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 Anoop Nambiar, Country Manager, BPO, IBM India, says that customers want IT solutions that help them innovate business models to weather any impact
The economic turmoil during late 2008 continued to have a major impact through out 2009. Undoubtedly, re-creating value became the single most important factor. India’s balanced economy—with a good mix of domestic consumption and exports—worked well for the country.
However, there was a rapid shift in customer needs and IT buying decisions. In 2009, cutting costs and creating efficiencies were top priority for many businesses. CFOs became increasingly involved in decision making and discussions clearly focused on return on investment and cost of ownership.
In 2009, in our discussions with clients their consistent feedback was to help them:
- Optimize existing IT infrastructure. On one hand spend on IT infrastructure has grown considerably; on the other hand, in a distributed environment, we see server and storage capacity being underutilized. This is where technologies like virtualization, consolidation will play an integral part
- Provide technologies that allow them to effectively respond to market and customer demand regardless of any spike in the economy. This may mean developing innovative business models to weather any impact that may arise from market fluctuations
Emerging trends
We are beginning to see early signs of recovery in the global markets and in India. The market is leveling out and we are expecting to see increased spending in 2010. From a technology standpoint, in future, we will see two key technologies emerge—cloud computing and business analytics.
When you take the flexibility and economics of the cloud, add in the predictive power of business analytics, and apply them in concert with the billions of intelligent devices that are making their way into transportation, water management and governance, you can see the making of a more-intelligent world.
We believe, in the latter part of 2010, cloud computing will transition from the current hype phase to create real business value for clients. We see the interest in cloud computing picking up in India.
The thing to get excited about is that cloud computing could act as the means to connect billions of people, sensors and storage to powerful back-end systems, that then make sense of it all in seconds. The technologies on which cloud is based are technologies that we invented or are leaders in—like virtualization, automation, open standards, and Web-based computing.
Integrated solutions will continue to play an important role, especially in the mid-market. According to a global study released by IBM, even in tough economic conditions, over 50 percent of Indian mid-market business decision-makers expect their IT budgets to increase. The need of the hour is to put together an integrated solution that will help customers significantly reduce implementation and management costs.
Sector wise, banking and finance, telecom, and PSUs and government, continued to spend through 2009. Sectors like automotive, retail, manufacturing and ITES were the most impacted. Going forward, we see a recovery in these sectors, and more traction in emerging sectors like media and entertainment, pharma, and healthcare.
Partner priorities
In 2009, we shared our vision of building a smarter planet, with channel partners. For partners, smarter planet is about engaging clients in high-value discussions. In 2010, to address this, we will work with our business partners on building and enhancing their skill levels to help them showcase the value proposition of our solutions to customers.
| Takeaways for 2010 | - Customers want partners to help them optimize their existing IT infrastructure
- Integrated solutions that help reduce implementation and management costs are in demand
- Cloud computing will transition from hype to realization phase
- Partners need to look beyond traditional customers and create new revenue streams from new customers
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We will further strengthen our presence and extend our success in the mid-market, by strengthening our partner programs and enhancing their earning potential.
In 2009, we were aggressively pursuing our geo-expansion strategy to take our services, through channel partners. This will remain a key focus area for us in 2010 as well.
We would advise partners to constantly monitor industry and technology trends closely, in order to play a consultative role to their customers. They need to equip themselves to sell solutions, rather than point products. They will have to look beyond traditional customer bases and create new revenue streams from new customers. |