VMWare looking to penetrate BPO firms in PHL

With most companies already using their solution, virtualization software provider VMWare said it will aggressively target its solutions at the local BPO industry, an area which it has not actively participated in before, regional officials said Wednesday. Speaking at a press briefing, VMWare General Manager for ASEAN Ed Lenta said the BPO industry will be their focus area in the Philippines for the next several months, especially because BPO firms usually use many workstations. Lenta said they would be specifically offering their desktop virtualization and cloud solutions to these firms to address their need for scale. VMWare Head of Communications for ASEAN Clement Teo told GMA News Online that usually, these firms would need large numbers of workstations, which could pose issues concerning management. "In some BPO firms, agents would often have several screens and workstations in front of them which they use to interface with clients," Teo said. For these kinds of setup, Teo said firms could make use of the company's VMWare View, a commercial desktop virtualization product which provides remote desktop capabilities to users. Desktop virtualization is a computing approach wherein data is processed in a central server, and "images" of the user's desktop environment are pushed to the workstation's monitor, which acts as a viewing terminal. Usually, virtualized desktop setups eliminate the huge tower CPU from the workstation, making the solution attractive to businesses looking to cut workstation footprint in the office. But Teo said VMWare View could bring an entirely different benefit to BPO firms. "Usually, these BPO firms access servers or data which are outside the country. [This solution] makes it easy for them to do that," he said. Teo said, however, that they currently do not have clients among the many firms in the local BPO industry, but emphasized that most companies in the Philippines already use their solutions. Lenta, meanwhile, disclosed that this push in the BPO industry is one of their strategies at growing their business in the ASEAN region. "We are always trying to be global yet locally relevant in the markets that we serve," Lenta said. In the past year, Lenta said their ASEAN business has grown by as much as 50 percent, and its regional partner base has reached 1,200 partner firms. Globe Telecom Inc., a major telecommunications firm in the country, is one of VMWare's local partner firms. In August, Globe rolled out its own Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution powered by VMWare, which gives businesses access to storage and networking solutions at a fraction of the cost of acquiring on-premise setups. — TJD, GMA News