editorial
Celebrating excellence
I
n this edition we present the winners of the twelfth CRN Xcellence Awards. The process of choosing the winners is rewarding for us because we get to scan through the nomination forms of enterprise VARs from across the country. It provides the CRN team insights into the partner business not just from the perspective of revenue numbers but also for the deeper knowledge about what is driving their business. Our eminent jury members have told us the same thing. Ganesan Arumugam, Director, Channels & Alliances, VMware, who has been on the jury for the past three years, says he looks forward to judging the nominations of the CRN Xcellence Awards because though it is a lengthy process it provides him enriching insights into the partner business. This year we received 185 nominations from 25 cities. The nominations capture all aspects of a partner’s business and performance including profitability, market and sales strategy, systems and business innovations, information on key projects deployed by partners, and their future plans. After personally going through all the 185 forms I noticed a few trends which I would like to share with our readers. Most of the enterprise VARs recorded revenue growth of 20-25 percent, which is good considering the problems
the economy has been facing. Virtualization continues to be a key driver for business. Bagging large box-deals is no longer the priority; most partners prefer solution-led projects. Deep-selling and advanced technology solutions are gaining ground. Nearly 20 percent of the partners have started focusing on application-led solutions instead of hardware integration. They are building skill-sets for the deployment of ERP, CRM, HRMS and other functional applications. Services is emerging as a key focus. While many partners are still formulating their strategies for cloud services, most have already begun offering SLA-linked services. Every partner organization that nominated itself has highlighted profitability as the key driver of the business. Many of them have boosted their profitability even if this meant forgoing low-margin, high-topline projects. I thank all the partner organizations who nominated themselves and also the jury which conducted the rigorous exercise of choosing the winners from the nominations. While the winner can only be one, the other finalists deserve the same applause though they did not get the trophy. They are clearly among the best in the business. For the other readers of CRN, I believe that going through the success stories of the top-performing enterprise VARs will provide them inspiration to grow bigger and better. n E-mail me at dhaval.valia@ubm.com
Volume 1, Issue 21
Managing Director Printer & Publisher Associate Publisher & Executive Editor Group Commercial Director Contributing Editor Assistant Editor Principal Correspondent Senior Correspondent
: Sanjeev Khaira : Kailash Pandurang Shirodkar : : : : : :
Dhaval Valia Salil Warior Ramdas S Sonal Desai Abhijeet Mukherjee (Mumbai) Amit Singh (Delhi)
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OD 202
OD 204 OD 200G
OD 203 OD 200B
ODSP 113 (WITH MIC)
OD 201
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Agra - 6453125, 4041027, Ahmedabad - 64508450, 26851663, Amritsar - 6450186, Aurangabad - 645 7141, Bangalore - 65687567, Baroda - 6595588, Bhopal - 6464925, Bhubneshwar - 6510444, Calicut - 6515152, Chandigarh - 6512547, 2694932, Chennai – 64501273,28412414, Cochin - 2205051/52/53, Coimbatore - 6572160, Dehradun 6546333, Delhi - 64734905, 26387897, Ghaziabad - 6517809, Goa - 6514657, Gurgaon - 6453544, Guwahati - 9207411634, Hubli - 6453123, Hyderabad - 66901598, Indore 6510124, Jabalpur - 6457306, Jaipur - 6577844, 2280421, Jammu - 2437478, Kanpur- 9235601410, Karnal - 6450508, Kolhapur- 9223101332, Kolkatta- 64517248, 22315174, Kottayam - 6452013, Lucknow - 6546333, 2286134, Ludhiana - 6512545, 6450125, Madurai - 6463839, Mangalore - 6451030, 2494355, Mumbai – 65261670,65990329, Nagpur - 6502571, 2420009, Nasik - 6450103, Parwanoo- 645108, Patna - 6453850, 6450116, Pondicherry - 6530470, Pune - 65205706, 24497489, Raipur - 6538333, 4221307, Rajkot - 6593588, Ranchi - 6455499, Siliguri - 6450108, Surat - 6596267, Trivendrum - 6535433, Varanasi - 6454820,Vijaywada - 6622872, Vizag - 6590992.
contents September 01, 2012 l Volume 1 Issue 21
par excellence Presenting the winners of CRN Xcellence Awards 2012, who outperformed their peers in business growth, solutions expertise, market strategy and best practices
10
methodology
12
outstanding channel contribution
14 16
Choosing the best
28
Systems integrator
North Proactive Data Systems west Syndrome Technologies south Webcom Information Technology
KR Naik, Chairman, Smartlink Network Systems
Large SAI Infosystem
Solutions Provider—Networking
30
Systems integrator
Solutions Provider—Software North Futuresoft Solutions west Softcell Technologies
North Team Computers
south Nortech Infonet
west Pentagon System & Services south Precision Infomatic
18
Solutions Provider—Server and Storage North
Cache Technologies
32
Solutions Provider—Security
North ACPL Systems west MIEL e-Security
west VDA Infosolutions south Mukesh Infoserve
23
26
Enterprise VAR—Advanced markets North Mm9 Information Technologies
Managed Services Provider
Duckback Information Systems
mid-size
Value Point Systems
west
CDP India
emerging
Choice Solutions
south
Central Data Systems
Enterprise VAR—Emerging markets North E Connect Solutions east
Computer Gallery
south Team Frontline
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large Omnitech Infosolutions
east
west Ishan Infotech
8
33
35
Cloud Services Provider
35
system builder
Albion Infotel
Vardhaman Technology
SPECIAL FEATURE Cloud, Mobility, Virtualization Present New Partner Opportunities
T
AMITABH JACOB
Channel Director, India and SAARC, Symantec
“As partners achieve specializations and deepen their expertise in Symantec solutions, we will continue to provide them with additional resources to drive profitability and differentiate themselves”
he advent of new technologies like cloud, virtualization and mobility devices has played a key role in influencing the channel business in 2012. Organizations of all sizes are more aware of these IT trends and interested in the opportunities they present, to build a scalable, efficient and connected business. In the absence of dedicated or skilled IT teams, the customers require expert advice from partners about the right solutions and technologies to be deployed. For this, channel partners need to be two steps ahead to ensure that they keep the trust of their customer, leading to continued and incremental business growth. It’s important they keep abreast with solutions that can help mitigate the challenges in the cloud, virtual and mobile environments, enable maximization of the benefits, while keeping the costs at a minimum. Customers also continue to make it clear that we need to be able to deliver consulting services around our products. Today, partners need to be both solution and market specialists, rather than being technology generalists for their customers. It is important that they focus on delivering value-added services to their customers and no longer be just sellers. Giving true value to customers means providing IT solutions that solve their business problems and not just selling them point products. Customers are increasingly looking up to partners as their IT experts for upcoming solutions and market knowledge on the same. Partners therefore need to review customers’ business processes, growth plan and IT infrastructure and help them choose the best solutions to take full advantage of strategic IT trends and also advise them on the best practices for data protection, security, storage management, and disaster recovery.
In this scenario, channel partners must not hesitate to broaden their horizons. Selling only traditional software is no longer enough; partners must add cloud-based services and applications to their offerings. Investments in business education and knowledge are also essential as this enables partners to understand, manage and anticipate customer needs. It is also a good idea for partners to map other partners with complementary expertise to service customer needs better. As the trusted advisor of their customers partners have a lot to gain in terms of business continuity and new market prospects. As partners achieve Specializations and deepen their expertise in Symantec solutions, we will continue to provide partners with additional resources to help partners differentiate themselves, deliver greater value to customers and take advantage of new market opportunities: Symplus is Symantec’s new partner incentive promotion for members of the Symantec Partner Program. Symantec IQ for Partners provides partners with access to product and solution content created by Symantec experts. Partner Support Center for Marketing acts as a help desk for partners wanting to leverage the broad range of marketing tools and programs available to them to generate new business and maximize their participation in the Symantec Partner Program. Renewals Partner Portal is designed to provide channel partners with a simple view to manage their renewals sales opportunities, which helps to ensure the continuity of their customers’ licensing requirements. n
— Special Advertorial Feature presented by Symantec
COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS
01/09/2012
www.crn.in
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methodology
Choosing the best C
RN presented the 12th edition of the CRN Xcellence Awards to 28 leading enterprise VARs, solution providers and service providers during a scintillating evening ceremony on July 27, 2012 in Goa. The awards ceremony was held during the 3-day CRN Leadership Summit which witnessed the participation of 110 technology integrators and more than 28 technology companies. The most coveted award of the night, the CRN Outstanding Channel Contribution Award, was conferred on KR Naik, Chairman, Smartlink Network Systems, 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 and applying sound business acumen, and in the process created 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 in the following categories: u Systems Integrator u Solutions Provider—Security u Solutions Provider—Software u Solutions Provider—Networking u Solutions Provider—Server & Storage u Enterprise VAR—Advanced u Enterprise VAR—Emerging u Managed Services Provider
“The jury process of the CRN Xcellence Awards is very well balanced and carefully thought through. It ensures that every organization is scored after careful evaluation on multiple parameters Srikanth Doranadula Director, VAD, Oracle
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u Cloud Services Provider u System Builder u Outstanding Channel Contribution
Award parameters The CRN Xcellence Awards lay emphasis not just on the size of the company but also on certain aspects which are integral to making the company a true leader. We ranked each entry on: u Quality of turnover, growth and profitability u Product and solution mix u Quality of HR u Business systems u Marketing and sales innovations u Customer responsiveness u 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 certain aspects of
“The CRN Xcellence Awards have emerged as a platform for the recognition of leadership and excellence. I credit CRN for driving this as a transparent industry platform for excellence B Raghavendran, Head, Partner Organization, India & Saarc, Cisco
“The CRN Xcellence Awards are the most coveted awards among the partner community. As a jury member, it is quite a rigorous process, but a learning all the same” Ganesan Arumugam
Director, Channels & Alliances, VMware
their business. The final five contenders were selected 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 send 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 2012. u
The Jury
Naresh Desai General Manager, Avnet Technology Solutions
Vishak Raman Senior Regional Director, India & Saarc, Fortinet
Bhaskar Bhakthavatsalu Regional Director, Checkpoint Software
Pradeep Khemani Country Manager, Channel & SMB Sales, ESSN, HP India
List of final nominees West
Systems Integrator
u CDP India, Mumbai u G-Tech Solutions, Mumbai u Magnanimous, Mumbai u Silver Touch, Ahmedabad u Vintech Electronic Systems, Pune
Large u Allied Digital, Mumbai u SAI Infosystem, Ahmedabad North u Compton Computers, New Delhi u Progressive Infotech, New Delhi u QuantM Net, New Delhi u Targus Technologies, New Delhi u Team Computers, New Delhi West u Ace Brain System & Software, Pune u Ashtech Infotech, Mumbai u Dynacons Systems & Solutions, Mumbai u Insight Business Machine, Mumbai u Orient Technologies, Mumbai u Pentagon System & Services, Mumbai
South u Archon Consulting Systems, Bengaluru u Central Data Systems, Bengaluru u Future Businesstech, Bengaluru u Futurenet Technologies India, Chennai
West u Adit Microsys, Ahmedabad u Dev Information Technologies, Ahmedabad u LDS Infotech, Mumbai u MindCraft Software, Mumbai u Softcell Technologies, Pune
Enterprise VAR —Emerging markets
South u Mukesh Infoserve, Chennai u Nortech Infonet, Cochin u Veeras Infotek, Chennai
North u Acme Digitek Solutions, Lucknow u Aman Technologies, Jammu u E Connect Solutions, Udaipur u H&H Technologies, Chandigarh u Robotics Computer, Agra
South u Choice Solutions, Hyderabad u Locuz Enterprise , Hyderabad u Nortech Infonet, Cochin u Precision Infomatic, Chennai u Valuepoint Systems, Bengaluru
East u Computer Gallery, Imphal u Integrated Systems & Services, Guwahati u Trade & Technology, Dibrugarh West u Innovative Telecom & Software, Surat u Ishan Infotech, Rajkot u ITCG Solutions, Vadodara u Micropro, Nagpur u Transit Geo, Surat u Veltronics, Indore
Solutions Provider—Server and Storage North u Ablaze Infosys, New Delhi u Cache Technologies, New Delhi u Computers Network & Telecom India, New Delhi u Ricoh India, New Delhi West u Concept Information Technology, Pune u Infobahn Technical Solutions, Mumbai u Leon Computers, Pune u Unified Data Tech, Mumbai u VDA Infosolutions, Pune
South u Ascent E Digit Solutions, Erode u Cyberland Technologies, Cochin u Team Frontline, Cochin
South u 22by7 Solutions, Bengaluru u Fourth Dimension Technologies, Chennai u Gowra Bits & Bytes, Secunderabad u Mukesh Infoserve, Chennai u Quadsel Systems, Chennai
Solutions Provider—Networking
Enterprise VAR—Advanced Markets
West u Microlink Group, Ahmedabad u Nirmal Datacomm, Mumbai u Nahar Integrated System, Pune u Syndrome Technologies, Mumbai
North u Artek Enterprises, New Delhi u Proactive Data Systems, New Delhi u Spark Technologies, New Delhi u Targus Technologies, New Delhi
North u Associated Business Computers, New Delhi u Cache Digitech, New Delhi u Mm9 Information Technologies, New Delhi
South u Dhanush Infosol, Bengaluru u Pranaav Televentures, Chennai u Shell Networks, Hyderabad u Webcom Information Technology, Bengaluru
East u Comprehensive Consultancy, Kolkata u Duckback Information Systems, Kolkata u Macaws Infotech, Kolkata u Trisita Corporation, Kolkata
B Raghavendran
Solutions Provider—Software North u All e Technologies, New Delhi u Comparex India, New Delhi u Futuresoft Solutions, New Delhi
Head, Partner Organisation, India & Saarc, Cisco
Tushar Sighat
Srikanth Doranadula
Ramesh Natarajan
Director, VAD Channels, Oracle
Head, National Sales, Redington
Solutions Provider—Security North u ACPL Systems, New Delhi u Mikroz Infosecurity, New Delhi West u Essen Vision Software, Mumbai u Miel e-Security, Mumbai u Softcell Technologies, Pune Managed Services Provider Large u Allied Digital Services, Mumbai u Omnitech Infosolutions, Mumbai Mid-Size u Team Computers, New Delhi u Value Point Systems, Bengaluru Emerging u Acma Computers, Mumbai u Choice Solutions, Hyderabad u Dev Information Technology, Ahmedabad u Dhanush Infosol, Bengaluru u Futuresoft Solutions, New Delhi Cloud Services Provider u Albion Infotel, New Delhi u Choice Solutions, Hyderabad u Compusoft, Mumbai u Techgyan, Mumbai System Builder u Connoiseur Electronics, Bengaluru u Vardhaman Technology, Mumbai
Praveen Sahai Vice President, Channels, EMC India and Saarc
CEO, D-Link India
Bimal Raj CEO, Smartlink Network Systems
