Crn 01 january 2014 all pages by UBM India

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contents

January 01, 2014 l Volume 3 Issue 05

Cover Story The growing shift among corporates toward an asset-light, asset-right mindset is creating opportunities for partners who can offer various IT management services on an opex model

16 Cover Design : Deepjyoti Bhowmik

NEWS Analyses Kodak Alaris bullish about Indian market Citrix expects strong growth for VDI

Channel Chief

Epson aims `1,000 crore topline in 2014 Kaspersky aims to win enterprise mindshare

Editorial 08 Opinion

Feedback

Channel Buzz

New Products

Shadow Ram

Get Personal

Computer Reseller News

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11 Special Focus Empowering SMBs From using standard enterprise applications like ERP to using emerging technologies such as cloud, let’s see how IT is enabling SMBs to scale new heights

13 Role Model

Pradeep Khemani Director, Channel & SMB Sales, Servers, Storage & Networking, HP India, talks about the revamped PartnerOne program and the company’s plans for 2014

Friends first, partners later Jaimin Patel and Manoj Agarwal, Directors, E-Connect Solutions, have built an organization that is a leading provider of application solutions in the government sector

Tech Focus Next-generation workstation HP’s latest Z620 workstation turns in stellar performance that makes it a great choice for video production, high performance computing and other compute-intensive applications

starting line Kodak Alaris bullish about Indian market n ABHIJEET MUKHERJEE

odak Alaris, the new business entity formed following the acquisition of Kodak’s personal and document imaging division by UK-based Kodak Pension Plan, is expecting double-digit growth of its India operations in 2014. The new entity plans to set up a fully-owned subsidiary in India. “We presently continue to operate under Kodak India and are awaiting the final approvals to set up a different entity under the new name of Kodak Alaris. We expect all approvals to be in place by the beginning of February 2014, and are currently building up our sales and post-sales resources,” said Susheel John, Regional Business Director, APAC, Document Imaging, Kodak Alaris. Despite the continuing economic slowdown, which has impacted the IT industry, Kodak Alaris is confident of strong demand in the document imaging space. John explained why. “The opportunity for digitization in India is huge both in the private and government sector. Projects such as UID, land records digitization and e-governance are fueling the demand in the government sector. Compliance and productivity enhancement initiatives are driving the demand in the private sector.” Globally, Kodak Alaris estimates the document capture (scanner) market at nearly $1 billion, and says it has a marketshare of 21-22 percent. “The competition among the top three players—Fujitsu, Canon and ourselves—is intense, with each one having a share of around 2022 percent,” said John. Kodak currently has 600 large enterprises as its customers in India and an installed base of document scanners exceeding 15,000 units. John continued, “While BFSI and the government

“Projects like UID are fueling demand in the government sector, while Compliance and productivity are driving demand in the private sector” Susheel John

Regional Business Director, APAC, Document Imaging, Kodak Alaris

continue to be the largest segment for us, we are also seeing strong demand from the SMBs.” Kodak has two NDs in India, Redington and Indecomm Global Services. While Indecomm is focused on large SIs and alliance partners, Redington is driving its volume business. Over the past six months the company has been on a drive to sign up regional distributors to expand its geographical coverage to tap into opportunities in tier-2 cities. The company recently revamped its entire document scanner portfolio consisting of personal, workgroup and department products with prices from `20,000 to `1.5 lakh. The personal scanners can scan up to 1,000 pages a day at a speed of 30 ppm and are meant for small offices. The workgroup scanners have seven SKUs and can scan up to 10,000 pages a day at a speed of up to 50 ppm. The department scanners can scan up to 20,000 pages a day at a speed of 60 ppm. In addition, Kodak Alaris introduced its new Info Insight and Info Activate software tools which use artificial intelligence to index, convert and classify data according to the business processes for faster decision-making. The company plans to offer these tools as a cloud service. n

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Citrix expects strong growth for VDI Citrix is betting on growing demand for virtual desktop infrastructure among the large enterprise and SMB segments for growth. According to F&S, the desktop virtualization market will grow by 33 percent annually till 2015. AMI India has predicted that VDI will grow in excess of 30 percent YoY, in SMB segment for 3 years. Explained Kaushal Veluri, Director, Channels & Alliances, Citrix Systems, “A key business driver for VDI adoption is the promise of better manageability and security, less downtime, an no compromise on user experience. Data recovery and business continuity are other plus points.” The company signed on 230 new customers comprising 200,000 new nodes in 2013. “Although most of these deals were bagged by tier-1 partners, tier-2 partners such as SK International, Orient Technologies and Futurenet also signed on new customers,” he said. According to Veluri, partners bagged larger deals and more customers because of flexible opex model Citrix launched in July 2013. The new model, named Citrix Service Provider Kaushal Veluri Licensing provides customers a subscription-based payment option. “For that partners can either manage the infrastructure on a pay-per-month basis or can own the infrastructure, lease it out to the customer on a per user per month basis, and amortize it over a period. Alternately, partners can own it for a period and then hand over the asset to the customer,” he explained. Admitting that the opex model is currently being used by tier-1 SI partners, he encouraged tier-2 partners to form consortiums like AllTimeIT to save infrastructure cost and avail the benefits of an opex model. Encouraged by the new options, Veluri said that about 15-20 tier-2 partners out of its overall base of 80 are ready to take on large projects. Veluri said the next wave of growth would come from enterprise mobility and BYOD. “We have the products, solutions and services ready for these opportunities, and are preparing partners for the same. While 2013 was the touch-point for enterprise mobility and BYOD, 2014 will be a really big year for these technologies.” n — Sonal Desai Computer Reseller News

01/01/2014

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edit opinion Volume 3, Issue 05

What lies ahead dhaval valia

ost hopes are pinned on 2014 for an economic revival. The results of the national elections will be key to this. Will we continue to see a coalition government at the center? Or will a single party get a majority to run the government more decisively than we have seen over the last four-and-half years? Will the new government implement the much-needed economic reforms? Will we see the capital investment cycle of core sectors—which has been dormant for the past three years—start once again? These are questions which will be answered only after the results of the poll in May 2014. Till that time we are unlikely to get any breather in the state of affairs of the Indian economy. What’s more, after the new government is sworn in, it could be a couple of months before we see concrete policy reforms and economic measures, and it will take at least another 2-3 months for these to start showing results on the ground. Since we will see a semblance of any economic revival only toward the end of 2014, from a demand and growth perspective, the year 2014 may not be very different from 2013. What we may see instead is a paradigm shift in the customers’ needs and requirements from IT. We will also see a considerable churn in the IT ecosystem and a gradual but resolute shift in business models. The year 2014 will only accentuate trends such as moving from capex to opex payment models, businessenabling and ROI-driven IT, the waning role of the CIO, and solutions and services gaining over products. I have said earlier that over the next three years, we will be a witness to a massive consolidation and transformation in the IT industry. 2014 will only see this change deepen. Hence, while 2014 may not be action-packed from a demand perspective, it should provide strong pointers as to how the IT industry will reshape itself, and those are the pointers that partners need to watch for. In that sense, 2014 will be a busy year for partners who have started their transformation journey. Meanwhile, on behalf of UBM and CRN, I wish you all a very happy new year. Let’s all try to be the change we want to see. n E-mail CRN Executive Editor Dhaval Valia at dhaval.valia@ubm.com 8

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Joji George Kailash Pandurang Shirodkar Anees Ahmed Dhaval Valia Ramdas S Sonal Desai Amit Singh (Delhi) Abhijeet Mukherjee (Mumbai) Deepjyoti Bhowmik Yogesh Naik Shailesh Vaidya Shailesh Ghadigaonkar, Sameer Surve Samta Datta Viraj Mehta Nilesh Mungekar Nitin Lahare Aditi Kanade Yogesh Mudras Satyendra Mehra Jagruti Kudalkar

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starting line Epson aims `1,000 crore topline in 2014 n ABHIJEET MUKHERJEE

o achieve its target of `1,000 crore in revenue in 2014, Epson has adopted a two-pronged strategy comprising a revamped partner program and a sub-category for its projector portfolio. “We are confident that the new strategy will help us to achieve `1,000 crore in 2014. We clocked `820 crore in revenue in 2013 compared to `700 crore in 2012,” said N Sambamoorthy, Director, Sales & Marketing, Epson India. While Epson’s commercial business comprising high-lumen and home theater projectors, inkjet printers, scanners, POS printers and large format printers contributed 55 percent of its overall revenue, the consumer business comprising its single and multi-function inkjet printers and entry-level projectors contributed the remaining 45 percent. Speaking about the revamped partner program, he said that globally Epson has merged its nSolution and nDimension partner programs under Epson Envision which brings retail and solutions partners on a single platform. The move is aimed at repositioning Epson from being a product company to being a solutions company. “We have a vast portfolio of products across printers, projectors, POS and lifestyle products,” noted Sambamoorthy. “The new Envision allows partners to showcase our entire range to customers. While it retains key features of the old programs such as partner profitability, lead generation and marketing support, we have added new elements that incentivize partners for cross-and deep-selling with greater emphasis on training and certification.” In order to transition partners to the new program, Epson has launched a 20-city campaign

“We have merged the nSolution and nDimension programs under Envision, which brings retail and solutions partners on a single platform” N Sambamoorthy

