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editorial
Recognizing best channel practices
W
e present the final edition of the Channel Champions 2013 survey which reveals the channel satisfaction and preference rankings across 14 commercial products and services categories. In the May 15 edition we had presented the survey findings for 11 IT components and consumer product categories. Together it’s a mammoth exercise for the CRN team, because, apart from the survey, we do a very large number of qualitative interviews with the partner respondents. This year, for the total of 25 product categories we featured across the two editions, we must have interviewed 600-700 partners who took the survey, asking them specifics about what they liked and what they didn’t like about their key principals’ channel strategies and engagement. The best part of doing this survey is when we receive compliments from partners who tell us that many vendors take the CRN Channel Champions survey rather seriously, take feedback from the findings, and
Volume 3, Issue 02
Managing Director Printer & Publisher Associate Publisher & Director Executive Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor Principal Correspondent Senior Correspondent
: : : : : : : :
Joji George Kailash Pandurang Shirodkar Anees Ahmed Dhaval Valia Ramdas S Sonal Desai Abhijeet Mukherjee (Mumbai) Amit Singh (Delhi)
Design : Deepjyoti Bhowmik Art Director Senior Visualiser : Yogesh Naik : Shailesh Vaidya Senior Graphic Designer Graphic Designer : Jinal Chheda, Sameer Surve Marketing : Samta Datta Marketing Head online Manager—Product Dev. & Mktg. : Viraj Mehta : Nilesh Mungekar Deputy Manager—Online Web Designer : Nitin Lahare : Aditi Kanade Sr. User Interface Designer Operations Head—Finance : Yogesh Mudras : Satyendra Mehra Director—Operations & Administration Management Services : Jagruti Kudalkar Sales bangalore Manager—Sales : Sudhir K sudhir.k@ubm.com (M) +91 9740776749
6
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improve their channel policies and strategies. In this year’s survey two vendors need a special mention—Cyberoam and Quick Heal. Both these Indian companies have done extremely well despite competition from large global players. They have delivered good technology products with consistent channel policies and engagement. While most MNC vendors have globally-defined programs and policies, these two companies have developed their own strategies which partners have rated as the most channel-friendly. Some of the large global players can learn from Cyberoam and Quick Heal how to consistently deliver on channel promise and commitment. We strongly believe that such surveys not only provide neutral feedback to vendors on what part of their channel-led GTM is working and what isn’t, but also offers them insight into what other vendors are doing in terms of programs and policies which are probably better than theirs, thus allowing them to adopt the best practices. Do let us know your views on this year’s Channel Champions survey. n E-mail me at dhaval.valia@ubm.com
Kangkan Mahanta kangkan.mahanta@ubm.com (M) +91 8971232344 Delhi : Sanjay Khandelwal Senior Project Manager sanjay.khandelwal@ubm.com (M) +91 98117 64515
USA Huson International Media (West) Tiffany DeBie Tiffany.debie@husonmedia.com Tel +1 408 879 6666 Fax +1 408 879 6669
Rajeev Chauhan rajeev.chauhan@ubm.com (M) +91 9811820301 mumbai : Ranabir Das Manager—Sales ranabir.das@ubm.com (M) +91 9820097606
Huson International Media (East) Dan Manioci dan.manioci@husonmedia.com Tel +1 212 268 3344 Fax +1 212 268 3355
Japan Pacific Business (PBI) Shigenori Nagatomo nagatomo-pbi@gol.com Tel: +81 3366 16138 Fax: +81 3366 16139 South Korea Young Media Young Baek ymedia@chol.com Tel: +82 2227 34819 Fax: +82 2227 34866
EMEA Marvin Dalmeida Huson International Media marvin.dalmeida@ubm.com Gerry Rhoades Brown, gerry.rhoadesbrown@husonmedia.com Tel: +44 19325 64999 Fax: + 44 19325 64998 (M) +91 8898022365 production Important Production Manager : Prakash (Sanjay) Adsul Every effort has been taken to avoid errors or omissions in this magazine. In spite of this, errors may creep in. Logistics Any mistake, error or discrepancy noted may be brought to our notice Deputy Manager : Bajrang Shinde immediately. It is notified that neither the publisher, the editor or the seller will be responsible in respect of anything and the consequence of Subscriptions & Database anything done or omitted to be done by any person in reliance upon the Manager : Manoj Ambardekar content herein. manoj.ambardekar@ubm.com This disclaimer applies to all, whether subscriber to the magazine or not. For binding mistakes, misprints, missing pages, etc, the publisher’s Senior Executive : Deepanjali Chaurasia liability is limited to replacement within one month of purchase. deepa.chaurasia@ubm.com © All rights are reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Head Office All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts UBM India Pvt Ltd, 1st floor, 119, Sagar Tech Plaza - A, Andheri-Kurla Road, Saki Naka Junction, Andheri (E), Mumbai 400072, India and forums in Mumbai only. Tel: 022 6769 2400; Fax: 022 6769 2426 While care is taken prior to acceptance of advertising copy, it is not posPrinted and Published by Kailash Pandurang Shirodkar on behalf of UBM sible to verify its contents. UBM India Pvt Ltd. cannot be held responsible India Pvt Ltd, 6th floor, 615-617 Sagar Tech Plaza - A, Andheri-Kurla Road, for such contents, nor for any loss or damages incurred as a result of Saki Naka Junction, Andheri (E), Mumbai 400072, India. transactions with companies, associations or individuals advertising in its Executive Editor: Dhaval Valia newspapers or publications. We therefore Printed at Indigo Press (India) Pvt Ltd, Plot No 1c/716, recommend that readers make necessary inquiries before sending any Off Dadaji Konddeo Cross Road, Byculla (E), Mumbai 400027 monies or entering into any agreements with advertisers or otherwise RNI No. MAHENG/2011/39915 acting on an advertisement in any manner whatsoever.
Commercial PC
14
NETWORK SECURITY
16
Software Application
18
cloud computing
20
commercial UPS
24
INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT software
26
virtualization
28
THIN CLIENT
HP wins with all-round performance WORKGROUP PRINTER
HP sprints ahead again SERVER
IBM is back NETWORK STORAGE
NetApp makes it to the top networking
Cisco maintains status quo STRUCTURED CABLING
Digilink stays put client security
Quick Heal way ahead 8
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Cyberoam conquers all
Tally is on top again
Microsoft’s magic carpet
APC’s high five
Microsoft pips Kaseya
V for VMware
NComputing enthroned
30 32 34 35 36 37 38
methodology
Distinguishing the Channel Champions
T
he CRN Channel Champions survey is being conducted for the past 11 years in India and 22 years in the US. The main objective of the survey is to lend a voice to the channel’s perceptions and its experience in dealing with the vendors who drive its business. At the same time, the survey aims to provide vendors a neutral view of channel expectations and how well they are managing channels and helping them to grow. In the current edition we present the annual Channel Champions 2013 survey rankings for commercial product categories—products sold to SMBs and enterprises.
Survey methodology
The CRN Channel Champions for FY2012-13 survey was conducted through an online poll that ran from January 15 to February 25, 2013. For the commercial category, we polled
889 unique respondents across 128 cities. Overall we polled 5,030 vendor evaluations which means that each unique channel respondent who took the survey for the commercial category voted for an average of 5-6 different product categories from the 14 commercial products and services categories. In comparison, for the FY2011-12 survey we had received 3,522 vendor evaluations from 687 unique respondents across 85 cities. For each commercial product category, unique respondents voted their vendor preference and satisfaction on the following eight key parameters and 22 sub-criteria. Product availability: This included sub-criteria such as the regular availability of products, and whether a product was over- or under-distributed. In several commercial product categories products are delivered backto-back, hence we also captured the delivery lead-time for such products.
Channel Champions
10
Product Categories
FY2012-13 FY2011-12 Winners Winners
Commercial PC Workgroup Printer Server Network Storage Networking Structured Cabling Client Security Network Security Software Application Cloud Computing Commercial UPS Infrastructure Management Software Virtualization Thin Client
Hewlett-Packard Dell Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard IBM Hewlett-Packard NetApp EMC Cisco Cisco Digilink Digilink Quick Heal McAfee Cyberoam Fortinet Tally Microsoft Microsoft NA APC APC Microsoft Kaseya VMware VMware NComputing Hewlett-Packard
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We polled 889 unique respondents across 128 cities; overall we polled 5,030 vendor evaluations. For the FY2011-12 survey, we had received 3,522 vendor evaluations from 687 unique respondents across 85 cities Price performance: Included subcriteria such as product features, quality, reliability and price. For commercial products, special prices are decided by the size of the deal and the importance of the customer, hence we also factored in the special pricing offered by vendors which often makes or breaks a deal. Channel profitability: The overall profitability that partners could achieve while dealing with a particular vendor. This included the front-end margins offered and the backend incentives which partners could earn. Brand-pull & customer marketing: This criterion included the brand-pull enjoyed by vendors among endcustomers, and the local customer marketing promotions conducted by the companies to generate demand. Channel marketing & pre-sales support: This comprised parameters such as market development funds provided to partners for business development and generating demand, as well as channel schemes and incentives. Pre-sales support, which includes technical and sales enablement of partners, was also considered. Training & certification: This criterion
methodology
included regular sales and technology training provided, online training resources, product-specific training, and the value and effectiveness of vendor certification. Post-sales support: Had aspects like warranty policy, RMA turnaround and escalation mechanism, toll-free phone support, Web and email support. Channel policy & management: Respondents voted on parameters such as the fairness, transparency, swiftness of various channel processes, accessibility and responsiveness of channel managers.
