Huco’s Vivek Parath: Delivery—the Foundation for Solution Success

As we globally work to flatten the curve, we continue to see evolving business needs at the forefront of the economic recovery effort. While priorities increasingly shift towards business agility in the face of extraordinary disruption, our partners continue to excel as trusted advisors guiding their customers on the digital transformation journey at astonishing speed.

During this week’s virtual coffee chat, Rich Steeves sat down with Vivek Parath, Vice President of Salesat Huco, to hear how Huco is meeting customer challenges with innovative solutions and leveraging their partnership with VMware to manage business continuity.

Huco’s Mission

Huco is a highly service-driven organization, focused more on delivery excellence than sales, and is uniquely 100% VMware-centric from a solutions standpoint. Based in the Middle East, they have positioned themselves in the market as one of the most skilled delivery-led partners in the region with a key focus on advanced technologies.

The success mantra Huco prides itself on is to “ensure the delivery is in place first before taking [the solution] to the market,” according to Vivek. This is what Vivek attributes to their recent 4.8 out of 5-star customer satisfaction rating for VMware services.

“We put in a lot of investment on human capital first, and then capitalize on that investment in the next 12 months’ time. VMware has not yet launched the sixth Master Service Competency, but we have already completed all prerequisites. We will be one of only three partners worldwide with six Master Services Competencies.” – Vivek Parath

Huco’s focus on advanced VMware technologies spans a variety of solution areas, particularly in the Cloud Native space, application modernization, networking and security, and private cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation. Specific to application modernization, Huco has already delivered several projects with PKS and now has a key focus on VMware Tanzu.

“We want to be more of a value-driven organization. We want to be the first partner in this region to bring these solutions to market.” – Vivek Parath

A New “Business as Usual”

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Huco is focused on keeping their customers close and ensuring all of their employees work from home. This means all Huco’s projects are currently being completed and delivered remotely. According to Vivek, this new reality gave way to another mode of thought: “If we can do all of these projects remotely, why not set up offshore deployment sites in India?”

“It is very evident that apart from the 10% of the work to be done onsite, 90% of the project can be done offshore from a delivery standpoint. So, we are planning to create an offshore center of excellence in India to do projects remotely. Since I am not restricted to doing projects in the Middle East, I can do projects across the globe – which also provides a cost advantage to the customer without diluting the quality.” – Vivek Parath

There is much to be gained from this experience of a global crisis. For now, one of the ways Huco is working to support customers during this transition are through projects such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure In-A-Box, a solution packaging for customers from the mid-market and commercial segments in need of remote working. Utilizing this package, in partnership with some of the VMware promotions, is “a very cost-effective solution that can be up and running in a week’s time. That gives the agility and flexibility our customers need right now,” said Vivek.

Similarly, Huco also launched a solution package with VMware Cloud Foundation In-A-Box for the mid-market segment. “Interest in VMware Cloud Foundation has been increasing steadily,” according to Vivek. “Out of the 7 VMware Cloud Foundation projects within the past VMware fiscal year, Huco has done 3 of them in the region.” The traction gained in the market is all word-of-mouth and creates what Vivek calls a “chain reaction” accelerating the opportunity. Additionally, Huco is providing free Proof of Concepts to their customers to help support them in their transition.

“With the public cloud regulations here in this region, people are not able to utilize the cloud functionality or the multi-cloud environment. So, they need to consider a private cloud. This is where we are seeing a lot of opportunity for on-prem with VMware Cloud Foundation. We are already seeing our existing customers wanting to upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0.” – Vivek Parath

Weathering the Storm with VMware Tanzu

With a services delivery focus and the ability to deliver these services remotely, Huco is uniquely positioned to add increased value for their customers and help them weather the storm. More specifically, Huco is working with their customers on early engagements and early deployment with VMware Tanzu. With only a handful of customers in the region who have deployed this solution, the market opportunity is double according to Vivek.

“If customers had done the application modernization much earlier, they would be in a situation where they could have deployed their existing solutions much faster. Right now, they are figuring out how to do it, so the opportunity has only increased.” – Vivek Parath

Huco’s customers have seen the value of their PKS deployments and there is now fervent interest in VMware Tanzu due to COVID-19. With awareness of the solution increasing, Huco has been in the education phase with their customers throughout the past 12 months while they begin to understand the importance of it.

“We hosted a webinar on the 29th of April on VMware Tanzu with a lot of customer interest and registrations. Application modernization and VMware Tanzu is going to change the entire game for us now. That’s where we want to put our entire focus.” – Vivek Parath

Partnering for the Future

For the first time, the new Partner Connect program is recognizing partners like Huco with deep services skill sets and capabilities. With Huco’s investments 100% VMware-centric, they are very happy with the progress made in their relationship with VMware. Vivek believes that with the types of acquisitions VMware has made in the last 12-18 months, “VMware is really going to change the entire game.”

“With acquisitions like Pivotal and Heptio, we believe that in 3-4 years’ time this is where the entire story is going to lie. And we are very happy that we built our position and made the investment early.” – Vivek Parath

Huco is continuing to invest more and more in services capabilities to align with this vision. As a partner who has achieved five Master Services Competencies, is on the verge their sixth, and is at Principal-level tier in one IT priority within the Partner Connect Program, Huco has also demonstrated the highest levels of customer satisfaction and were previously recognized as a 2018 VMware Regional Services Partner of the Year. For additional opportunities and targeted promotions that Huco is driving with their customers, please visit the links below:

Webinar on Application Modernization with VMware Tanzu (3 part series) – Register for Part 2 (May 18) and Part 3 (May 20)
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure in a Box (packaged deal): Vdesk “Work Anywhere” promotion – $1 per user/day
Huco and Partner Connect – video from Huco President Dilip Kalliyat
VMware’s Modern Applications – video from Huco President Dilip Kalliyat and Huco CTO Sivagurunathan S
The Partnership with Huco and VMware – video from Huco Managing Director Ashok Chakravarthi Arulmozhi