LogMeIn: A Remote and Cloud Desktop

Dataquest got insights into LogMeIn, a remote and cloud desktop company from Anil Sharma, Director, LogMeIn, India. Excerpts:

How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?

At LogMeIn our goal is to create new possibilities through connectivity, and that means embracing the perspective and needs of both users of the technology and the businesses tasked with supporting it. We strive to for simplicity, making it drop-dead easy to connect people to the devices, data, and people - colleagues, customers, partners -- that make up  their digital world.

The four clouds of our business are - the service cloud, the IT management cloud, the collaboration cloud, and the connected object cloud 

a.       Our Service cloud is focused on giving professional help desks and customer care organizations the tools they need to efficiently engage customers across online, mobile and social channels, and quickly diagnose and troubleshoot issues on customers smartphones, tablets and computers from virtually anywhere in the world.  This cloud is highlighted by our professional-grade remote support product, Rescue, and our live chat and multichannel engagement product, BoldChat.

b.      Our IT management cloud and the solutions we offer there (Central, Pro, and our newest offering AppGuru which is currently in Beta) give IT organizations the ability to successfully manage devices, data and apps in today's bring-your-own-tech workplace.

c.       Our collaboration cloud is our fastest growing cloud and offers companies the ability to simplify how employees collaborate with each other as well as their customers and partners. It includes our wildly popular online meeting app, join.me, as well as our  cloud file sync and share product, Cubby.

d.      Finally, our connected object cloud is focused on helping companies embrace the rapidly emerging and potentially transformative Internet of Things.  While today's Internet is dominated by PCs, smartphones and tablets, the Internet of Things will introduce tens of billions of connected devices and objects.  This, in turn, will create completely new ways for businesses to connect with and service their customers, optimize business processes and even create a new generation of connected products.  Our first IoT offering, Xively, is a cloud platform - a platform-as-a-service purpose built to help companies accelerate their IoT initiatives.

The major differentiating factors for us are our own highly scalable and proprietary cloud infrastructure, our proven expertise building wildly popular, intuitive applications, and our   deep IT experience.  These characteristics give us distinct advantages in today's ultra-connected, consumerized work environments. 

 

What is your go-to-market strategy?

The same strategies and product advantages we've leveraged to successfully create market opportunities in other parts of the world should serve us well within the Indian market.  One natural area for synergy for LogMeIn in India is within India's renowned BPO market.  LogMeIn in general and our Rescue and BoldChat products, in particular, have benefitted from our early and continued investments in mobile - investments that have helped us consistently address emerging needs just as they are arising within the workplace and the larger population.  For example, as consumer-purchased smartphones began to enter the workplace, support staff suddenly had to contend with multiple OSes, dozens of device manufacturers, and a seemingly endless array of new device types.  Additionally, Rescue and BoldChat are purpose-built for large customer care deployments - situations where hundreds or even thousands of customer service staff are using these offerings to support thousands or even millions of end customers around the world.  As such, these customer service offerings represent our primary, initial push into the India market and represent the largest share of early revenue in the market.

·         Another opportunity we're seeing in India is the emergence of connected small and medium businesses (SMBs).  SMBs have long been a key audience for LogMeIn around the world, representing roughly 85% of the company's annual revenue.  Given the inherent budget-conscious nature of these businesses, we've had a lot of success by taking a freemium approach to market - giving business users professional-grade apps and tools for free and upselling premium versions for both individuals or company-wide use.  This strategy has been especially impactful in India and elsewhere with our popular online meeting offering, join.me.  It now represents our fastest growing product in the market.      

 

Who are the customers or verticals LogMeIn targeting?

LogMeIn's solutions are targeted towards SMBs, IT service providers, mobile carriers, customer service centers, OEMs, and individual business professionals. The key markets/ verticals that we plan to target in India are managed service providers, outsourced IT services organizations & Mobile Service Providers. Any organization providing Technical Support to internal & external customer can benefit from our solution(s).

 

What are the challenged faced by UC market? 

The rise of devices, data and apps represent a fundamental shift in consumer behavior that is fueling this "Consumerization" of IT. Consumers are now independent, universally connected users of technology that now have the ability to work and collaborate any way they choose.

Of course, there are potential downsides to this paradigm shift, namely less control and greater security risks. Take popular cloud file sync and sharing apps for instance. They're easy to use and great for working from anywhere across devices.  But they also open up the doors to unintended data leakage risks. 

Another challenge is the resulting changes to the role of the IT department. Up until recently, the IT department was the single source of tech in the workplace. Several forces have come together to create this change including: the exponential use of personal devices for business purposes, rising levels of business data rapidly flowing into the cloud, and applications brought in and managed by employees themselves in ever-increasing numbers.  All of these forces have combined to create an environment where IT professionals feel the reins slipping out of their hands.

What are the investments LogMeIn has made in India?

It has been three years since we started our India operations, and India is a very significant and strategic market to us.   Over the past 12 months we've tripled our workforce in India and opened a second office in Mumbai to complement our Bangalore operations. India is an important market to us and we will continue to invest heavily in India.

 

How big is your presence in the market? 

We are in a "favorable, competitive position" in our existing markets, and more importantly we are opening up longer-term opportunities in some of technology's most promising markets.

join.me, our popular online meeting app, has been LogMeIn's fastest-growing product, is used by tens of millions of business professionals, used in more than 130 countries and attracts more than one million first-time users every month. There were more than 27 million join.me meetings last year, alone. This viral adoption has quickly led to strong demand within businesses, with sales of join.me pro, the app's premium version, growing by greater than 100 percent year-over-year. 

join.me is purpose-built for today's workplace and today's customer interactions- fast-paced, highly mobile, highly dispersed, where collaboration needs to be spontaneous, continuous and available via any device. It offers mobile capabilities for iOS, Android and Windows devices, which are available via a free app in the Apple App Store, Google Play or the Windows Store. 

Another key growth platform for us is BoldChat. BoldChat is our live chat and multichannel engagement product. We recently released a number of new mobile capabilities to help businesses deliver a superior customer experience for the rapidly growing number of mobile web users. . As more customers shift to mobile, companies will be forced to adapt to a mobile chat platform to keep customers happy and engaged. We see  a significant market opportunity in this category going forward.

 

Can you name a few of your customers?

We have both large enterprises and SMBs as our customers in India. WNS, Genpact, Accenture, Happiest Minds, etc. are some of the large enterprises using our solutions. IN Technologies, Glopore, Lester Inc, are the technical support organizations based in India who have been using our solutions. India is an important market to us and we will continue to invest heavily in India.