CRN 01 october 2013 all pages by UBM India

editorial

Leading the way

the process it reduced its number of customers from 850 to 540. Consequently, while its topline shrunk by 7 percent its bottomline grew by 25 percent. Team Computers was no different. The company walked away from several large but low-margin deals which could have taken the company’s topline to Rs 300 crore plus. In the process, though its topline grew only 3 percent its bottomline saw double-digit growth. Team changed its focus to providing solutions that were directly linked with the customer’s revenue and profit growth. These are just two examples of what partners are doing to transform their organizations in order to stay ahead in these difficult times. With the IT ecosystem undergoing a major shift it is imperative for partners to transform. Read the winners’ profiles to see how India’s best partners are leading the business transformation. n

n the current edition we present India’s 26 best solutions and services providers—the winners of the Thirteenth CRN Xcellence Awards. Despite the slowdown these partners have done much better than their peers, not necessarily in terms of revenue growth but in identifying new growth areas and investing in building practices around them. Many took blows to their toplines by exiting low-value businesses. Some winners exited the PC and peripheral business due to low margins. Others weeded out customers who didn’t pay on time. Veeras Infotek moved away from Rs 15 crore of transactional business because it didn’t contribute to margins and impeded the company’s transformation to a solutions-centric organization. In

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October 01, 2013 l Volume 2 Issue 23

contents

Best of Breed

Presenting the winners of CRN Xcellence Awards 2013, who outperformed with their solutions expertise, market strategy, customer centricity and best practices

methodology Choosing India’s best

outstanding channel contribution Alok Ohrie, President & MD, Dell India

Systems integrator North Team Computers west Orient Technologies south Locuz Enterprise Solutions

Solutions Provider—Server and Storage North Cache Technologies west VDA Infosolutions south Vitage Systems

Enterprise VAR—Advanced markets Cache Digitech North Comprehensive Consultancy east Vintech Electronic System west south Central Data Systems

Enterprise VAR—Emerging markets North Aman Technologies east Graphic Trades west Innovative Telecom & Software south Cyberland Technologies

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Solutions Provider—Networking North Targus Technologies west Nirmal Datacomm south Dhanush Infosol

Solutions Provider—Software North Comparex India west MindCraft Software south Veeras Infotek

Solutions Provider—Security Softcell Technologies

Cloud Services Provider Albion Infotel

Managed Services Provider large Omnitech Infosolutions mid-size Valuepoint Systems emerging Choice Solutions

system builder Vardhaman Technology

methodology

Choosing India’s best C

RN presented the 13th edition of the CRN Xcellence Awards to 26 leading enterprise VARs, solution providers and service providers during a scintillating evening ceremony on August 23, 2013, at The Leela, Kovalam. The awards ceremony was held during the 3-day CRN Leadership Summit, which witnessed the participation of 105 technology integrators and more than 18 technology companies. The most coveted award of the night, the CRN Outstanding Channel Contribution Award, was conferred on Alok Ohrie, President and Managing Director, Dell India, for his role in creating, developing and nurturing the IT networking market and the channel ecosystem around it. Instituted in the year 2000, the core objective behind the CRN Xcellence Awards is to recognize companies and individuals in the IT channels which have excelled in their fields by adopting best practices, applying sound business acumen, and in the process create role models that inspire a whole new generation of business leaders. To provide a level-playing field to channel companies from smaller cities, the CRN Xcellence Awards are divided into two main subcategories: Advanced markets, for resellers in metros and class-A cities, and Emerging markets, for resellers in smaller cities. The Advanced and Emerging categories were further categorized region-wise, thus giving due weightage to the regional dynamics of the IT channels.

The CRN Xcellence Awards were presented to partners in the following categories: Systems Integrator Solutions Provider—Security Solutions Provider—Software Solutions Provider—Networking Solutions Provider—Server & Storage Enterprise VAR—Advanced Enterprise VAR—Emerging Managed Services Provider Cloud Services Provider System Builder

Award parameters The CRN Xcellence Awards lay emphasis not just on the size of the company but also on aspects which are integral to making the company a true leader. We ranked each entry on: Quality of turnover, growth and profitability Product and solution mix Quality of HR Business systems Marketing and sales innovations Customer responsiveness Future growth strategies

Choosing the finalists For this year’s awards, CRN received 185 nominations from 25 cities. Of the nominations received in each award category, the final five were selected by the CRN editorial team. The team scanned through every nomination form to verify the information provided in the awards applications. Wherever required, we called up applicants to get more details about the aspects of their business. The final contenders were selected

“Having been associated as jury member, I can say that the evaluation process for the CRN Xcellence Awards is extremely clinical, datadriven, fair and unbiased Pradeep Khemani, Country Manager, Channels & SMB Sales, HP Enterprise Group primarily on the basis of the quality of information provided in the nomination form. Once shortlisted, all finalists were sent an email requesting them to share any bit of information about their achievements and performance that would boost their chances of winning the award.

Jury process After almost two months of work, we invited a jury panel consisting of eminent people with diverse experience in IT channels. To provide the jury members with enough time to score the nominations, the entire jury process was held online whereby each jury member was provided online access to the nomination forms of the finalists. Each member had to fill up scores for each award criterion on a scale of one to 10. The jury was also asked to assign weights to the awards criteria for different categories. For each award category the weighted scores provided by each jury member were added up to arrive at the final score. In this manner we discovered India’s best enterprise VARs for 2013. u

the jury Bhaskar Bhakthavatsalu Regional Director, India & Saarc, Check Point Software Technologies

Pramodh Menon Managing Director, Partner Business Group, India & Saarc, Cisco

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Pradeep Khemani Tushar Sighat CEO, D-Link India & Saarc

Ajay Kaul Director & GM, Global Commercial Channels, Dell India

Country Head, Channel & SMB Sales, Enterprise Group, HP India

Jeetendra Gupta Director, Channels & Alliances, India & South Asia, Juniper Networks

List of final nominees West

Systems Integrator

u Ace Brain Systems & Software, Pune u Dixit Infotech Services, Mumbai u Innova Systems, Ahmedabad u KPlus Infotech, Mumbai u Swan Solutions and Services, Mumbai u Vintech Electronic Systems, Pune

North u Compton Computers, New Delhi u Progressive Infotech, Noida u Targus Technologies, Gurgaon u Team Computers, New Delhi West u Allied Digital, Mumbai u Ashtech Infotech, Mumbai u CDP India, Mumbai u Dynacons Systems and Solutions, Mumbai u Insight Business Machine, Mumbai u Orient Technologies, Mumbai u Pentagon Systems and Services, Mumbai u Silver Touch Technologies, Ahmedabad

South u Cache Peripherals, Hyderabad u Central Data Systems, Bengaluru u Futurenet Technologies, Chennai Enterprise VAR —Emerging markets North u Acme Digitek Solutions, Lucknow u Aman Technologies, Jammu u E-Connect Solutions, Udaipur u H&H Technologies, Chandigarh u Pentacle IT Solutions, Lucknow u Robotics Computers, Agra u Strategic Marketing, Dehradun u Veltronics India, Indore

South u Choice Solutions, Hyderabad u Gemini Communications, Chennai u Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Hyderabad u ValuePoint Systems, Bengaluru Solutions Provider—Server and Storage

East u BMG Informatics, Guwahati u Computer Gallery, Imphal u Graphic Trades, Patna u Integrated Systems & Services, Guwahati u Trade & Technology, Dibrugarh u Vidarbha Infotech, Nagpur

North u Computer Network & Telecom, New Delhi u Cache Technologies, New Delhi u CI Infotech, New Delhi West u G-Tech Solutions, Mumbai u Infobahn Technical Solutions, Mumbai u Lauren Information Technology, Mumbai u Magnamious Systems, Mumbai u Unified Tech Data, Mumbai u VDA Infosolutions, Mumbai u Wystek Systems Technologists, Mumbai

West u Innovative Telecom & Software, Surat u Ishan Group, Rajkot u ITCG Solutions, Vadodra u Micropro Software Solutions, Nagpur u Transit Electronics, Surat u Veetrag Computers, Sangli

South u Fourth Dimension Technologies, Chennai u Quadsel Systems, Chennai u Vitage Systems, Bengaluru

South u Cyberland Technologies, Cochin u Indsys Infotech, Erode Solutions Provider—Networking

Enterprise VAR—Advanced Markets

North u Proactive Data Systems, New Delhi u MK Infosystems, New Delhi u Targus Technologies, Gurgaon

North u ABC Systems, New Delhi u Arrow PC Networks, New Delhi u Cache Digitech, New Delhi u MM9 Information Technology, Gurgaon

West u Nirmal Datacomm, Mumbai u Microlink Solutions, Ahmedabad u Nahar Integrated Systems, Pune

East u Bardroy Infotech, Kolkata u Comprehensive Consultancy, Kolkata u Parth Technocomm Solutions, Kolkata u Techniche Consulting Services, Kolkata u Trisita Marketing, Kolkata

South u Dhanush Infosol, Bengaluru u Shell Networks, Hyderabad u Webcom Information Technology, Bengaluru

Meetul Patel

Ramesh Natarajan

General Manager, Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners, Microsoft India

Srikanth Doranadula Senior Director, Distribution, Alliances & Channels, Oracle India

Solutions Provider—Software North u All e Technologies, Noida u Adapt Software India, Gurgaon u Comparex India, New Delhi u Teckinfo Solutions, New Delhi West u Adit Microsys, Ahmedabad u LDS Infotech, Mumbai u MindCraft Software, Mumbai u Softcell Technologies, Pune u VDA Infosolutions, Mumbai South u Mukesh InfoServe, Chennai u Power Center, Chennai u Veeras Infotek, Chennai Solutions Provider—Security u ACPL Systems, Gurgaon u Essen Vision, Mumbai u Meta Infotech, Mumbai u Softcell Technologies, Pune u Veeras Infotek, Chennai Managed Services Provider Large u Allied Digital, Mumbai u Omnitech Infosolutions, Mumbai u Paladion Networks, Bengaluru Mid-Size u Dynacons Systems and Solutions, Mumbai u Solutions Enterprise, Ahmedabad u ValuePoint Systems, Bengaluru Emerging u ACMA Computers, Mumbai u Choice Solutions, Hyderabad u Dev IT Solutions, Ahmedabad u Dhanush Infosol, Bengaluru u Futuresoft Solutions, New Delhi Cloud Services Provider u Albion Infotel, New Delhi u Choice Solutions, Hyderabad u Magnamious Systems, Mumbai u MN World Enterprise, Bengaluru u PH Teknow, Mumbai u Techlink Infoware, Mumbai System Builder u Connoiseur Electronics, Bengaluru u Vardhaman Technology, Mumbai u Xpress Computers, Mumbai

Anand Naik

Head, National Sales, Redington India

Managing Director, Sales, India & Saarc, Symantec

Bimal Raj

Ganesan ArUmugam

CEO, Smartlink Network Systems

Senior Director, Partner Channels, VMware India

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outstanding channel contribution

