BECOMING A CLOUD PARTNER: JOURNEY OF PRECISION INFOMATIC

SOURCE: DQ CHANNELS, SEPTEMBER 2, 2020. BY ANKIT PARASHAR, DQ CHANNELS 2020-09-03 16:42:32 +0530

In this very unique segment of DQ Channels, we have covered the journey of Precision Infomatic becoming a Cloud Partner from a traditional Channel Partner. Kannan Seshadri, AVP, Cloud Business, Precision Infomatic, shared his entire journey about how Precision moved to the cloud business, challenges, growth, and future vision.

When and how did you move to Cloud Business?

Precision is in its 25th year of operation and provides Biometric, IoT, Cloud and Systems Integration Solutions and IT Infrastructure Management Services. Precision added public cloud offerings to its portfolio in 2017. On studying industry trends and the plethora of services & flexibility offered by Cloud business models, we found it appropriate, as a strategy, to position cloud services, to our customers and prospects. This strategy is reaffirmed by the situation at hand, with the pandemic, wherein organizations are slowing down on capital expenditure and are looking for lower-risk options as offered by cloud business models. Additionally, the other flexibilities offered by Cloud over traditional on-premise infrastructure, namely elasticity, agility and control over operating expenses, make it more suited to businesses today. We felt being able to offer a bouquet of options ranging from on-premise infrastructure to cloud and various consumption models would help us deliver greater value to our clients. Also, Cloud Services was a very apt addition to Precision’s stable of offerings helping broaden the services offered to customers and making them more comprehensive.

What are the different Cloud services you offer?

We offer infrastructure and platform services on the Cloud. Some of the services under this umbrella include IT infrastructure assessments, migration readiness assessments, migrations, DevOps services, SysOps services, serverless architecture, AI/ML configurations, Analytics, IoT and much more.

What sort of changes have you done to move to the cloud within the organisation in terms of Team, skill set, infrastructure, and others?

We have built a team of skilled, experienced and certified cloud architects & subject matter experts to take care of both pre-sales services and post-sales deliveries and ongoing support. Additionally, we built a team of expert Cloud Sales Professionals to ensure that our clients’ needs are properly comprehended and addressed appropriately in their best interests. We also developed relationships with leading public cloud providers and are engaged at all levels with both business-focused and technical counterparts, thereby developing the ability to position the offerings in an efficient and effective manner. We built an exclusive inside sales team and a robust digital marketing initiative that is focused on our cloud practice. We also upgraded our in-house CRM system to suitably track all opportunities and activities thereof.

How are your old and new customers adopting the new technology and moving to the cloud?

Existing customers – who were already on a cloud platform, felt more comfortable changing over to Precision as their preferred cloud partner. Other customers who were planning to adopt cloud, be it a complete migration from on-premises infrastructure or a hybrid IT implementation, were more than happy to partner us on their cloud journey.

We have observed that our new customers, in line with the market trends over the past few years, are increasingly preferring cloud over traditional infrastructure. This trend is not only restricted to server infrastructure but also extends to virtual desktop infrastructure in recent times.

What are the different challenges you’ve faced in this journey?

Initial challenges faced at the start of the journey related to the change of mindset within the organization, in terms of being able to inculcate the ‘cloud mindset’ and being able to effectively articulate the comparative benefits of traditional infrastructure versus the cloud and in being able to offer the best fit to the needs (both spoken and unspoken) of the customer. We also had to suitably skill & reskill people and mobilize a crack team to evangelize cloud business. On the way, we also had to ensure that we attracted and retained the right talent and ensure that the necessary skills and certifications were in place without any laxity.

What is your overall growth being a cloud partner?

We were able to acquire a significant number of new customers and in terms of business revenue, we have been able to achieve a CAGR of 80% over the past three years. Going forward we see a rapid uptake of cloud services and expect significantly higher growth rates from here on.

What are your future goals?

We plan to constantly broaden our core cloud service offerings. Being a Nutanix Master Partner and an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, we are well placed to offer new services such as Nutanix Clusters on AWS – a recently announced service that would enable seamless application migration and unified operations across clouds to help businesses accelerate their cloud journey with AWS.  Additionally, Precision’s own solutions/intellectual property have been/are being suitably enhanced to be offered on a service model. Leveraging our Pan-India presence, we are also in the process of ramping up our Cloud Team across the country to be able to effectively address these markets. The technical team is also being upgraded constantly so as to continually improve the support provided to our customers.

On the business front, we target a YoY growth of 100% or higher over the next 3 years.