GLOPORE IMS: Strengthening the Global IMS Footprint Date:   Wednesday , November 03, 2010 AQUENT, a leading marketing and creative staffing agency, provides design and content management, publishing and other creative services to its global client base from its offshore studios located in India. Part of its client acquisition process revolves around demonstration of its IT Infrastructure capabilities in terms of high availability, network performance, security and business continuity. A growing client base and increasing demands meant that the company build a further resilient IT Infrastructure that could be managed round the clock through out the year and could be scaled with ease as the per growing business needs and a decision to build another studio in Bangalore was made. But due to limited in-house expertise in infrastructure development and management, the company decided to selectively source the entire planning, design and deployment of the IT Infrastructure. Since ‘time to market’ was a critical factor along with key features like disaster management and recovery program, network security and data backup, the challenge was to find an IMS partner that would bridge the gap quickly by leveraging its ITSM capabilities and map the company’s growing IT Infrastructure needs to the generic publishing industry. Despite a large number of IMS vendors in the market today, it chose GLOPORE IMS as its ITSM partner. Conducting a quick but detailed requirement analysis through extensive discussion with the company’s management team, GLOPORE IMS advised them on how they could maximize their ROI through the different options available. Once the management zeroed in on the appropriate option, GLOPORE IMS quickly and effectively deployed it and set up the infrastructure in the new studio in no time. Incubated from IIMB-NSRCEL in 2006, GLOPORE IMS is a Bangalore based fast growing globally focused IT Service and Infrastructure Management Services (ITSM/IMS) Company. With offices in Boston (U.S.) and UK, the company offers managed infrastructure services to medium and large companies worldwide with the help of a wide network of strategic partners. GLOPORE IMS aims to be among the leading Indian IMS company to set the benchmarking standards for IT Service Management industry. GLOPORE IMS is already recognized by many venture capital ists as the best startup (in services sector), at Startup City SiliconIndia event in 2009 & 2010! Betting on the billion dollar market Infrastructure management is a critical function where even minutes of downtime can cripple a client’s business. Still, due to the high level of expertise, time and cost involved, companies are ready to outsource this to independent vendors to manage it for them. The global IMS market is currently estimated to be $126 billion, presenting a huge opportunity. It is no surprise that every one, from traditional IT services players, both big and small, to startups in India are trying to grab a piece of this multi-billion dollar pie which is currently dominated by the likes of IBM, EDS and CSC. A recent NASSCOM report shows that revenue from IMS will triple from its current levels as a result of the steep growth seen in RIM, Cloud Computing and Shared Services. But Satish Kumar, Founder, Chairman and CEO of GLOPORE IMS had envisioned the growth opportunity in IMS way back in 2005 when he was working for a multinational company, HQ in U.S. After deep discussions with several industry experts, he returned to India for good to found GLOPORE IMS in 2006 along with Ashwini SKumar and Dr. Srinivasa Rangan, Co-Founders and Directors. As a pure play IMS provider, GLOPORE IMS helps companies integrate their business & IT strategy with IT Operations through unique mix of IT Service Management services offerings including ITSM Transformation – Assessment, Gap Analysis, Roadmap, Implementation Consulting & Training Services, Managed IT Services, IT Infrastructure Management Services and Remote IT Infrastructure Management Services. But unlike a traditional IT services provider that works as an arms-length service provider, GLOPORE IMS believes in being more than just another IMS provider. “We prefer to be the mini McKinsey & Company of IMS Industry,” says Kumar, referring to the consultant – client relationship it shares with its customers. By engaging with the CXOs right from the requirement tracking stage and understanding the client’s end to end current business status, end goals and best approach to achieve them. GLOPORE IMS helps customers to focus on their core business and achieve their business objectives through IT Service Management Excellence. Using a selective sourcing model, it enables companies to retain control over strategic IT functions while they selectively source multi-year Managed IT Services from GLOPORE IMS through well defined Service Level Agreements (SLA) in alignment with their business objectives. “While we help our customers to improve the quality of IT Services, we help them transform their capital expenditures to operational expenditures, predict and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) for IT Service Management on an on-going basis. We help them achieve faster growth by increasing their productivity,” adds Kumar. This approach has been a key reason behind the company’s ability to clinch large deals. Today 350 plus people strong with 80 plus