Guest Speaker Of The Month :Pradeep Khemani

Pradeep Khemani Country Manager, Channel & SMB Sales, Enterprise Servers, Storage & Networking (ESSN), HP India

What kind of opportunity HP sees in the Government vertical in India?

The Public Sector contributes a fairly significant portion to our business. Be it Hardware, Software or Services, all would agree that this sector witnessed several key initiatives in the past couple of years. The IT and ITeS automation projects planned at various levels of key segments are a huge market driver today. We have all our business groups - Servers, Storage, Networking, Software and Services, PSG, IPG tapping the potential of these opportunities significantly.

Do you target the Government sector through channels? 

This segment encompasses large Central ministries as well as individual State Governments. HP largely depends upon its partners to address this segment. However, the scope of involvement depends upon the size and scale of the project. 95% of our business is done through partners. Depending upon the project and the deliverables, the profile of partner involved may vary from large to small SI to a regional distributor to a reseller. In some cases, Government requests direct involvement of HP because of technical and/or security concerns, which we address directly.

How do you make partners self-reliant? 

As you would be aware, buying in the public sector is an involved process of not only understanding the needs but also building a solution within the stipulated budget or fund allocated for that project. It also has intricacies related to deployment and post-deployment. Since the Public Sector looks at HP as the most favourable and preferred brand, we not only have to work towards maintaining that trust but also enable our partners facing the project to work towards winning in that space and maintaining the same trust.

Training is a continuous form of enablement that we follow - be it in terms of solution building skills, product knowledge, sales and pre-sales certifications, post-sales service. We invest heavily every quarter in ensuring that the skill-sets of our partners are current and that it allows them to address the opportunities in this market space.

Can we say that Government vertical helps you sail across the tough times?

As I have said before, the Public Sector contributes a fairly significant portion to our business. We are seeing this segment investing in core projects even during the current financial year. Irrespective of the market conditions, investments have been happening and we hope to continue winning and addressing this space together with our partners.