Magic in Bangalore

So I’ve just come back from a very successful HID on the Desktop™ road show in Bangalore, India, where we presented our new converged access solution to 200 partners and end-users.

Having previously showcased HID on the Desktop to an audience of over 160 people in New Delhi, and with a similar audience expected in Chennai next month, that means over 500 people in India alone will have come to hear about the business benefits of selling or deploying converged physical and logical access solutions from HID.

 

It certainly was one of the most “spectacular” launches that we’ve done so far in Asia-Pacific. Not being content with the fabulous opulent architecture of our venue - the Leela Palace Bangalore - our Indian sales director, Ranjit Nambiar, decided to top things off by arranging for a set of velvet curtains to be dramatically pulled pack against a backdrop of music, lights and smoke to reveal a selection of HID on the Desktop products mounted inside a specially constructed presentation booth! Well not quite Las Vegas standards admittedly, but if the marketing department is interested Ranjit reckons he’s got the perfect concept to jazz up the HID booth at ISC West 2010.

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With a high proportion of IT savvy partners and end-users, India in many ways represents the ideal marketplace for selling and adopting converged access solutions. Many Fortune 500 companies have operations based in India - especially in IT hubs such as Bangalore. If an organization is bound by regulatory requirements in its country of origin such as Sarbanes Oxley that requires monitoring of, and controlled access to, its valuable or sensitive assets, then these same regulations will also apply to their Indian subsidiaries. Compliance can typically be best achieved by deploying solutions such as HID on the Desktop that can provide risk appropriate authentication to IT networks.

Indian Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has been used by companies worldwide to help deliver increase operational efficiencies. In 2008 the Indian BPO market from IT services alone was estimated to be worth USD $30 billion. BPO companies must deliver cost savings without sacrificing quality and this is typically achieved through a heavy reliance on IT systems. There was general appreciation from the audience that HID on the Desktop can help users stay productive by minimizing the downtime that results from account lockouts and by reducing the number of calls that they have to make to the IT helpdesk for password resets. This in turn allows the IT helpdesk to run leanly and results in more time being spent on solving business critical IT issues that can fuel further operational efficiency.

We also received interest from one of India’s largest call centers. This particular operation needs to deliver 24x7 service 365 days a week since its clients are based around the world. The call center employs a series of highly regimented shift workers, who answer customer calls using a network of shared terminals. One of the benefits of HID on the Desktop is that it allows multiple users to be logged onto the same machine with their own secure sessions simultaneously whilst allowing individual users to securely access any machine for which they have permission to use - even if that machine is another building or even country. To help maintain quality of service and support auditing requirements the owner of the call center also wanted to know who was logged onto each machine at any specific time and when each operator last logged onto the system. Fortunately this information can be pulled using the reporting function in HID’s naviGO software.

Numerous systems integrators who were present at the show concurred that their end -users are increasingly looking for a more holistic approach to deploying physical access and logical access. The business benefits to end-users provided by HID on the Desktop of reduced cost, increased convenience, increased user productivity and increased compliance are real and demonstrable - and no smoke and mirrors required, honestly!