Vision 2016 – Raritan International

“We have been recently acquired by Legrand. We would continue to increase our market share. But, somewhere with Legrand coming into picture there will be consolidation of Legrand solutions and Raritan’s solution. Next three years are going to be very critical to opt consolidated solutions in the market but how this will be planned out will be very early to say” informs Sanjay Motwani, Regional Director, India, SEA, Taiwan & Hong Kong, Raritan International in an exclusive interview with itVARnews. Here are the excerpts –

1. The concept of storage is changing in enterprise. Where do you think it is headed?

If we look at the market today, ecommerce and e-services are picking up, smart phones are joining the utilization and there is lot of storage which is taking off. This fundamentally means that the organizations will need to manage the storage far better than they would have been doing. Now consumers are not restricted to one location, they are geographically disbursed globally which means  your data centers have to spread across the globe  making storage  more complicated across the globe. So we need to ensure that the access and retrieval of data on the storage is at their optimal best.

2. How does Raritan intend to ride this wave?

Raritan fundamentally provides tools for optimizing efficiency in data centers. Storage is just one element of data centers; there are applications and servers too. Currently data centers are increasing their existing foot prints and also multiple data centers are coming across the globe. Since we are into data center space, it’s a wave which we definitely want to ride and we are riding in terms of providing more tools to help data center managers to optimally use their infrastructure whether its space, air conditioning, power or equipment.

3. How solutions from Raritan help in reducing the data center running cost?

Every data center has the excess capacity and it exists in terms of power, air conditioning or physical state of data center. The challenge with the data center managers is that they do not know where the excess capacity is. So we help the data center managers to identify where this excess capacity is residing.

If data center manager wants to expand or add more computers to data center, he will either expand his existing data center or he is going to look at new data center. But, with Raritan tools he will get to know about the existing capacity in which case he may not need to expand in certain cases or if he has to expand than the expansion will be far less than what was supposed to be earlier.

4. PDUs (power distribution units) are a part of your product line. Do you have innovative technologies for energy conservation?

Instead of innovative technology we will call it intelligent technology. With excess capacity in every data center they are provisioned power based on name plate rating of IT equipment within the data center. So if a data center has power of 100 KW which is provisioned for any IT equipment, the reality is that they are using only 40 – 50 KW of power. That means there is an excess capacity of nearly 50% which is available within the data center. With Raritan Intelligent PDU, (the ones that allow you to monitor the power consumption at device level) one will be able to identify where this 50% is located. As a solution point of view, it is a power distribution unit which is intelligent, which has lots of tools built into it and understands how IT equipment consumes the power.

5. What is your marketing strategy in the face of rising competition with cloud technologies?

Cloud is not a competition for us. On the other hand, cloud is increasing our opportunity to sell more. Cloud is nothing but a data center in a public space. Most of the companies who have in house data centers are shifting a part of their data center into public data center space and cloud is one of them. Because of this we have also started selling our solutions to public players along with private players so cloud becomes our customers. If you are a cloud service provider, then you need to optimize your opex to ensure your services are more competitive in the market and you can earn more revenues from your existing services. . And Raritan specializes in it.

6. How do you motivate your channel partners to imbibe it?

With the kind of tools which Raritan provides, the hit ratio of channel community has raised from 5 on 10 to 7 on 10. If there are more closures, channel partners are making more money which is a natural driver happening for them. The other motivator from our side is the timely help that helps them to increase the value that they provide to the end customers which is also helping them to improve their hit ratio of the customers.

7. What are the key verticals you are focusing at?

R&D labs(both global and domestic) followed by Telecom, BFSI and healthcare are our key focus verticals.

8. What are Raritan’s plan for 2016?

We have been recently acquired by Legrand. We would continue to increase our market share. But, somewhere with Legrand coming into the picture there will be consolidation of Legrand solutions and Raritan’s solution. The next three years are going to be very critical to opt for consolidated solutions in the market but it will be too early to comment now on how it will be implemented.

9. Kindly share the transaction details of this acquisition happening?

Legrand  is into intelligent switches globally and are available in commercial as well as domestic market. They also have a data centre division. We have been acquired by Legrand US and not Legrand France. So in terms of solutions set, we plan to work for consolidated solutions for the customer. But as they are independent organization the consolidation will take time.

 10. Are your channel partners aware of this consolidation and what is their reaction?

Currently, we are not rushing to the consolidation because at the strategic level it is a very simple thing to do but the challenge lies at the field level. So the idea is to get the best of the words for both organizations’ point of view and channel community’s point of view.

11. What is the importance of vertical expansion in data centers?

It is the phrase developed by Raritan specifically focussing on a set of solutions which allow data center managers to pack more computing power in one rack. If you have 50 racks you would go to 60 or 70 racks but if you bring 3 phase power to the rack, you can almost triple the capacity in your existing rack. So vertical expansion will increase computer density and save the cost of reality.

12. What are the new trends in vertical expansion? What are the Indian specific trends?

It is basically bringing 3 phase power to the rack and then splitting the three phase into single phase for the end customers. Also, the customers are now beginning to realize the benefits of vertical expansion and it has been a learning curve for them.

13. What are the Indian specific challenges in vertical expansion?

It’s the learning curve of the customers on how long a customer takes to adapt it. That’s the only challenge present currently.

14.  How do companies overdo these challenges?

It is the matter of accepting the solution and learn how it works.