Packets from India

In January 2003, information storage major EMC became yet another company to
embark on software development activities in India. EMC’s India development
center (IDC) based in Bangalore is its first in South Asia. And as is the case
with the IDCs of multi-national IT companies, EMC too says that its India team
will eventually contribute to the development of its key offerings, including
AutoIS, its automated storage solutions initiative. But instead of starting from
scratch, EMC first acquired the Intellectual Property of a US-based storage
service provider–Sanrise and then, subsequently hired the (now bankrupt)
company’s staff of 21 people in India. The entire software development
activity of Sanrise, was done out of its Indian arm- Sanware, based out of
Bangalore. Sanware was in fact, preparing to launch certain storage software
products when it had to declare bankruptcy. EMC plans to integrate this IP into
its own over the next few quarters. This integration is likely to result in the
launch of products in storage resource management, backup and recovery of
systems.

"The EMC India software development and support center will initially
perform certain software maintenance and support activities for many of our open
software product offerings, and over time will play a more significant role in
contributing to the development and growth of our full line of storage software
products," explains Chris Gahagan, senior vice president, Storage
Infrastructure Software, EMC Corporation. EMC expects to double its strength of
21 software professionals over the next 12 months. EMC also has R&D
facilities in the United States, Cork, Ireland, Brussels, Belgium and Kawasaki,
Japan.

Steve Fitz, President, Asia Pacific/Japan, EMC Corporation says, "The
EMC India Software Development and Support Center is a unique opportunity for us
to gain access to a world class pool of extremely skilled software
engineers." EMC entered India in April 2000, with a small team of 20 people
focusing on marketing and sales activities for its products launched globally.
The company has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi.

EMC currently has clients in the five key verticals–manufacturing,
financial services, telecom, government as well as healthcare and biotechnology.
Among its clients are Airtel, Orange, Tata Teleservices, Citibank, GE and the
Railway Ministry.

Manjiri Kalghatgi

Roadmap India

The team of Chris Gahagan, Steve Fitz and Srinivasan,
MD, EMC India fielded questions from Dataquest on the company’s
strategy for India

Instead of working with distributors, EMC preferred to
reach out to end user companies via system integrators like HCL and Wipro. Who
are the other system integrators you are working with?

We cannot rule out working with distributors. In fact, we have been dealing with
Tech Pacific over the past year in areas where the distributor model was
amenable. The hardware part of storage will get commoditised in due course of
time. We do see the distribution model working out for the Clarion CX200 at some
point. At the same time, we are working with system integrators like Tata Elxsi
and Datacraft too. We partner with TCS on a project-to-project basis–primarily
for large projects.

Are you following the distribution model you have
globally–top clients serviced directly by EMC,
tier 2 clients jointly by EMC and the channels and tier 3 by channels alone?

In India, channels alone service all our clients. The top tier of clients
will see more of an EMC presence. We also have agreements with two outsourcers
in the offing. There always are certain products that customers still use, but
we no longer market. These outsourcers will offer technical support for such
"end of life" products. EMC meanwhile, will concentrate on new
products.

Out of EMC’s 100 customers in India, how many are
tier 1?

About 25 customers would fall into the tier 1 category and the rest in tier 2
and 3. The last 22 months have seen EMC India growing by 50 customers. We added
10 new customers in Q4 of the current year.

Your global partnership with Dell was meant to help
you penetrate the SME segment. How far has this worked given that Dell itself is
relatively new in Indian markets?

Our global partnership with Dell completed its first anniversary in Oct 2002.
Dell has been a very good ally. Our entry-level CX200 offering especially works
well on Dell’s direct distribution model. The partnership with Dell has helped
increase revenue globally. Even in India, Dell’s contribution will gain
traction. After all, Dell was perceived as a new entrant in Japan and China too,
but successfully broke into those markets.