India represents a huge opportunity: Darl McBride

Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO owns the core UNIX operating system and is

the exclusive licensor to UNIX-based system software providers. Darl McBride,

President and CEO, SCO spells out his vision for India, the company's

performance in the last two quarters, products and serviced offered, the

emerging trends in enterprise and SMB OS market in the country and also gives

his perspective on BRIC and its future in an interview to AC Ganesh of CIOL.

What are the factors you took into

consideration when choosing

India?

We

have been doing business in India for a number of years, well before I joined

the company. We were the early birds to set up the operations in India and I

think that it has helped our business there. The I.T. industry in India knows

that we aren't a start up company that is here today and gone tomorrow. We've

been in business for more than two decades and we plan to be in business for

many decades to come. 

How are

SCO products influencing the Indian market?  

SCO products are reliable, scalable, highly secure and work well especially in

various vertical markets (as mentioned before) and once installed they work for

years and years without interruption and without requiring much service or

support. In a country as large and as vast as India is, I think that it says a

lot that some of the most important institutions (banks, government agencies,

utilities, etc.) depend on our products. 

Elaborate on SCO's products and services in India?

SCO has had a presence in

India & the SE region for more than a decade now headed by Sanjay

Gupta (Country Manager — India & SE Asia). We have a strong presence in vertical

sectors such as banking, finance, government agencies, utilities and

transportation.

SCO has a complete range of products and services available in





India through its distributors and partners. The company also has

an engineering center for development and professional services in our

New Delhi offices. Obviously the mobile market in

India is huge and we have started working with service providers

and various companies to begin offering mobile services in a number of regions.

So during the past year, we have really diversified our product offerings from

operating systems with UnixWare and OpenServer to adding mobile services too.

How has been the performance of

SCO in

India since its inception here?

India has been a major growth center for the company with a 40 percent increase

in revenues between 2004 and 2005. We expect that revenues will continue to

increase from this region of the world with the high growth of I.T. expenditures

that

India

is expecting during the next 4-6 years. 

What percentage of total revenue for

SCO

do Indian markets contribute?

We don't break

out our revenue numbers by countries or region, but typically about 55 per cent

of our revenues come from

North America

with the rest (45 per cent) of the revenues coming from outside of the U.S.

Brief us on SCO's performance in the last two quarters?

The business has been more challenging than ever, mostly

because of the extreme competition in the OS marketplace. But the opportunities

have never been greater for

SCO. A number of large customers have started or finished



SCO OpenServer 6 implementations across their enterprise with

great results. The company's new mobile services business is showing tremendous

promise and we are already participating in a number of pilot projects with

companies around the world, including companies in

India. That market is wide open right now and whoever can deliver

the kinds of mobile services that companies and governments are looking for in

the shortest amount of time will win.

Name few customers for

SCO in India? 

Indian Overseas Bank, Dena Bank,

UCO

Bank, ITI ,

UBI,

The Centre for Railway Information Systems, Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd,

Punjab State Electrical Board, National Thermal Power Corporation, Haryana

Vidyut Prasarnan Nigam Ltd., and Central Power Research Institute  and many

more. 

What is your headcount in

India? What kind of a skill set do you look at

while hiring?

We

currently have 9 in sales/presales support and 15+ in engineering and

development and we continue to grow this number. 

Brief us on plans for

India in the coming quarters? 

We

have been doing a very good job in India and the

Southeast Asia region in terms of

revenue growth, new customers, new product launches, etc., and we will continue

to grow the business by bringing new technologies and products to market, by

working with our partners and by providing good support and service to our

customers.

What are the verticals addressed by SCO?

SCO has traditionally been a company that is strong where

transaction processing is important and reliability is of paramount importance,

so we address markets such as retail, banking, finance, hospitality, insurance,

pharmacy, utilities, transportation and government agencies.

 

What developments are taking place for the Enterprise market and as well as SMBs?

SMBs have incredible opportunities now because technology

prices have come down so low that they can adopt the same kind of software and

hardware that only their bigger competitors could afford a few years ago. So

there really is this leveling affect in terms of competition.  

 

Is there any way to reduce UNIX server cost for SMBs?

Our company is very focused on the SMB market. This is where

most of our resellers that sell

SCO UNIX sell into, so it's a market that we're very familiar

with. We have a number of products and solutions that are priced and targeted

specifically for the SMB customer, including

SCO OpenServer 6 for Small Business. 

Elaborate on marketing strategy and SCO's engagement in Indian market with ISVs,

channel partners etc?

