India is a very important market for us: Forke

Storage has become an all-important aspect for implementing IT solutions. In
keeping with the importance of the Indian market, global storage major Maxtor is
looking forward to increasing its partner strength in the sub-continent. Rachel
Forke spoke to Zia Askari about the company's partner program in this region.

What is the current focus for Maxtor globally and where does India stand
in its overall outlook?

Maxtor is always looking for opportunities to grow in geographies that we
have a presence in. India continues to be a very important market for us as a
company and we are totally committed to realizing the full potential of this
market.

In this market, we work closely with certain OEM partners like HCL
Infosystems, Wipro Infotech, Vintron and LG Electronics. Additionally, we are
working with the solution provider or systems integrator community to better
penetrate the Indian market. The importance of this market can be gauged by our
five-year warranty policy, which is applicable only in this geography. Service
is one of the factors that we take most seriously. We now have five service
locations within India and our resellers are maintaining three to four weeks of
inventory on an average.

How many partners does Maxtor work with globally and what is the figure in
India?

On a global scale-we are working with close to 40,000 partners as of
today. And in India this figure would be more than 1,000. These are part of our
VIP program and we are continuously looking at ways to increase our market reach
and presence.

Ideally, we would be adding 100 to 150 partners per month for our VIP
program. We created the Maxtor VIP Partner Program to help individuals in our
reseller network gain a competitive advantage.

As such, we work hard to support our members with the right tools, training
and incentive programs to help them recommend and sell Maxtor's full line of
storage solutions. Everything we do is designed to drive sales and help our VIP
Partner Program members be successful.

What kind of importance do you give to training when it comes to
developing an ecosystem for your operations?

As we grow our partner strength, we always look for ways to enhance their
level of understanding when it comes to implementing cutting-edge technologies.
Increasingly, partners now look for ways to move up the value chain. Training
provides them with an opportunity to do that.

We are engaged in an online training program for our partners. This program
is designed to deliver knowledge about current technology and its deployment in
today's dynamic scenarios.