''We encourage partners willing to scale up by selling solutions, including those addressing the enterprise space''

APC's recent venture into the data center space is something Pankaj Sharma
is bullish about. He believes the company's Network Critical Physical
Infrastructure (NCPI) offerings are rightly tuned to meet the requirements of
data centers, which is where he sees a lot of opportunity. Pankaj asserts that
partners are critical to the company's entry-level and mid-market products,
especially UPS business.

What are the specific strategies that APC is working on to further
increase its market share?

Vertical or segment focus is something that we are working on quite
seriously. We look at various IDC reports which tell us about the IT spending
across various verticals. Based on that, and other market intelligence, we want
to make sure that our presence within those segments is very strong and we have
the right products to address the user requirement there.

One of the best examples to demonstrate this is our momentum in the data
center space to provide infrastructure solutions.

Why a sudden need to offer solutions in the data center space? And what
are the challenges from an Indian customer's perspective?

These solutions came out after a research was done by taking opinion of over
a thousand CIOs and IT managers across the world where we asked what their
concerns were in designing, building and operating data centers. We realized
that APC has capabilities to address these issues and the market for data
centers in India holds a great potential in this space.

Pankaj Sharma

Challenges from a customer perspective here are more or less similar as
elsewhere in the world. These are largely related to availability, agility, and
aspects related to total cost of ownership. Our solutions essentially are aimed
at offering solutions to these issues.

Can you elaborate more on the precise nature of infrastructure solutions?

APC's solutions in this space can be categorized as what we call as Network
Critical Physical Infrastructure or NCPI. NCPI in an IT environment primarily
consists of power, cooling, power distribution, management, passive networking
and air-conditioning.

So, the infrastructure solutions are not only about UPS anymore, it is about
power and its distribution, which are two most important factors of the whole
NCPI. Then you also have the racks, which are the building block of any data
center.

Is APC driving this focused approach for addressing data centers directly
or through the channel?

Currently, it is very much a direct business line for us. We are in the
phase were we are doing a lot of evangelization like CIO education events across
the country. We tell the CIOs and the IT managers on how these infrastructure
solutions can actually improve their business value. And such a kind of
engagement demands a great deal of direct interaction with customers.

Does this mean that your focus on the non-enterprise kind of customers and
hence channel business, which drives it, will get reduced?

Enterprise business is driven by a different division  having its own
set of achievables. I mentioned we have three divisions, so there is a
separate division, that focuses only on the enterprise business. So the core
business which focuses on entry-level and mid-market products remains and
continues to get driven by the channels.

Also, infrastructure solution business has only been launched recently, and
this business typically has long gestation periods. Currently, we are in a mode
where in we are seeding the market than really making lots of money out of it.
So there's no question of focus on channel business getting reduced.

What roadmap is APC providing to its partners who primarily sell low-end
UPS, but want to scale up and offer solutions and not just products?

We do various educational activities for end-customers like events to
educate the channels itself. In fact, in many events, we present the entire
spectrum of products that APC has to offer including those addressing the
enterprise market. So after that, if partners are willing to scale up and sell
more solutions, we assess their capability and potential of the market they
address, and accordingly help them grow up the value chain.

Fundamentally, partners are free to begin a different line of business with
APC and we have always encouraged them.  

Looking ahead, what are the key drivers that would impart sustained growth
to the UPS business not just from APC, but industry perspective too?

One of the most critical factors that largely drives the UPS business is the
power condition in the country. And when I say power condition, I am not just
talking about the deficit, but also about the quality of power that is
available. With increased IT adoption, requirement for a clean power becomes
paramount, and customers would invest more in power protection solutions.

GOLDIE