Computer Reseller News
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www.crn.in
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outstanding channel contribution u KR Naik, Chairman, Smartlink Network Systems
“Channel is my extended family” said Naik. He understood the power of Internet-driven IT consumerization, and realized that the only way to equip and connect consumers and small businesses in every nook and corner of India was to ride on a multi-level marketing and sales model—the channels. In 1994 he set out to create a completely new channel for D-Link products. Rather than going after the large distributors he decided to put a regional distribution model in place—arguably the first in India in the IT channel. “Not having worked with any channel in my earlier ventures, it was a tall task. Our first experience wasn’t a very pleasant Dhaval Valia, Associate Publisher and Executive Editor, CRN, presenting one; a couple of regional distributors (RDs) we appointed took the award to KR Naik, Chairman, Smartlink Network Systems products on credit but never paid up, and in the 18 months we had outstandings of Rs 2 crore on a topline of Rs 3 crore. The advice from our JV partner D-Link was to go direct, but I was firm he CRN Outstanding Channel Contribution Award 2012 on going after channels because that was the most critical part of has been presented to KR Naik, Chairman, Smartlink our growth strategy,” Naik explained. Network Systems. For the next four months in 1996 Naik and his team toured Chosen by the editorial board of CRN, the award is a tribute extensively to meet prospective regional partners. Recalled Naik, to industry captains who, through their continuous initiatives “At the end we appointed partners for each of the four regions. and leadership, have contributed significantly to the creation, Till date they continue to be our foremost distributors.” expansion and nurture of the IT channel business. Of the 24 RDs that Naik and his team onboarded between Naik has spent 42 years in the IT industry and played a 1996 and 2000, 18 continue to be RDs. He disclosed the secret key role in creating the IT networking market and the channel of a consistent and strong RD network. “For me my partners are ecosystem around it. like my extended family; I am working with them for almost two He pioneered several new business and distribution models, decades now. Together we have seen good times as well as bad starting as early as 1990 when IT was a nascent industry and the times, and together we have supported each other and sailed concept of an IT distribution channel was just taking birth. through. Even those partners who are no longer doing business A mechanical engineer with post-graduate diploma in with us I still consider part of our family.” industrial engineering and Licentiate in plastic engineering, One of the practices that Naik put in place in 2000 continues developing indigenous technology, has always been his passion. till date—that of inviting all its RDs to a holiday along with He started as a product engineer with IBM India in 1970. their families. “After every Diwali we have an event for all key “I was part of the IBM team that developed a line printer from managers and partners—along with their families. No business locally sourced products in keeping with the then government presentations are allowed, only fun activities,” said Naik. policies. After IBM’s exit India, I joined ORG Systems where I Naik credits his channel for the success he has had. “Basiwas part of a six member team that developed six indigenous line cally I am a technology person who revels in identifying the best printers with speeds of 1,000+ lines per minute,” Naik recalled. technology products, identifying the best supply chain for them, This passion for developing India-specific products has and then planning the manufacturing to ensure we have the best been a key reason why he was among the first to import a wave spec products at India prices. It’s the channel which believed in soldering machine to manufacture PCBs of PCs in 1984, when my dreams and took them to millions of Indian homes.” he founded a company called Virtual Computers which sold Though 65 Naik is as excited about new technology and desktops under the same brand. product engineering as at the start of his It was in 1991 that he ventured into the milestones career. “Technically I have stopped taking field of networking products signing up as a salary from last year. However, I can a distributor for D-Link. Within three years 1970 Completed mechanical engineering; joined IBM as mainframe peripheral engineer never resign. I am reviving our R&D center he formed a joint venture with D-Link and and am planning several new products set up a manufacturing unit in Goa. Very 1974 Became part of the team that developed indigenous component for IBM range of line printers in the networking space and also in other next year, Naik guided the company into 1978 Joined ORG Systems after IBM exited India; categories.” manufacturing of passive components in contributed significantly to development of six new His biggest regret is that he couldn’t partnership with UK-based Sapphire. products create a culture of manufacturing India was at the cusp of a computing 1980 Turned entrepreneur and started a company with technology products in India. “From early revolution with the proliferation of PCs, the CMS founders to manufacture mainframe days of MAIT, it has been my endeavor to favorable duty structures put in place by components create the right government policies for the government in 1992, and the advent 1984 Started his own company, Virtual Computer, and manufacturing. This hasn’t happened so of the Internet. “The pitch was ready for imported the first wave soldering machine in India far, but I am hopeful that the government networking solutions because the Internet 1991 Became D-Link distributor and within 3 years formed a JV with a manufacturing unit in Goa will understand how supporting was shaping into a formidable force. To manufacturing can help India to move into connect to the Web everyone needed a 1995 Launched a unique regional distribution model; also signed up with Sapphire UK to manufacture their a different league where R&D and new network device, and hence moving into passive components locally technology inventions and innovations networking was in a way a no-brainer,” 2000 Launched cabling business under the D-Link brand become the core of our economy.” I am a technology person 2002 Became MAIT President Naik’s advice to the channel: “The technology landscape and business 2004 Cabling business was spun off into a separate brand who revels in bringing the best called Digilink models are changing drastically with products to the market. It is the 2005 Formed a JV with Gigabyte—DigiGiga—for the consumerization of IT, new category manufacturing motherboards access devices, and faster broadband channel which believed in my 2008 The JV with D-Link was discontinued; launched his connectivity. Partners therefore have to dreams and took them to millions own brand of active products under Digisol brand review their business and adapt to this 2011 Sold Digilink to Schneider for `503 crore of Indian homes evolving marketplace.” u
T
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Systems Integrator u
large
Sai Infosystem
Kirit Joshi, Director, SAI Infosystem, receiving the award from Sanjeev Khaira, MD, UBM India
A
hmedabad-headquartered Sai Infosystem grossed revenue of `1,550 crore in FY2011-12 against `1,138 crore in FY201011, a growth rate of 36 percent. “We grew as a result of deep-selling to existing accounts, expanding geographically in India and abroad, rolling out new services, and acquiring customers in education, BFSI, telecom and IT/ITeS,” said Sunil Kakkad, CMD, Sai. The BFSI segment accounted for 20 percent of Sai’s revenue. “We acquired several customers such as RBI, Vijaya Bank, BOI, IDBI, Syndicate Bank, Canara Bank, and United India Insurance. Projects executed for them ranged from rolling out retail banking solutions to inter-branch networking,” informed Kakkad. In 2010 Sai had set up a joint venture with BSNL called BSNL-SIS to provide video telephony and broadband valueadded services which were initially rolled out in Gujarat. Last year the company rolled out the services in three more states— Maharashtra, MP and Goa. Sai manufactures VoIP products and provides services for the joint venture; this contributed 10 percent to Sai’s topline. Manufacturing of its own brand of PCs, servers, desktops, thin clients and storage accounted for around 15 percent of its revenue. A major project executed last year was the first-phase implementation of the University Campus Area Network. This involved laying copper cables across 2,500 km and fiber cables across 2,100 km with more than 1,10,000 network nodes for 280 universities across India and then connecting them to the National Knowledge Network Cloud through a 1 Gbps link provided by BSNL. The project billing was `350 crore. In the last fiscal Sai internally deployed an ERP, CRM and inventory management system based on Microsoft Dynamics. “We saw a 50 percent drop in the time needed for processing tender documents, and a 40 percent reduction in inventory as a result of the implementation,” said Kakkad. Last year the Gujarat government recognized Sai as the Best Computer Hardware/Systems Integrator for 2011, while the Communication Multimedia & Infrastructure Association of India (CMAI) presented Sai the Best National Systems Integrator award. Strengthening its tele-medicine practice and rolling out cloud services targeted at PSUs are top priorities for the current fiscal. Rolling out video-telephony services in all states in west and north India is also on the cards. “Other plans include acquiring companies in north America and Europe to introduce our services in those markets,” said Kakkad. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
u Grew 36 percent to `1,550 crore
Company: Sai Infosystem
u Acquired customers such as RBI,
CMD: Sunil Kakkad
Vijaya Bank, Bank of India, IDBI, Syndicate Bank, Canara Bank and United India Insurance
u Recognized as the Best Computer
Hardware/SI for 2011 by the Government of Gujarat; presented with Best National SI award by CMAI
u Internally deployed an ERP, CRM and
inventory management system based on Microsoft Dynamics
14
Computer Reseller News
Year of inception: 1992 No. of branches: 19 Turnover FY2011-12: `1,550 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `1,138 crore Employees: 1,300 Certified employees: 150 Principals: IBM, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, Oracle
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Systems Integrator W
N S
E
Team Computers
W
Ranjan Chopra, CMD, Team Computers, receiving the award from Anand Naik, MD, Sales, Symantec India & Saarc
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elhi-based Team Computers registered a turnover of `252 crore in FY2011-12 against `211 crore in FY2010-11. Explained Ranjan Chopra, CMD, Team Computers, “Large projects in business intelligence (BI), networking and unified communication (UC) led to our growth. BI solutions contributed `20 crore from over 40 projects. Our networking business has seen 50 percent growth with `15 crore and UC 80 percent with about `7 crore.” Team also doubled its revenue from ERP/CRM, garnering `5 crore. In addition, the company was upbeat about its mobility solutions and field force automation business that added `10 crore. Becoming an Elite Premier Partner of Google in the last fiscal enabled Team to bag projects on Google cloud. “We acquired about 30,000 users for Google cloud solutions which added 20 percent to our services business,” informed Chopra. In-house, the company upgraded its self-developed supply chain management software which added 1 percent to its net profit; it also implemented Adrenalin HR software which streamlined its HR processes. Apart from email campaigns, Team focused on digital marketing through Google ads, LinkedIn and Facebook. “We also did customer events to develop relationships; in all, we spent about `1.45 crore on marketing activities,” Chopra said. The company implemented a project worth `20 crore involving networking, server, end-point and data entry for an HR application at about 100 locations for the security forces. For C-Dot, the company executed a server and storage infrastructure project worth `4 crore in Delhi. Besides, Team implemented a field force automation project worth `5 crore involving iPads and customized applications for 800 users for a pharma company. In the current fiscal Team is targeting 25 percent growth with deep-selling. “After aggressive expansion of our customer base we are now into a consolidation mode. We have infrastructure projects worth `50 crore under execution.” The company sees UC as a key growth engine and expects `25 crore from it. Team has also increased its focus on mobility solutions and field force automation, and targets `20 crore. Consequent to its recent partnership with IBM, Team wants to double its revenue from BI. It recently launched the Institute of Business Intelligence to train BI solution architects on platforms such as QlikView and IBM Cognos. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
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Pentagon System & Services
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Sairaman Mudaliar, Director, Pentagon System & Services, receiving the award from Anand Naik, MD, Sales, Symantec India & Saarc
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umbai-based Pentagon System and Services grew 20 percent with its topline increasing from `108 crore in FY2010-11 to `130 crore in FY2011-12. Sairaman Mudaliar, Director, Pentagon, attributed the growth to new vendor partnerships and a solution-focused approach. “Our partnership with brands such as NetApp, Hitachi and IBM enabled us to take on additional projects which contributed `13 crore to the topline. We also took end-toend solution projects which contributed `6 crore.” More than 60 percent of the company’s revenue came from servers and storage, while 24 percent came from enterprise security, infrastructure software, power and networking. The company acquired 70 new customers from IT/ITeS, BFSI and real estate in the last fiscal which contributed 15 percent to the revenues. “We specifically concentrated on SMB customers, addressing their pain-points that offered higher margins. We added 10 sales managers which resulted in more business with deals ranging from `50 lakh to `2 crore. We also provided regular in-house training in products and technologies to pre-sales, sales and support teams to make them more confident,” explained Mudaliar. To grow its bottomline, Pentagon introduced mailing, database and accounting solutions on the cloud from Netmagic and IBM. “We acquired mid-market customers from the BFSI and IT/ITeS segments. Cloud services added 5 percent to the revenue. In all, services contributed 16 percent,” Mudaliar stated. For a BFSI customer Pentagon executed a critical project involving migration from the existing HP set-up to an IBM setup for `5 crore. It migrated another BFSI customer from the existing Power 5 Unix server to Power 7. The project was valued at `2 crore. The company is eying 10 percent growth in FY2012-13. About the current IT scenario Mudaliar said, “We are on the conservative side. Most of our customers are hesitating to loosen their purse-strings. We are also facing the problem of getting payments on time because the payment cycle has increased to 90 days which is impacting our cash flow.” In FY2012-13 Pentagon plans to focus on security, both physical and Internet, as well as managed services; it intends to target SMB organizations from the manufacturing, insurance and FMCG verticals. In addition, it plans to expand to new geographies outside India, and sees Singapore as a prospective market. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
u Grew 19.4 perent to `252 crore
Company: Team Computers
u Grew 20 percent to `130 crore
u Became an Elite Premier Partner of
CMD: Ranjan Chopra
u Acquired 70 new customers from IT/
Company: Pentagon System and Services
