Quest Software entered into the Indian market two years ago and it is now slowly and steadily building its strong presence in the country. Thyagarajan talked about the company's strategy in india and the issue of piracy within the industry

Brief us about your channel strategy.
We are looking to expand our marketshare in the SME segment, for which we want to appoint solution providers and partners, who can promote our products at a regional level. In the next quarter, our main agenda is to expand our partner portfolio. We have been holding discussions with the channel community in order to enhance our focus and engage with them.

How are you planning to strengthen your presence in the Indian market?
We currently have three main distributors that include Vistech Information System in Bengaluru, Nippon Data Systems in Delhi and Alltech Technologies in Mumbai. We have recently appointed Sonata Software and Softcell Technologies.

We have a second set of partners, who are the system integrators (SIs) like Wipro, for large projects. We also have a few value-added resellers (VARs) who are working to expand our presence at a regional level. We are looking to expand our marketshare in the SME segment, for which VARs are most critical. We would be appointing two to three VARs in big cities and 15-20 in the up country regions in the next 12 months. For us, quality is more important than the quantity of business. We want our partners to be fully-skilled at the products they sell.

There are big and established players like SAP, Oracle or Microsoft in the ERP domain. The market is competitive. How are you geared up to take the competition?
We are not competing with SAP, Microsoft or Oracle. We manage the technology offered by these big players in the business application domain. We provide solutions that provide support in the ERP and CRM segment, for example, how to back up and archive messages.

Our solution is a complete alignment to products offered by big vendors. Our products include windows management for Microsoft, database management for Oracle and Sybase, application management for SAP and virtualization management for VMware.

So what are the challenges that you are currently facing in the industry?
Our biggest challenge is changing customer mindsets because in India, customers have a chalta hai attitude and they don't seek any solution to solve the problem faster. They are highly ignorant about technical upgrades or better management. Even now, they believe in manual operations for any technical faults. CIOs are now realizing that applications cannot be managed manually. So, our products play a vital role in solving their problem.

Do you see piracy as a hurdle in business application management?
Piracy in India is a huge challenge. It is a threat for large Oracle database users, or window users or window management solution. We are trying to focus on and identify the management compliance and security with the width of product range.

Piracy is a serious issue and it has increased by 75 percent in the last seven to nine months because of the tight market situation. The only ways to curb piracy is through education and enforcement at the customer's and channel partner's end. Our message to the end-customer is that spending on these management products is worthwhile as we provide tools that increase his productivity and give assured return on investment.

Amrita Tejasvi
amritat@cybermedia.co.in

Page(s)   1