Alok Ohrie, President & MD, Dell India

The channel man when IBM sold the PC business to Lenovo. In 2004, Ohrie was given the responsibility of driving IBM’s Systems Technology Group (STG) with the mandate to grow the partner ecosystem not just in metro cities but also in emerging geographies in the country. Ohrie soon rolled out IBM’s mid-market channel GTM and focused on enabling partners in tier-2 cities to sell storage and server solutions. He also introduced programs that enabled partners to sell IBM’s Unix range which till then was sold only by IBM and some of its tier-1 partners. At EMC, where he joined as President for India business in 2008, he mobilized the storage channel and rolled out the Velocity program for the tier-2 channel. Till then EMC didn’t have a strong channel focus and culture, and largely sold directly to customers or through select tier-1 SIs. Under Dhaval Valia, Executive Editor, CRN, presenting the award to Alok Ohrie, Ohrie’s leadership, EMC began engaging with partners and President & Managing Director, Dell India built a robust storage channel. According to Ohrie, the most challenging part of setting RN conferred the coveted Outstanding Channel up the EMC channel was to de-link the storage component Contribution Award for 2013 on Alok Ohrie, President & from the server business. “Till then storage was sold as part MD, Dell India, for his contribution in creating, nurturing and of a server deal. Our challenge was to sell storage on its strengthening Indian IT channels over the past two decades. own merits; this required effective customer and channel With over 25 years in the IT industry, most of them in marketing. Today, it’s good to see that storage has been channel-related roles, Ohrie has been instrumental in creating completely de-linked from servers and has created a standa robust enterprise channel ecosystem which has today alone market for itself, which is growing faster than the server become the backbone of India’s domestic IT industry. market.” He was among the first to set up a commercial PC channel, Ohrie returned to IBM as the Vice President of STG in which he did at IBM. Even today the ThinkPad brand that he early 2010. This time he faced a new challenge—that of an drove through pioneering channel-led strategies continues to organization in transformation. There were worries among be a market leader, and his contribution to building the server partners that IBM would go direct, especially with midand storage channel has been remarkable. market customers. However, he ensured that such worries Despite his achievements Ohrie remains modest. “I would were laid to rest by investing in empowering channels to sell credit all my successes to the teams I was lucky to be part more solutions. Under his leadership IBM embarked on a of. Rather than crediting me with the creation of the channel geographical expansion strategy and enabled hundreds of new ecosystem I would say it was the partners who, with their partners in smaller cities. entrepreneurial zeal, guided and inspired us in creating the Having joined Dell India recently his main charter is to vibrant ecosystem.” drive Dell’s transition from a PC company to an enterprise Ohrie, who graduated from the National Institute of solutions company and strengthen its channel DNA because Technology in Electronics & Communications Engineering in till now it’s been mostly a direct-selling company. 1988, spent his early career at ESPL and Wipro. “There’s a transformation underway in the IT industry, In 1993, he joined Tata Information Systems, a joint with new consumption models emerging,” observes Ohrie. venture between Tata and IBM, which at that point in time “Dell is today an end-to-end solutions was just one year old. His role was to vendor, and it needs channels more than put in place a team to drive Big Blue’s milestones ever.” PC business in the country where local 1970 Graduated from NIT, Surathkal, Those who have worked with brands such as HCL, PCL and Wipro in Electronics & Communications Ohrie say that he has strong leadership were dominant. qualities and is a team-person. His Accordingly, Ohrie set up the team engineering. understanding of market dynamics and and rolled out a channel-led GTM for the 1993 Joined Tata Information Systems to drive connect with customers and channels PC business. By 1999, IBM’s PC business the PC business. gives him an edge over other leaders. grew to a level that the company set up “I would say that his most valuable a manufacturing plant in Puducherry. 1996 Appointed head of IBM’s PC business. contribution is that he has built channelOhrie was also instrumental in building Embarked on building channels for the oriented teams in every organization the ThinkPad brand in India which ThinkPad brand. he has worked with,” comments continues to have a strong brand recall Ravi Verdes, CEO, Frontier Business among enterprises even today—almost a 2004 Took over as the head of IBM’s Systems Machines, an IBM partner who worked decade after it was sold to Lenovo. Technology Group. Laid the foundation with Ohrie for more than 15 years. Ohrie’s stint continued till 2004 for the company’s mid-market GTM. Adds Durganadh Venkata, Senior 2006 Joined AMD India as MD. Vice President, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, who, prior to turning an With over 25 years in the IT 2008 Joined EMC India/SA as President and entrepreneur, worked in Ohrie’s team industry, most of them in launched the company’s tier-2 channel at IBM STG, “Ohrie’s understanding initiatives. channel-related roles, Ohrie has of business dynamics is impeccable. He is aware of what happens on the 2010 Returned to IBM to head STG and been instrumental in creating ground. The credibility he enjoys among strengthened the company’s partner a robust enterprise channel enterprise channels will help Dell programs. immensely.” u ecosystem in India

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BEST SYSTEMS INTEGRATOR

Ranjan Chopra, Managing Director, Team Computers, receiving the award from Shalin Patel, Manager, National Distribution, Symantec N W

N S

Team Computers

elhi-based Team Computers grew by 4 percent from `252 crore in FY2011-12 to `262 crore in FY2012-13. “We could have had a bigger topline, but we walked away from low-margin businesses including stand-alone PC sales and regular break-fix support,” explained Ranjan Chopra, MD, Team Computers. “We migrated nearly 95 percent of our FMS and AMC business to automated managed services.” During the last fiscal Team’s focus was on working with many of its midsize-to-large customers and offering them solutions directly linked with the customer’s revenue and profit growth. BI and analytics emerged as the highest growth domain and contributed nearly `65 crore to the company’s turnover. Team executed 60 BI projects ranging from `30 lakh to `1.5 crore. One of the largest BI projects executed was for CRM and financial management for Videocon Telecom. Another major project, this time for Parle Industries, was to plot and analyze the real-time data of the company’s entire value-chain. For an auto company Team deployed an analytics engine for finance management; this helped the customer to free-up working capital of `100 crore within six months. Last fiscal also saw Team Computers focus on enterprise mobility. It provided iPad-based salesforce automation to two major pharma companies and implemented pilot projects for two insurance firms. On the systems integration front the company executed a `15 crore project for a cooperative bank in Himachal Pradesh to deliver core banking services across 200 branches. Another large project involved setting up a war-room for the Ministry of Defence from where the authorities can get real-time videos of selected locations and issue commands in real-time. Team also executed a `10 crore enterprise-wide video conferencing solution for Tata Teleservices. On the cloud front Team saw a significant number of small and large deals come its way. One of the large projects was for Punj Lloyd where Team migrated the entire unified communication solution for over 4,500 employees to the cloud. Another project was for India Infoline where it migrated the mail and messaging to Google Apps. Team is targeting a `300 crore topline in the current fiscal with a focus on BI, cloud computing and enterprise mobility. In addition, it plans to focus on customized application development. “We also intend to target Middle East and other Asian countries for our BI and analytics solutions,” informed Chopra. u

Ajay Sawant, Managing Director, Orient Technologies N W

Orient Technologies

umbai-based Orient Technologies grew by 4 percent from `146 crore in FY2011-12 to `152 crore in FY2012-13. Ajay Sawant, MD, Orient, explained that the slow growth resulted from their bid to focus on the bottomline. Orient exited non-profitable businesses such as desktops and clients; focused on value-added products and services in storage and servers such as virtualization, cloud and software applications. The company continued to upsell and deep sell to its existing customers with an increased focus on the government and PSU verticals. “This year onward we will convert our SI projects in these verticals to turnkey projects,” Sawant informed. For `15 crore, in a project spanning two years, Orient connected 788 gram panchayats in Maharashtra with Mantralaya, the state government’s secretariat. Orient’s virtualization business contributed 55 percent to its overall revenue. Said Sawant, “We implemented three large storage virtualization projects in the BFSI segment, virtualized networks for some large pharma and manufacturing companies, consolidated PCs for VDI for IT-ITeS companies, and deployed server and application virtualization projects for customers across verticals.” With Oracle it tapped opportunities in the application, database and middleware. “For `1.5 crore to `2 crore each, we deployed an Oracle database for 6-7 large customers. We are training our technical and presales executives for middleware, and should be able to present a strong case-study this year. Plans are afoot to sign on QlikView for a strong BI practice,” he said. Sawant also credited AllTimeIT, a group of 15 HP partners offering cloud services, for an increased bottomline. “We moved 1,000 users of a big retail company to the cloud. We also helped two other large customers to set up their private clouds.” Talking about best practices Sawant said, “Last year we created a presales team which set up POCs at customer data centers. This resulted in a conversion rate of 70 percent.” For streamlining its finances the company created a payment collection cell for reminders and follow-ups with defaulters; the outstanding dues were thus reduced from `30 crore to `22 crore-`23 crore. “We aim to close the fiscal with total revenue of `175 crore and a double-digit bottomline,” Sawant stated. “We have invested in an NOC, and will focus on our managed services business. We will also provide services to the SMB segment.” u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 4 percent to

Company: Team Computers

u Grew its turnover by 4 percent to

Company: Orient Technologies

`262 crore

MD: Ranjan Chopra

u Walked away from low-margin

businesses including stand-alone PC sales and regular break-fix support

u Executed 60 BI projects u Deployed an analytics engine for

finance management for an auto company; this helped the customer to free-up working capital of `100 crore within six months

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Year of inception: 1987

`152 crore

u Exit non-profitable businesses such

Turnover FY2012-13: `262 crore

as desktops and clients, and provided only value-added products and services in storage and servers

Turnover FY2011-12: `252 crore

u Created a pre-sales team which set up

Number of branches: 26

Employees: 1,050 Certified employees: 954 Principals: IBM, HP, Kaseya, Apple, EMC, Google, Amazon, Microsoft

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

POCs at customer data centers; this resulted in a conversion rate of 70 percent

u Created a payment collection cell for

follow-ups with defaulters

MD: Ajay Sawant Year of inception: 1997 Number of branches: Six Turnover FY2012-13: `152 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `146 crore Employees: 950 Certified employees: 620 Principals: HP, Dell, Oracle, Apple, Cisco, Citrix, IBM, McAfee, Fortinet, Symantec

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 31 percent to

Company: Locuz Enterprise Solutions

`190 crore

u Handled a project worth `36 crore for

the Indian Navy

u Bagged projects from five large

companies for identity and access management, collectively raking in `25 crore

u Acquired its first customer outside

India, a US company, for its managed services; signed a multi-year contract

MD: Vijay Wadhi Year of inception: 2000 Number of branches: Five Turnover FY2012-13: `190 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `144 crore Employees: 278 Certified employees: 136 Principals: Cisco, IBM, NetApp, EMC, HP, Symantec, Microsoft, VMware, CA

Muralikrishna GP, Sales Regional Director, Symantec, presenting the award to Vijay Wadhi, Managing Director, Locuz Enterprise Solutions N W

S S

Locuz Enterprise Solutions

yderabad-based Locuz Enterprise Solutions saw a 31 percent growth in its topline from `144 crore in FY2011-12 to `190 crore in FY2012-13. The company attributed this growth to the execution of some very large projects, the growth of its services business, and a focus on solution areas such as identity and access management, and workplace transformation. “Two years back we launched an initiative called FLASH—which stands for ‘Fewer, Larger, Stronger & Happier’ customers—with the objective of increasing the total size of the projects we executed,” said Vijay Wadhi, Managing Director, Locuz. As a result, the size of the projects handled by the company in the last fiscal increased; it implemented more than 20 projects worth more than `1 crore, five of $1.5 million each, and three projects for more than $4 million each. The largest project worth `36 crore was for the Indian Navy. “We were chosen by Bharat Electronics as the network integration partner for the project. The project included setting up the core backbone network on Cisco platforms that connects all remote monitoring stations to the command

center in Delhi, and deploying 15 telepresence rooms and 50 video conferencing stations across the coastline of India, all of which will connect to the Naval HQ at Delhi,” explained Wadhi. As a result, in FY2012-13, Locuz’s Cisco business reached `75 crore. Locuz’s high performance computing (HPC) business also saw strong growth, contributing a total of `52 crore to the topline as it bagged three $2 million-$4 million projects from the science and research segment. The other big tech practice turned out to be identity and access management, where Locuz bagged projects from five large companies, collectively raking in `25 crore. Its revenue from services grew 50 percent to `25 crore. For its managed services Locuz acquired its first customer outside India in FY2012-13. This was a US company, with which it signed a multi-year contract with annual accruals of `1 crore. Going forward, Locuz expects to grow at a CAGR of 23 percent to reach `400 crore by FY2015-16. “We expect our services business to cross `90 crore by FY2015-16. Apart from our existing set of services, we plan to soon offer a bouquet of infrastructure services including desktop-as-a-service, HPC-asa-service and security-as-a-service,” Wadhi informed. u

