Exclusive Interview: Arunachalam.S, VP, Frontier Business Systems

In a candid interaction with DQ Channels, Arunachalam.S, VP -Technology Solutions, Frontier Business Systems talked about the company, cloud offerings, different support, training and journey with NetApp. He also shed light on how NetApp has helped them to grow business and customers. 

Tell us about your company.

Frontier business systems is an end to end System Integrator with 60+ OEM partnerships, Expertise in Hybrid Cloud, providing Day 0, 1, and 2 services to customers. Supporting 3000+ Customers across the country. Regional offices across Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and HQ at Bangalore. 700+ Skilled and Certified resources. Focussed on Software Defined Datacentre including Compute, Networking, Storage, Security, Access etc.

Tell us about your journey with NetApp so far.

We are partnered with NetApp for more than 15 years now. Had supported a majority of the Critical NetApp's critical implementations in the country. We recently signed up as a focused partner for NetApp Cloud Solutions for providing Hybrid cloud Data Management for our Enterprise customers.

How has the pandemic reshaped/reoriented your offerings?

We see the trend of Capex based Consumption moving to Opex and subscription-based consumption with almost every customer. This is where we find NetApp CVO and Keystone Solutions as compelling offerings for our customers.

Which are the different technology services receiving maximum traction in the market?

Security, Backup and DR, Digital Experience Monitoring are some of the niche services demanded by our customers currently.

Take us through your cloud portfolio.

We provide end to end Cloud Journey for our customers. Partnered with around 16+ OEMs in the cloud space. We create maximum value for our customers from initial feasibility to actual Migration and Managed Services. We focus on Cloud Security, Governance,  Cloud Cost Optimization services.

What are the training & enablement programs offered by NetApp to adopt cloud solutions?

We are investing heavily in NetApp Cloud solutions with various certifications completed already and working towards the highest level of NetApp Partnership in the country.

What changes have you done to move to the cloud within the organization in terms of Team, skill set, infrastructure, and others?

Our Cloud Practice started around 7 Years ago and we had taken up some of the most complicated Migrations and implementations in this space. Based on our On-premise expertise for the last 25+ years, we are building a similar skills base in the Cloud Business.

How does NetApp help you to grow your business and customers?

NetApp has helped us build a unified data fabric between the data center and choice of clouds with simplified management and limitless flexibility to adapt to any change. With NetApp hybrid cloud data offering’s we find perfect synergy in terms of our joint GTM.

How are your old and new customers adopting the new technology and moving to the cloud?

We find there is still 80% + Potential customers who have not explored the cloud as yet. With so many customers realizing the cloud benefits now we definitely see this as a future focus area.

What is your customer base in the Cloud offering? Highlight any recent use case.

We currently support about 200+ Production customers in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platforms. We are specialized in moving SAP HANA Workloads to Public Cloud either Greenfield or Brownfield. Desktop as a Service is another niche service that works well for our customers increasing Security and Performance for their End users application access.

Tell us about the financial offering models to the customers.

We are offering both Capex based and Opex Based Annual and Monthly subscriptions for our customers across the Services portfolio.