CRN February 15, 2012 by UBM India

contents

February 15, 2012 l Volume 1 Issue 08

Cover Story The IT distribution ecosystem is set to transform as new business models evolve around cloud services, the introduction of GST, digital convergence and the consumerization of IT

22 NEWS Analyses

Channel Chief

IBM launches Storage Specialty Program

Disk drive prices start dropping

RSA to increase partners

Quest in expansion mode

Fujitsu gears up for SMB push

WD to focus on personal cloud devices

READ More Editorial 12 14 Opinion Feedback 14 Special Focus 28 Channel Buzz 36 New Products 37 Shadow Ram 42 Get Personal 42

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Kevin Ackhurst VP, Partners, Juniper Networks, discusses the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new partner program and specific plans for India

16 Market Focus Trends in PC gaming Playing games can be serious business. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth more than `1,000 crore per annum in India if you are talking about gaming PCs

20 Role Model Growing in customer trust What started in 1991 as a computer repair shop is today a `51 crore company handling large virtualization projects for MNCs. Nikesh Sakaria and Ankit Desai, co-founders of CDP, recount the highlights of the past two decades

30 Tech Focus

Perfect timing for an offspring The Oracle Database Appliance is customized for channel-based solutions, and provides significant value as a dedicated appliance for data

starting line IBM launches Storage Specialty Program n RAMDAS S

BM India has launched its Storage Specialty Program for partners with a focus on the entry-level and midrange market. Around 40 partners (including leading STG partners) have been roped in for the purpose. “This year the mid-range market as well as the small business is very critical for IBM. We are beefing up our portfolio by increasing the choice a partner has to go to market with,” said Laura Guio, Vice President, Storage, STG Growth Market Unit, IBM. IBM India has also recruited industry veteran Subrato Das as Vice President, Storage Business, STG, India & South Asia. “We have a new business leader who understands the storage landscape better than anybody else,” Guio declared. She said that the Storage Specialty Program is flexible, and has been customized so that each partner can work on individual strengths

“This year the mid-range market and the small business is critical for IBM, so we are beefing up our portfolio” Laura Guio

VP, Storage, STG Growth Market Unit, IBM

for better results. “Our prime focus is on educating the partners about opportunities, technologies, vertical solutions, and pre- and post-sales consultancy. The storage market is booming, and we want our partners to be completely ready with solutions that they can sell, and earn revenue on with services.” The focus will be on the entrylevel models DS 3000 and DS 5000, as well as the V7000 series.

“Virtualized storage has caught the imagination of customers. We want to push the V7000 series through partners aggressively this year. A lot of the training will be on V7000 because we are seeing the product as a differentiator.” Last year IBM had introduced the stock-and-sell model for the DS 3000 series. “We want to better our run-rate model. We want the partners—beyond the 40 signed on for the Storage Specialty Program—to focus on these units.” Guio said that IBM has been the No 1 storage vendor in the country for the past eight quarters. “We are interested in the small businesses which are implementing critical software systems and need reliable data storage. Following the refresh, you will see more enterprise features in our entry-level products too. While we are the No 1 overall, we are probably not doing very well in the entry-level space, and being market leader in the small business space is an important item on our agenda.” n

Disk drive prices start dropping n Ramdas S

early four months after the Thailand floods, which created acute shortages of disk drives globally and saw prices shoot up by as much as 300 percent, the prices of disk drives have now started falling. While most industry leaders still feel that it will take another two quarters for prices to go back to pre-October 20 2011 prices, they are hopeful that by March-end the supply will outstrip demand. The bulk price of a 500GB SATA drive, which rose to $110, dropped to around $65 on February 8, 2012 in major spot markets. “I am expecting that in a week prices of 500GB drives may drop below `4,000, which will be a big relief for the system builder market,” said S Sudhir, MD, Inspan Infotech. The price of a 1TB HDD has also dropped to less than $90 from

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“In a week, I expect prices of 500 GB drives to drop below `4,000, which will be a big relief for the system builder market” S Sudhir

Managing Director, Inspan Infotech

the highs of $135 in early November 2011. The drive shortage affected even enterprise vendors. “The shortage affected the entire market. We now see things definitely improving,” said Laura Guio, Vice President, Storage STG, Growth Market Unit, IBM. The shortage even forced Lenovo to postpone shipments for the Elcot

order. “We are hoping to make confirmed deliveries this quarter. The drive shortage is easing up, and there is availability although at higher prices,” said Rajesh Thadani, Director, Consumer Business Unit, Lenovo India. Earlier, research agency iSuppli reported that by December-end the manufacturing industry in Thailand resumed operations and production returned to normal output. But the report also said that there was a shortfall in the production of hard drives by 20 million units in Q42011. Partners had earlier complained that several brokers, hoarders and distributors took advantage of the situation, creating acute short supplies to increase prices. “Now that prices are sliding, there could even be panic selling, which would further help bring the prices down,” Sudhir said. n

starting line RSA to increase partners n AMIT SINGH

esides continuing its attention on large enterprises, RSA is increasing focus on the mid markets by increasing its active partner base and lowering the entry barrier. The company is banking on Authentication Manager Express (AME) to enter new markets. The AME is a risk-based and on-demand authentication system designed for mid-market customers with less than 2,500 users. It offers secure access to data and business applications through SSL VPN and online portals. “With our reinforced marketing plans, we are targeting customers in cities beyond Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. We are also offering incentives to partners selling AME over and above the incentives and margins offered on other products,” said Amitabh Jacob, Head, Channels, India & Saarc, RSA.

