60 Mins - Day 3 - 11AM

Strategic ICT Partner

Technology Partners

60 Mins Show dates: 14-18 October 2012, Dubai World Trade Centre

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| AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -7pm

Optimus sets eyes on data management market Could you tell us more on your recently launched ‘Data Management’ bundles?

SMBs usually look for affordable feature-rich solutions to help them manage their businesses more effectively. We worked closely with our vendor-partners, some of the best global brands, to design a powerful one-of-its-kind ‘data management solution’ for the SMB segment, mid-market enterprises and larger companies with distributed IT environments.

We partnered with Acer, Netgear, Quest Software and Bitdefender to offer our partners and customers a one-of-its kind solution at the best price in the market today.

How unique is it from other similar solutions in the market?

Optimus’ ‘Data Management solution’ comes in two options, one with a Acer Tower Server AT110F2 and the second with a Acer Rack Server AR320F2 with a 3 year warranty, and includes Windows 2008 Server R2, Foundation Edition, 64Bit,

The new ‘Data Management solution’ is easy to deploy, requires minimal hardware upgrades and can boast of being the lowest in price for such a bundle in the Middle East region.

Customers are assured an investment protection for the next 3 years with product warranties, software maintenance and subscriptions covered till then.

English-ROK Kit; Quest NetVault Backup Server Starter Edition including three year maintenance and upgrade; Bitdefender Small Business Security Solution with a 3 Year subscription and Netgear ReadyNAS Pro4 4TB Storage Solution with a 5 Year Warranty.

Customers implementing this bundle can expect to have no additional investment for the bundle for 3 years.

What incentives are you offering channel partners who sell this?

We are also offering our partners a chance to earn rebates on buying more bundles, either together or at the end of the promotion. Our channel partners are able to up sell further by bundling more products such as switches, rack, cabinets, UPS and cabling solutions at competitive rates to complement the bundles and professional services support to implement the solution at attractive pricing.

Optimus is also enhancing our Channel Partner’s bottom-line by

Explain the benefits of this bundle?

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Meera Kaul, Managing Director, Optimus Technology and Telecommunications

14 -16 MAY 2013, QATAR

PICTURE OF THE HOUR

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Optimus sets eyes on data management market bundle rebates and WAFA points.

Which countries are you promoting this to?

We are offering these low-cost bundles in all countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

When is the promotion valid till? Any plans for more such solutions in future?

The promotion for the ‘Data Management Solution’ bundles will run from October 1st, 2012 to December 31st, 2012. Going by the response we have received within just a week of launching, we are looking forward to creating more such bundled solutions in the near future.

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Dvcom expands portfolio DVCOM Technology, which provides open source VoIP telephony solution, was awarded exclusive Middle East and North Africa distribution rights for ViaScope, Maipu and Yeastar.

“Our product and solutions portfolio, with the signing of the new vendors, enables to offer our clients and partners a one stop shop for all their VoIP Telephony requirements; from products to management to solutions,” said Renjan George, Managing Partner at DVCOM Technology.

“Yeastar, with its cost-effective range IP-PBX, allows the users to have the most advanced PBX features at affordable prices. This, when combined with MAIPU’s IP network equipment and application solutions and ViaScope’s access control, traffic monitoring, IP asset management and DHCP servers, provides our client a 360O solution to their Data/Voice requirements,”

Renjan George, Managing Partner at DVCOM Technology George added.

With a niche range of IP product portfolio, DVCOM has become a prominent name to compete with proprietary IP based communications products.

DVCOM provides a complete range of professional products and services and assists organizations with the assessment, design, and implementation of professional

IP Communications solutions including Unified Communications (UC) and Converged Communications (CC) for ensuring high availability, reliability, performance, scalability, and manageability within their intranet environments.

“With the distribution rights for ViaScope, MAIPU and Yeastar, our channel partners will be able to offer an even more complete range of products and solutions that are required to cater to the requirements of their clients” said, Sabu Thomas, Director – Channel Development & Alliance.

