Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) servers unit, which largely looks into business critical solutions, is witnessing green shoots of growth from the Indian market. After seeing a de-growth of about 15% for critical servers in this market last year, the firm is now expecting to see a positive growth in the coming year. This would be on the back of the opening up of Indian financial services market, new entrants in the telecommunications area and the public sector.
The overall server market in India in the financial year 2009, according to Dataquest, was at Rs 3,244 crore and HP had the market share at 35%. Analysts predict the market would grow 7-8% this fiscal.
HP’s business critical system consists of Unix and non X86 server, along with NonStop server technology that makes up the major part. The NonStop server caters to the unique requirement of computing power, which is mission critical with zero downtime and infinitely scalable at will. The mission critical servers are witnessing increasing demand as telecos and financial services firms constantly seek parameters like cost per square feet in the data center and operational costs.
Talking at the sidelines of NonStop Open World conference, Santanu Ghose, country head (business critical servers technology solutions group), HP India, said, “The overall business critical server market saw a de-growth of about 30% but now the financial services market is opening up in the areas of new technology payments and financial inclusion. ”
According to Ghose, although clients have been cutting on IT spends since last year, the volume of transactions haven’t gone down. “In the coming year, we expect a transaction volume growth of 25-30% year-on-year,” he adds. Financial services contribute about 30% of the firm’s critical server business revenues and most Indian banks like HDFC, ICICI, Bank of Baroda, State Bank of India, and the Bank of India are its clients, amongst others like the BSE.
The firm is also in talks with two new telecommunications entrants for billing and mediation infrastructure. The deals would last for more than five years. “Telecommunications players are ramping up to facilitate a number of services to the financial services, like mobile banking. At the same time, with 3-G coming into picture, we expect a huge market as telecos would then look at more of data than voice,? adds Ghose. Telecommunications adds about 50% of the firm?s revenues. Currently, HP manages the network systems with HLR (home location register) for Reliance Communications and core-base station systems for Tata Teleservices.
?(Travel for the story was sponsored by HP)