u Concentrated on SMB customers,
Year of inception: 1994
u Implemented a project worth `20 crore
across 100 locations for the security forces
u Executed a `4 crore server and storage
infrastructure project for C-Dot
u Launched the Institute of BI to train
solution architects on QlikView and Cognos
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Computer Reseller News
Year of inception: 1987 No. of branches: 26 Turnover FY2011-12: `252 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `211 crore Employees: 1,100
ITeS, BFSI and real estate
addressing their pain-points that offered higher margins
u Added 10 sales managers which
resulted in more business
Director: Sairaman Mudaliar No. of branches: 5 Turnover FY2011-12: `130 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `108 crore
Certified employees: 987
u Provided regular in-house training to
Employees: 225
Principals: IBM, Microsoft, Google, EMC, Symantec, Lenovo, Schneider, HP, Dell
u Migrated a BFSI customer from Power
Principals: IBM, Juniper, Lenovo, Fortinet, NetApp, HP
01/09/2012 www.crn.in
pre-sales, sales and support teams
5 Unix server to Power 7
Certified employees: 53
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Precision Infomatic
Connect and interact with more than 1,000 resellers at half the cost of a 50-delegate F2F event
November 21-22, 2012
Mathew Chacko, Founder Director, Precision Infomatic
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hennai-based Precision Infomatic grew 39 percent to `280.6 crore in FY2011-12 against `202.6 crore in FY2010-11. Mathew Chacko, Founder Director, Precision, attributed this growth to the company’s increased focus on the biometric security business, a managed and cloud services push, and a new organizational model created around technology focus areas. “Of the revenue in the last fiscal, biometrics contributed 40 percent. The cloud and managed hybrid services also contributed a significant chunk,” said Chacko. He said that till FY2010-11 the company’s approach toward business was product-centric. Then, with a clear focus on solutions and services, the company remodeled itself and created technology- and vertical-led teams. “We created divisions for data center, network security and software solutions. This helped us to develop deeper engagement with our customers and enabled us to map their requirements better; in the process we won several large deals in range of `1 crore to `5 crore in BFSI, telecom, manufacturing and healthcare.” Precision’s largest customer during the fiscal was the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) which contributed `100 crore to its revenue for the supply of biometric solutions along with HP printers and notebooks. One of the largest projects it handled in FY2011-12 was for Indian Overseas Bank, and worth `3.2 crore; Precision provided a biometric solution enabling the bank’s 13,000 employees to get secure access to the core banking solution. Precision also installed 15,000 biometric devices at the State Bank of India for its financial inclusion initiative; these devices allowed the bank to accept thumb-prints of people in rural areas in order to open no-frills bank accounts. For Coimbatore-based CRI Pumps, Precision migrated Oracle e-Business suite users from Sun Sparc to HP Itanium. The project included consolidating 30 servers into seven blades. The company also upped its focus on services and introduced a hybrid model for RIM and FMS. “We decided to exit the pure-play AMC offering, and last fiscal moved 100 large customers from AMC contracts to an SLA-driven hybrid model,” Chacko informed. Precision began offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service to existing customers, and signed up 15. The company is targeting 19 percent growth in FY2012-13, and is aiming for a `330 crore topline. “We plan to sign up 150 new customers for our services offerings in the next 6-9 months,” Chacko said. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
u Grew 39 percent to `280.6 crore
Company: Precision Infomatic
u Executed `100 crore worth of orders
Founder Director: Mathew Chacko
from UIDAI for the supply of biometric solutions along with printers and notebooks
u Provided IOB with a biometric solution
enabling the bank’s 13,000 employees to get secure access to the core banking solution
u Won several `1 to `5 crore deals
in BFSI, telecom, manufacturing and healthcare
Year of inception: 1996 No. of branches: 8 Turnover in FY2011-12: `280.6 crore Turnover in FY2010-11: `202.6 crore
After the success of CRN Virtual Expo held on May 30-31, 2012, CRN brings to you yet another one. Slated on November 21-22, 2012, the CRN Virtual Expo will bring together more than 1,000 channel partners from across 150+ cities, thus making it the largest such virtual initiative in the IT channels in the country. A combination of web- and video-based live conference program and an interactive online exhibition, the CRN Virtual Expo promises to be the most cost-effective channel marketing tool for IT vendors.
Platinum Partners
Gold Partner
For Partnerships contact Project Director Salil Warior +91 99875 80188 salil.warior@ubm.com
North Sanjay Khandelwal +91 98117 64515 sanjay.khandelwal@ubm.com
South Sudhir K +91 9740 776749 sudhir.k@ubm.com
West Ranabir Das +91 98200 97606 ranabir.das@ubm.com
Number of employees: 863 Certified employees: 566 Principals: HP, Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, Fortinet, Lenovo, Toshiba, Adobe, Epson, Samsung, APC
www.crn.in/virtualexpo
Computer Reseller News
01/09/2012
www.crn.in
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Server and Storage
Cache Technologies
Prarthana Gupta, CEO, Cache Technologies, receiving the award from Shrirang Kane, Regional Manager, Pre-sales, Symantec
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elhi-based Cache Technologies grew 58 percent from `43 crore in FY2010-11 to `68 crore in FY2011-12. Cache partnered with VMware, Symantec and RadWare, and earned competencies in new technologies. “We took on several projects in networking which contributed more than `5 crore to the topline. Virtualization added `1 crore, and back-up and security solutions over `50 lakh. In all, solutions accounted for about 68 percent of our business,” informed Prarthana Gupta, CEO, Cache. At the bottomline, the company’s focus on managed services and FMS contracts showed 50 percent growth. “We offered highly trained resources on a contract basis to Tech Mahindra, Comviva and IBM, and established a laboratory for PoC and training,” she said. “Telecom has been shrouded with scams for the last 18 months, hence our business from the segment dipped 20 percent,” Gupta explained. “But we added 15 large customers from other verticals with project sizes ranging from `50 lakh to `3 crore, and appointed account managers for our top 70 customers.” For `5 crore it handled two projects around server and storage consolidation and upgrade for Idea Cellular. Cache implemented a recommendation engine project worth `2.5 crore for Aircel in Gurgaon; this entailed virtualization, server, storage and live data migration on SQL. It deployed campus networking worth `1.25 crore at Sharda University, and at JK Laxmi Cement in Jhajjar for `80 lakh. The company offered 27 engineers to implement projects of Comviva Technologies in Africa with yearly accruals of `2.5 crore. In the current fiscal Cache is targeting a topline of `85 crore, of which `50 crore is expected from servers and storage. “We already have 8-9 projects in the telecom and manufacturing segments. Three large projects in telecom alone will add `40 crore [to our topline],” informed Gupta. Cache aims to garner about `7 crore from networking and security solutions. “We are doing some big projects with NIIT Technologies, MCarbon and IBM. Besides, we have desktop and server virtualization projects worth `2 crore in line,” she stated, adding, “We have bagged two projects for UC solutions with Avaya, each worth `3 crore. We want to expand our data center solutions portfolio with APC, Emerson and Eaton.” u Performance highlights u Grew 58 percent to `68 crore u Partnered with VMware, Symantec and
RadWare
u Offered highly trained resources on
a contract basis to Tech Mahindra, Comviva and IBM
company snapshot
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umbai-based VDA Infosolutions saw topline growth of 20 percent as its revenue climbed from `35 crore in FY2010-11 to `42 crore in FY2011-12. Explained Deepak Jadhav, Director, VDA Infosolutions, “More than acquiring new accounts we focused on deep-selling to existing customers. We set up teams which did an analysis free of cost for almost all accounts we had done business with on how they could optimize their infrastructure; these reports and recommendations which triggered a number of wins.” The company signed on with Microfocus, which provides tools to modernize legacy applications. Microfocus-driven business added nearly 11 percent to the topline. Vertical-wise, BFSI accounted for 40 percent of VDA’s business, IT/ITeS 30 percent, while manufacturing added 15 percent. Product-wise, 65 percent of the revenue came from storage and server solutions while the rest was contributed by software licensing and services. Last year VDA set up a pre-sales technical team for specific practices such as de-duplication, virtualization, software modernization, cloud computing, back-up and archival. One of the biggest orders executed was for KPIT, and was worth around `10 crore. “We had implemented the first vBlock solution for KPIT in 2010-11. Last year we implemented two more vBlock solutions for adding capacity and also for DR. This was the first time in India when two private clouds were implemented in the DR mode,” said Jadhav. Another implementation, worth `2 crore, was for server and storage consolidation for a leading insurance company. Using Microfocus tools, VDA also executed a `5 crore banking application modernization project for a leading private sector bank. For BEHR India, in a deal worth `1 crore, VDA was involved in re-designing its storage architecture; the project involved replacing archaic storage solutions with new EMC hardware. Jadhav attributed the company’s success to its good understanding with vendors such as IBM, EMC, VMware and Microfocus. Last year EMC presented VDA with both the Partner of the Year Award as well as the special Cloud Impetus Award. Microfocus recognized the company with the Performer of the Year 2011 Award, while VMware acknowledged its contribution with the Rookie of the Year Award. This year VDA’s focus includes expanding its storage practice and exploring areas such as big data. Other plans include targeting the telecom vertical. u Performance highlights
company snapshot Company: VDA Infosolutions Director: Deepak Jadhav
Year of inception: 1991 No. of branches: 8 Turnover FY2011-12: `68 crore
u Deployed a recommendation engine
Principals: HP, IBM, Oracle, VMware, EMC, Symantec, Lenovo, Cisco
Computer Reseller News
Ashutosh Deuskar, Director, VDA Infosolutions, receiving the award from Shrirang Kane, Regional Manager, Pre-sales, Symantec
u Focused on deep-selling to existing
Certified employees: 185
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VDA Infosolutions
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CEO: Prarthana Gupta
u Deployed campus networking worth
project for Aircel in Gujarat
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Company: Cache Technologies
u Established a laboratory for PoC and
`1.25 crore at Sharda University
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u Grew 20 percent to `42 crore
Turnover FY2010-11: `43 crore
training
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Employees: 300
01/09/2012 www.crn.in
customers u Signed on with Microfocus u Set up a pre-sales technical team u Executed a `10 crore order for KPIT; deployed two vBlock solutions u Implemented a banking application modernization project for a bank u Received the Partner of the Year and the Special Cloud Impetus Award from EMC
Year of inception: 2010 No. of branches: 8 Turnover FY2011-12: `42 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `35 crore Employees: 400 Certified employees: 150 Principals: Kaseya, HP, Microsoft, Cisco
Performance highlights u Grew 15 percent to `48.5 crore u Carved four niche teams for
networking, enterprise, software & service to create customer-focused solutions u Executed a `2 crore networking project for a 7-star hotel chain u Executed an HP converged infrastructure project worth `2 crore for a logistics customer u Deployed a VDI and server virtualization solution for SAP at a healthcare customer, worth `75 lakh
Surajit Bit +91 9873445423 surajit.bit@ubm.com Salil Warior +91 9987580188 salil.warior@ubm.com
Total Live Event Attendees
1,052 2,614
Total Registrants
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hennai-based Mukesh Infoserve grew 15.5 percent from `42 crore in FY2010-11 to `48.5 crore in FY2011-12. Detailing the performance highlights of the last fiscal, B Mukundh, CEO, Mukesh Infoserve, said, “We moved to hi-end products in networking, storage and servers, and invested in resources, certifications and PoCs. We carved four niche teams for networking, enterprise, software & service (NESS) in order to create customer-focused solutions.” As a result, Mukesh won several projects in the range of `60 lakh to `2 crore. “With NESS, we trained the sales and technical team for cross-platform sales. We provided performance incentives to not only the sales team but also the team that architected advanced solutions, thus creating a solution-centric culture in the organization. These initiatives improved our bottomline, and also the size of the sales funnel,” Mukundh explained. The company started a new marketing division to develop and help position itself as an end-to-end solutions vendor, and went after new clients. New customer acquisitions provided 40 percent of Mukesh’s turnover. The remaining 60 percent came from existing customers where the company was involved in technology refresh, consolidation, virtualization and converged infrastructure solutions. “With the new teams in place we were able to understand customer pain-points better and position solutions accordingly,” explained Mukundh. “For instance, for several of our customers we provided back-up and recovery solutions.” One of the projects Mukesh executed was for a 7-star hotel chain. The `2 crore project included designing active and passive networking for more than 2,000 points across the country, and supporting nine different functionalities including applications such as voice, data and video. It also executed an HP converged infrastructure project worth `2 crore for a logistics customer. For a healthcare customer Mukesh deployed a VDI and server virtualization solution for SAP in a project worth `75 lakh. For a large multinational financial services company it deployed a data center refresh on the IBM platform in a project worth `50 lakh. With a growing funnel, streamlined marketing and a crossfunctional sales team, Mukesh is confident of closing FY201213 with more than 30 percent growth compared to FY2011-12. “We are also bidding for projects outside India, and if those come through we will close the fiscal with more than 50 percent growth,” he said. u
LOBBY
C
Year 2011 saw
B Mukundh, CEO, Mukesh Infoserve
For sponsorship opportunities, contact:
Mukesh Infoserve
Drive brand awareness Demonstrate thought leadership Showcase technology solutions Engage with qualified business decision makers
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40%
S
Align with Virtual INTEROP 2012 to
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Attendance Rate
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company snapshot Company: Mukesh Infoserve CEO: B Mukundh Year of inception: 1997 No. of branches: 5 Turnover FY2011-12: Rs 48.5 crore Turnover FY2010-11: Rs 42 crore Employees: 180 Certified employees: 85 Principals: IBM, EMC, VMware, Cisco, HP, AMP, Molex, D-Link, Microsoft, Lenovo, SAP
Computer Reseller News
01/09/2012
www.crn.in
19
MUMBAI October 10 - 12, 2012 // Bombay Exhibition Center
WORKSHOPS AT INTEROP CONFERENCE Is User-Experience in your company’s DNA?
