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At a time when things aren’t looking up for most sectors across the country, storage and solutions firm EMC Corporation’s India arm claims it recorded its best first-half results this year. EMC India President Rajesh Janey, in an interview with Surabhi Agarwal, says the explosion of data, trends around mobility and the need for organisations to cut costs and drive efficiency have made the company upbeat about the Indian market. Edited excerpts:
How are traditional storage companies such as yours reinventing themselves with the drive towards cloud?
A customer needs a cloud because of efficiency needs. It always starts with virtualisation, where the client doesn’t care about where the data lies. But they still want to own some of the applications. We work with service providers so that they can offer cloud solutions. Second, we enable customers to build their own private cloud. But today, most organisations are opting for a hybrid cloud where some applications are private; the rest they can put with the service provider—their IT manages both. In India, too, hybrid cloud is becoming popular. Big data is also a very big trend emerging here.
At a time when so many challenges are emerging, what makes you optimistic about the Indian market?
I have a different view. While there is so much of negativity everywhere, we have had the best first half ever. The last quarter of the 2012 was our biggest quarter, as we got a huge deal from the Unique Identification Authority of India. Normally, for every organisation, the first quarter of a year is a weak one, but for us, it was the biggest first quarter. The second quarter is the second-largest in our history. This is despite the currency (headwinds). Our annual first-half growth was 45 per cent.
What is driving this growth?
Transformation and customer need. Currently, clients are looking to reduce costs, improve profitability and do these with a level of trust and security. Last year, we spent a lot of time transforming ourselves---we hired new leaders and had some eleven leadership changes. We have what the customer needs today, as well as a team that can deliver it. Our growth is coming from a combination of existing customers and new ones. Today, data is exploding. We tell clients we can help them reduce their back-up window and manpower costs. On security, we tell them it is no more about securing the perimeter.
With the new bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, isn’t the security debate going out of the window?
Security has evolved from securing the perimeter to security analytics and taking action in real-time. It is based on the assumption that threats exist and we need tools to mitigate the risks. Today, every mobile device is BYOD. So, what IT is doing is installing devices and tools lying inside the information area and looking out for any unusual activity. For example, is my PC trying to access salaries of people not related to me? In security, real-time analytics is becoming a real thing. I am able to stop a threat when I am able to detect it real-time. Earlier, the approach was to analyse events in rear-view. Now, there is a massive engine running and correlating all logs such as when have you logged in and what file are you trying to access from where. Through this, we are able to provide intelligence to a security analyst, give alerts and block certain actions. An increasing number of conglomerates are opting for such solutions.
What hopes do you have from the Indian market in the short term?
Cloud penetration in the IT and business process outsourcing sector would rise from 1.2 per cent to 8.4 per cent. The second big thing would be mobility. Studies show in 2012, mobile data traffic grew 90 per cent year-on-year; they say by 2017, data traffic would double. Smartphone sales are also doubling every year. All this would drive huge data traffic. That means mobility is becoming a reality in India and this tells me next year, telecom would have to invest despite the challenges.
