Over 95% of Indian biz comes from the channels

Can you detail about market adjacencies specifically in the Indian
context?

John Chambers identified around 30 market adjacencies or markets close to
where Cisco currently operates. From an Indian perspective, smart connected
communities are a type of market adjacency where we look to be active. With
infrastructure development going on and given the rate of urbanization, Cisco
can play a role in providing IP or the network. We have products which can take
feeds from various management systems which can in-turn monitor and control
them. We are working on developing a platform as well as other solutions for
this market. The other area is that of physical security where we are seeing a
strong push from government and corporates. With our technology, alerts can be
raised, based on analysis of patterns of movement allowing the user to be more
proactive rather than just reactive.

Give us some details on your role in the datacenter virtualization
segment.

According to IDC estimates, the datacenter virtualization market in India is
around $2.2 billion. They see virtualization as a route to consolidation of
resources in order to derive greater efficiencies.

At Cisco, we use the network as a platform to drive virtualization of
datacenters. We have collaborated with VMware, NetApp and EMC to provide the
unified collaborative systems' platform, which encompasses everything from
server to storage virtualization. In India the first shipment started from
October onward. We currently have five advanced technology partners who are
certified on the UCS platform and these include TCS and Wipro. We are talking to
tier-2 partners like SK International, who is looking to provide the
virtualization solution stack to his customers. It calls for putting investment
and resources in place and it also depends on their appetite to stay in this
space.

We launched the B- and C-Series servers as a part of our virtualization
basket. The B-series is being sold by the ATP UCS partners. While the C-series
is distributed to the mass market through our tier-2 partners. The B series
consists of the blade chassis servers which is an entire system on its own,
while the C series is a standalone rackmount server.

What are the challenges you face in the market?

From the stand point of infrastructure, availability of network bandwidth is
still a challenge though we know that government has been investing to upgrade
the same. With the advent of 3G, 4G, WiMAX and Wi-Fi the reality of overcoming
this hurdle will happen in the near term. On the other hand, it is more about
whether they want to go ahead with buying the technology.

What are the channel programs you have in place?

Some of the programs we have in place for our partners include our umbrella
program-Navigate to Accelerate, which consists of other initiatives and demand
generation programs. One such initiative is the Marketing Services Organization
(MSO). Most importantly we have invested significantly in data modeling and
other agency services to increase market intelligence and understanding. The MSO
is mainly for those partners who don't have extensive marketing teams in place
and who are looking for support in this area. We put up the infrastructure to
generate leads and then pass on the same to our partners. If they want our
expertise for a specific vertical in a particular market, we run it for them and
whatever leads that come through, are passed on to them.

We have a financing arm called Cisco Capital, which enables our partners to
tide over financial issues and help to finance certain solution portfolios that
they want to offer to their customers. We also offer lifetime warranty of five
years on our case two and case three products in the switches product line.

For our distribution partners, we have two focused programs. One is called
the Distribution Partner Enablement program. The second is the program for
Distribution Accelerated Partners.

One interesting knowledge sharing initiative is our SMB university. This is a
fully-funded sales training on a Web 2.0 platform which happens on a continuous
basis through a training initiative focuses on SMB select partner sales people.

We also have a Network On Wheels (NOW) bus going around tier-2, tier-3 cities
where it can be difficult to setup demo centers.

Can you throw a bit of light on Cisco's channel landscape?

Our channel landscape consists of strategic alliance partners, which are
typically the large SIs, distributors and disti led partners under the following
three levels: registered, select and premier andfour distributors in Ingram,
Redington, Compuage and Westcon Comstor with whom we have recently tied up.

Share a little more on the tie-up with Westcon Comstor.

We have signed up with Comstor as a value added distributor and they will
sell our advanced technology portfolio, which focuses on solutions around
virtualization, collaboration and the security suite. There are two major
reasons why we signed them. One is that we share a global relationship with them
and so this is an extension of the same for the Indian market. Secondly when we
looked at the Indian market, we realized that we needed a value added
distributor for the market we operate in. Comstor has a strong base of around
900 to 1000 partners and their key strength comes from their understanding of
technology and the ability to drive distribution of technology products. They
have the requisite experience in technology distribution.

John jacob

johnj@cybermedia.co.in