How to define your cloud strategy
Overcoming outages in public clouds: How to design high availability patterns
Eric Schaffer, Global CEO and Founder, Human Factors International
Janakiraman, Cloud - Practice Manager, Aspire Systems
Harish Ganesan, Cofounder and CTO, 8K Miles
For delegate registrations, write to Sanket Karode on sanket.karode@ubm.com or call on +91 22 67692411
*WORKSHOP BY INTERNET SOCIETY EXPERTS: IPV6 & DNSSEC
Internet Society: Mission and Goals
The Business Case for IPv6 and DNSSEC
Rajnesh Singh, Internet Society Richard Jimmerson, Internet Society
Deploying DNSSEC: From end-customer to content Moderator Dan York, Internet Society
Industry Collaboration: Working together to deploy IPv6
Panelists Desi Valli, Net4India, Jitender Kumar, Afilias India
Richard Jimmerson, Internet Society *this workshop is open to all business visitors. To register, visit www.interop.in
Make lasting connections with your peers and see new and cutting edge technologies at INTEROP expo
OFFERS!!! October 10–12, 2012 Bombay Convention & Exhibition Centre, Mumbai www.interop.in
INTEROP LAS VEGAS 2012
October 10–12, 2012
Delegate Kit Bag First 100 pre-registered business visitors onsite to get a delegate kit bag
Bombay Convention & Exhibition Centre, Mumbai
Additional benefits: INTEROP Las Vegas 2012 and INTEROP Mumbai 2011 Conference Presentations CD*
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INTEROP LAS VEGAS 2012
Register, Attend & Win an Amazon Web Service Gift Voucher worth USD 50!!!
October 10–12, 2012 Bombay Convention & Exhibition Centre, Mumbai www.interop.in
INTEROP MUMBAI 2011
October 10–12, 2012 Bombay Convention & Exhibition Centre, Mumbai www.interop.in
INTEROP MUMBAI 2011
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To mark your presence at INTEROP 2012, contact: Salil Warior | +91 99875 80188 | salil.warior@ubm.com Surajit Bit | +91 98734 45423 | surajit.bit@ubm.com
Organised by
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advanced markets
Mm9 Information Technologies
Parminder Singh Chawla, MD, Mm9, receiving the award from Patrick Mathias, VP, Mid-Market and SMB, Cisco Systems
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urgaon-based Mm9 Information Technologies grew 25 percent to `60 crore in FY2011-12 against `48 crore in FY2010-11. Parminder Singh Chawla, MD, Mm9, attributed the company’s growth to its investment in competencies around storage and server technologies, new customer acquisitions, and consolidation. “Last year we invested in competencies in security and virtualization around storage and servers, gained a Symantec Gold Partnership, and became a VMware Enterprise Partner. While HP was the driving factor in all our deals, we were able to give value to customers.” Mm9 drafted separate strategies for large enterprise customers and SMBs. Explained Chawla, “Most of the global customers demand the same brand used by the headquarters and branches abroad, hence we developed a strategy to pitch only MNC brands to such customers. We target SMBs and the education segment with Cyberoam. The strategy has worked.” In addition, Mm9 set up PoCs around solutions, especially for SMB customers. “We used our MDF for PoCs and were able to convert 40 percent of the PoCs into deals,” Chawla said. In-house, the company elevated its account managers to product management. “People with core competency now talk about solutions, products and technologies with customers. For complex projects involving multiple vendors, we associate a senior manager who can discuss end-to-end solutions. Although the move has not led to cost savings—instead we had to hire more people—the connect with the end-customer has improved,” Chawla continued. The company converted an opportunity for DR implementation (for a very large customer in the manufacturing segment) to server virtualization by using vMotion, storage consolidation and DR back-up; the project value was `80 lakh. For a large pharma MNC Mm9 implemented a `2 crore project which required integrating 18 technologies from various vendors; the technologies included gateway security, client security, DLP and virtualization. For another project worth `3.5 crore for a logistics company, Mm9 implemented a 60 TB flash-based storage solution which reduced the query generation time by one-third. Chawla is not upbeat about the current fiscal. “The slowdown is hitting us. We should be able to stay afloat and sustain the same growth rate. At our end we have stopped doing transactional business for HP services. We are chasing more avenues, and the knowledge management portals are an emerging option.” u Performance highlights
company snapshot
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Duckback Information Systems
Asis Chaudhuri, CEO, Duckback Information Systems, receiving the award from Patrick Mathias, VP, Mid-Market and SMB, Cisco Systems
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olkata-based Duckback Information Systems grew 14 percent with its topline increasing from `25 crore in FY2010-11 to `29 crore in FY2011-12. Asis Chaudhuri, CEO, Duckback, attributed this growth to the solutions and software reselling business. “Revenue from software reselling and customization contributed nearly 50 percent of our revenue. Cloud computing and virtualization projects brought in about 15 percent.” Microsoft contributed the highest, 35 percent, followed by IBM at 10 percent. “Oracle and Adobe contributed `2.5 crore each to our revenue,” Chaudhuri said. The company became a sub-distributor of Acer commercial notebooks in 2011; this business contributed 5 percent. Cloud computing and the reselling of Catia, a scientific software, led to robust bottomline growth. “Although scientific software contributed only `1.5 crore to the revenue, it offered the highest margin in the range of 35-40 percent,” Chaudhuri disclosed. Topline growth was supported by the acquisition of more than 30 new SMB customers in the north-east. The company garnered more than `1 crore from MS Exchange and Office 365-based cloud projects for a software development house for 2,000 users. It also implemented Lotus on the cloud worth `15 lakh for a manufacturing company for 700 users. “In all, we implemented about 30 projects on the cloud in the range of `5 lakh to `40 lakh,” said Chaudhuri. Duckback implemented about 600 licenses for MS Office and Windows Server with Active Directory worth `65 lakh for Coal India at seven locations. It also supplied and implemented a 35-user license of Catia valued at `50 lakh for an engineering college. In FY2012-13 Duckback is aiming to clock `35 crore riding on its focus on virtualization and the cloud. The company also considers database and storage to be high-growth areas. In addition, Duckback is eying projects in business analytics and business intelligence based on its partnerships with IBM and Oracle with a focus on the BFSI, FMCG and telecom verticals. With a couple of projects in hand, the company is also upbeat about boardroom solutions from Avaya. Meanwhile, its focus on the education vertical has increased. “With growing demand for Catia, we expect the contribution from educational institutes to double to `3 crore this fiscal,” said Chaudhuri. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
u Grew 25 percent to `60 crore
Company: Mm9 Information Technologies
u Grew 14 percent to `29 crore
u Gained a Symantec Gold Partnership;
MD: Parminder Singh Chawla
u Scientific software contributed 35-40
Company: Duckback Information Systems
u Acquired more than 30 SMB
Year of inception: 1986
became a VMware Enterprise Partner
u Used its MDF to set up PoCs;
converted 40 percent of the PoCs into deals
u For an MNC implemented a project
which required integrating 18 technologies from various vendors
u Implemented 60 TB flash-based
storage for a logistics firm; reduced query generation time by one third
Year of inception: 1995 No. of branches: 3 Turnover in FY2011-12: `60 crore Turnover in FY2010-11: `48 crore Employees: 100 Certified employees: 14 Principals: HP, Symantec, VMware, Cyberoam, Netmagic, Checkpoint, McAfee, RSA, Cisco, Toshiba, Microsoft
percent of revenues
customers in the north-east
u Executed about 30 projects on the
cloud in the range of `5 lakh-40 lakh
u Implemented a 35-user license of Catia
valued at `50 lakh for an engineering college
u Implemented MS Exchange and Office
365 for 2,000 users in an IT company
CEO: Asis Chaudhuri No. of branches: 1 Turnover FY2011-12: `29 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `25 crore Employees: 30 Certified employees: 22 Principals: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Acer, EMC
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Nikesh Sakaria, MD, CDP India, receiving the award from Bimal Raj, CEO, Smartlink Network Systems
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umbai-based CDP India grew 45 percent with its revenue scaling from `51 crore in FY2010-11 to `74 crore in FY2011-12. Nikesh Sakaria, MD, CDP, attributed the growth in topline to large projects and their focus on virtualization. “We executed several large projects of `1 crore to `18 crore in the BFSI segment in the last fiscal. Moreover, our focus on virtualization garnered about `8 crore.” The company grew its bottomline through its focus on automated managed services (AMS) and facility management. “We added about 25 customers for AMS and more than 20 for facility management. Overall, services contributed 20 percent to our revenue; of this, 25 percent was from AMS,” informed Sakaria. CDP focused on deep-selling to existing customers. “Over the last couple of years we were concentrating on new domains to increase our customer base. Last year we consolidated these customers and started deep-selling,” said Ankit Desai, Director, CDP. The company bagged around 25 large projects from its existing customers. CDP also established a facility in a free trade zone; this led to direct cost savings for customers and facilitated large enterprise orders. It shifted its base to larger premises and established a command center for its AMS. The company bagged some very large projects which included a branch roll-out and desktop migration project worth `18 crore for a banking organization. CDP implemented 1,000 notebooks worth `5 crore plus a virtualization and storage project valued at `4 crore for Deloitte. On the managed services front, CDP bagged a deal to manage 1,000 nodes in a BFSI organization with annual accruals of `50 lakh. The company is targeting 25 percent growth this fiscal. “Apart from large systems integration deals from deep-selling, we aim to double the contribution from virtualization,” said Sakaria. CDP has plans to enter technology consulting and advisory services. “We expect to garner about `5 crore through consultancy services,” Sakaria added. In addition, the company intends to focus on cloud services. “We will introduce trading technology applications for traders in capital markets,” said Desai. CDP is targeting the BFSI segment for its managed services and wants to add 50 more customers. It also plans to acquire customers in the US, Canada, Middle East, Singapore and Thailand. u Performance highlights u Grew 45 percent to `74 crore u Established a facility in a free trade
zone
u Bagged a project worth `18 crore from
a banking organization
u Implemented 1,000 notebooks worth
`5 crore plus a virtualization and storage project valued at `4 crore for Deloitte
u Managed 1,000 nodes for a BFSI
organization with annual accruals
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Computer Reseller News
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Central Data Systems
Suresh HR, Director, Central Data Systems, receiving the award from Bimal Raj, CEO, Smartlink Network Systems
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engaluru-based Central Data Systems grew by 21 percent to `46 crore in FY2011-12 against `38 crore in FY2010-11. Suresh HR, Director, CDS, attributed the company’s growth to the bagging of large projects from existing customers. It provided end-to-end solutions to SLK Group’s software division for `2.5 crore. For Cibersites it consolidated storage and servers for `4 crore. The company added new brands to its kitty. It partnered with Citrix for desktop virtualization, Fortinet for security, and Avaya for unified communication. “The inclusion of new brands increased our revenue by 15 percent,” Suresh informed. In terms of new projects, CDS bagged a greenfield project to set up network infrastructure for the Bengaluru operations of Brazilian conglomerate Gerdau for `2 crore. Another project, this time for Intuit, and valued at `1.5 crore, involved deploying borderless networks from Cisco. Yet another project, for Kalyani Steel Plants and worth `2.5 crore, included network infrastructure and a data center. CDS migrated from Sage ERP to SAP Business One, and deployed several processes to increase its efficiency and decrease costs. “It helped us track accounts receivable (AR) in a smarter way which reduced the average AR days from 60 to 45,” Suresh disclosed. “One of the best practices which I am proud of is that we reduced our printing costs by almost 60 percent with the deployment of SAP.” The company deployed a new system to get customer feedback through support engineers and provided incentives based on the engineers’ performance and customer satisfaction. “This is of prime importance for us because more than 50 percent of our revenue comes from repeat business and mapping customer satisfaction gives us a clear picture of our performance,” added Suresh. In FY2012-13 CDS expects to grow by 30 percent and clock revenue of close to `60 crore. It will focus on cloud services. Said Suresh, “We will focus on selling more of IBM Smart Cloud and Smartcloud Enterprise. We are also in talks with HP for their cloud services.” In addition, CDS is planning to increase its manpower in pre-sales, sales and support to reduce its dependence on vendors. The company will focus on new verticals such as healthcare and BFSI. Besides, it aims to increase its revenue contribution from services. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
Company: CDP India
u Grew 21 percent to `46 crore
Company: Central Data Systems
MD: Nikesh Sakaria
u Provided solutions to the SLK Group
Directors: Suresh HR and K Subrahmanya
u Consolidated storage and servers for
Year of inception: 2003
Year of inception: 1991 No. of branches: 5 Turnover FY2011-12: `74 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `51 crore Employees: 95
for `2.5 crore
Cibersites for `4 crore
u Partnered Citrix for desktop
virtualization, Fortinet for security, and Avaya for unified communication
No. of branches: 2 Turnover FY2011-12: `46 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `38 crore
Certified employees: 30
u Migrated from Sage ERP to SAP
Employees: 76
Principals: HP, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Kaseya, Lenovo
u Deployed a new sytem for customer
Principals: Avaya, Cisco, Citrix, IBM, HP, Fortinet, Oracle
01/09/2012 www.crn.in
Business One
feedback
Certified employees: 14
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E Connect Solutions
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B Srinivasan, National Technical Manager, Leviton India, presenting the award to Jaimin Patel, Director, E Connect Solutions
