Symantec rolls out cloud strategy

Security and backup solution provider, Symantec, had recently shared the results of its 'Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud 2013 Survey', where the findings state that nearly all the surveyed large and small businesses in the country are at least discussing cloud. However, increasing complexity and the proliferation of "rogue clouds" - prevalent in about 90 percent of Indian businesses, according to the survey -is resulting in escalating costs related to cloud. In line with the increase in adoption of cloud technology across segments, the company has already rolled out its strategies and is enabling a set of channel partners to address the requirements emerging in this segment.

Rogue clouds are defined as business groups implementing public cloud applications that are not managed by or integrated into the company's IT infrastructure. Other key survey findings showed enterprises and SMBs are experiencing escalating costs tied to complex backup and recovery, and inefficient cloud storage.

There is tremendous opportunities to tap for vendors as well as its channel partners in the Indian market with regards to cloud. With an aspiration to grab a significant market share, Symantec has already rolled out its channel strategies and is in process of enabling its channel partners to cater to this market.

Jyoti Prakash, country sales manager, India and Saarc, Symantec.Cloud said, "The Indian consumers are just warming up to the concept of cloud and its offerings and so we see a huge number of rogue clouds. I think it will take a few years for the industry to start utilizing cloud platform more effectively. At Symantec, we are in process of planning for the coming 3 to 5 years and as of today we aspire to have visibility for this duration only." He further added, "There is a huge learning curve for everybody in this segment especially users with regards to technology provider evaluation criteria, security policy, compliance, and more."

Symantec already has a suite of offerings for cloud platform and according to Prakash, the market potential is huge. He added, "Currently, we are seeing good traction in manufacturing, automotive, IT/ITEs and few other segments. The segments have witnessed adoption due to the nature of business. Most of the players follow a global compliance model and the security infrastructure deployed is of high standards. Also, in insurance segment we have witnessed a spike in cloud adoption, however, similar opinion cannot stated about banking segment."

Symantec's cloud strategy will entail selling cloud services, reselling hosted services and products being deployed in the cloud. Going forward, the company will address cloud on all the mentioned fronts. Symantec has adopted 3-pronged strategy. It has more than a dozen pre-integrated cloud products on the market that channel partners can resell - and it plans to add more in the not-too-distant future. The company is investing in products companies can leverage to build their own clouds. There are offerings that extend customers' existing operations by leveraging other third party clouds - such as cloud file-share and cloud storage - that help organizations mitigate risk and become more efficient.

Some of the biggest opportunities for partners are in building cloud infrastructure and also offering services wrapped around it said Prakash.

As of today, Symantec has about 30 channel partners who can termed as cloud ready partners. Prakash said, "If wanted we would have appointed 100s of partners but we were asking for a higher side of expertise. The partners had to fulfill a stringent criterias to be first of all eligible for this, which was followed by an extensive series of certification and training. Couple of our channel partners who have been associated with us for long are almost ready but in other cases we have crossed two phases and by the year end the rest will be completely ready."

Prakash said, "The challenge was to educate and make the partners understand concept and extent of this technology and its possibilities. The extensive training was required to justify the level of engagement these partners will have in time to come with their customers."Sell Symantec's Cloud Solutions: Partners who sell Symantec products and services portfolios can enhance customers' confidence and strengthen trusted advisor status while building recurring revenue with best-in-breed, high-margin cloud solutions from Symantec.

Manage Symantec's Cloud Solutions: Symantec enables Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to add confidence to cloud-based service offerings, helping expand the partners' managed service offerings, simplify their business, and drive monthly recurring revenue.

Host Symantec's Cloud Solutions: With Symantec, partners can host and deliver highly protected and reliable solutions-as-a-service that are based on and empowered by the market's leading security, backup, and storage technologies.

Build Symantec's Cloud Solutions: Partners who build cloud solutions can easily add Symantec options to their product and services mix, helping to create cross-selling opportunities and increase deal size by enhancing the private cloud infrastructures they create.

First Published in THE DQ WEEK http://www.dqweek.com/dq-week/news/189425/symantec-rolls-cloud-strategy