Director, Sales & Marketing Epson India

to educate partners about its solutions-centric focus and the benefits of Envision. “Over the next six months we plan to transition 300 partners to the new program,” he disclosed. The vendor is counting on its projector business to bring in the maximum growth in 2014. Informed Sambamoorthy, “Last July we divided our projector portfolio in two—home theaters, which are bought by home users, and high-lumen projectors which are used in the corporate and education segments. This strategy worked well for us.” Envisaging growing demand in each projector category, Epson is planning to increase the number of Pro AV partners selling highlumen projectors from the current 50 to 70 in the next six months, and home theater solution partners from 70 to 125. In printers, while the overall market was subdued, Epson grew faster than the market and is expecting to sustain growth in the new fiscal. “The introduction of new SKUs in thermal and POS printers, and the refresh of our traditional printers is helping us grow. Venturing into the new domains of digital signage printing, CAD printing and textile printing will also hold us in good stead,” Sambamoorthy said. n

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Kaspersky aims to win enterprise mindshare Having established itself in the home, SOHO and SMB segments, client-security provider Kaspersky is now planning to aggr target the large enterprise sector with more than 1,000 nodes. The company is aiming to double its markeshare in the enterprise segment and plans to emerge among the top-3 players in 2014. “In the past year we have made strong gains in the enterprise segment. With more focused partner programs and a strong product portfolio we believe we can give the top-3 players tough competition,” said Altaf Halde, MD, India & Saarc, Kaspersky Lab. Kaspersky is leveraging its distribution tie-up with Comguard which was signed on as a national distributor for 1,000+ users. The company’s empanelment with NIXI and DGS&D also bore fruit. “Our government business grew exponentially due to this and we bagged some very large customers including Western Railway. We also signed some large deals with customers like universities and airlines,” said Halde. Kaspersky is investing heavily in scaling up the skillsets Altaf Halde of 35 SMB partners such as Essen Vision, Taarak India, Raksha Technologies, Adit Microsys, Tracker Solutions, 64 Networks, Mark Systems, Secure Zone and 22/7 Solutions for enterprise opportunities. Said Halde, “We have formed a core group of B2B partners called the Dedicated & Focused Partner Group. New partners have been selected based on the business they drove for us in 2013. Lead generation and sales enablement training is one of our focus areas.” The company is banking on the Kaspersky Security Enterprise Business 10 which comes in four flavors—Core, Select, Advanced and Total Security. While Core provides only malware protection, Select also provides application, device and web security. Advanced has features including 256 bit data encryption and systems management, while Total Security includes mail, anti-spamming and collaboration. n — Sonal Desai

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edit opinion CEOs who commit to the channel bring in sales Steve Burke

EO commitment has always been a staple of great channel companies, but it is becoming even more critical as solution providers make big, new bets in the cloud computing services era. That is because solution providers are building out their own integrated stacks, making huge capital investments to cross the cloud computing chasm. These bets are so big that many cannot make more than a few. In effect, CEOs are waging a battle for the cloud computing armies that will determine which vendors thrive and which vendors flail and flounder in the buy-IT-as-a-Service era. That CEO commitment, by the way, was front and center at CRN’s thought leadership event held recently. Both, Dell CEO Michael Dell and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman addressed solution providers with highly personal appeals to partner. And several partners had dinner with Dell, talking business in an informal setting. Both Dell and Whitman are their respective company’s greatest assets, bringing not only extraordinary business acumen, but also a warmth and charm that many of their competitive CEOs lack. Far too often, technology vendors forget solution providers are customers. And like all customers, they buy from people they like. It’s about relationships. It’s about personal commitment. It’s about stepping in to help out when something goes wrong. And, of course, nothing is more powerful than oneon-one meetings to build those personal relationships. Besides those meetings, there are the personal touches that make a difference. Solution providers talk about Michael Dell sending Christmas cards and regularly checking in to see how a partner is doing. More than a few have asked for sales help and have been surprised at how quickly Michael responds. I heard one of the Dell partners tell me that Dell is regularly on call with him and helping his company win new business. His Dell sales are up 50 percent is no small part because of Michael Dell’s personal commitment. The customer intimacy Michael brings to the channel translates into millions of dollars in sales, according to the partner. Whitman has the same kind of personal power. When she meets someone one-on-one or is in the sales trenches connecting with partners and customers, you can bet it results in net new sales for HP. An HP partner at the CRN event told me an interesting story about Whitman. The partner had invited Whitman to speak at his company’s customer event in July 2013 and since then his company closed about $9 million in new business with another $28 million in the pipeline. According to the partner, Whitman’s keynote to his customers raised his company’s ability to connect higher in many organizations, including three or four CIOs that he had not been able to get an audience with. n E-mail Steven Burke at sburke@thechannelcompany.com 10

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The sky is the limit The title of the recent article on IT opportunities in the retail sector, in the December 15 issue, is quite relevant. Looking at the fast expanding demand for billing solutions and e-commerce, partners will need to redefine their approach toward the retail sector. While billing solution is the minimum IT solution that retailers are looking at, every other retailer is now opting for e-commerce. Even the small players are making their presence felt on the online marketplaces of large online players like Flipkart and Snapdeal. The article was insightful and we expect more such articles in future. Gaurav Bhat Hyderabad

Big stories of 2013 The cover story in the December 15 edition of CRN very well captured

some of the trends in 2013 that will impact 2014. Tablets will truly keep disrupting the PC market which is reflected by the fact that all the PC players are entering the tablet market. It will be interesting to see which of them will be able to make a dent in a domain dominated by Samsung, Apple and many small and local players. It will also be interesting to see Microsoft transforming into services and devices company. While I am confident of Microsoft prospering on cloud services front, the same can not be said about its devices. Microsoft should focus on enterprise and mid-market for Surface sales and the success of Nokia smartphones will depend entirely on how well Microsoft integrates the Nokia business. Abhay Singh Noida

Send your feedback at editor@ubmindia.com or post your views on www.crn.in

Advertiser Index Company name

Smartlink

Page No Web site

1 & 2

www.digisol.com

Sales Contact

helpdesk@digisol.com

4 www.hp.com

in.contact@hp.com

Philips

5 www.philips.co.in

india.callcentre@mmd-p.com

UBM Corporate

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RDP

www.rdp.in

TP-Link

29 www.tp-link.in

sales.in@tp-link.com

Biz

30 www.indiaantivirus.com

sales@indiaantivirus.com

Cisco

31 www.cisco.com

cisco.com/go/ucsbenchmarks

Kaspersky

32 www.kaspersky.co.in

sales@sakri.in.

1800 200 2444

channel chief “The new PartnerOne is the best in the industry” Pradeep Khemani, Director, Channel & SMB Sales, Servers, Storage & Networking, HP India, spoke to Ramdas S, about the revamped PartnerOne program and the company’s plans for 2014 You have recently revamped the HP PartnerOne program. What makes the program different?

How do you ensure volumes if there is no channel incentive to sell more?

The biggest demand since I took over the Enterprise Solutions Group (ESG) channel lead role three years back was to ensure better synergies with other groups in HP. At that time we ran different channel programs for every group, and worked in silos. However, over the past three years, we have been working at integrating the various programs of ESG into making PartnerOne. In the new PartnerOne which came into effect from November 1, 2013 we have now created better synergies with the HP Printers & Personal Systems group. While we still cannot have a common account manager across both groups because of the sheer range of solutions we carry, with the unified PartnerOne program, at several levels from special price clearance to deal registration to incentivization to lead generation activities, we are seeing the rich dividends of a unified partner program across the company.

You also revamped the partner incentive programs. Previously, partners used to get their backend rebates only once they achieved their numbers. While this worked effectively in a market which was growing in doubledigits, it is not suited for the current economic scenario where we are seeing flat-to-negative growth in many segments. A significant percentage of partners in the past couple of years did not get their incentives because they failed to meet their targets. With the new PartnerOne, partners get rebates on their first sale. This will motivate partners of every size to do business. The biggest advantage is that the new program makes a partner’s HP business and profitability far more predictable. Also, with accelerators built in for training and certification in emerging and new technologies, partners who have technical certifications around specific solutions get to earn more. Since most of our enterprise partners also sell printers and PCs, they will find it easier to calculate their compensation across all businesses.

“The new PartnerOne makes partner business more predictable. It unifies processes like special price clearance, deal registration and lead generation across PPG and ESG”

Though rebates start from the first sale, most of our enterprise channel partners are extremely target-driven. This is because we have re-juggled the incentive scheme in such a manner that partners who exceed targets end up earning upto twice of what they earned for similar volumes in the past. Besides, our rebates for certified partners have shot up. We have also introduced new schemes for channel partners who are selling a healthy mix of servers, storage and networking. Our rebates and incentives for partners willing to set up new POCs have increased by up to 2.5 times. In addition, we have several new benefits for partners who are willing to invest more to move up the partnership levels. For example, an HP Platinum partner could potentially earn 25-50 percent more through rebates than a Gold partner. As a result of these changes, we are beginning to see many partners invest more to graduate their partnership levels. Another investment we are making is in doubling market development funds (MDFs) for certain levels of partners especially for new technologies and new opportunities. Platinum partners will see their MDFs doubling, giving them that extra mileage to reach more enterprise customers. Also, the time-frame to utilize the MDFs has been increased from three months to six for several programs. Essentially, for a partner who has stacked up all relevant HP certifications, achieved a Platinum status, and sells across our portfolio, there is no maximum cap on how much he can earn.

