Into the Big League

As the domestic IT services market has

continued to grow, it has created enough space resulting in the

emergence of a new breed of SPs. What is more interesting is the fact

that most of these companies delved into avenues that demands more

market maturity and technical expertise woven seamlessly with an

integrated service structure to deliver efficient business solutions

for their clients. Interestingly, they have not only restricted

themselves to SMBs, but increasingly started addressing larger

enterprises as well. The rock steady performance which defied even

the ongoing global recession is proof enough of the buoyant strides

the new breed is ready to take.

If the transformation of the erstwhile

box pushers into SPs was complete by 2008, the last two years had

seen the coming of age of the latter as they matured to develop their

services offerings as a well-chartered business strategy. Doing

hardware business and doing solution business are completely

different ballgames. Understanding the criticality of providing

solutions and services on BI or any business application or

datacenter management for that matter, the tier-2 players have not

only developed the required skillsets to deliver such projects but

have build well-crafted business blocks around them.

Overcoming the fear factor associated

with all new ventures and the initial stumbling, the last two years

have witnessed this thriving business line to slowly pick up and now

the market is far more ripe and so are the players, who are gaining

better hold of the ground and maturing themselves in providing

effective business solutions to their customers. However, in order to

gain momentum solution providers like Sai Infosystems, Allied

Digital, Frontier Business System, Accel Frontline, Gemini

Communications or Precision Infomatic had to undergo rigorous process

re-engineering as well as introduce many new aspects into their

businesses. Operation and management of business processes have

become very vital as unlike hardware business, project management is

crucial here.

None of these solution providers have

parted with their old legacy of hardware reselling business; rather

they have aligned their software implementation business surrounding

their core strength area in a manner to obtain maximum profit out of

the marriage of the two businesses. As pointed out by many of them,

apart from giving additional revenue the older reselling business

helps in the current solution business in terms of providing a

wholesome hardware and software solution to the customers. Inventory

is the backbone of reselling business that can be extremely helpful

while implementing larger deals that require plenty of hardware

installations.

With time the scalability and nature of

projects delivered by the solution providers have changed

drastically. They have started taking up and delivering large scale

and more complex projects for their customers, a capability neatly

built over time and with much effort. They have also started actively

veturing overseas. Geographical expansions are must now as there are

various unexplored territories with lots of opportunities and its up

to the solution providers to explore the same as much as possible. As

the delivery portfolio and efficiency enhances, so does expectation

and competition. To sustain and thrive in this business it is very

important to follow the current market trends and upgrade skills on

regular basis to catch up with latest technology and develop

solutions around them. Services is an area wherein one has to provide

end-to-end solutions to his clients. Therefore, continuous evolution

is essential and its now up to these solution providers to see how

fast they can shape their way to join in the big league.