Chebbi feels this is the time for transformation for channel partners in India since customers are becoming more aware about technology and its implications on their infrastructure, which makes it imperative that partners too scale their knowledge in the technology domain

What is the biggest challenge for most CIOs in India today?
One the biggest challenges faced by CIOs today is not bit and bytes or the speed of processors or the chip technology transition. Their biggest challenge is power consumption.

In about four decades from now the world will need thrice the amount of energy that it is using today. At the same time, we all know that due to global warming, greenhouse effect, carbon footprint, etc, we are obliged to cut down the carbon emission by half. This means that we have to be energy efficient by four times over by producing less of carbon monoxide.

For any organization, the bigger it is, the bigger is the challenge of energy management. Smaller organizations can work it as a compe­titive advantage if they can manage this situation well.

So on one hand, IT has become mission critical and on the other hand, CIOs have a huge energy challenge. Also they are bogged by the management of the data center keeping its total cost of ownership (TCO) in mind.

Therefore, the biggest equation that a CIO is trying to solve today is that of energy management.

Post APC's merger with Schneider Electric, how will you help your channel to position the entire product portfolio of the merged entity?
When a company builds a data center, irrespective of its size, in order to deliver the required power utilisation efficiency, it needs to look at end-to-end solutions. CIOs want solutions quicker, simpler and more effective at lesser TCO, especially for SMB companies.

Schneider Electric is the energy management of the customer in the IT infrastructure. Starting last year, we started to build end-to-end solutions for data centers with our channel partners. Now we are going to enable them to offer these solutions not only to the large data centers, but to every IT infrastructure user in the country.

But how are you involving your partners in such an exercise, especially since most of them are still mired in the transaction mode of doing business?
This is actually the time of transformation for the channel. It is a great opportunity for them, because they are a partner of a company which can really bring the true solutions to them.

It's all about clear common vision, strategy and its execution on the ground level. We have been listening very closely to our partners and our customers and using all their inputs we will soon be rolling out a complete channel program.

Recently, we had rolled out a program on the service delivery platform called the Partner Engagement Program (PEP). A similar one is going to be rewarded for the sales channel.

We are targeting 30-40 major tier-1 and tier-2 cities. It is quite a comprehensive program which is a direct partner connect program.

What other elements are going to be involved in this new program?
First of all, it starts with a common program. We are talking about segmentation of the channel, their positioning and customization of our entire program for that set of partners.

So you are talking about close engagement with partners over having a larger channel base. How do you however manage to do it in practical terms?
This is actually a period of transformation. Some of the success stories that you hear about in the channel space is because of their customer focus or engagement. This calls for a clear mindset of helping to solve the customer problem in terms of delivery of the solution. This is because the customer situation is different though there may be common element through it.

But this is easier said than done. We have been able to plan the needs of our channel over the past months. Now what we would like to do is go and execute this plan. This is going to be our next phase of the program.

You had recently announced about your plans to have a training center. Can you elucidate on this?
We wanted to create a training center that is good enough to train our engineers, our customer's engineers and our partners' engineers. We had one such center in Mumbai but that was not in line with our future plans. We needed a bigger place where we could create learning environment that went beyond classrooms.

This training center will have a library, trained instructors, Internet resources and candidates will have access to video conferencing facility where depending on the kind of training to be given we will bring connectivity with experts around the world. So it will be a virtual best practices delivery center for training.

Vinita Bhatia
vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in

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