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 SPs 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 SPs 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.

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With time the scalability and nature of projects delivered by the SPs 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 SPs 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 SPs to see how fast they can shape their way to join in the big league.

(rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in)