customers and many more in the pipeline, GLOPORE IMS, amidst several large players, is stealthily firming its foothold in the global IMS scenario with a three prong strategy. The Three Step Business Model Instead of following the rat race and blindly entering the buzzing IMS market and trying to succeed with a trial and error method, Kumar and team had a well thought strategy before starting company — be a pure play IMS company focusing on Indian market through customer centric alliances. Unlike most services companies that started with and continue to serve global clients, GLOPORE IMS began its business by offering services in the domestic market. “From the beginning we knew that IMS was a market that would grow not only globally but also in India. We saw very early that as companies across industries begin moving towards complete computerization; India itself would become a major consumer of these IT Infrastructure Management Services. Thus instead of exploring export opportunities, we decided to first focus on India market and then go global,” says Dr. Rangan. Perhaps one of the few companies who early on saw the big domestic opportunity, GLOPORE IMS’s strategy worked in their favor. It provided GLOPORE IMS with the platform to quickly ramp up and mature its mix of ITSM service offerings and achieve the growth it has accomplished today. One of its success stories in India is with Educomp Solutions, a globally diversified education solutions provider and country’s largest education company. Winning a tough competition against several well established Tier 1, 2 and 3 companies offering IMS, GLOPORE IMS started its journey with Educomp Solutions as its partner in South India covering all the four states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu). And within just three months, it replaced Educomp’s other IMS partner that had been in the market for 20 years, to become its partner in Central India as well. “We accomplished this purely because of the team strength, our ITSM capabilities and the know how in the IMS space,” beams Kumar. Today Educomp Solutions is one of GLOPORE IMS’s large customers and the deal size itself is almost as big as any international mid-size IMS deal one can have, highlighting the well thought strategy of using India as lab, a maturity ladder and to build its cost leadership. The other part of the strategy is the conscious decision to remain a pure play company. Today, in most IT services companies, IMS, though large, is one of the many services they offer for their clients. This makes the ability to work with partners very limited as at some point the partners in IMS tend to become competitors in another service area, creating hard-to-manage competition-co-operation tension. IMS is an offering that is replicated across different businesses by various vendors. By being a pure play IMS company, GLOPORE IMS focused on creating a delivery engine and extending it to the ecosystem. “By ecosystem we mean that if one of our customers is consumer of other services like ADM or BPO from another well established firm, then we could extend our IMS capability to them as well, leveraging on the existing relationship we have with our customer and boost the ecosystem,” explains Kumar. The company today has forged strong relationships with some of the top vendors of software, hardware, SIs and other business applications in different geographies and partnered with them as a pure play focus partner, where there is no trade off to be made and they can complement their partners’ services to go to the market and scale up and grow. The final step to the strategy was to expand its geographic presence through strategic partners. Every company has a need for a wide range of services and, most of the times, a single firm may not be able to provide all of it. This is how system integrators work; they bring together the vendors and providers of the services from multiple areas to meet the customer’s requirement. GLOPORE IMS realized the potential in a similar setup for IMS too. “Since, most of our customers would require other services apart from IMS, we decided to look for partners who could support us in providing end to end service. This would be mutually beneficial for all three — the customer, the partner and us,” explains Kumar. In the initial years, after having built its capability that is today both mature and capable, the company since last year has been focusing on finding partners across different geographies, developing customer centric alliances. With a strong partner ecosystem in Africa, GLOPORE IMS successfully took on the opportunity with one of the largest telecom operators in the world and be their delivery partners in 19 countries across the continent. “We are helping our partner with their onsite IMS strategy, pre-sales, transition management, building resources, skills, tools & automation maturity and we become their remote delivery engine for entire Africa,” says Kumar. Similarly, just last month it forged a partnership in Sri Lanka and Maldives with a company that has been there for the past three decades. The partner company has most of the leading companies across verticals like airlines and banks in that region as its clients. “With our partner in Sri Lanka, we will extend our RIM and IMS offerings to its clients. In Middle East too we are forging a partnership with an established company to