Shantaram Shinde, VP & National Head – Channel Business, NTT Com-Netmagic, shares the company’s channel strategies for 2019
Key highlights 2018 and opportunities for 2019
In 2018, we saw good business in the public and private cloud space. SAP HANA migrations, hardware and technology refresh in government space, are the reasons to drive the growth for these products. Multi cloud strategy is working really well and contributing to managed services revenue. NTT-Netmagic introduced SD-WAN as a service this year and we saw really encouraging response for the same. We also saw some good growth with ‘Born in the cloud’ partner space as well as with Application Integration Partners. Our traditional SI partners brought in few big colocation and data centre deals on the table. In 2019 as well, we estimate to grow by 30 per cent to 35 per cent. Multi cloud, private cloud, SD-WAN and security services should drive this growth. The main contributors will be again ‘born in the cloud’ and application integration partners. Changing partner profiles is what we see as a positive outlook for 2019 as well.
Top tech trends for channel community
Due to digital trending, adapting to multi cloud strategy will work. We foresee customers migrating to third-party data centres or opt for private cloud as service for compliance and committed performance reasons. This can be attributed to technology refresh like SAP ECC to SAP HANA migrations and hardware refresh, say for instance, five to seven-year-old IT infrastructure. SD-WAN will slowly make inroads in MPLS connectivity space in 2019, just as cloud displaced traditional infra business to good extent. SD-WAN will remain the buzzword in 2019 as well. Security-as-a-service saw good deals in 2018 and will see business growth in 2019 too.
Channel directions for partners
NTT-Netmagic has a huge list of services, which are more horizontal – be it IaaS, network and connectivity, managed services or managed security. We would suggest partners to become more solution centric and problem solvers than reselling the available set of services. The advantage of doing this is that your engagement with the customer enters into a different horizon and becomes more in depth.
The customer would start looking at you as a solution or consulting partner as opposed to a reseller for particular OEM. NTT-Netmagic programs are so tailored that we not only have sales and solutioning support, but also offer complete marketing engagement programs for partners and customers. Such programs help retaining the partner revenue and also grow it for new set of services. In some of our mature partner organisations, they even bill and support to the end customers for NTT-Netmagic Services. Today, we not only have one of the best compensation policies for our partners but also incentivise and reward partner sales and presales teams.