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best Solutions Provider

Praveen Sahai, Vice President, Channels, EMC, India & Saarc, presenting the award to Prarthana Gupta, CEO, Cache Technologies N W

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Cache Technologies

elhi-based Cache Technologies grew 25 percent from `68 crore in FY2011-12 to `85 crore in FY2012-13. Prarthana Gupta, CEO, Cache, attributed this growth to large server and storage deals, new solution areas, managed services and deep selling. Server and storage projects contributed about 44 percent to the total revenue. “For the last two years we worked on competencies around servers and storage, including virtualization, back-up and security. This enabled us to win several large end-to-end deals in excess of `50 lakh from customers such as Hero MotoCorp, Comviva, KPMG and NIIT,” Gupta informed. The company strengthened its ties with Symantec and executed about 15 backup and security projects worth a total of `4 crore. “In addition, we partnered with Oracle in Q42012 for their software applications and hardware business,” she added. To strengthen its bottomline, the company focused on managed services and the FMS business which contributed about `17 crore. Besides existing customers like IBM, Comviva and Tech Mahindra, Cache added customers such as Airtel, NIIT and MCarbon which gave additional service revenue of `5 crore. The company continued its focus on deep selling through about 12 account managers focused on the top 70 customers. Said Gupta, “With an expanded solutions portfolio we became proactive in identifying customer pain-areas and suggested solutions with visibility on TCO and ROI. These top 70 customers gave us more than 60 percent of our business.” For `2.4 crore the company executed a fraud management and DR project for MTS. For Aircel the company executed an eTop-up project worth `2.5 crore. Cache executed a project worth `1.8 crore entailing servers, storage and virtualization for Dalmia Cements. It also implemented a networking project worth `1.9 crore for Airtel. In the current fiscal Cache is targeting revenue of `125 crore, of which `65 crore is expected from servers and storage solutions. “Of this, we already have projects worth `50 crore under execution. We expect about `20 crore from the software solutions business,” Gupta informed. With the recent alliance with HP Networking, the company sees an additional 10 percent business. It has under execution five networking projects worth more than `1 crore each. Added Gupta, “We expect services to contribute about `25 crore and have planned to establish an NOC.” u

Server and Storage

Praveen Sahai, Vice President, Channels, EMC, India & Saarc, presenting the award to Deepak Jadhav, Director, VDA Infosolutions N W

VDA Infosolutions

umbai-based VDA Infosolutions grew 48 percent from `42 crore in FY2011-12 to `62 crore in FY2012-13. Deepak Jadhav, Director, VDA, attributed the growth to large storage and virtualization projects, new solution areas, and a services push. “We improved our partnership levels with vendors such as EMC, VMware and IBM; this enabled us to win large deals and get higher back-ends. Projects in servers, storage and virtualization contributed 50 percent to our revenue.” The company focused on new solution areas like testing and modernization solutions, IPv6, WAN optimization and virtual tape library (VTL). “Over the last two years we built our strengths in niche areas with less competition and higher margins,” explained Jadhav. “Our increased focus on MicroFocus, which provides tools to modernize legacy applications, added 15 percent to our revenue.” VDA saw increased adoption of IPv6 and load balancing by the IT-ITeS and BFSI segments, and completed three projects with an average deal size of `50 lakh. It also bagged a project worth `1 crore for WAN optimization. “In addition, we focused on smart storage technologies, and bagged many projects ranging from `25 lakh to `5 crore,” he informed. VDA increased its services share to 25 percent with 15 key customers whose annual FMS contracts exceeded `1 crore each. Said Jadhav, “There are a few customers whose annual billing is `6 crore to `8 crore per annum. Our mandate includes facility management, private cloud, consultancy and systems integration.” In addition, VDA refreshed its sales strategy and formed separate teams for existing and new customers. “Till last year our sales team consisted of primarily pre-sales personnel doing the sales. Though this was a successful model, to improve the funnel and penetration we added hard-core sales people. Moreover, having separate teams gave us both depth and breadth,” explained Jadhav. The company deployed application modernization tools from MicroFocus for a large private bank for an order worth `8.2 crore. “For another private bank we implemented an integrated solution using IBM’s PureFlex with SVC which virtualized all existing storage,” Jadhav informed. In the current fiscal VDA is targeting a topline of `75 crore. Said Jadhav, “We will continue our focus on the IT-ITeS and BFSI segments but will also look for opportunities in the telecom and mid-market segments.” u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 25 percent to

Company: Cache Technologies

u Grew its turnover by 48 percent to

Company: VDA Infosolutions

`85 crore

u Built competencies in virtualization,

backup and security

CEO: Prarthana Gupta Year of inception: 1991 Number of branches: Eight

u Partnered with Oracle u Added Airtel, NIIT and MCarbon as

customers for managed services

Turnover FY2012-13: `85 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `68 crore

u Executed a fraud management and DR

Employees: 300

u Implemented an eTop-up project for

Principals: HP, IBM, Lenovo, EMC, Oracle, VMware, Symantec, Red Hat

project for MTS Aircel

Computer Reseller News

Certified employees: 185

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

`62 crore

u Focused on new solution areas like

testing and modernization solutions, IPv6, WAN optimization and VTL

u Increased services share to 25 percent

Director: Deepak Jadhav Year of inception: 2010 Number of branches: Nine Turnover FY2012-13: `62 crore

u Built its strengths in niche areas with

Turnover FY2011-12: `42 crore

u Deployed application modernization

Certified employees: 187

less competition and higher margins tools for a large private bank for `8.2 crore

Employees: 450 Principals: Cisco, IBM, EMC, VMware, Microsoft

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 7 percent to

Company: Vitage Systems

`54.5 crore

u Stayed away from PC and peripheral

deals

u Bagged 30 server room and data

center deals ranging from `40 lakh to `1.25 crore

u Changed its pitch to customers; started

identifying their pain areas, then offering a solution

u Designed data centers for customers

across verticals

Praveen Sahai, Vice President, Channels, EMC, India & Saarc, presenting the award to Ajay Badrinath, VP, Marketing & Communications, Vitage Systems N W

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Vitage Systems

engaluru-based Vitage Systems grew by 7 percent from `51 crore in FY2011-12 to `54.5 crore in FY2012-13. According to Ajay Badrinath, VP, Marketing & Communications, Vitage, the marginal growth was due to a conscious decision to stay away from PC and peripheral deals. “The decision hit our topline by about 15 percent but we still grew due to large solution-centric server and storage deals, strong demand for enterprise security, and geographical expansion.” The company bagged about 30 server room and data center deals ranging from `40 lakh to `1.25 crore. “Last fiscal we changed our pitch to the customer. The focus was on consulting and identifying their pain areas, then offering a solution. We also improved our focus on virtualization and also started designing data centers which helped us win end-to-end deals,” shared Badrinath. One of the large data center projects executed, and worth `1.68 crore, was for a defense establishment; it involved setting up a high-availability data center. Vitage ventured into enterprise security by increasing its focus on FireEye and CheckPoint. “We identified advanced

Interop in 3 words by top technology experts

MD: Alton Viegas Year of inception: 1993 Number of branches: Two Turnover FY2012-13: `54.5 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `51 crore Employees: 37 Certified employees: 16 Principals: Cisco, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, FireEye, CheckPoint, Juniper, Fujitsu

persistent threats, network access control, secure remote access and SIEM as high-growth areas with compliance requirements. The need was to educate customers about existing vulnerabilities and how to plug the gaps,” he stated. The company executed eight projects worth between `30 lakh and `1.5 crore for security solutions; these contributed nearly `8 crore to the topline. Further, the company focused on adding new customers and expanded its base in Mumbai. “While we approached existing customers with end-to-end solutions around server and storage, the focus was more on acquiring new customers. With enterprise security solutions we focused on verticals such as BFSI, healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Expanding our base in Mumbai helped us to win new customers because it is a hub of BFSI and pharma companies,” Badrinath explained. In the current fiscal Vitage is targeting growth of 15 percent riding on its continued focus on servers, storage and enterprise security. Said Badrinath, “Enterprise security is our key focus now. We already have projects worth `4 crore under execution and expect them to contribute about 20 percent to our turnover this fiscal.” The company is also planning to add more sales people at its Bengaluru office and open a branch in Delhi. u

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Best Enterprise VAR

Manoj Grover, Head, Marketing, Channel, SMB and Alliances, HP India, presented the award to Alok Gupta, Director, Cache Digitech N W

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Cache Digitech

elhi-based Cache Digitech grew by 1.8 percent from `57 crore in FY2011-12 to `58 crore in FY2012-13. Said Alok Gupta, Director, Cache Digitech, “Topline growth was minimal because we reduced our focus on lowmargin deals. We also rejected customers with a history of payment defaults. Although these initiatives impacted our topline, we maintained cash more effectively.” Cache Digitech sustained its revenue due to tie-ups with new vendors, aggression in cloud services, and a focus on small deals. The company partnered with Dell and APC. “The tie-ups enabled us to win several large projects including a `5 crore deal for PC and server integration in 15 colleges of the Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee of Delhi,” he informed. The company increased its focus on cloud services and bagged several large deals for TCS iON. One of the largest deals bagged for the TCS iON cloud was from PDM University for `4.5 crore for three years. The company also signed contracts worth `1.25 crore with Paradise Plastics and `1 crore with Asia Institute of Management. In addition, Cache Digitech partnered with Airtel and Tata Teleservices to sell their IaaS offerings. Informed Gupta, “With these two partnerships we bagged 35 deals ranging from `5 lakh to `1.5 crore for cloud and connectivity offerings.” Cache Digitech focused on small deals comprising desktop, notebook and server sales, and formed a team of eight telecallers. “These tele-callers targeted existing as well as new customers to bring in small deals ranging from `1 lakh to `5 lakh,” shared Gupta. “The deals were rather small but gave us margins of 15-18 percent due to value-adds like longer warranty and accidental cover.” Another growth area was collaborating with ERP solutions partners to provide systems integration. Cache supplied notebooks, UPSs, cameras and biometric devices worth `6 crore for the UIDAI project. It implemented compute, storage and networking for the Asia Institute of Management for `3.5 crore, and an MPLS and networking solution worth `2.5 crore for Aakash Institute. In the current fiscal, the company is targeting growth of 10 percent with a focus on building an ERP practice, and is also going aggressive with cloud and managed services. Cache Digitech is planning to establish an NOC in Delhi for remote managed services and a branch in Bengaluru. u

Advanced Markets

Manoj Grover, Head, Marketing, Channel, SMB and Alliances, HP India, presented the award to Akhil Ranjan Jha, Director, Comprehensive Consultancy N W