take our IMS and RIM services through them across Middle East. In India we have a strong partner in Chennai-based Sundaram Infotech, through which we are trying to make in roads into the BFSI and the automotive sector. The times are indeed exciting!” says Kumar. Presence across geographies through strong alliances with local partners is the reason why GLOPORE IMS is able to have an edge over other IMS vendors. Creating a Value Chain GLOPORE IMS today has positioned itself in services market with a mix of ITSM service offerings that help companies benefit from better integration of Business and IT strategies with their organization’s operations along with a strong value chain in terms of business model, services and execution. A combination of this has been instrumental in company’s rocketing growth over the last few years. Despite all the above factors, Kumar understands that the foundation and the real strength of the company lie in its management and associates. The underlying culture at GLOPORE IMS is ‘entrepreneurial’ and Kumar ensures that it does not get diluted as the company continues to grow. From a team of 18 people, in 2006, GLOPORE IMS today is 350 plus member strong and hopes to grow tenfold to 3500 by end of next financial year. With a strong mentorship from project & COE heads, the company sees to it that every professional at the company is given ample challenging opportunities and global exposure to develop their capability and expertise to the full. All associates are encouraged to be entrepreneurial in thought and action. “GLOPORE IMS is a team of members who are part of a professional family, eager to learn and grow together. We refer our associates as ‘GLOPORIANS’ and not as employees and by working together actively, we seek to identify and bring out the hidden capabilities in GLOPORIANS to match our promised service delivery,” says Ashwini SKumar, Co-Founder, Director and AVP - HR, Finance & Accounting , GLOPORE IMS, “Associates are allowed to make decisions and get a chance to learn from their mistakes and contribute to a better working environment, inner satisfaction and excellence through their learning and growth within GLOPORE IMS family.” Since, the management plays a critical role in shaping the company; Kumar handpicks the people to join leadership roles. “At the end of the day, every associate at GLOPORE IMS should be an ambassador of the value that the company stands for,” says Kumar. The road ahead Since its founding, GLOPORE IMS has been enjoying a healthy streak of growth but now with the expanding global foot-print, the company hopes to grow by 3-4 times year-on-year and, in few years’ time, hopes to either go public or forge bigger alliances with a strategic investment partner. “By 2011-12 we hope to be the chosen IT Service Management partner for 250 global customers and be among the top 10 global IMS companies by 2015,” envisions Kumar. At the same time, GLOPORE IMS strongly believes in building a healthy ecosystem. At the rate at which the IMS space has grown in the last three years, it is critical that there is a pool of skilled resources available in the years ahead, not only for the company itself but for other players in the space as well. To achieve this, GLOPORE IMS has been working with several tier 2 & 3 degree colleges to empower young and dynamic graduates through its “IMS Gurukul” programs to transform them into professional IMS experts and create employment opportunities for them. At $126 billion the opportunities in IMS space is ample and enough for every player. With GLOPORE IMS growing by leaps and bounds both in terms of customer and partners, its vision of being one of the Top 10 IMS Company does not seem too ambitious. “Despite all the competition and hunger for growth, the ultimate idea for GLOPORE IMS is to be able to co-exist amongst other large global IMS vendors!” says Kumar. GLOPORE IMS At A Glance Founded: 2006 CEO: Satish Kumar Headquarters: Bangalore Other Offices: Boston (U.S.), UK Employees: Over 350 Customers: Over 80 Website: www.gloporeims.com What Do Clients Have To Say About GLOPORE The presentations put forward by GLOPORE in helping us choose the right options was very impressive. The multiple solutions proposed by them reflected their strong understanding of our business as well as their ability to establish a flexible IT Infrastructure that could be scaled as per our growing needs. " Jayaraj, Director of Operations, AQUENT Solutions "GLOPORE IMS has done a fantastic job for us. We engaged them as a consultant to identify areas of improvement in our hosting business. They identified the business problems very quickly and brought in great value in collaborating with us to establish a road map for improving the processes. GLOPORE team members are very well qualified not just in terms of domain knowledge but also the business acumen. They went an extra mile to ensure that we as a business partner are extremely satisfied with the service. We now engage them with many other initiatives." Raj Mruthyunjayappa, MD - APAC & Europe,Talisma Corporation “Though the association with GLOPORE IMS has been very short and limited to getting trained in ITIL Foundation, the experience during this brief stint was very good. We look forward to taking this relationship forward to other areas as well.” Anand Nair, Chief Manager – IT Services, Manappuram Group of Companies