TechnoBind is first Specialist Distributor in the Indian IT channel space – offering a hybrid distribution model placed synergistically between broad-based and niche distribution, in order to deliver the highest business values for each of its reseller partners.
Prashanth GJ, CEO, TechnoBind interacts with Zia Askari from ChannelDrive.in about how the company is evolving itself to address the upcoming opportunities and how it is looking at its future growth.
What are the big priorities for TechnoBind today? What are the emerging opportunities for partners in the cloud space today?
TechnoBind is one of the only specialist technology distributors in the country and is poised to redefine the distribution market with the services led by technology distribution model. Adoption of emerging technologies like Cloud has always been a challenge for organizations across industries, especially in the mid-market and SMB space.
Organizations often struggle to keep pace with the innovations and changes happening in the cloud space. There is also the lack of understanding about new technologies and the prevailing skills-gap in the industry. IT decision makers find it difficult to build a business case around such technologies. This is in fact a great opportunity for the cloud-savvy partners. If they have the right set of people, Cloud adoption & migration offer great prospect to the channel. Today’s multi-cloud architectures and adoption of hybrid cloud call for new approaches, strategies and skills from partners.
What is your strategy towards catering to the changing cloud computing needs of enterprise customers?
We have formed a focused business unit for Cloud services and have brought in an industry veteran to head this unit. The formation of new BU will give us a more concerted and sustainable approach to the cloud market. We will be working closely with our enterprise partners in helping them identify and address new opportunities in Cloud. We handhold them in acquiring the right skill sets, vetting the right solutions and building the right go-to-market strategy around cloud.
Our focus is on Cloud storage, backup-as-a-service and DR-as-a-service. Data storage and data management are the key priority areas for organizations migrating to Cloud this year. Nearly 70 percent of the companies we spoke to have either adopted or will soon adopt enterprise cloud storage. We see great amount of enthusiasm from our partners in taking these services to the market. We are also planning to address the IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-service) space jointly with our partners.
DR as a service is picking up in India… How do you look at this as a growth opportunity?
DR-as-a-service is fast becoming a popular option for companies who want an effective, on-demand Disaster recovery plan within their shrinking budget. With the new innovations in cloud and DR solutions, migration of data from primary data center to the Cloud DR site is no more a hassle. So, we see increasingly organizations adopting this model to achieve faster recovery times, scalability and flexibility. According to Gartner, ‘DR-as-a-Service’ market will nearly triple in the next three years to a revenue point of $3.4 billion by 2019.
Partners can watch out for growing demand from small and mid-sized companies, which are quite price-sensitive. The recent ransomware attacks and outage incidents have made it clear that all types of organizations need to be prepared for unforeseen IT and business disruptions. At the same time, many SMBs do not have the right technology skills or the budget to implement an enterprise-class DR solution. This is where our partners can have a long-term role.
Please share your future plans on creating big value for your ecosystem??
We have very ambitious plans with a target to further double our revenues from the last FY. Mobility and software-defined storage present great opportunity to us in India. If reports are anything to go by, 2017 will be the year of software-defined storage. With Big data, IoT and other technologies contributing to the enterprise data deluge, SDS is seen as the only way to curb storage cost. According to analyst firm Research and Markets, the global SDS market is predicted to reach $6.2bn by 2019 with a 34 per cent CAGR. India presents a huge untapped market for partners in this space, as virtualization adoption in general is lower than the global average. We are in the process of building a set of services around SDS, along with our partners, to help them accelerate market adoption.
We will continue to focus on bringing new technologies and solutions from leading vendors to our channel in India.
