What is your core strength as a leader?
NetApp is one of the most committed partner organisation and 100% of our business is driven through our partners. This automatically translates to my charter to make the entire organisation functioning in a pro-partner manner, so that while we grow our business, our partner growth is at the heart of that strategy. Hence, making sure that partners are cultivating and addressing newer opportunities and enabling them to do so in a consistent manner would be what I describe as my core strength.
What are your future plans to further grow the channel market in 2017 – any particular strategy from geography or vertical perspective are you planning?
As businesses are increasingly dependent on IT to deliver products and services and to interact with their stakeholders, a simple but reliable, responsive and agile IT architecture will become essential for enterprise growth. NetApp will enable partners to choose the best blend of products and services that address the changing business needs that customers require.
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“Our decision making is based on three corner stones of a good channel strategy- Training, Enablement and equipping partners to drive demand for themselves with opportunities to upsell and cross sell.”
Krithiwas Neelakantan
Director Channel & Alliances
India & SAARC Operations
NetApp
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What would be your message for aspiring partners?
With fast digitization, partners are faced with solving new and complex customer IT challenges requiring them to evolve their solution offerings and consumption models. Aspiring partners should opt for solutions that integrate efficient data storage solutions into their existing portfolios and up-sell and cross-sell those to their existing as well as new customers.
