Red Hat, an enterprise open source solutions company plans to scale its platform in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by tapping into the small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) market. The foray into the segment will be driven by strengthening partnerships in the region according to Marjet Andriesse, Senior Vice-President & GM APJC at Red Hat.
The company whose strongest suit has been enterprise customers is now eyeing the commercial segment that is largely the SMB sector as a white space that could be leveraged for further growth and scale. Andriesse told BusinessLine, “Digital transformation is very important for the SMB sector and their transformation journey is moving at a quicker space. Hence, this an absolute sweet spot to scale for RedHat.”
Red Hat plans to drive the growth in the segment by strengthening its partner ecosystem. “Our partners will play a huge role in the commercial segment as they can bring in their own IPs, make value additions, and build products as they have deep relationships with customer. This will help us scale,” said Marshal Correia, Vice President and General Manager, India at Red Hat.
Foray into the SMB segment is a part of Red Hat’s strategy for the APAC region in the next three years, which also includes focusing on customer retention and going deeper in the enterprise segment and also foray into the telecom segment as the 5G rollout could provide greater opportunity for cloud computing.
Significance of India
The company sees India as an important market as it provides scale. It believes the challenges faced by Indian enterprises can be best solved with open source innovation.
Red Hat was acquired by tech giant IBM for $34 billion, in its largest deal ever, in 2019. Globally, the company has an employee base of 19,000, with several thousand based in Asia region. The company has a sizeable presence in India with six offices across four cities - Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune - It has various customers in India including Tata Motors, RBL Bank, National Stock Exchange and Indigo.