Brightstar aligning its focus to drive a cloud enabled business in India

2018 has been a turning point for Brightstar as it enters the cloud league with its own cloud offerings - the very recent being the Security as a Services deal with SonicWall which has already seen some early success. It is also bringing its very own service offering in WiFi as a Managed Service soon very soon. Sanjeev Patil, VP - Networks Division, Brightstar Telecommunications India speaks to VARINDIA on the paradigm shift it has seen in its approach from a traditional distribution mindset to a solution providing entity in the Indian market -

How is the distribution landscape changing in the country and what is the need of the hour?

The distribution landscape witnessed an interesting 2018 which saw the industry move forward from the initial GST hiccups and shift its focus on building revenues, creating innovative service models, broadening geographical reach and optimising cost. Amidst the growth story, however, the falling margins and subdued growth of many small and mid-tier companies served as a wakeup call for that segment. Going forward, we expect to see a consolidation wave in the years to come, where small and medium players would merge to compete for large scale deals and keep up with the changing industry dynamics. Emerging trends in service delivery like Cloud Computing are likely to remodel the industry by creating new business opportunities for the IT/ITeS vendors and driving changes in the traditional service offerings. Today, margin pressures are pushing companies to proactively look for ways to contain costs while enhancing output. For long, Tier-2 cities have played around the fringes of mainstream IT/ITeS delivery. Today, we are seeing more and more companies moving into Tier-2 cities to set up delivery centres. In line with the market situation, distribution firms are also on the lookout for growth avenues like Cloud Computing/Opex models, beyond the traditional box-selling model.

In this fast changing world, how is the adoption of cloud platforms complementing the growth of Brightstar?

Over the past few years, cloud computing services and delivery models are being embraced by organizations globally for their numerous benefits. The data aggregated from cloud adoption trends show that companies are willing to use cloud services due to their business and IT benefits and to avoid costs in maintaining and upgrading their in-house infrastructure. Brightstar with its foray into Cloud Services (in partnership with OEMs like Polycom, SonicWall etc.,) and Channel Partner ecosystem is confident that this business model will be a game-changer in this industry.

How will the Security as a Services deal with Sonicwall complement your growth plan?

With the cybersecurity threat landscape rapidly expanding, every company is facing new cyber security threats. Technology professionals are fending off attacks from all directions. CIOs and CSOs may have looked at cloud environments with a wary eye in the past. They now realize that Managed Security Service Providers or MSSP companies may be the best way to maintain protection. Security-as-a-service (SECaaS) is becoming a more comfortable concept for many technology professionals.  They quickly realized that creating customized solutions are often too slow and expensive. Gartner estimates the cloud-based security services market will reach close to $9 billion by 2020.

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are driving growth as they are becoming increasingly aware of security threats. They are also seeing that cloud deployments provide opportunities to reduce costs, especially for powering and cooling hardware-based security equipment and data center floor space. Brightstar, with its reach to the SME segment through the Partner ecosystem is planning to utilise this opportunity through the Cloud offerings.

Can you share about your next big service offerings on Wi-Fi as a Managed Service.

The traditional multiple vendor approach doesn’t meet the challenges of today and future WiFi needs. More customers are looking for a turnkey subscription based model to deploy an enterprise grade wireless network. Fast, secure, and reliable WiFi doesn’t depend on just one, but many network infrastructure components i.e. AP, WLC, SMP etc, engineered precisely to meet performance and user expectations. And it requires ongoing management and support to keep things running at their best. Brightstar WI-FI flex combines all of these elements and packages them into a monthly subscription model. As per our study, Small and Medium Enterprises, especially the Hotel and Healthcare sectors have high acceptability of Cloud Services.

How is Digital India and start-ups bringing newer idea and Innovative technologies?

There are a lot of Start-up firms in India focusing on innovative technologies like Cloud technology, IoT, Digital Payments etc. In the coming years, this sector will provide a big opportunity to Technology Distribution Companies like Brightstar to play a big role, not only in terms of selling the products but also to enhance their service portfolio.