Silicon Valley-based, Application Delivery Controllers major, Array Networks, has launched it’s first fully designed and developed Application Traffic Generator tool – Amplifier, for Indian enterprises. The product is a result of the company’s investment last year into R&D worth US$ 20 million (about `140 crore). Michael Zhao, President and CEO, Array Networks, shares Amplifier’s journey and plans for amplifying this ‘Make in India’ product to global markets
Can you talk about the journey of Amplifier? How important is this achievement for Array Networks?
Launch of the Amplifier is a big milestone for us in India. I have had a strong belief in the Indian R&D team that they can develop a product on their own and sell to other parts of the world. Thereby, we started Amplifier R&D work in India in 2012 at Array Center for Technology Innovation (ACTI), a product innovation and design centre located in Bangalore. We made a significant investment in designing and developing this product to address the growing need for application load capacity at our customers. Currently, the product is being rolled out for the Indian customers and we will be testing and marketing the product in the next two-three quarters before we expand into newer markets like China.
As part of our business model, the Amplifier will be available at a price point of US$ 5,000 and US$ 20,000. Additionally, customers can use it as a service as well. It will cater to both CAPEX and OPEX oriented customers.
How is Amplifier going to address the need for BFSI and government application delivery need?
Today, several mobile payment gateways are having a huge volume of transactions per day. Latency in application deliver can cost US$ 2 million loss per second. It is an important gateway to stay alive and will assure on the most important day of business, servers and security is up. Looking at the business demand, the Amplifier can help our customers in simulating and generate thousands and millions of transaction requests. Amplifier is a new and futuristic load generating system that conducts performance tests and enables testing of networking devices in terms of stress, scalability and throughput, transactions, and many other system attributes. So the launch of the Amplifier is very exciting for us.
With the launch of Amplifier, will there be a change in Array’s product offerings?
Traditionally, Array Networks provides IT security solutions, optimises application performance and facilitates related transactions. We have the application delivery networking platforms like AVP,
AVX, and now ATG-Array Traffic Generator(Amplifier). The new tool, Amplifier, will be improving the performance and reduce the latency of our application delivery platform-AVP. Nevertheless, down the road, the company will be focusing more on security. Security is our vision, we will be launching our another ‘Make in India’ initiative security product in 2020. With this success we will do more, we are doing a pilot of security products. Presently, we working towards channel development and looking for IoT focused security partners.
Can you share India’s growth story for Array Networks?
India is one of the fastest-growing regions for Array Networks and we are excited about our growth momentum for the last eleven years. Last year, we were successful in generating 70 per cent of our revenue from the Government, smart cities and banks. With this new round of investment coming in, we are positioned to expand our product line and manpower in the region.
Will the centre in India be working on products only for India or for the global market as well?
Globally, definitely to start with. We want to make it a global development centre. As part of our Amplifier’s expansion plan, it will be available to China markets. However, the US market will wait for a while as it is a matured market and using expensive solutions already. Having said, we will not label the Amplifier as ‘Make in India’ product outside Indian markets. From a competition point of view, we don’t think there is enough solution at this price point. We will gain an early mover advantage in the Indian market. The people we are hiring are top-notch developers doing hardcore R&D and product development. We have about 50 employees. My target is to grow it to 75 by the year-end. Hopefully, we can grow more but it’s certainly hard to find talented people.
We want to make it a global development centre. As part of our Amplifier’s expansion plan, it will be available to China markets. However, the US market will wait for a while, as it is a matured one and using expensive solutions already.
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