Virtualized Environment Helps Manage Complex IT: Vikas Bhonsle, Crayon CEO

Crayon caters to the entire lifecycle management of software assets and a strong ecosystem of partners for a PAN-India reach. The company is also playing a key role in virtualizing customer workloads in a world where cloud is becoming the driving force for enterprises. It is helping customers to easily navigate from their existing environment to the virtualized one. Dataquest did have a candid talk with Vikas Bhonsle, CEO – Crayon where he outlined Crayon's role in assisting customers in their cloud journey. According to him, complex technologies are now being easily managed by moving the workloads to a virtualised environment like the cloud. Such migrations not only help in optimising the investments on technology, but provide the customers with the flexibility to pay-per-use, and better regulate their usage.

How does Crayon plan to steer its reach forward among Indian businesses?
For the last 2 years since our inception in India, Crayon has achieved tremendous milestones with our customers, partners, vendors and OEMs. Driven by our eagerness to build industry standard practices and expertise, customers now believe that we are their trusted advisors – hereby re-living the Crayon philosophy. With our “SAM first – Cloud First” approach, Crayon is uniquely positioned to cater to the entire lifecycle management of software assets and a strong ecosystem of partners for a PAN-India reach, which makes us one of the fastest growing players in India. At Crayon, we have a strong business model with the direct business that caters to customers around Software Asset Management and perpetual licensing, and the partner-led business model on Service Provider License Agreements (SPLA) that drives the subscription based cloud licensing enabling customers to optimize costs with “Pay-Per-Use” model. This is further backed by a strong team of professionals with deep technology capabilities to accelerate our growth.

What are the key enterprise IT challenges which Crayon is trying to address?
Most corporates are looking to adapt to the changing paradigm of technologies. While some organizations have implemented asset management tools, it becomes even more important to analyse the effectiveness of such tools and processes. This is where Crayon’s expertise helps in optimizing the client’s IT investments. Crayon helps in making the complex IT landscape simple and easy. Complex technologies are now being easily managed by moving the workloads to a virtualised environment like the cloud. Such migrations not only help in optimising the investments on technology, but provide the customers with the flexibility to pay-per-use, and better regulate their usage. By enforcing license terms in a virtual environment, clients benefit from key challenges like Software monetization, enhanced productivity with the ability to run cloud-based applications on intelligent devices, subscription and consumption based pricing and also preventing software piracy.

What sets Crayon apart in enabling enterprises to embrace cloud-based technologies?
Crayon is a global company with operations in 22 countries and a strong team of professionals with deep expertise in Software Asset Management and licensing – both perpetual & subscription based licensing. Crayon is uniquely poised to bring in the Software Asset Management (SAM) advantage to overcome the complexities, and simplify the adoption of technology amidst our clients. While we do not have any legacies, we have acquired IPs by way of our acquisition of Kryptos Networks, which is a 100% born-in-the-cloud company and we currently drive more than 65% of our business on cloud technologies, thereby positioning us to become a very prominent player in the India market.

May you please elaborate on some of the innovative approaches which Crayon has taken to optimise the client's hybrid cloud journey?
Embracing cloud or even ensuring its seamless adoption within the organisation in itself is one of the key challenges. Crayon’s “SAM First Cloud First” approach helps customers embark on this journey with ease. Quoting an example, I’d like to talk about a customer based in Bangalore, who sourced perpetual licenses from India, Europe, etc. We engaged with the customer for a few months that involved a software lifecycle management with an assessment, a few Proof of Concepts, and how he can benefit from one such Software Asset Management practice. This helped us demonstrate our capabilities and best align with his roadmap and helped him architect his entire cloud infrastructure. We not only bagged a three-year subscription contract on Software Asset Management from the customer, but also seamlessly moved them to the cloud on Microsoft Azure.

Please elaborate on your partnership with Microsoft. How can customers leverage this partnership?
As a fastest growing global Large Account Resellers (LAR), we are authorised by Microsoft to sell licenses to midsize and enterprise accounts through special volume licensing programs that has more generous discounts to the customers than the Microsoft’s standard licensing programs. Besides, we are also Microsoft’s Cloud Distribution partner under the Cloud Solution Provider program, helping customers to adopt Microsoft’s cloud based technology solutions like Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office 365, Windows Intune and Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) subscriptions. The Cloud Solution Provider Program (CSP) enables customers to adopt value-added solutions and offerings supporting their specific requirements on the cloud. Customer’s working with us, can customize their IT requirements by leveraging our deep experience in cloud migration, software asset management and delivery of fully managed services. Our partnership with Microsoft is so crucial to the effect that we participate with Microsoft in building future roadmaps and also drive customer advocacy around most Microsoft products & solutions.

What sort of options do customers have if they want to move to a virtualized cloud platform?
We at Crayon, help our customers manage and secure their sensitive data by keeping it where it belongs to and as secure as possible. We have the right tools and processes in place to help customers do the right thing for their business in the most productive and efficient way. Software Asset Management’s (SAM) adoption in India has been significantly sluggish. Primarily, this is due to lack of understanding and corporates have not set policies to significantly and consistently categorize and control their data. Assessments around software asset management, cloud readiness can help customers better understand their IT environments and best optimise it. Besides, there are many ways how the customers can embrace a virtualised cloud platform. While some customer’s move only critical workloads to the cloud, some organisations imbibe a private cloud environment, in the interest of security and ease of monitoring. Increasingly, most organisations use the hybrid model thereby having control on the overall IT infrastructure, with virtualised applications and hosted services. Crayon can help customers adopt to the right licensing models, migrate and embark the cloud journey with our expertise.

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