Most Comprehensive SP (Silver): Orient Technologies : Working Towards A Dream Team

From being a box pusher, Orient Technologies has now ushered itself into the
world of solution providing in 2007-08. The run up to this move had started a
couple of years ago, when the company had a very good volume of business. But,
despite the good topline growth, Ajay Sawant, MD of Orient Technologies observed
that the bottomline was not growing proportionately, which underlined the need
to get into more bottomline-oriented business.

The graduation to adoption of newer technologies then began and slowly, the
company started adding skillsets in server and security business. Today, it is
regarded as a leading solution provider (SP), offering solutions around
information access, infrastructure management, networking and communication,
information security, managed services, IT solutions (including backup search
and recovery, file reporting, migration and archival), software and information
management.

Ajay Sawant of Orient Technologies receiving the Most Comprehensive SP Silver Award from Girish Krishnamurthy, MD, Kaseya

Orient tied up with VMware last year for executing virtualization projects
and entered into an alliance with Citrix to offer their application networking
solutions. Another tie-up was with Juniper Networks for high-end networking
solutions.

In fact, a year within its tie-up with Citrix, it implemented a project for
Fullerton India where it helped its 4,000 users spread across India access their
finance application, using the vendor's solutions as well as blade server
technologies. Among other notable projects that the company executed to mark its
emergence as a strong SPr was consolidation of storage for CRISIL and Barclays
Bank.

It was adjudged the Best Asia-Pacific Partner for New Technologies by Citrix,
Best SMB Partner for PSG (West) by HP India as well as Best Enterprise Partner
by HP.

Last year, the company invested heavily in getting training and
certifications from various vendors. In all it got 62 certifications after
spending close to Rs 30 to 40 lakh for the same.

The transition from box pusher to a solution provider was smooth, but it was
an uphill task for Orient. The company needed to upgrade the technology
knowledge, understand the need of customers and position itself as one of the
key SPs in the country. Further, the other major challenge was their internal
user-level integration, as its employees were accustomed to traditional working
style and dealing with customers who bought laptops or single products only.

But Sawant knew how to dealw ith it. “We became friendlier with the customer,
upgraded our management skillsets to prepare for the change, trained the
manpower and checked retention,” he revealed. Orient recruited 65 people last
fiscal largely in the service business. Even during the slowdown Orient is
investing heavily on employee training. “We are giving more exposure to them by
involving them in multi-tasking as this would help us to save on operational
expenditure front,” he added.

Akhilesh Shukla

akhileshs@cybermedia.co.in