Indian companies are very much concerned in so fast evolving digital world where managing huge amounts of data is a massive challenge for them. Their capability to manage and analysis data generated from customers is key to succeeding in so competitive world. Leading players and expert like Splunk has brought many such solutions for companies across all verticals which can help them in resolving this major growth barrier. To know more about the brand, Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal interacted with Mr. Jyoti Prakash, Regional Sales Director, India & Saarc Countries, Splunk. Read below the excerpt from this informative discussion:
DT: From network security to analytics and observability, how would you describe Splunk’s focus area and journey in the Indian market so far?
Jyoti: Founded in 2003, Splunk’s mission has always been to remove the barriers between data and action. Due to the pandemic, we have witnessed how remote work and digital transformation quickly went from a priority to an urgent imperative. This urgency accelerated cloud adoption in India. In fact, as per the latest IDC report, the overall Indian public cloud services market is projected to reach US$ 10.8 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 24.1% from 2020-25. In a fast-growing, expanding Indian cloud market, there are tremendous growth opportunities for Splunk as a data platform leader for security and observability to help businesses succeed in the cloud.
The key focus for Splunk in India is to help connect the silos within the organisation using data and make processes efficient and scalable for companies. Investing in digital and moving to the cloud are our customers’ top priorities as they look to redefine business resilience in today’s disruptive environment. At Splunk, we empower businesses in India with the necessary tools to remove complexity, make sense of their data, and transit successfully to the cloud. Using data, organisations can improve product innovation, risk management, customer experience, and security posture. This can only be achieved with the help of a real-time data analytics platform like Splunk which has a robust and scalable architecture.
In terms of industry focus, the BFSI sector is relentlessly competitive and there is a clear need for the industry to reimagine existing data analytics strategies in order to leverage the power of data to manage disruptions. Our customers in the BFSI sector are already reaping the benefits of data innovation and we aim to expand further. The public sector, where Splunk’s ability to provide real-time, data-driven insights, can help government agencies unlock innovation, improve security, and achieve mission success as well. Trusted by 90 of Fortune 100 companies globally, there is an immense opportunity for Splunk to expand to more use cases across sectors in India.
DT: How do you sell your solutions in the Indian market? Please share your channel model.
Jyoti: A robust partner ecosystem is very important for our growth in India. Collaborating with local partners has helped us reach a wider range of customers to help them gain end-to-end data visibility and unlock innovation. Full-stack visibility into their data has enabled businesses to increase resilience, improve security, and successfully embrace cloud technology. Splunk’s unique offering of an extensible data platform, partner integrations, and custom applications powers Splunk-built apps and enables our partners to competitively serve the digital needs of organisations in India.
Through Splunk’s Partnerverse Program, our priority is to deliver a world-class holistic customer experience and invest in our rich partner community and customer success programs. This includes delivering superior solutions to our customers and ensuring our partners continue to stay competitive with us. Driving business results through our channel partners and established organisation transformation consultants and system integrators such as Accenture and Deloitte is essential to Splunk’s Go-To-Market strategy and serving the needs of the Indian market. In 2021, Splunk was awarded the 2021 Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year - Marketplace award, and we see this as a testament to our commitment to customer success.
To further strengthen our channel strategy globally, industry veteran Gretchen O’Hara joined Splunk last month as Vice President of Worldwide Channels and Alliances. With O’Hara onboard, our goal is to continuously evolve our channel strategy and ecosystem towards improving customer and partner experiences and scale Splunk solutions to support customers operating in a distributed, hybrid, and multi-cloud world.
DT: What are some of the mature data practices that Indian organisations are adapting to? How have Indian leaders identified future technology like Observability benefitting the system?
Jyoti: When it comes to advanced technology adoption, India is at the forefront. In Splunk’s latest Economic Impact of Data Innovation 2023 report which surveyed over 2,000 organisations globally, we learnt that 55% of Indian companies are making excellent progress when it comes to automating data monitoring. 85% of respondents also said that they prevented a production line outage or disruption in the previous year due to their ability to use data to identify the need for predictive maintenance on production systems. The results revealed that Indian businesses are taking their data seriously and are further down the observability journey compared to their global counterparts.
The frantic pace of digital transformation has made Indian business leaders aware of the importance of thriving on data, and real-time data analytics is becoming a clear competitive advantage. A growing number of organisations in India are optimising their cloud environments with observability to innovate faster and gain an edge over competition. Observability enables companies to gain an insight into how their complex webs of cloud services perform and provides insight to help enhance customer experiences through application code, user interface, or infrastructure performance. Observability also helps to regularly analyse operations to pre-empt issues.
Splunk is working with customers in India to operate more securely and efficiently, reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, and innovate to achieve seamless digital transformation outcomes. As an example, with Splunk Cloud, the country’s largest oil and gas explorer and producer is able to strengthen its threat monitoring and detection capabilities. With real-time monitoring at scale, the organisation fortifies their data security and responds at speed when suspicious events are detected.
DT: How does Splunk see the potential in the Indian market and what is the roadmap plan for coming years?
Jyoti: As shared, our partners continue to be an integral part of Splunk's growth story in India, and together we are committed to addressing our customers' digital transformation needs. Organisations have realised the importance of moving to cloud/multi-cloud environments for scalable outcomes. Together with our local partners, Splunk ensures that customers are empowered to migrate seamlessly to the cloud and succeed.
Case in point, Splunk Cloud Platform was made available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace India last year to help streamline customer adoption via a consolidated purchase environment and integration with AWS accounts. This ensures fast time-to-value for customers leveraging Splunk solutions to gain an additional layer of real-time security, operational and cost management insights across their AWS and hybrid environments. Splunk is committed to bringing the solutions that matter to the Indian market.
