EXPRESS COMPUTER | APRIL, 2017
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INTERVIEW
We want to be the largest storage company in India THE STORAGE INDUSTRY is in a state of change and traditional storage is giving way to more innovative approaches such as software-defined storage. Since no one solution fits every need, having a broad portfolio is necessary, and nobody has a portfolio of the scope of Western Digital Corporation. In an exclusive conversation with Nivedan Prakash, Khalid Wani, Managing Director Sales, Western Digital Corporation, India shares the company’s India specific plans and opportunities and how WDC plans to maintain its leadership position in the country How bullish is WDC about the Indian market? Earlier, we had created a region comprising of Middle East, Africa, and India combined. And we had termed it as an emerging market. Interestingly, in one of the recent developments, we have decided to craft In the last 18 to out India as a 24 months, we region by itself and we will be have seen directly strong growth working with in our the corporate. This signals a surveillance very strong business due to shift in terms of our strategy, the Indian focus, and the government's attention that the increased focus organization on smart city wants to have projects on India as a market. It is because we predominantly believe that India will be one of the fastest growing markets for WDC and its entire product line - be it consumer, enterprise, OEM, surveillance, or datacentre.
For us, India has been on a growth trajectory for the last couple of years both from WDC as well as SanDisk perspective. Any vertical that we are currently operating in India, we see a very strong opportunity to grow. Besides, we believe that the country has the potential to drive its own go-to-market strategy and the right support from the corporation in terms of resources and investments would actually help us execute the GTM strategy in India. Moreover, the merger and integration of SanDisk business within our ecosystem helped us to scale and create a high growth model here. In the last 18 to 24 months, we have seen strong growth in our surveillance business due to the Indian government's increased focus on smart city projects. The consumer space is another critical growth area for us driven by the huge penetration of smartphones and content generation. In terms of product category, we have witnessed good growth of the dual drives that can be used as both USB as well as storage device. At the top of it, the rising demand from the
enterprise space is going to further help us drive different growth verticals in India. You mentioned about the smart city projects. How strong are you in that space or are you still exploring or in talks with different government agencies? Smart City is a fabulous initiative and as an organisation we believe that our product line would help add a lot of value in building infrastructure for smart cities, especially in the security and surveillance space. At this point of time, we have a fairly decent level of engagement with the government. Besides, we continue to have our teams to work on strategic alliances and partnerships in the SMB and the enterprise space that is being pushed or supported by the government. The fact that the initiative of Smart City has kicked off on a good note and the government is serious about it will help us expand our horizon. From the overall initiative perspective, it’s a step in the right direction and as an organisation, we will continue to support the government wherever we can.
WDC is seen as a strong player in the surveillance space. Besides the smart city projects, where else do you see the opportunities lying in his domain? If you look at the surveillance industry per se and the opportunities associated with it, it’s not only smart cities driving this space. Smart city is a very small portion of this particular segment. The whole surveillance space is driven by every other vertical, whether it is the enterprise, corporate, or end user space. One of the key areas that continues to grow in the surveillance sector is the consumer space, wherein you will find a lot of end users wanting to have a much more reliable security and surveillance system built at home. If you collectively look at all these segments – government, private or public private enterprise, high end residential areas, individual users - everybody is concentrating very heavily on surveillance and security. I believe it’s going to be in every vertical that you can find an opportunity to grow. And from the technology perspective, our Purple line
of products, is considered to be one of the best available in the surveillance space. Besides, we keep on working towards product enhancements to offer bestof-the-breed solutions to the market. Since the company has identified India as one big potential market for its growth, has this called for a realignment in your go-tomarket strategy? Usually as an organization, we do not share our go-to-market strategy. But I can tell you that from the organisational perspective, we have made some realignments post the integration of SanDisk business. We did it to make
sure that we have the right resources available to cater to the right segments in the market. For us the importance of India as a market is very critical and our investments in the country continue to be strong. We have a very strong R&D centre based out of Bangalore. Now, we will focus on expanding our team and create pillar to pillar strength in India to ensure that we have a very strong core built here. And our go-to-market strategy will revolve around this approach. We just want to make sure that we are a very strong player in our domain and the largest (post the acquisition) as well as best storage company in India. And the focus would be on creating a robust value system for the customers. In your bid to become the number one storage player in the Indian market, what sort of road blocks are being faced by the comany in this journey? There are always external factors through which you have to navigate around in different markets. It could be related to the whole demography and, as you
rightly pointed out, India has such a large demography that it brings a lot of complexities with itself in the way you build your business to make sure that you are able to fulfil and cater to the tier 2, 3 and 4 cities in India. Creating an ecosystem where you have touchpoints for consumers to reach out to you is always a challenge and I am just talking about a particular segment and similarly you will find a lot of challenges in various other environment. But having said that, I think as a company we have been able to successfully navigate around it and build the right model which allows us to cater to those complexities and roadblocks which are out there. We will keep finding these tactical, time bound, and economic challenges but as a company, we will always strive to overcome them. I personally feel that irrespective of these roadblocks - short term or long term - the sheer fact that India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world gives you no other reason not to believe that this is the growth market to target.