Have you revamped the partner advisory councils? While the number of partners still remains around 20, we have increased the time we are spending with our advisory council members and are involving them in geography-specific strategies.

HP is facing stiff competition in the blade server market. How has your server business grown over the past year? According to IDC, globally, for the past decade QoQ, HP is the No 1 in worldwide server shipments. We are also the market share leaders in India for x86 server shipments. The server market is transitioning worldwide, and HP has been the fastest among all server vendors to introduce

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channel chief new product lines for emerging opportunities such as high density hyperscale servers or low power solutions. Our hyperscale high density servers based on Project Moonshot are already selling through partners in the country, and HP has trained around 25 partners to take such solutions to market. We have also revamped the entire Proliant range. Globally, according to IDC again, over the past couple of years HP has shipped 2.6 times as many blades as Cisco, 2.4 times as many as IBM, and 3.8 times as many as Dell. We have a 43.6 percent revenue share, and have over the past decade shipped more blade servers than the next three competitors put together.

Some say that IBM, which has been a late entrant with Pure Systems, has gained more momentum than HP in the converged infrastructure space. I do not have third-party figures to share on our market leadership with converged infrastructure. You need to remember that HP’s converged infrastructure is a more than three-year-old architecture which has matured over that period, and that it is the most robust offering in the space with a wide solution stack. Partners have tremendous confidence in our platform. With the new revamped PartnerOne program we have introduced new certifications around converged infrastructure that will help channels to earn more.

What about your enterprise storage strategies? In India, as per the Q32013 IDC External Disk Storage Systems Tracker, HP has gained 3 percentage points of market share as compared to the same quarter last year with a market share of 15.9 percent against 12.9 percent in Q32012. We have successfully integrated our entire 3Par product line, and today we are offering the most compelling storage product line, especially on flash optimized storage. For partners we have introduced several new certifications around both products and

“We have doubled the MDFs provided to partners. Also, the time-frame to utilize their MDFs has been increased from three to six months for several programs” technologies; this will help us to gain more market share and grow our partner-led storage business.

You are still lagging in networking. Unlike servers, where we have been a market leader for long, and storage, where we are among the market leaders, in networking we are dominated by the competition. However, we see this as the biggest opportunity over the next 12 months. Today, with our technology leadership in softwaredefined networking, HP is the best positioned to bridge the gap. Our revamped partner program gives our existing channel partners the biggest reason to invest in networking specializations because these partners will earn the maximum rebates.

What is your outlook for 2014? What can channels expect? Our key goal in the immediate future is to educate channels on the benefits of the new PartnerOne program, and empower them to take maximum advantage. The key message will be around the need to upgrade our partners’ capabilities and skills. It is also important for partners to understand the benefits of selling the entire HP portfolio. Besides, we are trying to increase the number of Silver partners. At present there are several partners who are buying from our volume partners because they do not get the necessary credit from tier-1 distribution. We are working on bringing them under PartnerOne so that they can grow faster with HP. n

Consistent Credible Clear Competent Compassionate Communicative CRN Creative CRN – the 8th C of Channel Marketing

www.crn.in 12

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special focus Empowering

SMBs

From using standard enterprise applications like ERP to using emerging technologies such as cloud, the technology appetite of Indian SMBs is becoming bigger in scale. Let’s see how IT is enabling SMBs to scale new heights n Jasmine Kohli & Srikanth RP

fleet maintenance, which was largely outsourced to n an extremely competitive environment, Indian SMBs local vendors with a manual process of analyzing and are leveraging technology extensively to improve their validating the work. To achieve its objective, the firm operational efficiencies and competitiveness. Not chose an ERP solution from SAP and installed GPS surprisingly, market research firm, Zinnov, estimates that devices on each truck. IT adoption in the SMB segment is growing at 15 percent Today, real-time vehicle data made available through and is expected to reach $15 billion by 2015. SAP is helping Varun Beverages find more ways to save With global aspirations, Indian SMBs are actively money in its fleet operations. The supply chain team taking the help of IT to put in the right processes and knows the exact distance traveled by each truck’s delivery systems in place, so that they can scale quickly. Keeping run, which has eliminated the overpaying of contract this objective in mind, many Indian companies are drivers. And by monitoring key vehicle parameters like implementing ERP. tire life, critical parts, and per-vehicle maintenance A case in point is Avon Cycles, India’s largest bicycle costs, the company is reining in excess repair spending. exporter. As the firm started growing, it realized the The fleet management solution also gives the bottler the importance of integrating different business processes reliable and timely reporting that fleet managers need and systems and information sharing. Accordingly, the to make the right decisions about reducing costs. For firm chose an ERP solution from SAP to introduce an example, they know which trucks should be retired and integrated information system to capture all the key when to acquire new ones. So far, the solution has helped processes. Today, the firm’s procurement-to-cash cycle the bottler reduce fuel costs by 12 percent and tire costs costs have reduced due to greater sensitivity to demand by 5 percent. Varun Beverages also expects a 15 percent and supply. Similarly, the firm’s inventory and operating reduction in maintenance costs compared to the year costs have decreased using monitoring tools. Onkar Singh before the implementation of ERP. Pahwa, Managing Director, Avon Cycles, believes that the solution has increased operational visibility, led to major efficiencies and provided a flexible platform for growth. Roots of virtualization Similarly, Heubach India, uses a pre-configured verIn line with their business needs, Indian SMBs are sion of SAP ERP that has been created for chemical manuinvesting actively in servers for line of business facturers. The solution has helped improve monitoring applications such as CRM, ERP and analytics. Market and control over key processes such as purchasing, sales, research firm, AMI Partners, states that Indian SMBs production, inventory control, supply chain management, operating in the manufacturing and IT-ITeS space and financials. This has led to a 15 percent reduction in continue to be on the watchlist of major server vendors inventory, which has cut costs substantially. It has also as they are expected to fuel the demand for servers. improved control over accounts Verticals such as manufacturing receivable, contributing to an 85 are striving for automation and Indian SMBs step up percent reduction in month-end to increase productivity across technology adoption closing times. the entire value chain. While l IT adoption in SMB segment is growing at Automation has become smaller SMBs are laggards in 15 percent and expected to reach $15 billion critical for Indian SMBs and technology adoption, larger SMBs by 2015 this is visible in every possible are now in the consolidation function. Varun Beverages, India’s mode. Some SMBs are hence l Expenditures on cloud-computing within India largest Pepsi bottler that relies looking at virtualization and server SMB ICT portfolio comprise almost 10 percent on a fleet of over 1,000 trucks consolidation to reduce their TCO. currently and are predicted to increase by a to deliver its services, wanted A case in point is E-Meditek CAGR of 23 percent over the next five years to know precise details about TPA, one of India’s leading Third l Professional services, is the most mature each truck’s operation, including Party Administrators (TPA). Over vertical for technology adoption, led by the need distances traveled, fuel consumed, 7 million registered members trust to grow the business, scale up and expand and brake usage. The company and depend on E-Meditek for the Source: Zinnov and AMI Partners also wanted better insights into speedy processing of their medical

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special focus technology to grow in accordance claims. E-Meditek has a strong Tech-savvy SMBs gaining with the growth in our business. relationship with 24 insurers, over competitive edge This ruled out huge investments 10,000 health providers and a l Over the past 3 years IT-enabled SMBs grew in infrastructure at the initial host of partners and international revenues 15 percentage points faster compared stages of the business. Also, we alliances. The firm’s main concern to SMBs that use less technology. believed that it made more sense was maintaining and managing l Tech-savvy SMBs created more new jobs over to invest resources on our core the 40 stand-alone servers at the past three years than SMBs using little goal of software development and its Gurgaon data center. These technology not on hardware infrastructure servers host a number of business l If more SMBs in India adopted the latest IT tools and associated maintenance,” critical applications including there is potential for SMB revenue to grow by states Satish Mani, CTO, a 24x7 cashless processing $56 billion and create 1.1 million new jobs Engineering Leadership, ZOVI. service for insurance companies. Source: The Boston Consulting Group In terms of tangible benefits, Consequently, any downtime of using AWS has helped ZOVI any of these servers would result avoid spending $1 million in initial capital expenses in their processes grinding to a halt. To address this issue, for hardware and saved $200,000 of annual operating the firm decided to virtualize its servers and zeroed in expenses. Additionally, ZOVI was able to scale on VMWare as the solution provider. Today, over 97 dramatically from 50 visitors to 100,000 visitors per day percent of the firm’s critical applications are virtualized. in a matter of minutes without any of its internal team’s Virtualization has allowed E-Meditek to consolidate its 40 intervention. physical servers down to just 4 physical servers, which Startup eDreams Edusoft which delivers Software-as-ahas resulted in savings in costs and data center space. Service solution for students, is another example of a firm, From a hardware point of view, the firm has realized which has leveraged the immense potential of the cloud. savings of more than 50 percent in provisioning new The firm has developed what it calls the world’s first servers over a year. intelligent and adaptive personal tutor Funtoot for K-12 education. The solution is implemented using a hybrid Leapfrogging to cloud cloud solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 The cloud is tailor made for SMBs as it allows them and the Windows Azure platform. to deploy solutions quickly without a huge capital “Originally we wanted to offer Funtoot on a public investment. According to AMI, expenditures on cloud cloud, which could be accessed through the Internet computing within India SMB ICT portfolio are on the rise. either in school or at home. But, in emerging markets These expenditures comprise almost 10 percent currently such as India, high bandwidth for Internet accessibility and are predicted to increase by a CAGR of 23 percent is still not same as in the West.” states Suryaprakash over the next five years. Konanuru, CTO, eDreams Edusoft. The decision was thus Vserv.mobi, a leading global mobile advertising made to set up a private cloud in schools using Microsoft network for app developers, publishers and advertisers, SQL Server. At home, kids access Funtoot through the is a perfect example of how a fast growing company Windows Azure public cloud. To offer this continuity, can leverage the cloud. The firm has chosen Amazon the data in the private cloud is bi-directionally Web Services as its cloud provider. “As we started our synchronized with that in the public cloud on a daily operations in India, the AWS cloud enabled us to swiftly basis using the SQLSync. This is to ensure that kids can expand our global business and scale it up rapidly. Today, work seamlessly at school or at home. Today, more than we serve 31 billion ad requests to millions of consumers 25,000 plus kids across dozens of schools in India are across more than 150 countries,” states Ashay Padwal, using the product. CTO and Co-founder, on how the cloud has enabled his Engineering firm, Elecon, uses a cloud-based solution firm to expand quickly. from Salesforce.com to standardize the management of With the option of using technology on a pay-persales and service requests. Today, the firm has improved use model, most SMBs find the cloud option extremely its sales management coupled with better servicing. attractive. ZOVI, a firm which designs and manufactures Service response time has reduced to five days from 10. apparel and accessories, attributes its ability to decrease Another startup, HIKE, which has a free messaging its time-to-market to the cloud. “Based on past experience, app, attributes the role of the cloud as strategic. “As a we were very clear that we needed our infrastructure and