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daipur-based E Connect Solutions grew by 38.5 percent from `21 crore in FY2010-11 to `29.1 crore in FY2011-12. Jaimin Patel, Director, E Connect, attributed the company’s growth to bagging large application-led projects in the government and PSUs. “Last fiscal we won projects where we developed certain software applications.” One such application-led project was for the excise department in Uttarakhand, where E Connect implemented a revenue management system which included developing a licensee database, and an application to generate online transport permits and excise passes across the supply chain. The solution was implemented on a BOO basis with the scope of setting up a data center at Uttarakhand and a DR site at E Connect’s data center in Udaipur. Another project was for Balco (part of the Vedanta Group), where E Connect deployed a customized HRMS application that included modules such as performance appraisal, learning & development, payroll, and a company-wide knowledge management system. It deployed similar modules for another Vedanta Group company, Hindustan Zinc, and L&T Dubai, among others. The company tied up with the Info Tech Corporation of Goa as a technology partner to implement an ERP solution for the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation. E Connect also signed up with industry automation companies such as Rockwell and Schneider, and developed competencies for the IT components of large-scale SCADA projects. For one such SCADA-led project worth `10 crore for South Eastern Coalfields, Chhattisgarh, E Connect set up the WAN, LAN and data center. Overseas, through L&T Dubai, it implemented for `2.75 crore a similar project for Takreer, the Abu Dhabi oil refining company. E Connect aims to close FY2012-13 with revenue of `50 crore. “We will expand geographically across India and abroad, and also offer turnkey solutions on the cloud to the excise segment,” Patel said. The company is banking on bids for e-governance projects at the municipal corporation level. Patel informed that E Connect has developed 18 modules of citizen services for e-municipality, pilots of which have been rolled out across Rajasthan, and some districts in Gujarat, Kerala and Goa. A similar application is being developed for National eGovernance Projects. Also on the cards is a cloud-based service offering. Disclosed Patel, “We are testing SaaS-based services. The first service to be rolled out will be workflow management for HR.” u Performance highlights u Grew 38.5 percent to `29.1 crore u Implemented a revenue management
system for the excise department in Uttarakhand
u Deployed a customized HRMS
IT components of large-scale SCADA projects
u Set up WAN, LAN and data center for
Eastern Coalfields; a SCADA-led project
Computer Reseller News
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Computer Gallery
RK Philip, CEO, Computer Gallery, receiving the award from Srikanth Doranadula, Director, VAD Channels, Oracle
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mphal-based Computer Gallery grew 10 percent with its topline increasing from `3.7 crore in FY2010-11 to `4 crore in FY2011-12. Large projects in the government and education segments, deep-selling to existing customers, and its partnership with Apple for video editing solutions contributed to the growth. Explained Rajkumar Philip, Proprietor, Computer Gallery, “Government and education are the two most active buyers in Imphal, and we have good traction in these sectors. We started doing Apple’s post-production solutions business in the last fiscal wherein we installed servers which the customers connected with Apple notebooks as consoles to play and record audio and video. We acquired around 10 small customers in the last fiscal; these include NGOs and media companies, with each deal worth `3 lakh-5 lakh.” The company also got its AMCs renewed by its existing 12 customers, mainly in the education vertical. “Services form 35 percent of our revenue; out of this more than 55 percent is contributed by the education vertical while 10 percent comes from the government and the rest from SMBs,” Philip said. One of its major projects was a consolidation and virtualization solution with gigabit gateway routing for Manipur University worth `1.5 crore. “This project was a 3-year rollout; it included upgrading the entire server infrastructure, virtualizing, and setting up the networking solution. We completed the project with `50 lakh of the final implementation accruing from the project in FY2011-12,” informed Philip. For the Treasury & Accounts Department of the Government of Manipur, Computer Gallery installed 17 servers at different locations which can be accessed remotely from a central location. This multi-phased project was completed last fiscal, adding `70 lakh to Computer Gallery’s kitty. The company plans to cross `6 crore in turnover in FY201213 with expansion to the neighboring states of Mizoram and Nagaland so that it can procure more deals in the education and government verticals. “With a few private sector companies such as Reliance investing in the north-east, we expect increased demand,” said Philip. “We have plans to build new skill-sets in security, remote managed services and networking.” The company is in talks with the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, Imphal, for managing their hospital network system and installing Internet and gateway security. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
Company: E Connect Solutions
Company: Computer Gallery
MD: Manoj Agarwal
u Started doing Apple’s post-production
Proprietor: Rajkumar Philip
Year of inception: 1999 No. of branches: 5 Turnover in FY2010-11: `21 crore
u Developed competencies for the
S
u Grew 10 percent to `4 crore
Turnover in FY2011-12: `29.1 crore
application for Balco
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company snapshot
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Employees: 263 Certified employees: 8 Principals: Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, Digilink, Rockwell, Schneider
01/09/2012 www.crn.in
solutions business
u Acquired 10 small customers,
including NGOs and media companies
u Executed a consolidation and
virtualization solution for Manipur University worth `1.5 crore
u Installed 17 servers at different
locations for the Government of Manipur
Year of inception: 1996 No. of branches: 1 Turnover FY2011-12: `4 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `3.7 crore Employees: 33 Certified employees: 18 Principals: Cisco, IBM, HP, Lenovo, Apple, Cyberoam
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Ishan Infotech
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Pradeep Khemani, Country Manager, Channels & SMB Sales, HP ESSN, presenting the award to Pinkesh Kotecha & Keyur Jathal of Ishan Infotech
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ajkot-based Ishan Infotech grew 22 percent with its topline increasing from `15.5 crore in FY2010-11 to `19 crore in FY2011-12. Pinkesh Kotecha, Director, Ishan Infotech, attributed this growth to shifting its primary focus from financial services in the nick of time because this segment later witnessed turmoil. “We are now more focused on other verticals such as manufacturing, auto ancillaries, government, PSUs and education.” The focus on the new verticals contributed around 50 percent of the revenue for Ishan Infotech. “We won some 8-10 projects, each with an average size of `40 lakh,” informed Kotecha. Ishan also signed up with SAP as an Extended Business Partner to provide ERP-led IT solutions in the new verticals. A big project implemented in the last fiscal was for Atul Auto to migrate its existing legacy systems to SAP-based applications. Ishan provided end-to-end infrastructure including a data center, servers and storage deployed on the RedHat open source platform. The project size was `1.2 crore. Another project included a discreet VDI solution for Marwadi Shares & Finance where for its three branches wherein Ishan moved legacy applications running in DOS to VDI as the customer was comfortable with DOS and had no plans to migrate. The project was for 75 nodes, and the value of the project was `40 lakh. A project handled by Ishan for a sugar manufacturing company included campus-wide area networking along with enterprise Wi-Fi. The project was worth `65 lakh. Ishan also deployed end-to-end UC, campus-wide networking and computing infrastructure worth `60 lakh for the Marwadi Educational Foundation. It deployed the entire IT infrastructure for the Rajkot Municipal Corporation in a project worth `35 lakh. In addition, Ishan deployed wired and wireless connectivity solutions for a PSU, Gujarat Info Petro Limited; the project was worth `40 lakh. In FY2012-13 Ishan is aiming to garner revenue of `25 crore. It recently signed up as a VMware Service Provider Partner. It is also a Gold Partner for Microsoft, and is looking at Service Provider License Agreement to launch its own mailing and collaboration solution based on Microsoft Exchange. Besides, it is in talks with Tally for providing Tally on the cloud for the SMB segment. Ishan will also increase its focus on cloud services and remote infrastructure services. u Performance highlights u Grew 22 percent to `19 crore u Shifted its primary focus from financial
services to manufacturing, auto ancillaries, government, PSUs and education
company snapshot
Pradeep Khemani, Country Manager, Channels & SMB Sales, HP ESSN, presenting the award to SR Nair, MD, Team Frontline
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ochi-based Team Frontline grew 10 percent with its topline increasing from `16.9 crore in FY2010-11 to `18.7 crore in FY2011-12. SR Nair, Managing Director, Team Frontline, attributed the company’s growth to deep-selling to existing customers, its focus on ERP-led projects, and new customer acquisitions. “We deep-sold managed services, CRM solutions and storage solutions to many of our large customers; it brought in 15 percent of our total topline in FY2011-12. This was in addition to the customers’ other standard infrastructure requirements such as hardware and infrastructure software licenses,” said Nair. For one of its largest customers, Geojit Finance, the company deployed a CRM solution. For another customer, Saint Gits Engineering College, Team Frontline deployed an open platform Dspace digital repository solution. Both these projects contributed `1 crore to the topline. Team Frontline added 10 new customers including Muthoot Fincorp and Chemmannur Finance; they contributed `2.5 crore to the revenue, with the rest coming from existing customers. A focus on ERP-led projects helped the company to bag a migration project from Choice Trading Corporation, a leading seafood company in Kochi. It migrated the customer from SAP ERP to Microsoft Navision in a project worth `35 lakh. Team Frontline also deployed a small data center, along with an ERP solution, for Kottakal Arya Vaidya Sala in a project worth `30 lakh. One of the largest deals bagged by the company in the last fiscal was from Manappuram Finance, to which it sold 16,000 Windows 7 licenses worth `3 crore. Another project, worth `1.5 crore, was for Muthoot Fincorp where it signed a rate contract to provide IT infrastructure at 150 new branches. The company invested a significant amount in skilling its employees in different solutions, including ERP. “Training has been a priority for us for the past couple of years. It has enabled us to target opportunities for application-led solutions and advanced technologies, thus helping us to uniquely position our company in the marketplace,” said Nair. The company is eying revenue of `20 crore in FY2012-13. Explained Nair, “We plan to expand our ERP implementation services outside the state. We intend to target verticals such as Ayurvedic medicine makers and seafood processing units.” Team Frontline also plans to address state-level government projects in the current fiscal. u Performance highlights
company snapshot Company: Team Frontline
u Deployed a CRM solution for Geojit
MD: SR Nair
Year of inception: 2000 No. of branches: 9
Employees: 125
Gujarat Info Petro Limited
Team Frontline
Director: Pinkesh Kotecha
u Deployed the entire IT infrastructure u Deployed connectivity solutions for
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Company: Ishan Infotech
Turnover FY2011-12: `19 crore
for the Rajkot Municipal Corporation
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u Grew 10 percent to `18.7 crore
u Signed up with SAP for ERP-led IT
solutions
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Turnover FY2010-11: `15.5 crore Certified employees: 40 Principals: Microsoft, IBM, Fortinet, Lenovo, VMware
Finance
u Deployed an open platform Dspace
digital repository solution for Saint Gits Engineering College
Year of inception: 1996 No. of branches: 3 Turnover FY2011-12: `18.7 crore
u Invested in skilling its employees in
Turnover FY2010-11: `16.9 crore
u Sold 16,000 Windows 7 licenses worth
Certified employees: 20
different solutions, including ERP
`3 crore to Muthoot Fincorp
Employees: 65 Principals: Microsoft, HP, Symantec, Checkpoint, Lenovo
Computer Reseller News
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Proactive Data Systems
Rajiv Kumar, CEO, Proactive Data Systems, receiving the award from Ashish Gupta, Head, Channel & Service Business, Polycom
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ew Delhi-based Proactive Data Systems grew from `48 crore in FY2010-11 to `50 crore in FY2011-12. Explaining the reasons for its low growth, Rajiv Kumar, CEO, Proactive, said, “Last year was tough due to delays in projects from IT/ITeS. We also missed deals worth `15 crore due to the competition offering quotations with negative margins.” Besides, the company took a hit of `60 lakh-70 lakh because of the volatility in the rupee-dollar exchange rates. Proactive held on to the revenue numbers through its expansion into data center build-up, virtualization, and server and storage, as well as its focus on unified communication (UC). “While 50 percent of our turnover came from networking, UC contributed about 15 percent. Data center build-up projects added 10 percent, and server and storage 5 percent,” Kumar informed. The company partnered with EMC, Citrix and NetApp last fiscal. Services such as AMC, facility management and implementation added 20 percent to the bottomline. Kumar revealed that the contribution from large enterprises decreased last fiscal. “There were only 4-5 large deals with a collective contribution of about `15 crore. We therefore changed strategy and targeted several small deals from mid-market customers. We did about 250 deals from `2 lakh to `1 crore.” In addition, Proactive targeted verticals like government, manufacturing and education, and added about 25 mid-sized customers. In-house, Proactive deployed MS Navision ERP in 2010 and reaped the benefits in the last fiscal. “It improved the efficiency of our sales and purchase cycles, and we were able to close our account books by mid-June against the usual September-end,” informed Kumar. The company bagged several networking projects from Adobe with composite value of `2 crore last fiscal. It also did networking worth $200,000 for a Citrix development center in Bengaluru. Proactive executed a UC project worth $365,000 for Global Logic. It also completed a UC project worth `1.25 crore for the Samvardhana Motherson Group, and a project worth $68,608 for Innodata Isogen in India and the Philippines. On the services front, it has strengthened its sales team and is deploying CRM. “We will also get ITIL certification for our services,” Kumar stated. Proactive has plans to expand to the US. In FY2012-13 the company is targeting a turnover of more than `60 crore. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
No. of branches: 3 Turnover FY2011-12: `50 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `48 crore Employees: 86
u Executed a UC project worth $365,000
Principals: Cisco, Panduit, EMC, Citrix, NetApp
Computer Reseller News
