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Shekhar Dasgupta, President and COO, Solix Technologies feels that India is
one of the fastest growing markets in the world with a significant number of
enterprise application customers. In order to tap the market opportunity, Solix
is all set to recruit new channel partners and expand their customer base in
India, thus getting out of their image of being 'low profile' here
Why has Solix kept a low profile in India? Any plans of changing the
profile now?
Over the last few years, we had been quietly working on solutions for data
management. Our experience in enterprise application services led us to this
field. We helped customers migrate data from one version of an ERP to its next
higher version (SOLIX UPGRADEjinni), or from one ERP to another (SOLIX
MIGRATEjinni) or from production system to an operational system within the
current application (SOLIX ARCHIVEjinni). Our solutions have received
endorsements from analysts, customers and partners. Obviously media is an
important vehicle to get our message across. We have a strong value proposition
and we need all stakeholders, including media to support and endorse this.
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| Shekhar Das Gupta, President
and COO, Solix Technologies |
Which strategies are you going to adopt to increase visibility and expand
your presence in the country?
Solix is present in India through two development centers in Hyderabad, which
are CMM Level 5 certified. The three solutions that I have mentioned were
developed out of our Hyderabad facilities. We also have a few customers in
India.
India is one of the fastest growing markets in the world with a significant
number of enterprise application customers. We intend targeting this market. We
got a tremendous response from our participation at the Oracle Open World. We
are also recruiting channel partners and this should significantly expand our
customer base in India.
For most technology companies, their APAC hub is Australia, Hong Kong or
Singapore. For Solix, we have made India as the APAC hub. This would require us
to extend our infrastructure and we are now looking at new facilities as we are
planning to expand over the next five to 10 years.
What are your plans for channels this year and are you looking at
expanding your channel presence in India?
We are currently on an expansion mode. Besides India, we are aggressively
recruiting partners all over the world – even in markets like the US where we
have our current customer base. Besides, we are also looking to partner with SIs
(solutions integrators) who have a global presence so that we can work together
with global customers.
What criteria would you be looking at when signing new partners? Also by
how much are you looking to expand the partner count?
Verticals will be a strong strategic initiative for us. Hence, partners with
strong vertical domain knowledge or solutions will be an important
consideration. We have a few ISVs in India who have a strong global presence
through their domain knowledge or solutions.
Since we are in the data management field, the reseller and implementation
partner should have DBA experience and preferably also some ERP technical
implementation experience.
Would your channel expansion strategy vary for metro vis-à-vis B and C
class cities?
Ours is enterprise level software and we aim to improve the performance of the
enterprise application. We need only a few quality partners who have the reach
and knowledge to target this market and ensure customer satisfaction. Geographic
location is not going to alter our fundamental partnering principles.
Tell us a few important features of the just launched ILM partner portal.
Also please comment on your association with the two resellers that have signed
up for the portal.
The partner portal will be a knowledge repository and a one-stop source for
partners to work with Solix - the one source of communication via web with
partners. Some of the key benefits the partner could leverage using the portal
would be:
Register and lock opportunities early with Solix. This is a method of
ensuring that any other partner who approaches us with the locked opportunity
will not be considered for it
- Manage their sales opportunities and request for technical help when
necessary
- Access domain-specific current news
- Access Solix news and press releases
- Access ARCHIVEjinni related technical documents, sales material and white
papers for sharing with customers and for internal use to improve their
success in closing sales and providing better customer service.
- DBORA (in Malaysia) and InfoMart (in Germany) are strong partners for
Oracle with good DBA experience and strong customer relationships. We see a
synergy that would help Solix and these partners to achieve the individual
and the collective objectives.
What according to you would be the next big thing in ILM technology?
Enterprise search across all data types will be the next big thing in ILM.
Business intelligence, threats of litigation, compliance guidelines, data
privacy and security requirements are demanding that all data (structured,
semi-structured and unstructured) in an enterprise be maintained in an
unaltered, secure form that can be retrieved in a fast and reliable manner.
Search technologies that were primarily for unstructured data (documents) are
now being extended to cover semi-structured (e-mail) and structured data from
databases in an ILM framework.
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