AMI was floated by Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai alumni S Shankar in the United States nearly ten years ago.
Huge demand for and rapid growth in storage at compounded annual growth rate of 40 per cent, with this market expected to be Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) by next year, has lured the company to venture into expansion plans in India.
AMI USA, a global player in BIOS, diagnostic tools, storage and computing innovations, had started a wholly-owned subsidiary, AMI India, in 1994 and has a state-of-the-art development centre at Chennai, with 125 engineers.
Indian market was not on its radar screen before but things are now about to change.
AMI, a $75 million company, on Tuesday announced the launch in India of two products - StorTrends iTX which is an IP SAN (storage area network) solution and STRIX enterprise wireless LAN system, a third generation wireless LAN solution.
AMI India director and chief executive officer, Jayaram Krishnan told reporters here that from the storage business in India, the company was expecting revenues of Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million) in 2004-05, Rs 45-50 crore (Rs 450-500 million) in 2006-07 and a market share of 7.5 per cent to 10 per cent in 2008-09 when the industry is projected to be valued at Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion).
In India, storage market has players like HP, IBM, EMC, Netapps, Sun and Apple. "We can take them on quite well", Krishnan said.
He said AMI's StorTrends iTX enables users to implement a cost-effective hybrid SAN and NAS system which can be used by enterprises in India having local and wide area networks.
"Information Technology administrators for SMBs can now manage all StorTrends iTX and StorTrends NAS servers from a single console along
with tracking and planning the growth of storage resources deployed across the enterprise," he said.
AMI has partnered with Strix Systems to distribute their enterprise wireless LAN system, Strix Systems/One Network, a third generation wireless LAN solution.
Krishnan said "AMI is launching the products nationwide through channel partners who are system integrators," and added that it would initially have 15 partners in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore before expanding to other cities in 2006.
It would have sales and support offices in major cities this fisal. AMI is targeting BPOs, software companies, manufacturing industry, educational campuses, and animation and graphic design industry, for its products.
AMI India planned to recruit another 75 engineers in the next one year at its Chennai centre.
After two years, AMI India proposed to set up a development centre in Bangalore with an investment of $3-4 million, Krishnan added.