Scoring
For each product category respondents were asked to vote for one of their top three vendors in terms of business dealings, and rate it on the eight key criteria and 22 subcriteria. The CRN Channel Champions survey questionnaire is open-ended, which means resellers are allowed to rate any vendor of their choice; we don’t compel respondents to choose vendors from a list of names. Vendors which received less than 10 percent of the total votes polled in a particular category were not considered eligible and were hence not included in the final ranking. For instance, in the server category, we received 504 unique votes from
Survey Demographics Total unique votes polled: 889
Total vendor evaluations: 5,030
East 11%
South 26%
Class C 23% West 36%
North 27%
Region
Class A 65%
Class B 12%
Type of City
504 unique channel organizations, hence any vendor which got less than 50 votes did not make it to the final rankings table. As a result, brands such as Cisco and Oracle failed to make the cut in the final rankings because they received less than 50 votes. Within the finalists, we arrived at the average scores for each vendor for each criterion. Under each main criterion, the scores of the sub-criteria were added and averaged to arrive at the overall criterion ranking. Individual criterion scores were added to arrive at the final score, and the final rankings were based on this overall score.
Non-Partner 31% Partner 69%
type of reseller
In plotting the survey results and arriving at the rankings we were ably helped by our knowledge partner, Aranca, a leading B2B research agency. Following this, the CRN editorial team embarked on a marathon exercise to conduct qualitative interviews with partners who took the survey. For every product category, the CRN editorial team conducted anywhere between 25-30 qualitative interviews to understand the voting pattern and get qualitative information about the strategies and policies of the finalist vendors. In all, the editorial team conducted close to 400 qualitative interviews. n
Consistent Credible Clear Competent Compassionate Communicative CRN Creative CRN – the 8th C of Channel Marketing
www.crn.in 12
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INDUSTRY LEADING COMPANIES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A PART OF
22-24 AUGUST 2013 THE LEELA, KOVALAM
Presented by
DON’T MISS TO MAKE YOUR MARK. Also witness the most coveted awards in the channel industry.
Presented by
To know about CRN Leadership Summit, log on to www.crn.in/lsummit For partnership opportunities: Anees Ahmed +91 9845032170 North: Sanjay Khandelwal +91 9811764515 | South: Kangkan Mahanta +91 89712 32344 West: Ranabir Das +91 98200 97606 | Marvin Dalmeida +91 88980 22365 Gold Partner
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commercial pc
HP wins with all-round performance
H
ewlett-Packard scored high on all parameters except channel profitability to win the 2013 Channel Champion crown. Lenovo came second largely on positive votes from SMB partners and non-partners even while its relationship partners gave it negative votes. Acer improved its channel preference with a vertical-focused strategy to come third. FY2011-12 winner Dell was pushed to the last position because it lost focus on the PC business and also because of the exit of some channel managers.
Hewlett-Packard
The PSG-IPG integration seems to have gone well for HP as far as improvement in channel preference is concerned. The company improved its scores on all parameters and was well ahead of its competitors. Most partners appreciated HP’s handling of the integration as it was smooth; besides, HP was clear
and regular in its communication, informing them about the changes in policies and people. Partners in Class B cities appreciated HP’s initiative to hold partner meets after the integration to explain the various changes and discuss product and market strategies. The integration has simplified the partners’ engagement since they no longer need to deal with multiple channel managers; this, respondents said, has improved decision-making and made the company more aggressive in the marketplace. A single channel manager handling both the portfolios helped them increase their printer business by offering value deals to customers. However, post-integration, the realignment of channel managers briefly created partner engagement issues. According to respondents, this happened because IPG managers who were now also handling the PC business didn’t know the channel policies and processes of the PC business and vice-versa.
Score Card Criteria
HP Lenovo Acer Dell
Product availability
99.5
99.2
97.8
96.8
Price performance
82.1
84.6
83.3
81.5
Channel profitability
71.4
75.4
75.0
71.8
Brand-pull & customer marketing
83.6
81.5
80.5
79.3
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
76.3
73.1
72.8
72.9
Training & certification
80.1
74.2
70.3
67.9
Post-sales support
80.5
77.9
76.6
82.2
Channel policy & management
83.9
79.2
75.9
74.3
Final Score
658.4 644.1 632.2 626.7 *Scores out of 800
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Respondents said this created delays and confusion in decision-making, and resulted in loss of opportunities. However, this problem was solved by the end of July 2012 after the managers were trained by HP in policies and processes. Respondents appreciated HP’s new rebate program launched in November 2012 whereby they got incentives even if they didn’t meet their overall targets. Several HP partners praised the introduction of a new incentive for partners who did consistent and linear business every quarter. They said that an additional 0.5 percent linearity incentive encouraged them to plan their business better. HP became stringent with user verification (UV) to ensure there was no leakage into the open market of products cleared for specialprice deals, and it made account managers responsible for any leakage of such products. While many respondents said that the stringent UV process resulted in delays in getting approvals, others opined that it was the right step because such malpractices were on the rise and negatively impacted the overall market health. On channel profitability HP scored the lowest. Respondents blamed it on partner over-capacity which resulted in multiple partners chasing the same customers.
Lenovo
Lenovo graduated to the second spot riding on its increased focus on SMB channels. The vendor topped on the price performance and channel profitability parameters. It updated its ThinkPad range twice during the year, and partners said that the brand-pull enjoyed by ThinkPad, especially among the CXO community, helped them to win orders. Lenovo also spruced up its B
series with aggressive price cuts. Respondents praised Lenovo’s increased aggressiveness on pricing for large and SMB deals which enabled them to win orders. Respondents also appreciated Lenovo’s focus on SMB partners as it ran several schemes for them during the year. They said that the SMB team, while being pro-active, never allowed channel inventory to pile up, and took aggressive calls on price-cuts to keep partners profitable; they also offered incentives on lower target achievements. However, the company’s scores were pulled down due to negative voting by many of its large relationship partners who expressed unhappiness over several policy decisions. The first instance happened in early 2012 when 20 relationship partners were penalized for selling in the open market, products cleared for price deals; their penalty was deducted from their rebates and incentives. The partners alleged that they were compelled to resort to such practices by Lenovo’s managers to meet targets. In Q1FY2012-13 Lenovo introduced a zero-rebate policy on SPC deals. It also reduced program incentives which resulted in dissatisfaction among the large partners who alleged that Lenovo was trying to make up for its loss in the ELCOT deal by cutting their margins. These partners also rued Lenovo’s decision in the first half of the fiscal to remove the regional partner managers aligned to them. Following this, all decisions were taken by a single national channel manager which led to a decrease in channel interaction and delayed approvals. However, following the partner uproar, in Q3FY2012-13 Lenovo agreed to resolve all issues and introduced quarterly review meets with its relationship partners in the presence of senior management. After taking partner feedback, in January 2013 Lenovo increased
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Commercial pc category: 757
South 24%
East 12%
West 38%
North 26%
Region
Class A 45%
Class B 22%
Non-Partner 34% Partner 66%
Type of City
rebates and incentives.
Acer
Beginning in 2012 Acer streamlined its product and channel teams, creating vertical-focused units to target opportunities in the government, PSU, education and BFSI sectors. Each vertical team was empowered to build its own strategies to win business. In addition, managers were prompt in providing price clearances which led to an increase in business. Acer continued to be priceaggressive in the PC market, offering the lowest prices among peers. It offered a 5-year warranty on several commercial models, which,
HP became stringent with user verification to ensure there was no leakage into the open market of products cleared for special-price deals. It made account managers responsible for such leakages
Class C 33%
type of reseller
respondents said, provided them an edge in selling more, especially to SMBs. Respondents highlighted Acer’s lack of an AIO range which resulted in losing a few deals. While Acer offers good rebates, respondents complained of significant delays in pay-outs. Respondents want Acer to introduce an automated deal registration mechanism.
Dell
Last fiscal’s winner Dell was pushed to the last position because the exit of several channel managers threw its channel engagement out of gear. Partners noted increased conflict with Dell Direct, and complained that in many cases the direct sales team poached customers even after the deal was approved. Many opined that Dell’s focus on enterprise solutions has led to the neglect of its PC business. In FY2011-12 Dell offered special pricing on deals as small as five units, but in FY2012-13 respondents noted a lack of market and price aggression. The company halved its partner incentive during 2012 which impacted partner profitability. Dell’s post-sales support continued to be rated the best among commercial PC vendors. n
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15
workgroup printer
HP sprints ahead again
H
ewlett-Packard retained its Channel Champion crown in the workgroup printer category thanks to its high-decibel channel and customer marketing, integrated channel approach, and better channel policy and management. Canon maintained its second position, scoring high on channel profitability. However, some flipflops in its policies and business strategy impacted its overall channel preference. Samsung made it to the third position largely due to its price aggressiveness in entry-level laser printers. Epson, which ranked third in FY2011-12, failed to make it to the final list because it polled less than 10 percent votes. Product shortages, reduced incentives, and delays in post-sales support led to the erosion in Epson’s channel preference.
Hewlett-Packard
The company scored higher on all parameters of channel preference
compared to its competitors. Respondents lauded the integration of the PC and printer divisions as it helped them gain incremental business. Nevertheless, post-integration, the realignment of channel managers created partner engagement issues. This happened because PSG managers who were now also handling the IPG business didn’t know the channel policies and processes of the printer business— and vice-versa. According to respondents, this created delays and confusion in decision-making, and resulted in loss of opportunities. However, by the end of August 2012, this problem was sorted out as the managers were trained by HP in policies and processes. Partners noted increased aggression on special price clearances for SMB deals compared to FY201112; this enabled them to win more business. They appreciated HP’s aggressiveness in the government vertical which helped them win
Score Card Criteria
HP Canon Samsung
Product availability
97.5
98.7
93.9
Price performance
85.4
81.3
82.3
Channel profitability
75.4
81.1
76.1
Brand-pull & customer marketing
85.8
79.6
73.2
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
82.4
76.3
69.7
Training & certification
75.8
69.3
64.6
Post-sales support
82.9
80.8
76.1
Channel policy & management
84.2
79.5
73.6
Final Score
669.4 646.6
609.5
*Scores out of 800
16
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more DGS&D business in FY2012-13 compared to the previous fiscal. HP launched several new products during the fiscal. Respondents said that HP’s ePrint technology, available in every commercial printer, offered strong product differentiation to enterprise customers, while its Ink Advantage printers became popular with SMBs due to their low printing cost. Many partners catering to SMBs appreciated the introduction of printing solutions to manage printers and eliminate waste. HP commanded the highest brand recall, and was very aggressive in marketing. Respondents praised the company’s channel events to highlight its policy changes and create awareness about its new products. Respondents also appreciated the new incentive program launched in November 2012 whereby they got incentives on every sale even if they didn’t meet their overall targets. HP partners praised the introduction of a new incentive for partners who did consistent and linear business every quarter. Partners continued to be critical of the deal registration for HP printers. They said that while HP has integrated many of the processes of the erstwhile PSG and IPG divisions, the deal registration is still separate. While PSG’s Web-based deal registration is quick and systemdriven, deal registration in IPG is still people-driven and takes more than 4-5 days for special price clearance. The company continues to be weak in A3 MFPs. Respondents complained that certain fast-moving printers faced intermittent shortages during the year. HP continued to rate low on channel profitability due to its being the most widely-distributed brand and also due to channel over-capacity.
