Video conferencing and collaboration solutions continue to have sustained growth in India, in response to market demands for workforce optimization and increased efficiencies across enterprises and the public sector. According to a recent Polycom survey, 91 percent of the Indian respondents use video collaboration technologies to stay in touch. More than half (51 percent) said they use video multiple times a day to collaborate with others for work purposes. Also, 98 percent believed that video collaboration is important for improving productivity when teams are based in different locations. This shows that video collaboration is the way forward in India.
Ankur Goel, Director Commercial Sales & Channel Head, Polycom India & SAARC, in an exclusive chat with Channel Times, shares the company’s channel roadmap for India.
Channel Times: What are the key trends you are witnessing in India market?
Goel: A few of the top trends we are currently witnessing in the market include –
India’s digital agenda – Government initiatives such as ‘Digital India’, ‘Skill India’, ‘Smart Cities’ and communication infrastructure upgrade are helping contribute to the growth in video conferencing and audiovisual (AV) industry. Many central government, state government and public sector organizations are leveraging video conferencing solutions as a tool to be more collaborative, cut down costs and be more agile. Police departments, justice services and various government institutes and banks are using video solutions to increase citizen engagement, improve outreach to remote areas and connect face-to-face with businesses.
Growth in education and healthcare sector – video is being adopted extensively by the education sector to create world-class interactive or virtual classrooms; this is helping improve access to knowledge. We are also seeing a lot of projects in the healthcare sector – many hospitals and medical institutes are adopting video conferencing to expand their foray in tele-medicine.
Increased adoption by SMBs – business has become more global than ever, thanks to advancements in internet connectivity and social media tools. As bandwidth costs come down and affordable video conferencing solutions are being introduced in the market, adoption of video among SMBs is on the rise.
Emerging technologies and impact on collaboration – connectivity has transformed the workforce and their expectations for how work gets done. BYOD, cloud, mobility and artificial intelligence are eliminating the many barriers that once prevented effective workforce collaboration within organizations across the globe. These technologies are also driving offices to create environments which can better support collaboration and innovation among employees.
Channel Times: What is the channel scenario for video conferencing solutions? What type of channel partners can enter this market?
Goel: The video conferencing industry in India is poised to grow; there are many factors contributing to this growth: rise in real estate costs, globalization of businesses, changing workspaces and workplaces, increased need for information sharing and collaboration in real time, and finally the emergence of collaboration rooms.
Hence, there is significant opportunity in the video conferencing market for the channel community.
As the focus shifts towards enhancing the meeting room experience for customers, we have noticed that the audiovisual (AV) and unified communication (UC) markets are coming together to provide better interoperable solutions. This obviously opens new avenues for partners in the AV space to enter into the UC space and vice versa.
Channel Times: What is the demand of telco product like yours? Especially after the latest trends in telecom, including the free internet by telcos, upgraded versions in blue-jeans and more.
Goel: Polycom has always been a leader in this space and the demand for our solutions just continue to grow. We have a strong R&D team and they work towards creating cutting-edge collaboration products, to help customers create the workplace of the future.
As far is free internet is concerned, we see this as a big opportunity for Polycom; it opens up greater avenues for people to collaborate and share information, which benefits the video conferencing market. Today’s customer is looking for interoperable, easy to use solutions with the best user experience and this is where Polycom adds a lot of value.
Channel Times: What role does a channel play in your product portfolio- hardware or software? How are you ensuring profitability of partners in this segment?
Goel: We are a partner-driven organization and there is no conflict of interest between Polycom and its partners. At Polycom, 100 percent of our business flows through our Channels. Since our entrance into the Indian market, we have nurtured a very good set of channel partners in unified communications (UC), audiovisual (AV), system integrators (SI) and real estate consultants space. Most of the partners have invested in Polycom technology and have skilled their manpower to provide services support for Polycom solutions to the end customer.
Channel Times: What is your channel roadmap for India market?
Goel: We plan to rapidly expand our market in India-
By partnering with Microsoft ecosystem – Polycom and Microsoft have enjoyed a strategic alliance for more than a decade. This partnership has resulted in more than 40 voice, video, and content solutions that seamlessly integrate with Skype for Business/Microsoft Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange—including the broadest available portfolio of voice and video solutions that integrate with Office 365.
Geographical expansion- with an increase in network connectivity, there is tremendous potential in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. We plan to expand in these markets to capture the opportunity.
Vertical coverage – we have identified verticals like government, healthcare, education, e-Commerce, manufacturing and retail to drive our growth. We would be seeking and onboarding new partners to help us increase our coverage in these verticals.
Channel Times: How much focus are you laying on mobility since even today, many simple conference calls are not happening with crystal-clear audio.
Goel: Mobility is fast becoming one of the most important factors for Unified Communications (UC). Today’s workers increasingly prefer working from the location of their choice, which is leading to growth in the overall usage of mobile and personal devices for work.
Also, internet services in India have improved significantly over the past few years. Even though customers in metro cities are better positioned to leverage mobility, we are seeing that tier 2 and tier 3 cities are also slowly moving towards offering better services.
Given this opportunity, Polycom is focusing extensively on mobility – we enable the workforce to connect consistently and easily across mobile devices, personal systems and group collaboration systems with the same voice, content and video experiences.
Channel Times: Explain your channel certification and training.
Goel: Polycom has Platinum, Gold and Silver partners – the segregation is based on business contribution, revenue criteria, certification, specializations (sales and pre-sales) and services specialization (expertise in complex solutions).
We want to ensure that our partners are up-to-date with the latest industry trends and have access to information that will help them succeed in the market. For easy certifications, we conduct monthly enablement sessions under the “Get Energized” banner to reach a wider set of people in our partner and distributor community. We also encourage our Distributors to conduct training sessions for our partners in tier 2 and tier 3 cities by incentivizing them for trainings – this way, the customers have access to skilled resources locally. We want to ensure that our partners are certified and specialized in our portfolio across solution design, implementation, and ongoing support. We have mandatory certification and specialization requirements to be met as per the medal status of the partner.
Channel Times: How well-equipped is your pre-sales and after-sale support for partners?
Goel: We have an established a strong pre-sales and after-sale support team. Our experienced set of team members work across the regions in India to look after the pre-sales requirement. For post-sales, we provide support for return material authorization (RMA), L2 and L3 services. We also have a network operations center team that offers services to customers globally.