Japan has established its supremacy all over the world in the space of technology. Fujitsu is also a technology-driven company, which does not believe in spending on big-time marketing activities to create a lot of noise about the solutions. Rather, it wants that its technology speaks for itself. And, the customers, who have used Fujitsu, should talk about the benefits. Although the company has its presence in India for a long time, but its direct presence for enterprise storage was not there till last year. However, Fujitsu enterprise storage was being used by various MNC enterprises through global SIs. Even though the company does not have much experience on the Indian turf, but the think- tank expects that things will move in the right direction, as expected.
Tosh Kataoka, General Manager – IT Business, Fujitsu India Limited, says, “In India, our headquarters is in Delhi and we are opening branches in Bangalore and Mumbai. We are planning to open a branch in Chennai this year. Apart from this, we have a sister concern in Pune. We have eight hundred employees. We also have offices in Noida and Hyderabad.”
Fujitsu India started its IT business officially last year for its enterprise storage products. The company already owns a few accounts as of now. Most of the customers are based in the media segment as well as government.
Fujitsu offers the entire range of storage products starting from entry-level to mid-range and large enterprise storage.
“We have about 15 line-ups for storage products of fiber channel, disks, tape libraries, etc. We also provide data backup, disaster recovery solutions. Our focus is on the SAN market, but for NAS we have partnership with other vendors.”
As far as go-to-market is concerned, Fujitsu has chosen Channel network. Tosh says, “We have selected to go along with channel partners because we have a few number of people and our entry is a bit late. The channel partners have reached India, which will help us to reach to our customers. We have a good coverage in the North, West and South. This year, our focus is to tap the eastern market and we will start with Kolkata.”
Fujitsu channel partners, right at this moment, are very few. It has about ten channel partners, who consist of local and national partners and most of them are System Integrators who provide solution to the customers. The company works with its sole distributor – Redington India. The biggest advantage of Fujitsu solutions is that all are cutting-edge technology and built grounds up. Along with the technology, the channel partners are also asked to support the customers. Therefore, it brings a unique opportunity for the channel partners to earn a good margin out of selling Fujitsu solutions.
Tosh Adds, “Hardware margin is becoming less year on year. The channel partners need to provide solutions to the customer and differentiate themselves from the competition. Although we started our operations only last year, but we have a clear goal in terms of channel partners’ engagement. We are discussing on various options. One of the options is to sell more software and service in addition to the hardware boxes so that they can have a better margin. Towards achieving this, both the channel partners and we will work consistently.”
In order to sell technology needs a lot of education, which the company knows very well. Tosh says, “Global basis, in the geographies like Japan, US and Europe, we have a complete Education Programme and in India we will also launch a full-fledged programme very soon. This, however, depends on what kind of products we are going to bring into India in this year. Having said that, we have already started per-sales training programmes in the country.”
Although Fujitsu’s strength lies in large enterprises, but in India it cannot be blindfolded towards the SMBs as this segment contributes a lot to the market growth. Tosh agrees on the point and says, “Most of our channel partners are addressing the large enterprise market. However, we have plans to explore other channel partners who are focussed on the SMBs and also give a change to the existing channel partners to be SMB focussed.”
Definitely, being a base year, 2007 was not for them to go beyond their core market, but yes, 2008 will unveil a different market for them.”
Finally…
Started in 2007, the company has acquired a few accounts in the media and government sectors. This year, Fujitsu wants to consolidate its position in the same space and to capitalize on certain global accounts, which are operational in India as well. From the operational point of view, the company will surely like to taste the waters of East India. Fujitsu will surely want to replicate its success of Server space in the enterprise storage space.