“We are aiming to recruit SIs and VARs as Authorized partners in tier-1 and tier-2 cities such as Hyderabad and Pune” Amitabh Jacob

Head, Channels, India & Saarc, RSA

The company revamped its SecurWorld master program in January 2012. Lowering the entry barrier, it introduced a new level to the existing three levels of Premier, Affiliate Elite and Affiliate partners. “In the revamped program we have launched a new level, Authorized partner, in which a minimum revenue commitment is not required. We have also introduced

specializations in each product line entailing added incentives and support. The specialization is applicable for Premier and Affiliate Elite partners,” Jacob informed. “In addition, we have increased the incentives for all partner levels by 30-40 percent compared to last year.” RSA currently has three national distributors—Redington, Inflow Technologies and Mtech Solutions—and 30 active partners; it aims to increase its partners to 40 in 2012. “Apart from our direct sales presence in Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai, we are aiming to recruit SIs and VARs as Authorized partners in tier-1 and tier-2 cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai, as well as in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” Jacob added. To efficiently manage its channel base, the company recently appointed Suneel Rangamani as Channel Manager; he will drive sales with partners. n

Quest in expansion mode n AMIT SINGH

uest Software wants to double its revenue in 2012 through a focused approach on expanding its channel base, sales force and product portfolio. The company expects 50 percent of its revenue to come from large enterprises, 30 percent from mid-market customers and the rest from small businesses. Increasing its focus on the midmarket and small businesses, the company recently introduced Toad 11, a database optimization tool. “To promote Toad 11 we have plans to conduct roadshows in cities such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, targeting more than 350 customers activated by our VARs. Prior to this we will organize a round-table to create awareness among partners,” said Anand Natarajan, National Channel Manager, Quest Software, India/SA. He added, “In 2011 mid-market

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“To promote Toad 11 we have plans to conduct roadshows targeting more than 350 customers activated by our VARs” Anand Natarajan

National Channel Manager, Quest Software, India/SA

and small businesses contributed about 40 percent of our revenue. This year we are expecting 50 percent of our revenue from these segments.” Quest is aiming to increase its partner base from the current 60 to more than 100 in 2012. Informed Natarajan, “Besides the enterprise customers who are catered to by our eight national SIs, we are targeting

VARs to service SMB customers. We are eying partners in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. We will extend our focus to tier-2 cities like Pune and Ahmedabad in the second half of the year.” In January 2012 the company rolled out its Quest Partner Circle program with three partner tiers: Elite, Premier and Registered. Explained Natarajan: “Under the program, while all the partner tiers will get the base discount and registration discount for a deal, Elite and Premier partners will get a specialization discount for deals in their specialized domains.” Quest has already increased its base of sales executives and pre-sales executives to 15 each in 2012. “We recently appointed three VAR managers for three regions— north and east, west, and south,” Natarajan informed. n

starting line Fujitsu gears up for SMB push n Abhijeet Mukherjee

ujitsu India is on an aggressive growth trajectory with an aim to grow 10-fold by 2015. In 2012 the company plans to focus on the SMB segment, and it is scouting for partners in tier-1 and tier-2 cities. “The SMB segment is growing at 15 percent, and in 2012 our primary focus will be to tap that market. Fujitsu India has witnessed a triple-digit growth in the last 18 months; we have also acquired 350 customers which helps us believe that we would be able to achieve that feat,” said Ramprasad Lakshminarayanan, General Manager, Channel Sales, Fujitsu India. To achieve this growth the company has plans to invest $10 million in the next three years. Rolf Schwirz, CEO, Fujitsu, has stated that the company aims to become

“Our regional heads are identifying partners with an SMB focus. We will increase our SMB partners to 1,500 by year-end” Ramprasad Lakshminarayanan General Manager, Channel Sales, Fujitsu India

a $250 million company in India by 2015. The company will invest in strengthening its marketing and post-sales support team by 50 percent in 2012. It will also invest in acquiring SMB-focused partners. “Our regional heads are identifying partners who have an SMB customer-focused approach. We

would like to increase our partners from the current 180 to 1,500 by the end of the year,” added Ramprasad. In terms of expanding product portfolio, Ramprasad said the company has plans to launch new SKUs of servers, storage products, desktops and notebooks aimed at SMBs. It will also launch its Android-based tablets by May. The company will continue with its mission to manufacture green products. “We are ready with our entire range of products manufactured with GermanJapanese engineering technology, with the emphasis on developing green products, power management for servers and TFTs,” added Ramprasad. Apart from strengthening the call center team, the company also wants to double the number of its authorized service centers from the present 42 to 84. n

WD to focus on personal cloud devices n Abhijeet Mukherjee

estern Digital (WD) will focus on its recently launched personal cloud devices—My Book Live and My Book Live Duo—in FY2012-13. “With low bandwidth availability, cloud services might take some time to get popular in India. There are also security concerns, and the costs are immense, so we have come up with affordable personal cloud devices for consumers. We are sure that the devices will gain acceptance by the end of the current fiscal,” said Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, Western Digital. My Book Live and My Book Live Duo are meant for shared storage for notebooks, tablets and smartphones. My Book Live is available in capacities ranging from 1TB-3TB; the prices ranges from `10,799 for a 1TB device to `17,499 for 3TB. WD will launch the My Book

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“We have launched a training portal to provide technical knowhow to our partners to help them sell WD products” Khwaja Saifuddin Senior Sales Director, Western Digital

Live Duo in the next quarter; the product adds RAID to the personal cloud concept and will give users the benefit of safe backup through real-time data mirroring. The company is targeting working professionals (in the age group of 20-35 years) who own a smartphone or tablet, and families in tier-1 and -2 cities. WD distributes its consumer products nationally through Global

Infonet, and will increase its present 4,500 resellers by 1,000 in 2012. “We will intensify our activities in Class A and B cities, and will be present in all LFRs and prominent retail outlets. We also have plans to double the strength of our sales team this year,” said Saifuddin. The company has started a new initiative called the WDUniversity. com—a training portal to provide partners technical know-how to sell WD products. To promote its cloud devices, the company will conduct 15-20 brand-building exercises, roadshows and Master Blaster drives. These activities will provide updates and basic technical knowledge of new products. The company has strengthened its support team to further streamline its post-sales support, facilitate faster pick-and-drop, and improve the TAT. n