umbai-based Syndrome Technologies grew 27 percent from `56.8 crore in FY2010-11 to `72 crore in FY2011-12. While networking contributed about 60 percent to the topline, Siddharth Mehta, MD, Syndrome Technologies, highlighted that additional growth came from data center projects, virtualization and a focus on collaboration solutions. “Large projects in data center build-up added about `7 crore to the topline. Our increased focus on the BFSI and pharma segments for collaboration solutions showed results in the last fiscal and added `6 crore. Moreover, we partnered with VMware for virtualization and took on a few small projects worth `40 lakh each.” Mehta said that the company focused on deep-selling to existing customers; this contributed almost 60 percent. “We focused on mid-market companies which are in an expansion mode and aim to become large enterprises.” Syndrome ran ‘Yes We Do’ campaigns to inform existing customers about the additional solutions offered by the company. It spent about `10 lakh on marketing activities. The company formed a data center team with 12 engineers; it also added eight engineers to its collaboration solutions team for a total of 14. Syndrome executed an IP telephony and networking project worth `7 crore for BNP Paribas Bank across its seven branches in Mumbai. The company also executed a data center project worth `4.5 crore for an online casino from a large lottery house in Sikkim. For a large broking house, the company executed a networking project worth `3.5 crore in Mumbai. From a large bank Syndrome bagged a project worth `7 crore for virtualization and collaboration. Syndrome also won several infrastructure projects from Tata Teleservices and its application service providers. “We completed projects worth `5 crore for Tata Teleservices and `15 crore for four of its application service providers,” Mehta informed. The company recently entered managed services and plans to establish an NOC which will also act as a PoC for virtualization, networking and collaboration. It has partnered with Radware for load balancing solutions and with Checkpoint for security. With its continued focus on data center build-up, collaboration and virtualization, the company is targeting revenue of `90 crore this fiscal. Syndrome also has plans to establish sales bases in Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Singapore; it recently expanded to Pune. u Performance highlights
company snapshot CEO: Siddharth Mehta
Certified employees: 66
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Company: Syndrome Technologies
u Did networking worth $200,000 for a
for Global Logic
Siddharth Mehta, CEO, Syndrome Technologies, receiving the award from Ashish Gupta, Head, Channel & Service Business, Polycom
u Data center build-up projects added
Year of inception: 1999
Citrix development center
Syndrome Technologies
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CEO: Rajiv Kumar
u Executed about 250 deals worth
from Adobe with composite value of `2 crore
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Company: Proactive Data Systems
u Partnered with EMC, Citrix and NetApp
u Bagged several networking projects
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u Grew 27 percent to `72 crore
u Grew marginally to `50 crore
`2 lakh-1 crore for mid-market customers
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01/09/2012 www.crn.in
`7 crore to the topline
u Partnered with VMware for
virtualization, Radware for load balancing solutions and Checkpoint for security
u Executed an IP telephony and
networking project worth `7 crore for BNP Paribas Bank
u Entered managed services; plans to
establish an NOC
Year of inception: 2004 No. of branches: 2 Turnover FY2011-12: `72 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `56.8 crore Employees: 89 Certified employees: 35 Principals: Cisco, HP, EMC, Juniper, Citrix
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Webcom Information Technology
Anantharam Varayur, MD, Webcom, receiving the award from Ashish Gupta, Head, Channel & Service Business, Polycom
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engaluru-based Webcom Information Technology saw its turnover grow by a modest 10 percent from `22 crore in FY2010-11 to `24.2 crore in FY2011-12. Said Anantharam Varayur, MD, Webcom, “Last year we de-focused from corporate selling to focus on niche solutions in networking, security and surveillance. Setting up a small software team to develop solutions in access control and time & attendance also helped us to clinch large projects. Almost `13 crore of revenue resulted from these initiatives.” During the fiscal year Webcom acquired Yugae Technologies, a wireless networking solution provider. As a result, Gridharan Vidi, Director, Yugae, joined the board of Webcom. The acquisition of Yugae brought in around 40 new customers for Webcom. Despite the payout to Yugae shareholders, Varayur said that Webcom’s net profits grew by 20 percent from `32 lakh in FY2010-11 to `40 lakh in FY2011-12. The solution provider also hired two senior government officials to tap the government/PSU and power sector; this resulted in Webcom breaking into several new accounts. The largest order it executed during the year was worth `2.5 crore, and was from a large PSU; this was a network management order, with solutions from Fluke Network. Another order worth `33 lakh was for the implementation of an integrated CCTV, access control, vehicle management and attendance system for the Center for Airborne Systems (CABS), a Bengaluru-based defense PSU. “The solution was developed in-house, and has been integrated with the payroll system used by the organization. We implemented a similar solution for HAL this year,” informed Varayur. Another project was the live streaming (using a Wi-Fi network) of a racing event on the outskirts of Bengaluru featuring ace racer Lewis Hamilton. To strengthen its security practice Webcom signed up with Cyberoam, and for video surveillance with Milestone Systems. By the end of the last fiscal Webcom restructured its board of directors, with industry veteran Prabhakar Kini (former CMD of Kinfotech) joining as a Director; he subsequently took over the role of the Chairman of the company. “With Kini and Vidi coming on board—two experienced hands with an average of 35 years of experience in business— we are expecting exponential growth in the days ahead,” said Varayur. The target is to hit `100 crore by 2015. u Performance highlights u Grew 10 percent to `24.2 crore u Acquired Yugae Technologies;
Gridharan Vidi, Director, Yugae, joined Webcom board u Prabhakar Kini joined as Director and subsequently took over as Chairman of the company u Hired 2 senior government officials to tap projects in PSU and power sectors u Executed a `2.5 crore network management project for a large PSU u Executed a `33 lakh surveillance project for a defense PSU
company snapshot Company: Webcom Information Technology MD: Anantharam Varayur
Clear Credible Compassionate Consistent Creative Communicative Competent CRN CRN – the 8th C of
Channel Marketing
Year of inception: 1991 No. of branches: 1 Turnover FY2011-12: `24.2 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `22 crore Employees: 55 Certified employees: 8 Principals: Cisco, D-Link, Schneider, Tyco, Milestone, Access
www.crn.in Computer Reseller News
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Futuresoft Solutions
Ashutosh Sharma, Senior VP, Futuresoft Solutions, receiving the award from Ganesan Arumugam, Director, Channel & Alliances, VMware
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elhi-based Futuresoft Solutions grew at 8.4 percent to `35.2 crore in FY2011-12 against `32.5 crore in FY2010-11. Said Vipul Datta, CEO, Futuresoft, “Last year we faced margin pressure owing to cautious market sentiments. We used the slowdown to augment our organization, expand our services footprint, and build strong internal processes. We focused on new solutions such as mobility and content lifecycle management, and also strengthened our infrastructure management services.” Futuresoft established a direct service footprint in more than 40 cities with 120 MoU-led partners, and focused on technology refresh and deep-selling among existing customers. The company bagged service contracts from four large customers to manage 30,000 end-points. It also introduced productized service offerings for audit and compliance for IT infrastructure and applications, and IT policy frameworks. “Besides, we combined pure-play software opportunities with data loss prevention, mobile device management (MDM) and content lifecycle management,” Datta explained. “Our services and solutions revenue grew by 200 percent YoY. We invested in creating level 2 and 3 leaders in our organization, and increased our touch-points for customers in both the presale and post-sale phases. We also invested in dedicated quality and process automation teams for measurable improvement in internal processes.” Futuresoft worked closely with vendors such as Quest, Symantec and Citrix. “We worked with these vendors to set up PoCs and offer solutions with strong ROI and TCO calculations. This helped in bagging deals worth `3 crore,” he added. For a large IT/ITeS customer Futuresoft implemented VDI, server virtualization and MDM. Similar projects were executed for two BFSI and pharma companies. “We made a cumulative `6 crore from these three projects wherein the software solutions component was nearly `3 crore,” informed Datta. Futuresoft migrated the on-premise CRM of a large media and entertainment company to a hosted solution. The deployment also involved Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 for the project worth `40 lakh. Futuresoft offers group accident insurance, family Mediclaim and gratuity to its employees. These initiatives, backed with best HR practices, helped the company to retain talent, Datta said. The company intends to raise the services component of its revenue and grow at 100 percent CAGR till 2015 when it aims to cross the `250 crore topline. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
u Grew 8.4 percent to `35.2 crore
Company: Futuresoft Solutions
u Used the slowdown to build strong
CEO: Vipul Datta
internal processes
u Established a direct service footprint in
more than 40 cities
u Bagged service contracts from four
large customers to manage 30,000 end-points
u Began offering group accident
insurance, family Mediclaim and gratuity to its employees
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Computer Reseller News
Year of inception: 1996 No. of branches: 3 Turnover FY2011-12: `35.2 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `32.5 crore Employees: 279
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Softcell Technologies
P Rajaraman, National Manager, Softcell Technologies, receiving the award from Ganesan Arumugam, Director, Channel & Alliances, VMware
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une-based Softcell Technologies saw de-growth of 6 percent to clock a turnover of `135 crore in FY2011-12 against `143.9 crore in FY2010-11. Sunil Dalal, CEO, Softcell, explained how this happened. “Last fiscal our topline declined because we allowed vendors and distributors to bill customers directly due to dollar fluctuations. Although we were compensated on these deals, it muted our topline by at least `20 crore but our gross margins improved.” Focusing on the bottomline, the company walked away from several large deals which offered low margins. “The changes in the regulations related to issuing lower TDS certification affected us and we could not get the necessary certificate for lower TDS deductions on software sales from the income tax department,” Dalal added. “Since customers had to deduct tax at 10 percent, this made it impossible for us to participate in low-margin deals as it would have created a negative cashflow.” As a result, Softcell focused on its existing customers and projects with a strong solutions and services component. The company concentrated on security, de-dupe, back-up and VDI solutions to drive its deep-selling initiatives. According to Dalal, one of the large projects it implemented in FY2011-12 involved providing a de-dupe solution for a large conglomerate to consolidate its storage from 40 TB to 20 TB. This led to big savings for the customer; the money saved was deployed in network back-up and other IT solutions. Softcell also virtualized servers for 10 SMBs with as few as five servers. Remarked Dalal, “These deployments changed our opinion that virtualization was essential only for large companies. These projects also built more confidence in our sales people who were able to convince the SMBs about the benefits of virtualization.” The company followed the Information Security Management System framework and obtained an ISO 27001 certification for its hosting services business. Said Dalal, “The process helped us streamline our service delivery and make it SLA-centric.” In FY2012-13 Softcell wants to win back many of its old customers. Explained Dalal, “Now that the TDS issue has been resolved, we want to consolidate ourselves first, then approach those customers with whom we did not transact last year on account of lower transaction margins. We are not planning anything new, but still foresee growth of about 10 percent.” u Performance highlights u Saw a dip of 6 percent with a topline of
`135 crore
u Walked away from several large deals
which offered low margins
u Focused on de-dupe, security and VDI u Provided de-dupe solution for a large
MNC to consolidate its storage from 40 TB to 20 TB
company snapshot Company: Softcell Technologies CEO: Sunil Dalal Year of inception: 1989 No. of branches: 7 Turnover FY2011-12: `135 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `143.9 crore Employees: 360
Certified employees: 116
u Provided virtualization solutions to 10
Certified employees: 90
Principals: IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Symantec, Citrix, HP, Dell, Cisco, Juniper, Quest, Adobe, NetApp
u Obtained ISO 27001 certification for its
Principals: Symantec, Citrix, VMware, HP, IBM, Cisco, Adobe, Oracle, McAfee, RSA, Checkpoint, Lenovo, Apple
01/09/2012 www.crn.in
SMBs with as few as five servers hosting services business
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Nortech Infonet
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Benley Noronha, MD, Nortech Infonet, receiving the award from Shoaib Ahmed, President, Tally Software
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ochi-based Nortech Infonet grew 15 percent with its topline increasing from `68.4 crore in FY2010-11 to `78.7 crore in FY2011-12. Benley Noronha, MD, Nortech Infonet, attributed the growth to the company’s increased focus on the value business. “From box-selling we increased our emphasis on application-led solutions, and grew our topline. Our net margin increased from 5 percent in FY2010-11 to 15 percent in FY2011-12.” Nortech also increased its focus on the software (SAP) business with emphasis on the education vertical which increased its topline. In addition, it tied up with TCS iON as a software partner and resold its IaaS offering in the education sector. For Malayala Manorama, Nortech provided infrastructure optimization with deployment of virtualization. The project was valued at `1.5 crore. It developed a new SAP-based production module for VKC, a footwear manufacturer, for a project worth `30 lakh. Nortech also did a SAP ERP deployment for Midas Safety Technologies, a Canadian company, to which Nortech sold around 40 SAP licenses in a deal worth `70 lakh. For Abu Saeed Trading in India and the Middle East (ME), Nortech deployed SAP and sold 30 licenses worth `40 lakh. Nortech’s services projects included one for Tesco Hindustan Service Center in Bengaluru where it provided a backend networking support and monitoring solution. “We sold them Cisco Smart Care services for all their mission-critical devices for a period of three years at an average annual accrual of `1 crore,” Noronha disclosed. As a best practice, Nortech deployed SAP internally which helped it to streamline its finance and accounting system, save on costs, improve productivity, and increase employee and customer retention. It also leveraged its ISO 9001:2008 certification to become more streamlined, disciplined, transparent and proactive. The company is eying 30 percent growth in FY2012-13. It is looking at increasing its focus on data center solutions, virtualization, collaboration, ERP and professional services. Vertical-wise, it will concentrate on real estate, telecom, discrete manufacturing and BFSI. Nortech plans to expand in the ME and African market, and is looking at software business with Business One. It has already acquired 60 customers in India and three in the ME, and is tying up with new partners to look after the sales with Nortech focusing on the deployment part. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
