F5 crafting its India growth story

Parag Khurana, 
MD,
F5 Networks India 

The newly appointed Managing Director of F5 Networks India, Parag Khurana shares with VARIndia the role he will be playing in building the India growth story for F5 Networks and the different channel initiatives started by it to make this growth happen   

"F5 Networks is a global leader in the space called ADC (Application Delivery Controller). If you look at the worldwide market we have a pretty good market share in most of the places. My job is simple; get F5 in the leadership position in India across all verticals and get the customers accessed to the products in the market through channel," explains Parag Khurana.

So what F5 basically does is to deliver an application that a user accesses in a seamless, fast and secure manner. F5 has multiple products to offer and their focus usually revolves around the way application is being delivered.

F5 also works with big time Application players like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, VMware. “All of them are global partners for our applications, to the extent that we have something called Application Ready Templates. We have worked with them in the labs to deploy our products to our clients.”  

A Channel -friendly company

If you look at the DNA of this company, it is pretty much channel friendly. There is no direct business involved in trading our products. Recalls Khurana, “In fact, the first thing I did after joining was to meet my partners. All the tier II partners I went and met them myself. We have complete accessibility with our partners.” 

When it comes to the channel structure of the company, they have different tiers that ensure a smooth and linear flow of the products. From a structured prospective, the first level they talk to are the distributors; they have appointed three National Distributors in the country - Transition, Westcon & Avnet. They are their first point of sale as they are the ones who place their orders. Following this order are another set of people working which they call as the resellers and System Integrators (SI). SIs are again differentiated in 2 categories - Global SIs and Indian SIs. They have 4 global SIs – HP, IBM, Dell & Dimension Data, while they work with Indian SIs like Wipro.  

There are some small niche tier II partners who are the resellers and their operations are localized. "Every region has small partners who focus in their areas of expertise – be it IT optimization or IT Security. They know their work and have good knowledge. These are the 2 categories of people we have," says Khurana.

However, F5 has another system of grading the partners into different categories -Platinum, Gold and Silver. The grading will depend on their level of expertise and the kind of customer profiles they are dealing with. And this is how F5 engages in the market now. 

F5 now works with around 50 registered partners.

F5 Unity Partner Program

To reinforce its commitment to the channel community worldwide, F5 has a standard programme exclusively for Channel, called Unity Partner Program. It is a program that helps a partner to engage in the market and get empowered; it clearly defines the rules of engagement and clarity of communication. Though this program is designed worldwide, it got launched in India only in 2012. "Before this, F5 had it in a more unstructured way of working, when channels used to complain about the lack of clarity in communication among different tiers and this primarily necessitated the introduction of this initiative in the India market," opine Khurana.

The Unity Partner Program consists of the following initiatives - 

• Unified Deal Registration – The company has a unified deal registration process across all partners that enable partners to better identify and pursue opportunities, leading to smoother sales cycles and enhanced returns

• Comprehensive Partner Portal – The partners are given access to F5’s own portal. Tight integration with F5’s CRM infrastructure gives partners the ability to intelligently track sales opportunities and simplifies access to solution information and other F5 resources. That is how they have all their resources available. 

• Enablement Programmes – F5 also does enablement programmes, be it Sales accreditation or technical accreditation. It arms channel partners with dedicated marketing resources, including programmatic support for lead generation, customer-focused events and targeted outreach campaigns.

India market promising growth

For F5, India is a growing market and with big investments happening, the company continues to grow unprecedentedly. “Our CEO believes in India story and this is evident in the kind of initiatives that we are introducing for this market. However, our growth plans are closely tied with the fact that the Indian market is maturing, mobile traffic is increasing, and virtualization market is growing.”

F5’s product line being horizontal, it is present across verticals. While 25% of its business comes from Telcos, another 25% and 20% come from BFSI and technology respectively. So these 3 verticals – Telcos, BFSI and Technology alone account to 60-65% of its business. 

samrita@varindia.com