SCO has a strong presence in banking, finance, government,

utilities and transportation verticals. Within India

SCO has direct presence at 4 metros and works with OEMs , Sis,

ISVs/VSPs and solution providers to address customer's requirements — we have

grown in India year-over-year, signed on new customers, have conducted a number

of corporate events under the leadership of Sanjay Gupta and are looking forward

to ramping up our business as we move forward with the help of new technologies

such as mobility.

With most of the companies engaged in educating the channel partners and

resellers, is SCO also looking at the same to reach out and address them?

SCO is a very channel friendly company and has been

recognized by

VAR business and other publications with awards for our channel

programs. We believe in transferring the knowledge to our channel partners to

enable them to propose the solution not the boxes. We have done various consumer

specific events and other activities to introduce new technologies to the market

and train our channel partners so they are ready when they receive customer

leads.   

What about the after sale service to the

customers? 

SCO has worldwide support services and infrastructure in place and we do provide

services through our trained partners. We have a team in India which can take

care of any special support needs and of course this team is backed up by our

engineering teams around the world. We have a worldwide support infrastructure

in place and provide support ranging from email/fax/telephone through to

enterprise level support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What is your vision for India?

India represents a huge opportunity because of a number of

factors. The projected revenue growth of the I.T. market in

India is the highest in all of

Asia, and outpaces the rest of the world. The Indian

government's plan for I.T. investment and expansion into more rural areas is

also significant.

SCO has been prominent in Indian banking for a number of years

and that will continue as bank modernization continues throughout the country.

Throw

some light on emerging trends in Enterprise OS markets?

Probably the biggest

trend in the enterprise OS market is around virtualization, where the underlying

OS becomes more and more transparent and multiple operating systems are able to

run on one system. We are already seeing this with some of our customers. One of

our major customers runs a product called Merge with



SCO OpenServer which allows OpenServer to also run Windows applications on the

same system. We anticipate seeing this trend more and more in the years to

come. 

 

Your

perspective on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) emerging as strong

markets, their strengths and future?

I actually just gave a

keynote on this very topic at a trade show in



Russia. The BRIC markets are compelling because they represent a collective

population of 2.7 billion people with nearly $16 trillion in purchasing power,

and I.T. spending that will increase 13.9 percent annually to more than $110

billion by 2009. This kind of growth clearly outpaces the rest of the world and

these countries will experience rapid I.T. changes during the next 5-7 years.Â

 

What

are the challenges SCO is facing and how do they plan to tackle it?

We have some very tough

competitors in our product categories, with Microsoft Windows on the one side

and Linux on the other. Many customers view Linux as offering a similar value

proposition as UNIX in many respects because, well, it's based on UNIX. Added to

that is the problem of it being freely downloadable. How do you compete against

free?



SCO has had to fight and innovate every step of the way to show customers that

what we offer them is better supported, more reliable, and of greater value over

the long term. 

Who is

a bigger threat - Microsoft or Linux for UNIX?

They are both equally

tough competitors for different reasons. Microsoft because they have so much

cash, a strong brand, and they are really good marketers, and Linux because it

is so much like UNIX.

 

Now

more and more enterprises or developers are going to Linux. How do you plan to

bring them back to UNIX?

Linux has been around

since the 90s and we have many customers that have stayed with



SCO on UNIX. So you have to ask yourself why? People don't move operating

systems because it's the popular thing to do; especially SCO customers. Many of

these customers have been running SCO UNIX for more than a decade with very

minimal downtime and little maintenance required. Customers just don't want to

give that up.

 

Now

SCO is looking at mobile/wireless market. What exactly you are looking at here?

Again, don't you think you are a late entrant here?

The most lucrative

non-hardware category for the mobile and wireless device market in recent years

has been ringtones. Beyond ringtones and e-mail services, there are few

applications or services that businesses have adopted en masse. From our point

of view, mobile services is a market that is wide open and whoever can deliver

the right applications and services with the speed to market and quality that is

required will win. We've been preparing these services for more than two years,

and so far, I like what I see.

So far we've delivered

some very unique communications tools with our Me Inc. mobile services product

line called Shout and Vote, and we seen great adoption of these services from a

number of verticals including sports franchises, universities, realtors,

retailers, and many other industries. In addition to this, we have our EdgeClick

mobile services platform that allows developers to use our EdgeBuilder software

development tools to create custom mobile services for any business or

organization. We're seeing a lot of interest in this area with customers

implementing a variety of unique and powerful mobile services.   