edit opinion Volume 1, Issue 08

Distribution 2.0 dhaval valia

hat shape and form the current model of traditional distribution (pick, pack, ship) will take in an IT landscape that will increasingly move to cloud computing is a key question that is looming over everyone’s mind. IT-as-a-Service will undoubtedly be a predominant theme for the next several years as the market transitions to a new model of IT services delivery. As more businesses adopt the cloud, distributors run the risk of disintermediation as on-premise hardware and software lose market share to off-premise solutions. Enterprise VARs are building partnerships directly with cloud vendors, and the need for the middleman will disappear. Or so the theory goes. In the past the distribution ecosystem had faced several other challenges—those posed by the Internet, the direct model, drastic changes in vendors’ GTM models, evershrinking product margins and the commoditization of technology itself. Each time distributors overcame those challenges and managed to remain relevant. Will the cloud challenge be any different? In the past, while there have been several challenges, the fundamental distribution business model of logistics, channel credit and financing, and inventory management remained intact. Distributors had to make tweaks to this business model by doing things like automating processes, slashing costs, improving logistics and driving new financing models. But cloud computing feels different from what distributors are used to. For instance, Microsoft offers only annual commission on its Office 365 sales. None of the fundamental aspects of distribution (such as imports, inventory management, logistics, financing and billing) are required in order to do the Microsoft cloud business. Presently, in India and globally, cloud services account for a small portion of distributors’ annual revenue. However, according to Forrester, cloud computing revenue is expected to hit more than $241 billion by 2020 from $40 billion in 2011. According to another survey, IT companies globally are expected to move 25-30 percent of their on-premise IT infrastructure to off-premise by 2015. The role of most distributors in the early days of cloud computing has been to aggregate services, provision, bill and meter. Now however distributors will have to adopt several new cloud business models such as selling white-label services; forging local ISV partnerships and helping the ISVs to port their industry-specific applications and offer them as SaaS; or forming JVs with regional data centers to launch their own set of managed and cloud services. For most distributors, the next few years will be a steep learning curve, and they need to learn quickly. n E-mail CRN Executive Editor Dhaval Valia at dhaval.valia@ubm.com 12

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edit opinion Will Windows 8 deliver? Edward F Moltzen

ost of the PC-using corporate world is still at the early stages of migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7, and now along comes Windows 8 beta. We have had a look at Windows 8 developer preview, and we have got even more questions about Microsoft’s next-generation OS than ever. We are beginning to get that knot-in-the-stomach sensation that Windows 8 could be more like Windows Vista than Windows 7. Windows 8 beta could underwhelm us in three key areas. Because it will be beta software, and not a final release, there will be time for MS to fix them. From what we have seen from the developer release, they may not be quick fixes. First of all, we have already been underwhelmed by the dearth of announcements by major Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that they will optimize their applications for the Metro interface of Windows 8. Metro has the ability to make a desktop and laptop much more efficient and user-friendly, as well as optimize touch-based displays and use patterns. The fact that so few ISVs are talking about their groundbreaking plans for Windows 8 applications is unsettling. Without major ISV buy-in or development for Windows 8 on PCs, the OS will be a tough sell. Second, we are not convinced that Windows 8 will offer enough value across hardware platforms to make it worth the disruption of upgrading right away. Take a look at Apple. Applications like Facetime, iCal, Contacts, iTunes and Reminders work equally well on the mobile iOS devices as they do on the Mac. From what we have seen in pre-releases of Windows 8 on PCs, as well as Windows Phone 7 (which is very similar to Windows 8 Metro), there still appears to be a lack of consistency in how applications will function on different hardware platforms. You will still have to make significant adjustments in apps like Outlook and Skype between devices. If Windows 8 beta can not show progress in breaking down complexity between hardware platforms, it will be a let down. The third area of concern is migration. Even with Windows 7, which was a major improvement over Windows Vista, there were still ridiculous barriers to migration from one platform to the next. When Windows 7 arrived, Microsoft refused to provide a straight upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. Instead, it gave us silly, circuitous options like Windows XP Mode. With the lion’s share of enterprise desktops still running Windows XP, who wants to bet that straight XP-to-Windows 8 upgrades will be just as slick? We are rooting for Windows 8 because we love when technology gets better and enables us to do more. But seeing will be believing, and we will start to see in a few weeks. n E-mail Ed Moltzen at Edward.moltzen@ec.ubm.com 14

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Priyanka to sue HP for expired cartridges We Indians are used to slavery, first by Britishers and now economic slavery by MNCs which are actually faceless organizations. We don not know whom to catch for such vexed issues. MNCs have bigger and better legal teams, and hence they fight on a bigger platform. I personally sympathize with Priyanka Computers as `8 lakh is a big amount. The response by HP in the story smacks of arrogance and nothing else. Deepak Daryani Kunhar Peripherals, Mumbai

HP has turned the printing business into an FMCG business. Their products are designed in such a way that they get spoilt or outdated soon. If the products outlive 1-2 years their consumables are not available.

I have a feeling that printing companies like HP are suppressing new technology that could be cheaper, efficient and green. They spend money on advertising that HP is a green company. But obviously more cartridges mean more emissions—and look at the energy consumed in manufacturing, packing and logistics. There was a time when these cartridges could be refilled so easily. Rajesh Tiwari Bengaluru

Dell takes on parallel importers Parallel imports do not happen due to high demand. They happen when there is a huge price gap. Vendors are treating India as a profit center and selling their products at much higher rates than in other countries. Lilesh Khakhra Crown Trading Co., Kolkata

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

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channel chief “We are creating more partner opportunities” Kevin Ackhurst, VP, Partners, Juniper Networks, spoke to Sonal Desai about the company’s new partner program and its plans for India Juniper announced the Juniper Partner Advantage Program at the recently concluded Juniper Global Partner Conference. What are the benefits of the program? The new program is built on three pillars—Reach, Accelerate and Reward. It will help partners maximize profitability. We are developing new competencies to drive the new network. The competencies are a mix of product and technology, and will be developed around the edge, core, data center, WAN, campus branch, and consumer and business device, among others. While SPs will work around the cloud, network and data center, enterprise partners will work around the data center network, legacy and layering, and network architecture. We have aligned the competencies with opportunities for partners. The information is available on the Website. We will build a course around the competencies next year; the certifications will allow partners to align better with customers. At our end, we will work with VMware, Parallel, Citrix and Microsoft to build a virtual network system. Network virtualization, WAN optimization, branch and campus networking, and BYOD will offer more opportunities. In addition, we have more than 500 training courses for partners today. Our plan is to drive 200,000 learning achievements in 2012.