Canon
Canon emerged as the second-mostpreferred vendor in the category. However, its channel preference scores suffered due to flip-flops in its channel strategies and policies. At the start of 2012 Canon formed separate teams for inkjet and laser printers. While partners observed 1015 percent increased sales of inkjet printers in the commercial segment, they also complained that they had to deal with two separate teams which led to confusion. Eventually, Canon merged the two teams in January 2013. During the first nine months of FY2012-13 Canon partners complained of intermittent customer account poaching by Canon’s institutional sales team. They said that due to the slowdown the institutional sales team started pitching directly to many of their customers. In addition, due to the lack of a proper named account policy and deal registration mechanism, multiple entities, including Canon’s institutional teams and large SI partners, bid for the same accounts thus creating conflict. To Canon’s credit, it acted on partner complaints, formed a centralized team in January 2013 to look into account history to decide who would handle an account and give price clearance. A few volume partners complained about intermittent MOP issues during 2012 due to inventory flow from other states. They said that some partners who took high inventory positions to earn incentives liquidated their holdings at low prices. However, they admitted that based on their feedback Canon rationalized the targets according to partner capabilities and started conducting regular stock audits. Respondents said that Canon offered the best channel profitability with strong backend rebates and front-end margins. Many partners stated that Canon was very aggressive with its partner-led
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Workgroup Printer category: 512 East 11%
South 24%
West 42%
North 23%
Region
Class A 41%
Class B 26%
Partner 57%
Type of City
managed print services business. The company helped them with training and pre-sales support; this gave them additional business with good profitability from existing customers. Respondents noted that Canon continued its stronghold in A3 MFPs with its copier technology and low printing cost-per-page. This helped them win deals in A3 MFPs over HP. Partners were critical of Canon’s lack of customer-focused events. They also rued the fact that the company stopped offering MDF to partners from Q2FY2012-13.
Samsung
According to respondents, Samsung,
Partners were critical of the deal registration for HP printers. While HP has integrated many of the processes of the erstwhile PSG and IPG divisions, the deal registration is still separate
Class C 33%
Non-Partner 43%
type of reseller
with its limited portfolio of entry- to mid-level laser printers, and price aggressiveness, is largely sold in government and PSU rate contracts, and to SMBs. Partners said the company was highly aggressive in deals above 150 printers in the government and PSU verticals. It offered a 3-year warranty as well as special pricing on consumables in many of the large deals in these verticals. Many Samsung partners said the company’s focus on printers has reduced over the last 12-18 months because the company continues to do well in its mobile business. They noted the lack of clear market strategy, channel communication and marketing, and new products. Due to Samsung’s low focus on printers, a few local and regional channel managers have exited the company, further reducing Samsung’s channel engagement. Partners reported an increase in post-sales warranty issues and blamed it on the fact that support for printers was provided by Consumer Electronic’s post-sales network. This resulted in the increase in TAT as well as a long waiting time for toll-free support. Respondents informed that toward the end of 2012, Samsung created a separate support team especially for business customers. n
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17
server
IBM is back
I
BM regained the Channel Champion crown, beating FY2011-12 winner HewlettPackard on the back of aggressive GTM strategies and better channel policy and management in FY2012-13. HP was let down by its lack of aggression, below-expected marketing and channel engagement, and low channel profitability. Dell failed to make any gains in channel connect and preference during the fiscal primarily due to the exit of some senior channel managers which impacted its channel engagement.
IBM
IBM scored high on several parameters including customer marketing, channel marketing & presales support, price performance, post-sales support and channel policy & management. The company received 46 percent of the category votes suggesting that the geo-expansion strategy it
embarked on two years ago has improved its coverage and channel connect in smaller cities. In the x86 server market, IBM transitioned from the M3 range to the M4 series, and offered more SKUs in stock-and-sell compared to the previous fiscal. The vendor was also aggressive in pushing its Power servers through tier-2 partners. According to partners who took the survey, their Power business saw good growth because of the company’s market and channel push. On channel profitability, while IBM scored higher than HP, respondents noted a drop in the margins of their IBM business due to multiple partners in the same deals. In July 2012 IBM launched its unified infrastructure offering PureFlex, and backed it with an aggressive GTM. It enabled its top 10-15 tier-2 partners to sell PureFlex, many of whom said that they closed large deals for the new offering. However, they expressed discontent
Score Card Criteria
IBM HP Dell
Product availability
92.1
92.2
92.3
Price performance
86.3
85.4
85.3
Channel profitability
80.9
77.7
82.8
Brand-pull & customer marketing
88.6
86.8
85.1
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
84.5
81.4
75.8
Training & certification
87.5
84.0
76.3
Post-sales support
86.4
84.8
84.8
Channel policy & management
84.8
81.8
76.4
Final Score
691.1 674.1 658.8 *Scores out of 800
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At a time when the economic slowdown was impacting partner business, IBM cranked up its lead-gen engine with several respondents reporting a 20 percent increase in leads compared to last year with IBM’s decision to have a single distributor (Avnet) for PureFlex, and wanted at least one more distributor. Some leading partners stated that IBM needs to relax its guidelines for the use of co-op marketing funds because the current policy restricts them from investing in certain activities which they believe would get them more business. On the channel marketing and pre-sales parameter IBM received better scores than its peers. The company ran year-round channel marketing and training programs for the M4, PureFlex and Power servers. At a time when the economic slowdown was impacting the channel business, IBM cranked up its lead-gen engine with several respondents reporting a 20 percent increase in leads received from IBM compared to FY2011-12. During the first nine months of the fiscal, IBM was quick in decision-making pertaining to deal registration and SPC. However, following the surfacing of allegations of malpractice around the Easy Sell program in Q3FY2012-13—which saw a few partners being blacklisted and some senior managers of IBM being sacked—the company
became stringent with SPC and deal registration in Q4FY2012-13; this, according to respondents, resulted in loss of opportunities. By the end of 2012 IBM created a separate channel team to drive geoexpansion and the SMB business. While product availability was normal for most of the year, in Q4FY2012-13 partners complained about delays of 6-8 weeks in the shipping of certain products. Though IBM scored high on channel policy & management, there were complaints of significant delays in rebate and incentive payouts.
Hewlett-Packard
HP lost its Channel Champion crown due to product planning issues, low channel profitability, and a drop in channel marketing and training programs. While large partners rated the company high on all parameters, smaller partners complained about the lack of channel engagement. HP traditionally polls more category votes than IBM largely due to its strength in the volume x86 servers; however, this time it received only 39 percent of the category votes. In H1FY2012-13 HP phased out its Proliant G6 range for the newer G7 servers and select G8 products. This resulted in the phasing out of popular SKUs mainly the 2U 2P rack servers, and, respondents said, created a gap in the volume product portfolio. In addition, the phase-out wasn’t well communicated, and as a result many partners, especially in Class B and C cities, didn’t know exactly which products were phased out. HP scored low on channel profitability, with a cross-section of partners attributing it to channel over-capacity which forced them to compete among themselves. Many of the smaller partners complained about lower margins because of changes in the HP rebate program toward the end of 2011. The rebate program reduced incentives on
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Server category: 504 East 10%
South 28%
North 24%
Region
Class C 21% West 38%
Class A 57%
Partner 69%
Type of City
volume products and increased incentives on value products. However, partners admitted that the revised rebate program launched at the end of 2012 addressed the issues raised by smaller partners and incentivizes them well. To HP’s credit, many large tier-2 partners said the company was aggressive with its converged infrastructure portfolio, and they reported a good number of projects coming their way. While respondents said that HP’s brand-pull is stronger than IBM’s in the x86 server market, in the high-end server space its Itanium products haven’t been able to keep up with IBM’s Power series in terms of technology, performance and market strategy.
HP traditionally polls more votes than IBM largely due to its strength in the volume x86 servers. However, this time it received only 39 percent of the votes against IBM’s 46 percent
Class B 22%
Non-Partner 31%
type of reseller
Dell
Dell, which had been making steady progress in attaining channel confidence in the past couple of years, frittered away some of the gains in FY2012-13. This was mainly due to the exit of several senior managers including the partner business head, and was aggravated by several local channel managers also leaving. The depletion of the channel management team impacted all spheres of Dell’s channel engagement. Respondents reported an increase in direct sales, a lack of decision-making, and overall lack of market direction. Dell’s vote share dipped compared to last year, and it managed only 10 percent of the category votes as compared to 18 percent in FY2011-2. Most respondents, including those who voted for IBM and HP, said that Dell was the most priceaggressive in the x86 server space during FY2012-13. In the middle of the year Dell appointed HCL Digilife as distributor, but Dell’s partners weren’t very happy with the move noting that the company lacked experience in commercial products distribution. On back-to-back deals Dell offers faster deliveries than its peers. In addition, it scored high in channel profitability. n
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19
network storage
NetApp makes it to the top
N
etApp won the Channel Champion crown for the first time for its strong channel policies and management, higher channel profitability, and focus on channel training and certification. EMC, which won the crown four times in a row in the past, was pushed to the last spot. IBM came second followed by HewlettPackard. Dell and Hitachi did not make the cut as they failed to get the minimum of 10 percent votes.
