“We are planning to recruit more resellers who have sufficient knowledge about WAN and related areas”

Addition to its partner network is the mandate for Packeteer this year in
India. Once these partners are brought on board, next on the company's agenda is
to train them. Leong is confident that these measures will help the company gain
grounds in India, in face of competition from Riverbed and Cisco

 What is your observation about the network connectivity issues in India?

In India, broadband to the homes is not very prevalent. A lot of employees
use the bandwidth for recreational purposes. They download applications,
ultimately using up the bandwidth.

When employees start doing their personal work across the wide area network
(WAN), then the entire WAN is blocked with non-business critical applica­tions
using up the entire bandwidth.

A lot of CIOs in India do not know what is actually running across their WAN.
This is primarily due to lack of awareness. Packeteer's philoso­phy has always
been threefold, viz, visibility, control, and centralized management.

How do you predict WAN deployment in India this fiscal?

WAN deployment will be growing bigger over the next decade and not just in
this fiscal. This is because bandwidth is going to get cheaper.

I look at WAN from a different angle. It is like your highway where getting
from point A to point B is becoming increasingly difficult, as roads are getting
congested. In turn, this consumes more time to travel from one point to another.

So WAN can be considered as a highway, lets say between Mumbai and Delhi.
This is getting more and more congested due to the increasing number of
applications that are passing through the network.

This is resulting in higher consumption of the bandwidth. The biggest
question here is how do you manage this bandwidth.

Alan Leong VP and GM-APAC, Packeteer

How do you compare the Indian WAN market with those in APAC countries?

The answer to this question is twofold, viz, similarities and opportunities.
When I look at Australia and New Zealand market, they are fairly mature. Most of
the big enterprises are aware of WAN control and have better management of their
WAN infrastructure.

However, countries like India and China are only beginning to see the need
for WAN optimi­zation. Most of the WAN customers here add bandwidth to build
their WAN infrastructure. This is generally due to lack of awareness of the
solutions that are currently available for WAN management and optimization.

Hence, there are similarities between countries like India and China on how
they use WAN, WAN management and WAN optimization. On the other hand, there are
much dissimilarity between countries like Australia and New Zealand, and India
and China.

I see a tremendous opportu­nity in India, as the WAN market here is huge. We
have seen our business grow very strongly in India so far.

In a nutshell, what solutions does Packeteer have to offer for WAN
management and optimization?

We have two types of solutions-one is WAN optimization and the second is
branch office solution. WAN optimization is focused on four things-visibility,
control, compression and acceleration.

Branch office solution is about helping customers who have remote offices
with only a few people. They do not have a lot to invest in the infrastructure
at the branch offices.

We have provided them with solutions to move all their data to the data
centers. This enables the users at the branch offices to log in to the network
and use the data as if they are sitting at the main office. This is especially
useful to customers who already have their entire data web-based.

How do you ensure that your channel positions these solutions successfully
in the Indian market?

Currently, we have two value-added distributors (VADs)-Transition Systems
and Inflow Technologies. Beyond that, we have solution partners such as Wipro
and value-added resellers (VARs) in metros like New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Packeteer has a very small team in India. We have a sales and a technical
person in New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. We have a regional director and a
channel manager for South Asia .

South Asia comprises India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan
and Pakistan. With a small team of only eight people, it is very clear that we
do not go direct to the market. Our focus is to drive our business through our
distributors and resellers.

Do you have any schemes or incentives for your partners?

Till the recent past, most of Packeteer's schemes and incentives were
restricted only to its distributors. However, now we are planning to launch
various incentive programs for our wider channel network including our
resellers.

What are Packeteer's plans for the future?

We are planning to recruit more resellers over the next year. The resellers
we are looking at should ideally have sufficient knowledge about WAN and related
areas. We are also looking to find new customers through our partners. After
recruiting new resellers, we will look to enable and engage these resellers.

Also, it will be mandatory for our resellers to have at least two Packeteer
certified engineers (PCEs). We will train them for around a month, after which
they have to undertake an exam. Only on successfully clearing the exam will they
be awarded a PCE certification. Without this certification, partners will not be
able to deploy the Packeteer solution.

What programs does Packeteer currently offer?

There is an ongoing sales program, various modules of which are available
online on our Partner Web. Partners are regularly invited to participate in the
workshops where there is a lot of information that is shared all around. Every
quarter, there are sales and technical workshops. We also have roadshows, which
focuses on product launches and has partners participating in them.

Who are your closest competitors in the Indian market?

When you look at the entire spectrum of visibility, control and
acceleration, you find that Packeteer provides solutions across the entire
spectrum. Competitors like Riverbed are only into acceleration and some others
are only into visibility. Perhaps closest competitors would have to be Cisco.

Which verticals is Packeteer targeting in India?

If you look at verticals, it will be primarily those organizations or
enterprises with a lot of infrastructure spread across the country. The
verticals that Packeteer is very focused on are banking and finance, telco,
manufacturing and federal.

RAVISH KHAPRA

ravishk@cybermedia.co.in