“Cloud has enabled us to expand our global business and scale it up rapidly. Today, we serve 31 billion ad requests to millions of consumers in more than 150 countries”

“We chose cloud to save huge investments in infrastructure at the initial stages. It made sense to invest on our core goal of software development”

Ashay Padwal

Satish Mani

CTO and Co-founder, Vserv.mobi

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CTO, Engineering Leadership, ZOVI

special focus How SMbs ARE BENEFITING FROM TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION Heubach India

By using a pre-configured version of SAP ERP, the company has registered a 15 percent reduction in inventory, which has cut costs substantially. It has also improved control over accounts receivable, contributing to an 85 percent reduction in month-end closing times.

By adopting virtualization, the company was able to consolidate its 40 physical servers down to just 4 physical servers, which has resulted in savings in costs and data center space. From a hardware point of view, the firm has realized savings of more than 50 percent in provisioning new servers over a year.

E-Meditek TPA

ZOVI

By adopting cloud, ZOVI was able to avoid spending of $1 million in initial capital expenses for hardware and saved $200,000 of annual operating expenses. Additionally, ZOVI was able to scale dramatically from 50 visitors to 100,000 visitors per day in a matter of minutes without any of its internal team’s intervention.

startup, cloud has enabled us to ramp-up very quickly and seamlessly, especially given the unpredictability involved in our growth along with the scarcity of time and resources spent on IT. AWS gives us the ability to run quickly. My team does not have to spend too much time in managing the infrastructure and their time can be directed towards developing newer features and driving innovation,” states Kavin Bharti Mittal, Head, Product and Strategy, Bharti SoftBank (BSB). SMBs are also actively investing in cloud-based disaster recovery solutions. For example, Servion Global Solutions, a customer interaction management (CIM) solutions firm; Synthite Industries, a manufacturer of natural products and Luminous, a power backup solution provider, have gone in for a cloud-based DR service from IBM.

Outsourcing set to accelerate in SMBs Most SMBs do not have a formal IT team in place. In most

“As a startup, cloud has enabled us to ramp-up very quickly, especially given the unpredictability of our growth along with the scarcity of time spent on IT” Kavin Bharti Mittal

Head, Product and Strategy, BSB

cases, partners or system integrators play a crucial role in the decision making process of SMBs. Many SMBs hence actively consider outsourcing as a way to improve their competitiveness using IT. Mobile value added services player, RockeTalk, for instance, has outsourced its IT infrastructure to Netmagic. “As we are a growing company, we plan our capacity on a need basis. With Netmagic, we can provision for spikes in business by adding new servers on demand and decommission them when not required,” says Vimal Gupta, Head of Technology, Operations, RockeTalk. Similarly, Mobile2Win, a firm in the mobile advertising space, has partnered with Netmagic. After partnering with Netmagic, Mobile2Win has stopped facing the constant outages that were severely impacting its business. 24x7 monitoring and management through the hosting providers’ Network Operations Center (NOC) ensured high uptime and performance levels, helping Mobile2Win improve customer satisfaction. With cheaper and more efficient technology options in the form of technologies such as virtualization and cloud, Indian SMBs today have greater choice in automating their processes. Given the fact that there are about 50 million SMBs in India across different industry verticals, even if a small percentage of SMBs accelerate their path of technology adoption, the transformational effect on India’s GDP would be huge. n Courtesy: www.informationweek.in

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cover story

The growing shift among corporates toward an asset-light, asset-right mindset is creating opportunities for partners who can offer various IT management services on an opex model n RAMDAS S and Sonal desai

or almost half a decade IT experts and the Indian IT channel have been advocating the need for cultivating a business that sells and delivers technology services on a recurring revenue basis. The reason is the predictability which repeat revenue brings to the business. For an MSP the internal business dynamics are also changing. High inflation and growing operational costs have upset business calculations and the traditional approach to the services business. Also affecting services revenue is the need for specialization in delivering services on demand and as per quantifiable SLAs. “SMBs and enterprises are gradually recovering from the impact of economic slowdown, and hence are working on bottleneck IT budgets which in turn is persuading them for IT managed service adoption,” agrees Kalyan Banga, Head, Research, RS Market Research Solutions.

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Further trends such as cloud computing, mobility and the consumerization of IT, alongwith the acceptance of opex-based business models with demonstrable ROIs are influencing decisions around procuring managed services. In the quest for such services revenue, many partners have tried to build their managed services portfolio over the past few years. Banga says, “Managed services such as security, data center, networking, monitoring and management are the most popular. However, in the next two years, we see cloud-based managed services would grow the fastest at a CAGR of around 45 percent, followed by remote services and on-premise at 24 percent and 21 percent respectively.” Another trend driving managed services is the infrastructure managed services projects outsourced by large multinationals to Indian service providers. “The global infrastructure managed services market has been

cover story “Businesses are recovering from the impact of economic slowdown, and are working on bottleneck IT budgets which is persuading them to opt for managed services”

“When costing of managed services is based on what we perceive the customer will pay, or what are our costs, we are bound to get the maths wrong”

Kalyan Banga

Kshitij Kotak

Head, Research, RS Market Research Solutions

CEO, Fortune Grecells

growing at around 8 -10 percent per annum. Presently the Indian service provider delivers services worth about $4 billion,” says M Balakrishnan, CEO, 3i Infotech. Ashok Kumar ER, Lead, Enterprise Services & Sales, Cisco, India & Saarc, explains how partners can make money in managed services. He says, “For every dollar you make on product sale, you earn 3 dollars in services, and the the services revenues multiplies 5 times in managed services.” However, with opportunities managed services has its own set of challenges. Many partners who joined the managed services fray are struggling with the cost equations and often wonder whether they are making enough margins to sustain the business. “We were beginning to question the meaning of the term managed service. The definition of managed services has moved away from typical asset management, RIMs, FMS and reactive trouble shooting to proactive management. A partner should therefore be prepared for a role-change toward being a solutionsprovider even in managed services environments. The ROI and TCO discussions now happen at the CXO level and you need to be prepared with facts and figures,” Sudarsan Ranganathan, CEO, Veeras Infotek, Chennai. Apart from the need to specialize and choose the battles they need to fight in the services zone, a fundamental challenge which most channel partners are discovering is the costing model. Says Kshitij Kotak, CEO, Fortune Grecells, “We are doing the costing wrong. When we base it on either what we perceive the customer will pay or what we feel are our costs we are bound to get the maths wrong somewhere.” Ranganathan agrees, and says that over the past year or so he has been working on a business model that would be acceptable to customers. “I don’t think there exists a simple mathematical equation, so we must stop over-simplifying the models of costing and quoting for the managed services business. We have to figure out the cost of down-times, data losses and compliance defaults for the customer, and then bargain for a healthy

fraction of those costs as the cost of managed services. At least the discussion needs to start with that.” As service providers add or transition to managed services they face significant challenges in terms of operational structure and efficiency. Team restructuring—including hiring, retraining and the development of a new type of compensation—needs to be discussed by the service provider. In addition, a number of IT vendors want to either share revenue or enable partners to deliver managed services. Many enterprises are not betting on a single service provider but are considering hiring specialists for specific functions. “We have customers who outsource break-fix to one vendor while RIMS is handled by another. We consult on managing cloud services especially on the Azure platform, and outsource the managed services pie to our strategic partners such as MM9,” says Sunny Sharma, CEO, Foetron, Delhi. A study by MSPMentor of over 100 organizations in the US also suggests that CIOs are demanding specialists to solve specific problems. While they would still like to be able to hold one entity responsible, the chances are that MSPs who are unable to adapt to the specific needs of customers will be left behind. In the next few years the MSP community will see an evolution toward more profitable business models as they keep bettering their processes. Compliance with regulatory and operational risk requirements are leading customers to look more closely at the integrity of outsourcing service providers and to demand strong service level agreements. Says KV Jagannath, CEO, Choice Solutions, Hyderabad, “We entered the automated managed service (AMS) business in 2009. It has taken us four years to understand that AMS is all about increasing your own efficiency first.” Here we look at eight managed services opportunities which partners have started targeting. Some of these opportunities are fairly nascent while others are mature. All are still evolving. n

