Daas for Large Indian Enterprises
By Sonal Desai
Mumbai, Sep 02, 2008 1630 hrs IST

Offering Daas services to more than 30,000 customers globally, the company will leverage testimonials of its clients as one of the go-to-market strategies here. The desktops are hosted at the company's data center in Delhi.

"The attitude of the industries across verticals is changing. They are now getting more sensitized toward customers and not their employees. Things are changing. I see a few CIOs and CTOs focusing on business process rather than computing," said Iqbal Gandham, chief business strategist at Nivio.

As organizations continue to grow, their IT architecture gets more complex, most of the applications such as software development, are being outsourced. Companies are also outsourcing departments such as HR, marketing, etc to cut costs. Desktop oursourcing is the last leg.

"We are talking to the media companies, people in the BFSI space. Some of them have outsourced their desktops on a test and trial basis. And so, it is too early to reveal names," said Gandham.

Nivio is looking to partner large telecom service providers. Despite the brand value, the telecom companies are already hosting websites and other applications for the large organizations. "It will help us pitch our offering. Besides the telcos can offer value added services around Daas and earn recurring revenues. We also support the Linux and Mac users."

Gandham is also exploring OEM like partnerships with unbranded PC makers in India. He said, "The PCs are inexpensive. Our software will take care of the process and also host desktops. It is a win- win situation for all stake holders."

He is aiming the offering for enterprises that want to tap tier 2, 3 and 4 cities, as also organizations that have a large mobile workforce. "Our approach will be bottom-up. We provide the workforce with a Nivio account. They can go to any Internet caf and file reports. We offer a complete Microsoft suite for Rs 399 per month, and a complete Windows XP suite for Rs 149 per month per user. We however, do not host Vista because certain technologies are not Vista compatible."