Bridging the gap between consumers and the hosting service providers gives the advantage of setting up a great business model for channel partners without actually investing. Additionally, channel partners can benefit by acting as affiliates, provide services for their own customers, and private-label hosted service provider’s expertise to other consumers.
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“Pricing and uniqueness are the major challenges which are a part of adopting hosted service.”
Jim Simon
Sr. Director
Asia-Pacific Marketing at Quantum Corporation
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India’s technology and business services industry is among the world’s most dynamic sectors, transforming the nation’s growth story. Service requirements have changed immensely over the last few years. The evolution of Services sector can be classified in three stages – the first was dominated by Back office applications such as ERP, the second of front office applications such as automation, CRM and mobility. The current stage is marked by customer centricity, where focus on enabling the customers is causing a wave of digital transformations in the Services sector.
The services industry is not only the dominant sector in India’s economic growth, but has also attracted significant foreign investment flows, contributed significantly to exports as well as provided large-scale employment in India. Services sector covers a wide variety of activities such as applications (software as a service), security, monitoring, storage, web development, website hosting and email). The global market as such is seeing loads of potential for the growth of cloud services with IaaS – cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service) expected to be the key segment steering the growth. As far as Indian market is concerned, it’s catching up with the emerging trends and leading IT players have already probed into this to improve efficiency. Both private and government sector are aware of cloud services and have started adopting which has resulted in a great opportunity for the cloud domain in the coming years.
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“The latest government initiatives have inspired private sectors, mainly SMBEs to move over cloud services and here is where, we, as a hosted service solution provider, chip in.”
Bala Kandaswamy
Co-founder and CEO
Contus
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The thrust of the Government on digital initiatives, such as the UIDAI project, Smart Cities and e-governance projects among others, will also add on the growth of this sector. This will provide a big impetus to the Data Center market and Cloud Storage market in India. The rapidly growing e-commerce space, with its pull in the rural and semi-urban markets, is another factor for the booming growth of Cloud market in India. Rajan Rahi, Business Head- Channels, HCL Infosystems excerpts, “The growth for Cloud Services in India is expected to be led by the increasing number of SMBs migrating to online presence. This, coupled by the increasing internet and smart phone penetration, is likely to drive the demand for Cloud Services in the next few years. The growing number and influence of Start-ups are leading the digital journey in both India and globally. Start-ups are at the fore front of digital adoption to come up with the most customer-centric solutions.”
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“The thrust of the Government on digital initiatives, such as the UIDAI project, Smart Cities and e-governance projects among others, will also add on the growth of services sector.”
Rajan Rahi
Business Head- Channels
HCL Infosystems
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Cloud consumption in India is surely on the rise and has been rapid of late. According to Gartner’s forecast, Public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 30.4 percent in 2016 to total $1.26 billion; SaaS – $389.8 million USD; Cloud Management and Security Services – $104.2 million USD and hosting – CAGR (Compound annual growth rate) of 20.6% FY’2014-FY’2019. Application hosting and E-mail are the major consumers of hosted services in India. SaaS is said to be the major crowd puller in Indian cloud market which is predicted to take up over 40% of market share by 2020. As far as the verticals are concerned, pharmaceuticals, automobile, healthcare, FMCG, ecommerce and BFSI (Banking Financial Services and Insurance) have been the major contributors for the growth of hosted services.
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“India is so far one of the most receptive market for technologies. if we address the security concerns of the Cloud, generally Indians are more willing to accept the Cloud Solution.”
Sanjeev Deshpande
MD
iTelligence India
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The e-governance initiative is a big step towards realising the digital dream. UIDAI project, E-governance initiative, Indian Data Center market are the upcoming prospects that’ll determine the future of hosted services in India. E seva, mobile seva and several other initiatives which encourages people to access government services through the internet has increased the demand for hosted services that are secured and scalable. According to Bala Kandaswamy, Co-founder and CEO, Contus, “The latest government initiatives have inspired private sectors, mainly SMBEs to move over cloud services and here is where, we, as a hosted service solution provider, chip in.”