“We have to work out the cost of customer’s down-time, data loss and compliance defaults, and then bargain a healthy fraction of that, as the price of managed services”

“For every dollar you make on product sale, you earn 3 dollars in services, and the the services revenues multiplies 5 times in managed services” Ashok Kumar ER

Sudarsan Ranganathan

Lead, Enterprise Services & Sales, Cisco

CEO, Veeras Infotek

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cover story Managed Security Services

Managed Print Services

he functions of managed security services (MSS) include round-the-clock monitoring and managing of intrusion detection systems and firewalls, overseeing patch management and upgrades, performing security assessments and security audits, and responding to emergencies under tight SLAs. Frost & Sullivan’s analysis of the Asia Pacific MSS market in 2012 found that the market earned revenue of $1.66 billion in 2012 and estimated this to reach $5.34 billion by 2019. “Security is the most complex piece in the managed services stack. Many companies, despite investing in the best of security solutions, are keen to outsource the management of their security infrastructure to others,” remarks Rajesh Maurya, Country Manager, Fortinet, India & Saarc. For many partners MSS is a niche business. Informs Satheesh Nair, Director, Unified Stickman, “We are focused on penetration testing, security and compliance auditing.” Stickman has over 70 customers. Delhi-based ACPL Systems sees two types of customers. The first, after buying the network security hardware and software, is keen to outsource security management. “Most customers do not want to invest in manpower. They prefer to outsource everything including end-point security, virus scans, monitoring and SIEM,” notes Vishal Bindra, CEO, ACPL. He says the second lot prefers to outsource the management of specialized security services. “We have set up a security operations center in Gurgaon and have signed five enterprise customers for managed data leak prevention services.” Bindra sees increased traction for Web security and advanced persistent threat (APT) services in the days ahead. He informs that over the past year while 60 customers have signed up for MSS, 20 have opted for DLP and APT. Nair notes that while the services offered were initially on a project basis, many customers are now willing to sign contracts on a managed services model where they are ready to pay per incident for round-theyear support and periodic audits. While many services are technically single-occasion services, Nair says that more customers are signing up for niche services in an outsourced model. “Monitoring event logs not for intrusions but for change management is a service that identifies changes to a system which violate a formal security policy. We are now offering this as a managed service,” Nair adds. n

“We have set up a security operations center in Gurgaon and have signed five enterprise customers for managed data leak prevention services”

“We guarantee 30 percent savings on MPS, and have signed 3-5 year contracts with many of our large customers. MPS contributed `1.5 crore to our topline in FY2013-14”

Vishal Bindra

Jayessh Mehta

CEO, ACPL systems

anaged print services (MPS) involve customers outsourcing their print requirements. The Indian market is estimated to be worth `500 crore in 2013. Key segments adopting MPS include BFSI, IT-ITeS, manufacturing and government. HP India recently launched a partner-led MPS business initiative. Says Nitin Hiranandani, Director, Printing and Personal Systems (PPS) Group, HP India, “Partners can provide supplies, consumables and software-based services while the customer owns the hardware. Or partners can buy hardware through HP Financial Services and offer it to customers on base charges per month on hardware and click charges on actuals.” Jayyesh Mehta, MD, Future Businesstech, Bengaluru, has 30 enterprise customers for its MPS. “We guarantee 30 percent savings on MPS as compared to traditional printing costs, and our customers have signed 3-5 year contracts with us. This has increased our recurring MPS revenue in FY2013-14 to `1.5 crore out of the `10 crore we clocked for our printing and imaging business.” Rates per page for an MPS vendor depend on the printer, print volumes and print quality. “On an average, a black-and-white print costs from 42 paise to `1.10 plus the cost of paper. We charge a rental which is approximately the cost of the printer divided by 36 if the customer does not want to own the printer,” says Shivram Iyer, CEO, Dixit Infotech, Mumbai. According to Mehta, partners can offer additional services such as reporting, security and forecasting print requirements. Partners reveal that the vendor-driven MPS business offers margins of less than 15 percent. Additional costs include the cost of standby printers. Some resellers say that while it’s riskier, investing in one’s own printers by buying second-hand or refurbished printers and re-manufactured cartridges makes more business sense. “While costing 30-40 percent less per print, re-manufactured cartridges provide similar yields. Besides, heavy duty printers which are refurbished are 10-20 percent cheaper than new printers, and give ROI on hardware investments in 4-6 months,” says Hari Nair, CEO, ER3 Solutions, Bengaluru. He estimates that the ROI on running an MPS business on new printers is typically 18 months. However, if customers adhere to minimum print requirements the margins can be as high as 30 percent. n

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cover story Managed Storage & Backup

Managed Data Center Services

anaged storage services are one of the fastestgrowing among all managed services categories. Customers are already signing annual contracts to manage and administer in-house primary storage, while several partners are offering managed backup, de-duplication and DR services on innovative payment models. “While the basic support and warranty come free with all our products, customers are relying on our channels to avail managed services for optimizing, monitoring and managing their storage as value-added outsourced services,” says Krithiwas Neelakantan, Director, Channels & Alliances, NetApp India. Adds Ratnakar Kanchan, Director, Lauren Information Technologies, Mumbai, “We are currently working with two large enterprise customers. We provide them with a private Dropbox-like facility which is being used as a private cloud to host their applications. The pricing is per usage or a one-time fee.” Many partners say that SLA-driven managed storage services revenue is more than 10 percent of their hardware revenue. Mumbai-based VDA Infosolutions sees DR-as-aService as a big opportunity. “We are working with eight customers who, after implementing their primary storage, asked for a DR set-up but were keen on a payper-use model,” says Deepak Jadhav, Director, VDA. However, the maximum traction is around backup and archival services which are being offered on both an on-premise and software-as-a-service model. Delhi-based Ace Data Devices has been offering a backup and restore product, and has signed up more than 200 customers over the last four years. Explains Neeraj Mediratta, CEO, Ace, “This is an SLA-driven solution designed to free IT administrators from the challenges of managing agents, backup schedules and policies. We are offering flexible pricing which is based on the amount of data you want to store and retrieve.” Both Symantec and IBM have rolled out their managed back-up services with a partner transfer price which allows channels to resell the services. “We have new pricing models which allow a partner to build a back-up- or archival-as-a-service business. You can put up a POC with our free entry-level DXi V1000, a virtual appliance that supports up to 15 TB of de-duplication,” says R Guna Sekaran, Country Manager, Quantum India. n

“We are working with eight customers who, after implementing their primary storage, asked for a DR set-up but were keen on a pay-per-use model”

he managed data center services market includes outsourced post-deployment support and managed hosting. While there are no precise research agency numbers, industry estimates potential business worth `300 crore for tier-2 and smaller systems integrators (SIs) during 2014. However, few partners provide end-to-end managed data center support. While many do not focus on supporting the physical side of the data center such as power and cooling, others find supporting applications a challenge. Bengaluru-based NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Technologies offers managed on-premise modular data centers for customers who are willing to sign a contract of 36 months, and also offers them an equated monthly payment option. “We have already signed up channel partners who are working with their customers to offer the solution as a value-added managed service,” says AS Rajgopal, MD, NxtGen. Informs Durganadh Venkata, Senior VP, Operations, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Hyderabad, “We have 7080 customers to whom we provide managed services. A majority of them have asked for our services to manage their data centers through our NOC.” According to Venkata, managed services around data centers account for around 10 percent of the company’s revenue. “We are focusing on customers with HPC set-ups because we have considerable experience in this business. We have clinched a couple of deals worth $50,000 per annum to manage HPC data centers.” A number of partners are eying the managed hosting market. “Many data centers offer co-location services to customers directly. But these customers require 24x7 monitoring of the servers and also need technical expertise to outsource,” says Rahul Meher, MD, Leon Computers, Pune. Partners say that customers are willing to pay up to three times the cost of co-location for the 24x7 monitoring and maintenance of application uptime. Hyderabad-based Choice Solutions sees a niche in managing power equipment in a data center. “Our experience of over two decades in the power business helps us to provide support to customers on the power side,” says KV Jagannath, CEO, Choice. Vendors are also launching new managed data center services. For instance, Schneider Electric IT Business recently commissioned a center of excellence that offers complete remote monitoring of physical IT infrastructure. n

“We provide managed infrastructure services to nearly 70 of our large customers. For a majority, we are also managing their data centers”

Deepak Jadhav

Durganadh Venkata

Director, VDA Infosolutions

Senior VP, Locuz Enterprise Solutions

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cover story Managed Cloud Services

