The adoption of next-generation solutions has sharply increased in recent years in India. The rapidly increasing internet penetration, and government initiatives such as Digital India are all contributed to the growth of India’s digital economy. Tech Data has a big portfolio of cutting-edge technology solutions that play a crucial role in organizations’ digital journey. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal recently held an exclusive interaction with Bennett Wong, Vice President, Advanced Solutions – MDC (Modern Data Centre) & Analytics, Tech Data Asia Pacific and Japan. He talked about various aspects such as data center industry, adoption of next-gen technology solutions, center of excellence and much more. Read below the full conversation.
Rajeev: How do you see the growth of Data Centre in India? What are the major fuelling factor for growth of this market in India?
Bennett: On the back of strong digitalization and an increase in cloud adoption, the data center market in India is estimated to reach US$ 10.9 billion by 2027. Besides the increasing digital transformation journeys embarked on by businesses and surging implementation of cloud infrastructures happening across various industries which is contributing to this robust growth, factors such as growing deployment of innovative digital tools, penetration of 5G services, opening of new data centers to meet the growing data localization requirements and cyber-defense demands are also playing a key role.
Additionally, the Government of India and various state governments are revising their data center policies to support the infrastructural growth of data centers in India through tax subsidies.
Rajeev: How GitLab’s solutions will boost Tech Data’s existing portfolio of DevOps solutions?
Bennett: GitLab’s DevSecOps platform will be a centerpiece of Tech Data’s application modernization, and fits perfectly with our existing database and analytics offerings, contributing to a more complete and secure portfolio of DevOps solutions. The platform empowers firms to maximize overall returns on software development through enhancing speed and efficiency in strengthening security and compliance.
In today’s IT landscape, the focus on application modernization and the development of new applications has become a top IT priority for enterprises, with 86% indicating its importance. This growing emphasis on application modernization and new applications development is expected to fuel the growth of multi-hybrid cloud environments. The need for quicker software development and simpler upgrades to existing deployments, puts a spotlight on rapid IT service delivery. Against this backdrop, the partnership with GitLab comes at an opportune time further enhancing Tech Data’s portfolio by accelerating its application modernization capabilities.
Through this partnership, Tech Data will enable the go-to-market (GTM) strategy for our channel partners and independent software vendors, by leveraging the benefits of application modernization and DevOps across various industry segments. This extends beyond Banking, Financial Services and Insurance sector, benefitting enterprises and public sector customers aiming to digitally transform their operations to enhance customer service and maintain competitiveness in the new digital native age.
Rajeev: What is the role of Tech Data’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) in enabling growth across next-gen technologies?
Bennett: Built with the purpose of empowering our customers through a guided approach to enable productive and profitable growth, Tech Data’s Center of Excellence (CoE) is an adaptive virtual lab environment that caters to the emerging trends for next-generation solutions across Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC), Hyper Converged Infrastructure, Hybrid Cloud, DevOps, Security and Analytics & artificial intelligence (AI).
This CoE is built to provide ready multi-vendor next generation solutions that supports the channel partner community and end-users with most common and complex IT problems via proof of concepts (POCs), demos, and enablement through sales, technical, and solutions trainings. Together with our technology and cloud vendors, Tech Data’s suite of ready-built and tested solution offerings integrate the strengths across vendors to deliver end-to-end solutions, enabling partners to innovate and quickly scale their business by accelerating their sales opportunities and increasing their speed to market.
Rajeev: How the partner community gets benefited from your go-to-market strategy?
Bennett: GitLab plays a vital role as our strategic vendor within Tech Data’s Next Generation Data Center (NGDC) GTM strategy. This collaboration allows us to provide valuable support to our partner community in DevSecOps, specifically in their customers’ application modernization projects, which are integral to their overall IT transformation journey.
Additionally, our CoE serves as a significant resource for our channel partners. Together with our GTM strategy, the CoE supports solutioning in local markets while gathering valuable feedback from our partners. This approach ensures regional consistency with local adaptability, unlocks potential across partner segments, providing actionable insights for continuous improvement.
Furthermore, Tech Data actively supports our partners in the lead generation process. We understand the importance of generating quality leads and we provide valuable assistance as well as resources to help our partners succeed in this important aspect of their business.
Rajeev: What is your goal/target by end of Year 2023? How do you plan to achieve this major business goal?
Bennett: Our aim is to successfully execute the GitLab Partner Program across Asia Pacific and Japan region, and to integrate GitLab into our CoE to ensure the readiness and effectiveness of this partnership. Our goal is to provide the partner ecosystem with the capability to innovate, drive agility and accelerate their success and speed to market in addressing the DevSecOps and application modernization market demand.