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Comprehensive Consultancy

olkata-based Comprehensive Consultancy grew 14 percent from `10 crore in FY2011-12 to `11.4 crore in FY2012-13. Akhil Ranjan Jha, Director, Comprehensive, attributed the growth to an increased focus on software, working with national SIs as backend partners, and a continuing focus on solutions. “Last fiscal we addressed certain software opportunities which we could not address in FY2011-12. We implemented software solutions such as CAD Solidworks for 2,000 users in an engineering institute. We also provided network optimization software like INOC for mining and metallurgy to several engineering institutions. This added 15 percent to our revenue.” Comprehensive worked with national SIs including Wipro and TCS for projects where it did not meet the eligibility criteria. “We worked in four projects with national SIs for opportunities in campus-wide networking and the deployment of servers. The project sizes ranged from `50 lakh to over `1 crore and contributed 30 percent to our revenue,” informed Jha. Additionally, a solutions approach helped the company to grow. It formed a team which developed skills around solution areas like high performance computing (HPC), virtualization and collaboration, and created a practice around them. Said Jha, “We provided collaboration using IBM Lotus and Zimbra tools, and high-performance cluster computing. With solutions we were able to position ourselves much stronger, which led to a greater win ratio. This also helped to generate greater revenue through reference customers and contributed 25-30 percent of our turnover.” For `1.7 crore for a government technical institution in Orissa, Comprehensive executed a project for storage migration whereby it integrated HP storage with multiple OSs on nonHP servers and migrated part of the data from the existing IBM storage to a new one. In another project, the company set up an HPC facility for an engineering college in a deal worth `1.6 crore; this included training in HPC and the deployment of 40 servers for 3,000 users. “We also worked on a mail messaging and social collaboration solution for 6,000 users at a university in Kolkata. The project was worth `1.2 crore,” Jha informed. Comprehensive expects growth of 15-20 percent in the current fiscal. Remarked Jha, “Though many customers are delaying IT spending, we have several deals in our pipeline from the education vertical. Education contributes 95 percent of our revenue and will offer good growth this fiscal as well.” u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 1.8 percent to

Company: Cache Digitech

u Grew its turnover by 14 percent to

Company: Comprehensive Consultancy

`58 crore

u Bagged `4.5 crore deal for TCS iON

cloud from PDM University

deals; also rejected customers with a history of payment defaults

u Partnered with Dell, APC, Airtel and

Tata Teleservices

u Formed a team of eight tele-callers

to target customers to bring in small deals ranging from `1 lakh to `5 lakh

Computer Reseller News

Year of inception: 2006 Number of branches: Two

u Reduced its focus on low-margin

Director: Alok Gupta

Turnover FY2012-13: `58 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `57 crore Employees: 209 Certified employees: 97 Principals: Lenovo, Dell, HP, IBM, TCS, Cisco, EMC, D-Link

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

`11.4 crore

u Worked with national SIs including

Wipro and TCS

u Formed a team which developed

skills around solution areas like HPC, virtualization and collaboration, and created a practice around them

u Executed a project worth `1.7 crore

for storage migration for a government technical institution in Orissa

Director: Akhil Ranjan Jha Year of inception: 1993 Number of branches: Three Turnover FY2012-13: `11.4 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `10 crore Employees: 12 Certified employees: 11 Principals: Cisco, HP, Juniper, Oracle, D-Link, Netgear, Symantec, Fortinet, Adobe

Bimal Raj, CEO, Smartlink Network Systems, presenting the award to Chintamani Lele, Director, Vintech Electronic Systems N W

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Vintech Electronic System

une-based Vintech Electronic System grew 3 percent with its topline increasing from `30 crore in FY2011-12 to `31 crore in FY2012-13. Chintamani Lele, Director, Vintech, attributed the growth to winning back lost customers, the strong demand for cloud services, deep selling to existing customers, an increased focus on VDI solutions, and a focus on managed services. “Since the last fiscal was sluggish we approached the SMB customers who had stopped dealing with us. We won back 15 of our lost SMB accounts. When we studied reasons behind their decision to stop dealing with us, we realized that they wanted a more focused approach. We remapped our account managers, and aligned service operations to meet customer expectations. Regaining old customers contributed 20 percent to our revenue.” As part of its deep selling strategy which contributed 12 percent to its revenue, Vintech upsold and cross-sold clients, servers, storage and mobility solutions to its existing customers. For `90 lakh the company implemented VDI solutions from Citrix for 500 users of Sungard Software Solutions at its offices in Pune and the UK. The company also witnessed strong traction for its managed services business, which grew more than 100 percent “We tripled the number of endpoints of a Pune-based cooperative bank using managed services on the Kaseya platform from 1,200 in FY201112 to 3,500 in FY2012-13. Overall our managed services business grew more than 100 percent,” Lele said. One of the largest projects, worth `1 crore, was for an auto company, where Vintech set up the entire IT infrastructure including HP Integrity servers, storage and ERP. For `25 lakh it executed a wired and wireless networking project connecting 450 users at the new premises of a hospital in Pune. The company saw strong traction for its cloud business. It deployed many cloud-based projects such as a vehicle tracking application, SAP ERP production environment, and Web hosting and application development, on the cloud for SMB customers with project values of `25 lakh-`40 lakh. “Our partnership with AllTimeIT paid off. We bagged eight new customers,” said Lele. Partnerships with Apple and NetApp contributed almost 10 percent. “While for NetApp we did a few small server- and storage-related projects, our partnership with Apple helped us to bag many enterprise mobility and BYOD projects from among our existing customers. BYOD is a growing trend among senior managers of large and mid-size organizations,” informed Lele. u

Bimal Raj, CEO, Smartlink Network Systems, presenting the award to Suresh HR, Director, Central Data Systems N W

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Central Data Systems

engaluru-based Central Data Systems (CDS) grew 21 percent from `46 crore in FY2011-12 to `55.7 crore in FY2012-13. The company attributed this growth to large data center and networking deals, an increased focus on vendors such as Citrix and EMC, and new customer acquisition. Said Suresh HR, Director, CDS, “Earlier we were offering solutions only for compute, storage, power and cooling for data centers, but in the last fiscal we offered end-to-end solutions including access control, surveillance and civil works. This enabled us to win larger deals from our existing customers. We executed four large data center and networking deals which contributed 35 percent to our revenue.” The company increased its focus on vendors like Citrix and EMC. “Besides server and desktop virtualization from Citrix, we focused on the networking and ADC controller business which gave us good growth. Additionally, we saw increased traction for EMC storage,” Suresh informed. CDS expanded its customer base by focusing on verticals like BFSI and construction. “We focused on cooperative banks which were still building and expanding their IT infrastructure,” Suresh said. “Moreover, we grabbed a few large deals around networking and data centers from construction companies. New customers added about 20 percent to our business.” CDS expanded its service portfolio by adding designing and implementation services for unified communication and data centers. “This was a definite value-add which gave us service revenue and enabled us to win end-to-end deals,” Suresh said. “We added eight customers, and services contributed 20 percent to our revenue.” From a large construction company CDS bagged phase-1 of an optical fiber laying project between Bengaluru and Mysore; the win was worth `6 crore. For `3.6 crore, it established compute infrastructure and a greenfield data center for MDCC Bank, Mysore. It executed another data center project worth `7.2 crore for an international logistics company. In the current fiscal CDS is targeting 30 percent growth. Said Suresh, “We have already achieved 14 percent growth in H1FY2013-14 over the same period last fiscal. We are executing a couple of data center projects, and many are in the funnel.” CDS will also increase its focus on new technology areas like BYOD, and it has a pilot project under execution. “Moreover, we are focusing on cloud services from IBM and Amazon targeting mid-market and SMB customers,” Suresh informed. u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 3 percent to

Company: Vintech Electronic System

u Grew its turnover by 21 percent to

Company: Central Data Systems

`31 crore

u Won back 15 of the many SMB

customers who had stopped dealing with the company

Director: Chintamani Lele Year of inception: 1996 Number of branches: Two

u Grew its managed services business

Turnover FY2012-13: `31 crore

u Set up the entire IT infrastructure

Employees: 90

by more than 100 percent

including servers, storage and ERP in a project worth `1 crore for an auto company

Turnover FY2011-12: `30 crore Certified employees: 62 Principals: HP, Apple, Kaseya, VMware, Cisco, Citrix, NetApp

`55.7 crore

u Expanded its portfolio to offer end-to-

end solutions to data centers

u Increased its focus on vendors such as

Citrix and EMC

u Expanded its customer base by

focusing on verticals like BFSI and construction

u Established compute infrastructure

and a greenfield data center for MDCC Bank, Mysore

Director: Suresh HR Year of inception: 2003 Number of branches: Two Turnover FY2012-13: `55.7 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `46 crore Employees: 84 Certified employees: 17 Principals: Cisco, HP, IBM, EMC, Citrix, Fortinet

Computer Reseller News

01/10/2013

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BEST ENTERPRISE VAR

Rajeev Saxena, Director, Sales, NetApp, presented the award to Inderpal Singh, CEO, Aman Technologies N

Aman Technologies

ammu-based Aman Technologies grew 12.5 percent with its topline increasing from `16 crore in FY2011-12 to `18 crore in FY2012-13. Inderpal Singh, CEO, Aman, attributed this growth to an increased focus on services, new solution areas, and the addition of new brands to its portfolio. “The increased focus on services contributed 25 percent to our revenue. Besides renewals, we won new AMCs for data centers and networking, and added 50 technical people for support.” The company built skills and executed some large projects in BYOD, Wi-Fi and IT security in the government and education verticals; these projects contributed `8 crore to the topline. Aman implemented four data centers for Syndicate Bank and government-run universities. Said Singh, “Data center deployment contributed 10 percent to the company’s overall revenue.” To further expand its footprint in the security and software domains the company signed on new vendors such as Symantec, Juniper and Oracle. Aman became a Gold Partner for Oracle early last fiscal and Premium Partner for Symantec in H2FY2012-13. “While we built strength in new technology areas, we adopted deep selling as a strategy and bagged many security and software deals from our existing customers. Deep selling gave 15 percent additional revenue,” informed Singh. The company implemented Oracle ERP and database management software for two government organizations, and security and backup solutions from Symantec for 5,000 users across various verticals. It bagged a couple of projects for Juniper UTMs as well. Together these brands contributed around `1.5 crore to Aman’s revenue. The company won a project worth `2 crore to provide managed and secured networking to the Civil Secretariat of the J&K government. The project included providing BYOD solutions to more than 1,000 users. Aman executed another state government project, this time outsourced by Wipro, for GIS mapping and implementation for `1 crore. It also set up a campus-wide network and deployed a data center solution for a state government hospital and medical institute in Kashmir. In addition, Aman won an AMC from the J&K Bank for over 600 branches as well as the corporate headquarter. Aman aims for 15 percent growth in FY2013-14. “With a couple of large projects in partnership with national integrators in the pipeline, we expect to do well in the current fiscal,” Singh said. u

EMERGING MARKETS

Rajeev Saxena, Director, Sales, NetApp, presenting the award to Ajay Maitin, CEO, Graphic Trades N W

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Graphic Trades

atna-based Graphic Trades grew 22.7 percent with its topline increasing from `22 crore in FY2011-12 to `27 crore in FY2012-13. Ajay Maitin, CEO, Graphic Trades, attributed the growth to an increased focus on surveillance and video conferencing (VC), the addition of new brands, and deep selling to the government. “With infrastructure projects coming up in Bihar we saw a lot of potential for surveillance and VC,” he explained. “The state government has been instrumental in this initiative, and is connecting the state secretariat with the gram and zilla parishads through VC. Moreover, we are seeing demand for surveillance solutions from police stations, jails and toll entry-points.” The company added brands like Apple and Fortinet to its portfolio. “Our customers were looking for VDI on smartphones and tablets, and Apple fit the bill. It contributed 10 percent to the company’s revenue, and we are now looking at pushing it for VDI projects in various government organizations,” Maitin said. He leveraged Fortinet for solutions in network security. “Our customers in the government were looking for solutions in network security. We started pitching Fortigate products as part of our solution, and have secured around 100 endpoints with Fortinet.” With a broadened portfolio, the company intensified its engagement with its existing customers in the government. Deep selling contributed 25 percent to its overall revenue. “Moreover, we added 15 new customers last year, mostly through referrals,” added Maitin. Some of the large projects executed include a `3.2 crore surveillance solution for 44 police stations in Bihar. “In that solution the video footage is encrypted and can run only on specialized software. We also provided VC through Apple Macs connecting the DG office to 89 SP offices in the state. The project was worth `1.37 crore,” Maitin informed. For another project, worth `4.2 crore, the company set up WAN networking infrastructure and provided audio-visual devices. It also implemented a surveillance project worth `2.32 crore at the Buddha Smriti Park. In the current fiscal Graphic expects to grow by 20 percent with a focus around BYOD, data centers and the cloud. As the need for VC and IP surveillance rises, and SI projects get more complex, Graphic is investing in training its resources in various solutions and new technologies. “We invest about 3040 percent of our revenue in training,” Maitin disclosed. u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 12.5 percent to