Oracle foresees tremendous opportunity for mobility in the higher education sector THE INDIAN EDUCATION sector is in the midst of a huge transformation enabled by technology. Classroom boards have become more interactive and students have immediate access to information using mobiles, iPads and laptops. Looking at the huge opportunities in this sector, Oracle has rolled out a series of mobile enhancements specifically designed to meet the unique needs of higher education. In an interaction with Srikanth RP, Mitesh Agarwal, CTO, Oracle India, shares his perspective on why Oracle foresees a tremendous opportunity for mobility in the higher education sector in India Some edited excerpts: What do you believe is the market opportunity for your firm in terms of mobility? Is there a ‘white space’ that has not been targeted by other firms? Mobility in India is mostly being driven from within the organization. Today, organizations want to be able to extend their enterprise applications to mobile Mobility is devices taking the same because keeping the trajectory as workforce that taken by connected the Web when empowers everyone to it came into make being decisions, take action, and stay informed. What we are seeing is that Mobility is taking the same trajectory as that taken by the Web when it came into being. Today, nobody questions the need for a web presence. Similarly, time has come when it is imperative to have a mobile presence for all applications
and services. With respect to specific sectors, Oracle foresees tremendous opportunity for mobility in the higher education sector. Currently, more than 50 percent of India’s population is under 25 years old. But as opposed to developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60 percent and 90 percent of the total workforce, India records a low 5 percent of workforce (20 to 25 years) with formal vocational skills. There is a pressing need for accelerated reform in the higher education ecosystem to equip India’s youth with skillsets that enhance their employability in a digital economy with Apps tailored to specific education or coaching needs, enabling faculties or educational houses to provide management information and decision support systems, education systems that leverage enterprise mobility are ahead of the game from both, value creation and sizing the bigger market share perspectives. Therefore,
universities and colleges are looking to ensure that information is available anywhere, anytime via any device to enterprise applications. This has led to a surge in the demand for enterprise mobile applications in the education field. We offer universities a complete mobile solution to help colleges reduce the financial burden of deploying new technologies for curriculum updates and provides scalable services to address fluctuating demands. From a technology point of view, what is the unique differentiator you have over other firms? Oracle Mobile Platform provides a common technology framework for building, integrating, securing, deploying and managing mobile apps on any device. It supports a multi-channel, multi-device framework that allows building apps once and deploying them to iOS, Android and other platforms— with web, native and hybrid delivery. It leverages Oracle Fusion
The next frontier for mobility will see mobile devices enhance learning to make content more engaging
Middleware infrastructure to expose enterprise applications and data as web services and restful API’s that allow easy integration between mobile apps and back-end systems. This means that the same platform that you use to develop and maintain your enterprise applications can now be extended to develop, integrate, secure, deploy, and manage your mobile applications.
Apps created with the Oracle Mobile Platform integrate easily with each other as well as with third party applications based on Java and other industrystandard languages and protocols. This platform also protects API’s to uphold corporate security and compliance policies, with comprehensive capabilities for mobile identity management and mobile application management.
We provide the industry’s most complete, end-to-end offering aimed at reducing the risks associated with smart mobile devices. This is a unique capability that Oracle provides with respect to providing security in the mobile space. With a complete set of security-focused capabilities—including access and authentication, single sign-on, application containerization, corporate
application store —Oracle Mobile Security enables organizations to rapidly adopt and deploy new mobile technologies and applications, and segregate and manage corporate data and applications without interfering with mobile users’ personal data and applications. Can you share some details on the future strategy? Modern students are more connected and empowered than ever before. They arrive on campus – either physically or virtually – with high expectations. And as student expectations continue to rise, so will the pressure for colleges and universities to deliver personalized, seamless experiences demanded by modern students. Therefore, the next frontier for mobility will see mobile devices enhance learning to make content more engaging. Mobile learning is set to become a permanent feature in schools, colleges and universities, worldwide.