Q) Eaton has recently launched ‘Let’s Go North’ campaign. What are your key take-aways from the campaign?
– With this campaign we aim to target the SME, SMBs based out in Northern India. Partners are an integral part of our eco-system. We have channel partners in T2, T3, cities. With this program we aim to target more distributors, partners and resellers in every city of North India.
Eaton has a core partner program called ‘Power Advantage Partner Program’. This also aims at getting new partners on board. Many other schemes like Sales Bonanza offer for new partners, discounts on demo machines, first order incentives, have been announced so as to get new partners on board and motivate existing partners. So yes we have many programs and offshoots to increase our presence in the market.
Q) How do you see UPS market in India?
– I am quite optimistic about UPS market in India. The market is facing issues like poor distribution; the product quality of local brands available in grey markets poses a huge challenge for consumers. We aim to solve these issues with our world class products, extensive services and distribution network. Segments like healthcare, manufacturing industry are growing day by day. This is where our market lies. SO, yes India is a very good market for growth.
Q) What are the initiatives taken by the company to facilitate the business of the channel partners?
– Firstly I would say the product range that we offer- right from 500 VA to 5000 MW is wide. This helps them to address a large segment of audience. Secondly, we provide training to our partners about the product and the services that we offer. Also, our partners have a perception that we cater to large enterprises only, so when it comes to SMB, we have taken initiatives to increase their confidence in this aspect. We are present in 100+ cities through authorised service centres and in 30+ cities directly.
Our partners have a direct access to our website, wherein they can learn about the product, get a gist about our R&D work. So, overall we have a channel friendly approach.
Q) What are Eaton’s efforts as far as cloud computing in India goes?
– Cloud computing is generating an enormous amount of discussion and excitement in the world of corporate IT. Eager to drive efficiency up and costs down, organisations of every size and description are rapidly adopting outsourced software, platform and infrastructure solutions.
Cloud computing and virtualisation often go hand in hand. Virtualisation is the creation of a virtual – rather than actual – version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, storage device or network resources. Most cloud infrastructures make extensive use of server virtualisation, a technology that allows a single physical server to host multiple virtual servers, each with its own operating system and applications.
Virtualisation changes the way data centres are used. When a data centre is virtualised and managed remotely, and data is stored on fewer servers than before, a company should see savings in power consumption, cooling, infrastructure expenditure and maintenance work.
However, a virtualised environment sets new requirements for uninterruptible power supply. Without a proper UPS solution, a power failure on a physical server can bring down tens of virtual services. To minimise or eliminate downtime, a power system’s reliability and the link it provides to virtual machine management becomes critical.
Eaton’s Intelligent Power software products, including Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) for power device monitoring and management and Intelligent Power Protector (IPP) for graceful shutdown of UPS systems, now fully support VMware’s vSphere vCenter and Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) virtualisation platforms.
At the moment Eaton is the only UPS provider supporting all major virtualisation vendors, including VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and RedHat. In addition, our Intelligent Power Protector solution supports Xen and KVM platforms, providing its users with a graceful shutdown that allows work in progress to be saved and data to be preserved.
Q) What are the key differentiators of Eaton in UPS market?
– Eaton has four decades of experience in UPS market. We have been working closely with our end customers. We have several patents to our name. This shows the importance our company gives to the quality of products. This also shows that the company is committed to making efforts to increase the reliability and value-for-money proposition of the products.
We focus our efforts to provide an economical solution and prompt response to all queries within a reasonable time frame. It is due to these reasons we are either No. 1 or No. 2 in which ever country we operate.
Q) Would you please update us on Eaton’s performance in last fiscal?
– The last fiscal has been really successful for the company in India. We have been growing at a stupendous rate in India. Eaton has a policy that the company should outgrow itself by few hundred times. E.g. If the overall UPS market growth rate has been 20%, then we outgrow by 120%.
Plus we also follow EBS-Eaton business solution closely, which focuses on following best practices in organisation and continuous improvement thus providing us competitive advantage.
Q) How is the penetration of service centres in India?
– As I said earlier, we are present in 30 cities directly and in 100+ cities through authorised service centres. The places where we are present directly, we offer all kind of services. As far as ASC are concerned, they have a basic trained man power, a stock of spares. These centres are regularly trained by us and auditing of these centres also happens from time to time to keep a check on quality of the processes.
We have a dedicated 24×7 call centre, wherein the customer logs the complaint and from here the complaint is transferred to the nearest service centre. Our aim is to provide an experience which is nothing but excellent.
Q) What are the various branding strategies undertaken by the company for end customers?
– Our main advantage is that we have many global accounts which include data centres, facilities, and some key accounts where we are present. Eaton basically has 4 verticals- trucks, automotive, aerospace and hydraulics. Owing to this we can address a wide segment of audience. It’s for these customers we organise many tech days wherein we showcase our product line. We participate in many conferences like Elecrama, Data centre dynamics and DCS etc. This provides us a good mileage and also good platform to showcase our innovations.
Also, we do conduct many customer meets, road shows; send out regular customer and channel newsletter. Customers can also visit our manufacturing facilities to get a first-hand experience of our plants.
Q) How active is the company on renewable sources of energy?
– As you are aware, the overall economy is growing through a slump right now. Many companies in this sector have closed down. We are not very active in this sector. As far as India is concerned, maybe after some time we will consider about entering in this sector in India. There are few OEMS who buy Eaton equipment from abroad and use in India.
