Huawei is committed to partner enablement and profitability as its key strategies to make strong inroads in the enterprise segment, says Shailendra Sainani, Sales Director, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei Technologies ME

Discuss how your product portfolio focus for the enterprise segment?

The Huawei enterprise Business group has three major solution groups. Among these, our IP product portfolio includes IP based systems like switching, routing, wireless and security. The IT product portfolio includes servers, storage, datacenter products. The UCMC includes voice and video products – IPT, video conferencing, tele-presence all come under this. All products are included in our distribution business from the enterprise segment.

Please elaborate on Huawei’s reach into enterprise channel?

We are at a stage where we are expecting a large growth in this segment. We are focusing on how the channel can become trusted advisors of our solutions into that space. Our entire engagement will pivot around four pillars.

First, we will rely on our strong focus. That focus is going to become a strong ring for us in knowing who stays in and who stays out. Second, enablement will play a key role. We will look to ensure that partners are duly empowered to become trusted advisors as I mentioned. Profitability of the partners is the third element. That will ensure that they stay committed. Our channel program will bring clarity as to how this is driven. In a nutshell, Focus, enablement, profitability and a channel program will be the key aspects of our engagement with the enterprise segment channel.

What are the kinds of partners who will suit your focus?

We are looking at partners who specialize in verticals and technologies and can add value to our Business. The market is wide enough – there is the government sectors, large enterprises and then the commercial segment. Not all our products and solutions fit into each and every element. We need to be careful in selecting partners who cover a vertical.

We are assessing the market space in this area. We are talking to some large systems integrators who cover enterprise spaces like enterprises, public safety, oil & gas, and the large government sectors. We are talking to many mid-market players who have good reach into the space and are good with mid-market solutions.

How will you ensure the balance between widening market reach as well as ensuring partner profitability?

We will have a good number of partners which is sustainable from the profitability point of view. We are focusing on achieving a consistent progress. At the end of the day, it is going to be one Huawei approach – for instance, the enterprise partners will have strengths that we would like to utilize in the commercial space.

The final number of the partners will depend on market size and our requirements. We have four tiers- we have tier one partners called VAP ( value added partner) and this type of partner engages directly with us. Then there are distribution led partners whom we categorize as Gold, Silver and Registered. Typically, between VAP and Gold, we will look to have not more than 3-4 key integrators. From Gold to Silver, we will look to 15 in these markets like the UAE and Saudi Arabia. There is the much wider space in the silver and registered partner ecosystems, where we will like the distributors to increase our channel breadth, enabling as many partners as possible to tap as many customers. At the same instance, we would want to ensure that partner profitability is taken care of.

Do partners have any stake in the telecom Business?

Telecom is a direct Business and is taken care of by the Carrier Business Unit. We have three Business units – carrier BU, Enterprise BU and consumer BU. That is a different engagement model over a longer period of time. The service model is also different and we need to deploy our own teams.

Has the partner program been revamped and what have been the key features of the refresh?

There has been a refresh and one of the aspects we focused on was partner profitability. The focus was on differentiating our rebates program. We have created a model for our partners to use our marketing funds to create demand. We are giving rebates to our partners on the basis of revenues generated, specialization basis and third on Marketing basis where we are supporting them on all their marketing initiatives. There are two kind of funds used – one is the Partner development fund which is wholly funded by Huawei and the other is co-funded on 50-50% basis. The rebates program is therefore structured to ensure profitability for partners while dealing with Huawei.

We have a rebate based program for our distributors and this is classified on a product basis.  We are encouraging distributors to specialize and where we see that a significant level of investment is required, we will reward them on that basis.

Discuss your distribution and geographical focus?

From an enterprise Business group perspective, we cover from mid-market to enterprise and in terms of the territories that we oversee include GCC including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Our distributors cover the regional markets for us. As of today, we have Enterprise Systems, Huawei, Empa and Stor IT. Optimus is specialized on UC, Empa on IT and Enterprise Systems is across the board and StorIT on storage.  Our partner program is across the region but focused on certain markets. We want to enhance our partner program further and take it to the next level.

The channel is looking for a change and the channel has great confidence in Huawei to be the change because of the vast product portfolio that we offer. We cover end to end solutions portfolio and there is no other vendor who has that range under one umbrella. From computing to storage, networking and the voice video IPT portfolio, we offer solutions across.

Elaborate on your enablement focus for the channel?

We are selecting partners on basis of solutions focus and verticals focus. Based on these, we are enabling them. We offer sales training for the sales teams from resellers and equip them with product knowledge so that they can talk in detail about the products Huawei offers and understand the key selling points. We enable the pre-sales partners where we focus more on transferring the technology knowhow. The third area is certifications for post sales resources. There is a hands on training wherein Huawei assists the partner in the first implementation scenario so that the partner gets enabled on site. We also have certifications programs running.

Apart from these, Stage 2 is our authorized training partner here and in Saudi Arabia. Certifications given out include sales Associate, Sales Expert, Network experts, design experts, implementation experts etc. These cover our key areas of focus.

How do you view the opportunities in emerging technologies and what’s Huawei’s value differentiation?

Definitely, there are opportunities in the market in areas like cloud, BYOD, VDI, Big Data etc and customers are looking for such solutions and there are implementations. We want to enable our partners in such emerging areas. We have some good cloud solutions. For instance, Huawei FusionCube is an IT infrastructure platform based on an open and integrated architecture. It integrates blade servers, distributed storage devices, and switches into its 12 U subrack. Distributed storage, a virtualization platform, and cloud management software are also factory installed which makes it an ideal product for a cloud provider or a cloud integrator. We have launched a product called OceanStor 9000, suitable for Big Data. Using a symmetric distributed architecture, the OceanStor 9000 delivers large-scale horizontal expansion capabilities, and a super large single file system to provide shared storage for unstructured data.

We are wrapping our products with a solutions focus as well as a vertical focus. Partners are looking for profitability and who cares for them. Our partner program takes care of such aspects and today what we offer is one of the best in the