How will the new partner program impact Indian partners? India is one of the top 12 countries where we want to establish the Juniper brand. The sheer size of the population that is connected with the Internet offers a big opportunity. We can provide the infrastructure and a high level of intellectual capital for development centers. From the point of view of market opportunity, many vendors are investing in BRIC countries because of the size of the business now and the size that it could be—it could be 10 times bigger. Also, we are shifting 3,000 of our enterprise accounts into commercial accounts in APAC; these will be tapped by local solution providers expanding into tier-2 and tier-3 cities. The commercial accounts are usually large national enterprises which have

“Many partners who sell [our products] do not fit into our new program, so I will be doing some cleaning work. We will include the distributors in the clean-up process” 16

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a regional presence. Opportunities are also being created for more distributors and IT partners to participate. Globally we work with 26 distributors, including three in India— Ingram Micro, Avnet and Westcon. There are many partners who sell [our products] but do not fit into our new partner program, so I will be doing some cleaning work. Over the year, we will also include the distributors in the clean-up process. We think there are some more opportunities for Indian distributors.

Juniper spoke about simplifying the deal registration process. Could you give some specifics? We are making the lead-generation program more partner-led. We are creating more opportunities for partners to make money. We are also developing tools and strategies to strengthen the opportunity registration system. The tools will be essentially for partner lifecycle management and the development of joint business plans. The exchange of information will be mutual, whether the opportunity is identified by Juniper or by the partner. Our dialog [with the partners] will be much more around creating business value for customers.

And will that reflect in the MDF that Juniper is promising partners? Certainly. 5 percent of the total revenue will go for partner development and MDF, and 3 percent for marketing. We will develop marketing programs aligned with the sales forces of the partners, build social media campaigns, and also focus on traditional lead-generation. 40-50 percent of the MDF will be driven toward regional development.

What are your priorities for the next few years? For 2012 we are building a new team. We have Jitendra Gupta, who will be driving the channel. We want to implement the new partner program and change the ways in which we measure our business. We also want our partners to deploy our solutions and ensure that customers are satisfied with Juniper.

What challenges do you foresee? In our market positioning. We are no Cisco or HP, neither are we a Brocade or F5—we are somewhere in between. There is also pressure from smaller networking companies. Consolidating service providers could be a challenge as well. But as long as we use innovation, we will grow. We are focused on the financial services and healthcare verticals as of now, and will look at more verticals as we grow. n

channel chief “Our DNA is hardware”

When Meg Whitman was named CEO of HP, the company was mired in one of the most tumultuous periods in its 72-year history. Since then, Whitman has sought to restore stability. She spoke to Kevin McLaughlin about the decisions she has made so far, HP’s future plans, and its rivalries with Cisco and Oracle You have been CEO of HP for about four months. What are your impressions of the channel so far? I have been mostly in a learning mode when I have met with partners. I start off the conversations saying, “I want to know everything you know. I want to know what you think about HP, what you think about the state of our industry, what you think we could do better.” It has been more conversation to me rather than the other way around. In a funny way, this feels very comfortable to me because FTD was an association of independentlyowned florists who distributed all of FTD’s products. eBay would not have been successful without our seller community, so this feels comfortable to me. Before I came to HP I did not understand the power of the channel to this company—it is pretty cool. Partners are an essential part of our history, and also our future, because this is how we get incredibly broad distribution for HP products.

What decisions have you made since joining HP? We have put together our senior executive team—a few people left and a couple of new people joined. Overall, I feel great about our leadership team. Another thing I had to do was to make the PSG decision right away. Uncertainty was not our friend, particularly with our channel. We made that decision as fast as we could, which was about 35 days. We made a lot of people in our industry anxious over what we announced on August 18. Then we had to get Autonomy integrated and up and running. It is easy for a big company to roll over a little company in an acquisition. HP is so huge that we could have overwhelmed them, so we tried to do a really smart job of setting that up. We also had to make the WebOS decision. We had to set our budget for 2012 and had to give Wall Street guidance for 2012.

Have you made any symbolic changes at HP? We decided to move out of our executive suite. I thought it was too Old World, and it did not make for

“We decided to move out of our executive suite. I thought it was too Old World. We have moved to a more open-seating framework, and the teamwork is visible” 18

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teamwork. I could sit in that executive suite all day and not see Cathie Lesjak, CFO, HP, who sits right next to me, all day. We have moved to a more open-seating framework, and you can see the teamwork already. The conversations over the cubicle are the conversations that really matter. If we are going to succeed, we are going to have to be a team at the executive level, senior leaders, employees, partners and customers. We have also eliminated the executive parking lot. It used to have a commando fence with barbed wire on it. We took all of that down, and now everyone can park in that area. And when our executive briefing center is done, we will just go in through the front door like everyone else.

Your predecessor was very focused on building software. What is your view on the role software should play in HP’s portfolio? We are in the software business. Not to transform ourselves into a software company, but to actually solve customer problems.

channel chief We have staked out three areas that we want to be terrific at. The first is the software that differentiates our hardware—orchestration, monitoring, etc. The second is security. I know from my eBay days that it is an arms race—the bad guys get better, the good guys get better, etc. And every CIO I have talked to, even of medium businesses, is worried about security. The third is Autonomy, and big data/analytics. It probably won’t go beyond that, at least in the near term. We may make some acquisitions, orchestration and monitoring and other things, but as I told the Street, do not look for any big acquisitions from HP, at least for the foreseeable future.

HP’s $10.3 billion acquisition of Autonomy confused some shareholders, and the size of the deal was alarming to HP’s hardware-focused partners. What have you done to counteract this? Right out of the gate, the question I was getting because of Autonomy was: What is HP? Who is HP? And in all of those meetings, I reinforced, first and foremost, that HP is a hardware company. 70 percent of our revenue comes from hardware. The DNA of this company is product engineering; printers, computers, servers, storage and networking are our bread and butter. We are in the software business to address customers’ problems, and services wraps it all together so that we can deliver those products and software to our customers. Of course, many of our VARs are service providers as well.

You have a reputation as someone who builds bridges and consensus. Does HP plan to reach out to Oracle and patch up that relationship? Historically, the HP-Oracle relationship was one of the great software-hardware partnerships in the industry. We used to be on stage with them at Oracle World demonstrating their software on our hardware, and vice-versa. Obviously, the relationship is strained at the moment. Listen, I would love to get this behind us. That is one of the benefits of being the new CEO—I was not party to all of this, and so I would love to get this behind us. But obviously we have got to protect the legal rights of this company. They obviously feel the same. So we are in a series of legal tussles with them around the world. I hope these can be resolved without going all the way to trial, but we will see.