NetApp
A key factor which pushed up NetApp’s scores was its policy of having select partners. According to respondents, this ruled out competition among partners and increased partner margins. Unlike the other three vendors, NetApp does not have run-rate models. Despite the absence, partners said the company rarely delayed deliveries and that its product availability was good, often
delivering back-to-back within two weeks. On the product front NetApp primarily offers unified storage and enterprise NAS products which till a couple of years ago were seen as a major limitation because many customers preferred to buy dedicated SAN storage. However, with customers realizing that unified storage—which supports multiple protocols—is far simpler to manage and cheaper to scale-up in comparison with stand-alone NAS or SAN, the adoption of this technology in the mid-market and large enterprise has grown. Respondents said NetApp has the best demo and PoC policy for partners, offering a discount of up to 85 percent on demo equipment; this helped partners to set up more customer PoCs and thus increase their business. The company offered higher margins than any of its peers. Besides, it has a policy of not getting involved in storage-related services
Score Card Criteria
NetApp IBM HP EMC
Product availability
92.3
90.8
93.7
87.5
Price performance
86.1
86.2
86.7
83.9
Channel profitability
86.3
84.6
83.1
83.9
Brand-pull & customer marketing
88.6
87.4
81.1
83.3
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
85.0
85.1
85.2
80.5
Training & certification
96.1
90.8
81.0
83.7
Post-sales support
87.5
85.9
89.2
84.8
Channel policy & management
84.5
84.8
83.0
84.0
Final Score
706.4 695.6 683.0 671.6 *Scores out of 800
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such as deployment, integration, consulting, virtualization and optimization unless the account is a global MNC. Partners noted that this furthers the margins made on NetApp business—because profits on services are always higher—and gives them a strong stickiness with customers. The company scored the highest for training and certification. NetApp’s policy of not getting involved in price discussions with customers was appreciated by partners. In contrast, other vendors get involved in price negotiations with customers and dictate the final customer price, thus reducing partner margins. However, many respondents noted that, unlike EMC or IBM, NetApp does not have a strong lead-generation program. They also point out that storage, backup and analytics software, which are critical to large systems integration deals, are missing from NetApp’s armor.
IBM
With aggressive discounts on server-storage deals, IBM worked closely with its software division for solutions opportunities for its partners. The company’s aggression in the server space had a positive impact on its storage business. IBM partners reported good sales of the Storewize 7000 and DS 5000 series which they said are very popular among mid-market customers thanks to their features and performance. The company also ran several buy-back schemes which partners said increased customer interest in these product lines. Partners noted that as part of its Storage Specialist program IBM provided customized training depending on the partner’s domain focus and GTM strategy. Partners said that through the year IBM’s storage and software divisions
worked jointly to create more opportunities for storage partners among customers who bought Tivoli and Cognos. The company received good ratings on pre-sales support. IBM was also rated high for its customer marketing initiatives and leadgeneration programs. Many partners reported a 15-20 percent increase in the leads provided by IBM compared to the previous year. A major grouse that partners continue to have is IBM’s strong involvement in partner-led named accounts where it negotiates rates directly with the customers; this impacts partner margins. However, partners said such instances were fewer compared to last year.
Hewlett-Packard
In the FY2011-12 survey HP was criticized for lacking a solutions story around storage as partners said it was merely pushing boxes. The company worked on that feedback and tried to present a strong solutions story—it worked with VMware, Microsoft, SAP, Citrix and others to create vertical-specific storage solutions. Exclusive HP partners noted increased HP support for training, pre-sales, leads and pricing. However, many large multi-vendor partners complained that HP was biased toward exclusive partners. The company consolidated its storage portfolio and launched several new products with advanced features borrowed from technologies gained from its acquisitions of 3PAR and StoreVirtual VSA. The company offered exchange schemes to customers for replacing their oldtechnology EVA and MSA range of products with the newly launched products. However, many partners said the product upgrades were not accompanied by timely training, hence they weren’t equipped to sell the new products. The vendor got low votes on customer marketing and brand-pull
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Network Storage category: 302 East 8% South 30%
West 39%
North 23%
Class C 11% Class B 15% Class A 74%
Region
EMC
EMC was pushed to the fourth spot primarily because many of its Affiliate and Growth partners complained that the company
Respondents said NetApp has the best demo policy, offering a discount of up to 85 percent on demo equipment; this helped partners to set up more PoCs and thus increase their business
Partner 82%
Type of City
because many partners said that HP is no longer considered a technology leader in storage though it has a strong portfolio. HP’s exclusive partners criticized the company for the huge difference between the initial and final quotes offered to customers. They said this created the impression in customers’ minds that negotiating harder would bring down prices further. This not only impacted partner margins but also delayed sales cycles because customers kept negotiating harder.
Non-Partner 18%
type of reseller
supported only Premier partners. Starting in 2012 EMC had shortlisted 25-30 partners as Premier partners with whom it worked directly, while the rest (categorized as Growth partners) were managed by distributors. It is the second lot of partners who are critical of the company’s policy. A few expressed unhappiness over the selection of Premier partners saying that they too deserved to be in that league because they have been doing sizable EMC business. Some of them said they lost projects for advanced solutions because the distributors couldn’t support them with proper and timely pre-sales—and neither did they get any help from local managers upon escalation of their issues. The Premier partners rated EMC high on all parameters. They appreciated the company’s focus on enabling them to provide advanced solutions and services. EMC conducted focused partner events and on-demand training for advanced offerings. Premier partners also noted strong aggression by EMC to win large deals by enabling them with PoCs, special pricing and joint sales meets. EMC increased the MDF offered to Premier partners for conducting customer events around advanced solutions. n
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networking
Cisco maintains status quo
C
isco retained its Channel Champion crown riding on its aggression in pricing and pre-sales, and its increased focus on partners. D-Link came second largely due to its strong brand-pull in the SMB segment and the bundling of active and passive products which increased the deal size for partners. Hewlett-Packard came third, and while the company improved its overall focus and strategy for the networking business, the lack of proper pre-sales and deployment support, together with the lack of timely training on new products, resulted in its partners losing business. Digisol, with its young and limited SMB portfolio, came fourth, while Juniper failed to make it to the final list since it got less than 10 percent votes.
Cisco
Cisco maintained its aggressiveness on pricing. Respondents across the board said that the company was
very aggressive on special price clearances for large deals. They said that though the discounting varied from case to case, the company offered up to 70 percent discounts on very large deals. Partners stated that this was mainly due to tough competition from HP, Juniper and Extreme. Cisco scored the highest on presales and implementation support. Respondents appreciated the easy availability of pre-sales support which was either on the same or next working day. Partners said that the company provided regular training, webinars and network configuration tools. Respondents catering to SMBs appreciated Cisco’s Avant Garde partner program whereby the company provided partners a list of fresh customer accounts and supported them in terms of pricing and discounts, partner enablement, etc; partners said that their business grew about 20-30 percent due to this.
Score Card Criteria Cisco D-Link HP Digisol Product availability
92.5
96.9
95.3
94.3
Price performance
87.4
86.6
85.8
79.3
Channel profitability
79.8
82.1
83.4
83.8
Brand-pull and customer marketing
85.9
84.1
80.5
77.2
Channel marketing and pre-sales support
83.3
82.7
78.9
80.5
Training and certification
85.8
80.9
82.8
80.5
Post-sales support
84.9
79.9
80.2
83.3
Channel policy and management
83.4
81.3
81.1
82.3
Final Score
683.0 674.5 668.0 661.2 *Scores out of 800
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Partners also appreciated Cisco’s demo and PoC policy. However, respondents said that their profitability took a beating because they faced stiff competition from tier-1 SIs to which the company offered heavy discounts—10 percent more than what it offered tier-2 partners. A few Select and Premier Partners alleged that Cisco allocated certain named customer accounts to two or three partners instead of letting a single partner service them. However, they appreciated the new backend rebate which is offered on the number of certified engineers deployed for a project; this increased the profits of partners with certified skill-sets. SMB partners rued that Cisco products cost at least 10-15 percent more than D-Link products. At the entry-to-mid level they noted that D-Link offers more features than Cisco—at a lower price. Cisco’s decision to offer shared services along with partners was also appreciated by partners. However some partners said Cisco need to bring more clarity and consistency to the Shared Services program.
D-Link
D-Link introduced a range of products for enterprises but could not make a dent because of the lack of brand-pull and pre-sales support for the range. However in SMBs (50-250 node customers), due to its wide market coverage and channel connect, strong brand-pull and bundling opportunities, it continues to be the best-selling brand. Many large partners of D-Link appreciated the company’s aggressiveness in large government and education projects due to which they were able to win some large deals. D-Link offered steeper discounts
to partners bundling active and passive products; the bundling made it attractive to customers. For partners this increased both the deal size and their margins. Although D-Link launched its university to train and certify professionals, it failed to leverage it for partner training and certification. Respondents opined that D-Link should provide incentives to partners for getting their engineers certified. Although D-Link has brandpull in the SMB and mid-market segments, respondents complained that the company did not conduct any customer marketing activity to create a brand image in the enterprise segment. D-Link scored high for channel marketing and pre-sales support, largely on the back of the aggressive pre-sales support provided to partners in Class B and C cities. The company scored low on post-sales support as its ASP, Kaizen, provided poor service which impacted the customer’s confidence in the brand. Partners expressed hope that D-Link’s new direct service initiative will address the warranty issue.
Hewlett-Packard
HP improved its channel preference scores considerably compared to the previous year, giving stiff competition to Cisco. However, it ended up third largely due to the lack of timely training for new products, as well as the lack of pre-sales and implementation support. The company, which launched several new products during the year, didn’t have enough technical resources to help partners with pre-sales and post-implementation support. This made it difficult to design and pitch a solution, and many partners said they lost deals because of this. Moreover, partners alleged that issues during implementation took 7-8 days to
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Networking category: 463
South 25%
East 12%
Class C 23% West 38%
North 25%
Class A 54%
Region
Partner 63%
Type of City
be addressed because of the lack of manpower; only recently did the company added more engineers to resolve these issues. Nevertheless, partners commended HP for being aggressive in the marketplace. The company offered deep discounts to HP partners and egged them to sell bundled solutions (server, storage, networking). It worked closely with partners to target Cisco accounts through deep discount offers. Partners catering to SMBs appreciated HP’s increased thrust on the segment in terms of products and pricing. Respondents appreciated the company’s initiative to offer free training to their sales and pre-
Respondents said that Cisco was very aggressive on SPCs. They said that though the discounting varied from case to case, the company offered up to 70 percent discount on very large deals
Class B 23%
Non-Partner 37%
type of reseller
sales executives. It ran incentive schemes for technical engineers, and introduced a program which allowed partners to use their MDF to fund their certification.
