Experiences are critical for both personal and professional growth of any individual. For Mr. Vijay Balan, Managing Director at HP that experience has been quite vast.
While talking to Team CIO, Balan shed some light on his professional background and the vast experience he has had in being associated with the field of IT for more than two decades. During this long period of time, he performed multiple roles ranging from sales, to running a business. He also introduced different, large scale projects across multiple geographies and also took part in putting forth solutions. Before joining HP, he was working in Japan. On his current role and position, he stated, “I look after the Asia Emerging Countries Enterprise Business for HP. I am the Managing Director for the region, which covers 11 countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Las Cambodia, Sri Lanka and all the few countries around Indian sub continent.”
With a close eye on local, as well as international markets, one gets the fair idea of the market potential, trends, and the consumer behavior. Mr. Vijay shared that businesses in Pakistan have immense potential. He further stated that the local market is quite favorable with respect to big data, cloud, and mobility. Comparing Pakistan with other regions he said, “We get positive response from local market as we drive solutions and efficiency, but other regions have bigger scope for technology in terms of developments and innovations.”
Since buying trends and demand have a huge impact on the overall economy and growth of businesses, a slow buying trend, thus, negatively influences the technology graphs. While discussing these impacts, Mr. Vijay stated that it is becoming difficult for CIOs to manage budgets to purchase latest technologies. However, on the other hand, consumer market is inclined towards innovative technologies and some established and leading companies also try to invest in state-of-the-art technologies to achieve agility and efficiency.
Shedding light on the current dynamics of the local industry, Mr. Junaid Javed, Country Manager Channel Manager – ESSN Pakistan and Afghanistan (Enterprise Group) at Hewlett Packard Pakistan said in an interview with CIO Pakistan that the local talent is very aggressive and resource-oriented and the IT market has a positive outlook for accelerated adoption of services. He also said that the companies and government is also working on a way to adapt to optic technology swiftly, in order to reach out to the customers in a very service-oriented way.
With the proliferation of innovative and smart devices, competition between the companies has definitely increased. HP is also one of the famous brands in the world and thus competes with many top companies in the world. Talking about the competition, Mr. Vijay stated that, “HP has the largest spectrum of solutions; we have from the smallest devices to the most powerful servers that you can find in the market. We do have competition with daily show suspects; however, still HP is the largest IT Company across the globe.”
Smart phones are undoubtedly the smartest evolution in technology. Based on the usefulness of these devices, technology companies are rolling out new devices frequently to take lead in the market. Just like Google and Microsoft, HP, too, was rumored to be working on a Smartphone. However, it seems that HP doesn’t want to reveal anything beforehand. Partly accepting the speculation Mr. Vijay stated that HP does want to make sure that their customers get the best of products and services. He explained that the company focuses mainly on cloud services and aspires to become a market leader. Besides this, their main area of specialization is big data. “We understand the importance of mobility, and therefore spend most of the money in this area,” Mr. Vijay told.
HP is a company that has products and services tailored at both small and big businesses. It tries to fulfill the needs of almost every sector – be it Telecom or the financial sector. Owing to their extensive range of products and vast outreach, one could expect HP to continue to serve Pakistan as well as other regions in a similar fashion into the future. Pointing out to his latest ventures, Balan shared that some projects were in the pipeline and HP looks forward to working with businesses and governments in the days to come.
Pakistan is among few industries with immense talent and resources. Realizing the potential in the market, HP intends to double its investment in the coming five years with an intention to delivering the best of innovative solutions and services to the local market, said Mr. Junaid Javed. However, he insisted that the image of the country be improved in order to gain the attention of international players. When asked about the future of the local market, he said: “There is a lot of potential in the market. However, we need support from businesses in order to develop a positive image of the country. Media has developed a certain image of the country for which we look towards businesses to contribute to positive business, value, and in changing the core perception of the country.”