DVCOM is headquartered in Dubai and has branch offices in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Sudan, Bangladesh, India and the partner network spread across GCC and MENA region.

They can be visited at GITEX Technology Week, Stand No M20 in Zabeel hall.

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GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2012 HIGHLIGHTS

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Digital Forensic Investigations of Any Kind Incident Response & Remediation Training and Services Geoff Brooks Regional Sales Manager - Middle East, India & Africa PO BOX 211364, Dubai UAE Mobile No : +971 506 527659 gbrooks@accessdata.com www.accessdata.com

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GCT celebrates 15 years of partnership with GeniusKYE Systems Genius Computer Technology (GCT) is showcasing 15 years of its successful distribution relationship with Genius- KYE Systems, representing the brand in the Middle East region.

At its stand at GITEX Technology Week 2012, the company is showcasing the latest line up of Genius GX professional gaming gear which includes the speakers, keyboards, headsets, mice and mouse pros in addition to a host of other products for gaming aficionados in the region.

“Over the last 15 years, we have shared a mutual relationship with Genius catering to more than 35 partners from the Middle East, Africa and CIS countries. Our participation at GITEX Technology Week is an effort not just to showcase the latest line up of products for customers in the region but also a relationship building exercise. At GITEX not only do we meet our existing partners and customers while simultaneously meeting but also leverage an opportunity to meet and interact with prospective clients, understand their requirements from us and their capabilities to help us build the brand further,” said Jihad Youssef, General Manager, GCT Middle East

According to Youssef, the two companies have been especially successful in meeting partners who can represent the brand in untapped territories, bringing a host of attendees from around the region to the largest ICT exhibition of its kind.

The company also successfully participated at GITEX Shopper, earlier this month through its retail partners in the region. Youssef believes that gamers in the region are fast maturing. “They know just what they want. They are not fooled by competitive prices but focus on quality. Gamers need reliability and that is why Genius GX gaming

Jihad Youssef, General Manager, GCT Middle East

accessories are their preferred choice.

Not only do all the products come with a two year warranty, they also come with a zero 0% to 0.5% failure rate. Gamers want something new, something reliable and Genius gives them just that. With a steady string of innovations and constant support from partners around the world the company has enjoyed significant growth both in the region and around the globe with over 40 million products sold worldwide,” he said.

“GCT has been an active participant at GITEX since its inception in 1997 and we have witnessed the underlying theme of constant change at every exhibition.

While the aim of participating at GITEX remains the same for almost each and every one us, the technology we bring to the market keeps changing.

Every year we see a few new names venture into the market and notice some old ones disappear yet the noise that surrounds this competition never quietens, because every consumer out there today is an IT user whether he is a professional gamer, a student or a businessman and this exhibition is a platform for each one of them to source the right products to fit their specific needs,” he concludes.

Publisher Dominic De Sousa, COO Nadeem Hood, Managing Director Richard Judd, Commercial Director Rajashree R Kumar, Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan Editors Pallavi Sharma, Ben Rossi Sub-editor Joe Lipscombe Circulation Manager Rajeesh M, Production Manager James Tharian, Design Director Ruth Sheehy, Senior Designers Analou Balbero, Froilan Cosgafa IV, Glenn Roxas, Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy Magma Web Developers Erik Briones, Jefferson De Joya Photographer and Social Media Co-ordinator Jay Colina

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Vendor value add IBM brings its partners a number of support initiatives to help them play a greater part in the company’s route to expansion through 2015. Mark Hennessy, GM, IBM Global Partners and Midmarket, tells us more while Ilse Cilliers, VP Global Business Partners, MEA gives us the regional take.

Tell us a little bit about IBM’s focus on partners.

MH: The business partner channel is critically important to IBM’s operations. We invest over two billion dollars a year in our business partner programmes, technical support, marketing initiatives and other relevant areas. Approximately half of that investment is focused in our growth markets. We have about 120,000 partners worldwide, about 55,000 of those are here in the growth markets. We continue to invest very heavily in co-marketing with our business partners as we believe that to be very important from a demand generation standpoint, so we have invested about $1.5 million for 3000 partners here in the GMU, making this a significant piece of our investment.

