M-Virtual Technology was founded on the 15th of June, 2007 as a joint venture between M-Tech Singapore and Ahmedabad-based Virtual Netcomm Pvt. Ltd. And, the objective of the company was to be a niche value-added distributor in the security and storage space. And, after a year and a half, they have been quite successful in their efforts.

M-Virtual Technology is engaged in the distribution of enterprise security and storage solutions. “Our basic aim is to provide value-added distribution for security and storage products in India,” said Rajendra Shah, Managing Director, M-Virtual Technology, India.

The principals of the company are Check Point, Citirix, Proofpoint and Solarwinds. The distributor is in the process of adding more products to its portfolio, but they are only from security and storage. The message is clear. The company is trying to emerge as a niche security and storage distributor. Right now, the company is not entering into the storage space, but by January or February next year the company hopes to have storage products in its portfolio. 

Discarding the concept of end-to-end security solutions, Rajendra Shah says, “When you talk about end-to-end security solution, the trend is to move towards the UTM to provide most of the security solutions into one box. If you see, today Check Point is more into that space.” 

“The company has a different approach towards value distribution. Partners and distributors have to work together. Both should be determined to give the full comfort to the end-customer. Partners have to realize that we are the part of same family. We consider our partners as customers and their customers as ours,” says Rajendra Shah. 

The company conducted its first channel meet in September. “We have just started our operations in the country and wanted to meet our partners who are associated with us in order to interact with them. This meet also provides us an opportunity to explain to them the emerging solutions that are available with our vendors, Check Point and Citrix,” said Rajendra Shah. 

Currently, M-Tech has around 130 partners, of which most are system integrators (SIs) and solution providers (SPs). After establishing its presence in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Chennai, shortly the operations would be expanded to Hyderabad. 

The company is funded by Singapore-based Multi-Chem Group, a listed company in the Singapore Stock Exchange. Currently, M-Tech Group holds 51-per cent stake in the joint venture. 

“We see a huge potential in the security space, which is growing at a pace of 40–50 per cent year on year. We wanted to be the preferred i-security partner in India in another couple of years,” said Rajendra Shah.

The company also has set its eyes on the e-mail security space and would be announcing its tie-up with an e-mail security giant shortly. M-Tech is looking to tie up with more SIs across the country in order to tap the huge potential in the i-security space. M-Tech is looking to tie up with more partners, but does not want to fix on a certain number, as the company feels the partners need to have some expertise in the security space. Therefore, the SIs focussing on the security space would be the preferred ones for the company and the company will be adding them gradually.

Even though M-Tech has focussed its attention on the security space, the company is also eyeing the storage space. “Storage is another area where we want to make our presence in order to tap opportunities in the data center space. We already have our footprints in the security space and are now looking to accelerate that. Our presence in the storage arena would enable us to cater to the whole range of data center solutions,” maintains Rajendra Shah. 

M-Tech Group has operations across 21 cities in ten countries. The joint venture has brought in more opportunities for them to look beyond the Indian market, especially in regions like Middle East. Now, applications are more centralized. Thanks to the increasing popularity of WAN, security threats are growing immensely. Hence, there is more need for security applications and consoles.

“Our internal goal is to achieve the maximum on what the vendor has set the goal. We would definitely like to match the goal set by our principals,” says Rajendra Shah. He adds, “In order to cope with our internal target, we have continuous partners’ training happening in terms of honing their skills on sales, marketing and technology. We are also expecting to expand the company geographically very soon.”

Finally…
Market slowdown has surely had an impact on the overall operation of the industry, but Mr. Rajendra Shah considers it has an opportunity for his company as they can have a very good workforce at an affordable price point and secondly, this is the time when enterprises will be more careful in protecting their investments. So, security solutions have become a must and are going to sell in the market.