HP has made gains on Cisco in networking. Are you going to keep the pressure on them? Enterprise storage, servers and networking are three

“We are in the software business, and not a software company. HP’s core business is hardware because 70 percent of our revenue comes from there”

“In networking, we have a better product that is architecturally consistent and offers customers a real value relative to the Cisco gear. I feel good about our position here” great businesses. And in networking and storage, we’re the disruptor—we are the ones who are challenging the status quo. Often we are on the other side of that. We have got a great networking product and a great networking organization, and you can see the results in how well we are doing. Frankly, our view is that we have got a better product that is more architecturally consistent and can offer customers a real value relative to the Cisco gear. So that is the overall strategy—and by the way, we can also provide servers and storage and networking in a converged infrastructure environment. I feel good about our position here. Obviously they are the leader, they are the big dog, but I think we can grab a big share of this market by providing the Holy Grail of business, which is better quality and lower cost.

Can HP remain atop the global PC market without a tablet? We have to have a tablet offering. We will be back in that business. We are coming back into the market with a Windows 8 tablet, first on an x86 chip and then maybe on an ARM chip. I think our sweet spot has to be around security. This whole security thing is a big worry, not just for big enterprises but also for medium enterprises and small and medium businesses. So if we can provide devices that consumers really want—and by the way, employees are consumers too— and we can provide a tablet offering, then we have an opportunity to solve problems for the enterprise and small- and medium-business segments with products that their employees like and are also secure in terms of protecting the enterprise’s data.

Can you talk about the reasoning behind promoting HP software chief Bill Veghte to chief strategy officer? He and I are going to work very closely not only to plot, along with our business unit heads, the long-term strategy of HP, but also to make sure we are on top of every trend of our business units. As we set the objectives for this year, we are making substantial investments—in R&D, innovation, in go-tomarket—that we have not made for quite some time. My view was, 2012 needs to be a reset, rebuild and reinvest year, to get HP set up for the next 70 years. I came to this company not for next week or next year. With regard to the cloud, we will be coming out to the market in the next several months with a more coherent and internally consistent cloud strategy because it has been a little bit all over the map. n

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market focus mixing business and pleasure Playing games can be serious business. It’s worth more than `1,000 crore per annum in India if you are talking about gaming PCs n RAMDAS S

he gaming PC market in the country has been witnessing exponential growth. While there are no official market figures from the leading research agencies, the market size for gaming PC and hardware is now estimated to be more than `1,000 crore. “While we may still be [far] away from having an evolved gaming culture compared to the US, Japan or European countries, more gaming enthusiasts are joining the fray every day,” says Sunil Grewal, Sales Head, Gigabyte India. States P Raghuraman, Director, Transaction Business, AMD India, “Based on feedback from the retailers and system builders, one out of three assembled PCs sold in the country is purchased with gaming as a predominant reason in mind.” Another way to estimate the size of the PC gaming market is the number of graphics cards sold in the country. It is estimated by leading vendors that the graphics card market is 10-12 percent the size of the assembled PC market, which translates into a market size of 330,000 units. Nearly 80 percent of these cards are exclusively used by gaming enthusiasts, while the rest are accounted for by white-box workstation, graphics and multimedia professionals. At 264,000 units, where the average price of a gaming PC is estimated to around `40,000, the size of the gaming PC market appears to be around `1,056 crore. There also exists a market for gaming PCs and notebooks through MNC vendors; however, this market is estimated to be as low as 1,000 units a month. Among these vendors is Dell, which is trying to promote PC gaming through a separate Alienware brand.

Four segments To understand gamers better, vendors have now

“Based on feedback from the retailers and system builders, one out of three assembled PCs sold in the country is purchased with gaming as a predominant reason”

“The enthusiasts segment has grown tremendously. Though the prices of high-end graphics cards have been firm, customers have been lapping up products”

P Raghuraman

Rajesh Goenka

Director, Transaction Business, AMD India

classified the market into four categories: casual or value segment, mainstream gaming segment, hardcore performance and enthusiasts. 55 percent of the market is estimated to consist of casual or value gamers. “Most of these users typically use a very entry-level graphics card or a processor that has built-in graphics such as AMD’s APU or FX series,” explains PP Shinu, CEO, Kochi-based Hardware Zone. The average price to an end-user is around `25,000 without operating system costs. The mainstream segment is said to account for around 35 percent of the market. These are products which are priced at an average of `35,000. “This is a market that is opening up in a big way, and will remain a sweet spot for years to come,” says Vinay Shetty, Country Manager, Component Business, Asus India. “We plan to target this segment as an OEM supplier of desktops and also as a motherboard and graphics card maker. They are serious gamers, and would look at graduation to the next level.” Next is the hardcore performance segment. “This is the segment that is targeted typically by manufacturers like us. The market looks beyond processors and graphics cards for performance, and looks at components such as memory, disk drives and coolers, and higher capacity chassis and power supplies,” says MA Mannan, Country Manager, Corsair India. The product prices range from `50,000 to `85,000, and account for about 7 percent of the gaming market. Finally, there is the enthusiasts segment, with desktops that range between `75,000 and `250,000. The graphics cards used typically cost `30,000 and above, and the processors are almost always overclocked.

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VP, Sales & Marketing, Rashi Peripherals

market focus Classification of Gaming PCs Segment

Processor Specs

Typical Graphics Card

Price Range

Comments

Casual or Value

Intel Core i3 or Nvidia GeForce Gt `25,000 onwards AMD Athlon X4/AMD 440, AMD Radeo 5650 A series

With entry-level graphics, these gamers play on budget constraints. 55 percent of the market

Intel Core i5 or AMD AMD Radeon HD 6670, `35,000 - `45,000 Mainstream Phenom X6 Nvidia GTS 450

Most gamers start experimenting with basic ideas such as overclocking. 35 percent of the market

AMD FX4 or Intel Core i7 Hardcore Performance

Radeon HD 6790, `45,000 - `75,000 Radeon HD 6970, Nvidia GTX 550 ti, GeForce GTX 570

Serious gamers who look beyond processors and graphics. 7-8 percent of the market

Enthusiasts AMD FX4 or Intel Core i7

Nvidia 2x, GeForce `75,000 - `250,000 These are machines with every GTX 560 Ti, AMD component used specific for gamers. Radeon HD 7970 2-3 percent of the market

Source: Industry estimates

Enthusiast users are extremely well-informed, and invest in specialized cooling, SSD drives, faster memory and above 900W power supplies. “This is a segment that has grown tremendously over the past one year, and the demand has almost always outstripped supply. Though the prices of high-end graphics cards have been firm, customers have been lapping up products,” says Rajesh Goenka, VP, Sales & Marketing, Rashi Peripherals.

