Mind Over Market

The storage solutions arm of Wipro ePeripherals is making aggressive moves to

cater to the growing enterprise storage solutions market, especially in the wake

of the US-Afghanistan fray. The division has tied up with various data storage

companies to provide the Indian storage market with superior storage solutions.

These tie-ups will enable WeP to bring cost-effective and high quality

enterprise storage solutions to India.

Queen bee in the making: Wipro ePeripherals has clear plans to corner the storage market

The company has tied up with three big players in the high-end storage sector–Network

Appliance (NetApp), Qualstar and Exabyte. An entry-level server attached storage

and NAS device is also being offered to Wipro Netstor.

NetApp is one of the world’s cutting edge products in the primary storage

market with solutions ranging from 50 GB to 12 TB (terabytes). Qualstar is a

pioneer in the robotic tape libraries space with a track record of a large

installed base. Its customers include Hotmail, Boeing and Citibank among others.

Qualstar’s lead screw-based robotics offers solutions from 400 GB to close to

53 TB. Exabyte is one of the earliest exponents of tape devices. The company

evangelized the highly popular mammoth technology. Its new portfolio comprising

VXA based tape devices is slated to replace the DAT technology completely.

There has been a sudden burst in the storage solution requirement after the

September 11 iincident. The disaster left a lot of companies shaken spurring

them to tackle issues of data recovery and storage in a big way. Though sales

are yet to pick up, the Indian market has lately seen a sudden surge in storage

requirements as well. The end consumer is now proactive and is demanding

technologically sound solutions. WeP plans to cash in on the same, though it is

currently concentrating on creating its brand equity. Says KPMG CIO Suresh

Kumar, "We have deployed the NetApp filer system for our primary data

storage solution and HP’s autoloaders for secondary storage requirements. This

system was a quintessential requirement of the company.’’ Kumar agrees that

the end consumer is better educated and dynamic in his approach towards a

technically strong solution.

There are various companies who are still looking at enterprise storage

solutions primarily for data backups and offsite data storage. From SMEs (small

and medium-sized enterprises) to large corporates and government sector

organizations, the latest storage solutions are being installed in a big way.

Nestle is one such organization looking for a technically strong data storage

solution. Explains M R Suresh, senior IS technical support executive, Nestle,

"We are yet to assess our storage requirement, but we do need strong data

warehousing. Knowledge companies like us cannot take any risks with data storage

services."

WeP has employed a two-pronged strategy to capture the growing Indian storage

market. It plans to target the end user and at the same time, set the channel

front in motion. The focus should be on educating end users about the NAS

(network area storage), SAN (storage area network), data consolidation and data

warehousing technologies. In the process, the company is securing mind share,

which it hopes will eventually lead to market share too, given that the storage

market is poised to grow in India in a big way. The primary focus is on BPOs

(business process outsourcing) as well as the insurance and banking sectors.

The latter strategy is close at the heels of its other product lines. It has

identified five major channel partners in north India and is giving them the

requisite technical inputs. As the product is expensive, channel partners have a

lot to gain with higher margins.

Vivek Thomas, storage sales specialist (North Zone), WeP, says, "We are

very clear in our approach. We do not want the top lines but healthy and

consistent bottom lines. We add value to our services by eliminating the MNC

margins." According to IDC India, the Indian storage market is expected to

have a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 84% in the period 2000-2005. With

these predictions, WeP’s storage solutions arm is optimistic about the market

share that it will be able to gain. Talking about the targets, Thomas says,

"We are in the process of gaining as much mind share as possible, market

share will follow soon." He predicts a fast surge in storage solution sales

in the third quarter of financial 2002-03.

Shweta Sharma/CNS in New Delhi