Amid the increasing blare of the pandemic and the spectre of omicron casting its long shadows over the tech landscape, we have ushered into 2022. Channel success which has always been the holy-grail for any business is all set to get a makeover in the new year.
As part of our effort to get the channel community better informed and get an earful of what the who’s who of Indian IT are thinking, expecting, and planning for the channel community in 2022, we have started this new section to record the channel predictions of the most prominent players of the IT industry.
Here, as part of this special series of Tech Forecasts, NETSCOUT India registers its predictions for 2022.
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“Apart from deepening engagement with Channel Partners across industry verticals, we also look forward to appoint Partners for specific industrial verticals and large accounts.”
Vinay Sharma,
Regional Director, India and SAARC,
NETSCOUT
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As a leading provider of application performance management and network performance management solutions, NETSCOUT stresses on innovation as a core business strategy. Assuring digital business services against security, availability, and performance disruptions, the company combines smart data technology with smart analytics. Providing real-time, pervasive visibility and insights to accelerate and secure digital transformation, NETSCOUT serves a wide clientele worldwide.
In an exclusive interaction with SME Channels, Vinay Sharma, Regional Director, India and SAARC, NETSCOUT shares his company’s Channel Predictions for the year 2022. Edited excerpts…
Give a brief introduction of your company.
NETSCOUT helps assure digital business services against security, availability, and performance disruptions. Our market and technology leadership stems from combining our patented smart data technology with smart analytics. We provide real-time, pervasive visibility and insights customers need to accelerate and secure their digital transformation. Omnis Cyber Intelligence delivers the fastest and most scalable network security solution available on the market. NETSCOUT nGenius service assurance solutions provide real-time, contextual analysis of service, network, and application performance. And Arbor Smart DDoS Protection by NETSCOUT products help protect against attacks that threaten availability and advanced threats that infiltrate networks to steal critical business assets. To learn more about improving service, network, and application performance in physical or virtual data centres or in the cloud, and how NETSCOUT’s security and performance solutions can help you move forward with confidence.
As the pandemic is still there and a new variant has surfaced, what major market trends would you forecast for 2022?
The WFH, Remote working and BYOD trends that accelerated with the onset of the pandemic will continue in today’s workplace as well, to ensure business continuity. To facilitate this new business model, organisations are increasingly depending on VPN, Cloud and SaaS services. This has led to the explosion of edges – the data centre, remote working environment, cloud and the networks, creating a big challenge for the IT teams, especially with the loss of visibility and control. Usage of appropriate technology by the clients, irrespective of where the services are hosted or accessed from, will become crucial. Availability, Performance and Cybersecurity aspects are key for organisations in 2022.
There will be more collaborative efforts from businesses, government, security vendors and industry bodies to address the rise in cyber-attacks that are growing both in terms of volume and complexity.
Due to the prevalence of remote working culture, organisations are today heavily dependent on communication and collaborative platforms, such as Cisco WebEx, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and many others. The user experience on these platforms is becoming very crucial for organisations as their performance is impacting productivity and business outcomes. This trend will continue in 2022.
What major trends are you forecasting in the channel market?
NETSCOUT, globally works only with Channel Partners to tap and cater to the market. We respect our Channel Partners and strongly believe they are crucial for the organisation’s success.
We also acknowledge that India is a Channel-friendly market and continue to invest in this area.
The major trends in the Channel market in 2021, include, more collaboration with Partners and Partner Experience will become the key focus. IT Vendors and Channel Partners will deepen their association further to deliver seamless customer experience.
Focusing on selecting the right Partners with relevant skill sets in the respective industry vertical will take centre-stage.
Which areas you want to focus in the channel – skillsets – sales and marketing, vertical and technology practice development, service capability, etc.?
Each area mentioned in the question is important to remain competitive in the market. However, Service Capability is one aspect we want to lay more emphasis on. Services through Partners is key, as we want them to gain substantially from the engagement and we will continue to support them and add further value that help to strengthen their capabilities.
What percentage of budget growth are you expecting for channel development?
As I have already mentioned that our Sales and Marketing are through Channels Partners only, we would want them to develop their capabilities on all fronts. So, whether it is overall Channel Enablement, Development or Skillset development of Partners, we would continue to invest in them substantially.
What is your expectation from channel this year?
I would like to emphasise again that with respect to the product and technology we are dealing with, we are global leaders and have a huge customer base, including Fortune 100 companies and large Enterprise Accounts in the US and European markets.
So, we want our Channel Partners here, to understand the value proposition of NETSCOUT and leverage our technology to provide solutions to Customers by addressing the latter’s pain points and performance issues. Be it appropriate visibility and control in hybrid cloud environments and across all edges or the cybersecurity aspect, which is going beyond the traditional flow and log-based analysis into packet-based wire data technology, we have the right solutions. Yes, NETSCOUT delivers unmatched service visibility and protects the digital infrastructure that supports our connected world.
We expect our Partners to have a thorough understanding of our technology and capabilities as we together serve customers with appropriate solutions.
In 2022, we expect to increase our engagement with the Channel engine, so that it grows further, leading to better business outcomes.
Are you planning any new product addition for the channel market?
NETSCOUT’s new Omnis Cyber Intelligence, which is an enterprise-wide network threat and risk investigation platform helps to reduce the impact of cyberthreats on businesses. With its comprehensive security visibility and NETSCOUT’s global threat intelligence feed, the platform helps security teams to easily detect, validate, investigate and respond to cyber-threats.
Organisations will benefit from this cost-effective and highly scalable cyber-threat analytics system, which can easily integrate with popular SIEM platforms used by many organisations.
We see a huge potential for this product, which we will introduce through our Channel Partners.
Is there any channel expansion plan in terms of numbers in 2022?
In 2022, we plan to expand our Channel market geographically to cover the regions of Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We are also deepening the level of engagement with our Channel Partners across industry verticals and look to appoint Partners for specific industrial verticals and large accounts.
