Has Huawei given up enterprise IT goals to Cisco in India?

Huawei Enterprise India Vice President Suresh Reddy announced the company’s channel strategy aimed at improving its IT market presence. It seems Huawei India has given up its goals to main rival Cisco.

The company does not have any strong strategies to take on big rivals such as Cisco, HP, Dell, etc in India. Because Huawei has low base, its revenue growth was around 100 percent in 2013. It hopes that the revenue growth will continue this year as well.

It focuses on innovation. But innovation is yet to assist Huawei considering its enterprise customer base. Many customers are from government. Probably, Huawei is winning due to its low price quote. Most of its enterprise customers are small companies in India.

Beam Telecom, You Broadband, RBI, Taj Hotels, ICICI Bank, Medanta, Sterlite, BSE, etc. are some of its customers in India.

Though the company is not looking at significant market share in the enterprise IT market that is pegged at around $6 billion, Huawei would like to work with top enterprises in important verticals such as data centers, ISP, hospitality, retail, e-commerce, etc. It feels the growth should come from big enterprises since it is not looking at market share.

Please see the video interview with Huawei Enterprise India VP Suresh Reddy on channel strategy.

Its India strategy is different from its aggressive plans for some of the global markets. In the U.S. market, it is trying to take on Cisco, HP, Dell, etc. In China, its main threat is from Lenovo, another Chinese vendor which recently acquired the low-end server business from IBM.

Globally, Huawei enterprise business focuses on energy and power, large enterprises, government and public sector, transportation, finance and SMB.

Huawei officials admitted that it does not have tier 1 partners like Wipro, TCS, etc. to take on big enterprise vendors in the country. It is working with tier 2 partners. “We do not want to attack Cisco or HP,” said Daniel Jiangqingsong, president, Huawei Enterprise India.

“Media and entertainment will be a focus area this year. We doubled revenue last year. We learned from mistakes. We invested heavily earlier. There were unfavorable market conditions in India. We need to execute our plans in the Indian market in phases. We need to understand the demands of enterprises and our partners,” Jiangqingsong added.

Huawei has around 150,000 employees and out of this, 70,000 resources are in R&D. It spends heavily in enterprise product innovation.

Cisco-Huawei

The $39.5 billion Huawei has 15 R&D centers. It has already built 330 data centers worldwide.

Some Indian enterprise customers use customized products developed by Huawei

“Future Group, a retail chain uses Huawei micro data center called All-in-one for Branch ICT. It reduces Opex by 30 percent. It can be deployed in three hours. Opex savings for Future will be more than 30 percent,” Reddy said.

90 percent of its Indian enterprise business is from channels.

The company has 150 partners in India. The number of focus partners is around 50. It focuses on metros and key cities.

Huawei is trying to re-strengthen its enterprise business in India. In 2010-11, Huawei tried to invest significantly in India. But it could not succeed in the IT market. At present, Huawei enterprise business has 60 resources. The increase in resources will depend on the growth of the company. It is waiting for the new government.

Huawei India said the program — Connect, Engage & Build — aims to build a larger channel partner ecosystem through engagement with core partners which include strategic partnership with Beetel on Networking / IP product lines, Iris and DDMS along with other tier 1 & VAP partners namely Sify, ABS, Primatel and Allied Digital and enable them with latest technology innovations and solutions so as to address the growing ICT needs in the market.

Baburajan K
[email protected]

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