As Manager-Channels at Red Hat India, Amit Bhoraskar is spearheading the
management, reinforcement and expansion of partners and OEM relationships across
India. At the moment, Amit’s basic objective is to develop a sustainable
busines model for his channel network, to increase their value in terms of
margins and revenue they make on Linux. However, he wants only those channel
members who will adopt Linux as a full-fledged line of business and offer a
complete gamut of services for Linux-based deploy- ments and installation. What
progress has Red Hat India made since it set up shop two years ago?
Red Hat started its operations in India with a 3-A objective. In the last
couple of years, it has been able to successfully meet two of these three ‘A’s–that
of ‘Awareness’ and ‘Appreciation’ for Linux in the Indian market. Now it
is gearing up to meet the third ‘A’, which is ‘Adoption’.
In this scenario, distribution and support of Linux assumes great
significance for customers in the Indian marketplace.
Amit Bhoraskar, Manager-Channels, Red hat India |
Our biggest success here is that we have built a good sustainable model across services, support and training |
Can you please explain your channel strategy?
We have three tiers of channel partners. The first is the distributor who
operates across the country. We have three of them right now – Sonata
Information Technologies, Integra and the recently-appointed GT Enterprises.
The second tier is the authorized Red Hat channel partners. We have 26 of
them right now and we are looking at expanding this base to 100 by the end of
this year.
We started off in India two years ago and are increasingly seeing a lot of
adoption and momentum of Linux amongst corporates. And this is where we believe
that the entire channel partnership will come into play.
What value-adds do you give to the channel?
The biggest value-add we give is that as per our global revenue model, a
large share of partners’ revenues come from services.
The biggest success here is that we have built a good sustainable model for
offering services, support and training. So our basic objective would be to
replicate the same model for our channel, so that they can earn better margins
and revenue through Linux.
We approached the channel market with clear focus a to appoint people who can
adopt Linux as a full-fledged line of business in terms of building up a
complete gamut of services for Linux-based deployments and installation.
What is the percentage of business that comes from services?
Worldwide, almost 60 percent of our business comes from offering customized
support. Products of course are the facilitator. We get in the products which
are available freely on the Net. But the value that we add is offer the
customers are resources which he needs to install the product. This gives the
customer tremendous confidence that he gets the support directly from Red Hat
and we provide the final escalation point for any query that he has.
How do you go about giving training to the corporate segment?
We have about 12 training partners and we provide training to students,
hardware resellers as well as the corporate segment. But these corporate
training programs are specific programs for the enterprise segment, keeping
their requirements in mind, in terms of things like systems administration and
networking security.
What is the percentage of business that comes from services in India?
In India too, the percentage of business coming from services will also be
around 60 percent. As the adoption of Linux grows in India, every customer will
require the support services.
What is the installed base of Linux in the corporate segment today?
It is very difficult for us to track the numbers because a lot of Linux OS
is downloaded directly. Plus we are not selling the products on licenses so we
do not know on how many servers the OS is installed in. But I think in the
server space, Red Hat has approximately 30 percent marketshare.
What about Red Hat’s OEM partnerships?
In terms of OEM partnership we are very well-established in India. One of
largest OEM partner is IBM. We also have relationships with Dell, Acer in the
desktop segment and we are talking to a lot of other people in India. Every OEM
today has a strategy on Linux, either in building new technologies or products.
So we are gearing up for that.
And a major boost today is coming from the Advance server OS, which we
launched recently. It is a full-fledged clustering solution. The entire Linux
kernel is tuned to run large database clusters like Oracle and IBM.
Do you have any plans to partner with local assemblers?
The assembler segment is a great market. Our focus was primarily on the
server space. But with the increasing end-user requirement to save cost on PCs,
we definitely have a strategy to partner with assemblers.
We have plans to even roll out certification programs for assemblers.
Typically with the OEM partners we certify the compatibility of the hardware
with Red Hat Linux.
So will you concentrate on big players will you work with local assemblers
as well?
We would not like to differentiate between players, because this is a market
which is opening up. So we are quite open in terms of whom we partner with. But
the idea is to partner at a much broader level.
But have you got a specific strategy for assemblers?
We have the kernel and open office tools that assemblers can get at much
lesser cost. This will increase their bandwidth of sales too. We are talking to
a lot of people for partnerships but it is too early to talk about it right now.
Do you have any plans to enter into the retail segment?
Ideally Linux as a technology is not something that a customer is looking
for in a box. Our strategy has been to enable channel to provide the basic level
support to customers. If we have a large channel base and unless we provide a
good value proposition to retailers, it would not really make business sense.
VINITA BHATIA in Mumbai