Digisol
While there’s no doubt among most respondents that Digisol is making large inroads into the SMB market, most partners said that Digisol still doesn’t have a broad SMB portfolio like D-Link. Partners feel that the recall for the Digisol brand is weak. Digisol scored low on partner training and certification. Partners alleged that its trainers did not provide detailed training. Most of the partners said that Digisol was also low on channel marketing compared to 2011. They added that the marketing and pre-sales support helped to attract only SMB customers with no clear message for enterprise channels. Partners focusing on government deals confirmed that Digisol took care of almost all requirements such as DGS&D registrations and the necessary certifications required for qualification. While channels said that Digisol’s distribution strategy is good, there is no comprehensive system for transparent deal registration or price clearance. n
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25
STRUCTURED CABLING
Digilink stays put
D
igilink (Schneider) retained its Channel Champion crown in structured cabling with an improved channel preference score as it focused on enabling partners to sell solutions by offering strong pre-sales and training support. It also trained partners to sell its wider portfolio of UPSs, racks and building automation solutions. Tyco, which also retained its second position, improved its channel engagement by strengthening its channel management and pre-sales teams. D-Link was aggressive in the cabling market, and with its strength in active networking made gains in the SMB segment. Confronted with the exit of senior and local managers, and affected by the realignment of its distribution, Molex came last. CommScope , which stood 4th last year, polled only 6 percent votes and failed to make the rankings.
Digilink
Digilink (Schneider) strengthened
its position as the most preferred vendor in the category, scoring high on most parameters. On price performance respondents noted that after Schneider took over, the quality of copper and fiber cable has improved dramatically with the company offering better angles, patch panels and information outlets. In fiber Digilink began importing Corning Plus fiber with a new feature that minimizes loss because of bending. Digilink products were available at an average price of `4,500 per box, 10-15 percent higher than D-Link and at par with Molex, while being 10 percent lower than Tyco. Regarding product availability, while most copper products were available ex-stock with a delivery time of 2-4 days, the fiber portfolio saw longer lead times. Digilink scored high on channel profitability, with non-partners saying that they got assured margins as the company maintained its MOP while partners opined that the
Score Card Criteria Digilink Tyco D-Link Molex Product availability
94.8
96.6
96.4
91.1
Price performance
87.8
87.3
86.2
84.2
Channel profitability
86.7
83.6
85.4
82.9
Brand-pull & customer marketing
83.6
84.2
81.3
79.6
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
86.1
82.6
82.7
73.2
Training & certification
86.6
83.2
78.4
78.1
Post-sales support
84.8
83.4
78.4
76.6
Channel policy & management
87.3
83.2
81.5
76.7
Final Score
697.7 684.1 670.3 642.4 *Scores out of 800
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company’s strategy of enabling them to sell a larger Schneider portfolio increased the size of their deals, thus adding to their topline and margins. The backing of Schneider has increased the saleability of and pull for Digilink; however, respondents opined that it should communicate its Schneider parentage more forcefully to customers. Digilink was commended by partners for its pre-sales even in smaller cities as respondents reported easy accessibility to engineers who visited customer sites and helped them at every stage from designing and specing to architecting a solution. To encourage partners to achieve certifications, the company allowed them to redeem the certification cost if they did a minimum business of `5 lakh in that product category. Digilink’s post-sales was rated the best. It also got high scores on channel policy and management as partners appreciated its transparent and fair processes for lead distribution, deal registration, special pricing and incentives. However, some partners said that Digilink has become too processdriven; this was causing delays in deal registration and special price clearance which sometimes led to loss of opportunities.
Tyco
Tyco improved its channel engagement by strengthening its channel management and presales teams and offering more opportunities to partners to participate in large deals. The company rates high on the width and performance of its products, and this was further strengthened with its acquisition of ADC Krone which is strong in large backbone and data center networking.
Many large tier-2 partners noted that the company handheld them in large deals for GPON and data center networking. In addition, partners welcomed the company’s move toward the end of 2012 whereby it allowed select partners to provide services in larger direct accounts. Respondents noted that in H2FY2012-13 the company introduced a manual lock-in mechanism and began supporting only the partner who was locked to the deal. Prior to this, respondents said there were multiple partners pitching for the same account leading to price and margin discounts. While the instances of direct selling to customers reduced, partners said that the company continued to sell specialized products directly.
D-Link
The company, which launched its cabling products two years back, has made significant progress in this segment. It was very aggressive in pricing in both the volume product segment and in projects. However, in terms of performance it’s rated lower. The vendor leveraged its active portfolio to cross-sell cabling. This, respondents said, was the biggest advantage as customers prefer to buy both active and passive components from the same vendor. It also meant that partners could increase the size of their deals. While D-Link has a wide copper cabling portfolio, it doesn’t have strong fiber cabling products. Respondents said that with the adoption of fiber growing in universities, real estate, and smaller IT/ITeS companies, D-Link needs to boost its fiber offerings. The bundling of active and passive products, and the company’s price aggression, provided good margins to partners. Partners who pitched D-Link for government tenders spoke about the
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Structured Cabling category: 443 East 11% South 31%
Class C 21% West 34%
North 24%
Region
Class A 58%
Partner 60%
Type of City
active pre-sales support. However, the company was criticized for not conducting any training and certification program. While channel managers were proactive in channel engagement, partners complained about the lack of a system-driven deal registration program. As a result, they said that multiple partners got quotes for the same deal thus pulling down the margins.
Molex
Molex suffered on all channel preference parameters due to the realignment of its distribution (which created supply issues) and the exit of senior managers. Following a global policy,
Respondents noted that after Schneider took over, the quality of copper and fiber cable has improved dramatically, with Digilink offering better angles, patch panels and information outlets
Class B 21%
Non-Partner 40%
type of reseller
Grainger Electric Supply, one of the distributors of Molex, dropped structured cabling from its portfolio in India, in mid-2012. Respondents who were largely dependent on Grainger complained about product availability and delays in delivery. The company’s channel engagement also suffered as its national sales head and channel managers exited the company at the start of H2FY2012-13. As a result, pre-sales suffered, and there were significant delays in getting price quotes which resulted in partners losing existing customers to competition. However, partners in the west said that the local channel managers continued to support them well despite the problems. Partners complained that Molex’s distributor Redington has a cumbersome billing process which delayed fulfillment. Respondents noted that Molex was very price-aggressive and as a result they could win deals. On SMB deals it offered up to 30 percent discount while in large deals the discount went up to 50 percent. Large partners opined that Molex’s APLLM technology is very good as it provides enterprises with the ability to manage their physical layer infrastructure. According to them, APLLM can easily gain a market leading position if marketed well. n
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client security
Quick Heal way ahead
Q
uick Heal (QH) won the Channel Champion 2013 crown in the client security category on the back of its strong connect with SMB channels in smaller cities that cater to customers having 50-500 nodes. Symantec, which is the mostpreferred customer brand in the midmarket and large enterprise segment, suffered due to inadequate partner engagement and management, and the lack of a clear channel-led GTM. With just over 10 percent of the category votes, Kaspersky seems to have limited market coverage and channel connect. However, with its price-aggressive strategy to address SMB customers, it ranked third. McAfee, which won the crown in 2012, received only 6 percent of the category votes and was unable to make it to the final rankings. The lack of a clear GTM, the constant churn in its channel managers, weak channel policy and management led to the brand’s poor performance. Many partners who took the survey
said that they have stopped focusing on McAfee because of the above issues. Trend Micro lacked focus on channels; it focused on large projects and as a result polled only 5 percent of the category votes. eScan, which was a finalist in last year’s survey, polled only 4 percent of the category votes.
Quick Heal
The new Channel Champion scored much higher than its competitors on all channel-preference criteria and emerged as the preferred SMB client security brand across all geographies and Class B, C and D cities polling nearly 28 percent of the category votes. Nearly 60 percent of the respondents who voted for QH were from Class C and D cities where many MNC brands are not very focused or don’t have the same customer preference as among large customers in Class A cities. QH improved its central console
Score Card Criteria
Quick Heal
Symantec
Kaspersky
Product availability
100.0
100.0
96.3
Price performance
86.8
87.9
85.3
Channel profitability
88.9
83.3
87.0
Brand-pull & customer marketing
88.4
87.3
84.5
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
87.6
89.5
77.8
Training & certification
87.9
82.1
76.5
Post-sales support
88.5
87.0
82.8
Channel policy & management
90.2
82.1
83.8
Final Score
718.3 699.2 674.0 *Scores out of 800
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Respondents said that pre-sales executives from the distributors accompanied partners to customer meetings to explain the benefits of Quick Heal; this helped in closing deals and added certain manageability features which respondents appreciated. A strong focus on renewals, good MOP control, and assured margins led to QH scoring high on channel profitability. The majority of respondents from smaller cities said that QH is a pullbrand among SMB customers, and that they don’t face much competition from any of the MNC vendors. Respondents said they sell QH by telling customers that being an Indian brand it provides immediate postsales support. QH also received good ratings for its channel marketing and presales support. Respondents said that pre-sales executives from the distributors accompanied partners to customer meetings to explain the benefits and new features of QH; this helped in closing deals. The company also arranged for regular training through its distributors soon after it launched products with new features. However, respondents complained that QH is not investing enough in making its products enterprise-class. A few QH regional distributors opined that the company needs to have a well-defined partner program which would help them to engage with large tier-2 SIs.
