ChannelWorld.in, Strategic insights for solution providers

Hentschel: Indeed, the journey and the transition have been quite challenging and interesting. Going forward, few key trends present a huge opportunity for us. Mobility and IP traffic are driving enterprise application and network layers across voice, data and video. F5 is striving to enhance and excel its competencies in application delivery to meet these trends, secure networks and make them flexible and reliable. We are helping customers and partners to leverage and monetize capabilities at the data center, on the cloud. We deliver security solutions that help customers to protect applications. Our DDoS (distributed denial of service) solutions are a manifestation of this mandate. We have tons of opportunities to look into, and we are working towards optimizing these.

Hentschel: VDI is a great opportunity for us. It is, at some level, an application that becomes a browser. We need to have underlying intelligence in the data center; that is where F5 comes into the picture. F5 has a standing strong partnership with VMware for data center customers, with VMware standardizing their solutions on ours. We have a number of customers across APAC, who look at us to layer upon their existing Citrix VDI solutions. Whether it is Citrix or VMware, we are open to partnerships, because VDI is a focus area at the data center. It will not only drive the data center business but will also drive the security focus for us.

Hentschel: The last few quarters have been very good to the company as a whole and have been viewed very positively by analysts. F5 closed last quarter with US$339 million, which was a 22.4 percent YoY growth and a 5.3 percent growth quarter-on-quarter. APAC and Japan have the highest growth rates, with Japan at 45 percent and APAC at 24 percent, YoY growth, while the Americas clocked 21 percent and EMEA at 19 percent YoY. In the last couple of quarters, the business from APAC and Japancontributes to around 21 percent of the overall revenues of F5 worldwide, which is quite significant.

Hentschel: Absolutely, the recent acquisition will push the telecom as far as it needs to. Telecom is a chief contributor to F5 top-lines. Previously, in 2G and 3G deployments, the main attribute was the radius, while 4G goes on to the diameter. Traffix has a diameter solution and we were looking at a specialist player in the 4G space whose portfolio would enhance and integrate our existing 4G solutions and our service provider focus. We have more than 35 service providers and that is a huge opportunity to build on to the next level.

Hentschel: I wouldn’t say that there is disconnect as such nor can I comment on specific partner observations. We have started to rebuild our India engagements in the last 18 months or so. We have a team in place. It is at a challenging phase and we quite look forward to the changes. All partners across the world, including partners in India, have access to information depending on their certifications and specializations. Dev Central, a portal with access to customers and partners, is a community platform for application developers with about 1 Lakh unique users. Some of the solutions that we have deployed in India (in the service provider and the financial services) are quite sophisticated. Hence, the interaction is self-explanatory. From a channel perspective, 95 percent of our business comes from the channel. From a go-to-market standpoint, we have done everything within our control to ensure partners get the maximum benefit of all the resources we have. We are keen to continue to invest in India.

Hentschel: Yes, we are still not there from a high-end standpoint. We have observed that in the emerging markets, much of the business and interest that is evinced ranges in the low- and mid-range products. But, in the last year or so, in APAC, much of the growth that we are seeing is due to the change in customer perspective in understanding the value of high-end solutions. There has definitely been a quarter-on-quarter increase in the implementation of high-end platforms. From an India perspective, most of the customers are already using high-end platforms; these are larger deals. Given these changes, we are surely going to witness accelerated growth.

Hentschel: I wouldn’t say that. At the end of the day, business is between people, and we will not restrict engagements on the basis of global or local; it is about competencies. We are engaging with players other than GSIs across all our business geographies and I see no reason for India to be an exception.