SMBs experimenting with changes to technology solns

BANGALORE, INDIA: In an exclusive interview with CIOL, E R Ashok Kumar, Director - SMB, Nortel India talks about SMB customers leaning towards experimenting with changes to technology solutions.

Excerpts from an interview:

CIOL: How has the SMB market been adopting new technology solutions?

Ashok Kumar: We see the small and medium business (SMB) customers adapting to and embracing IP telephony. There has been a distinct shift from viewing IP telephony as a 'nice to have' to a 'must have' solution. Nortel has also seen SMB customers leaning towards experimenting with changes to technology solutions. They also wish to adapt to the changing technology to be ahead of their competition.

CIOL: Which are the new products on offer by Nortel to the SMB market?

AK:Nortel's new product range includes switches, routers and access points and will feature the SMB-specific Business Communications Manager (BCM50), and a digital hybrid PBX supplied by Nortel's Korean JV, LG-Nortel. SMB customers will benefit from both voice and data enabled solutions backed by Nortel's carrier-grade industry standards. The specially designed offering will provide customers simple, scalable and easy to use products at a very affordable price.

CIOL: What market share has Nortel gained in the Indian SMB space?

AK: For Nortel, SMB is very critical to the overall enterprise strategy, and it expects this segment to contribute to 25 percent of the business in the coming three years. Nortel is targeting to be the leading player in the coming years. There is a huge market for the product that Nortel has launched. With about 7.6mn SMB businesses in India (as per AMI partners), 20 percent of them have PCs, all of these businesses will need basic voice EPABX and basic switches, routers, access points.

Nortel believes they have solid products/solutions combined with solid 'Go-to-Market' strategy to be successful in this segment. Nortel's biggest success story has been developing dealers and partners in the converged solutions space. They have been the only company in India to have done so.

With Nortel's focus on the SMB segment, we expect the channel to grow by about 50 percent. As of March 2007, Nortel has 1,000 partners in India, of which 200 are nforce select partners. Nortel is planning to further develop these partners' expertise areas. The nforce partner segment has about 800 partners working with Nortel. The basic quality Nortel looks for in a partner is technology system integration capability. As important is the partner's hunger for growth, which should to a certain extent be aligned with Nortel's own objectives.

CIOL: In your understanding, are Indian SMBs on par with those in the APAC region and other countries when it comes to IT awareness and implementation?

AK: The Indian SMB market is a gold mine that needs to be tapped. It is estimated to be worth Rs 900 crore. About 54 percent of the IT spend in India comes from the flourishing small and mid-sized business segment, which is growing at a rate of 20 percent per annum. According to IDC, there are about 1.7 million organizations that can be classified as SMBs or Small Office Home Office (SOHO) set-ups. These organizations spend about Rs 3,400 crore on IT products and services. SMBs are more varied in shape or form and can be segmented in more ways than one: size, number of employees, revenue, international presence, whether independent or part of a larger group.

The Indian SMB segment is going through a process of evolution and businesses are looking at technology to enable them to grow bigger. Backed by the buoyant Indian economy and the large SMB market, Nortel has established a long-term strategy to cater to specific needs and challenges of SMB customers. Today the SMB segment needs enterprise technologies like wireless, high end voice features, IP etc., at an affordable price, from a single vendor/ channel partner, with the ability to scale when needed. That is the USP of Nortel where we have introduced both voice and data, converged products and solutions precisely meeting SMB customer needs.