Our way of working is totally different from Ericsson's'

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The acquisition of the enterprise communication business of Ericsson by Aastra Technologies will have a long-term impact on the Indian market. With this acquisition, Aastra, which has grown rapidly by protecting its customers' investment while offering a roadmap for customers to evolve to IP communications, will have a globally installed base of enterprise communication customers with presence in Western Europe. The acquisition has also ensured an extended footprint in key markets across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, and North and South America. And, post this acquisition, it was time for the top management to go-to-market with their view about the short term and long-term business plans. Hugh Scholaert, regional group president, Aastra Technologies, was in India to chalk out its India strategy. Excerpts

What are the key challenges Aastra Technologies would face in the Indian market following the acquisition of Ericsson's enterprise business division?
Our strategy was to become a global player, and this finally culminated with the acquisition of Ericsson's enterprise business. Post acquisition, we have indeed become one of the top players in the EMEA market.

Though, in India we will have several challenges starting with the fact that we are not a global brand name. The major challenge is to increase our company awareness and of our solutions that would help Indian businesses to have more efficient communication infrastructure. Besides, we need to increase our market reach in India, and the building up of our channels will require lot of investment in local competence.

What will be the main shift in your strategies as compared to Ericsson's business approach in India?
Our way of working is totally different from Ericsson's. Our model is much decentralized. And this has led to major changes in our local organizational strategy. Each of our country sales unit or market unit has full control of their local go-to-market strategy. This includes channel development and the choice of products to be launched in each channel. In the Indian market, we expect that this should add a broader portfolio while our local team strengthens our channels. As such, we also expect a renewed focus on building up local competence in terms of presales and after sales support. We will further continue to build on Ericsson's success by supporting all existing products and applications, and by providing a smooth migration path to new technologies.

What according to you are the new trends in India?
The growth of the IP telephony market, coupled with enterprise demand on converged communication is a much talked about area. The fall in bandwidth prices has spurred this growth. In India of course, there has been a major growth in the domestic contact center market, an area where we have market-leading solutions, and this has brought in major growth in the enterprise voice communication space as well. Finally, solutions like unified communications and mobility, which have been our major focus areas globally, are the buzzwords in the enterprise world with customers wanting to deploy technologies which could better support them in future.

The global economy is slowing down and in the scenario how are you planning to maintain growth?
Contrary to the general global slowdown, India has still not experienced any major slowdown. Although, it has impacted the IT/BPO sector, we are still witnessing growth in sectors like hospitality, real estate, and BFSI. In our case, the products under our spectrum cater to all segments (SMB, LME, and the high-end segment). In addition, applications in our portfolio like unified communication, mobility, and multimodal contact centers, as well as some of our terminals are either based on open standards or are simply platform agnostic, allowing us to address much more than our traditional installed base.

What are your future plans for India?
We have chalked out a two-prong strategy, keeping in view the fast changing market demands, especially in the enterprise space. In short term, we are planning to increase our market reach, strengthen existing channels, and build up local competence. And in the long-term, we plan to launch new product portfolios in new markets, increase channels, and start initiatives for brand awareness.

Is India the right market for your acquisitions? What are your plans?
Since the acquisition is global, viewing it from a single market perspective would not be the right approach. However, from our global strategy perspective, India is a focus country from the management's point of view. We are a global leader on SIP platforms and are also acting as OEM to major enterprise players offering solutions for the same. Going forward we will concentrate our effort to launch our latest SIP products in the Indian market. We are also building up a state-of-the-art experience center, which will house our technological innovations for customers to interact with at our corporate office in the Noida IT Park.

Sunny Sen
sunnys@cybermedia.co.in