We do not intend to take away the service providing opportunities from channel

To establish a strong hold on the Indian market Commvault plans to create
a symbiotic relationship with the channel. Ross Stewart believes that by helping
the channel partner grow Commvault will also be able to secure its positions in
the market

How do you see yourself positioned in the Indian market?

We started our business in India in 2004 with the opening of our research
and development center in Hyderabad.

Today we cover three centers for sales operation-Mumbai, Bengaluru and
Delhi-where we have placed our pre-sales support team. We have three categories
of partners that include Sun Microsystems, Dell, Hitachi Data Systems and EMC as
the OEM partner; Inflow Technologies as the distributor and third category is of
base resellers. Our resellers execute business through OEM partners or
distributors but we maintain a direct relation with them as well.

Ross Stewart Regional Director, Commvault

What are your marketing strategies for India?

Our product suite is a strong tool for us to promote Commvault among the
end- customers.We reach customers only through our channel, and the after-sales
support and services is provided either through the channel or us.However, we do
not intend to take away the service providing opportunities from channel. We
have got our team in India who provide support to the partners in building the
customer base. Also, we try to maintain a difference in technology and sales
operation.

Our go-to-market strategy will remain the same. We will promote our channel
to add value to the service they provide to the end-customers so that the
service level is consistently enhanced. If required, we also give additional
service to the partners. We can go for business dialogues directly with the
end-customer but the solution will be deployed only through channel.

What are your plans for channel expansion?

We are always open new partnerships but are very selective in adding new
partners. Our intention is not to saturate the market by appointing large number
of partners but we aim at providing business opportunities for the existing
partners. We haven't set any target for the number of partners. Depending on the
space we will continue adding more partners.

It is very easy to appoint four to five distributors and saturate the market.
I don't think this would be beneficial for existing distributors. We will hire
more partners only where we find a gap. We may appoint vertical-oriented
partners who have attained specialization in a particular segment-be it finance,
telecom or banking. While selecting the new channel, we look for skilled
business partners who have reasonable business presence. Their selection may
depend on the geographical locations where we do not have partners.

How do you position Commvault in a market where players like Symantec have
a dominating presence?

We approach customers with our competitive products that are different from
those of other players. In order to make our customers understand the value of
the product, we have to make sure that the right message is conveyed to them
consistently.Customer has to buy only one solution for archival, data security
data and information management and backup.We have one package that is equipped
with all the solutions unlike other solutions available in the market, which
have to be purchased separately.

AMRITA TEJASVI

amritat@cybermedia.co.in