Trends in gaming Online gaming has been the biggest business driver in the past couple of years. “Typically, gamers gets tired of playing the same game. They want more choice, and online gaming sites offer, for low subscription costs, options for gamers to play different games every month. Online gaming is the biggest driver today,” says Vishal Dhupar, MD, Sales & Marketing, Nvidia India. Meanwhile, online game makers have started making use of the graphics processing unit (GPU) on the gaming PC for better rendering of their cloud-hosted games. AMD India is seeing growth for its accelerated processing unit (APU) platform as a result of the gaming boom. “Our APU platform has a built-in Radeon 6000 GPU platform inside the processing silicon, and offers tremendous performance gains for the average gamer. We have also seen that many gamers, after using the APU platform, are going ahead and buying a graphics card to make use of two GPU modules inside the same PC,” says Raghuraman. While gaming zones are not new, with lower costs to create a mainstream gaming PC, faster ROIs are possible if an entrepreneur is setting up gaming zones. “After the launch of new platforms—such as the GeForce GTX 550 Ti platform—it is possible to create a good gaming PC for less than `40,000, which is very affordable for most gaming enthusiasts,” points out Harish Kumar RP, CEO of the Bengaluru-based Connoisseur Electronics.

Typically, most gaming zones charge `100 per hour, which would translate to `800-1,200 per PC per day. With the lower cost of mainstream gaming PCs, one can get faster ROI on gaming zones, says Kevin Picardo, CEO of the Mumbai-based gaming zone Hangout.

Game of passion While the demand for gaming PCs and hardware is at a high, most vendors advise partners not to enter the business without knowledge or passion for the business. Remarks Raghuraman, “Like any business, this requires sound knowledge, but apart from knowledge you need to be passionate about gaming and understand the needs of gamers.” Creating gaming zones within retail outlets where gamers can come, play and decide on the hardware they wish to acquire is a strategy used by some retailers. But the opportunities for retailers are not limited to gaming PCs. Many IT specialty stores have aligned with gaming console makers, and are reaping profits. “On an average we sell 10 Xboxes as well as Nintendos every quarter. As far as PS2 and PS3 are concerned, we sell around 25 units per quarter. The Xbox and PS3 are more popular among the 18-25 age group, while Nintendos are popular among those from 5-15 years,” says Raj Chopra, Proprietor, Gadgets 4 U, a Delhi-based retailer. Most gaming enthusiasts are repeat customers, and keep upgrading their gaming rigs. “Many of them wait for the launch of new graphics cards or even other hardware, and are eager to upgrade. They also bring in reference customers as they are a closely-knit community,” says Harish. Vendors are doing their bit by promoting gaming festivals and even sponsoring gifts. “Nowadays there is at least one gaming festival every month somewhere in India. They are great opportunities for us to connect with the community and deliver our message,” says Raghuraman. n

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cover story

The IT distribution ecosystem is set to transform as new business models evolve around cloud services, the introduction of GST, digital convergence and the consumerization of IT n Ramdas S & Sonal Desai

T distribution in India has seen tremendous transformation over the past decade and half. From being largely unorganized, semi-anarchic and immature, technology distribution today is very mature and organized. The challenges organized distribution faces have also changed over the years. The gray market, once the bane of most authorized distributors, is now a mere distraction. While government policies continue to be unpredictable, they are fairly manageable. Yet in 2012 IT distribution is all set to witness a revolution that is threatening the very existence of some of the established distributors in the business. Ironically, it is not government policies or an unstable

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economy influencing the change. Rather, it is the very disruptive nature of the technology industry that is forcing distributors to rethink and even re-channelize their efforts. Whether it is cloud computing, the consumerization of IT, or a concentrated effort by CIOs to opt for an opex model, the trends are certainly not distribution-friendly.

Will the cloud kill distribution? Unarguably, cloud computing has been the most hyped technology in recent times. As more businesses adopt cloud technology, some channel observers feel that distributors run the risk of losing their relevance as the sales of on-premise hardware and software lose share

cover story “When IT becomes a recurring overhead and not a capex, new business models will evolve. It is imperative that we align our business models to stay relevant”

“We plan to launch a cloud aggregator model, and offer a virtual catalog of cloud services whereby partners can choose, configure, re-package and even white-label services”

S Sriram

Rajesh Kumar

CEO, iValue Infosolutions

Business Head, Inflow Technologies

to off-premise solutions. A theory that has been doing the rounds for long is that since solution providers are forging relationships directly with cloud vendors, the need for the ‘middleman’ will become obsolete. Take for example Amazon, the big daddy of the Infrastructure-as-a-Service model, or Rackspace. They all are willing to do direct business with an IT solution provider or an end-user. While Ingram Micro has forged relationships with Amazon, Rackspace and other cloud vendors, there are still no real compelling reasons for an IT solution provider to route the business through a traditional distributor. With customers opting to host their applications on infrastructure that is owned by a cloud provider, there is also the fear that some of the infrastructure product business that is generally routed through the distribution channel would slowly lose momentum. “We are in very interesting times, and we are going to witness a major shift in the way CIOs and small businesses think. When infrastructure can be just a recurring overhead and not a capital expenditure, new business models are going to evolve around the cloud. There is no stopping it. It is imperative that distributors align their business models to stay relevant,” says S Sriram, CEO of the Bengaluru-based value VAD, iValue Infosolutions. Many distributors have recognized this, and are quickly adapting themselves. iValue has already set up a cloud aggregation model, and is offering a bouquet of services from various vendors. Last year Ingram Micro had set up a team of 15 to focus on cloud opportunities. Over the past few months the company has signed up with leading cloud service providers including Salesforce.com, Google Apps, Net Magic, Microsoft, HP and IBM. The vendor also ran channel educational events to promote its cloud initiatives. “The cloud is emerging as the next big wave in IT, and we are getting ready to capitalize on this opportunity for ourselves and our partner ecosystem. We are evaluating various business models around cloud computing that will create a value proposition for Ingram and its partners,” said Bimal Das, Senior Director, Enterprise & Computing Systems Group, Ingram Micro India in an earlier interview to CRN. (Das has since moved on as MD, Ingram Micro, Indonesia.) Ingram’s closest competitor, Redington, is not far behind, and is expected to make a major announcement about its cloud initiatives in the near future. Westcon India has already launched its cloud

