Budget constraint, boon for remote access industry

BANGALORE, INDIA: Global remote support tools will grow from $171 million in 2008 to $473 million in 2013, representing a five-year CAGR of 22.6 per cent, as per IDC. Some factors contributing to that growth include continued adoption of mobile devices and the opportunity to combine remote desktop access with other personal cloud solutions.

Seth Shaw, SVP, sales, LogMeIn, in an interaction with Deepa Damodaran of CIOL talks about the growing need for remote access services, how important is India for LogMeIn, how it is better than Cisco and Citrix and more. Excerpts:

CIOL: How is remote access and support industry evolving?

Seth Shaw: The market for PC-to-PC remote access service has slowed, however the popularity of mobile devices such as tablets and availability of remote access applications for those devices has begun to revitalize the remote support and access market.

With the continued adoption of mobile devices and the opportunity to combine remote desktop access with other personal cloud solutions, the remote support and access market is poised for a healthy growth.

Smartphones and iPads are the new indispensable IT tools in every company. The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has changed the way information is accessed and shared by employees across the globe and has urged IT departments to consider mobility as the core of their IT strategies.

Economy is forcing businesses to do more with less; there is a shortage of skilled IT workers at branch locations, and telecommuters, remote workers and mobile workers are increasing as a percentage of the workforce. Given this scenario, I feel the remote access and support industry is poised for positive growth.

CIOL: How important is India as a remote access and support market for LogMeIn?

Seth Shaw: It is observed that this market is niche and growing. Given this market scenario, we see incredible potential in the Indian market - with fleets of customer support desks that can benefit from offering their end-users on-demand remote support. Our strategy has been to secure a few key customers to prove the benefits this type of solution can have for Indian companies, and then bring the solution out to a broader audience.

It has been three years since we started our India operations. India is a very significant and strategic market for us. Fifty per cent of our new APAC business comes from India. The key markets/verticals that we plan to target in India are managed service providers, outsourced IT services organizations and mobile service providers.

For LogMeIn Rescue and Bold Chat we have over 500 customers in India, which include managed service providers, outsourced IT services organizations and mobile service providers and technical support organizations. We have both large enterprises and SMBs as our customers in India.

CIOL: In India you are still a new player, whereas there are other established companies such as Cisco, Citrix etc.. So how do you plan to tackle them?

Seth Shaw: The same strategies and product advantages we have leveraged to successfully create market opportunities in other parts of the world should serve us well within the Indian market. With our Rescue business in particular, a disruptive pricing model is only part of the story.

LogMeIn in general and our Rescue business in particular have benefited from our early and continued investments in mobile - investments that have helped us consistently address emerging needs just as they are arising within the workplace and the larger population.

Rescue was the first solution to offer remote support of Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian, and iPhone devices, iPad tablets and of course, Android phones. This first mover advantage not only helps us win new business in mobile heavy environments - 4 of the world's top 8 mobile operators use Rescue in their helpdesks - but it also gives internal and outsourced IT organizations the confidence that their support solution will scale to meet the unpredictable challenges of tomorrow's helpdesk.

CIOL: What are your differentiating factors against competitors?

Seth Shaw: One of the main differentiating factors between us and our competitors is our continued investment in mobile. This investments have helped us consistently address emerging needs just as they are arising within the workplace and the larger population. LogMeIn Rescue, the company's flagship mobile remote support and customer care solution has partnered with some of the world's largest mobile operators and OEMs.

Rescue's new mobile care offering called the Rescue Click2Fix empowers frontline customer service representatives to diagnose and resolve common Android and iOS device issues without the need to escalate to technical support staff, or worse, ask the mobile subscriber to return a device.

Our other differentiating factor is our product architecture and our engineering capabilities. Our products have a personality that the technicians can easily understand, our products are straightforward, simple and effortless to use. These product characteristics undoubtedly make them the preferred choice over competition

Often both personal users and enterprises experience bandwidth issues. We utilize the best route to transport data. For Ex: we use two direct points to transport data without having to rely on the data centres. This technology enables us to perform much better than our competitors.

CIOL: Do you have any plans to start an R&D centre in India?

Seth Shaw: As our business continues to scale up we will definitely look at supporting the growth. However, as of now we do not have concrete plans for opening the R&D in India.

CIOL: Doesn't LogMeIn's Freemium approach affect the company's bottomline?

Seth Shaw: We follow the 'Freemium' approach with our solutions, which mean LogMeIn solutions are available free for customers, once they are convinced about the solution and its performance, they can buy the paid for premium solution.

This strategy has helped us create good market awareness amongst our customers. Because of our Freemium approach, our share in the remote access market in India is definitely multiple times bigger than the nearest competitor as our share accounts for both free and paid for solutions.