The Pune-based company believes that remote access domain is fragmented across multiple technology domains and does not mean only VPN or only application virtualization. The offerings from the market leaders are still evolving that too in silos and this is a big opportunity to tap the market with a comprehensive solution.
In an exclusive interaction with Channel Times, Vijender Yadav, Chief Architect, Accopsexplains the company’s USP and its channel plans for the Indian market.
Channel Times: Please explain how your solutions are different from the existing leaders in this space.
Yadav: There are companies just for VPN, just for two factor authentication and then there is Citrix for application virtualization. A customer who wants to implement a secure application delivery from datacentre must integrate all these solutions after spending huge amount of money for product and services and then start delivering the application. The whole process can take weeks and months to go live.
The base premise of the our products is that user’s care about applications and not through which platform they are getting the access. We have built an integrate application access platform using which users using any device can access any application in the way that is most suitable to the user.
For e.g. once the user logs into to Accops gateway, a user can use the SAP client that is installed on her local PC. If the same user is using a different device that does not have SAP client on her PC, she can launch the hosted version of SAP client from the HySecure web page. All this, without any further training and integration with any other solution. When enabled, the user can be enforced to authenticate with multi-factor authentication.
The final component was if the user is not provisioned a device at all, then we provide our our zero client and thin client hardwar ehwich can be used to access the corporate applications.
Channel Times: Why the partners should sell your product and what are the key aspects in your product that might thrill the customer?
Yadav: We believe partners like to sell a product when there is demand from customers and its easy to manage a product.
Virtualization and especially VDI is still complex domain but the use case is growing. There is enough expertise available today for server virtualization. That is because VMWare made the products simple enough for partners to easily learn, sell and manage. VDI has been a product with less demand and not easy to manage. We are changing that. Accops products are easy to deploy and manage. More importantly, all the pieces of virtualizing applications and desktops and then securely delivering are provided by Accops, so there are less integration issues and a single OEM to call for support issues.
Accops to VDI is what UTM to firewall. We are a highly customer focused company and understand the specific needs of Indian customers. Unlike competition, we are open to customization and any type of integration to make VDI a successful project for the CIOs.
Channel Times: Have you developed your products completely from the scratch or you are using already developed open source product with value added in it?
Yadav: All our software products are developed in-house and all the IP is owned by us. We are a 100 percent Indian product build in India for the global world. We also believe in re-using best of breed technology that is already available and acceptable in the market. So we have not developed our own hypervisor, but we use Microsoft Hyper-v and VMWare Hypervisors. Our zero client and thin clients are manufactured by 3rd largest thin client manufacturer.
Channel Times: What according to you, the virtualization industry in India will be in next 5 years?
Yadav: The myth of desktop virtualization saving capex cost against desktop cost is gone long bank. Customers are now more convinced that VDI is more useful for specific use cases, like application and data-security, mobility, BYOD and central management of distributed workforce. We think the market of end user computing virtualization will continue to grow based on these specific drivers and then in next 3-4 year it should reach a tipping point when VDI will be the normal desktop and physical desktops will be used for a specific use cases like offline access only. With bandwidth costs going down, Microsoft simplifying its VDI licensing and hypervisors becoming free, the capex of VDI is comparable to VDI today and it will continue to slide down in years to come. We will see more and more organizations who are 100% on VDI to save costs and increasing internal security.
Channel Times: What are the key suggestions you want to give the channel partners in the virtualization space?
Yadav: As Hyper-converged infrastructure and simplified, more integrated solutions are becoming more common, partners must switch from box selling approach to solution and service selling. There is a significant lack of quality resources and partners who can provide technology knowhow on HCI, virtualization and VDI space. I think partners should look at building more expertise in these areas and build services around these technologies.
Channel Times : Today, most of the virtualization products can be managed through an automation tool like Puppet, Chef and more. Can your products be automated using these tools?
Accops: Yes, We support automation today
Channel Times: Please explain your channel roadmap and marketing stratergies for promoting your products?
Yadav: We have around 75 channel partners across India and globe. In India, we directly work with System integrators and resellers. Outside India, our distributors take care of channel building, marketing support and technical support. We provide both strategic, marketing and technical support to our partners. We have our internal lead generation teams who passes leads to our partners. We provide all the technical support during POCs and for new partners our engineers do the POC. We provide regular sales and technical trainings to the partners.
We provide healthy margins and have special market development funds available to our partners. We co-fund the events along with partners. Our internal marketing team is focusing on inbound marketing by way of SEO, content marketing and social media marketing, that will provide quality leads which can be passed on to our partners.