GEC NEWS WIREWith an Unrivalled Onsite and Offshore Workbench and ultramodern NOC that breathes superiority, EES presents a catalyst for Managed services in the region and tells us why they are here to ‘Stay’; and in this process how they are enabling the competitors to learn from their approaches. . Our exclusive interview with Muhammad Salman, Business Unit Head, Managed Services at Emitac
“Managed services is a snowball that is gradually gaining momentum. It is a journey that requires patience and customers’ understanding.”
Muhammad Salman, Business Unit Head, Managed Services at Emitac
It has been a short span of 10 months and EES Managed Service Unit has already climbed up the success ladder and tasted over 13 customer wins. A journey started by a man single-handedly has a great winning team on-board now which is all set to bridge the major legacy gaps in the market and attain new territories in the coming quarters. In this journey, Flexibility, Reliability and Agility is the spine of the EES Managed Services.
The 10 in 10 Figure
“As a 40 year old organization, we have had our own shares of box pushes and evolutions. Since the past 4-5 years we have entered into the services platform. The experience has been wonderful. 30% of our portfolio has been services, which is a handsome score on the board. We entered into the Managed Services portfolio last year. We started from Ground Zero in last July and I was a single-man-army. Now we are 10 people on-board focused on building a winning team”, says Muhammad Salman, Business Unit Manager, Managed Services Head at Emitac.
The prompting factor
According to Salman, the market demands you to share resources. It may look very fancy to have your own dedicated data center but to afford that data center, one needs a lot of investment and the costs are always overriding. In Salman’s words, “Here we are able to give the same solution to a customer with no upfront investment..We convert everything into an OPEX model and can be flexible at the same time by growing or reducing it according to the demand. Flexibility, adaptability, and agility are the keywords. If one is able to provide these three things to the customer then they hit the nail. We are in a WIN-WIN situation if we are able to be flexible and agile enough. This is exactly what Emitac offers to the customers.”
The Early Birds
A great number of organizations are still reluctant to have Managed services or entrust their business to third party. Convincing and winning customers is a rough road to travel. Talking about the responses that Emitac received, Salman says, “It has been a mix for Emitac as we have successfully established contracts with both government and corporate sectors. It is a mix of time, material engagement and SLA based engagement. Last year the scenario was a bit different, but today there is a visible change in the mindset of the Government organizations too. Many government agencies are now open to work with third party contractors. The reason for this being, in any organization with 500+ employees there are at least 15-20 people working onsite reporting on the IT infrastructure which is a huge recurring cost every month. For them, an SLA model saves a good percentage of cost. Theyalso don’t need to buy products as it is all converted to an OPEX model and this is a huge driver for them to go the managed services way”
Salman believes that it is not anybody’s wish to move to managed services, but it is the need of the hour. “You get all the ingredients that you need to be competent in terms of technology and at the same time save costs. If you have to exist as a business, your bottom line should always be green and cash-flows positive – that is the bottom line. You must have innovative ways to create value to your organization and your customers”, says Salman.
Services in the Quiver
The Managed Services Unit at EES has a roadmap. According to Salman, “We are primarily an Infrastructure company, so the most obvious way was to showcase our Infrastructure managed services.”Emitac is currently offering a couple of services that includes, Outsourcing on time and material of resources;XaaS;Cloud as a service;Platform as a serviceetc. .Next year we also plan to enhance the SaaS and ERP managed services platform… According to our understanding and market study, Government and Corporates are a mix of Oracle and SAP. So we believe that there is a gap to be bridged and some internal questions to be answered before we explore further into that space. As we talk, we are in the phase of identifying the right market” Opines Salman.
Ruling the Roost
The market is ruled by many when it comes to Managed Services and SIs. So how does Emitac justify its unique position? Salman says, “We are second to none. We have the required skill sets,a set roadmap and aligned processes for an ISO 27001 certification plan for next year. We are also implementing ITIL certified Cloud Service desk at present. With this our moto is to ask the customers— ‘If we can do it, why can’t you?’
Another objective is to achieve a resource pool of 500 onsite resources by the end of FY-17.