Company: Aman Technologies

u Grew its turnover by 22.7 percent to

Company: Graphic Trades

`18 crore

CEO: Inderpal Singh

u Built skills in BYOD, Wi-Fi and IT

Year of inception: 1993

security

u Became an Oracle Gold Partner and

Symantec Premium Partner

u Won a project to provide managed

and secured networking to the Civil Secretariat of the J&K government

u Won an AMC for 600 branches and the

corporate headquarter of J&K Bank

Computer Reseller News

Number of branches: Four Turnover FY2012-13: `18 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `16 crore Employees: 75 Certified employees: 65 Principals: Cisco, HP, Juniper, Oracle, DLink, Netgear, Symantec, Fortinet, Adobe, Microsoft, Wipro, D-Link

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

`27 crore

u Added brands like Apple and Fortinet to

its portfolio

u Acquired 15 new customers last year,

mostly through referrals

CEO: Ajay Maitin Year of inception: 1992 Number of branches: Four Turnover FY2012-13: `27 crore

u Executed a `3.2 crore surveillance

Turnover FY2011-12: `22 crore

u Implemented a surveillance project

Certified employees: 12

solution for 44 police stations in Bihar worth `2.3 crore at the Buddha Smriti Park

Employees: 23 + 54 (outsourced) Principals: HP, Cisco, Apple, Fortinet, HCL, D-Link, Digilink, Axis, Polycom

Sunil Sharma, Vice President, Sales, India & Saarc, Cyberoam, presenting the award to Moin Shaikh, Director, Innovative Telecom & Software N W

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Innovative Telecom & Software

urat-based Innovative Telecom and Software grew 2.6 percent with its topline increasing from `112 crore in FY2011-12 to `115 crore in FY2012-13. Moin Shaikh, Director, Innovative, attributed the company’s growth to factors such as the execution of large projects and a focus on new technology areas like integrated building management system (IBMS) and physical security. Innovative implemented several large projects which contributed 25 percent to its revenue. Informed Shaikh, “For a project worth `5.5 crore for Gujarat Hira Bourse we provided campuswide networking based on GPON technology for its SEZ. In another multi-crore project for a textile manufacturing firm, Nakoda, we upgraded and consolidated their entire infrastructure.” During FY2012-13 Innovative implemented eight IBMS projects which contributed about 20 percent to its revenue. Many of these projects ranged between `1.5 crore and `3.5 crore. While most customers were from the gems and jewelry vertical, some were from manufacturing and infrastructure companies. “In the last two years large gems and jewelry exporters have been compelled to follow the Kimberley Process which prohibits companies from doing international trade if they are using conflict diamonds. Many customers began deploying IBMS solutions for Kimberly Process compliance. This helped us to bag several projects from this segment,” explained Shaikh. Innovative implemented IBMS for Fine Star Diamonds, a Surat-based diamond company which was facing pilferage issues. Said Shaikh, “The project cost `1.5 crore but the customer realized the value within six months because it helped to stop the pilferage of diamonds.” Innovative won several large surveillance projects which contributed more than 25 percent to its revenue. The largest and most prestigious one was to deploy end-to-end infrastructure for safe Surat city. In the first phase, worth `10 crore, Innovative deployed a state-of-the-art command and control center equipped with a 280 sq ft video wall to monitor real-time stream recordings from various city locations; it featured video analytics such as face recognition, crowd identification, 3D images of sensitive areas, and a vehicle tracking system. Also included in the first phase was a scalable data center. The company expects to garner revenue of `120 crore in the current fiscal. “Seeing the sluggish market we are looking at minor growth this fiscal for the pure IT business. However, we are expecting strong business growth for our surveillance and IBMS business,” added Shaikh. u

Sunil Sharma, Vice President, Sales, India & Saarc, Cyberoam, presenting the award to R Madhav Chandran, Managing Director, Cyberland Technologies N W

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Cyberland Technologies

ochi-based Cyberland Technologies grew 6.9 percent with its topline increasing from `12 crore in FY2011-12 to `12.8 crore in FY2012-13. R Madhav Chandran, Director, Cyberland, attributed the company’s growth to large deals from the financial sector, increased focus on surveillance and security solutions, and deep selling to existing customers. “We have been traditionally strong in the BFSI sector and we continued to focus on it for growth in FY2012-13. We deployed surveillance solutions, and upgraded and expanded the network infrastructure for our existing customers. We also acquired some large customers in the BFSI and jewelry segments; this helped to boost our growth,” said Chandran. One of the largest projects deployed by Cyberland was for the Kalyan Group, a jewelry retail chain. Cyberland provided a complete networking solution for the chain’s several branches across India for a project worth `1.8 crore. For a cooperative bank, Cyberland deployed a LAN and WAN connectivity solution worth `1.2 crore across its five branches in Kerala. It upgraded the WAN for the Muthoot Group for `90 lakh. Said Chandran, “Our strong brand equity in the BFSI segment helped us to bag three new customers for whom we provided networking infrastructure. They added `2.5 crore to the topline.” Surveillance was another growth area where the company executed several small and large projects worth `3 crore cumulatively. “We deep sold surveillance products such as IP cameras, CCTVs, vandal and weather proof alarm triggers and remote monitoring solutions to existing networking customers in the banking and hospitality verticals,” informed Chandran. For one of its existing customers, Manappuram Finance, it deployed surveillance across its offices in India. For a real estate company, Infra Housing, Cyberland deployed surveillance with CCTVs at eight locations of the customer’s offices and construction sites in a deal worth `12 lakh. FY2012-13 also saw the company venture into the Sri Lankan market where it partnered with a local solutions provider. “Our aim is to work with this company to tap opportunities in Sri Lanka,” explained Chandran. “We will provide them all the presales and technical support to execute local opportunities.” In the current fiscal Cyberland plans to increase its focus on verticals such as real estate, for surveillance. It has also signed up with an online surveillance monitoring services company for more solutions in the space. u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 2.6 percent to

Company: Innovative Telecom and Software

u Grew its turnover by 6.9 percent to

Company: Cyberland Technologies

u Provided campus-wide networking

Director: Moin Shaikh

u Provided networking solutions to the

`115 crore

based on GPON technology for a project worth `5.5 crore for Gujarat Hira Bourse

u Implemented eight IBMS projects

which contributed about 20 percent to its revenue

u Won several large surveillance projects

including one to deploy end-to-end infrastructure for safe Surat city

Year of inception: 1988 Number of branches: Seven Turnover FY2012-13: `115 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `112 crore Employees: 120 Certified employees: 65 Principals: IBM, Cisco, Lenovo, Microsoft, VMware, Verint

`12.8 crore

Kalyan Group branches for `1.8 crore

u Upgraded the WAN for the Muthoot

Group for a project worth `90 lakh

u Ventured into the Sri Lankan market

where it partnered with a local solutions provider

u Deployed LAN & WAN solutions for

5 branches of a cooperative bank for `1.2 crore

Director: R Madhav Chandran Year of inception: 1998 Number of branches: Three Turnover FY2012-13: `12.8 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `12 crore Employees: 26 Certified employees: Six Principals: HP, Cisco, Dell, Dax, Kaspersky, Wipro, Seagate, Norton, Cyberoam

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BEST SOLUTIONS PROVIDER

Balwinder Singh, Managing Director, Targus Technologies N W

N S

Targus Technologies

urgaon-headquartered Targus Technologies grew 6.8 percent from `136 crore In FY2011-12 to ` 144.5 crore in FY2012-13. The networking business contributed `45 crore to its topline. Nearly 50 percent of the revenue from the networking business accrued from a telecom segment, with IT-ITeS and defense accounting for 15 percent each. “Our networking business had a phenomenal year due to some large projects, our deeper engagement with Juniper Networks, and our strong domain expertise in advanced networking technologies and network security which made us a preferred partner for our customers,” said Balwinder Singh, MD, Targus. One of the most prestigious projects was for Airtel for monitoring Internet traffic originating in and out of India; this was under the Lawful Intercept rule which is a regulatory requirement enforced by DOT. The application primarily runs on servers and specialized load balancers. The solution was integrated across each telecom circle on HP servers, Netoptics load balancers and software provided by DOT for a bill value of approximate $5 million. Targus also won and executed a pan-India project as part of the modernization of 30 airports in tier-2 cities. The company provided Cisco solutions for real-time connectivity for data interchange with the Airport Authority of India. The value of the project exceeded `3 crore. For HCL Technologies and a project worth around `3 crore, Targus revamped a campus network in NCR territory. Asserted Singh, “Though the HCL Group of companies has networking expertise of its own, we bagged the order due to our superior understanding of and expertise in Juniper technologies.” Other prominent networking projects executed in the last fiscal were for the Military Intelligence wing and DRDO Labs for WAN interconnectivity and security. “In addition, we bagged several small projects ranging from `30 lakh to `1 crore for wireless connectivity, IPv6 conversion, network infra overhaul, auditing and network optimization from organizations such as ABC Consultants, the Lalit Group of Hotels, Whirlpool, Dabur, BHEL and NDMC,” Singh informed. Plans for the current fiscal include adding more offerings to its security portfolio and targeting the WAN optimization and application acceleration market, where, apart from Juniper, Targus has aligned with Riverbed and F5 Networks. Having bagged an order to install and support 300,000 notebooks in UP on behalf of HP as part of the UP schools project, Targus is also eying projects from other state governments. u

Networking

Harshvardhan Kathaley, Director, Partner Account, Juniper Networks, presenting the award to Chetan Vaidya, Business Head, Services, Nirmal Datacomm N W

Nirmal Datacomm

umbai-based Nirmal Datacomm grew 25 percent from `40 crore in FY2011-12 to `50 crore in FY2012-13. Kedar Shah, CEO, Nirmal, attributed the growth to large physical surveillance and networking projects as well as the focus on new solution areas. The company executed about 15 large projects in networking with an average deal size of `1 crore. “We leveraged our core strength in networking to enter physical surveillance. Our skills in networking enabled us to bag a large deal from the Navi Mumbai Police for physical surveillance. In all, networking contributed 51 percent to our revenue,” Shah said. Nirmal ventured into end-to-end data center implementation and bagged three large projects last fiscal. Informed Shah, “We accumulated skills to get into end-to-end data center solutions including compute, storage and virtualization. Overall, it contributed about `9 crore in the last fiscal.” The company also increased its focus on mobility solutions and bagged nine projects. “We linked smartphones with office EPABX for large enterprise customers who wanted to attend to calls on the move and save on communication costs. The mobility business contributed substantially to our topline in the last fiscal,” he stated. The biggest project Nirmal bagged was to implement physical surveillance worth `13.5 crore for the Navi Mumbai Police. Disclosed Shah, “We implemented a command center at the police commissioner’s office and physical surveillance solutions at seven entry points, 27 signals and 20 marketplaces at 12 locations in Thane, Belapur and on the Palm Beach Road.” The company also bagged large networking and data center deals from customers such as Toyo and the L&T heavy engineering division. For a project worth $75,000 the company built a private cloud on VMware data center architecture with compute, network, storage access and virtualization for a leading TV entertainment channel. It also implemented a BYOD project worth `3 crore on a Cisco solution for a leading hospital chain in Chennai. In the current fiscal Nirmal is targeting revenue of `75 crore riding on its increased focus on networking, surveillance and data center projects. “We are implementing a large physical surveillance project worth `10 crore for India’s largest oil company across all its refineries,” informed Shah. “We also have eight large projects under execution for networking and data center. We expect surveillance to contribute about 30 percent and networking and data center 40 percent to our topline.” u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 6.8 percent to