Another really important piece of our investment is focused on our innovation centres where our business partners can get access to our R&D and latest technology. We have 40 Innovation Centres in 33 countries around the world, half of them being in the growth markets.

So first and foremost, partners continue to be very important to IBM and will only become more important as we look to achieve our 2015 roadmap. We have openly declared that while we continue on our strategy through 2015, our business partners will have a larger share of our business and enjoy a more significant role in the IBM business cycle.

What are some of the fundamental changes you see affecting the technology channel across the globe?

MH: The changes begin in the marketplace itself, in our end user clients who are less and less interested in building out their own IT Printed with GIT cartridges

Mark Hennessy, GM of IBM Global Business Partners and Midmarket solutions and they are less interested in buying products and doing self integration. A majority of end users today are looking for a solution that combines hardware, software and services together that are unique to their industry or a particular area of interest such as business analytics or cloud computing. The market is increasingly becoming more ‘solution oriented’.

At the same time we are witnessing a whole new set of buyers emerge. So where it has traditionally been CIOs and IT departments taking the frontline to IT purchases, today we are witnessing CFOs, CMOs and the like demanding solutions relevant to their line of business like the dashboard capabilities of analytics or data mining for consumer or purchasing insights, mayors are saying they need help with public safety, water management or even transportation.

Finally, we are also seeing organisations changing the way they consume IT. So instead of looking at a traditional model where they built an infrastructure on premise and hired staff; they now see the opportunity to acquire IT-as-a-Service which is essentially a significant benefit to their business. Because these firms today can leverage the capabilities of

the cloud, clients can acquire what they’re looking for much quicker; have a much better ROI and leverage solutions that more attuned to what they’re looking for.

This essentially sets the stage for our partners who are looking to change their approach to move from more of a product distribution value add where they’re focused primarily on their logistics capabilities to higher value spaces where they’re combining hardware, software with their client knowledge to build out a suitable solution. Partners are building out their business, skills and capabilities to bring real value to the new buyers. So what we’re seeing today is that many s firms maybe building out a managed service provider (MSP) business in addition to their systems integration business. These partners maybe providing Infrastructure-as-a-Service or hosting an application in a private environment or helping customers make the transition to a public cloud environment. This is a significant change for many of our partners who need to transform their business models in order to cash in on the evolution of the market. IBM is really excited to be on the forefront of that change and is focused on helping partners realise their aspirations of driving higher value for clients.

So how are you helping channel partners with this evolution?

MH: We are changing our approach with business partners. So one example is around our offerings, we are looking to provide a much more integrated set of offerings to our business partners. A perfect example is the recent announcement we made around our PureSystems Technology, a new category of preconfigured systems that combines computing hardware, software and

some services to provide a higher performance and a more integrated package for our clients. This helps our partners move into a more value space and deliver value quickly. We already have over 200 ISVs certify their solutions on PureSystems Technology, so starting day one our business partners can leverage these offerings to drive higher value for clients.

We also actively increasing our co-marketing investments to help partners with unique and targeted demand generation activities given the industry or solution area they are focused on. In addition we also have many offerings for partners looking at service provider capabilities as well.

IC: For the Middle East and Africa, one of the key focus areas as we expand our business in the region is assist them in develop their skills to help them deliver IBM solutions and offerings effectively in the local market and ultimately help partners serve and support customers to retain them. We have a big focus on enablement, skills development and are leveraging our innovation centres around the region to accelerate this process of learning.

What are the elements you take into consideration when signing on new partners?

MH: Fundamentally we choose our partners based on the skills, solutions or industry expertise and client insight that they bring to the table. We have a value add model, in other words we don’t have just open distribution.

For business partners to represent IBM they have to have the skills and capabilities and the certifications to do that, which we believe is very important. We also study the track record of their relationships and their ability to align themselves with our requirements and strategies.

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