Interaction with Kamal Gulati, Managing Director, ITS Technology

In an exclusive interview with Kamal Gulati, Managing Director, ITS Technology. He spoke about the company’s performance, expectations, and challenges for the coming year.

How was the last year for your business from a channel partner perspective?

Great, 80%+ business came through multiple channel partners.

Even I think they also got

• Stickiness ( as backup is difficult to move from one service provider to another) with each customer that brought in this year or earlier years
• 15%+ margin in each deal
• Other infrastructure like server, storage, UPS, Networking, that they could sell in this opportunity.
• Newer ideas for taking to market.

What are the different expectations a partner has from a CIO?

Some of these being :

• Data Backup be given due weightage it deserves, it is the “LAST LINE OF DEFENCE FOR DATA”, as Security has been breached sometimes each and every time secure org and would continue to.
• Audit of recoverability of Data, internally through training or by external organisations.
• Sharing the pain points that they have in their current infrastructure, application, Data space
• Be open to listening to new ideas, in service of the current and future direction of business
• The org which gives a new idea and has the capability to execute these ideas internally within their org to get some advantage in commercial terms
• Payment terms given and agreed to be respected.
• Give a chance to Partner even when OEM approaches you directly, they might have something unique for you.

How can a partner help CIOs in building the technology?

• Consistent training and development for IT staff of customers/prospects
• Care for taking care of multiple pain points much beyond customer expectations
• Learning new & futuristic technologies internally in the partner team
• Tech leadership that CIO could rely on
• Even classical proven technologies to be maintained, not simply moving on
• Training and development for Customer / Prospect teams from technology and customer team's perspective
• 24X7 emergency support by partners

What are the challenges you face as a channel partner?

• New ideas to be communicated to / received by the right people in the customer/prospects team
• Hiring right staff

What is the potential for the year 2023-24 for the business as a channel partner?

• One of the best, the whole world is looking toward India
• OEM looking at large customers directly would mean you need to build and communicate USPs
• Critical that marketing be made strong, that is one of the biggest focuses for the owner/management of channel partners, we have been weak in this area in view of operational issues.
• Channel partners to align with each other, create kinds of JVs / collaborations