Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Twitter

Take one glance a the bullish strategies of major IT vendors targeted at the SMB segment and it becomes obvious that tech consumption amongst this fraternity is on an exponential rise.

SMBs will invest approximately $500 mn on servers and networking hardware this year with two-thirds of the expenses going towards network related hardware purchases alone, a recent survey of Indian SMBs conducted by the New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners Inc has disclosed.

The SMB market in India is undergoing a sea change with respect to their data management needs “The employees are spread across India, business data and critical applications usage is growing fast as the mobility increases thus making data protection and high availability requirements, a must for them to mitigate risks internally and externally,” says SNIA chairman PK Gupta said.

As data itself becomes a key business asset, most SMBs now understand the need for backup and recovery policy. The government regulations too (Sebi clause 49) enforce strict procedures to be followed for the use and storage of electronic data.

Strategies Adopted
SMBs today are an important market for any storage vendor as this is where the maximum growth potential is. All vendors admit that the SMB market potential in India is immense and everyone is vying for a share in the pie. Industry leader HP admits that in terms of infrastructure products like servers, storage and services, close to 50% of HP revenues comes from the SMB segment in India.

Storage vendors like HP, Cisco, Seagate, EMC and IBM etc are devising out-of-the box strategies to grab a share in the segment. “EMC has launched a three-pronged business roadmap including solution portfolio, market reach and creating a support network to deliver on the information management and storage needs of SMB segment in India,” informs EMC India & SAARC President Manoj Chugh.

	-Ashok Pamidi, HP India director, Commercial Accounts & Enterprise Partners, TSG
	-Baba Sam, marketing director, Sun Microsystems
	-Manoj Chugh, president, EMC India & SAARC

HP too has devised a three-step strategy for its SMB customer base, which is in thousands. “Since our strategy is customer focused, we have grown our sales force and are targeting SMBs in tier-2 cities,” opines HP India director Commercial Accounts & Enterprise Partners, TSG Ashok Pamidi. The company has segmented SMBs based on industries and for each industry it has identified ISVs who offer solutions for solving business problem and has developed a set of channel partners, trained and equipped to offer relevant and easy to use solutions to help customers focus on their business and not their IT.

Tech majors have realized that SMBs require different treatment than enterprise accounts for several reasons as they are large in number; they are geographically more spread out than enterprises and there is a fair amount of diversity and therefore there is no single thread of commonality, which runs through them. Keeping all these factors in mind, IBM India has its strategy woven around these three dimensions; coverage, channels and products. “We have dedicated teams like ibm.com- a tele sales initiative, VFB- a non-metro initiative to forge relationships with these customers in a scalable way. Tier II channels are encouraged to go into storage opportunities and we have launched a set of affordable products to suit the SMB budgets,” Says IBM India Storage Solutions country manager, Shailesh Agarwal.

As most SMBs are spread out over a large area, most vendors like Hitachi Data System and Seagate have roped their channel partners to solve the problem of reaching out to them. “Hitachi Data Systems addresses the segment through its channel partners like Wipro, Apara, Acer and its distributor Ingram Micro and its set of tier-2 partners,” remarks Hitachi Data Systems managing director, PP Subramaniam. To make the sales process easier for the partners, HDS has been conducting hands-on trainings, lead generation seminars, joint mailers etc. Seagate on the other hand, according to Seagate India & SAARC Country Manager Rajesh Khurana, has formed Regional Customer Councils comprising of channel partners, .

How Much do SMBs Invest?
SMB storage market is growing because of increased focus to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness using IT systems. “They are going for some level of enterprise application usage like Supply Chain Management (SCM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), HRIS, Sales/ Support automation etc apart from regular office automation and email communications,” says Gupta. As per a study by AC Nielson, SMBs in India will increase their IT spend to Rs 26,709 crore in 2008 from Rs 21,370 crore in 2005.

When it comes to preferences in storage deployment, most SMBs prefer price performance, as they cannot afford very expensive solutions. They look for data storage solutions that can be installed, managed and maintained easily as they cannot use resources for these activities. The worry points are similar to big enterprises but different inhibitions like affordability, manageability, inter-operability and support needs to be taken care of by storage vendors by providing simple tailor-made storage solutions. Also the units would require minimum onsite involvement, as they don't have dedicated person for storage.

Tracking SMB Market Share

The DAS>NAS>SAN Route
With a variety of storage technologies available, the question that besets most SMBs is which is the best way to determine which one is right for them. The business units should then consider the nature and data of application and how critical and processing-intensive are they. Choosing the right storage solutions depends on specific needs and long-term business goals of an organization and there is no right answer for anyone. The key criteria to consider include deciding on the amount and type of data (file level or block level) that needs to be stored and shared as well as deciding on how mission critical are the applications. Also to keep in mind are the needs for backup and what are the recovery requirements plus availability of dedicated IT staff and resources. Not to forget the performance angle that is I/O and throughput requirements, prospects of long term data growth and last but not the least the budget concerns. 

Most of the small/mid-sized enterprises are moving towards automated tape backups from manual. Some SMBs are gradually veering towards Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Networks (SAN) from Direct Attached Storage (DAS) as they are now realizing the advantages of these new technologies. “Migration can happen from DAS to NAS or SAN or both depending on whether the application requires file or block access,” believes NetApp marketing director, Soumitra Agarwal.

Page(s)   1  2