Sandip Naik, Head of Channel Sales, AMD India on channel plans and product innovation...

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Despite a fall in overall shipment of PCs last year, AMD is geared up for the growth this year with innovative and customer centric product. Sandip Naik, Head of Channel Sales, AMD India in an exclusive interview with IT VAR NEWS gives an insight into the companys product innovation and channel plans.
 
ITVN: Can you throw some light on your idea of customer-centric innovation'?
 
SN: AMD's customer centric innovation is about one, simple idea: helping our customers win. This winning focus requires us to not only deliver best-in-class solutions, but to be a leading force in the trends that are significantly shaping our customers' businesses.  With an eye on the coming generations of technology and technology consumers, we believe there are three trends that will substantially shape our industry: Energy Efficient Processing, The Ultimate Visual Experience and Affordable Internet Access. These trends represent opportunities for our indus

try to address some of our generation's greatest challengeswhile growing some our customer's most important markets.
 

ITVN: Which are the new technologies you are going to introduce in 2009 and also brief about your 2008 achievements?  
 
SN: The year 2009 will witness a product line-up that is much better than overall product line-ups in the last two years. We will also further strengthen our workstation GPU and server product portfolio with several industry leading and innovative products in 2009. Last year witnessed the resurgence of AMD in the GPU segment with the launch of ATI Radeon 4000 series. AMD clearly led the performance at every price point by offering a complete family of graphics cards that delivers winning performance in each market segment. In addition to this we have also launched the Yukon platform for slim-line notebooks. We also launched the latest 45 nm Phenom II processors which are capable of delivering unb

eatable multi-core value with superior high definition computing, advanced multitasking performance, and innovative, energy efficient solutions.  With a substantial performance boost over the previous generation of AMD Phenom processors, new AMD Phenom II processors deliver an amazing experience at mainstream price points and can help eliminate the substantial cost required by competing platforms which force an immediate upgrade to DDR3 memory.

ITVN: Explain briefly about your channel strength in India?
 
SN: At this moment we have total 130 partners who are part of the AMD AIR Network Program. We call them regional distributors (RD)&premier partners (PP), as all these are part of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal & Bangladesh territories. We have 42 RDs in 18 cities and 87 PPs in 54 cities. There are 3000 solution providers in all. We have SI base of 5000+ partners who are registered on the amdconnect.com. We are planning to have 200+ R

D/PP partners in place.
 
 
ITVN: Recently, AMD has introduced some novel strategies to strengthen channel strength? What are they?

SN: AMD has undertaken a number of programs for the growth of the channel community. For System Integrators (SI) community, aiming to give training and certification to partners in smaller cities, AMD initiated the System Builder Yatra. As a part of this initiative, AMD India has also created an interactive portal that gives information on the latest schemes and product launches to all their channel partners. Since the launch of this initiative, AMD has been educating and certifying SIs in 56 cities. AMD had also began the Dive 2008 a comprehensive channel partner-training program in India, targeting nearly 2000 partners from across 20 cities. AMD hosted its annual channel meet at Gold Coast, Australia for channel partners who accomplished their prescribed goals. The three-day annual event recognized t

he critical role that the channel partners play in bringing award-winning AMD products to mainstream Indian markets and in further expanding the market to include small towns and cities in India. 25 channel partners were acknowledged and rewarded for their contribution during the event. The year long High Flyers challenge was conceptualized to recognize AMDs valued channel partners who have made significant contributions to the growth of AMDs business in India.

ITVN: What kind of principles you are following in R&D? How often are you  introducing new technology in the industry?

SN: AMDs culture and our strategy are guided by a single principle: customer-centric innovation. In other words, AMDs R&D strategy is fuelled by accurate, actionable customer intelligence.  We believe that the visual experience and energy efficiency will become key drivers for consumer demand in computing and our R&D is aligned with it. Being the only

company globally to have expertise in three of the most important PC components processors, graphics cards and chipsets; AMD is looking at closely integrating the CPU, GPU space to provide a really immersive and compelling graphics experience and industry leading energy efficiency to our users.

ITVN: What are your commitments towards introducing energy efficient products?

SN: AMD as a company is making strides to provide more energy efficient computing through its next generation microprocessors and various other computing initiatives. Previously, computing innovation emphasized only speed and performance. But today, computer manufacturers and buyers need a total solution incorporating performance and energy-efficiency, hence AMD is committed itself to make all its products extremely energy efficient and has been investing considerable amount of time and resources. In addition to this, AMD also believes that a stronger partnership betw

een the government and industry is needed to achieve energy-efficient computing that will have a positive impact on every computing device and to accomplish this, AMD is working with several partners.

ITVN: What are your offers in Gaming market in India? How do you evaluate this market?

SN: The GPU offering from AMD ATI brings industry leading technology that translates into exceptional gaming and HD multimedia performance at affordable price points. AMD has successfully delivered the entire ATI Radeon HD 4000 family of graphics cards with 10 new products spanning across all market segments ranging from the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, the world's fastest graphics card designed for the ultra-enthusiast, to the ATI Radeon HD 4350 providing a great visual experience for the value-minded market. Gaming in India is still in its nascent stages. The gaming industry in India is growing at CAGR of 78% and mobile gaming, PC and console are expected to a

dd to the pie. In addition to this, we have also launched the Dragon platform and AMD powered ASUS Vento Chassis to tap the gaming market.