SME and DGS&D Rate Contracts –biggest focus for AMD in 2014

Vinay Sinha,
Director-Enterprise Business,
AMD

2013 was a phenomenal year for AMD. And as Vinay Sinha, Director-Enterprise Business, AMD India puts it, 2013 will supposedly go down in the history of AMD India as the best-ever year. “It was a grand success for us. It might be little difficult to keep up with the successes we had last year, especially from the commercial enterprise standpoint and replicate the same this year. But then there can not be a more special moment than this when you actually get the feeling of contentment at what you have achieved,” he reiterates. 

AMD enjoyed a very strong Q3 FY 13, beating Intel with a 54% market share. This was AMD’s highest ever market share ever. Overall, AMD ended the FY13 with a commercial market share of about 40%, up from 6-7 % in 2011, thus enjoying a dream run in the commercial enterprise business. “This has really taken us to the next level, which also means that revenue was up for us, there were more investments happening and the India success story becoming an example worldwide with the market suddenly coming to the notice of everyone. Because of this momentum, there is going to be more focus on this market and more investments coming our way,” Vinay states contentedly.   

The UP Govt. deal that AMD had bagged last year to supply AMD powered HP laptops to students has remained till date as one of the single largest deals in the history of AMD in India. “From February to September, 1.5 million HP Pavilion G4-10064AU notebooks were distributed to college students that came embedded with AMD A4 series 12 core processor.  It was again a huge feeling of content and pride as we worked towards bridging the digital divide,” he replies.

Prior to this was the ELCOT deal from the state of Tamil Nadu that AMD had bagged of which Intel was also a part. AMD was roughly present inside close to 40% of the Lenovo notebooks. A similar deployment was also done in Rajasthan where 64% laptops delivered to students were on AMD APUs.Even a Union Territory like Daman & Diu had given away 6000 Acer & AMD combined laptops to its meritorious students.States like Chhattisgarh and Punjab are to follow with it in the coming months.“This is also a social cause as students have been benefitted from these laptops. Suddenly we had 2 million units sold only to the student community. We also had around 65,000 laptops sold to students from Delhi University. They are using these notebooks for various purposes - gaming, turbo-charging, overclocking, and they are all working well. There has not been a single complain on the UP or Rajasthan deal as we do notcompromise on the product specs. The latest APU technology from the AMD stable has also been a big hit,” vinay explains.

All geared up for 2014

2014 is going to be a big year for AMD in the sense that it will be coping up with whatever has been achieved in 2013. "We are going to adopt a 'Protect and Áttack' strategy as a means to ‘protect’ our manifesto dealsand large OEM partnerships that we have clinched and ‘attack’ the new areas of SMB, extensive Channel interactions and most importantly the DGS&D rate contracts that we are eyeing this year. By doing so, we get a lot of recognition and credibility which helps the management to reinvest into the country,” Vinay says.

All large mega deals are focused at AMD aligning with the right set of OEMs. Today AMD is present across all the major OEMs –the major ones being HP, Acer, Lenovo, HCL and this partnership is to be taken forward with the same momentum.

Post the election era, the same manifesto deals are getting replicated. This is going to become more of a rule than an exception. “There will be a UP Phase 2, ELCOT Phase 4, Rajasthan Phase 2; so this has been the biggest vertical for us and we are going to bank on this opportunity further,” Vinay says gleefully. “Also, we will be more prominent on the DGS&D Central rate contract. Besides there will be a huge amount of focus on SMB, which will be majorly channel driven," he continues. A Top-down approach is what AMD has been following – it started with the large corporates before slowly expanding its gaze to the SMBs, who are also the enterprise for tomorrow. 

AMD will also be entering the tablet space and mobility and has already partnered with Xolo. 

Channel in 2014…

2014 will also be the year when AMD will see lot of Channel fragmentations and interactions.From 16 partners in 2013, AMD will increase its partner base to 100 in 2014 The SMB vertical will be largely Channel driven and AMD will have lot of special SMB initiatives and programs coming in. While some of them will be AMD exclusive programs, the rest will be special SMB initiatives through the various OEMs that AMD is partnered with. 

samrita@varindia.com