Symantec
Symantec undoubtedly has the largest and most customer-preferred product offerings in the client security segment; these include endpoint security, spam filtering, DLP, and backup and recovery software. However, the lack of a clear channelled GTM and lack of focus on SMBs and smaller cities relegated it to the second position. Of the nearly 22 percent of the category votes it polled, 67 percent were from Class A cities and 25 percent from Class B. Respondents said the loss of senior managers over the last couple of years and the constant churn of employees have impacted Symantec’s overall pre-sales, product focus, partner engagement and decision-making. Some even said that the company was focused on large deals and large tier-2 partners, and paid little attention to smaller partners. According to large partners, despite creating different specializations within its partner programs, the company failed to formulate a clear partner enablement strategy. They said that while they were keen to specialize in mobile device management and virtualization security there was no enablement from Symantec. Respondents praised the company’s demo policy which made it easier for partners to set up PoCs which increased customer buy-in. Respondents noted that Symantec was less flexible in its pricing—though customers were negotiating hard due to the economic slowdown—hence they had to compromise their frontend margins to sell. On post-sales support, while the technical expertise of Symantec was rated high, respondents complained of lengthy waits on the toll-free number. A few long-time partners said that despite the lack of engagement from Symantec their business grew because they were able to convert some McAfee customers. They said the one thing Symantec did right was to not alter its channel
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Client Security category: 507 South 22%
East 10%
Class C 27% West 43%
North 25%
Region
Class A 52%
Type of City
programs unlike its competitors McAfee and Trend Micro which defocused from channels.
Kaspersky
Ranking third on channel preference, Kaspersky made progress in the client security space with its aggressive pricing. Kaspersky targeted SMBs having 50-500 nodes with aggressive pricing—it sold licenses at prices equivalent to Symantec’s renewal rates. Kaspersky however lacks a country-wide channel connect. It polled just over 10 percent of the category votes. Of this, nearly 70 percent votes were from Class A cities and 60 percent from the south; the west and north contributed 25 and 10 percent respectively while the rest came from the east.
Respondents said the loss of senior managers over the last two years and the constant churn of employees have impacted Symantec’s partner engagement and decision-making
Class B 21%
Non-Partner 26% Partner 74%
type of reseller
While the company has a number of offerings with good features in the business security space, respondents complained that there is no proper training provided to understand the various product features, and that as a consequence they sold Kaspersky on its low pricing. Many said that while the company organized regular training programs, the instructors lacked proper technical knowledge. The distributors’ and local tech support team’s lack of product knowledge resulted in queries being routed to the tech support team in Russia, thus delaying responses. Respondents gave good scores to Kaspersky on channel profitability; they noted that because it is a pushbrand and is flexible in pricing, the margins are higher. Kaspersky’s policy of allowing its national distributors to take decisions pertaining to SPC and deal registration was appreciated by some respondents as it made decision-making faster. However, a few complained of bias by distributors in deal registration and SPC clearance, and alleged that some partners got preferential treatment. Respondents said that having Sachin Tendulkar as brand ambassador has helped Kaspersky to build brand awareness; however, Kaspersky continues to be a pushbrand. n
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network security
Cyberoam conquers all
C
yberoam, the Indian network security brand, won the Channel Champion 2013 crown beating large players like Cisco and Fortinet. Cyberoam scored higher than its peers on all channel preference criteria. Cisco, which became aggressive in the UTM market last year, improved its channel preference on the back of increased focus on the SMB market. Last year’s winner Fortinet was pushed to the last position. Check Point, which ranked second last year, failed to make it to the final listing because it polled less than 10 percent of the category votes. Partners said that the company was focused on large projects and worked with only a few large partners. SonicWall, which ranked fifth last year, also failed to make the 10 percent vote cut. Following its acquisition by Dell, its channel policies and engagement have suffered.
Cyberoam
Cyberoam won the Channel Champion crown polling an impressive 27 percent of the category votes. The company, which ranked third in FY2011-12, did well to receive high ratings on all key channel preference parameters. According to respondents, Cyberoam increased its market coverage and product availability in several smaller cities during FY2012-13 by adding more models to its ex-stock and expanding its partner base. This was evident from the fact that the company received nearly 34 percent of its votes from Class B, C and D cities. In the case of back-to-back deliveries, Cyberoam reduced its shipping time from 4-7 days to less than three days. In Q3FY2012-13, Cyberoam launched its NG series of UTM appliances targeted at SOHOs and SMBs. The company ran aggressive schemes and discounts around the series, thus helping partners to do good business.
Score Card Criteria Cyberoam Cisco Fortinet Product availability
98.0
94.8
97.3
Price performance
92.0
85.3
84.2
Channel profitability
89.0
85.3
82.1
Brand-pull & customer marketing
86.3
85.5
82.3
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
86.4
85.5
82.8
Training & certification
89.9
87.1
83.0
Post-sales support
88.0
84.8
79.3
Channel policy & management
91.0
87.5
83.9
Final Score
720.6 695.8 674.9 *Scores out of 800
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According to respondents, Cyberoam has successfully moved from being a push-brand to a pullbrand among large customers due to its consistent market strategies and product quality and performance. Respondents pointed out that Cyberoam’s achievement of the ISO 20000:2011 service management certification for its post-sales helped them to make more confident pitches to large customers. Respondents said Cyberoam offered the best channel profitability through a combination of channel schemes, front-end margins and back-end rebates. The company’s pre-sales support was praised as it readily offered demo units and helped partners to set up PoCs. The company also held a series of channel events and partner meets during FY2012-13. However, respondents complained about Cyberoam not providing leads. The company was aggressive in offering channel training and certification. While in Class A cities it conducted training and certification events every month at a fee of `3,000-4,000 per person, in Class B and C cities the frequency of such trainings was quarterly. Respondents praised Cyberoam’s post-sales and reported an improved TAT of 48 hours in addition to a more improved RMA process. According to them, 70-80 percent of customer complaints were resolved remotely.
Cisco
Continuing with the channel momentum it acquired in late 2011, Cisco improved its vote share and scores on all channel preference parameters to win the second spot in FY2012-13 compared to its fourth position in FY2011-12. Cisco security products are sold as a part of the borderless
networking offering. The company’s increased coverage and focus on SMBs for the networking business has helped its security business which include ASA, IronPort and routers that come with strong gateway level security. The company was aggressive in offering ASA security appliances as bundles with their switches and routers through the distributors. While Cisco’s stand-alone security appliances are priced 40-50 percent more than Cyberoam’s and SonicWall’s, when bundled with routers and switches they are available at 40-50 percent discount. Most Cisco security products are available back-to-back with a delivery time of 3-4 weeks; however, in some Class B and C cities, particularly in the east, partners complained of longer lead times. Respondents said that to make inroads in the SMB segment, Cisco must lower its annual licensing fee for appliances which is 30 percent higher compared to Fortinet’s, thus making the TCO too high for customers. Respondents noted an improvement in Cisco’s pre-sales support for network security; they praised the company’s refreshed microsite which offers more online training and marketing resources than previously. Cisco’s training and certification is the most expensive compared to its peers, but respondents said it carries a lot of weight among customers. Cisco charges `10,00015,000 per module for network security certification. However, it offered up to 20-30 percent discounts on certification fees for network security in FY2012-13. Respondents said they haven’t faced any issue with Cisco’s postsales support in the last 8-12 months. Those from Class A and B cities expressed satisfaction with the promptness of Cisco managers in attending to partner queries and issues. However, partners from
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Network Security category: 426 East 10%
South 28%
North 27%
Region
Class C 13% West 35%
Class B 21% Class A 66%
Partner 75%
Type of City
smaller cities were critical of its channel engagement and reported delays in decision-making on special-pricing and deal registration.
Fortinet
Last year’s winner Fortinet frittered away its channel momentum, scoring low on all parameters. The company’s vote share also decreased as it polled only 17 percent of the category votes compared to 22 percent last year. Respondents acknowledged that Fortinet products are technically the best and the company enjoys a strong brand pull among mid-market and large enterprise customers. At the start of 2012 the company appointed Redington as the second distributor to improve its market coverage and also increased its
Cyberoam has successfully moved from being a push-brand to a pull-brand among large customers due to its consistent market strategies, product quality and performance
Non-Partner 25%
type of reseller
team strength to enhance partner engagement. Despite all these positive changes the company failed in executing its channel-led GTM. Most of the issues started from October 2012 onwards as the company was under increased pressure to meet targets, said respondents. Respondents complained of a marked increase in direct sales. A few large partners alleged that Fortinet sold directly to customers whose leads they had shared with the company for getting special pricing. Fortinet became rigid in its pricing; as a result partners either lost business or had to cut their own margins to offer discounts to win deals. The partners’ biggest grouse was that despite repeatedly escalating issues to the Fortinet senior management there was no intervention or resolution. On post-sales support respondents complained of a significant increase in TAT; in many cases this was more than a month. They blamed this on the attrition of technical staff. A few partners reported that some new products launched in early 2012 faced installation issues. However these issues were rectified within a couple of months with a software update. n
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software application
Tally is on top again
T
ally which was criticized for its channel policy and management in FY2011-12 did well to gain the channel confidence back to win the Channel Champion 2013 crown. It scored substantially higher than its peers. The winner of last year, Microsoft had a forgettable year as exit of its senior managers led to a significant reduction in channel engagement. SAP continued to do well. It scored more votes and mindshare than last year, and came second.
Tally
Tally enhanced its ERP software and added many new features such as built-in Form 16 and Form 16 (a) in the payroll section, and cheque printing and automatic bank reconciliation. Tally’s executives regularly met VAT officials, updated their R&D team about new clauses, and added the updates within 15-20 working days. The company also solved the concurrency issue—the system would slow down if five users
worked concurrently—with the launch of Tally Server 9 which supported upto 60 concurrent users. While Tally continued to dominate the under-100 user organization segment, with the new add-ons it managed to make inroads in the 250-300 user organizations. A few partners were critical of the increase in base pricing of the Tally ERP from `13,500 to `18,000. While Tally Partners (TPs) said that they could not justify the price hike to their customers, the Master Tally Partners (MTPs) justified it because of the new features. Many TPs said that they were hit by the high pricing because customers refused to pay `18,000 for a Tally license due to the perception that Tally is a low-priced ERP. Partners welcomed the new incentive structure which Tally launched in August 2012. It introduced a 3-tier incentive slab—8 percent, 15 percent and 25 percent—evaluated partners on 26 different parameters such as partner skill-sets, resources dedicated to Tally business, and services capability, among others.
