Disaster, war spell opportunity to IT players

Ashu Kumar in New Delhi

The terrorist attacks on the USA and the war in the aftermath have provided Indian IT companies with a new vertical segment: Disaster recovery and business continuity solutions and consulting.

While hardware companies, especially storage solution providers, are selling their wares with a new sales pitch, software firms are eyeing the newly emerging business opportunities in the area and planning to offer software services under the new vertical.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) India and the storage solution company, EMC Corporation, have chalked out new business promotion plans for their data storage solutions with a fresh focus to provide disaster recovery and business continuance solutions.

On the other hand, software majors, Wipro Technologies and NIIT, which claim to have spent considerable efforts in putting up their own disaster recovery plans in place bowing to client demands, are now planning to cash in on their experience and knowledge to offer these services to others.

According to NIIT president Arvind Thakur, the company is considering developing disaster recovery and business continuity verticals to add to its portfolio of services currently offered to clients.

Most Indian software companies are currently being scrutinised by their clients for their disaster recovery and back-up infrastructure after the US attack on September 11.

“We have had to assure a few of our major clients about our arrangements. We have reviewed the existing infrastructure and have also made necessary changes to make it more robust,” said Wipro Technologies president and chief executive officer Vivek Paul adding that the company was considering offering consulting services in the area of disaster recovery under a full-fledged vertical of its business.

Hardware major HP India is offering solutions to its high-end customers under the banner of ‘Business continuity and disaster recovery’. The company is also offering consulting services to assist its clients in ensuring data availability and implanting a ‘bullet-proof’ system in place, claims HP India country sales manager (storage) Anupam Nagar.

“We have all the building blocks and behind that we also have a practice to put them together for a 99.999 per cent up-time in business systems,” said Mr Nagar.

EMC Corporation also claims to offer ‘Infrastructure for 24x7 information availability’. The company offers a five-step approach to the organisations to build complete robust systems for business continuity. The approach is to build around different combinations of its storage equipment and data management tools. According to EMC country manager T Srinivasan, the company’s ‘Enterprise business continuance’ plan would help clients manage information risk, restart business in minutes and accelerate their business.