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Ashish Dhawan

Trendlines: Nortel is Upbeat About UC in India

Interviewed by Yogesh Gupta Wed, Apr 15, 2009

image Nortel wishes to align with vertical-focused solution providers. image

Ashish Dhawan VP & Country Manager, Nortel India

What’s the impact on Indian channel community after Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection?

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DHAWAN: Initially, the cause of worry among channels was genuine in terms of custom support, as enterprises will continue to buy Nortel products. However, we have not lost a single partner in Asia including India. For the past two quarters, Nortel pursued its changed course as business was emerging from government, defence, hospitality, and other verticals. India is a shining star for Nortel because of high revenues, decent margins, and excellent channel ecosystem.

What benefits are in store for the channel for partnering with you?

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DHAWAN: We have some partner programs in place. All you can eat, which was launched as a pilot program, is now mandatory. Since channels face persistent problems like attrition, they pay nominal amount for Nortel trainings with limitless seating program. This enables their new staff to be trained at no extra cost. Network design training through Lunch and Learn program is a much-needed tool for channels at a pre-sales stage. Held every month across major
cities, partners are empowered with hands-on training on subjects like hospitality, government, etc. With sales dipping for channels, we give more incentives for every dollar they sell under the Overdrive program.

How do you intend to move forward in India?

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DHAWAN: Besides Ingram Micro, we have forged an alliance with Redington as our second distributor. Our structure is geographical with sales team across offices at Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Cochin, and Hyderabad. Key verticals like government, defence, IT/ITES, BFSI, hospitality, healthcare, utility, and manufacturing dominate India’s four regions. In every region, we have sales teams that focus on these prime verticals. With solutions becoming vertical-specific, we are aggressively seeking alliances with vertical-focused channel partners across the country.

Will you also be targeting the mid-market ?

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DHAWAN: With mid-market and SMBs showing demand for IT infrastruture, we need to extend our presence in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. We have deployed sales teams in Indore, Lucknow, and other cities to align with local channels that rule the roost in these regions. Nortel SCS100 is one of the cheapest unified communications (UC) solution in the world, designed specifically for the SMBs. BCM450 is like an office in a box with all the contents of UC, which makes it ideal and quick for branch offices.

Nortel is upbeat about UC. How can solution providers sell more UC solutions to their customers?

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DHAWAN: Nortel will sell everything under the UC umbrella. Customers today are seeking ROI, which justifies our vision of UC. Installing IP telephony is investment, but putting IP telephony and UC is ROI. UC domain is an excellent up-sell opportunity for solution providers as we have a huge installed base in India. The demo labs in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata help channel partners and end customers recreate a part of their environment to witness UC’s real-time benefits.

 



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