VMware India channel partners anticipate business climate favoring growth and expansion in 2012

BANGALORE, INDIA: VMware Inc. announced the findings of a survey conducted amongst channel partners across Asia Pacific, exploring business outlooks and technology priorities for 2012. The results show that a majority (63 percent) of channel partners surveyed in India expect business growth and expansion in 2012, compared to a regional average of 45 percent.

VMware channel partners in India report that their top three business priorities for 2012 are attracting new customers (76 percent), developing innovative offerings for current customers (67 percent) and business transformation and process improvements (46 percent). Fifty-seven percent of partners surveyed expect their customers’ IT budgets to increase in 2012. Partners also indicate that IT/ITeS (75 percent), banking and financial services (62 percent) and manufacturing (53 percent) are the three industry verticals most important to their businesses.

From a given list, partners surveyed believe the most important role of IT over the next 18 months will be to drive increased efficiency and productivity (32 percent). The majority of respondents identified cloud computing (84 percent) as one of the technology trends which will have the greatest impact on the business, followed by mobility (66 percent) and changing risk and security landscape (40 percent). More than half (51 percent) of the respondents said desktop virtualization is the top technology investment priority for customers, followed by cloud computing (48 percent) and virtualization for datacenter consolidation (48 percent).

“The survey results suggest that our partners anticipate growth and expansion in 2012 and that their customers’ investments in technology will enable them to advance on their journey to their cloud in the year ahead. We share this optimism as we see a new cloud economy emerge around our virtualization and cloud infrastructure, with our partners playing a central role in delivering these technologies,” said Ganesan Arumugam, director, Channels & Alliances, VMware India. “Our partner community has played a strategic role in educating and enabling customers on the immediate opportunity of the cloud.”

Supporting the trends toward cloud computing, respondents cited potential growth in 2012 in the areas of server and datacenter virtualization (97 percent), desktop virtualization (94 percent) and modernizing applications for the cloud (87 percent).

VMware shared these insights at the sidelines of its annual Partner Exchange on Tour 2012 that kicked off in Mumbai last week. The event saw more than 850 senior executives, sales professionals and technical experts from VMware’s community of solution providers, technology alliances, systems integrators, distributors and OEMs in the region come together to learn how to grow and transform their businesses for the cloud era with VMware. The tour will also cover Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Colombo.