Managed Network Services

anaged cloud services is an idea that’s gaining acceptance globally. According to a study by Infotrends in 2013, the independent managed cloud services market is estimated to be worth $1.7 billion for third-party services around Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service. While public cloud computing vendors such as Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft, Google and Red Hat offer virtual machines and platforms that can be scaled fast, customers require MSPs who can manage, monitor, migrate and provide on-demand services. Amazon and Rackspace follow a channel model which is targeted at such MSPs. “In our model customers transact directly with us, and rely on our partners for third-party services,” says Terry Wise, Director, Amazon Web Services, Partner Ecosystem. Partners explain that the business model is not really different from managing traditional infrastructure; the only difference is that unlike physical infrastructure the service provider relies on managing software APIs provided by the cloud vendor. Forty VMware partners are managing virtual private clouds for their customers. This is very similar to standard managed services, and in many cases standard monitoring and management tools fit in. “Many of our customers have started running some applications off the cloud. Since they are paying through an opex model, we are charging them either annually or monthly for supporting and managing the cloud instances,” informs Sandeep Vahi, CEO, Compton Computers, Delhi. Vahi has signed on 20 customers who are running their services on a public cloud where he provides managed cloud services. “We also have a few private cloud customers, but their requirements are not at all different from standard AMS-FMS contracts. On an average we charge 20 percent of the cloud utilization charges as service fees.” Chennai-based 24x7 Services is another partner which has moved to providing services on top of AWS. “Customers who do not want to invest in infrastructure are moving to the cloud. However, the cloud does not insulate you from IT management issues. We are migrating close to a dozen customers,” says L Ashok, CEO, 24x7. Skillsets are the key to success in managed cloud services. Vendors such as Amazon and Microsoft have already launched certification programs for professionals. n

“Many of our customers are running applications off the cloud. We are charging them annually or monthly for supporting and managing their cloud instances” Sandeep Vahi

CEO, Compton Computers

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arketsandMarkets estimates the global managed network market to grow from $29.47 billion in 2012 to $58.39 billion by 2018. According to industry estimates, India accounts for around 1.25 percent of the global market. Till a year back most large managed network services opportunities were handled by larger national and MNC SIs. However, with several mid-market companies expanding their networks, and several enterprise companies and telco providers looking for cost optimization, the opportunity for tier-2 channels has opened up. Explains Ashok Kumar ER, Lead, Enterprise Services & Sales, Cisco, India & Saarc, “The model works on a per port or per seat billing. Cisco currently has about 300 customers in India for managed services of whom 90 percent are partner-led. We have two gold and 11 silver tier-2 partners who are offering MSP services such as video and voice on the network.” Cisco is also offering MSP services as part of its Smart Care and Smart Total Care programs whereby it enables partners to offer remote infrastructure management of switches and routers. “We have managed services contracts with several of our Cisco customers. Apart from regular services such as monitoring, patch management and performance tuning, we also offer minor optimization services using the extended APIs that Cisco provides,” says AL Srinath, CEO, Shell Networks, Hyderabad. Kumar says that in the next 12 months Cisco plans to develop around 100 MSP partners. “We have been working with Juniper Networks to offer extended MSP support to our customers. We offer L1, L2 and L3 support on Juniper platforms,” informs Raunaq Singh, Senior Vice President, Targus Technologies, Delhi. Typically, remote infrastructure management services outside SLA-driven contracts are charged 8-11 percent of the value of the solution. Other managed services which partners offer are periodic auditing and generating reports which CIOs use for infrastructure planning and optimization. Partners disclose that such value-added services are charged at up to 16 percent of the solution. According to Sudhir Rao, CTO, Enterprise Services, HP India, “The key to success is certification not just in the product line but also in the service offered. Most customers expect partners to have ITIL-compliant workflows and processes in place.” n

“We have contracts with many customers where apart from monitoring, patch management and performance tuning, we also offer network optimization services” AL Srinath

CEO, Shell Networks

cover story Automated Managed Services

Managed Mobility Services

utomated managed services (AMS) has gone beyond the hype and is settling into an opportunity for channels to offer value-added infrastructure management services. According to estimates, less than two million endpoints are currently being managed using AMS technologies. Apart from Kaseya, vendors such as Solar Winds, ManageEngine, Microsoft, Sapphire and CA Technologies have stepped in for a slice of the AMS pie. The biggest challenge for partners is getting customers to appreciate the value which AMS brings. “Over the past few years, while the concept and technology have found acceptance, we have seen only a sub-set of partners succeeding with AMS. Those partners have gained who have used AMS to reduce operational costs in terms of manpower and the number of break-fix calls to the customer, or those who have used AMS to deliver better SLAs,” remarks Nanda Kumar, VP, Kaseya India. Kumar says that around 20 of the top Kaseya partners have grown their business over the past couple of years though he admits that a number of partners have not made a successful transition. Delhi-based Team Computers says that over the past 18 months almost 95 percent of the endpoints which were managed using FMS and AMC were migrated to AMS. Ranjan Chopra, MD, Team, explains, “We realized over a period of time that the margins from traditional break-and-fix models were non-existent or very thin. Using AMS we are able to deliver value to the customer.” Team manages over 40,000 endpoints. While some partners admit that they have not succeeded in delivering AMS services, Mumbai-based Ashtech Infotech signed on 3,500 more endpoints last year on a subscription model. “We are trying to deliver services using a hybrid model. Using AMS we will deliver proactive IT management. We offer on-premise manpower, remote management and on-demand services,” informs Mahesh Pawaskar, Head, Services, Ashtech. Ashtech charges its customers on a per user or per agent basis. The current rates per endpoint range from `1,500 to `4,200 depending on the SLA offered. Partners feel that customers are willing to pay a premium of about 15 percent if they are convinced that tighter SLAs can be delivered. n

umbai-based Compusoft has signed on two customers for managed mobility services. Informs Devesh Aggarwal, CEO, Compusoft, “We are managing the mobile devices and offering sales force and dealer management applications for 1,000 users across the two organizations. Normally, fees for such services range from `1,500 per dealer to `20,000 per dealer depending on the enterprise, the application being managed, and the complexities.” Another partner, Thane-based solutions provider Kaizen Infotech, which has developed a mobile application for Rotary Clubs, is charging `10,000 annually per club to maintain the data and related usage. “We have enabled more than 15 partners who are delivering managed mobility services to their customers. This includes ensuring that corporate applications are streamed securely into mobile devices owned by the corporate,” informs Kaushal Veluri, Director, Channels & Alliances, Citrix Systems. Says Ganesh Mahabala, Senior VP, ValuePoint Systems, Bengaluru, “Though we have been working to make inroads in this market since 2012, and have bagged a few orders from existing customers, we believe that we will really see exponential growth in mobile device management next year.” According to him, on an average, a mobile MSP can earn 50-150 percent more compared to supporting desktops. Meanwhile, Gartner believes that in the long run globally SIs will work with service providers and telco providers to help customers get their voice and data usage optimized. While it’s still early days, the industry estimates that close to 100,000 mobile devices are already managed by third-party vendors. Biren Selarka, CEO, Acma Computers, Mumbai, avers, “If it’s a C-level executive accessing email, downtime of even a few minutes is frowned upon. We have trained 24 people for our managed mobility practice, and are currently managing 2,300 mobile devices across many customers for services such as security application, remote device tracking and remote deletion of data.” Partners also note that software licenses to manage mobility devices are expensive. Explains Shafi Ahamed, Director, Sapphire IMS, “Unlike desktops where protocols are standard and there’s just one dominant operating system, in mobiles there are at least four significant platforms. What’s more, innovation is fairly rapid in mobiles.” n

“We realized that the margins from traditional break-and-fix models were non-existent or very thin. Using AMS we are able to deliver value to the customer”

“We today have 24 people trained for managed mobility practice, and are currently managing 2,300 mobile devices across multiple customers”

Ranjan Chopra

biren selarka

MD, Team Computers

CEO, Acma Computers

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role model Friends first, partners later

Childhood buddies, Jaimin Patel and Manoj Agarwal, Directors, E-Connect Solutions, have built an organization that has emerged as a leading provider of application solutions in the government sector n Amit Singh

hildhood buddies, Jaimin Patel and Manoj Agarwal, Directors, E-Connect Solutions, Udaipur, started their careers in different domains but eventually got together to build a joint business. The duo currently run an IT business which is highly regarded for software and application development especially for e-governance. The company has executed more than 100 e-governance projects on a turnkey basis for 200 different state government organizations. The projects included consulting, conceptualization, Web-based application development, data center infrastructure set-up and management, and facility management.