u Grew 15 percent to `78.7 crore
Company: Nortech Infonet
u Increased its emphasis on
MD: Benley Noronha
application-led solutions
u Tied up with TCS iON as a software
partner
u Developed a new SAP-based
production module for VKC, a footwear manufacturer
No. of branches: 11 Turnover FY2011-12: `78.7 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `68.4 crore Employees: 312 Certified employees: 140
u Provided backend networking and
Principals: Microsoft, HP, Cisco, EMC, Kaseya, Fortinet
monitoring solution for Tesco
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Solutions Provider W
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Security
ACPL Systems
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Vishal Bindra, CEO, ACPL Systems, receiving the award from Amitabh Jacob, Director, Channels & Alliances, Symantec India & Saarc
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elhi-based ACPL Systems grew 22 percent from `35 crore in FY2010-11 to `45 crore in FY2011-12. Vishal Bindra, CEO, ACPL, attributed the growth to the company’s 3-pronged strategy. “Last year we decided to analyze the needs of our customers, deep-sell, and focus on highavailability solutions.” The company added expertise around information rights management (IRM), email archiving and storage solutions. Nearly 15 percent of its revenue accrued from these three areas. While existing customers brought in 50 percent of the total revenue, new customers contributed the other 50 percent. Said Bindra, “Many customers were not keen on deploying DLP solutions. We took a consultative approach and set up PoCs to show them the ROI. The new approach resulted in a 4-fold increase in the conversion of PoCs to deals.” The need for high-availability and compliance solutions boosted business. “For deep-selling we educated customers about the Indian IT Act and the regulatory requirement for email and document archival policies. This not only helped us sell security and software but even storage,” Bindra said. One of the large multi crore projects executed in FY2011-12 was for Nokia. It entailed deploying a high-availability solution (including security, storage and networking) for the company’s data center. ACPL deployed advanced Web and application security solutions to guard thousands of users of Max Life Insurance against ATP and DDOS attacks. For a BYOD project worth `1.2 crore for one of its large customers, ACPL deployed a secure virtual client solution for more than 1,000 users across the country. ACPL made a concerted effort to move away from vendorcentric solutions. Said Bindra, “For every project we suggest offerings based on solutions from 3-5 different vendors. Although customers consult us for solutions, we let them choose the vendor. This vendor-neutral approach helped establish strong credibility for ACPL.” The company invested in improving its service capabilities and moved into providing an entire suite of managed services. FY2012-13 is the year of transition for ACPL; it is eying not topline growth but bottomline growth. “We want to move from being a product-driven to a service-driven company. We have invested in an NOC and technology excellence center to provide advanced managed security services and set up PoCs for customers,” Bindra said. u Performance highlights
company snapshot
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Miel e-Security
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Amit Vyas, Head, Sales, MIEL e-Security, receiving the award from Sunil Sharma, VP, Sales, Cyberoam India & Saarc
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umbai-based Miel e-Security grew 21 percent with its topline increasing from `50.9 crore in FY2010-11 to `62 crore in FY2011-12. MN Kutty Nair, MD, MIEL, attributed the growth to business around private clouds and emerging technologies in security. MIEL’s strategic consulting services also pushed the company’s growth. “The private cloud, VDI and virtualization together contributed around 30 percent to our topline, while emerging technologies provided us 15 percent,” informed Nair. “The rest we garnered from our strategic consulting services in domestic and international markets.” Nair also sold deeper to existing customers. “To customers to whom we earlier sold back-up and storage we further sold private clouds and security. To customers to whom we earlier sold basic security products we sold 2-factor authentication and content filtering products.” For a `3 crore project for Volkswagen, MIEL deployed a zero recovery point objective and recovery time objective Metro cluster solution. For Melco Crown, it provided a DLP, dataflow analysis and risk management solution worth `1.3 crore. For 3D PLM, an IT/ITeS company, MIELdeployed a private cloud. The project size was more than `3 crore. The company also won quite a few projects in the international market due to the ISO 27001:2005 certification for its strategic consulting services. MIEL saved around `1 crore in costs by increasing the productivity and efficiency of its people and processes. “We did not add a single employee last year, yet grew 20 percent by fine-tuning our sales and post-sales processes,” Nair informed. MIEL is looking at garnering `85 crore in FY2012-13 and sees revenue flowing in from security, VDI and private cloud projects. It also sees good traction from privilege identity management solutions, database security and services. “We have formed two core groups,” Nair informed. “One is the emerging technologies group which handles niche technology areas such as DLP, SIEM and PIAM; the other is the strategic projects group which is focused on consulting and services for IT strategy, IT Act compliance, etc.” The company has a good presence in the Middle East, East Africa and SE Asia, places it plans to penetrate deeper in 2013. “We have tied up with a global services delivery partner which will help us grow in the international market,” Nair said. u Performance highlights
u Grew 22 percent to `45 crore
Company: ACPL Systems
u Grew 21 percent to `62 crore
u Adopted a 3-pronged strategy for
CEO: Vishal Bindra
u Deployed a zero recovery point
growth—analyze the needs of customers, deep-sell, and focus on high-availability solutions
u Deployed solutions to guard users of
Max Life Insurance against ATP and DDOS attacks
u Adopted a vendor-neutral approach
while offering solutions to customers
32
Computer Reseller News
Year of inception: 1990 No. of branches: 2 Turnover FY2011-12: `45 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `35 crore Employees: 52 Certified employees: 33 Principals: Websense, McAfee, NetApp, CheckPoint, Fortinet, EMC
01/09/2012 www.crn.in
objective and recovery time objective Metro cluster solution for Volkswagen
u Saved `1 crore in costs by increasing
the productivity and efficiency of its people and processes
u Tied up with a global services
delivery partner
company snapshot Company: MIEL e-Security MD: MN Kutty Nair Year of inception: 1999 No. of branches: 4 Turnover FY2011-12: `62 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `50.85 crore Employees: 185 Certified employees: 160 Principals: IBM, EMC, Symantec, VMware, NetApp
Managed Services Provider u
Performance highlights
large
Omnitech Infosolutions
u Grew 45 percent to `503 crore. MSP
business contributed 67 percent
u Added 100 customers to its managed
services clientele, taking the total to 250
u Entered a 3-year contract with a
Singapore-based bank to manage its data centers in Australia, US, Singapore, Hong Kong and India for $12 million per annum
u Manages 25,000 nodes with earning
company snapshot Company: Omnitech Infosolutions MD: Atul Hemani Year of inception: 1987 No. of branches: 15 Turnover FY2011-12: `503 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `346 crore Employees: 1,250 Certified employees: 500 Principals: Kaseya, HP
of `15 crore for IDBI Bank
percent to our managed services revenue,” Pitale informed. The company also added 100 customers to its managed services clientele, taking the total to 250. In all, the company manages more than 1.5 lakh nodes and 1,500 servers. In the last two years Omnitech established NOC and DR centers with global helpdesks in Mumbai and Hyderabad. It has 900 service engineers, with 91 handling monitoring, administration, diagnostics and service desk. “We have additional 120 seats and 1,000 sq ft space in Hyderabad for scalability,” informed Pitale. Omnitech entered a 3-year contract with a Singapore-based investment bank to manage its data centers in Australia, US, Singapore, Hong Kong and India with accruals of $12 million per annum. For IDBI Bank the company manages 25,000 nodes with earnings of `15 crore per annum under a 5-year contract. In the media segment Omnitech manages 1,000 end-points with accruals of `75 lakh per annum. The company is targeting 30 percent growth in the current fiscal and wants to attain revenue of `1,000 crore in FY2014-15. “This fiscal we expect 35 percent growth in managed services. We are looking at organic growth with the introduction of data center management, data center migration services and Octane role-based dashboards. We will also look for inorganic growth with a few more acquisitions.” u
Atul Hemani, MD, Omnitech Infosolutions
M
umbai-based Omnitech Infosolutions grew 45 percent, with its revenue scaling from `346 crore in FY2010-11 to `503 crore in FY2011-12. Managed services contributed more than 67 percent of the turnover, systems integration brought in 24 percent, and DR and BCP 6 percent. Said Avinash Pitale, Co-Founder & Joint MD, Omnitech, “Overseas acquisitions, large deals and a focus on BFSI allowed our managed services business to excel. Our acquisition in the last two years of a Singapore-based managed services company and a Netherlands-based security and managed services company showed results and added 30 percent to the revenue.” Besides, the company targeted the BFSI segment with RTGS and payment gateway solutions. Omnitech added about 15 banking and financial organizations as clients; of these, six banks utilized its RTGS services. Omnitech also focused on its B2B business under which it offers backend services to large IT service providers at 1,085 locations and manages 25,000 nodes. “This added about 10
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Managed Services Provider u
Mid-size
u
Value point Systems
RS Shanbhag, CMD, Value Point Systems, receiving the award from Praveen Sahai, VP, Channels, EMC India & Saarc
B
engaluru-based Value Point Systems witnessed de-growth of around 11 percent with its topline dipping from `273 crore in FY2010-11 to `243 crore in FY2011-12. However, its MSP revenue grew 18 percent from `15 crore to `19 crore. “We stayed away from some low-margin deals in FY2011-12,” explained Sampath Kumar HR, CEO, Value Point Systems. “It was a conscious decision to focus on the bottomline and transition our business toward services and solutions. However, while our topline witnessed a decline our bottomline improved.” On the MSP front it added five new customers in the last fiscal, and from existing customers grew the number of assets under management. “Our billing per existing customer increased by almost 15 percent as we grew the end-point base and also signed existing customers for new services,” informed Kumar. Among the new customers signed was the Manipal Group, for which it began offering helpdesk services. The largest deal last fiscal came from Flipkart for managing 4,000 end-points. Value Point manages around 600 customers and more than 70,000 assets under its services business, largely through FMS and AMC contracts; its services business contributed nearly 25 percent of its topline. “However, under the MSP business, we classify only those customers to whom we offer automated managed services (AMS). So far we have converted 28 of our large customers and 20,000 end-points to AMS,” said Kumar. Pharma giant Astra-Zeneca renewed its MSP contract for 3,500 end-points. “We started offering AMS for 800 end-points of the customer’s field force in 2010; this was beefed up to 3,000 in 2011, and another 500 were added last fiscal,” Kumar revealed. “Bharat Electronics and HAL renewed contracts for 3,000 and 2,000 end-points respectively.” Along with Kaseya, Value Point organized four customer events in the last fiscal, and also did 100 customer PoCs. “In addition, we set up a web portal to provide AMS in a SaaS model,” informed Kumar. Nearly a dozen customers signed up for the SaaS services last fiscal. Value Point expects more than 100 percent growth in its MSP business. The company plans to convert many of its existing FMS customers to AMS. It has identified the retail sector to acquire new customers “because they have a multilocational infrastructure which is best managed with AMS,” Kumar explained. u Performance highlights u Experienced 11 percent de-growth;
dipped to `243 crore. MSP business grew 18 percent to `19 crore
u Made a conscious decision to focus
on the bottomline and transition its business toward services and solutions
u Signed up new customers including
the Manipal Group and Flipkart
u Along with Kaseya, organized four
customer events
u Renewed MSP contract with
company snapshot Company: Value Point Systems CEO: Sampath Kumar HR Year of inception: 1991 No. of branches: 12
Computer Reseller News
Choice Solutions
KV Jagannath, MD, Choice Solutions, receiving the award from Praveen Sahai, VP, Channels, EMC India & Saarc
H
yderabad-based Choice Solutions grew its topline marginally from `90.4 crore in FY2010-11 to `91.9 crore in FY2011-12. Its managed services business grew by 25 percent from `3 crore in FY2010-11 to `4.01 crore in FY2011-12, and accounted for 50 percent of the company’s net profits. “Last year we expanded beyond managed services for endpoints to cater to infrastructure products such as servers, storage, network and power equipment as per the ITIL framework,” said KV Jagannath, MD, Choice. “We didn’t shy away from accepting FMS and AMC contracts as a part of building deeper relations with customers.” According to Jagannath, the biggest change Choice made during the last fiscal was to build managed services offerings around measurable and accountable SLAs which customers were demanding; this helped Choice to retain all its existing customers. Last year’s winner in the same category, Choice added 30 new customers in FY2011-12 to take its customer base to 114 by the end of the fiscal. 86 of these customers have availed of its RIMS for a total of 13,586 end-points, an increase of around 3,000 endpoints in the fiscal year. Choice invested in 20,000 licenses from Kaseya and contracted to invest in another 20,000 licenses during the present fiscal. The company focused on SMB customers in the pharma, retail and stockbroking segments. Choice also created a virtual CIO service, whereby the company offered the consulting services of an experienced team which helped the CEOs of SMBs to take IT decisions based on pure business parameters. “We signed three customers last year. We are hoping that during the current fiscal more customers sign up,” said Jagannath. A major customer acquisition for Choice during the period was Arshiya International; this was to manage the customer’s entire IT infrastructure covering 700 end-points across six locations through a hybrid model. Another customer signed was a pharma company which outsourced its entire IT infrastructure, including AMC, for an annual contract value of `20 lakh. Choice is trying to build partnerships with other solution providers with skill sets in providing domain-specific solutions; it is also working on a delivery engine to deploy and manage the solutions on an MSP model. Other plans include offering services around managing mission-critical, non-IT assets such as power infrastructure. u Performance highlights u Grew marginally to `91.9 crore.
