EMC Juggernaut in India Marching ahead

“India has rapidly become one of the most strategic markets for EMC’s expanding global business. India is a remarkable country in so many ways – from its vast population of scientists and engineers and the priority given to education, to the rapid growth of its economy, and the government’s intensive focus on IT and e-governance. We see a great future for EMC in India, and we look forward to providing the technology and solutions that can help India progress towards its goal of becoming one of the world’s leading information-based societies,” said Joe Tucci, Chairman, President & CEO, EMC, on his first visit to India recently. The message was clear. India, which has become a crucible of IT market and opportunities, occupies a place of prominence in the EMC’s scheme of things. Manoj Chugh, President, EMC India & SAARC, reinforces the point, “India is a key strategic market for EMC, globally, and we see immense potential for growth in this market going forward. We have outlined an aggressive strategy to strengthen our leadership position in the market.”

In the recent past, Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based EMC is on the prowl for acquisitions. Its most recent acquisition has been the security major RSA for $2.1 billion in cash and options. In the past three years, the company has swallowed nearly 20 companies spending US$4.5 billion in the process, a majority of them software companies. Backup-recovery firm ––Dantz, Data content management specialist ––Documentum and virtualization outfit ––VMWare are among the most notables.

This has something to do with EMC’s transition from storage vendor catering to what Mr. Tucci calls an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) company.

“It is no coincidence that every one of our acquisitions in the last four years has been of software companies. By acquiring and integrating these organizations, EMC’s revenues from software alone have propelled us into the seventh-largest company in the world with software revenues,” notes Chugh. In order to better leverage these assets and to go to market in an effective manner, the company has created the EMC Software Group (ESG). And, as it is obvious, the company’s dependency on the hardware has been eliminated. “In 2003, we set ourselves an ambitious goal (at that time) to generate 50 per cent of our revenues from hardware, 30 per cent from software and 20 per cent from services. Today, we have already over-achieved on that goal, our revenues in Q1 2006 comprised of 46 per cent from hardware and 54 per cent from software and services,” says Chugh.

EMC’s vision is to help our customers get the maximum value from their information at the lowest total cost of ownership at every point in the information lifecycle. That means building an ILM infrastructure across all applications that is policy-driven, business-centric, heterogeneous and application independent. Although ILM is a process ––not a product ––that requires a set of tools, technologies and services to make it work. EMC currently offers the widest selection of ILM technologies in the industry.

With a full range of storage platforms, management software and consulting services, no other company today has all the three components to fulfil a complete ILM solution. The software companies acquired by EMC have helped EMC complete the ILM offering and give EMC the added advantage and capability to rapidly implement an ILM solution to customers. EMC is also in the process of taking ILM to the next level, with an initiative called Automated ILM. In this integrated environment, customers will be able to apply business-driven policies across the entire heterogeneous IT infrastructure of an enterprise, matching the right application to the right service level at the right time, all from a single console.

Asked about EMC’s approach to ILM, Chugh says, “Our approach is incremental. We believe that even when implemented in a limited manner, ILM provides customers with clear goals and clear benefits.”

“EMC’s phased approach to ILM helps our customers maximize the benefits available with today’s solutions and also prepares them for innovations yet to come,” claims Chugh.

Expanding India’s Presence

EMC has been involved with the Indian market since 2000 and already runs business offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai. The company also operates customer support and logistics centres (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad) throughout the country to address the customers base. It has three proof-of-concept (POC) solution centres in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

“EMC in India has witnessed tremendous growth over the last three years; we are the leading information management vendor in the country. According to various analysts and reports, we have been ranked as the Number 1 information management in India. In future too, we expect to continue to grow and solidify our leadership position in the Indian market,” says Chugh.

The company also plans to establish a Centre of Excellence for E-governance (CoEE) to help the Central Government and various State Governments implement e-governance initiatives to provide better governance. The CoEE will work in partnership with the Ministry of Communications and IT in India.

EMC has committed to investing $500 million in India over the next five years, which will be used to grow the Indian market for information management, expand its sales and marketing infrastructure, and boost its R&D presence in the country.

“One of the key areas where this investment will be used is to strengthen our marketing strategy in the country. We have outlined an aggressive marketing strategy to expand the information management market in India and strengthen our leadership position,” says Chugh.

“In terms of manpower, EMC already has around 800-strong workforce in India. We plan to double the workforce in the next two years.”

EMC does handsome selling its storage products to India’s booming high-tech industry. According to Gartner, EMC was the Number 1 External Storage Vendor in 2004 as well as 2005. The company has a large market to pursue in India among both domestic companies and multinationals expanding their operations in the country.

2005-2006 till date has been a significant year for EMC in terms of product portfolio enhancement. In 2005, the company launched 12 new hardware and software products, including EMC CLARiiON UltraScale architecture and CX3 series of networked storage systems storage, industry’s first available platform with full end-to-end 4 gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) Fibre Channel technology.