business in the country. “We have signed on with CA and Symantec, and have been offering their cloud products through our partners. In essence, the model is not different. We manage subscriptions and enable partners to manage customers. We may make larger investments in future,” states Rajiv Unnikrishnan, Business Head, Westcon India. Inflow Technologies, part of the Westcon Group, is also set to launch its cloud business model over the next quarter. “Being a Westcon entity, we have access to some of the business models that Westcon has evolved in Europe and North America. We are going to launch a cloud aggregator model, and offer a virtual catalog of cloud services whereby partners can choose, configure, re-package and even white-label services,” says Rajesh Kumar, Business Head, Inflow Technologies. However, many partners who are serious about cloud computing do feel that the cloud would limit the role of distributors. “If we ally with large cloud service providers such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft and start offering their services, the relationships with distributors will change. That is because these companies encourage a direct relationship between the vendor and the partners as the cloud services are offered over the wire. There is no role for intermediary play,” comments Durganadh Venkata, Vice President, Locuz Enterprise, Hyderabad. “Even in the case of Cisco or TCS, there is very little role for an intermediary.” Venkata feels that distributors will need to rebrand themselves and offer value which is beyond what the direct vendor will provide. But several partners feel that distributors will still have a role to play, and they would like them to be around to facilitate cloud-based services. “Once business volumes go up, and customers demand value-added services, cloud vendors will need to have an intermediary to manage logistics, credit and partners. Also, large cloud service providers would never bill through smaller VARs because the credit part becomes a problem for them. So, once the cloud services are turned into a commodity, the cloud service providers would have to rely on distributors even for services such as SaaS, IaaS and PaaS,” forecasts Ajit Mital, Managing Director, Acme Digitek, Lucknow. As Google and Microsoft start wooing partners, the role of the distributor is being questioned. Microsoft’s Office365 mentions 12 and 6 percent commission for partners selling the subscription, but fails to mention specifically what is in store for distributors.

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cover story “Companies like Amazon or Google encourage a direct relationship with partners as cloud services are offered over the wire. There is no role for intermediaries”

“Tablets are the future, and will soon emerge as a part of personal and enterprise computing. We have already started exploring vendor alliances in this space”

Durganadh Venkata

S Sudhir

Vice President, Locuz Enterprise

Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Business Division, Microsoft India, confirms that there are roles for existing distributors who would be managing partners, but refused to divulge the commission details. “We want everyone in the ecosystem to benefit as we embrace the cloud. Distributors have a role to play in channel enablement, and we are taking care of their interests too.” Says Paresh Shah, Partner, PH Teknow, Mumbai, “There is no doubt that distributors will remain critical from the perspective of channel enablement. I see them continuing to play a bigger role, although in a different model.”

The new age client One of the hottest topics of discussion through 2011 was the possible death of the personal computer. The

MD, Inspan Infotech

advent of mobile Internet devices and smartphones has played a very disruptive role in the PC market, with analysts betting that by 2015 more tablets could sell than personal computers. With enterprise mobility being a reality, VARs and systems integrators are trying to strike new alliances. “There is no doubt that tablets are the future, and though we do not think they will cannibalize the PC market, we believe that these products will definitely be a part of personal and enterprise computing. We have already started exploring vendor alliances,” says S Sudhir, MD of the Chennai-based distributor Inspan Infotech. Meanwhile, Rashi Peripherals has tied up with Samsung for their entire range of tablets and smartphones. Some distributors such as Supertron Electronics and iBall have launched their own branded

Distributor View: Adaption is Key

networking. VADs have started building a he Indian IT distribution market today has combined revenue of `30,000 crore. With complete sales cycle chain including pre-sales, post-sales, training, consulting, designing, the PC installed base at 5 percent, and the implementation, supply chain and finance Internet penetration at less than 5 percent, the Indian IT industry has plenty of growth services. This would be the differentiator at the end of the day. prospects. The key to sustaining it is strong India has a very large SMB market. fundamentals with a focus on distribution and Distributors offering SMB solutions on an channel hygiene. The coming years will witness opex model and with measurable results the growth of various distributors, but some could also vanish. will become winners. The relationship with branded PC vendors on the consumer or Though India is one of the last countries to adapt to newer technology, the cloud commercial side is the trump card to connect with the SMB segment, and is helping would be a game changer. Though a threat to emerging distributors to scale up faster than distribution, it will create larger opportunities Paras Shah the industry average. The emerging C,D and E and open new horizons. Currently there is an CMD, Neoteric Informatique class cities have already been mapped by the imbalance in the overall distribution industry, and a few large players dominate. Many distributors. Soon we will also witness a convergence between telecom, distributors are surviving by fulfilling channel orders. The change will impact everyone. CE and IT distribution as new categories such as smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and telecom accessories come into play. In the days ahead, distributors who adapt to these changes, At the end what would matter is how we generate profits build a strong end-to-end competency, and value-add with a through low-cost structures, efficiency and strong value solution-centric approach will become the distributors systems. of choice. To cut through the clutter, distributors are also going Change is the only constant. If you do not adapt, it will sound the death knell. n the vertical specialist way be it security, storage, server or

We will witness a convergence between telecom, CE and IT distribution as new categories such as smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and telecom accessories come into play

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cover story “Distributors from the telco and FMCG sectors are moving into IT. Linkworld in Kolkata is `800 crore plus in revenue, while the SSK Group from Pune is `3,000 crore”

“Vendors will have a mix of national and regional distributors, and there would be some level of micro-management to get the desired results at a regional level”

Mohit Anand

Suresh Pansari

Managing Director, Belkin India

CMD, Rashi Peripherals

mobile phones and tablets to cater to new needs. The Indian arm of Research in Motion (RIM), makers of smartphone platform BlackBerry, is betting on Indian enterprise VARs and has roped in close to 40 tier-2 partners to milk opportunities from the enterprise market in the country. The vendor has signed on Redington for the consumer market while Ingram Micro was roped in last year for wooing enterprise resellers. “We feel that established IT distributors like Ingram Micro are the key for connecting with the right channels to address customers,” says Sunil Lalvani, Director, Enterprise Sales, RIM India. Distributors have also started selling to non-IT channels including telco retailers. “We are in talks with telco channels especially in smaller towns. The convergence of IT and telecom is real,” says Sudhir of Inspan.

