Managed Storage Service Provider

This is a new category we've added to the awards this time. With the amount

of storage growing by leaps and bounds, organizations have started outsourcing

its management to external service providers in order to save cost of purchasing

fresh storage and its management.

There are plenty of vendors providing managed storage services. In fact we

found that we received responses for 31 different vendors from our respondents.

Out of these, only three were able to make it to the club-HP, IBM, and Wipro.

HP took the crown this time, winning over IBM by a very slim margin. Wipro

was there, but far behind HP and IBM. At an overall level, the concept of using

managed storage services haven't been very well adopted.

Maybe that's why even the overall top of mind recall for the brands in this

space is pretty low.

The winner HP, received a brand recall from 38% of the respondents, while IBM

was at 28%, and Wipro at 3%. Likewise, the current ownership, overall brand

loyalties, and shift-in are all pretty low due to this.

The sectors that have been adopting managed storage services the most need no

introduction. The highest adoption seems to be in discrete manufacturing, BFSI,

and IT/ITeS segments.

Amongst the three top brands in this space, HP's brand perception was highest

amongst BFSI, process manufacturing, and education segments.

IBM's stronghold was in IT/ITeS, communication media, healthcare, and

services segments. Wipro had a good stronghold in the discrete manufacturing

segment.

Zone wise, IBM respondents were equally distributed across all four zones

while HP was strong in south and west, followed by north. It received pretty low

responses from the east.

The primary factor for choosing these brands amongst their owners was the

after sales support and service. While the same factor remains a good reason for

future purchase also, but the primary reason has changed to become brand value.

Coming to brand switch analysis, among 43% of the HP users who are likely to

upgrade in the near future, 35% said that they would like to stick to HP, and

57% were not sure or had no plans to shift to any brand. IBM's brand loyalty was

higher than HP at 61%, with uncertainty amongst 33% of the existing users.

Wipro's brand loyalty amongst the respondents who were using its services was

29%, with uncertainty amongst the remaining 71% of users. whereas HCL is. HP is

also enjoying the maximum number of possible shift-in in the near future.