In the beginning Patel, a textile technology graduate from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, began his career with a textile company in 1986. “I wanted to establish a textile company and hence accumulated expertise in sales and business management working with a textile firm for 18 months. However, the plan to start my own firm didn’t materialize due to financial issues.” Meanwhile, Agarwal, a computer graduate who had just shut his TV manufacturing unit, was scouting for other options. “Jaimin and I collaborated and formed Tayal Software Consultancy Services (TSCS) as a software and application development company in 1989. Our first customer was the cosmetics unit of Bajaj for which we developed the accounting software and MIS to streamline its dealer management process, for `40,000,” he recalls. “After the deployment at Bajaj we acquired many mid-market and small customers through referrals,” says Patel. “It was a kind of concept selling because awareness was too low at that time. We educated customers on the benefits of automating processes such as accounting and inventory management.” By 1992, TSCS saw the demand for integrating hardware with software applications to provide end-toend solutions. It tied up with an Indore-based company, Mathadox and PCS. TSCS then bagged an order from JK Tyres for accounting, supply chain and MIS automation. “At the same time we developed applications for drug distribution management for pharma companies, and

“We have provided our e-municipality ERP to 184 corporations across Rajasthan. There is still a `300 crore opportunity for implementation in the remaining municipalities” 22

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Jaimin Patel and Manoj Agarwal

FMCG sales and distribution management,” says Agarwal. The company increased its portfolio by partnering with Compaq in 1993. “We gained skills for data center and server room establishments, and entered networking in partnership with D-Link in 1996. We then started bagging large solutions projects,” recalls Patel. In 1997 the company partnered with L&T’s Control & Automation Division. “We participated in large SCADA projects as their IT partners, and collaborated from presales to execution to maintenance. We executed a large project for a pipeline network designing and control room establishment for the Department of Mines & Geology, Rajasthan. We executed similar projects for IOCL, GAIL and ONGC,” shares Patel. It was in 2000 that the company bagged its first overseas project. Informs Agarwal, “We signed on Rockwell and executed a building management solution in Albania.” Meanwhile, TSCS renewed its software focus in 2002 and saw lucrative opportunity in e-governance projects. “Somehow we got carried away with the SI business and lost focus on new software development,” says Agarwal. “The hardware business gives you a high, but we soon realized that a hardware focus will not give us the required margins.” Over the next 3-4 years it developed separate ERPs for excise and revenue management, and e-municipality. The renewed focus bore fruit in 2003 as the company implemented an excise revenue management system for the Rajasthan Excise Department in a project worth `5.35 crore. Encouraged by the positive response, TSCS implemented similar solutions for Bihar, Punjab and Uttarakhand for deals ranging from `2.5 crore to `4 crore. In 2004 the duo formed E-Connect which took over the operations of TSCS. It deployed the e-municipality

Role model 1989

Formed TSCS as a software applications development firm

1992

MILESTONES

Partnered with Mathadox and PCS for end-to-end solutions

1997

solution in Rajasthan for centralized control of revenue and tax collection, trade licenses, processes for issuing birth and death certificates, etc. Informs Patel, “We have provided our e-municipality ERP to 184 municipal corporations across Rajasthan. There is still `300 crore opportunity for implementation in the remaining municipalities.” The company established a tier-2 data center and development center with investment of `10 crore in Udaipur to strengthen its e-governance offerings.

Increased SI focus; partnered with L&T’s Control & Automation Division Refocused on software development; entered the e-governance domain

In the current fiscal E-Connect also bagged projects worth `12 crore for the computerization and networking of 627 schools across Rajasthan. For `50 lakh it implemented a biometric real-time attendance system in the secretariat and all DM offices in the state. The company also entered the city surveillance domain and is currently executing a project worth `2 crore in Rajasthan.

Best practices

2012

2010

2004

2002

E-Connect regards its success in the software and e-governance domain as the fruit of persistent Current business hard work. “In most e-governance E-Connect grew 7 percent from Formed E-Connect which took projects officials do not have clarity `28.9 crore in FY2011-12 to `30.9 on their requirements. This is why crore in FY2012-13. Patel attributes over TSCS many e-governance projects do the growth to large applicationnot see daylight. We go beyond led e-governance projects and Invested `10 crore for a the scope of work and explain geographical expansion in Bihar and software development center the requirements right up to the Uttaranchal. processes, complexities and risks,” The company implemented a Entered cloud computing; explains Patel. revenue management system for the offered HRMS on the cloud Adds Agarwal, “We leverage our excise department in Uttarakhand DC which doubles as a POC. We to develop a licensee database, are able to modify solutions on-the-fly for the changing and generate online transport permits and excise passes requirements of customers in different domains. This across the supply chain in 2012. It also bagged a 5-year gives us an edge over competition—and more margins.” contract from the Bihar government to deploy a beverage supply chain management system. “Currently, our revenue management system is running across the excise Future plans departments in four states. We will start implementing E-Connect aims to close FY2013-14 with revenue of a similar project in Kerala, and another one in Daman,” `50 crore. The company is banking on e-governance discloses Patel. projects at the municipal corporation level. “We already E-Connect also implemented a district helpline system clocked more than `30 crore by Q32013 and have projects for UIT Ganganagar to enable citizens to raise queries and worth `20 crore in the pipeline,” discloses Patel. complaints through a helpline number and Web portal. Additionally, the company has plans for geographical In 2012 E-Connect decided to tap cloud computing, expansion. “We will expand to states like Goa, Kerala and developed an HRMS solution on the cloud. It offered and Karnataka to offer turnkey excise and e-municipality its HRMS to Balco and Hindustan Zinc which has opted solutions to state governments,” Patel adds. for modules such as performance appraisal, pay-roll and “Our focus on the cloud will also increase,” informs a company-wide knowledge management system. L&T Agarwal. Dubai is one more customer for the HRMS on the cloud. The SCADA component also grew in 2012. Says Patel, On a personal note “For one such SCADA-led project worth `10 crore for Patel is highly inspired by the late Dhirubhai Ambani. South Eastern Coalfields, Chhattisgarh, we set up the “I don’t believe in taking short-cuts in life. Dhirubhai WAN, LAN and data center. Overseas, through L&T Dubai, inspired me that nothing is impossible if efforts are true. for `2.75 crore, we implemented a similar project for The scarcity of resources will not hinder growth provided Takreer, the Abu Dhabi oil refining company.” you have a focused approach and consistency.” Agarwal considers his brother-in-law as his role model. “He is a former senior IBM executive and I learned a lot about management and visualizing skills from him.” “Many government projects do not see Agarwal is fond of traveling and travels 2-3 times a year. daylight as there is lack of clarity among Patel participates in many social activities and is currently President of Gujarati Samaj, a local cell of the officials. We go beyond implementation Non-Resident Gujarati Foundation. He spends an hour and explain the requirements right up to the daily walking and jogging. For him, a dream holiday is a family vacation in Rio de Janeiro or Alaska. n processes, complexities and risks”

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tech focus Next-generation workstation HP’s latest Z620 workstation turns in stellar performance that makes it a great choice for video production, high performance computing and other compute-intensive applications n Edward J Correia

ewlett-Packard’s new Z620 workstation is as screamingly fast as it is easy to service. It is completely redesigned with a twosocket motherboard in a rackable mini-tower. Its top configuration delivers 24 cores across two Intel Xeon E5 2697v2 3.0 GHz CPUs. Its 12 DIMM slots can handle as much as 192 GB of 1,866 MHz eight-channel ECC DDR3 memory with four memory channels per CPU. A sixchannel SATA controller can address as much as 12 TB of internal storage and manage RAID 0, 1, 5 or 10 arrays. There is more to report on the latest workstation, including a reconfigured interior and a Thunderbolt option. Read on for details and performance results from CRN Test Center benchmarks.

Storage HP has boosted the Z620’s storage-controller options, adding an 8 port LSI 9717 4i4e SAS controller and LSI 9212 4i4 port SAS RAID card. That is on top of the motherboard’s Marvell SATA controller with six channels for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10, two of which can handle 6.0 Gb/s. For system and booting, the company this year uses Seagate Pro series SSDs instead of Micron. The test system also sported a pair of Hitachi 7200K 6.0 Gbps spinning drives in a RAID 5 array controlled by a LSI MegaRAID 9260 8i. Against this array, the Z620 turned in a sustained data transfer rate for sequential reads of almost 370 MB/s. Transaction and throughput performance were measured with IOmeter. For this test, peak performance was found with sequential 4K reads and a queue size of 48.

Thunderbolt too HP is among just a handful of vendors to fully embrace Intel’s new Thunderbolt spec, which defines a highspeed bus for video and storage. It included a sample of its Thunderbolt 2.0 PCIe card in the test system, and its performance was pretty good. The card delivered a sustained transfer rate of 280 MB/s with sequential reads of 32K, but its IOps was just 8K. By reducing packet size to 4K, testers were able to boost IOps to 70K and still achieve 275 MB/s, or 2.2 Gb/s. In drag-and-drop tests of file transfers, the drive delivered a transfer rate in

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excess of 3 Gb/s. HP’s Thunderbolt card is scheduled to begin shipping early next year.

IO chops To measure transaction processing, testers reconfigured IOmeter’s access specifications to use 512 byte packets. A peak sustained transaction performance of 153K IOps was observed with a transaction queue size of 64. Other I/O gear included in the base Z620 configuration includes dual gigabit Ethernet ports, four USB 3.0 ports—two front and two rear—and FireWire. Options include a 10 GbE NIC. For graphics, HP offers the Z620 equipped with an Nvidia Quadro K4000, K5000, 6000, Tesla C2075 and K20c models, or AMD’s FirePro W7000.

Geekbench This score was a bit of a head scratcher. Using the 64 bit version of Primate Labs’ Geekbench 2.3, the Z620 turned in a top score of 35,040. That is an extremely high score in its own right, but it falls well short of the 41,348 turned in by last year’s Z620 workstation, the fastest PC we have ever tested. That machine had slower processors (2.9 GHz) and slower memory (1,600 MHz), yet delivered a far higher Geekbench score.

