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 Manoj Chugh, President, EMC India and Saarc, estimates that customers will increasingly invest in a host of IT optimization products and services that enable faster ROI and reduce costs of operations
While the slowdown did affect many segments considerably during 2009, several segments such as retail, rural infrastructure were relatively untouched. India’s strong and stable economy withstood the impact of global slowdown.
However, the overall IT spending has been affected considerably with budgets being slashed. Globally, while information within an organization has been growing at 60 percent, the overall IT spending has been growing at just 1.2 percent. This trend is likely to continue till 2012. The biggest challenge for the CXOs will be to manage the information explosion within their organizations, with lower budgets.
Overall, the IT industry in India is estimated to have grown by 5 percent in 2009, much lower than the double-digit growth rates we have witnessed over the past decade or so. The storage industry, however, saw relatively healthy growth of 12 percent.
During 2010, we expect the economy to do better as the global markets are recovering. This would definitely improve the IT industry outlook.
Changes in store
Today, the technology industry is looking at tectonic shifts. With information growing at 60 percent and budgets getting conservative, CIOs are looking at solutions and services that will help them to optimize their infrastructure. To solve the information infrastructure problems, it is likely that vendors and partners will be focusing on optimization as well.
As newer applications get adopted and new business models evolve, another key challenge for enterprises will be managing scalability. To maximize IT investments, it will be necessary to optimize every element of an enterprise infrastructure.
Partners who can help customers manage, maintain and monitor IT infrastructure, and ensure the best performance gains are going to be successful. More and more CIOs are insisting on stringent service level agreements (SLAs), and partners need to learn how to deliver products and services within SLAs.
Gone are the days when CIOs bought storage solutions based on lowest cost per TB. The new-age IT managers look at overall costs, the service levels and factors such as scalability of solutions before inking a deal.
Technologies to bet on
During 2009, we saw virtualization, both at server and desktop level, finding acceptance. It promises to be the biggest opportunity in 2010. Virtualization is perceived to bring down costs considerably as customers consolidate both servers and storage. However, if not implemented properly, virtualization doesn’t result in real and tangible benefits.
| Takeaways for 2010 |
- To maximize IT investments, customers will optimize every element of IT infrastructure
- Virtualization, both at server and desktop level, promises to be the biggest opportunity in 2010
- Enterprises will adopt a mix of on-premise infrastructure and cloud computing
- Customers will invest in technologies that enable faster ROI and reduce costs of operation
- Data loss prevention technologies will witness significant growth
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That’s why EMC is equipping partners with right set of tools, products and practices to deliver the right virtualization solutions. Partners who can help customers consolidate and manager information assets will grow this year.
We also see customers readily adopting cloud computing. Enterprises may not move all applications to the cloud, but will adopt a hybrid model—a mix of on-premise infrastructure and cloud computing.
In India, several large enterprises will also use cloud computing technologies to create private clouds. Partners who can help customers move from legacy environment to the cloud model will be favored.
Customers will invest in a host of IT optimization products and services, like Green computing, to enable faster ROI and reduce costs of operations.
With information growing exponentially, customers will be worried about scalability. Partners need to plan for scalability as they design solutions for customers.
We also see security solutions as a major opportunity. Customers are increasingly worried about the internal threats as much as the external threats. In 2010, data loss prevention technologies will see a growth in demand.
EMC will continue to bet heavily on channels during 2010. We are also trying to understand our channel partners better, and we promise they will see a more agile vendor in us, with a much wider portfolio of products and services. |