Company: Targus Technologies

u Grew its turnover by 25 percent to `50

Company: Nirmal Datacomm

`144.5 crore

MD: Balwinder Singh

u Implemented a solution for Airtel

for monitoring Internet traffic under the Lawful Intercept rule which is a regulatory requirement enforced by DOT

u For HCL Technologies revamped a

campus network in NCR territory

u Executed networking projects for WAN

interconnectivity and security for the Military Intelligence wing and DRDO Labs

Computer Reseller News

Year of inception: 1997 Number of branches: Nine Turnover FY2012-13: `144.5 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `136 crore Employees: 305 Certified employees: 60 Principals: Juniper, HP, IBM, Cisco, TE Connectivity, Microsoft, Oracle, Netoptics, F5, Riverbed

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

crore

u Executed 15 projects in networking

with an average deal size of `1 crore

u Ventured into end-to-end data center

implementation and bagged three projects

u Increased its focus on mobility

solutions and bagged nine projects

u Implemented a physical surveillance

project worth `13.5 crore for the Navi Mumbai Police

CEO: Kedar Shah Year of inception: 1991 Number of branches: Eight Turnover FY2012-13: `50 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `40 crore Employees: 207 Certified employees: 125 Principals: Cisco, Dell, EMC, VMware, Fortinet

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew 15 percent to `12.2 crore

Company: Dhanush Infosol

u Implemented networking and data

CEO: Anil Kumar TV

center for Toyota Logistics Kishor

u Deployed campus wide networking

solution connecting 25 buildings across 27 acres

S S

Dhanush Infosol

engaluru-based Dhanush Infosol grew 15 percent from `10.6 crore in FY2011-12 to `12.2 crore in FY2012-13. According to Anil Kumar TV, CEO, Dhanush, networking contributed 25 percent to overall revenues; additional growth came from campus wide networking, IP surveillance and managed services. “We also saw demand for Wi-Fi and wireless connectivity increasing.” For RV College of Engineering, it deployed a campus wide networking solution connecting 25 buildings across 27 acres with core switching, passive cabling, Wi-Fi solutions and UTM. The biggest project Dhanush bagged was to implement networking and a data center for 100 users of Toyota Logistics Kishor (TLKL). “We also bagged another a repeat order to build their private internal data center,” Kumar said. Another focus area was IP surveillance. Said Kumar, “Due to compliance and regulations, the demand for IP surveillance has shot-up. We decided to leverage on the opportunity and included IP-based solution as a part of our networking solutions. Surveillance added 20 percent to our revenues.” The company saw demand coming from temples,

Turnover FY2012-132: `12.2 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `10.6 crore

u Ventured into managed services;

Certified employees: 34

u Managed 6,500 devices across

Principals: D-Link, Cisco, Digilink, Aruba Networks, HP, Microsoft, Kaseya, Tally, IBM, Lenovo

established NOC in Bengaluru

Number of branches: Four

u Installed 892 IP cameras across 100

locations for Wipro

Harshvardhan Kathaley, Director, Partner Account, Juniper Networks, presenting the award to Anil Kumar TV, CEO, Dhanush Infosol

Year of inception: 1995

geographies for its MSP business

Employees: 45

government, municipal corporations, hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, retail stores, etc. Dhanush implemented one of the largest surveillance projects Wipro. It installed 892 IP cameras across 100 locations and provided the ITeS major with local storage and centralized video monitoring solutions. Dhanush ventured into managed services last year; this enabled it to spread into foreign territories such as Australia, Oman, UK and Malaysia. It also set up an NOC in Bengaluru. Said Kumar, “While India contributed 70 percent to our MSP business, the UK contributed 12 percent, Oman 8 percent, and Australia and Malaysia together 10 percent. We managed to bag deals for our MSP services from the pharma, manufacturing, infrastructure and education verticals.” Last fiscal the company managed a total of 6,500 networking devices across geographies, and plans to double the number this fiscal. The company follows the EIA-TIA standards for all networking projects. “We test and document the findings of every project and are the only vendor to offer a 25-year performance warranty support,” he added. In FY2013-14, Dhanush will work closely with promoters and architects for opportunities in networking and IP surveillance in building management. “Besides, plans are afoot to develop relationships with large SIs to sub-let some of the networking projects,” Kumar said. u

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BEST SOLUTIONS PROVIDER

Ganesan Arumugam, Senior Director, Partner Channels, VMware India, presenting the award to Navin Kapur, Managing Director, Comparex India N W

N S

Comparex India

elhi-based Comparex India grew 162 percent from `50 crore in FY2011-12 to `131 crore in FY2012-13. The company attributed the high growth to geographic expansion, new customer acquisition and its focus on services. Comparex opened offices in seven locations across India and acquired 400 new enterprise customers. A Microsoft LAR, Comparex mostly executed projects for Office 365, Microsoft Azure and infrastructure software; the deals averaged `50 lakh in verticals such as pharma, healthcare, IT-ITeS, BFSI and manufacturing. “From two offices in north and south India we branched out to seven more cities last fiscal. We also leveraged our brand as an award-winning global Microsoft LAR to penetrate large enterprise accounts. Most importantly, our expansion plan had no negative impact on our bottomline,” said Navin Kapur, MD, Comparex India. He added, “Microsoft was our largest contributor at 80 percent; Adobe and Oracle contributed the rest. As a Gold Partner of Adobe we executed 200 ETLA deals averaging `10 lakh-`15 lakh, and although we did not do many projects for Oracle we developed a sizeable funnel for this year.” The company ventured into cloud computing and migrated 5,000 users from pharma and manufacturing companies to Microsoft Azure and Office 365. The cloud contributed 5 percent to its revenue. Comparex also leveraged its global presence to offer services to Indian customers. Explained Kapur, “Many partners in India are not capable of consulting with customers on how to optimize their Microsoft licenses. For example, Microsoft has certain licenses which can be optimized for global branches; we lend clarity on which license to use for which product. Secondly, many partners skip the opportunity of servicing customers who did not purchase the perpetual license from them. We do that. This approach added 20 percent to our services revenue.” The company transitioned messaging and communication solutions from the physical premises of a large healthcare company to Microsoft Office 365. It migrated hundreds of users of a large ITeS company with a global footprint from Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 to Exchange Server 2010. Comparex is eying revenue of `200 crore in FY2013-14. “While Microsoft would continue to be the dominant contributor, we expect Adobe and Oracle to add significantly. Also, revenue from cloud services will double from 5 percent to 10 percent,” Kapur forecast. u

SOFTWARE

Ganesan Arumugam, Senior Director, Partner Channels, VMware India, presenting the award to Hemant Nerurkar, Managing Director, MindCraft Software N W

MindCraft Software

umbai-based MindCraft Software grew 71 percent from `18.8 crore in FY2011-12 to `32.1 crore in FY2012-13. The company attributed the growth to continued focus on BFSI and pharma verticals; setting up of separate sales teams for large accounts, direct sales and alliance-led sales; deep selling. “Our development and integration practice contributed 32 percent to the company’s overall revenue, business intelligence added 27 percent, and software infrastructure services 41 percent,” disclosed Hemant Nerurkar, MD, MindCraft. The company acquired 11 new customers last year with efforts from its technical and presales teams which explored newer technologies in data warehousing, business intelligence, data de-duplication, risk reporting and payment solutions. MindCraft deployed a multi-crore rupee risk reporting solution for a large financial services group. It provided managed services to a leading Indian private bank for the bank’s middleware stack. In addition, it integrated the core ERP system with all peripheral applications using state-of-the-art change data capture technology for an Indian pharma company. The company’s focus on specific domains helped it to deep sell to existing customers. “It is very essential for solutions providers to have domain expertise. We ensure that all our team members understand the customer domain, business realities and customer expectations. In a tough year the functional expertise we brought to the table contributed to our overall revenue increase because we could identify customer pain-points and offer them ROI-driven solutions. We also improved product margins by focusing on large transactions,” Nerurkar explained. Speaking on the alliances with its principal vendors, Nerurkar informed that while IBM contributed 60 percent of their alliance-led business in the last financial year, the rest came from other vendors. “Oracle and SAP will contribute significantly in FY2013-14,” he forecast. MindCraft intends to develop new products for the banking and life insurance verticals. Informed Nerurkar, “We are planning to develop India-centric solutions for the financial services segment. We are also building centers of excellence to showcase our key technical competencies.” MindCraft recently carved out a new practice called Business Analysis & Testing, a domain-focused group that has further enabled the organization to adopt a solution-oriented approach. Riding on these plans, the company expects to sustain the momentum, and is forecasting 40 percent topline growth in FY2013-14. u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 162 percent to

Company: Comparex India

u Grew its turnover by 71 percent to

Company: MindCraft Software

`131 crore

MD: Navin Kapur

u Acquired 400 new enterprise

Year of inception: 2001

customers

u Executed 200 ETLA deals (as a Gold

Partner of Adobe) averaging `10 lakh`15 lakh

u Ventured into cloud computing and

migrated 5,000 users from pharma and manufacturing companies to Microsoft Azure and Office 365

Computer Reseller News

Number of branches: Nine Turnover FY2012-13: `131 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `50 crore Employees: 92 Certified employees: 67 Principals: Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Symantec

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

`32.1 crore

u Acquired 11 new customers u Integrated the core ERP system with all

peripheral applications using state-ofthe-art change data capture technology for an Indian pharmaceutical company

u Improved its product margins by

focusing on large transactions

u Carved out a new practice called

Business Analysis & Testing

MD: Hemant Nerurkar Year of inception: 2002 Number of branches: One Turnover FY2012-13: `32.1 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `18.8 crore Employees: 300+ Certified employees: 89 Principals: IBM, Oracle, SAP

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Its turnover contracted by 7 percent to

Company: Veeras Infotek

`67 crore

u Defocused from desktop productivity

tools and decided to weed-out loss-making customers; reduced the number of customers from 850 to 540

u Transformed itself from a transactional-

to an outcome-focused company; invested `25 lakh in this initiative

u Entered business analytics and signed

up with Canada-based ACL

Parag Khurana, Managing Director, F5 Networks, India & Saarc, presenting the award to Kumar Somayajilu, COO, Veeras Infotek N W

S S

Veeras Infotek

hennai-based Veeras Infotek saw degrowth of 7 percent to `67 crore in FY2012-13 from `72 crore in FY2011-12. The company defocused from desktop productivity tools and decided to weed-out loss-making customers. “It was a tough call, but we reduced the number of customers from 850 to 540 last year. Our run-rate business including Microsoft licensing, HP and Acer saw de-growth of about 38 percent. We reduced our desktop productivity tools business which saw a degrowth from `7 crore in FY2011-12 to `1 crore last year,” explained Sudarsan Ranganathan, CEO, Veeras. However, its solutions business, including virtualization, consolidation and security, grew more than 100 percent. The company transformed itself from a transactional- to an outcome-focused organization. It invested `25 lakh on this transformational initiative and hired a coach to train its employees to start discussions with customers not from a technical or product perspective, but from a strategy and business outcome perspective. “The transformation helped us enormously,” Ranganathan informed. “Our executives can now enable a business to architect its IT vision for 18 months. We signed on 25 new

