SMEs are in the Forefront of ICT Adoption

With the Digital India and Start-up India movement gaining momentum, we are now witnessing the mushrooming of new SMBs, SMEs and start-ups.These SMEs and SMBs are based in the tier 2 and tier 3 cities where there is scarce energy supply. For functioning smoothly a company requires 24*7 continuous energy supply. This has opened up opportunities for companies like Emerson Network Power, to play a huge role in ensuring business continuity with products like UPS.

In an exclusive conversation with SMEStreet, Ankesh Kumar - Director - Product Management (Channel, IT Solution) & Marketing at Emerson Network Power India expressed his key insights and trends of ICT market and its penetration in the SME domain.

What Are The Key Trends You Witness In The ICT Market With Respect To SMEs?

SMEs and SMBs who although are generating large amounts of data, are making do with a limited IT infrastructure and with perhaps two to three servers. They do not have the capacity to invest in huge data centers on account of space constraints and are always on the lookout for smart solutions that can help them save and manage data without having to build new data center space. A modular/ smart data centre approach, helps them increase their data center capacity, improve IT control and business efficiency without having to build a new data center, which would involve the company incurring huge costs.

From Emerson Network Power’s point of view, some of the technological trends that left a mark was how hyper convergence started taking a larger role within the datacentre infrastructure as business requirements drove. This demand ensured that customers demanded for further simplifying the datacentre infrastructure and asking for more efficient solutions within IT departments.  To this effect, the demand for modular and scalable datacentres saw a significant rise in the year 2015 and Emerson Network Power saw a majority of its customers opt for smart solutions. We also saw a rise in the use state-of-the-art solar inverters, given the demand for renewable energy focused solutions. With technological advancements, organizations started looking at installing and investing the best solar UPS systems and inverters available in the market, with the aim to be cost efficient and energy efficient.

What Level Of Relevance And Importance Does SMEs Carry For Emerson Network Power's Business?

As mentioned above, the proliferation of SMBs, SMEs and start-ups coming up in India has opened up opportunities for companies like Emerson Network Power to play a major role in the day to day operations of the businesses. With a view to this, we have reached out to many such SMBs and SMEs across India and haveengaged with as many as 700 potential companies in 2015 and will continue to do so this year. Our initial focus has been the BFSI and the Retail sector. Now we are looking at reaching out to auto ancillary hubs and manufacturing hubs.

Emerson Network Power’s industry leading solutions has enabled quite a few start-ups SMBs and SMEs with smart solutions.The need for solutions that are less complex, where the IT infrastructure is viewed as one rather than piecemeal solutions are major reasons that have today spearheaded the demand for such solutions from start-ups SMEs and SMBs.

What Are The Key Offerings From Your Portfolio For The SME Domain?

Data centers today are evolving in response to technology, innovation and emerging trends —mostly server-based—and the pace and direction of this has been somewhat predictable. The Indian datacenter market is no different and is evolving as forces such as cloud computing, sustainability and IOT  are causing new archetypes to emerge that will change the data center landscape and improve productivity, drive down costs and increase agility.

To tap these emerging trends, Emerson Network Power has positioned two key offerings:

1. Smart Solutions: Our smart solutions are aimed at SMEs, SMBs and startups who lack capital and space to invest in full-fledged datacenters and thus are looking for cost effective options with an easy interface. Smart Solutions are mini datacenters in itself which come complete with precision cooling, UPS, power management, monitoring, control technologies, and fire suppression facilities makingthem a smart buy for organizations, offering good return on investment as well as reducing operational costs.

1. Trellis Platform: Considered by experts to be a ground-breaking DCIM innovation, the Trellis platform leverages the entire breadth of our full offering from asset, power, cooling design and management solution to embedded server firmware and management capabilities. In 2015, research firm Gartner adjudged Emerson Network Power as a leader in its Magic Quadrant for DCIM Tools - ranking us highest for our ability to execute within the “Leaders” quadrant with our flagship DCIM solution- the Trellis™ platform.

What Are The Priorities For Emerson Network Power For Next One Year For The Indian Market?

Technology is ever-evolving- datacentres are becoming more compact and the energy crisis in the country becoming more obvious as a larger number of start-ups and new entrepreneurs start shop.Primarily we believe that there lies a significant untapped market opportunity for partners to grow their business laterally by helping their customers explore the repertoire of smart solutions from Emerson Network Power for datacentres in the area of SMBs and Start-ups.

Additionally, the telecom sector will continue to remain a crucial vertical driving business for Emerson Network Power due to the sheer scale of projects they undertake. As the adoption of smartphones and data usage in India increases exponentially, telecom companies will drive growth for datacentres and they will continue to invest in infrastructure at a rapid pace. Additionally, we believe e-Governance projects will become the next biggest demand driver for us, and it showcases enormous potential considering that DCIM is a key area of specialization for our business. Other sectors that are expected to spur the demand for DCIM are infrastructure and education which have been showing exceptional demand.Various industries rely upon Emerson Network Power’s expertise in the segments of data centre design, build and project management.We work with quite a few leading companies across BFSI, Telecom, ITeS, manufacturing, education, banking and healthcare sectors etc.  We will continue to invest in maintaining our position as one of the leading provider of critical infrastructure for information and communications technology systems.