Score Card Criteria
Tally SAP Microsoft
Product availability
100.0
100.0
100.0
Price performance
88.9
88.5
82.0
Channel profitability
86.7
86.5
73.1
Brand-pull & customer marketing
84.3
83.1
83.4
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
88.0
84.8
81.1
Training & certification
91.8
82.9
80.6
Post-sales support
90.8
85.5
82.4
Channel policy & management
91.7
85.7
82.5
Final Score
722.2 697.0 665.1 *Scores out of 800
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Partners welcomed Tally’s new incentive structure in August 2012 where it introduced a 3-tier slab—8, 15 and 25 percent—offering incentives based on 26 different parameters However there was criticism from some TPs, who while welcoming the new incentive structure, said that the company left it to the MTPs to explain the nuances of the new structure to them. They opined that such important partner policies should be explained by the company directly. The TPs also expect Tally to formalize the entire training and certification program following the introduction of the new incentive structure. According to them, currently the training and certification is provided by MTPs which now should be provided by either Tally or a single authorized agency to maintain consistency and quality. TPs praised the pre-sales support provided by the MTPs, especially for explaining the new features of the ERP and helping partners to implement the software at the customer site. Tally had received criticism from partners due to the change in certain policies last year. However this year, the company taking feedback from the channel, addressed the issues raised by partners and enhanced its overall channel engagement.
SAP
SAP continued to be the most preferred brand in the mid-market and large enterprise. It increased its coverage in Class B
and C cities by appointing partners, and helped them to sell its flagship SAP B1 to SMBs. The company appointed field managers in each region who worked closely with partners and helped the partners to not only win the deal but also helped them to up-sell and cross-sell other SAP products, thus increasing their profitability. Partners complained about the high training and certification fees of SAP. They however appreciated the free training provided by the company through WebEx. Partners also appreciated the free access they had to the SAP experts who responded to queries either the same day or within a maximum of 48 hours.
Microsoft
Microsoft which won the crown last year came third scoring low on channel-preference parameters. The head of Microsoft CRM and ERP business left the company in July 2012 which was followed by
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Software Application category: 191
South 24%
East 9% West 37%
North 30%
Class A 47%
Class C 35% Class B 18%
Region
Type of City
the exit of some regional resources. Partners said that as a result, the company’s focus on the software application business suffered. Although the company appointed people to replace the outgoing managers, that didn’t improve the channel engagement. Partners also expressed their
Non-Partner 16%
Partner 84%
type of reseller
dissatisfaction with Microsoft LARs who they said failed to provide good support and as a result they lost deals to SAP and Salesforce.com. Partners alleged that the company was too focused on Windows 8 and its Office 365 cloud business and in the process ignored the business apps practice. n
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cloud computing
Microsoft’s magic carpet
I
n this new category introduced this year, Microsoft claimed the top spot with its aggressive focus on Office 365 cloud offerings. TCS which has a comprehensive cloud offering in form of iON for SMBs, came second. Google did not get enough votes to qualify.
Microsoft
Microsoft with is wide range of cloud offerings including different flavors of Office 365, Online CRM, and its platform-as-a-service offering Azure, was very aggressive in its channel-led GTM. Many partners informed that Microsoft was so aggressive in pushing the Office 365 platform that they were told not to sell licenses of the software and instead sign customers for Office 365. The company scored high on channel profitability with many partners noting that they made handsome margins by selling Office 365. Microsoft’s offers 12 percent upfront margins new Office 365 subscriptions sold, while 6-8 percent on renewals. In addition the company offered extra rebates on deals in excess of 250 nodes. It also introduced a new program in July 2012 offering partners extra rebates for migrating existing customers from onpremise to cloud, respondents informed. Microsoft conducted aggressive channel and customer marketing campaigns around Office 365 and offered 25100 free seats of the cloud offering to partners, as part of its pre-sales initiatives. In February 2013, Microsoft launched Office 365 open licensing program allowing partners to bill customers directly as well as offer customized services, a move which was welcomed by partners. Microsoft offered flexible pricing especially in the government, NGO and education segments which helped
Score Card Criteria
Microsoft TCS
Product availability
100.0
100.0
Price performance
88.6
79.1
Channel profitability
83.6
79.5
Brand-pull & customer marketing
84.3
82.0
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
91.0
84.0
Training & certification
84.1
86.4
Post-sales support
84.0
87.0
Channel policy & management
87.8
82.8
Final Score
703.4 680.8 *Scores out of 800
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Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Cloud Computing category: 96 South 25%
East 6%
North 26%
Region
West 43%
Class C 12% Class B 14% Class A 74%
Type of City
Non-Partner 10%
Partner 90%
type of reseller
partners do more business in these verticals. While Microsoft reduced the pricing of Office 365 by 20-25 percent in February 2013, partners noted that it is still substantially higher than Google’s cloud offerings. On post-sales support, partners noted that customers faced language issues in telephonic support. They opined that Microsoft should offer phone support in regional languages as many smaller partners and SMB customers are not comfortable with English. Partners pursuing cloud opportunities with Microsoft’s Online CRM complained of low focus and channel policy and management issues.
TCS
In FY2012-13, TCS consolidated its partner base and also its cloud portfolio focusing on only four verticals, namely retail, textile, wellness and education. The company decided to work with select 20-30 partners and devoted all its training, pre-sales and marketing support to these partners, noted respondents. While partners acknowledged that TCS iON is a comprehensive end-to-end cloud offering for SMBs, they said that deployment and service delivery issues continue to plague its adoption. They informed that the customization of the services (delivered by TCS) is a time consuming process, and in some cases takes 3-4 months to deploy and deliver iON services. This created dissatisfaction among customers, with some of them even opting out. While partners appreciated the pricing of TCS iON for the education sector, they said it was high for other verticals. Partners noted that TCS was very prompt in attending to calls despite challenges in resolving issues especially when customers demanded complex customizations. These efforts helped TCS to score high on post-sales support. Respondents said that the Tata name has tremendous brand-pull. The company conducted regular training for its select partners. n
commercial ups
APC’s high five
A
PC (Schneider) won the Channel Champion crown for the fifth year in succession in the commercial UPS category. Emerson came a close second, while Numeric failed to make it to the final list because it polled less than 10 percent of the votes. Since its acquisition by Legrand in early 2012, Numeric’s channel engagement hasn’t been the same.
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Commercial UPS category: 314 South 25%
East 14%
North 23%
Class C 27% West 38%
Region
APC
The company scored high on product availability, channel marketing, pre-sales support and channel policy & management. However, on channel profitability it scored the lowest. The company improved its product availability in smaller cities by appointing Digilink as a regional distributor—in addition to its four existing national distributors—to stock products up to 20 KVA. However, some partners, particularly in Class A and B cities, complained of over-distribution as a result of this and said it impacted their margins. Respondents noted that the company’s decision to enable partners to sell Schneider’s larger portfolio—racks, KVM switches and cabling—helped them increase the size of their deals. On channel profitability, partners complained of lower front-end and backend margins due to channel over-capacity. The issue of profitability was compounded by the delays in paying ORC and rebates. Interestingly, this feedback came from some of APC’s key data center and Inner Circle partners. Partners who are also ASPs for APC complained that their services rate card hasn’t been increased for the past few years during which costs have escalated substantially, thus rendering their services business unprofitable. APC’s pre-sales support received good ratings particularly from Class B and C cities. However, in Class A cities, the pre-sales got critical ratings as respondents said that the company hasn’t increased its pre-sales resources
Score Card Criteria APC Emerson Product availability
100.0
96.0
Price performance
87.4
86.9
Channel profitability
76.9
87.6
Brand pull & customer marketing
85.5
82.5
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
83.7
82.4
Training & certification
78.7
75.7
Post-sales support
84.3
82.3
Channel policy & management
84.9
79.7
Final Score
681.4 673.1 *Scores out of 800
Class A 49%
Class B 24%
Type of City
Non-Partner 39% Partner 61%
type of reseller
in keeping with its wider portfolio and growing business. Similarly on channel policy and management, APC got high rating from Class B and C cities as they appreciated the company’s improved local support and promptness in providing special pricing and discounts. However, its premier partners complained that the company in the past couple of years has shown a strong tendency to sell its products and services directly to their customers.
Emerson
The company scored high on channel profitability, and scored at par with APC on most parameters except channel policy and management. The fact that Emerson sells directly in many deals continued to bother partners. The change in leadership—with the head of the India business moving out—impacted the overall channel engagement. Partners said that due to the transition and lack of resources, matters like special pricing, inquiries and escalation of issues took time to be addressed. In FY2011-12 partners had complained about Emerson’s lack of aggression in the under-20 KVA market. In response, in FY2012-13, it upped the exstock availability of these products. It also improved the delivery time for other products. However, the company’s score on product availability was pulled down by partners in the east and north-east who said that the delivery time is still 3-4 weeks. Emerson added new products with better DCIM features which partners said helped them pitch to customers with confidence. Some of the products with features such as 3 phase-in and 1 phase-out, auto power transfer, and transformerfree were appreciated. Emerson was rated high on channel profitability as it offers 15-20 percent front-end while 2-3 percent backend and the payments are made within 30 days. The company’s acquisition of Avocent helped to increase partner business. Emerson lacks in brand-pull, especially in SMBs. However, in large organizations, especially those with data center capabilities, Emerson tops in mindshare compared to APC. The company has a strong pre-sales team in the top 10 cities. In smaller cities respondents reported issues with pre-sales support due to inadequate resources. n
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INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT software
Microsoft pips Kaseya
M
icrosoft won the Channel Champion crown in the infrastructure management software (IMS) category riding on the traction of System Center 2012, high-decibel customer marketing, and its channel marketing exercise. The winner of the past two years, Kaseya, came second as its decision to work with 15-20 select partners led to dissatisfaction among other partners. It received low scores on channel marketing and partner engagement.
