Apara: the new face in professional services

Apara Enterprise Solutions, a high-end infrastructure solution provider is transforming itself into a professional services company. Abhinav Singh says that high-growth segments and overseas business will fuel Apara’s topline growth

	Apara’s focus will be on providing end-to end storage solutions, optimising application performance and consulting, says K N Prasad

Five entrepreneurs came together in 1993 to offer system integration services. Eleven years later what started off as an Rs 20 lakh operation is now generating revenues at the rate of Rs 93 crore a year. With 130 people and 400 enterprise level customers that include some big names such as GE Capital Services, BSNL and Citibank, Apara Enterprise Solutions has a come a long way. The company is now looking at overseas markets for joint ventures (JVs) and acquisitions. It has already entered into a MoU in the Middle and the Far East and is set to venture into the European, Australian and US markets.

Apara has moved away from being a product-centric solution provider to a customised solutions provider with a strong focus on Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) catering to BPO units, call centres, banks and telcos. In intelligent networking, it is offering SSL security, bandwidth management, load balancing and failover and its customers include the likes of Rediff, Indiatimes, Netmagic, Reliance and VSNL. In the recent past, the company has won some of the biggest security deals in the country including those from Reliance, Bharti, and AT&T. Apara has also won the data centre deployments for GE Capital Services, Citibank and VSNL. Apara deployed a SAN for ABN Amro.

In partners we trust

Entering into collaborations to satisfy diverse customer needs in a more focused manner is one of the basic tenets of Apara’s ‘go-to-market’ strategy. It already has technical alliances with around 40 vendors such as Network Appliance, Hitachi Data Systems, Veritas, NetScaler and Trend Micro among others. M S Sidhu, managing director Apara Enterprise Solutions says, “We make value additions to our technical alliance partners’ products and provide a complete solution to our customers.” Apara is planning to have more partnerships with companies in the IT consulting space. It has also collaborated successfully with Vincity Networks to provide remote management services to some customers and is building strong relationships with its channel partners. Sidhu says, “Our channel partners understand our business and this helps them win customer accounts across India, especially in smaller towns. We regularly train them so that they are up to date on technology.”

The Malavalli factor

With Kumara Malavalli (co-founder of Brocade) becoming the chairman of Apara, the company has benefited from his experience in the field of storage. Malavalli’s guidance is expected to give Apara a foothold in the global market. Says Sidhu, “Malavalli’s vision and mentoring have helped us grow rapidly. He has also helped us with relationship building in the storage segment.” Last year Malavalli invested Rs 10 crore in Apara. The investment will help expand Apara’s footprint in India and abroad.

	The acquisition of local companies is essential to win customers in non-English speaking countries, says M S Sidhu

Acquire, collaborate and grow

Acquisitions, joint ventures (JVs) and partnerships will be the key to gain overseas customers. Apara’s approach will depend on market conditions prevailing in different geographies. Acquisitions will be a major thrust area, especially in non-English speaking countries such as France and Germany. Sidhu says, “Local customers feel more comfortable dealing with local rather than foreign companies. Hence the acquisition of local companies is essential to win customers in non-English speaking countries.” Having established its presence in Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka, Apara is now eyeing the European and US markets. It has signed MoUs with companies in Korea and is looking forward to tying up with companies in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand. Apara is also considering the prospects of establishing its own subsidiary in different markets. It plans to build a presence in eight countries in the coming year.

New found opportunity

Apara is planning to tie up with large Enterprise Application Software (EAS) vendors to sort out issues related to discrete storage systems and to fine tune ERP systems in the telecom, oil & gas and the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) verticals. It would do this in partnership with EAS vendors. The company is also contemplating alliances with system integrators such as CMC, TCS and HCL among others on a project-to-project basis where they can leverage Apara’s skill sets. K N Prasad, head, Marketing and Alliances, Apara Enterprise Solutions says, “We are supporting new applications like multimedia messaging through our intelligent storage infrastructure. We are building relationships with companies in the telecom and middleware segments. Our focus will continue to be on providing end-to end storage solutions, security within storage and intelligent networking i.e. optimising application performance and consulting.”

For Apara, the bulk of its 34 percent projected growth that will help it achieve a revenue target of Rs 125 crore in 2005 is expected to come from storage and storage services (50 percent) while the balance is split between professional services, security and intelligent networking. The company is also looking to recruit the right people with specialised skill sets for pre-sales and deployment. It is planning to add 80-100 people by the end of 2004.

Storage will continue to be a major focus area for Apara and the company has some interesting projects involving Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and SAN security for banks.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com