MSP business grew 25 percent to `4 crore
u Expanded beyond managed
Turnover FY2011-12: `243 crore
services for end-points to cater to infrastructure products
Turnover FY2010-11: `273 crore
u Added 30 new customers to take its
Employees: 1,600 Certified employees: 180 Principals: Kaseya, HP, Microsoft, Cisco
Astra-Zeneca for 3,500 end-points
34
Emerging
01/09/2012 www.crn.in
customer base to 114
u Created a virtual CIO service whereby
it offered consultancy to help the CEOs of SMBs take IT decisions
company snapshot Company: Choice Solutions MD: KV Jagannath Year of inception: 1992 No. of branches: 11 Turnover FY2011-12: `91.9 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `90.4 crore Employees: 550 Certified employees: 40 Principals: APC, Microsoft, Kaseya
Cloud Services Provider Albion Infotel
Vardhaman Technology
Sanjeev Gupta, MD, Albion Infotel, receiving the award from Bakshish Dutta, Partner Account Manager, Symantec India
A
lbion Infotel grew by a whopping 93 percent from `33.7 crore in FY2010-11 to `65 crore in FY2011-12. While 70 percent of its turnover came from systems integration and solutions, the cloud services contribution almost doubled from `5.2 crore in FY2010-11 to `10 crore in the last fiscal. Remote infrastructure management services (RIMS) contributed 15 percent. Said Sanjeev Gupta, MD, Albion, “We doubled our cloud business YoY and acquired new customers by adding several on-demand consumer services such as computer management (Albion Procare) and child protection (Kidsguard4U), besides commercial offerings like Albion cloud back-up. Our cloud back-up service witnessed significant traction and we signed 500 customers within eight months of launch.” The company also offers a range of Albion-branded services (CRM, email, e-fax, HRMS) under its SaaS portfolio; and hosted contact center, application hosting, co-location and virtual private server under IaaS. Albion caters to more than 150 enterprise and SMB customers, besides 6,000 individual customers. The company also partnered with TCS iON. “TCS’ ERP solutions have strong presence in education and healthcare, and leveraging this we made about `3 crore,” informed Gupta. In addition, Albion introduced its RIMS through an inhouse platform, offering services such as a helpdesk, and server, end-point, storage and application management. “We already have more than 100 customers and are managing about 50,000 devices,” Gupta disclosed. In FY2011-12 Albion spent $2 million to upgrade the capacity of its hosted data center at Ctrl S in Hyderabad and to set up another hosted data center in the US. The company spent an average of `8 lakh per month on search engine optimization to popularize its consumer and SMB cloud offerings. In the current fiscal, Albion expects revenue of `100 crore, of which cloud and managed services is expected to contribute `35 crore. The company intends to set up bases in UK and Australia. In the US it already has a subsidiary, Albion Global. “We plan to double our employee strength to 300 in the US to handle overseas demand,” Gupta added. Albion has a research lab for new development with 15 certified cloud professionals; it also plans to double this number by year-end. To strengthen its cloud portfolio, the company intends to soon introduce an antivirus (Albion Secure), Albion Remote View and an Albion Apps store. u Performance highlights u Grew 93 percent to `65 crore.
Cloud services revenue doubled to `10 crore
u Partnered with TCS iON; earned
`3 crore from TCS’ ERP solutions
u Spent $2 million to upgrade its
hosted data center in Hyderabad and set up another data center in the US
u Spent `8 lakh per month on SEO u Expects revenue of `100 crore;
35 percent expected from cloud and managed services
System Builder
company snapshot Company: Albion Infotel MD: Sanjeev Gupta Year of inception: 2000 No. of branches: 3 Turnover FY2011-12: `65 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `33.7 crore Employees: 250 Certified employees: 100 Principals: HP, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft
Altaf Halde, MD, Kaspersky Lab, South Asia, presenting the award to Nikit Rambhia, Director, Vardhaman Technology
M
umbai-based Vardhaman Technology recorded a YoY growth of 33 percent with a turnover of `26.9 crore in FY2011-12 against a turnover of `20.2 crore in FY2010-11. “We sold around 2,500 white-branded AIOs, around 11,000 small form factor (SFF) PCs, 4,500 digital signage terminals and 5,000 PoS terminals. AIOs was a fairly new market for us, yet accounted for nearly 20 percent of our revenue,” informed Amit Rambhia, CEO, Vardhaman. “Export revenue almost tripled from less than 5 percent in the previous year to nearly 15 percent in FY2011-12.” Thin clients accounted for over 30 percent of the company’s revenue. Another 10 percent came from the retail segment (for its PoS terminals). Last year Vardhaman launched SFF PCs with less than a 4-liter volume based on the second-generation Intel Core i3 and Core i5 processors. Rambhia said that support from Intel was a key reason for the company’s growth because Intel supported Vardhaman not just with MDF assistance but also with guidance in the design of products. Intel honored Vardhaman with its Innovative Design on Intel Architecture Award in 2011. Vardhaman also showcased its products and solutions at international exhibitions in Hong Kong and Hyderabad to generate leads. During the last fiscal the company started a new factory at Daman with an annual capacity to manufacture 3,00,000 of its white-boxes. A major project executed was a defense project for the state department of an African country; this involved not only the supply of SFF PCs across that country but also the provision of centralized IT services management. Another project, worth `2 crore, involved setting up around 1,000 PoS terminals for automated ticketing for a business group owning multiple cinema halls. In H22011 Vardhaman implemented in-house a new ERP and CRM solution based on the OpenERP platform; this saw benefits within three months of implementation. Vardhaman secured Crisil’s SE1B accreditation in FY201011; this helped in generating credit from and credibility among international suppliers. “Our plans for the coming year include increasing business from overseas markets. We are starting to explore sales operations in the US and Europe. Our attempt to launch tablets did not quite work out last year, so this year we will be launching applicationspecific tablets for the SMB market,” Rambhia said. u Performance highlights u Grew 33 percent to `26.9 crore.
Export revenues tripled to `4 crore
u Started a new factory at Daman with
an annual capacity to manufacture 3,00,000 white-boxes
u Executed a defense project for the
state department of an African country
u Implemented open source ERP and
CRM solution
company snapshot Company: Vardhaman Technology CEO: Amit Rambhia Year of inception: 1991 No. of branches: 3 Turnover FY2011-12: `26.9 crore Turnover FY2010-11: `20.2 crore Employees: 52 Certified employees: Eight Principals: Intel, Microsoft, Suse, Logitech
Computer Reseller News
01/09/2012
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35
shadow ram GET
Is Lenovo acquiring HCL?
Personal
A
recent report in a business daily on Lenovo acquiring HCL Infosystems has started intense debate in the channels. While both HCL and Lenovo issued carefully-worded statements that described the news as speculation, channels feel there cannot be smoke without fire. They feel that HCL might be able to get a premium valuation, and that it is an excellent buy for any PC company because it has the biggest reach in terms of distribution—being a Nokia distributor, it has a connect with 93,000 retail outlets across the country. The biggest government deal is expected to happen in the northern belt, especially in UP, where HCL has been the most preferred vendor. HCL is also a frontrunner in many central government orders this year, and the belief is that the funnel which HCL is sitting on is in excess of Rs 6,000 crore each for the next two years. Apart from Lenovo, HCL could be of interest to both Acer and Dell. However, unless it gets a huge premium, it is highly unlikely that the HCL board would sign on the dotted line. n
“I would ensure quality education” KK Shetty is currently Director, India & Saarc, Enterprise & Telecom Networks, TE Connectivity, and also part of the company’s India leadership team. If not in the IT industry: I would have been an economist.
kk shetty
Biggest passion: People development.
Behind the wheels: Mercedes. Gadget I can’t live without: My BlackBerry. Weekends are for: Relaxing and spending time with my family. Favorite holiday destination: Salzburg, Austria. Hate the most: Rumor mongers. Favorite movie: Sholay. Favorite star: Amitabh Bachchan. Role model: Mahatma Gandhi for his ideologies. Ultimate ambition: To be happy and content in life. Wildest thing I have ever done: I have overcome my fear of water. Thing I most want to do in life: I love traveling. If I became the PM: I would ensure quality education for every child. Celebrity I would like to spend a day with: Ratan Tata. One person I would like to meet and why: The Dalai Lama, to experience the aura of positivity. Deepest and darkest fear: Fear of heights. n
38
Computer Reseller News
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— CRN Network
WE ARE MORE THAN A NETWORKING COMPANY. WE ARE A RESPONSE. At Juniper Networks, we believe that new technology, mobility and the networked world are driving transformation at an unprecedented rate of speed. Countless new discoveries— business models, medical cures, technical solutions, inventions and ways of understanding the universe are happening every day. And the one thing that keeps all of that progress flowing is the network’s ability to meet the demand. Customers want an alternative to the old approach. That’s why, for us, the network is our sole focus and constant innovation is our mission. CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO From the beginning, Juniper set out to architect a different kind of network. The kind of network approach that enables customers to solve the world’s most complex problems and harness its most exciting opportunities. Our goal was never to be a smaller version of the competition, but rather an answer to the status quo. In keeping with that goal, a year ago we declared “It’s time for the new network.” We did this not as a marketing slogan, but to signal our laser focus and commitment to a fundamentally new approach to networking; answering the wave of incredible demand that we predicted then and that our ever more connected planet is experiencing now.
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