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Infrastructure Management Software category: 102
South 25%
East 6%
Class C 11% Class B 13% West 52%
North 17%
Class A 76%
Non-Partner 23% Partner 77%
Microsoft
Microsoft introduced its new System Center 2012 in Q22012 with additional features such as support for a virtualized environment as well as the Unix, Linux and Mac environments; a dashboard view of assets; and the management of private, public and hybrid clouds. Partners noted that with support for a heterogeneous environment, System Center 2012 addressed the requirements of midmarket and large enterprises having hybrid IT systems. Most partners who took the survey said that their business from System Center server license sales grew 20-30 percent. While there is no scope to provide remote managed services around System Center, partners said that they used System Center to provide onsite support. Microsoft offers two versions of System Center. One, priced at `75,000 for a perpetual server license, is aimed at SMBs. The other, priced at `2,00,000, is targeted at midmarket customers. The company ran both customer and channel training programs for System Center 2012. It also helped partners to set up PoCs. It modified its incentive structure with additional incentives provided if the partner also sold System Center to the customer. However, Microsoft’s cloud IMS offering, Intune, launched in early 2012, failed to create any traction.
Score Card Criteria
Microsoft Kaseya
Product availability
100.0
99.6
Price performance
82.5
88.3
Channel profitability
76.5
82.8
Brand-pull & customer marketing
89.5
73.2
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
85.5
78.6
Training & certification
83.0
66.9
Post-sales support
84.5
78.8
Channel policy & management
85.9
79.4
Final Score
687.4 647.6 *Scores out of 800
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Region
Type of City
type of reseller
Respondents found fault with the company’s strategy of selling an Intune subscription with Windows OS; Intune with a Windows 7 OS license was priced at $11 per user per month. Prospective customers found the overall subscription fee high—and those already having OS licenses didn’t have the option of buying a stand-alone Intune subscription. However, Microsoft recently introduced a new version of Intune without OS and with additional features like patch management, a dashboard view of software and hardware inventory, and an antivirus subscription at $6 per user per month.
Kaseya
Kaseya received substantially low scores on most parameters. The company’s decision to work with 1520 select partners led to dissatisfaction among other partners who said that they received very little support and attention from Kaseya. This pulled down the overall channel preference score of the company. These partners said that they too have invested in the Kaseya business and it is incumbent upon the vendor to provide them proper support. As a result of its selectiveness, they said their IMS business has suffered. While many of the select partners who took the survey said that they doubled their Kaseya end-points in FY2012-13, they also noted that after the exit of Kaseya’s country head there has been an overall impact on the market aggression of the company. Kaseya has reduced its channel sales team and cut down on pre-sales resources resulting in a drop in channel engagement. However, they appreciated the company’s initiative to offer a monthly payment scheme—instead of an upfront payment—for new licenses bought. All partners agreed that Kaseya is a feature-rich IMS platform, and has several features which lend themselves for use in providing remote managed services. Kaseya therefore received high ratings for price performance. n
virtualization
V for VMware
V
Mware continued its dominance in the virtualization market for the third year in succession. Citrix came second by improving its channel preference across all parameters and bridged the gap with VMware. Microsoft, which ranked second in last year’s survey, failed to qualify this year as it received less than 10 percent of the category votes.
Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Virtualization category: 178 East 6% South 32%
West 40%
North 22%
Region
VMware
The beginning of 2012 saw VMware revamp its muchcriticized licensing model which was based on memory and computing resources and adopt a new model which partners said was simpler and cost-effective. It refreshed its entire portfolio during FY2012-13 with a focus on private clouds and software-defined data center solutions opportunities. It increased its focus on desktop virtualization by offering deep discounts on deals as small as 200 nodes. Partners said that while this initiative helped VMware to win business, it still lags Citrix both in terms of VDI technology and customer acceptance. Respondents appreciated the company’s focus on partner training and certification during the fiscal. VMware held regular training programs to help partners move beyond plain-vanilla virtualization to private cloud solutions. However, partners from cities such as Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad complained that the training programs were held only in metros, and as a result they had to send their employees to these cities for training. VMware appointed Redington as a distributor to manage partners outside its enterprise and premier partnership programs; however, many respondents were not happy with the support provided by the distributor. VMware expanded its registered partner program by reducing the entry barriers. Newly registered partners appreciated the new program and noted that they were offered strong training support by the company so
Score Card Criteria
VMware Citrix
Product availability
100
100
Price performance
87.0
86.8
Channel profitability
82.7
84.8
Brand-pull & customer marketing
86.3
79.3
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
81.4
76.3
Training & certification
82.1
80.0
Post-sales support
84.4
84.7
Channel policy & management
85.3
83.8
Final Score
689.2 675.7 *Scores out of 800
Class C 10% Class B 13% Class A 77%
Type of City
Non-Partner 19%
Partner 81%
type of reseller
they could sell VMware solutions without requiring certifications. Where VMware scored low was channel profitability. While most partners commended VMware’s revised incentive structure they complained that due to partner over-capacity multiple partners bid for the same projects thus compromising their margins. Partners appreciated VMware’s new rebate program which offered incentives based on qualitative parameters such as the innovativeness and complexity of the solution deployed. To increase penetration in the SMB segment, VMware began offering rebates for deals as low as $6,000. Complaints of bias for certain partners persisted though they were less than in the previous year. Partners expect VMware to make deal registration and the evaluation process for rebate qualification more transparent with less involvement of channel managers.
Citrix
With the adoption of desktop virtualization increasing, Citrix solutions were more in demand during the fiscal year compared to the earlier one. Partners noted that Citrix started the fiscal with a partner conference clearly laying out its business plans and channel strategies. Citrix strengthened its XenApp, XenDesktop and XenClient during FY2012-13. It also launched the VDI-ina-Box solution for SMBs which found good acceptance in the manufacturing and education verticals. Respondents said that Citrix closely aligned with Microsoft to tap technology refresh opportunities by offering VDI solutions to customers upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7. Partners who participated in such refresh opportunities saw their Citrix business double in the last 12 months. Citrix revamped its rebate structure at the beginning of the year and offered more incentives for SMB wins. Respondents also noted that since the company doesn’t have as wide a partner base as VMware, the Citrix business offers more profitability. Channel training provided by Citrix improved over the last fiscal as it conducted quarterly training initiatives. The company increased its number of channel managers which improved its channel engagement. However, partners said the company needs to have more resources for pre-sales technical support. n
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thin client
NComputing enthroned
N
Computing emerged as the Channel Champion in the thin clients category following a vast improvement in the execution of its channel policy. Last year’s champion Hewlett-Packard came second, because it did not have any attractive offer for partners focused on the SMB segment where thin client penetration grew. Dell-Wyse, which came second last year, did not make the cut-off.
NComputing
NComputing, with its focus on SMBs, has the largest channel connect and market coverage. It further penetrated the smaller cities by strengthening its sub-distribution and making available ex-stock its fast-moving SKUs in these cities. Respondents reported the continued menace of counterfeits and clones of NComputing’s fast-moving products, mainly the L series and M series. However, they said that NComputing managed to limit the damage by running an aggressive awareness campaign, and hence in H2FY2012-13 the issue was less visible. Respondents said that NComputing is priced 15-30 percent lower than HP and Wyse, and hence is a perfect fit for SMBs. The L series starts at an entry-level price of `5,500 while the M series, which offers PC-like performance, is available at an entry-level price of `7,500. Respondents said there is increasing adoption of thin clients in SMBs and that’s why their NComputing business is growing. During the year, NComputing updated its Numo SOC architecture and formed an alliance with Citrix to target the VDI market. NComputing also went after Citrix partners to offer them their hardware for large VDI deals. Partners admitted that NComputing is not perceived to be in the same league as HP and Wyse which are wellaccepted by large enterprises. Respondents said that NComputing which had re-
Score Card Criteria
NComputing HP
Product availability
94.0
85.4
Price performance
83.8
76.8
Channel profitability
81.9
75.2
Brand-pull & customer marketing
81.8
88.2
Channel marketing & pre-sales support
84.3
81.8
Training & certification
74.3
81.8
Post-sales support
84.9
81.0
Channel policy & management
82.0
81.8
Final Score
667.0 652.0 *Scores out of 800
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Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Thin Client category: 235 South 17% North 27%
East 19%
Class A 38%
West 37%
Region
Class C 35% Class B 27%
Type of City
Partner 60%
Non-Partner 40%
type of reseller
ceived low scores on post-sales support in FY2011-12 due to delays in replacements, did well to address the issue and improved its support. The company also improved its technical support for pre-sales and post-sales. NComputing ran specific campaigns around its Citrix partnership for enterprise-focused channels. For sub-distributors it ran quarterly schemes and volume discounts. While the company scored well on channel policy and management, some of its leading partners complained that in midsize-to-large projects the company was keen to work with national SIs instead of giving its partners the opportunity. The company scored low on channel training and certification as most respondents said that the company didn’t organize any training sessions in their city.
Hewlett-Packard
Last year’s winner HP came second as it failed to leverage on the fast growing SMB opportunities. Respondents said that with SMBs increasingly adopting thin clients, HP ought to have certain stock-and-sell models which are readily available. The company offers only back-to-back delivery and is not focused on 10-25 node deals. Also respondents in the education segment noted that in FY2012-13, the company wasn’t as aggressive in this market as it was in the previous fiscal. They opined that HP’s MultiSeat, a shared seating solution for schools, did not result in many sales. Partners said that HP cannot afford to ignore smaller deals where NComputing and lesser-known brands are dominating. In terms of product portfolio, HP has a wide range from very low power clients to highly manageable clients in the `10,000-35,000 range. Large partners appreciated HP’s partnerships with Citrix and VMware which helped them to participate in more VDI opportunities. However, HP’s overall profitability scores took a beating. This was blamed on partner over-capacity. In channel policy and management, HP has a structured partner program with clear incentive slabs, a deal registration process, and an SPC mechanism. n
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