Usha Prasad 

BANGALORE, INDIA: To tap into the lucrative small and medium businesses (SMB) market in India, Hewelett-Packard (HP), has been rolling out specific products to enable easy adoption of IT by growing businesses and SMBs. Continuing with the expansion of its servers and portfolio of entry-level storage solutions, HP has been offering a whole range of products –Proliant servers, Balde systems and entry-level EVAs, to name a few - to address the unique needs/pain points of Indian SMBs.  Durgadutt Nedungadi, director – marketing & alliances, Technology Solutions Group, HP, spoke to CIOL about HP's initiatives in addressing the needs of growing businesses. 

Excerpts:

CIOL: How open are Indian SMBs in adopting IT? 

Durgadutt Nedungadi: There has been a huge adoption of IT among Indian SMBs. We are seeing that a growing business is just as IT-enabled as an enterprise. The IT needs of a growing business or an SMB is no different from a large enterprise. Growing businesses are feeling that IT can bring in a tangible difference to their business. IT is felt as an intrinsic part. As regards adopting IT by an enterprise, they are ready to invest in robust solutions, take risks and deal with complexities. In the case of a growing business, they look at technologies delivering the same business needs at affordable costs, but don't let them deal with complexities. They are not ready to spend time on research. One more important thing to be made note of is that "Indian growing businesses has not been encumbered by legacy. This allows them to leapfrog a couple of steps ahead." In addition to ERP, adoption of web-based application, SaaS and hosted services has gone high among SMBs. The uptake has been huge.   

CIOL: How has HP been addressing the needs of Indian SMBs?

DN: From HP's perspective, we try and increasingly deliver solutions to reduce the increasing needs and requirements of growing businesses. For example, our Shorty – which is a one box IT infrastructure – effectively takes away the complexities of an SMB.  Our entry-level Linux product offers the flexibility of having the application which is robust on a Unix platform. This product has done very well in the market. Having said this, I don't think we are done. We need to go to the next step – packaging the infrastructure with the right applications. Here the envelope of affordability plays a major role. There is no 'one-size fits all' package to address the pain points of SMBs in one go. Our partners build and deliver a complete package to address the needs of a growing business. We are leveraging the potential of our fulfillment partners, ISVs and business partners.  

CIOL: Elaborate on HP's strong channel partner base in reaching out to SMBs.

DN: We have been able to reach out to growing business through our channel partners in a big way. The key cog in the wheel is the channels, who help in seamless implementation of our solutions/products. The selling and technical skills enable the partners to have an edge. There is a huge dependency on channel partners in this market. Channel zone sensitivity to the customers needs has gone high.  

CIOL: Which product of HP can address the overall pain points of an SMB?

DN: If there has to be one technology that can address all the pain points, it is our Bladed Enclosure – specifically designed for a growing business. It includes servers, storage and network across different platforms.  Further, we continue to innovate on the bladed platform. Our entry-level Unix products and entry-level EVAs too have accelerated the adoption of IT among growing businesses.  

CIOL: What is HP's focus for this market in future? 

DN: Moving forward, we will be focusing on innovative business models to maintain and grow our shares. With our channel partners, we want to create a center of excellence within their own organization, which enables growing businesses to come, explore and feel the technology. HP is working towards reinforcing the channel partner network to bring in seamless implementation of the package and to take away the complexities.  To sum it up, each SMB, across verticals have different pain points. However, the common concern and goal each of them has is to accelerate growth, reduce risk and keep the costs low. The lead-time for IT adoption has lessened. This is the competitive edge.