K Subrahmanya, Director, Central Data Systems talks about the company’s journey as a digital infrastructure solutions provider and how it is helping the customers adapt to dynamic market environments
Q. Briefly tell us about your journey as an IT solution provider?
We started CDS in the year 2003 and it has been a 14 long years in the market and we have seen 2 or 3 recession so far and have sustained. Personally, I am in the IT solution space from 1996 which is 20 plus years, wherein I have seen many changes in the IT industry.
Q. What all best practices should be followed by a solution provider to become one of the leaders in the industry?
As a solution provider, one should understand the customer’s business problem and offer a solution that solves that problem. Besides, there should be a focus on both customer as well as employee satisfaction.
Q. What has been your ‘success mantra’?
With our expertise, we always focus on offering a unique experience to customer, which we believe will lead to customer satisfaction. We always strive to keep our employees as well as our business partners i.e. OEMs happy.
Talking about your company, how has been its growth in the last one year or so? Please provide your turnover/revenue as well.
Central Data Systems has been growing at around 15 to 20 percent year on year in the last couple of years. Our previous financial year turnover was Rs.75 crore and a year preioe to that was ` 62 crores.
Q. Could you tell us about your business operations like your areas of expertise, major clients, vertical focus, number of locations your operate from, partnerships, etc.?
CDSPL is a full service provider of digital infrastructure solutions. By creating seamless, cost-effective solutions, we help our customers adapt to dynamic market environments and that too effortlessly.
The key focus verticals are IT/ITeS, manufacturing, education, and pharma. And we are present in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Delhi. Our major clients include SLK Group, Intuit, Hindustan Coca-Cola, Quintiles-IMS and Ingersoll-Rand.
In terms of partnerships, we are doing business with Cisco, HPE, Dell-EMC, APC-Schneider, Microsoft, Riverbed, and Palo Alto among others.
Meanwhile, architecture specializations, investments in skills and demonstration capabilities, and financial model are a few innovative ways that we have adopted to stay relevant in the market.
Q. What have been your major achievements / projects in the last couple of years?
CDS has executed a few projects in the last couple of years in the areas of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Software Defied Data Centre (SDDC), wherein we have successfully implemented the Cisco DNA and Cisco ACI solutions.
Moreover, we have also successfully implemented security as a platform solutions to e-commerce and manufacturing customer with the help of Palo Alto solutions.
Cloud solution such as Cisco Meraki, Cisco WebEx have been a great success to CDS in the last couple of years.
Q. What all business innovations you have done to stay ahead of your peers in the industry?
p Cloud model to Infrastructure Business
p Different Financial model (Operating and Finance lease options) for solutions
p Software defined network and data center approach
What sort of opportunities do new technology areas like IoT and Artificial Intelligence among others bring it for a solution provider?
IoT and AI are still at very nascent stage, hence we still have long way to go. Cloud has been adopted largely, hence this has been our focus for the last 2 years. We see that software programmability on infrastructure will be the key success in the years to come and we are betting big on this domain currently.
Q. As a leading IT solution provider, how are you helping your customers in their digital transformation journey?
CDS is involved with various customers in different verticals/segments in offering the following solution on Digital Transformation:
p Cloud solution with migrations services and inter-cloud strategy
p Software Defined Networking and data center solutions
p Network and Mobility solutions with analytics and assurance solutions
Q. What’s your future road map?
We are looking at cloud solutions to create a predictive business with more customer acquisitions. Secondly, we will focus on SDN and data center.
