We are committed to India, as a market and in R&D

What role has India played in VMwares strategy?

Our headcount in India stands at 800. VMware vCenter was the first product
which was developed from start to finish by the Bengaluru VMware development
team. We are committed to India, not only as a market, but also as a R&D player.
We are going to set up our second R&D facility in Pune. Our system integrators
in India are servicing our customers in India, and are also helping to take our
solutions to the global market place; and we are seeing a lot of success in
that.

What is the level of relationship between VMware and
EMC?

VMware was setup as an independent operating company post EMC acquisition. It
did not change our go-to market strategy. In fact, it helped VMware leverage
EMCs worldwide presence, and expand in newer markets. So, VMwares
international growth was due to the partnership we formed with EMC.

What is your assessment of the Indian enterprises on
adoption of virtualization?

Indian market has started to adopt virtualization, but not at the rate we
see in the US or in Europe; and probably lags by a year or two. But, clearly the
Indian market is IT savvy, and they understand the benefits of virtualization,
and we are starting to see them as more aggressive in their adoption. Among
large enterprises we have Bajaj Auto, Bharat Petroleum as our key customers whom
we have helped cut down on the additional server cost. We have also helped them
consolidate their existing infrastructure. Chitale Dairy is one of our SMB
customers, we helped them cut their software acquisition cost by 75%. Apart from
these, we have MNCs who have presence in India, and are using our products.

What is VMwares training strategy, considering
virtualization implementation requires special skills?

VMware has a solid strategy on how to educate the market, and we are focusing on
the academia and institutes across the region, and helping them understand our
virtualization offerings. We had a program called VCP (VMware Certified
Professional), and there are thousands of professionals who have got this
certification. We have IIHT and NIIT as our training partners, and our strategy
has been partner-led.

Sudesh Prasad

sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in