While the world is facing the wrath of the slowdown, Kevin Chen is confident of strengthening Aten's base in the Indian market through channel empowerment programs and robust after-sales support for its customers

How has the slowdown affected your business in India?

Despite the slowdown, Indian market is still one of the top markets for us in Asia-Pacific and hence we are very optimistic about its growth. We are putting in all possible efforts to sustain the current situation.

What kind of support are you giving to partners?
We are supporting our worst hit partners by running various schemes and incentives for sales. We are also working on some special price benefits for partners if they achieve the targets for the first quarter of the year. Also, we are planning to hold a multi-city partner empowering trainings program which will be done in coordi­nation with our distributor Cubix. Our prime focus will
be to increase awareness of Aten's high-end products amongst channel community by trainings, seminars and various partner benefit programs.

What is the future of KVM switches in India?
Till September 2008, the market was growing at a rate of 30 to 35 percent, however, later it became sluggish. But we still are optimistic about the Indian market. We expect that the overall KVM market in India will grow by 20 percent in 2009 despite the slowdown.

What are the new develop­ments coming up in the partnership with Cubix?
To enrich our post-sales services to our customers, we are planning a local 24x7 strong technical and RMA support in co-operation with Cubix for our customers and partners. With this new center the turnaround time for any rectification or replacement will be from eight to 24 hours across India.

What would be the core focus of Aten for the year ahead?
We are aiming to strengthen our partnership with Cubix to further create a strong base in the Indian market. For this year, Aten will have more complete over-IP solutions for large/multiple data centers. The new products from our over the net series provide centralized control of multiple server rooms within high price/performance ratio.

How are you focusing on the post-sales service of the products?
Currently, Cubix has eight authorized service centers spread all over India for Aten products that are managed by qualified trained engineers. Aten is now providing more demo units, evaluation units and swap units to cater to quality after-sales service to its huge customers and partner community in India. We are also ensuring customers get the replacement unit within next business day. Aten has also established e-support technology platform to solve technical problems online.

Amrita Tejasvi
amritat@cybermedia.co.in

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