India's Most Wanted IT Brands

Continued from page: 1

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Enterprise Backup Solutions, Large Volume Storage

Enterprise Backup Solutions

Though there are lots of players in this space, three brands stand out from the crowd. HP-Compaq, IBM and Veritas all have higher brand persuasion than the rest of the players.

EMC is also there but with a slightly lower top of mind recall and likelihood of buying, as can be seen from the graph. The remaining players didn't get sufficient response for us the pass any judgments.

What's a little concerning is that even top brands in this category are not persuasive enough. The number of enterprises inclined to buy them is lower than those who recall it as top of mind. Relatively though, EMC reported the highest persuasion, followed by Veritas, IBM, and then HP.

When it comes to attracting customers from competing brands, HP-Compaq showed a clear advantage over others. It doesn't mean that the rest of the brands don't have brand pull. Interestingly, they all seem to have more CIOs switching in than those switching out. This can become a little clearer after looking at the actual brand shifts.

Veritas showed the highest brand loyalty at 97%. The remaining 3% didn't have any plans to shift to any other brand over the next six months. HP-Compaq showed 92% brand loyalty, with only 4% of its existing customers likely to shift to IBM. IBM and EMC both have very interesting cases.

Highest top of mind recall: Veritas Highest current ownership: Veritas Most likely to buy: Veritas

While 4% of IBM's existing customers were inclined to shift to HP-Compaq, 32% were possibly unsure of their plans or the brands they would like to shift to in the next six months.

The case for EMC was even more interesting. A whopping 71% of its existing customers were unsure of their plans to shift to any other brand. This is a good sign for them.

So the overall brand loyalties in this category are very high, and so is the brand momentum. Veritas and HP-Compaq had the highest brand momentum. IBM is just a little behind, and EMC should get more active to gain more customers.

Large Volume Storage

There's so much competition in this market that brand persuasions were fairly low across all brands. The only four brands that had high top of mind recall, current ownership, and likelihood of buying were HP, IBM, EMC/ Legato and Veritas. Amongst these, on a relative scale, IBM seemed to have relatively higher brand persuasion than the rest. More enterprises said that they are likely to buy IBM storage than those who had higher
brand recall.

One brand seems to have a higher pull than the rest. EMC/ Legato had more enterprises who were likely to switch to it from competing brands than those switching away from it. The remaining players had the reverse situation, ie more switch out likely than switch-in.

In terms of brand loyalty, EMC/ Legato had the highest brand loyalty, followed by HP, IBM, and then Veritas in that order. About 8% of EMC's existing customers were likely to shift to HP. On the other hand, HP's existing customer base had 6% IBM fans and 3% Dell fans. EMC/Legato has fans in 6% of IBM's existing users, and 3% HP fans. Veritas has a different story altogether. Some 7% of its existing customers are likely to move to Sun. Even more interestingly, 44% of the overall respondents were unsure of their plans to shift to any brand over the next six months. They were even unsure of whether they were likely to remain with the brand that they currently owned.

Highest top of mind recall: HP Highest current ownership: HP Most likely to buy: HP

The brand persuasion, pull, and loyalty combine to give the brand momentum. From the graph for this, it's clearly visible that all the key brands are more market share driven than being driven by anything else. Their current ownerships are higher than thier brand speeds. On a relative scale, HP had the highest brand momentum, followed by IBM, EMC/Legato and finally Veritas. Maxtor, NetApp, Dell and Iomega had a fairly low base and therefore need to do much more to catch up to the four leading brands.

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