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All eyes on the first quarter of year '09

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DQW Bureau
New Update



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Lucknow IT market along with Kanpur is the central market within the state of
Uttar Pradesh. The IT market of Lucknow is a growth-centric market wherein fresh
demands are settling up from various segments of the city like government
offices, educational institutions, financial institutions, hospitals, other
private institutions, etc.

“In the server and storage area, Lucknow has some really good projects coming
up,” said Hetal Shah of Redington.

The IT solutions market in Lucknow is thriving for betterment as major
institutions are planning their upgradation. Pankaj Kapoor of Computer Shack
said, “Opportunities on the solutions front are increasing with time. For
example Lucknow University is looking forward to its complete computerization,
building campus networks, connectivity establishment between both the campuses
of the university. Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI)
is planning to setting up its own Hospital Information System (HIS) and
establishing Tele-Medicine system for video conferencing while another hospital
in the city namely King George Medical College (KGMC) is coming up with its own
Hospital Management System (HMS). Those are a few instances of how requirements
are coming up within the city.

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Demand for branded systems is on the rise as compared to the non-branded or
assembled systems. “This is a bad time for the new products in the market, as
people don't trust them. Local customers look for return on every single rupee
they spend. Whatever is being sold is dominated by the branded stuff," said PK
Agarwal of Docket Care Systems. Defining the trend in the city Surinder Suri
from Sagar Infosystems said, “Laptops are becoming more popular than desktops
now. Local consumers prefer to go for branded laptops rather than the desktops
as the price difference is coming down. This is expected to follow in future
too.”

He further added that the best selling brands in the city are Compaq, HP,
Sony, Dell and Lenovo in laptops while with these brands HCL is also preferred
within the city for desktops.

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With high demand for IT and IT peripherals, Lucknow is seemingly not that
affected by the recession. But the fear of the coming tough times, as they say,
the first quarter of the year 2009, will decide the direction of the market.
Owing to this skepticism, channel partners say, that customers looking to buy a
computer are delaying their plans for a few months owing to the current crisis.
“Need of the hour is basic demand. Demand is slowing down a bit on the sale of
computer. The demand should not slowdown at all as it didn't in the past.”
informed Ajay Saxena from Ingram-Micro.

Name: Lucknow

Location: Central Market of UP

Size of the market: Rs 50-60 crores a month.

Surrounding market:
Kanpur, Allahabad, Rai Bareilly, Bareilly, Varanasi,
Jhansi, Meerut, Agra, etc

No of dealers:
Approx 450

Prominent dealers:
Saagar Infocom, Omni, Nesco, Century, Sigma, etc

National distributors:
Ingram, Redington, Savex, Iris, Rashi, Supertron,
Salora, Compuage, etc

Association:
Lucknow Computers Dealers Association

Business vertical:
Government offices, educational institutes, financial
institutions, domestic users, hospitals, other bodies

Business trend:
Decreasing price of branded systems has leveraged a
knack for branded laptops/desktops, decreasing price differences between
branded desktops and branded laptops has pushed the buying habits towards
the laptops and coming up of new offices/institutions and upgradation of
existing offices/institutions has boosted IT solutions market

Highlighting the same thought, he further said that new offices should set
up, new infrastructure should be made so that the demand doesn't get affected
with the creeping fear of slowdown in the coming months.

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Commenting on the opportunities which the partners have in the local IT
market there, “Every partner is expected to run schemes for the customers as
customers do pay for something which satisfies them. I don't see a problem with
customers shelling out money if the product offered is good enough,” said Shah
of Redington. He further added that the current phase is definitely a temporary
phase with low bottomlines in the trade. Overall, the entire market is set for a
long term growth in all aspects.

Pankaj Kapoor of Computer Shack discusses the current stature of the IT
solutions market of Lucknow, its characteristics, foreseeable opportunities,
and some issues which he feels will gain reasonable ground in near future.

Q) Throw some light on the current demand on IT market in Lucknow.

I can comment only on the solutions part of the IT market in Lucknow.
Lucknow is a city dominated by government employees as residents and
government purchasing has the biggest share in the market. Given the fact
that the city is on its way to growth, the re-structuring of old existing
offices, setting up of newer offices like small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
and the basic upgradation work has pushed the requirements of technology.

There might be problems with regard to recession all around. Definitely,
there would be some impact on the local trade with people postponing their
expenditures as of now but on a larger scale, market for solutions is
unfazed by the crisis. An overall view justifies the logic behind.

Pankaj Kapoor

Computer Shack

Q) Discuss any trend which you have noticed within the local city in
the demand for its IT requirements?

As I said, demand is coming from the basic upgradation work in the
existing institutions, new offices setting in like small and medium
enterprises (SME's), banks, educational institutions etc, the demand is
arising from these sources. Hence with modernization, the IT requirements
are definitely increasing in leaps and bounds. Secondly, the attention
towards

the security aspect has also come up in a big way. Enterprises, offices are
focussing more on their data security, storage requirements, data back-ups,
anti-piracy, anti-virus requirements.

Q) Talking about data storage and requirements of security, back ups,
how far is the local market in terms of knowing and requiring disaster
management solutions?

Disaster management solutions is for those organizations who are
completely dependent on their IT infrastructure. So much to such an extent
that a stoppage in working would result in enormous loss of valuable data.
Large enterprises used to set up major IT infrastructure at their head
offices from where the data of other branches was managed. Now, for data
management, a parallel site is built up for every office so that in case of
emergency, usage is switched over to the parallel IT setup for unhindered
continuity. Lucknow, is probably not the right place for that kind of a
market as mostly the government offices are not that tech savvy. But,
exceptions are always there. Some SMEs within the city are building up such
data management systems for their business continuity.

Q) What are the prevailing problems within the city or region which
probably is affecting the interests of the IT channel partners?

I feel that the customers at the upper level like big companies with a
turnover of Rs 300 crores or more have a misconception that there are not
enough or sufficient solution providers locally suitable for their
requirements. So, they prefer to go for national players. A regional player
like me has a better grip, better manpower and better reach locally. HCL,
Wipro or a TCS would no doubt have good technical expertise, but even we
have no dearth of technical expertise. National players should realize the
benefits of regional players.

I feel that there should be a combination of national and regional
players working together in an environment of this kind. This would club the
advantages of the services of a national player with the hold that of a
regional player.

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