EMC will file 100 patents from India by next year

EMC, a global IT storage solutions provider, is betting big on the Indian data market and has invested $2 billion in the 12 years of its operations in the country - which is the largest investment by an IT multi-national company in India. Rajesh Janey, president, EMC, India & Saarc, and Sarv Saravanan, senior vice -president & managing director of EMC’s Centers of Excellence in India and Egypt, spoke to Beryl Menezes about the industry outlook, the business opportunity from e-governance projects in the country and his company’s prospects. Excerpts from the interview:

The global market for Big Data is expected to grow at a CAGR of 39.4%. How do you look at the opportunity?
Data explosion is happening at a very rapid rate globally, and in India, where the trend is just catching on, we are seeing twice the growth, as compared to anywhere else in the world. Thus, we are investing heavily in this market. EMC had invested $100 million by 2003, upped this investment to $500 million by 2006; increased it to $1.5 billion by 2009. Hence, till date EMC has committed an investment of $2 billion by 2014 in India.

You recently launched a new eGov solution, aimed at helping governments manage Big Data...
As government departments deploy more electronic-based citizen services, it will be important to implement automated case management workflows to speed up services delivery and ensure transparency. The EMC xCP Saksham eGov Case Management solution automates key processes typical in most government operations. Citizen-facing government services such as tax processing, issuing of driver’s licence, visa and passports, criminal justice matters are also common requirements for case management solutions, which will now be fully automated by EMC, starting from next quarter. While EMC is currently deploying this solution for a public sector company and a government agency, it is expected that more state governments are likely to deploy this solution soon, with a plan to completely automate all government functions. As per EMC estimates, the market size for workflow management in the government sector in India is currently at $104 million and is growing 25% annually.

What potential do you see for the storage market in India going forward?
Our focus areas for IT spending are network security, server virtualisation, storage, private cloud, data security and public cloud – in that order.  We are the leaders in network storage globally, as well as in India, holding about 24.4% market share. The market for storage of data analytics is expected to grow 12-20% in 2012, while IDC predicts the storage market to grow at 16% and touch $529 million this year. We recently partnered with Tulip Telecom for end-to-end managed on-demand cloud storage services, which will be hosted using EMC unified storage and backup and recovery technologies.

How many patents have you filed from India till date?
We file 50-60 patents per year, but are yet to get awarded with one, since there are 3 stages of patent approval. Going forward, we plan to file 100 patents by next year.

What has been your best innovation in terms of revenue potential?
Our best innovation in terms of maximum revenue contribution from India would be VPLEX virtual storage solution that was launched in May last year, which transforms servers from physical boxes into software resources in the cloud. The next best innovation would be Sakshan, the recently launched eGov solution, which we think will be big in the next two years.

What is your revenue estimate from the Indian market going forward?
While our fiscal 2011 revenues stood at $20 billion, to which India contributed at Rs1,351 crore, according to a Dataquest study, we are expecting revenues of $28 billion by 2014, and India is expected to be a major contributor to the same. We are also planning additional strengthening of our R&D centre in India.