With organisations in India now looking beyond consolidating hardware and virtualised applications, NYSE-listed VMware sees Indian market as one of its fastest growing regions. The Silicon Valley-based company, which started its India operations in 2005, currently has over 230 partners and more than 1,800 customers across verticals, with five offices including its second largest R&D centre globally. Andrew Dutton, general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), VMware tells Debojyoti Ghosh about the scope for virtualisation in the country and how the company is tapping into the growing market. Excerpts:
The adoption of cloud is still at a nascent stage in India. How do you see Indian companies adapting to this trend?
Cloud is a profound shift in IT that allows people to access data, information and applications on demand from anywhere. When these shifts happen, organisations often perceive obstacles. However there is a clear, step by step path that companies are able to follow that builds confidence along as companies work towards the promise of IT-as-a-service. This journey starts with virtualisation, and from the outset customers realise immediate cost savings and increased agility, while preparing themselves for the future. We have been strongly focused on continuously educating our customers on the benefits of the technology so they understand that each stage has enormous benefits. As a result, we?ve seen the adoption rate increase tremendously.
Given virtualisation?s role as an enabler of cloud computing and the real opportunity that cloud represents for India, I see no reason for that adoption rate to slow. We know that India is one of the top three countries globally when it comes to understanding the possibility of cloud computing, and in fact our own survey backs that up.
Which sectors are seeing maximum traction in India? Is it mostly basic-level virtual infrastructure work that is happening in the domestic market?
It?s hard to say that one sector is showing more uptake than another because there are huge differences in the approach one sector or another will take to implementing a cloud solution. For example the BFSI sector is naturally more aligned to private cloud given the regulatory restrictions placed on that kind of business. Manufacturing and telecoms have also been very strong sector for us, but the reality is that there is a cloud solution for every vertical in India today.
Many organisations in India have gone beyond consolidating hardware and virtualised applications. Virtualisation is an evolutionary process; some are ahead of the others in adoption. Most customers start with the basic infrastructure virtualisation and later move to applications in the security and data-related work.
Desktop virtualisation is an important market for VMware. What kind of business opportunity does India offers?
We believe India represents a strong opportunity for desktop virtualisation. A recent report by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan shows that the desktop virtualisation market, including hardware, software, licensing, and management tools, reached $79.24 million in 2008 and at that point was expected to grow at a CAGR of 33.31% to 2015 from 2008.
When you think of India?s role as a primary outsourcing hub for operations for a lot of global organisations it makes sense that finding ways to manage and reduce the cost of operations based on number of seats or desktops is important.
We see good adoption in the IT/ITeS and BPO sectors, and sectors such as BFSI, healthcare and retail have organisations using desktop virtualisation to meet their dynamically changing user desktop requirements which is also a good opportunity for us.
What are your plans for the Indian market. What kind of R&D work is being done at the Bangalore centre?
In 2008, VMware announced an investment of $100 million and 1,000 developers in India by 2010 and we continue to invest heavily in what is now our second largest R&D centre globally. We have made significant investments in R&D and manpower. India is a vital cog from a product development perspective as well and we are able to effectively leverage resources for developing advanced technologies.
At the Bangalore centre, we develop solutions across our portfolio and within some of our most advanced technology suites. We also launched the VMware Cloud Computing Centre of Excellence in Bangalore. This centre is an extension to the VMware R&D centre and is equipped with new labs and infrastructure replicas where customers can experience VMware solutions in real-life business scenarios. The centre is vital to our global operations.
How much cost saving does virtualisation provide?
Virtualisation not only reduces the total cost of operation but also the need to invest in a huge amount of additional IT resources, each time the business demands change thereby reducing capital expenditure.
Our case studies show that customers have saved 50-80% on their IT budgets by implementing virtualisation and cloud solutions. By consolidating several physical servers and virtual server machines on fewer physical machines, the cost of managing the server infrastructure comes down drastically. Lower number of physical servers also means reduction in power and cooling consumption, therefore reduction in overall energy costs.
Virtualising desktops further reduces the need to invest upgrade desktop infrastructure frequently and the associated hardware refresh cycles. It not only reduces the hardware costs but, also the overall energy consumption by end-user desktop infrastructure.