Technologies influencing Indian Service Sector
Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud can be the best partners for those interested in taking up hosted cloud services as a business. These technology giants have the much needed technical expertise, infrastructure, customer servicing models and well established support network that can empower newcomers of the hosted services domain to provide the best-in-class services to their customers like a pro in no time.
IoT, Virtual reality and self driven cars will be the game changers in the Indian service sector in the not so very distant future. IoT is more than a buzzword. Internet of Things has already transitioned from being an emerging concept to something which is finding its application in major industries. Its entry into the household is the major advancement in the recent times.
However, automated driving is a totally new tech that will introduced to Indian market very soon. With automobile major like Nissan, which has already tasted success in its automated driving car like Nissan Leaf, having their own product plants in India, self driven cars won’t be a future tech for long in India. Augmented reality has received a warm welcome in many industries including healthcare, entertainment, automobiles, architecture, gaming and much more. With great customer experience becoming a sophistication demanded by all modern-new-age consumers Augmented reality is the probably the best medium for brands to achieve it.
Partner’s Role
Partners can be a huge asset in terms of amplifying any vendors reach and message, and expanding the addressable market. No doubt, they will only do it if there’s something in it for them as well, be it any revenue sharing program or some other benefit. As we know, Software as a Service (SaaS) is growing in recognition with each passing day, and with the buzz around it, more and more clients are looking it. For a reseller or systems integrator (SI), SaaS requires a few adjustments, but service providers and vendors alike agree there’s a role for the channel with SaaS. Especially in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) sector, companies will look for suitable a SaaS reseller for advice and implementation help.
Low-value functions like order taking, fulfilment, installations and upgrades are like gone things now; rather with cloud solutions, partners have become strategic advisors, project coaches and field experts, helping clients gaining rapid success.. These differences change the channel role in sales, implementation and professional services.
Challenges for Partners:
Despite the obvious benefits, IT organizations have been careful in making the move to the cloud. Concerns over security, sovereignty, compliance, application disruption, and performance continue to inhibit a wholesale move to the cloud. This is particularly true for organizations with complex, data-intensive workflows—for example, capturing and evaluating satellite images, producing and distributing high-resolution video, and collecting and analyzing network traffic for cyber security defence. These demanding environments require a reliable, secure, high-performance infrastructure that is tightly integrated with applications—which most cloud offerings don’t provide. As far as Quantun is concerned, Quantum’s Q-Cloud Services represent a great opportunity for Quantum Alliance channel partners to offer consulting and implementation services. In some cases, Q-Cloud Services can even be resold by Quantum Alliance channel partners thereby adding an additional opportunity to increase margin. Explaining it further, Jim Simon, Sr. Director of Asia-Pacific Marketing at Quantum Corporation excerpts, “Pricing and uniqueness are the major challenges which are a part of adopting hosted service. When it comes to pricing, there is no one-size fits all. You never know what the exact pricing plan is, and only with time can a channel partner determine it.”
India is a market where the rates prevail and price sensitivity is at peak. Agreeing to this, Sanjeev Deshpande, MD, iTelligence India says, “India is so far one of the most receptive market for technologies. At the same time, it is very price sensitive. From that perspective, if we address the security concerns of the Cloud, generally Indians are more willing to accept the Cloud Solution. So, we see a tremendous growth perspective.”
Uniqueness is another major concern as each business has their own specific requirements which may not be available in your hosted solution. Deciding whether to provide the customization as an exclusive move for that particular customer alone, or incorporating the improvement (customization) as a part of your product are some of the challenging decisions every hosted service provider will have to face.
At the end…
Innovation and entrepreneurship will drive the next phase of growth for Indian technology and services market in the coming decade, so the partners have to be prepared. However, the ability of channel partners purely depends upon the prowess of the cloud service provider. Upon evaluating the cloud service providers’ ability to provide adaptive scalability and other key hosting factors, a channel partner can determine their level of servicing to their consumers.