The bottomline HP has kept much of what the CRN Test Center liked about prior versions of its venerable workstation, namely its ease of service. The lockable side panel is removed with the flip of a lever to expose processors, DIMM slots, storage, expansion cards, power supply and many other internal components that can be serviced without tools. As before, the second processor slot is implemented as a daughtercard— complete with memory and fan—but it is now far easier to remove and more precise to reinstall. The Z620’s internals truly are a masterpiece of engineering. Despite its anomalous Geekbench results, the latest Z620 workstation delivers outstanding performance benchmarks overall. This machine is built to be easy to service and upgrade and delivers consistent performance for video production, computer-aided design and any application that demands ultra-high performance from a small footprint PC. List prices start at $1,689 with a threeyear warranty. n

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channel buzz

n (L-R) Arnold Su, Distribution Manager, and Peter Chang,

Country Manager, Asus India, with Rajesh Goenka, VP, Sales and Marketing, Rashi Peripherals, conducting the lucky draw

Winners of Asus Festival Dhamaal Asus and Rashi Peripherals recently announced the lucky-draw winners of Asus Festival Dhamaal. Launched in October, the scheme was aimed at increasing social media engagement with partners. Partners had to Like the Rashi Peripherals Facebook page to be eligible for the lucky-draw. Vijayawada-based Moieen Computers & Laptops won an Asus notebook as the first prize, Bengalurubased Matrix Technologies won an Asus Fone Pad as the second prize and Nashik-based Nice Computers won an Asus Tab as the third prize. Said Peter Chan, Country Manager, Asus, “This was a campaign by Asus and Rashi to create strong social media engagement with our partners. Social media is a great medium for partners to share their feedback.” n

n Tadahiko Sumitani, MD, Konica Minolta India, adressing the partners during the launch in Chandigarh

Konica partners with Webnet Asia Konica Minolta India conducted an event in Chandigarh to announce the signing up of Webnet Asia, a unit of Jetage, as its volume partner for its range of A4 printers. Said Sanjeev Walia, Director, Webnet Asia, “Konica Minolta has many competitive products in the A4 printer category. We will work jointly to educate customers about the products’ price-performance and aim to gain good marketshare going forward.” Added Tadahiko Sumitani, Managing Director, Konica Minolta India, “All our products are based on cutting-edge technology, and Webnet Asia’s association with us is sure to go a long way.” n

ASIRT’s last Techday of 2013 ASIRT’s last Techday of 2013 saw a workshop by brand consultant Suneel Agarwal who highlighted how small partners can brand and differentiate themselves without spending money. He also gave examples of how small changes made by partners can improve customer experience. The event was sponsored by Fortune Grecells which showcased n Suneel Agarwal, Brand Consultant, its Blackbox Data conducting the workshop on brand Safe solutions differentiation for backup and recovery. Kshitij Kotak, CEO, spoke about the growing demand for backup and highlighted features of its products. On its part ASIRT announced some changes to the Gold Member program which it had announced earlier this year, and stressed on the need for partners to comply with the Gold Member guidelines. n

n (L-R) Ramakrishna, Business Head, Care IT Solutions, Amit

Gupta, Product Manager, Copier, Samsung, Dharmaraj B, MD, Ascent e-Digit Solutions, Hariharan S, MD, Care IT Solutions, Senthil Annamalai, DGM and J Prashant, Service Division, Samsung and Mutharasu KP, Chairman, Ascent e-Digit, launching the new Samsung A3 printers

Care promotes Samsung’s printers Along with its newly-appointed regional distributor Care IT Solutions, Samsung recently organized a channel event in Chennai to create awareness about its newly-launched A3 printers. Nearly 200 partners from across Tamil Nadu attended the event where the company shared its go-to-market strategy for the A3 printer portfolio. The new range was also displayed at the event. “We are happy to be appointed as the exclusive distributor for Samsung A3 printers. The company has aggressive plans for the new range and we have jointly planned an aggressive GTM for the same. Our aim is to give tough competition to the top players on the basis of the price-performance,” said S Hariharan, Managing Director, Care IT Solutions. n

To feature your company’s events in CRN, send write-ups with photographs to editor@ubmindia.com 26

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new products Asus Transformer Book Trio tablet

Buffalo Corporate Access Point

sus has launched its new Transformer Book Trio, a 11.6-inch convertible notebook tablet. The device is powered by an Intel 1.6 GHz Z2560 Atom processor. It has a 2 GB DDR2 and 16 GB of internal storage expandable up to 64 GB. It features a rear 5 MP camera and a front 720 p HD camera. For connectivity the Transformer comes with micro-USB and USB 2.0 ports. The tablet has a Li-Polymer 19 Wh battery. The CPU of the Transformer sits on the keyboard dock and runs on Windows Pro. It is powered by a fourth-generation 1.8 GHz Intel Core i7 4500U processor coupled with 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 500 GB HDD. The keyboard dock has a multi-touch touchpad and a backlit keyboard. The keyboard dock has a 33 Wh battery and provides up to 13 hours of battery life in Android mode and five hours in Windows 8 mode. It has Wi-Fi and BlueTooth 4.0 as connectivity options. The device is priced at an MRP of `98,099, and carries a 2-year warranty. n

uffalo has launched two new SKUs of Corporate Access Point—AirStation Pro WAPS-APG600H and AirStation Pro WAPS-AG300H for large network traffic environments such as offices and educational facilities. The AirStation Pro provides 802.11n speeds and coverage, with simultaneous operations on two concurrent bands of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies. While the WAPSAPG600H is auto switchable in both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, the WAPS-AG300H is manual switchable. Its integrated PoE allows the device to be powered without an AC for installation and placement even on high and drop ceilings and walls. Both devices allow administrators to create multiple SSIDs with different security pass-phrases for easy network segmentation and added security. The products’ wireless distribution system allows users to extend coverage by interconnecting multiple access points. Detachable antennas allow the addition of high gain antennas for longer ranges, wireless bridging or back-haul solutions. The devices come with an energy conservation feature that monitors the activity status of each port to reduce the total power consumed. While the WAPS-APG600H is priced at `30,000, the AG300H is priced at `25,000. They carry a 3-year warranty. n

iBall Slide 3G Q1035 tablet

Ball has expanded its tablet portfolio with the launch of the Slide 3G Q1035. The device features dual-SIM support with voice-calling. It runs on Android 4.2 and comes with a 10.1inch IPS HD display with a resolution of 1,280x800 p. It is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex A7 processor and 1 GB of RAM. The tablet sports an 8 MP rear camera with LED flash and a 2 MP front-facing camera. It includes 8 GB of built-in storage which is expandable up to 32 GB with a microSD card. The tablet packs a 6,000 mAh battery. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, BlueTooth, micro USB and 3G. The Q1035 is priced at an MRP of `17,999, and carries a 1-year warranty, n

Xolo Play Tegra Note tablet

olo recently launched its Play Tegra Note tablet that features a 7-inch HD IPS LCD with 1,280x800 p display. The device, powered by a 1.8 GHz Tegra 4 processor with a 72-core GeForce GPU and quadcore Cortex-A15 CPU runs on Android 4.2. It sports a 5 MP rear camera and a VGA frontfacing camera. The device comes with 16 GB of built-in storage which is expandable up to 32 GB via a microSD slot. The Tegra Note has front-facing stereo speakers with a bass-reflex port. The tablet can offer up to 10 hours of HD video playback. As connectivity options the Tegra Note has Wi-Fi and USB 4.0. The tablet is priced at an MRP of `17,999, and carries a 1-year warranty. n

The products featured here have not undergone any benchmarking or testing. The trailers contain information provided by vendors and distributors. To feature your company’s products in CRN, send write-ups with photos to editor@ubmindia.com

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shadow ram AAP inspires ADCTA’s tax compliance drive

nspired by the Aam Admi Party, the All Delhi Computer Traders Association (ADCTA) has vowed to make its members law abiding and tax compliant. As a step in this direction, the channel association recently met the local VAT commissioner and requested him to share a list of VAT defaulters from the IT community. “We want to to ensure that all our members do their business ethically,” informs Swarn Singh, Secretary, ADCTA. “Not only do we want to ensure that our members abide by law and pay their taxes honestly, we also want them not to trade with those suppliers who don’t pay taxes. We are on an education drive informing our members of the potential hassles of trading with tax defaulters.” Recently, ADCTA also met with the newly-elected Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, who has assured concrete steps in simplifying VAT compliance norms, so that traders are not hassled by officials. n

GET

Personal

“I’d like to control pollution, population and corruption” Vikas Chalke, Country Manager, Channel Sales, drives partner engagement at Propalms, a provider of application delivery solutions. Prior to Propalms, he worked with NeoAccel where he introduced channel business strategy at the regional level.

Vikas Chalke

If not in the IT industry: I have never thought of any other career option.

Biggest passions: Traveling and nature treks. Behind the wheel: Honda Civic. Gadget I can’t live without: A smartphone. Weekends are for: Being with loved ones, occasional long drives or trekking. Favorite holiday destination: Ladakh. Hate the most: Conflicts and corruption. Favorite movie: Gladiator. Favorite star: None. Role model: Sachin Tendulkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Shivaji Maharaj and Baba Amte. Ultimate ambition: To emerge as a role model for future executives in the IT industry. Wildest thing I have ever done: None. Thing I most want to do in life: Go on a world tour. If I became the PM: I would control the population, pollution and corruption in India. Celebrity I would like to spend a day with: Sachin Tendulkar. One person I would like to meet and why: Prakash Amte, son of Baba Amte, who has been working for the upliftment of tribals in Maharashtra. Deepest and darkest fear: Betrayal. n — CRN Network

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