Infotech Lead India: Subir Bhatnagar, VP & Global Head – Solutions, AGC Networks, says the year 2012 was the year of the cloud.
The enterprises with the help of the cloud service and solution providers explored new and better opportunities of making the technology a little more accessible at reduced costs.
Un-disguising the challenge and exploring the opportunity
In 2012, a majority of technology companies in India witnessed an almost flat year due to reduced growth and sluggishness across the industry resulting in reduced IT spends by enterprises. On the other hand, AGC Networks was on an expansion spree. It started with a splendid ’12 financial year closure we had in April 2012. We achieved a revenue growth of 69 percent, EBITDA growth of 107 percent and PBT growth of 100 percent. With this platform as a start, we expanded our solutions portfolio with alliance expansion and also entered in Australia & New Zealand (ANZ), Middle East & Africa (MEA) and United States of America (USA) during FY 2013.
The strategy at core which worked wonders for us was our 10-cube strategy which helped us focus in right solutions and geographies thus helping us channelize our efforts and attain multi-dimensional growth. During the course of this year too we have had our growth story continuing. Comparing H1 on y-o-y basis, in 2013 so far we have achieved 16 percent revenue jump and 55 percent EBITDA growth.
Trends in cloud adoption in the solutions space in 2013
AGC Networks has expertise in providing end to end business technology solutions and services which enable enterprises in delivering a rich customer experience. The year 2012 showed a growth in the demand of end-to-end business solutions suite by the enterprises to ensure cost effectiveness and unwavering IT experience. Basis the observation, it will be harmless to say that 2013 will be the year of cost savings, consolidation and consumerization of technologies. Technology companies which till now were developing and pricing solutions and applications separately for individual users and enterprises will shift focus to ‘users’ irrespective of who is the final consumer.
In enterprises, with trends like BYOD witnessing high levels of acceptance and users now demanding and accessing whole lot of information anytime, anywhere; the level of expectation from the technology companies will also be on a rise. Hence, these technology services providers will now be focusing on streamlining the networks, the hardware and the applications to make it user centric a delivering rich customer experience.
In addition, the amount of information being produced and accessed is on a panicking growth which is leading to an extra impact on hardware, application and networks.
These shifts are bound to add costs to solution providing enterprises like ours as well as technology builders, which is extremely unwanted in today’s scenario. Industry surveys have shown that IT heads do understand these shifts but are not increasing their spend budget in 2013.So what do we do? That’s when we can expect cost savers like cloud to play important role. The whole IT ecosystem is heading for transition. Cloud will at the center playing crucial role in making information accessible-on-demand, from anywhere and at a much lowered costs. It will also help share it, analyze it and use it strategically for achieving growth.
AGC Networks’ rise to the next level
Today, with our 60+ alliance ecosystem we are equipped to further strengthen our position as experience enablers in ICT domain as we are well equipped to give solutions which best fit from cost as well as technology perspective in the 4 technology quadrants cater to: Unified Communication, Network Infrastructure, Data Center & Virtualization and Enterprise Applications. Under these 4 windows we have complete ICT requirement of any enterprises from any vertical and any size.
In 2013, we will further customize our solutions to strengthen our global presence. This is needed also from a perspective as enterprises are in different stage of IT technology adoption and utility in different parts of the world. For example in India, we have most of CIOs looking at zero increase in their IT investment in 2013 making it a bleak situation, but we see a lot of growth potential in Middle East and Africa Region. Similarly, while in US & Australia, we see scope for our enterprise services suite, we see solutions portfolio generating revenues for us in India and Europe. Our current focus is on how to make our portfolio apt to cater to requirements of each market we serve.
In conclusion
Today enterprise just needs to understand that technology adoption & upgradation is not a cumbersome or an expensive process. They just need to identify and prioritize their needs; with right solution provider they can make best out of IT. We, as leading solutions integrator in India assure that in 2013 and in the coming years, we will take the extra step and go the extra mile to make a solution fit for their enterprise not just industry.
Subir Bhatnagar, VP & Global Head – Solutions, AGC Networks
editor@infotechlead.com
