India, key market for WWT due to strong customer demand and talent pool

World Wide Technology (WWT), a US-based technology solution provider and systems integrator, does the heavy lifting by providing maximum clarity and value for customers. WWT helps customers streamline the entire process and offer an integrated system of technologies that have already undergone extensive testing – removing the need for customers to assemble an IT system from scratch or manage multiple suppliers and vendors. WWT currently offers solutions from more than 3,000 technology manufacturers.

WWT is Cisco’s largest global and strategic partner. Having recently established their presence in India with the opening of its fourth global Integration Center in Mumbai, India, Matt Horner, SVP, Global Enterprise Sales, WWT, opens up more on the partnership, and new opportunities. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: Elaborate on WWT’s and Cisco’s strategic partnership and future growth in India.

Matt Horner: Since becoming partners in 1994, WWT has grown to be Cisco’s largest global and strategic partner and we’re delighted to bring this world-class partnership to India. Over the years, WWT has been recognized for our technical expertise and advanced services across Cisco’s entire product portfolio, geographic regions and market segments.

As Cisco has focused on helping customers optimize their digital transformation journey, we’ve been developing services and capabilities to make that objective a reality. We expect to offer unique solutions and services that will best benefit the India market.

Through our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), customers are able to access the latest Cisco solutions and services in networking, data center, security, collaboration, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) to test what solutions are best suited for them in a sandbox environment.

DQ: What is WWT’s commitment to continue investment in the booming India market?

Matt Horner: India is a key market for WWT because of strong customer demand and its immense talent pool. These factors were pivotal in our decision to set up our second Asia Integration Centre in Mumbai, and we expect to ramp up our investment in the years to come in order to provide maximum value to our clients here. The new integration center, along with future initiatives, will also allow us to better serve our client base in the region.

At a time where there is a worldwide race to secure top-level tech talent, India’s talent pool offers an opportunity for businesses to tap into a workforce that is diverse, motivated and talented. As companies around the world embark on digital transformation journeys, it is crucial to hire individuals who can contribute to that process; we think India is the perfect place to source these individuals.

To ensure that we are always able to offer the latest technology from leading manufacturers and enable our engineers to provide the best counsel for customers here in India to achieve their business objectives, we’re more than prepared to invest heavily in our employees in India.

Our India employees can look forward to continuous training and forging close working relationships with our partner personnel to stay abreast of the latest technology developments.

DQ: What are the new opportunities for WWT and Cisco?

Matt Horner: As companies look to digitalize every aspect of their business, implement new technology or improve their current IT environment, integrators and service providers have been handed a unique mandate to deliver maximum value for companies that struggle to achieve their goals. Such goals require extensive planning and testing.

In addition, the rapid pace of change to keep up with consumer demands will also bring numerous opportunities for us. During this change, customers will be looking at the kind of solutions our valued partners like Cisco offer, and our ATC will play a crucial role in helping our customers make the best decision for their business and technological needs.

Couple this with industry-best experts across every enterprise IT technology and a perfected lab process, our ATC delivers results in a fraction of the time it would take if a customer were to attempt the same testing on their own.

DQ: What can customers look forward to with an Integration Center now in India?

Matt Horner: WWT has a total of four integration centers, two of which are in Asia: Singapore and Mumbai, India. The establishment of our presence in India provides our customers here an evenstronger understanding of in-market business needs and gives them direct access to a vast pool of expert engineers who can customize mass-market offerings into bespoke technological systems perfect for every kind of business.

Regardless of location, all integration centers possess the same capabilities and will be staffed with certified engineers with the logistical and technical expertise to help reduce the risk, cost and complexity of IT deployments.

Our India customers can also look forward to our rack integration solutions, which combine technology from leading manufacturers, including Cisco, Dell EMC, NetApp, HP, VMware, APC, amongst many others.

DQ: What is the role of WWT’s Advanced Technology Center in helping customers explore and learn more about the best technological solutions for them?

Matt Horner: Our ATC is a physical campus, located in St. Louis, USA, that contains labs used for product demonstrations, proofs of concept and building reference architectures with the latest solutions regularly added to its environment.

The integration of various technologies to work together can be an expensive, timely and complex process especially as we transform into a 5G society. On top of being overwhelmed with solution choices and managing multiple vendors, customers also must worry whether new solutions would work well together with their current set up and whether they possess the necessary technical expertise to implement the solutions.

Failing to integrate properly will create security vulnerabilities, increase maintenance cost, lead to further downtime and decrease overall productivity.

WWT solves these challenges and provides customers with maximum value by doing all the necessary “heavy lifting.” By bringing solutions from more than 3,000 technology companies together through our ATC, customers can explore and evaluate the latest technologies. This is important because the addition of new technology could disrupt the entire synergy of a system and produce counterproductive results.

At the same time, the ATC’s sandbox environment also enables us to replicate customers’ IT environments, and help troubleshoot the technical issues they encounter.