Its new 2U chassis and the 2GB DIMM memory option kit are
specifically designed to support the computing needs of growing businesses.

In addition, the server meets the needs of network service providers who want
to manage the networking, gaming, mail, messaging, file, print, and data-storage
applications of their customers, and comes equipped with essential management
features to easily check and update servers from a remote location.

What is your go-to-market strategy and focus area for this product?

Paul Miller VP-Marketing, Industry Standard Servers and BladeSystems, HP

Our go-to-market strategy for the product will be to reach out through our
channel partners. This is because in geographically large countries like China
and India, partners are the only ones to reach out to small customers.
Additionally, we also leverage upon the ability of other groups within HP to
reach out to more customers.

As far as the focus for the product goes, we are targeting the SMB as well as
the enterprise segments. While the key focus verticals for us are government and
education, we are also targeting about 25 micro-verticals and want to appoint
about six to seven ISVs to take care of them.

Partners can choose whichever micro-vertical they want within a desired
geography and make it their core competency. We are trying to equip partners,
especially those dealing with SMB customers, from ground up to sell services
into key verticals and enable them to scale-up while giving customers a greater
value proposition. Conducting partner events would be a key marketing strategy
for us to take the new product to customers.

How would you equip the channel to sell your new product?

We would go to market together with our partners for the new product and
provide them training for the same. Information about the product would be made
available to our partners on the web and also through pod casts, in both English
as well as local languages.

We believe that product customization is a key global trend and we are
looking to build a team of partners who can handle datacenter products. They
would be trained on how to handle these products and how to deal with customer
queries. We would also work with vendors like Microsoft and Intel on provision
of special product training.

In addition to that, we would focus on increasing education and providing
awareness to our partners across the country, as far as new technologies are
concerned.

What value adds besides training would you give your channel partners?

Resellers today are tech-savy and updated as far as know-how on most
technologies are concerned. We therefore need to provide them only the knowledge
on the physical aspects of how to set-up a datacentre or redesign them.

Services are another area of growth for us. We would do joint programs with
vendors like Intel and Microsoft on their varied platforms and products. Linux
training also would be incorporated.

We also offer a variety of services to our customers like transition,
migration, disaster recovery and power distribution. When we deal with SMB
customers, they would like us to take care of the pain points in these areas. So
we would equip our partners to do that with the right kind of education as well
as hands-on training.

While managed services are not yet fully developed globally, we have robust
tools in place, which can offer remote and secure services to the customers.

What are your APAC-specific strategies for the year ahead?

APAC server market consists of both the rack as well as blade server, as far as
opportunity for growth is concerned. With so many software organizations,
security is a key concern for customers and an opportu­nity for us. We are
looking to tap that and provide solutions that meet customer specifications.

From the SMB perspective, solution providing is the key, so we have aligned
out ISVs to varied micro-verticals where they can grow along with us.

As far as our APAC and India strategies are concerned, we believe in
providing the right kind of platforms and products for customers. We would look
at a consistency in partner engage­ment and embark on a structured expansion
mode. The focus would continue to be on providing customers with technology and
solution leadership, while also making sure that our partners have the right
kind of infrastructure and technologies available to them.

Communication is very crucial and we would employ the web for the purpose of
information transfer to both customers as well as partners.

What according to you will be the emerging trends and technologies in
blade system architectures? How can vendors and channel partners leverage it?

Typically, servers fall under tower, rack and blades. Acquisition costs have
been a point of concern for SMBs, as far as blades are concerned. However, as
markets mature, we are seeing a greater traction for blades even in the SMB
segments and in B and C-class cities as well.

Yes, power and cost are still an issue. Adaptation to blades at the
enterprise level is also increasing and most customers are open to the idea of
transition from one to another as far as blades are concerned.

Opportunities in the SMB sector are not also clearly increasing. As awareness
increa­ses, we are seeing customers taking greater interest in redesigning their
datacenters to save cost on power as well as increase their RoI.

This means that a lot of consultancy options are opening up for us. Customers
are increasingly looking at us, not just as sever vendors but rather as an
infrastructure consultants. New technologies like virtualiza­tion, which blades
offer along with increased network security, promises a greater opportunity for
us to grow. Service options are also available.

SUBBALAKSHMI BM


subbalakshmibm@cybermedia.co.in