“Talking about the competitiveness of our tools, for our NOC we utilize best of the breed tools that ensures accurate and timely reporting of alerts and incidents. We provide solutions depending on customer’s need. We are not into the game of selling productsbut we utilize the resources based on the needs of the customer. We sign an SLA with the customer and provide solutions that deem right to us after clear assessment of our customer’s need. As for our NOC, we have established a newfully equipped NOC @ our DIC office which would be ready by next month. This is a MILESTONE achievement for the Emitac Managed Services unit. We have a 16 bench NOC that has all the capabilities to cater to the service desk for the next couple of years. We are the first SIin the regionto have an NOC of such a big scale.Additionally, keeping in mind our customer’s apprehensions,we are also offering a free POC throughoutJune, 2015 to give customers a hands-on experience and demonstrate itsimpact on their business.”
“WHILE OFFERING MANAGED SERVICES, WE ARE NOT USURPING THE ENTERPRISE. WE ARE ENABLING ITS EFFICIENCY AND PERFORMANCE”
Brainstorming with the CIOs/CTOs
“Whenever we approach a CIO or a CTO and tell them that we will manage all the services for you, the question we are faced with right away is ‘Where is the CIO’s existence then?’. So what we would like to clarify and communicate tothe CIOs at large is that— Managed Services are not here to eliminate their existence; ratherthere to enable and empower them to manage their business better. We imbibe efficiency into business processes without demanding huge investments. If we are able to prove this point to the customer, then our value is realized”, emphasizes Salman.
Success story
Salman took us through a virtual tour of an ongoing project to explain different stages and the time frame involved in deploying any such project. He said, “We are in the middle of onboarding a customer. The ‘Convincing’ itself took us 7 months. The region is a bit conservative about any new technology and its adaption compared to the US or Asian counterparts. Discussions started in March, and we were able to successfully convince the customer by October. In December we finalized the SLA. Now it’s a mix of onsite and offshore workbench. That is how we bring value. They have end points like; desktops, laptops, printers, etc. Moving to the data center part we have the network, security, server, storage, virtualization etc so we take up all. Considering their budget constraints, we deployed three resources onsite which are L1 plus resources. They do routine IT operation and when there is troubleshooting required beyond the abilities of the onsite resources we have the L2 and L3 team providing support on incident basis which will be used only if the need arises. If it is a stable organization then we would not need the L3 resources too often. To top it all and enhance it further, we have also added a component of monitoring to it. We monitor them from our NOC by aligning it properly.”
Salman is of the opinion that Managed services are the ultimate cost savers and if the customer has to be convinced, he needs to be patient to experience its value. It’s a journey that demands patience. It is a snowball that is gaining momentum slowly.
Migration to cloud
A good part of the world is still not comfortable moving their data on the cloud. According to Salman, ‘Cloud is a box’ regardless of where it is. He says, “Customers’ trust in the box is what matters the most. They should be able to see and feel the box and its services in order to be convinced. It’s a Pay-as-you -Go system. The time when people will realize the pain in dealing with overriding costs they will moveto cloud. Cloud is the need of the hour. Salman also says that Government organizations are still reluctant to go on the cloud due to the security issues. However, the mindset is slowly changing. “We can take the Microsoft Azure out of the office, but not the core business applications of the Government”, remarks Salman.
The Ripe and Ready Market
Talking about the readiness of the market in embracing Managed Services, Salman says that the market is getting ready for it. The next 2 years, according to him, are going to be very promising for cloud hosting and managed services because of the economic pressures that is pushing it. “In-line with the market,we are also introducingInfrastructure as a service. So one can buy virtual computing power from us, not a mere machine. We distribute this offering in 5 stages.
First—Bringing the device to the data center;
Second—Pluggingthe device into data center;
Third—RPC where we have the power cooling and rack;
Fourth—System administration;
Fifth—Application management(Getting ready for this)
With these services, our customers can focus on their core issues rather than IT operations”, says Salman.
Finally…
Managed services impact the organization deeply. It affects the top line and bottom line equally. Salman says that it is very important for the customers to have faith in the service in order to invest in it. “Seeing isbelieving … I don’t buy something which I can’t touch or feel. So, one has to change their approach, present true value and make themcomfortable with the serviceby presentingevery detail required to convince and get the customer to invest in the service.