“EMC has a large portfolio of over 350 customers in India spread across diverse verticals“– Telecom, Manufacturing, Technology and Financial sector,” says Chugh. The company’s strong 350 customers in India include telecom companies such as Tata Teleservices (Tata Indicom), Bharti (AirTel), and Hutchinson Group (Orange and Hutch); manufacturing firms such as Mahindra & Mahindra, the Aditya Birla Group, Asian Paints, and Madura Garments; the technology companies like Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Dell, GE, and Wipro; and banking and finance companies such as ICICI Bank, Citibank and CDSL. NDS, Marico Industries and KPMG are the other important customers.

Of late, EMC has ventured beyond the safety zone of large enterprises to target the small- and medium-business (SMB) market. According to a study by Access Market International (AMI), there are nearly 7.6 million small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in India. Of these SMBs, the medium-sized businesses are expected to spend $7.7 billion to beef up their IT infrast ructures, up 26 per cent from last year.

“The mid market or the SMB market is one of the most significant focus areas of EMC in India. We estimate that the information solution needs of this segment are growing at more than 150 per cent annually. We have recently launched 12 new products and solutions for this segment and we have committed to make our products accessible to customers in 60 cities through our channel partner by 2008,” says Chugh.

“At EMC, we like to ‘THINK global, but ACT local’. The way that translates into our mid market strategy is that we are doing different things in India than what we are doing in the US. The difference in strategy has got to do with the differences in average size of organizations, the difference in our partner and channel readiness, the difference in our brand recognition and the different needs that Indian customers in the SMB space have,” says Chugh.

As EMC undergoes transformation from Storage Company to complete Information Management Company, its channel strategy has also acquired a new dimension. Once a direct sales-focussed company, EMC took the channel route with the launch of the Velocity partner programme in 2005.

In India, the company has over 50 Velocity Resellers, focussed on different geographies and verticals. Through its partners and distribution network, the company offers its storage platforms, software and services to over 30 cities and towns in the country.

The company has already landed big-name partners such as Wipro Infotech, Tata Elxsi and HCL Infosystems, Tata Consultancy Services Limited and CMC Limited. Apart from having global relationship with Dell, its strong alliances with technology companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Cisco.

Redington is EMC’s regional distributor in the region. Additionally, EMC recently announced a global OEM and expanded technology agreement with Intel, focussed on growing the storage requirements of small and medium businesses in the emerging markets like India and China.

EMC is focussed on consolidating the partners across geography as well as solutions. EMC has unique solutions in the areas of storage management for Microsoft Exchange, Oracle RDBMS and SAP-based systems – EMC is expanding its partner network to cater to customer requirements in these solutions. EMC also offers solutions in the space of archival solutions for voice as well as data for ITeS services and has partners to provide end-to-end systems integration. 

EMC provides a comprehensive 3-day training programme for partners’ resources starting from the basic fundamentals of storage and extending to all Information Management solution offerings. Trained resources are mentored and initiated into storage business with guidance from EMC sales and presales teams. High-performing partner resources are given opportunity to represent India at various EMC customer/partner forums at corporate (EMC World) or APJ (SPEED). The company also recognizes the contribution of Partners at the Rewards and Recognition Events periodically in India. From time to time, it has come out with various Spiffs for partner sales teams on its business – Super Strokes, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, and Master Blaster, etc.

There are many benefits for partners in signing up with Velocity Partner Programme of EMC. “Whenever some one signs up with EMC, they need to invest something, whether it is in terms of people or financial resources. Our Channel programme will be geared towards ensuring that the initial investment is minimal as well as that they will be able to recoup their initial investment in the shortest possible time frame, even within two quarters,” says Chugh.

“EMC very clearly understands that not all partners are the same: some are larger, some are smaller and each has different needs. Our partner programme will be geared towards ensuring that our partners have the option of starting small and growing big.”

“We would like our partners to be focussed on Value Sales, so that they have the flexibility to offer EMC platforms, software and services, and also provide their own value addition.”

EMC has recently launched EMC Academy Programme (EAP) in India, industry’s first programme aimed at developing a resource pool of skilled information management and storage professionals. The company has already aligned with 26 educational institutes across India.

When questioned about how EMC tries to stand apart from the competition, Chugh says that unlike any other vendor, EMC products are seamlessly interoperable with products from all other vendors. “With 24 software acquisitions, we have the most comprehensive portfolio of information storage and management software,” he notes.

“EMC also differentiates itself on the basis of its consulting capabilities that it offers under the new brand of EMC Consulting. EMC and its valued partners offer these services globally, including via newly expanded practices in the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region, and Latin America. The EMC service offerings now go further to help customers realize the benefits of an ILM strategy,” says Chugh.

EMC had coined the term “content addressed storage” (CAS) in 2002 when it released its Centera product. EMC Centera is the world’s first CAS solution and leading online archival storage medium. EMC Centera has well over 1,200 customers, and more than 30 petabytes (30,000 terabytes) of capacity has been shipped since Centera’s introduction in April 2002.

EMC is world’s largest information and storage management organization with revenues of $9.66 billion in 2005. With 26,500 employees, the company has operations in 52 countries. It is the only global technology major with 12 consecutive quarters of meeting or exceeding Wall Street expectations.