Which are the potential

markets you are targeting in the next few quarters?

We will continue to target the markets where we are strong as

well as enter into new markets with our mobile services where we've never had a

presence before. Companies and government agencies are looking at what we are

doing in the mobile services space and I think that we are really turning some

people's heads. They are really surprised at the capabilities that we are

bringing to the market. 

Elaborate on your

partnership with MySQL?

The company entered into a mutual agreement with MySQL last

year. They saw our customer base as an important one to them and MySQL was not

yet certified on SCO UNIX platforms. So we had a number of meetings and worked

out an arrangement where we would work together to get MySQL certified on the

SCO UNIX platform and work together to jointly support our customers,

participate in joint sales calls, marketing opportunities, etc. 

Brief us on your latest

offering mobile digital services?

In September 2005, after many years of development work and

using the assets that we have in-house, we introduced what we call Me Inc.

mobile services. These are services that initially were available on the Palm

Treo platform, but we are now extending this out to Windows Mobile devices,

simple every day cell phones and even personal computers. Our initial services,

called Me Inc. Shout and Vote services, are really powerful at helping people

communicate quickly and gather opinions among friends, co-workers, and basically

any group that is central to someone's life. I can be sitting any where in the

world with my Palm Treo 700, quickly record an audio message using the Me Inc.

Shout service and send it to all of my employees with the click of a button.

That's really powerful and quick, and that's the kind of capability that we're

giving to all of our mobile customers. It's also a nice personal touch because

people aren't just reading an e-mail. They are alerted that they have received a

Shout message from me and then they hear my voice as I share my message with

them.

Beyond the Me Inc. services, we're also providing resellers

and developers with tools to quickly create mobile services of their own that

they can then sell and provide to their customers. We've already seen some early

success with this and we hope to announce a very large customer in

India that has begun using

these mobile services very soon.

The other strength of our mobile services is that we

incorporate a very powerful backend technology called the Edge Processor. The

Edge Processor is the service engine behind our mobile services. It allows our

customers to record a message and then quickly send it out to any thousands of

individuals. We've already had customers using this to send Shout messages to

more than 38,000 registered customers at once. In fact, the Edge Processor is so

powerful that we haven't found the threshold yet for how many customers we can

service at once. So we can handle really large, enterprise demands with this

kind of technology.  

What are the advantages of

having UNIX or MeInc. over similar products in the market?

All of our products have very unique advantages for different

reasons. Our UNIX products really set themselves apart from other products on

the market because of their reliability, security, and performance. Few other

products on the market offer those advantages on the Intel hardware platform

like we do. The Me Inc. products provide us different advantages because no one

else is providing the kind of service that we provide. It's unique. It's also a

very fast sales cycle. People see the technology and how it can be applied to

their business and they typically say, “Wow. I want that.” It doesn't take weeks

or months to deploy. It's a very fast sell because customers quickly realize the

benefits of using it. 

How effective is MeInc.

going to be, when similar products have failed in securing huge market share?Â

Most companies that have tried to do what we're doing have

failed because they rely on the phone to do all of the work. If you only rely on

the phone, then the application or service typically becomes big, cumbersome and

slow. We believe we have the right set up to keep the mobile service small and

agile on the phone, while providing big benefits to customers by combining our

mobile service with our backend Edge Processor technology. I don't believe that

anyone has implemented this the way that we have.

What are the other trends in

Enterprise OS market?

Virtualization is coming on strong and of course all of the

big OS vendors are taking advantage of 64-bit technology and multi-core

processors now.

Which are the products lined

up for further release? 

Without getting into specifics, you'll continue to see us

update our OpenServer and UnixWare products while also rolling out new mobile

services in the coming months.

What has been SCO's

performance in last couple of quarters and brief us on the plans

for the next two quarters?

The business has been challenging, mainly in the server OS

side of our business, but the company is starting to scale up on the mobile

services side of our business. We will continue to maintain and update our UNIX

business and focus on growth opportunities in our mobile services business.Â

What is your global

headcount and are you planning to ramp up?

The current number is 191 and that number has been ramping up

and I expect that it will continue to grow if our mobile services business

continues to grow like we expect it to.

Which of the products and

solutions contribute the most to SCO's revenues?

Clearly most of our revenues come from the sales of our SCO

OpenServer and UnixWare product lines, but we are ramping up quickly in the

mobile services area.

© Ciol Bureau