"EMC is where information lives," is how he sums up his company. Chugh knows exactly what the market wants and its nuances. One would expect him to.
An industry veteran with over 23 years experience in the ICT industry, he has managed and led companies across diverse businesses "� viz servers; satellite networking; telecom and networking and data storage.
The man has to his credit the success of Scientific Atlantic, Wipro Infotech (server business), Cisco and now EMC Corporation in India. The president (India & SAARC) of EMC "�a leading information storage and management vendor "�has taken it upon himself to educate and create a market for network data storage solutions.
Business Standard caught up with him to know more on a market that was originally created and now ruled by EMC Corporation.
Excerpts:
What market are we referring to when talking of growth in the IT sector?
The digitisation of data has its positives and negatives for the IT industry. IT architecture, today, has become extremely complex and business needs very demanding. Server computing, personal computing and now network computing is revolutionising the IT sector. Information will now power domestic IT.
More than 90 per cent of the information that gets generated today needs to be digitised, or else faces the challenge of getting lost. Now the problem comes when you have to manage and backup this digitised content. It will be further driven by the needs of the 'unstructured content' verticals like healthcare, call centres, office operations like payroll and others, which demands digitisation of data.
Besides, we need to also look at the issue of compliance. Clause 49 requires organisations (that export technology) to comply with a set of regulations aimed at reducing operational risks. If you need to continue and build the momentum in growth, then we need to start talking on how to manage generated information.
So what do you foresee?
If a single company like EMC (on a global scale) could amass $9.65 billion solely by working on the above-mentioned areas, the actual market out there has to be colossal.
We are not talking of external storage applications, but it is the network-attached storage solutions that enthuses me. Network storage has both compelling cost and management advantages. Today, the network storage figure stands tall at 87 per cent of the market. If we could shift the market to this level, I know we can also look forward to taking more than half the pie home.
Why would a small or a medium-sized business require complicated network storage solutions when they can make do with external storage devices?
When we went to SMEs, we repackaged and dropped the price tags. A product that was selling at Rs 20 lakh in 2003, today sells at Rs 2 lakh onwards. This worked fine for businesses who had sub-5 terabytes capacity issues. The reduction was further facilitated with EMC setting up its infrastructure in India. We are hoping to be an end-to-end tiered storage platforms company.
Can one say that EMC has matured in the sphere of network information storage in India?
When we came to India five years back, the IT architecture was ageing and in dire needs to ramp up its operational and data management competencies. But I would maintain, we came at the right time; we came in at a time when the IT spends were going up and people were awakening to the fact their information needed a safe backup location and not just be a back office to the world.
Even if Indian IT companies spend typically between 7-8 per cent of the total budget (which is a pittance, as per Chugh), yet it gives scope to companies like EMC to play a fair game. Now, the information storage industry has a cumulative growth rate of 15-20 per cent. So, if you look at a vision 2009 this kind of growth in technology area is quite respectable.
EMC's honeymoon period can be attributed to a company that began with just right amount of fanfare. What would be the next logical step?
Pricing is not an issue anymore. Prices were cut, products were redesigned for India and China and built up capabilities to support the deployed storage products. We also set up four logistics centres in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai. We ensured spare parts were available to our partners and customers 24x7.
Now, the task on hand is to maintain this growth rate and help the market build itself. A University of California study reveals that at Berkeley, information is growing by more than 60-70 per cent annually while IT budgets, at the most, are growing by only 3-5 per cent a year. This might be a dampener for a relatively new market like India.
Foremost focus would be on penetrating the enterprise segment and not just the MNCs. We shall be gunning after the SMEs too. EMC will continue to pursue the BFSI and telecom verticals at the high-end but also target government, media and entertainment industries.
