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Spotlight
Powering enterprises
Emerson’s efforts to deliver power solutions for the
enterprise have paid off, says Chitra Padmanabhan
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Since our inception we have followed a solutions approach
rather than being only a box-pusher
Shrikant Bapat
ENP India |
Power disruptions are seldom considered a matter of strategic importance. However,
with the emergence of India as a service economy, this perception is changing.
Attempts are now being made to quantify the impact of power-related problems.
So observes Emerson Network Power (ENP) India, which provides uninterruptible
power supply (UPS) and other power-protection solutions.
ENP India was formed in 2001 after the parent company acquired the Tata group’s
interest in Tata Liebert, which was a joint venture between the Tatas and Liebert
Corporation. The new entity brought together technology and engineering services
to design, install and maintain complete power networks including UPS systems,
climate and environmental systems, DC power systems, automatic transfer switches
and power distribution units.
It is now a 300-strong organisation with a network of 55 business partners and
resellers servicing 22 cities across the country. The company says it has achieved
a year-on-year growth of 20 percent for the past 2-3 years, and contributes
about six percent of its parent’s global revenues. In India the UPS business
contributes 80 percent of its earnings; the remaining 20 percent comes from
other businesses such as DC power systems.
Usually, the growth of the UPS industry is directly related to infrastructure
development in various sectors of the economy. “Unlike other IT solution
areas, the UPS business experiences a huge surge in an emerging market such
as India,” says Shrikant Bapat, who is the champion for uptime solutions
at ENP India. This is because companies set up their power protection systems
while commencing their operations. In order to cater to sector-specific needs,
ENP offers services in mobile and fixed line telecommunications, data centres
and computer networks, Internet infrastructure and services, power generation,
process and industrial applications, and medical electronics.
“Since our inception we have followed a solutions approach rather than
being only a box-pusher. In the current year, most of our business has come
from the telecom sector,” says Bapat. The company has won an award from
Frost & Sullivan for solutions provided to telecommunication, IT and ITES
organisations, data centres, hospitals and large enterprises.
“Last year our growth was largely driven by the BPO segment; in the current
year, the growth in the telecommunications sector has worked to our advantage,”
adds Bapat. When one observes the trend in the last three years, the bulk of
the company’s business came from emerging sectors. Next year the company
expects good business from the energy sector and it has designed its solutions
accordingly.
No more downtime
The biggest growth driver for the company has been the industry’s
lack of tolerance for downtime. ENP India’s telecom clients typically demand
very high capacity for power backup. Says Bapat, “A telco will demand an
eight-hour backup for our DC charges since they calculate their customer billing
in terms of airtime.” Similarly, companies in the BPO and ITES space believe
in going by SLAs (service level agreements) signed by them with their customers.
“Earlier, UPS as a device was only a single box. Nowadays customers are
demanding solutions that are best-suited for their mission-critical networks,”
states Bapat.
Local manufacturing
Local manufacturing gives ENP India the ability to custom-manufacture products
that suit Indian conditions. “We cannot depend on the manufacturing and
R&D capabilities of our parent company for our growth. To provide value
we have to innovate, and this is where the investments made in R&D help
us stay ahead of the competition,” notes Bapat. The company’s R&D
initiatives can be classified into two segments—global R&D and local
R&D. Global R&D is further classified into platform development and
localisation. The global R&D centres carry out work relating to the development
of frameworks for various products, while the local centres focus on customising
the products to conditions prevalent in that belt. Emerson has R&D centres
in the US, Italy, China and Australia. “The Indian centre funds all local
R&D initiatives,” says Bapat. While many UPS companies in India deal
in products that are shipped in from their core manufacturing centres abroad,
ENP has the advantage of an elaborate infrastructure for manufacturing right
here in India.
Not just hardware
ENP’s business cannot be classified as purely hardware related. Since an
organisation’s network infrastructure consists of multiple servers and
routers, the backup power infrastructure accordingly needs to be put in place.
For instance, Multiport is a device used to hook up more than one workstation
to a UPS, while MultiLink is software used to automatically shutdown of one
or more workstations. This approach brings about the need for a partner network
to not only sell devices but also provide software-related services to the customer.
The company’s marketing initiatives are divided into two categories. When
it comes to providing solutions it opts for direct selling; when the demand
is for a single device it is usually handled by its distribution partners. Ingram
Micro, which ENP has appointed as its Tier-1 partner, operates through 32 offices
all over the country to distribute ENP’s products to value-added resellers.
In the future, the company plans to focus on the emerging SME segment for which
it recently launched the UPStation GXT 2U UPS, which is capable of handling
potential power problems such as power spikes and transients, EMI/RFI noise,
voltage sags, burnout conditions and harmonics. There is also UCS, which is
ENP’s cooling solution targeted at server rooms for small-to-mid-sized
IT companies.
| 2003 Sales By Product |
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chitra@expresscomputeronline.com
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