What kind of trends you see in the market in India?
Across India today, datacenters are built with a one-size-fits-all mindset. Organizations have been adding datacenter equipment to keep pace with business growth, in turn creating costly technology silos that consume up to 70% of the IT budget. This means unnecessary expenses from the upfront build to ongoing operations. Keeping this in mind, there are two key trends that we are seeing drive a technology refresh in the market - the growth of server virtualization and the increased importance of power and cooling from customers.

To leverage the full potential of server virtualization, customers are now looking for next -generation infrastructure with the right management software that allows them to seamlessly and flexibly configure them. On the other hand, power and cooling can drag your operational expenses in a datacenter. In a country like India, leveraging traditional infrastructure is not sustainable.

HP with its latest range of G6 Servers delivers double the performance of previous generations. Together with management software that eases virtual server management and innovative sensor technology that delivers unmatched energy savings, it enables customers to get more value out of every rupee spent.

How important is the Indian market for you?
India is a large market for us and HP continues to dominate this market with clear leadership across categories. As per IDC's Asia/Pacific Quarterly Server Tracker, Q3 CY2009 (Jul-Sep 2009), December 2009 release, HP led the overall India server market in Q3 CY2009 with 32.48% market share in terms of revenue, ahead of the #2 player by 5% points.

In the latest quarter Q3 CY2009, HP led the India x86 server markets for the twelfth consecutive quarter, with a market share of 30.72% in terms of factory revenue, a lead of 5% over the #2 player. During the same quarter, HP grew its revenue by 9.38% sequentially from Q2 CY2009 to Q3 CY2009.

The x86 server product category is one of the important business for us in India and we are clearly committed to bringing more product innovation and customer value in the marketplace.

What is the partner's role in the deployment of products and services?
Channel partners are integral to our go-to-market in India and play a very key role in the x86 server business. With complex workloads getting deployed on x86 servers, partner's ability to deliver products and services to customers is a key parameter for HP's success in the marketplace. Hence, partner enablement and education is a key aspect to this.

x86 is also a very dynamic product category with continuous technology innovation and product refresh. Here, technology awareness and education play a very a crucial role. Another important area is the evolving nature of IT and business models in the country. At HP, we take great care to keep our partners abreast with all of these.

Today, we also work with our channel partners to deliver a complete solution stack rather than a product approach alone. In fact, we were the first in the market to work with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to enable an ecosystem that can help our partners address solution- based opportunities. We have a network of more than 250 ISV partners who are an integral part of this community.

What have you been doing as a vendor to push the agenda for server virtualization?
HP is looking at business opportunities and growth in the virtualization space in India. We have increased the number of local partners, and specifically eyeing partners who are specialists and experts in virtualization technology. We are investing in the recruiting, training and skill upgrade of partners who have speciality and expertise in the virtualization space.

According to an internal study, about 70% of Indian companies have tested applications or deployed virtualization in their IT infrastructure to some extent. Based on these market trends, HP recently launched the Blade System Matrix, which brings together end-to-end virtualization of server, storage and network resources in the datacenter under a common management tool.
The system increases utilization and repurposes underutilized capacity by allocating virtualized pools of these resources, when required. This convergence of infrastructure in the Blade Matrix is helping unleash the full potential of virtualization, private and public clouds. Through its power and cooling efficiency, it is also a catalyst for Green IT.

Specifically, what are the key features of the HP ProLiant G6 servers launched last year?
Building on 20 years of innovation, HP is raising the bar for the server market. The new HP ProLiant G6 servers are available in 11 standards-based tower, rack and blade platforms. This represents the largest HP ProLiant rollout in the company's history. The new HP ProLiant platform brings together the best energy innovations, virtualization & management technologies, as well as comprehensive services offerings across the entire HP portfolio.

The HP ProLiant G6 platform is built from ground up for energy savings:
The entire product line leverages HP Thermal Logic, a complete integrated solution that addresses server power and cooling challenges through on-board power measurement and controls. ProLiant G6's brings innovation in the form of "Sea of Sensors" technology, which is a collection of 32 powerful smart sensors that automatically tracks thermal information across the entire server monitoring fans, memory and processors in real time.

HP Dynamic Power Capping helps customers reallocate power and cooling resources in the data -center by dynamically setting or "capping" the power drawn by the servers. As a result, customers are able to triple their energy capacity and extend the lifespan of their datacenter. A new common slot power supply approach provides HP ProLiant customers with the flexibility to choose the power supply to meet the needs of their exact configuration, minimizing power waste.

The HP ProLiant G6 platform enables customers to maximize the productivity of their server infrastructure:

HP ProLiant Onboard Administrator helps IT managers simplify server set-up while also allowing customers to inspect their server health from any location, even when the server is offline.

Bundled for the first time, HP Insight Control Environment reduces operational expenses by up to $48,000 for every 100 users by allowing complete control of the server infrastructure onsite or remotely. Offered at a discounted rate, it is a single, easy-to-use management console that delivers increased flexibility to quickly respond to any business change.

What is the evolution path in the future?
The Channel community will play a critical role in the Indian market. We have seen the evolution of some of our key partners become solutions specialists to small SIs in many ways.

There will be huge opportunities. However, the key is to tap the right technology areas at the right time. Some of the key areas as the industry moves forward will be the convergence of the different technology layers - Converged Infrastructure. The converged infrastructure will be a base for services providers to deliver numerous pay-per-use models such as Infrastructure as a Service, Storage as a Service, Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Private and public cloud or Everything as a Service.

The other areas that will look very promising through 2010 will be server virtualization, cloud and high-performance computing. HP recently unveiled Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) portfolio designed to deliver a new magnitude of cost and resource savings for businesses involved in Web 2.0, cloud and high-performance computing.

Companies with "scale-out" business models such as these, which operate with thousands of servers, are pushing the limits of current technology solutions. The HP ExSO portfolio enables customers to save both on capital expenditures and energy costs.