CEO: Sudarsan Ranganathan Year of inception: 1992 Number of branches: Two Turnover FY2012-13: `67 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `72 crore Employees: 126 Certified employees: 78 Principals: Microsoft, Adobe, VMware, Citrix, ACL, Kaseya, McAfee, Symantec, Palo Alto

customers for software solutions around virtualization and security with deal sizes from `10 lakh to `1.35 crore.” Veeras entered business analytics (BA), and signed up with Canada-based ACL. “We implemented a large BA project for a BFSI customer using ACL solutions for $100,000. We already have a funnel of projects worth $400,000 for the current fiscal,” Ranganathan revealed. One of its largest projects was in security management for 145,000 nodes of the biggest ITeS company in India. Said he, “At `7.5 crore it was one of our largest solutions-based deal. It was SLA-based, with promised uptime of 98 percent.” Besides SharePoint and SCCM projects, Veeras helped customers to upgrade ADS from Windows 2003 to 2008, and email from third-party software to Exchange. Veeras is also banking on server and desktop virtualization. It has already deployed two VDI projects for 2,000 users. For a large BPO, which was consolidating its national operations, it optimized licenses and deployed a private cloud. However, everything was not smooth last year. “Because of the slowdown customers were delaying decisions; in some cases the lead-time 13 months. Projects which were supposed to start executing last March are coming in only now. We have undecided projects of over `5 crore,” Ranganathan informed. u

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

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Best Solutions Provider

Security

BEST SERVICEs PROVIDER

cloud

Anand Naik, Managing Director, Symantec, presenting the award to P Rajaraman Aiyar, National Manager, Softcell Technologies

Amitabh Jacob, Director, Channels & Alliances, Symantec, presenting the award to Sanjeev Gupta, Managing Director, Albion Infotel

Softcell Technologies

Albion Infotel

une-based Softcell Technologies grew by 7.2 percent from `135.2 crore in FY2011-12 to `145 crore in FY2012-13. In addition, the company made `15 crore from ORC. Its enterprise security business grew 18 percent over the previous fiscal, contributing nearly `38 crore to the topline. Sunil Dalal, CEO, Softcell, attributed the growth to a renewed focus on its SMB customers, several large deals, and increased focus on new security solutions. “Last fiscal we identified a few high-growth areas such as de-dupe, asset management, identity management, backup, DLP and vulnerability assessment which are finding strong acceptance among customers because they help to streamline IT costs and management.” One of the largest projects executed was the implementation of a de-dupe and backup solution for a large conglomerate. The project, worth `8 crore, saw Softcell consolidate the customer’s enterprise storage from 60 TB to 40 TB and deploy a backup solution for a heterogeneous 600-server environment. For a large infrastructure company Softcell deployed asset management solutions for 2,000 users; it consolidated the security infrastructure across all lines of business covering 15 different enterprise applications. Business from client backup and DLP solutions contributed close to `9 crore to the company’s revenue. Softcell signed 200 new customers—with 300-2,000 users—for backup and DLP solutions. Identity management was another area that helped drive significant business. “In the last fiscal alone we signed nearly 80 new customers for single sign-on solutions from ManageEngine with each deal worth between `50 lakh and `1 crore,” informed Dalal. In FY2012-13, Softcell renewed its focus on SMB customers. Explained Dalal, “We had stopped servicing the SMB segment because of TDS issues, but once the issue was resolved we started aggressively tapping the segment, even taking up orders that were as low as `2 lakh-`3 lakh while ensuring that they provided double-digit margins. As a result, our total transaction business for client security jumped 20 percent from 2,500 transactions in FY2011-12 to 3,000 transactions in FY2012-13.” The company increased its bottomline thanks to an increase in ORC on dollar billings. Said Dalal, “Due to volatile currency fluctuations we saw a substantial increase in dollar billings. As a result, we earned a strong ORC of `15 crore in the last fiscal.” u

elhi-based Albion Infotel grew 86 percent from `65 crore in FY2011-12 to `121 crore in FY2012-13. While 83 percent of its turnover came from the systems integration business, managed services and the cloud contributed the rest. The company doubled its services revenue from `10 crore in FY2011-12 to `20 crore in the last fiscal. Sanjeev Gupta, MD, Albion, credited the growth in the cloud business to the addition of new services, geographic expansion, and the focus on the SMB and enterprise space in India. “We acquired new customers by adding several ondemand services including advanced antivirus (Albion Secure), computer management (Albion eComputect) and child protection (Kidsguard4U). We expanded our commercial offerings by introducing the Albion DataSafe cloud backup and DR solution.” In addition, the company offers a range of Albion-branded services (CRM, email, efax, HRMS) under its SaaS portfolio, and hosted contact center, application hosting, co-location and virtual private server under IaaS. Albion expanded its presence in the British, Canadian and West European markets. “More than 80 percent of our cloud and managed services business came from overseas customers,” informed Gupta. The company expanded its presence in the Indian market by appointing 10 sub-distributors who resell its consumer and commercial products. According to Gupta, the focus on the SMB and enterprise space led to exponential growth in its services business in India. The company added 2,000 SMB, 23 government and PSU, and 15 large enterprises as customers last fiscal. Albion has more than 55,000 international and 8,000 domestic users of its cloud and managed services. “Of this, we added around 30,000 users last fiscal. About 25 new enterprise customers came on board for Albion CRM alone,” Gupta said. In the last fiscal Albion invested approximately `6.5 crore in R&D and marketing. Said Gupta, “We spent more than `4 crore on business promotion and marketing activities for our cloud services. In all, we have about 175 people for R&D, sales, marketing and customer support in cloud services.” In FY2013-14 the company is targeting revenue of `150 crore of which the cloud and managed services is expected to contribute about `40 crore. Albion recently launched a portal, appbanyan.com, to sell its consumer products and services as well as to enable other vendors to sell their products. u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 7.2 percent to

Company: Softcell Technologies

u Grew its turnover by 86 percent to

Company: Albion Infotel

u Introduced services including

Year of inception: 2000

`145 crore

u Signed 200 new customers for backup

and DLP solutions

u Signed 80 new customers for single

sign-on solutions from ManageEngine with each deal worth `50 lakh-`1 crore

u Renewed its focus on SMB customers,

even taking orders of `2 lakh-`3 lakh while ensuring that they provided double-digit margins

Computer Reseller News

CEO: Sunil Dalal Year of inception: 1989 Number of branches: Seven Turnover FY2012-13: `145 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `135.2 crore Employees: 340 Certified employees: 120 Principals: Symantec, McAfee, CheckPoint, RSA, ManageEngine, Fortinet, Riverbed, BlueCoat

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

`121 crore

advanced antivirus, computer management, child protection, cloud backup and DR solution

u Invested `6.5 crore in R&D and

marketing

u Launched a portal, appbanyan.com,

to sell its consumer products and services as well as to enable other vendors to sell their products

MD: Sanjeev Gupta Number of branches: Three Turnover FY2012-13: `121 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `65 crore Employees: 250 Certified employees: 100 Principals: HP, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft

BE A PART OF ASIA’S ELITE SECURITY FORUM Ground Zero Summit will be held over 4 days with high voltage sessions and workshops acquainting you with the latest in the information security domain.

Prominent Speakers 

Dr. Gulshan Rai, Director CERT-In

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Dr. Nirmalijeet Singh Kalsi, IAS, Joint Secretary (Police) - II Ministry of Home Affairs Government of India



Capt. P Raghu Raman, CEO, NATGRID



Mr. Alok Vijayant, Director, NTRO

International speakers 

Alexander Polyakov, CTO, ERPSCAN



Fyodor Yarochkin, Security Researcher, Academia Sinica/Taiwan

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Enrique Patricio Calot, CEO, Cloodie SA



Nahuel Grisolia, Owner, Cinta Infinita

www.g0s.org Platinum Partner

Academia Partner

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BEST MANAGED SERVICES PROVIDER

Anees Ahmed, Associate Publisher and Director, UBM India, presented the award to Anirudha Modak, Country Head, India, Omnitech InfoSolutions u

large

RS Shanbhag, CMD, ValuePoint Systems, receiving the award from Gurudutt M, Director, Channel Business, Schneider Electric u

mid-size

Omnitech Infosolutions

Valuepoint Systems

umbai-based Omnitech Infosolutions grew 6.7 percent from `503 crore in FY2011-12 to `537 crore in FY201213. Approximately `93 crore of this came from billing overseas customers, while domestic customers brought in `444 crore. Managed services revenue grew by 11 percent from `200 crore in FY2011-12 to `239 crore. Said Atul Hemani, Co-founder & MD, Omnitech, “We provide managed services to approximately 400 customers.” During the previous fiscal the number of endpoints managed grew around 10 percent to less than 100,000. “If you include the software assets managed by the organization the number crossed one million,” Hemani said. Fourteen-17 percent of the services revenue came from projects outsourced from IT service providers for whom Omnitech offers extended support across 1,050 locations in the country. IDBI Bank contributed `15 crore for a support contract of 32,000 endpoints and other assorted products and services across 1,200 branches. Two MNC banks together contributed $8 million in revenue for managing critical assets including multiple data center management and payment gateway solutions. A large contract won was to implement a Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system for AMCO bank across 84 branches. Another contract, worth `15 crore, was for setting up enduser support services across seven circles for a telecom major. Last year Omnitech started offering payment solutions such as RTGS services and payment management services under the MSP model with a transaction revenue share model with around 15 banking institutions signing up. Said Hemani, “Going forward we estimate that approximately 35 percent of our managed services revenue will come from the maintenance of RTGS systems.” Last year Omnitech invested `10 crore in an entry-level training program targeted at engineering and business school graduates to create a talent pool for the next 3-5 years. Another investment during the fiscal year, of around `10 crore, was to offer private cloud services. Hemani is banking on growth of 30 percent in the MSP business in the current fiscal. “We expect BFSI to contribute heavily. We have built a new service line called Omni Messaging Hub targeting the financial messaging needs of the banking sector.” Another service being planned is mobile device management with application-specific solutions for different verticals. u

engaluru-based ValuePoint Systems saw its turnover grow by around 11 percent from `243 crore in FY2011-12 to `270 crore in FY2012-13. Revenue from its managed services business grew 16 percent from `19 crore to `22.5 crore. Said Sampath Kumar HR, CEO, ValuePoint Systems, “We increased our managed endpoints from around 25,000 to 35,000 during FY2012-13. We added 28 new customers during the fiscal, taking the total count of customers using our automated managed services to 52.” Almost 80 percent of the company’s AMS revenue came through the renewal of contracts by its clients including pharma giant Astra-Zeneca with 3,500 endpoints, Flipkart with 4,000 endpoints and BEL with 3,000 endpoints. HAL and the Mahindra Group increased the number of endpoints by including more divisions under AMS contracts. IFB with 1,500 endpoints, KML with over 1,000 endpoints and RV Engineering College with 2,500 endpoints were the new customers contracted. However, the biggest deals came through its partnership with Infosys. “We partnered with Infosys for providing systems integration and managed services to their customers. The partnership helped us bag large AMS contracts from two PSUs,” informed Sampath. “More importantly, these two contracts have given us an understanding of how to partner large global IT service providers.” The company also launched its managed mobile device management (MDM) services and deployed pilot projects for two of its largest customers. “Last year, to initiate ourselves in the enterprise mobility and MDM space, we deployed an enterprise mobility solution for our sales team and armed each one of them with a tablet. In the current fiscal we are already in the process of deploying several large and small enterprise mobile solutions for our existing customers, and this will lead to an increase in our managed MDM services,” added Sampath. Plans are on to increase the number of services which presently includes 24x7 monitoring of critical components, data center automation services, backup & DR, and application migration services. The target is to cross 60,000 managed endpoints by the end of the current fiscal. To address global opportunities the company is setting up a new division called ValuePoint Global Services. “The partnership with Infosys has given us the belief that—apart from working with them in the domestic market—we can work with large software services companies to provide AMS services to their global clients,” Sampath said. u

