‘The Face of Indian Storage is Changing’

Kok Ee Mann: HP’s services and solutions manager (APAC)

n In your
presentation, you talked of major changes in the Indian storage landscape. What
specific areas were you referring to?

There’s a marked difference in the way Indian enterprises now approach
storage. Earlier, people used to buy servers, install them and get the
networking done and get on with work–it was only later that they would think
of storage solutions or business continuity. Today, the very approach of
enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region to the concept of storage has changed.
Business continuity and disaster recovery are on top of the agenda–ahead of
any other IT deployment. The only sluggishness I see is in the concept of
storage service providers taking off–while the process has started, it is
still far away from catching on.

n What
prevents SSPs from taking off in India?

The same as with credit cards, e-commerce, outsourcing on critical business
functions–security. Sharing of sensitive corporate and strategic data is not
easy for any organization, be it in India or anywhere else. There has to be a
total bond of trust between the two parties involved in any outsourcing deal.
While support or after-sales functions–like HR, client service and accounting
are doing with call centers–are easier to outsource, giving out critical
functions which can make or break your business overnight, are that much harder
to outsource. Also, outsourcing means loss of control–quite a few
organizations, in fact, are moving to in-sourcing, setting up captive support
groups within their own company.

n What is HP’s
storage strategy for India, and how has the merger affected this?

Storage has been the biggest beneficiary of the merger. Armed with the joint
bludgeon of both HP’s and Compaq’s repertoire in the storage space, we have
a combination that others will find tough to match–across product lines,
service capabilities and network reach and coverage. As for strategies, channels
are becoming increasingly important, hand-in-hand with large volumes and
national-focussed system integrators. Also there’s increasing awareness in the
enterprise management tiers–return on investment and total cost of ownership
have always been tough things for CIOs to explain…today, the words and their
impact has reached the top levels. But China remains a much faster market, but
that’s only because decisions are far speedier there…

Rajeev Narayan in New Delhi