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Evan Powell

On Record: Nexenta Is On The Lookout For Partners

Interviewed by Snigdha Karjatkar Thu, Oct 15, 2009

image The good news is that after starting the operations 15 months ago we are now acquiring 300 licenses globally. These numbers are encouraging, which is why we are expanding in the storage domain. image

Evan Powell CEO, Nexenta

Storage vertical is seeing new entrants every other day. With more number of players, how do you plan to differentiate yourself from the crowd?

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POWELL: There are around 490 companies in the business of storage across the globe and they have taken some time to make good business. But the good news is after starting the operations fifteen months back we are now going to acquire 300 licenses globally. The numbers are indeed encouraging and indicating, which is the reason of rapid expansion in the storage domain. We offer customers enterprise-class solutions with a saving of 80 percent. Yes, we are growing faster than any other company. Our solutions are cost-effective and less expensive but there is absolutely no compromise on the technology. The technology is as good as legacy applications and bankable for running the business smoothly.

What have been your key learnings so far?

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POWELL: We went live 3-4 months ago in the Indian market and obviously we had done our homework. India is a large market and extremely diverse. In fact, one can easily say that there are many markets within India and the characteristic of each segment is sometime distinct from the other. Secondly, so far we have found relatively few number of solution providers or systems integrators with an extremely advanced technology base. So it would be a challenge for us as we are not able to find that many partnesr. But India is a gigantic market and we are looking forward to explore the opportunities here.

Open storage market has a long way to go in India. Do you feel the need to educate the end user more on this? And what steps have you initiated to bring about a change in the situation?

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POWELL: In the last fifteen years or so, all of IT is shifting to open from close and storage happens to be the last bastion. There has been a massive shift in the industry towards open and we believe storage is now moving towards the open platform. In the coming months, we are looking forward to participating in Asia IT expo. Also, we will address the community over the website for our products. This has worked wonderfully for us in the other regions. We would prefer to invest in the community rather than spend on advertisements.

Can you highlight your partner policy and the role of the partner in delivering the product further to the end user?

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POWELL: When one would resell Nexenta storage solutions, partners will indeed be benefited. We are not in the business of pricing solutions for the partner but of making solutions. So partners are at their own free will as far as pricing is concerned, which would directly affect the margins they want to decide on the product.

We are shortly going to be announcing a competency center in India (Pune) to provide training and certification services to NexentaStor partners in India. This way, we will have time zone capabilities to assist NexentaStor VARs.

Our general approach and our mindset is to be a global company as opposed to being a Silicon Valley company attempting to expand overseas. Our Indian competency center is one reflection of this approach. This global mind set seems to be working as more than half of our sales are outside of the US already and it helps us maximize the contribution of our team irrespective of their location.

What has been your observation about Indian partners in terms of technology background?

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POWELL: We have so far been able to reach out to 10–15 partners. As of now there is more that the partner has to do to improve his technological competence. And we feel that it can be a challenge to find more number of partners with high technical skillsets. However, one has to keep in mind that there can be few who can make a huge difference. I would like to add that we are still looking for partners, and this has been the observation so far. And the partners that we have already signed up with are extremely good and competent in all aspects.

What is roadmap for the Indian market?

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POWELL: Our goal is fairly modest given the potential size of the market. Hiring is also in progress. We have plans to recruit and add 10–15 more partners. Our plans of hosting forums will give us a chance to know more about the partners. But we are sure with the current growth numbers that we will be definitely on the right path of growth and success. Also, with the storage market opening up, we are looking forward to better growth opportunities. As India is a vast market, we are gearing up to encash opportunities. And we are optimisitic about the entry and the road ahead.



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