NEWS

Surajit Sen National Sales Manager, NetApp

The last 15 years have witnessed dramatic growth of storage requirements and capabilities. As the requirements are becoming more complex, one vendor has been engaged in bringing “simplicity to the complex world of enterprise data management” and helping”organizations manage data more efficiently. VARIndia talked to Surajit Sen, National Sales Manager, NetApp India, who elaborated on the company’s products, its focus in India. Excerpts…

NetApp has the entire range of solutions for the storage industry, but is a leader in the SAN solutions in India. It has also been adjudged as the leader in magic quadrant for disk array by Gartner for the mid-tier segment. Please elaborate on how do you project NetApp and what is the identity of NetApp?

NetApp brings unmatched simplicity to the complex world of enterprise data management. We do this via three key strategies:

* Reduced Complexity & Costs: By simplifying data management and integrating storage tightly with enterprise applications, users are able to cut down costs of managing storage administration processes, including the day-to-day backup and recovery processes which are so important for high availability.

* Control Change: We enable enterprises to control, or rather adapt to, change by offering unique functionality that helps them cut down time and cost for implementing changes in their enterprise applications, especially test and development cycles.

* Mitigating Business Risk: We offer industry-leading data protection solutions to enable enterprises to make backup data copies, cost efficiently. In addition, enterprises benefit by our data retention and data security solutions, enabling them to comply with regulations governing data permanence and data privacy.

In the process of becoming a leader, you have come closer to many companies, including IBM, Riverbed, etc. and acquired many companies. Please elaborate on how you have built the capability?
We have a business a development team that focusses on strategic partnerships. This team identifies technologies that are synergistic with our offerings and can help us to broaden our range of enterprise solutions.

What are the new solutions you are bringing this year?
In the recent past, we have launched the following new products in the Indian market:

Systems
® FAS3070 & V3070

® FAS6070 & V6070

® FAS6030 & V6030

® Data ONTAP GX

® Information Server 1200

® 4 Gbps FC SAN

® 10 Gbps IP SAN

NetApp Manageability Software Family
SnapManager for Oracle v4.0
SnapManager for Exchange v4.0 Protection Manager
Virtual File Manager Enterprise Edition
Virtual File Manager Migration Edition
Command Central Service

What is your marketing and distribution network in India and what kind of unique advantage does a partner enjoy?
We have two SI partners who operate nationally, viz. Wipro Infotech and Apara Enterprise Solutions. In addition, we have two distribution partners – Ingram Micro and Inflow Technologies. We have our own sales/pre-sales/post-sales staff across Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, to support our partners and have a direct touch with the key enterprise accounts.

The benefits that a registered partner, Tier 1 or Tier 2, gets with us are:

® Opportunity registration through NetApp CRM system, which ensures margin protection

® Base level discounting irrespective of end-user price at which a partner sells to a customer

® Points-based rewards scheme for partner reps, both sales/pre-sales, where the rewards can be redeemed in cash or kind

® Back-end rebate programme for certain categories of partners, allowing them to earn higher overall margins, subject to achievement of specific sales targets.

What are your focus areas this year?
We are more focussed on going for the enterprise data centre space this year, with solutions for primary storage, disk-to-disk backup, business continuity, archival, compliance and data security. To be able to address our target market, we are very aggressively developing our partners and putting in place local infrastructure to scale up the business.

You have announced US$150 million of investment in India. Which are the areas you are going to spend?
The investment is going in multiple areas, including facilities, technology, infrastructure, people, systems, etc.

What is your target for 2007 in terms of growth of turnover, addressability, etc.?
We intend maintaining, and even increasing, the growth rates that our India business has seen in the last few years. In terms of addressability, we are focussing heavily on developing our partner network and equipping them with the right kind of training and support to help them win more business.