Performance highlights

company snapshot

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 6.7 percent to

Company: Omnitech Infosolutions

u Grew its turnover by 11 percent to

Company: ValuePoint Systems

`537 crore

u Started offering payment solutions

such as RTGS services and payment management services under the MSP model

u Invested `10 crore in an entry-level

training program to groom engineering and business school graduates

u Invested around `10 crore to offer

private cloud services

Computer Reseller News

Co-founder & MD: Atul Hemani Year of inception: 1987 Number of branches: 10 Turnover FY2012-13: `537 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `503 crore Employees: 1,250 Certified employees: 300 Principals: Cisco, Citrix, HP, Kaseya, IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, Tulip, Brocade, Symantec, Aircel, Oracle

01/10/2013 www.crn.in

`270 crore

u Increased the number of managed

endpoints to 35,000

u Partnered with Infosys for providing

systems integration and managed services; the partnership helped ValuePoint to bag large AMS contracts from two PSUs

u Launched its managed mobile device

management services and deployed pilot projects for two of its largest customers

CEO: Sampath Kumar HR Year of inception: 1991 Number of branches: 10 Turnover FY2012-13: `270 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `243 crore Employees: 2,000 Certified employees: 320 Principals: Kaseya, HP, Microsoft, Cisco

Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 6 percent to

Company: Choice Solutions

`97.59 crore, managed services grew 20 percent

u Increased the number of customers

for its managed services to 120 and the number of managed endpoints to 17,500

u With improvement in its processes,

increased the number of endpoints managed per engineer to 220

u Strengthened its Virtual CIO initiative

KV Jagannath, Managing Director, Choice Solutions, receiving the award from Gurudutt M, Director, Channel Business, Schneider Electric u

Emerging

Choice Solutions

yderabad-based Choice Solutions grew 5.9 percent from `92.2 crore in FY2011-12 to `97.6 crore in FY2012-13. Revenue from its managed services business grew 20 percent from `4 crore to `4.8 crore. “We added 34 new customers to take the total number of customers availing managed services to 120 and the total managed endpoints to 17,500,” said KV Jagannath, MD, Choice. One of the goals set by Choice in the last fiscal was to increase the number of endpoints managed per engineer. “Earlier, one Choice engineer was servicing 150 nodes, but last year, because of improvement in our processes, the ratio improved to 220 nodes per engineer. The industry average is 100-150 nodes per engineer. Our goal over the next 2-3 years is to manage 400 endpoints per engineer. We invested not only in ITIL tools but also in process re-engineering and people re-skilling.” Choice has invested in 20,000 perpetual licenses from Kaseya for endpoint management. Apart from this, it has specialized in other management tools from Microsoft and Saphire, and is exploring open source tools for infrastructure management. One of the large managed services contracts bagged by Choice

and rebranded it as CIO Advisory Services

MD: KV Jagannath Year of inception: 1991 Number of branches: 11 Turnover FY2012-13: `97.59 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `92.16 crore Employees: 586 Certified employees: 300 Principals: Kaseya, Schneider, Microsoft, EMC, IBM, HP

during FY2012-13 was from ITW Signode; the project involved managing 750 IT assets. “The company was already using Saphire IT management software so we had to integrate that with our NOC. The multi-year contract includes providing onsite support in 40 locations,” informed Jagannath. Jyoti Infrastructure also signed a multi-year contract with Choice to manage 400 endpoints and end-to-end service delivery. The last fiscal saw Choice strengthening its Virtual CIO initiative and rebranding it as CIO Advisory Services. Said Jagannath, “We signed seven new customers, mostly in the SMB segment; we act as a CIO to these customers and help them to plan and align their IT to their business. Our responsibilities range from providing consultancy to complete outsourcing. We are seeing strong demand for this type of service.” Another Choice offering last year was its Asset Lifecycle Management service whereby the customer gets precise feedback on the value provided by an asset so that he can intelligently plan and budget for IT procurement activities, updates, replacements and other changes in the asset’s lifecycle. During the current fiscal, Choice is launching new initiatives around network design and optimization services, and is also planning to offer security-as-a-service. It expects to log in 30 percent growth in its managed services business. u

Computer Reseller News

01/10/2013

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BEST SYSTEM BUILDER Performance highlights

company snapshot

u Grew its turnover by 7.6 percent to

Company: Vardhaman Technology

`26.9 crore

u Refocused its priorities and stayed

away from traditional Micro ATX systems

u Decided to focus on ARM-based

embedded devices and the Android platform for PCs

u Implemented 3,000 Windows XP-

embedded thin clients for a cooperative bank

Sunil Kripalani, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing, Escan, presenting the award to Nikit Rambhia, Director, Vardhaman Technology

Vardhaman Technology

umbai-based Vardhaman Technology grew 7.6 percent from `25 crore in FY2011-12 to `26.9 crore in FY2012-13. Nikit Rambhia, Director, Vardhaman, said that the company refocused its priorities and stayed away from traditional Micro ATX systems; this reduced its overall topline. “Regular desktops accounted for just 1 percent of our turnover last fiscal. Our revenue was evenly split 10-15 percent between small form factor (SFF) PCs, POS terminals, thin clients, industrial rugged PCs, digital signage, tablets and AIOs.” One of the strategic decisions made by the system builder was to focus on ARM-based embedded devices and the Android platform for PCs. “While Intel and x86 still accounted for 85 percent of our business, a significant 15 percent came from ARM-based embedded devices. We are launching several niche solutions on top of ARM for POS, digital signage, rugged tablets, etc. We expect ARM-based solutions to account for up to 25 percent of our revenue in the next 12 months,” he said. Though Vardhaman sold more Linux-based thin clients especially to the educational segment, its largest single order came from an MNC systems integrator to implement 3,000

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Director: Nikit Rambhia Year of inception: 2000 Number of branches: Two Turnover FY2012-13: `26.9 crore Turnover FY2011-12: `25 crore Employees: 60 Certified employees: 15 Principals: Intel, Microsoft

Windows XP-embedded thin clients for a cooperative bank. Overall the company sold 4,000 Windows XP thin clients last fiscal. Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors accounted for nearly half of the SFF PCs while Atom accounted for the rest. Intel accorded Vardhaman the Embedded Hero 2012 status for its pioneering work in the PC-like-embedded market. From a retail chain Vardhaman bagged a multi-year deal for 10,000 AIOs which are being implemented as POS terminals. Another interesting project was the development of a hybrid PC—which includes a projector—which has been sold to schools as well as enterprises for online training. In the current fiscal Vardhaman is betting on the industrial rugged PC market and is building multiple models for different use cases. “The rugged PC and tablet market is one of the fastest-growing segments. These products can perform under extreme weather and environment conditions, and are much sought after by factory shop-floors and defense,” Rambhia explained. The company is exploring plans to set up another factory in Gujarat. Other plans include starting a subsidiary in the US. On product front, the company intends to introduce PCs with batteries as well as PCs powered by solar power u

event Interop Mumbai 2013:

IT Leads, Business Succeeds

ow in its fifth edition, the INTEROP Mumbai Conference and Expo will be held between November 20–22, 2013 at the Bombay Convention and Exhibition Centre, Goregaon. This year INTEROP will see new conference formats and sessions. The expo area too will introduce new themed pavilions. The overarching theme for INTEROP Mumbai this year is “IT Leads, Business Succeeds.” In keeping with this theme, there will be business and vertical focused sessions for the Healthcare, BFSI, FMCG, Manufacturing, and Education verticals. In these sessions, the speakers will talk about the challenges, opportunities and technological innovations in their respective sectors. The three-day conference will have two parallel tracks with at least six keynotes (two per day). Another new format is titled ‘Down to Business’ and will see sessions from prominent enterprises such as Essar Group and Marico. These business-focused sessions will have C-level executives from the business side speak about business challenges, strategies and objectives. The CIO/CTO from the same organization will explain how s/he is aligning IT with business objectives. In addition, there will be a workshop conducted by CIO Specialist. The speaker line-up at INTEROP also includes CIOs/CTOs who will make individual presentations on IT-business alignment. Considering that OpenStack has been gaining a lot of traction in the IT industry, a workshop on OpenStack has been included this year and will be conducted by an OpenStack evangelist and global speaker. The buzz about Information Security has picked up and now includes mobile platforms. Security sessions and workshops in the conference agenda will be conducted by information security specialists and authorities from India. Speakers for the general sessions are chosen through a rigorous and redesigned Call for Papers process to ensure quality of content and credible speakers.

Some of the key speakers this year are: Jay Bavisi, Global President, EC Council Manoj Chugh, Global Head for Business Development, Mahindra Satyam Dinesh Pillai, CEO, Mahindra Special Services Group Dr. Pavan Kumar, Head of the Department of Telemedicine, Nanavati Hospital Dr. Prasad Ramanathan, Associate VP - Research & Innovation, iGate Sreekanta Aradhya B, Expert, Manufacturing Execution Systems, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions DD Mishra, Founder, CIO Specialist Alpna Doshi, CIO, Reliance Group Bala Meshram, Vice President-IT, The Shipping Corporation of India Shailesh Rao, Director of New Products & Solutions, Google Enterprise Sajid Akhtar, Organizer, OpenStack India User Group Special business and industry sessions are also being planned with established institutions such as NASSCOM and BICSI, who have partnered with INTEROP this year. BICSI publishes standards and manuals for the information technology systems (ITS) industry. Responding to feedback from last year’s visitors, the conference committee decided to add more time for networking and visits to the expo. Innovations will also be introduced in the expo area, which will see five themed zones this year: Security, Cloud, Information Transport System, IP4Biz & international pavilion. Workshops and demos will be conducted in special areas on the expo floor. With this new and inspirational content, we expect the visitors to be a mix of IT decision makers, implementers, evaluators, developers — as well as senior executes from the business side. n

Computer Reseller News

01/10/2013

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shadow ram BCCI’s N Srinivasan inspires Confed-ITA

hile everyone is unhappy with N Srinivasan’s election as the new President, BCCI, a similar controversy is raging in Confed-ITA, Tamil Nadu. The association is being sued by some members for alleged rigging of its recent elections to favor some office bearers. Two executive committee members have filed a petition before the Principal District Magistrate in Coimbatore questioning the legitimacy of the elections. It is learnt that the district magistrate has granted interim injunction against the election and has asked Confed-ITA to refrain from inducting new office bearers. It has also asked the association to file a report on the process of the election. Unhappy with the turn of events, some founding members of Confed-ITA are urging the members to resolve the matter internally rather than going to court. They have also urged the executive members to ensure that there is no politics in managing the affairs of the association as it will dent its credibility which will in turn impact their ability to fight channel related issues. n

GET

Personal

“I want to lift the standard of living of the poor” Sunil Sharma is the VP, Sales, India & Saarc, Cyberoam. He is also a part of the core management team, Cyberoam worldwide business. He has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to Cyberoam, he was associated with McAfee.

Sunil Sharma

If not in the IT industry: I would have been in to finance. Biggest Passion: Motivational speaking.

Behind the wheels: Toyota Corolla Altis. Gadgets I can’t live without: My Blackberry and iPad. Weekends are for: Family only. Favorite holiday destination: Switzerland. Hate the most: Dishonesty and being unethical. Favorite Movie: Waqt. Favorite Stars: Dharmendra, my all time favourite. Role Model: A person with combined qualities of Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Skip Ross and Deepak Chopra. Ultimate ambition: Self realization and starting an NGO. Wildest thing I have ever done: Going from Delhi to Aligarh on a scooter—a distance of 175 km. Thing I most want to do in life: I would like to see happy people around me. If I became the PM: I would ensure that money invested for development reaches the beneficiaries and to lift the standard of living of the poor. Celebrity I would like to spend a day with: Deepak Chopra. One person I would like to meet and why: None. Deepest and darkest fear: Losing my life partner. n — CRN Network

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The power behind competitiveness

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