The partnership between us and Hitachi Data Systems has been a rewarding experience: Redington

PS Neogi, president, IT products, Redington talks about his company's association with Hitachi Data Systems and growth plans

How has Hitachi Data Systems helped Redington grow its business?
The partnership between Redington India (RIL) and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is now more than two years old. perience for us.
We have attempted to capture synergies arising out of RIL's value added distribution strengths in the Indian market, and Hitachi Data Systems expertise in IT products and services across verticals. Of particular significance is Hitachi Data Systems advanced technological capabilities, including solutions around Hitachi's Unified Compute Platform and Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). Our association with Hitachi Data Systems offers us an opportunity to expand our value offerings to our partner ecosystem. This has generated incremental business for us from customers/partners who have found value in the solution offerings from Hitachi Data Systems.

Can you elaborate on the Hitachi Data Systems solution offerings from the Redington stable?
Customers have time and budget constraints when considering any kind of asset deployments, including IT assets. Hitachi Data Systems demonstrate solutions that help customers get the most out of their IT investments, maximize the performance of their systems and improve efficiencies.

Hitachi Unified Compute Platform

Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) is a fully integrated and flexible reference solution. Each UCP solution has been specifically configured for immediate deployment and to run applications with optimized infrastructure deployment. Each custom-built solution has a fully certified solution stack, avoiding compatibility issues and the complexity to deal with multivendor technical support.

File and Content Solutions Center
Through the ABC (Acquire first Backup less and Consolidate more) strategies of Hitachi Data Systems, organizations can move from expensive silos of stored data to future-ready, streamlined, cloud-ready solutions, which increase security, simplify management and reduce risks.

What is the distribution model in place for Hitachi Data Systems solutions to grow Redington's business?
We offer a strong and effective Specialization Program that helps Hitachi True North Partners train their team to sell and deliver service specializations as standalone offerings or in combination with the partners' own value-added solutions.
The service specializations are offered in areas where the market opportunity is the greatest and Hitachi Data Systems solution capabilities are the strongest. As the market evolves, new areas of specializations would be on offer.
Current specializations on offer are:
 Virtualization - using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform
 Migration - using storage controller based migration
 File and Content Services - using multiple Hitachi technologies

What is the role of a channel partner in the business ecosystem?
Channel partners play an integral role in our business. Channel partners help us understand the customer's need and pain points. It is through channel partner, we are able to discuss and evaluate customer's short, medium, and long term IT requirements. Furthermore, our channel partner helps us identify various technologies and option to be offered to customers. Their role is more evolved as consultants while deriving upon appropriate solutions. Thus, it is through our channel partners we offer the most optimum solution that is scalable to meet the customer's various ‘requirement horizon' requirements.
Above all, the channel partners are our connect to these customers. It the channel partner who hand holds the customer through the entire process of selection, purchase, and deployment life cycle.

What are the key focus verticals?
At Redington, we focus on multiple verticals. However, with HDS our key focus verticals include BFSI, Healthcare and Life sciences, IT/ITeS, Oil and Gas, and Communication & Media. Going ahead, we constantly evaluate other verticals and when we see significant traction, we will invest time and resource in development of business in those verticals.

What is the outlook of your association with Hitachi Data Systems in future? Please do highlight your rollouts in the pipeline along with Hitachi Data Systems?

 Redington would focus on improving its value offerings to its partner eco-system. We would like to strengthen our position as the distribution partner of choice due to the all-round support infrastructure that we offer them with the aim of making it easier for them to service their customers.

 

 For our vendors: We would engage strongly and partner them in their GTM initiatives to develop the channel base, help increase partner readiness, up-skilling of partner human resources to meet the requirements of the ever changing technology landscape being offered by the vendors.

 For HDS: we would continue to work towards being their preferred partner for India, acting as their extended arm and force-multiplier in the market. We would work towards helping to improve Hitachi's channel base in tandem with any requirement of geographical coverage while further helping strengthen the solid base provided by the existing Hitachi partner community.

 As the importance and demand for Secure, Easily Retrievable Data Storage and Analysis grow manifold Redington anticipates a huge opportunity to deliver optimum solutions to Indian customers through its channel partners, which would automatically result in business wins for Hitachi Data Systems as well as for Redington.

 Hitachi Cloud Services Connection (HCSC) is the Hitachi Data Systems sophisticated cloud service partner program, which enables a secure, multitenant environment to ensure privacy among various constituents within a shared infrastructure that can be managed from a single management suite. Supporting a variety of protocols, subscribers can further leverage existing investments in hardware and software and allow legacy devices to inherit cloud attributes, thereby preventing the cloud from becoming just another silo and eliminating the need for a complete refresh or update of hardware and software or the need to rewrite applications. Moreover, HCSC is a service offering built on the highest quality architecture that provides subscribers with state-of-the-art technology, a team of data management experts and industrial standard IT processes.

 Redington will tailor-make solutions for each customer after evaluating the size of the organization, its existing IT infrastructure, computing usage, storage size needs and other factors and will offer cloud services to customers under the brand ‘ ‘HITRED4CLOUD'. 