Keeping in mind a need to create innovation led disruptions in the market, Brocade India is looking forward to increasing its number of Independent Software Vendor partners in India.
Edgar Dias, Regional Director – India & SAARC, Brocade speaks with Zia Askari from ChannelDrive.in about the company’s core focus today and how it is moving ahead in the market.
How is Brocade creating disrupting propositions in the market?
We are disrupting through innovation, disrupting through software networking, and disrupting through devops. We are using technology as a disruptor to drive a unique value proportion to our end customers.
We have a strong presence across key verticals like; BFSI, Govt., IT/ITeS, E-commerce and Education. From a channel coverage perspective, we not only have OEM partners but also work with the reseller community.
Our robust partner relationships for SAN solutions are also reselling our IP portfolio for example EMC and Hitachi. These large OEMs play a key role in our overall go to market for IP storage, converged stack and for data center transformation. Customers are on the journey of transformation, they want to see compute, storage and networking basically marrying itself and that forms links between provisioning of a compute to integration with a network or vise versa or with storage. For this we are building the capability to drive devops capability in-house in India.
How big is your ISV ecosystem today? Can you name these ISV partners?
Today, we partner in a big way with two big partners. But we are looking for multiple partners. We cannot name our ISV partners. These partners bring in skills like python programming, Chef, OpenDayLight skills etc.
You have mentioned that you are working with two ISVs. Any plans to increase this number?
Yes we are planning to increase this number. But we do not have a target in terms of numbers but priority will be given to those who will bring in complementary skill sets that we can leverage and take to the market.
Please share your go to market strategy in India?
We use a very targeted approach to the market. We know which industries and niches to target and strategically work with our partners to initiate conversations. This zooming in strategy helps us maximize our sales conversion rates and gives us a leg up on the competition.
Brocade’s go-to-market is predominantly through the channel with over 50 channel partners (and growing) in India. Key market segments that Brocade focuses on include; BFSI, Healthcare, Government, Education, Media & Entertainment and Service providers. Brocade has also recorded solid wins in recent times in India. We want to be the best company to partner with in the networking business. We want to be the strategic networking vendor to the largest and most influential IT companies in the world.
You mentioned that you have 250 customers in India?
Right. So that is the proof point of existing deployments that we have in the country. We are doing a lot of new initiatives on the fabric side, IP fabric, software networking space and campus space.
Mention the challenges that you are facing while looking for these markets and which are the new age innovations that you are looking forward to be adopted?
There is a misconception that Indians do not adopt to technologies quickly which is not the fact because now Indian customers are fairly sophisticated. They will not take a bet on technology that is non-proven for eg, fabrics.
I think in Asia, probably after Japan, the market that has adopted fabrics fastest has been India, for Brocade at least. Obviously, there are countries like Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Korea etc. but India has done in a big way. Last year we grew triple digit year over year. This year we are going to grow triple digits as well.
Are you talking about the revenue?
Yes, I am talking about the revenue. We are growing triple digit year over year which means we are growing 100% year over year. So for us our challenge is how do we pump up the ecosystem and channel partners to pick up more customers.
You mentioned that you have thousand people here and would this number grow?
From a sales and technical sales perspective, we are around 50-55 in the country now. Yes, we amongst the few companies who have added additional tech and sales force in India. Our customers like what we are talking and like the fact that we are not locked down and that we are giving something that is unique. We play on the ability to give our customers the opportunity to drive better performance, better automation, better skills and ease of management.
How many people can we expect as you have today 50 people on the sales?
Right now it is our financial year end and we are going through the planning process. We do not have numbers as yet but are going through the planning cycle for the next year.
Are you planning for an expansion next year?
Yes. Our CEO was in India and he mentioned that India is the fastest growing market in the world for Brocade. A lot of technologies have been developed in India and we are planning a lot of expansion in India.
What are some of the big innovations that are being led by Brocade today? Why are these important for the market?
Recently Brocade launched three new solutions: The Brocade SDN Controller 2.0 is a commercial distribution of the OpenDaylight (ODL) controller based on the Lithium ODL release, and two new software-defined networking (SDN) applications—Brocade Topology Manager and Brocade Flow Manager. These new solutions reinforce Brocade’s leadership in open source SDN, providing greater innovation, interoperability and choice while eliminating vendor lock-in for customers.
Brocade Flow Optimizer is an SDN application supporting an Open Daylight-based controller, and provides real-time policy based management for network traffic flows. When coupled with Brocade MLXe routers, the Flow Optimizer enables service providers and enterprises to gain proactive insight into their network traffic and mitigate network attacks and eliminate network congestion, with the ultimate goal of providing an improved end user experience.
Brocade Analytics Monitoring Platform allows organizations to achieve greater ROI and reduced OpEx for their mission-critical applications by providing IT staff with the highest levels of monitoring and analytics between servers and storage. As a result, organizations can better ensure predictable performance and operational stability for their IT infrastructures.
When it comes to enterprise verticals, which would be the biggest enterprise vertical for Brocade?
It is the technology and government vertical. In terms of potential, obviously it is e-commerce and banking, and with the entire focus on digital India, smart cities etc. There is going to be a lot of trickle down effect in terms of investment in the networking infrastructure which we see happening in next 6-18 months.
