“Kingston through its multi-level campaign keeps educating channel partners on SSDs Opportunities”

“Kingston through its multi-level campaign keeps educating channel partners on SSDs Opportunities”

In India, lack of awareness on benefits of using SSDs and price point has contributed a lot for its smaller penetration. Seeing the huge opportunities in country like India, Kingston has been quite aggressive since last few months. Nidhi Sethi, Sales Director, Flash Products, Kingston Technology, India, discloses company’s strategy and channel plans exclusively with DIGITAL TERMINAL.

DIGITAL TERMINAL: What is the latest technology trend in SSD drives?


Nidhi Sethi: Since new NAND Flash manufacturing process will keep moving forward to 2Xnm in 2012, SSD price point will become much more acceptable to users in near future. With emerging specifications like SATA3.0, mSATA and Half-Slim, there is no doubt that SSD will be the killer application in NAND Flash industry.

DIGITAL TERMINAL: How do you see SSD market in India? Where do you see its consumption?

Nidhi Sethi: Although Flash storage technology has existed and been applied in the computer industry for some time, only recently has this technology been used as a primary data storage solution. In addition to anti-shock, SSDs offer several advantages over hard disk drives in the areas of performance, reliability, power consumption and durability. From an economic standpoint, the HDD may appear to be a more cost-effective option because of its price tag. However, when assessing the total cost of ownership (TCO), some environments would prove SSD to be a more practical and advantageous data storage solution. In India, SSDs are at an inflection point with niche customer segments, especially in the enterprise and PC enthusiast communities, opting for it for specialized requirements. Kingston has registered strong demand and will continue to focus on announcing newer product lines to cater to these niche customer applications at least in the short term.

DIGITAL TERMINAL: What are Kingston’s offerings in SSD drives?

Nidhi Sethi: In India, Kingston presently offers five product lines which are SSDNow V100 Series (For Consumers and Small businesses, available in capacities of 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB), SSDNow V+100 Series (for corporate environments, available in capacities of 64GB, 96GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB), Kingston HyperX SSD (For enthusiasts, gamers, and performance users), SSDNow S100 Drive (for System Integrators building non PC applications) and SSDNow KC100 (for the use in enterprise level environment, backed by a five-year warranty).



DIGITAL TERMINAL: How much market share you have in this market segment in India as well globally?


Nidhi Sethi: Since Kingston has stepped into the market since 2009, Kingston is already a leading company in SSD industry. Kingston dedicates in enhancing the leading position and keeps providing comprehensive product lines to fulfill the needs in different segments. Besides the V100 and V+100 for commodity, we also launched HyperX SSD for hardcore enthusiasts and KC100 for enterprise level users.

DIGITAL TERMINAL:
Tell us about distribution model you have in India to cater SSD demands.

Nidhi Sethi: Kingston cooperates with our official distributors in India to cater SSD demands. The entire range of Kingston SSD product line is available with our Flash product distributors including Avnet India, Fortune Marketing, Compuage Infocom, Neoteric Informatique and Shree Pati Computers.

DIGITAL TERMINAL:
Do you think that lack of awareness among channel about SSD is one of the major challenges? What are your efforts to educate your partners and consumer as well?

Nidhi Sethi: Yes. Channels have been slow to realize scale of opportunity that SSDs represent for them. Kingston through its multi-level campaign, has done considerable work in educating channel partners, especially corporate resellers, on how to position the Kingston SSD line amongst potential consumer targets. We have also rolled out programs to educate corporate customers on how to integrate the SSD product line into their enterprise storage architecture.

DIGITAL TERMINAL:
What are your marketing strategies to boost its sale?

Nidhi Sethi: Since SSD technology is still new to consumers, what we focus now is to educate the market. We have introduced a number of promotional schemes targeted at both corporate customers and reseller partners. In addition, we have rolled out a number of customer contact programs across major metros aimed at educating corporate customers on how to integrate SSDs into their enterprise storage architecture

DIGITAL TERMINAL:
How reseller partners can benefit from Kingston’s SSD Program? What margins you are offering to your partners on selling SSDs?

Nidhi Sethi: We are aggressively working to equip our reseller partners with more support, training and materials needed to increase their own awareness on the benefits of SSD and its applications. Kingston has evaluation units being given to channel partners for testing this technology & getting the feel of it. We also have internal incentive programs for our partners in order to motivate them to move this new technology in market towards end customers. Besides monetary benefits the technology itself is enticing enough to get interest of all consumers & partners.

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