Hybrid distribution Till about three years back, most IT vendors were focused on growing the market through adding more distributors at every level. With a market that was growing at 20 percent and above, and a diverse footprint to cover, this was the best model to adapt. However, since the slowdown in 2008, there has been a lot of rethinking by vendors. “The primary reason for the rethink has been to ensure partner and distribution profitability. When we started we had several tier-1 distributors, even two in a single state, Kerala. As we grew, we felt the need to consolidate. We realized that more distributors do not necessarily mean more business. By ensuring better margins through exclusivity either at the product level or regional level, vendors can grow business for the distributor,” says Mohit Anand, MD, Belkin India. Another example is that of Asus components. “In 2009 we were shipping less than 30,000 motherboards a month and had five distributors. We took a call to go in for a single distributor and zeroed in on Rashi, which has worked, since our volumes have grown three times,” says Vinay Shetty, Country Manager, Asus India. Many in the industry feel that the hybrid distribution model will evolve. “Vendors would have a mix of national and regional distributors, and there would be some amount of micro-management to produce the desired results at a regional level,” believes Suresh Pansari, CMD, Rashi Peripherals. One of the reasons is the presence of very strong regional players who have originated from other industry segments whose revenue sizes are comparable

to national distributors. Notes Anand of Belkin, “We have many distributors from the telco and FMCG sectors who want to move into IT. Linkworld Communications in Kolkata is `800 crore plus in revenue, while the SSK group of companies from Pune is `3,000 crore in revenue.” Toshiba is another vendor which has opted for regional distributors for the emerging markets while the Class A and B cities are still addressed through national distributors. Channel hygiene is top of the mind for vendors. “Today, any distribution strategy which vendors evolve is driven by the need to ensure that channel hygiene is maintained. When we revamped our regional distribution strategy we re-aligned each regional distributor to a national distributor to ensure that margins were protected and that inventory management was optimized,” says Rajesh Thadani, Director, Consumer HSB, Lenovo India.

The SMB puzzle The biggest challenge for IT vendors is to address opportunities in the growing SMB space. According to AMI Partners, around four million SMB enterprises in the country have seen PC penetration. “While this number seems to be very good, it remains a huge challenge for any vendor to reach these customers efficiently. SMB remains both an enigma and an opportunity,” says Shoiab Ahmed, President, Tally Solutions. Several industry thought leaders feel that traditional distributors can do bigger and better things to address the SMB challenge. “The only way a vendor can reach the small business is through channels, and this is true irrespective of the technology offering. Channel enablement across India can be best delivered through distributors,” points out Neha Jalan, Senior Associate, AMI Partners, India. With vendors forming focused divisions and teams to address the SMB market, very soon distributors may also create divisions to address the space. “SMBs require a lot of focus because the market dynamics and characteristics are a mix of both consumer and enterprise,” states Anand. Sriram of iValue feels that to address the small business and home business, distributors will align with telcos and ISPs to create win-win situations. “Small businesses require solutions that are not single vendor driven. We along with vendors are considering the creation of multiple services in the opex model

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cover story Global View: Ingram’s cloud mantra

he rise of cloud computing offers new IT service opportunities for the IT channel, many with explosive growth rates. Ingram Micro recognized the cloud’s potential early on and has since become a leading master aggregator of cloud services for the IT channel. “The Ingram Micro Cloud and corresponding Cloud Marketplace offer unique go-to-market advantages for our partners. We plan to continue to build on the success of Ingram Micro Cloud in 2012 while investing in additional areas that will further enable our partners’ success,” says Alain Monie, CEO, Ingram Micro. The distributor started down the annuity-based services path almost four years ago with its managed services program, an initiative that has greatly expanded to now include cloud solutions. As many MSPs have evolved to become cloud providers, so too has Ingram Micro. Greg Spierkel, former CEO, Ingram Micro, told CRN in an earlier interview that close to 3,000 solution providers are now buying at least one of Ingram Micro’s Infrastructure-as-aService- or Software-as-a-Service-based services, and that the distributor offers more than 50 services from 25 vendors in its Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace. Most recently, Ingram Micro added Kaseya’s IT systems management tools for MSPs and cloud-based solutions from security vendors Symantec and Trend Micro. “Right now we are pretty happy. We are putting [together] a nice portfolio for VARs and we have a good billing engine,” Spierkel said. According to Renee Bergeron, Vice President, Managed Services & Cloud Computing, Ingram Micro, Ingram views its customer base as divided into cloud service brokers that do not want to deliver the solution but want to resell the services of another provider, and cloud providers that want to deliver the whole solution. The distributor’s business is pretty evenly split between the two in terms of transactions, Bergeron says. “Our portfolio addresses both. If you are a broker and you want to resell the service desk, we offer a partnership with Fujitsu. If you are a provider and want to offer that service, we partner with BMC for Remedyforce, an incident-tracking system software provided in the cloud,” Bergeron states. “On the hosting side, if you want to resell IBM or Rackspace as a provider, you can do that. If you want to leverage someone else, VMware’s Service Provider Program can help virtualize into a private cloud.” Bergeron says that in 2012 Ingram Micro expects to see traction—and more solutions to offer—in business applications from CRM to ERP to supply chain management and e-learning. The company also expects to build a deeper vertical cloud solution portfolio, she added. “Whether it is EMR for healthcare or property management or legal applications, we have built a roadmap of cloud services we want to bring to market,” Bergeron says. n —Scott Campbell, CRN US

Whether it is EMR for healthcare or property management or legal applications, we have built a roadmap of cloud services we want to bring to market

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“When we revamped our channel strategy we aligned each regional disty to a national disty to ensure margins were protected and inventory management optimized” Rajesh Thadani

Director, Consumer HSB, Lenovo India

and then taking them to the market through telcos. The distributor would play the role of aggregator here.”

Deeper coverage As IT vendors start looking beyond Class A and B cities, distributors are expected to play a bigger role. “We want distributors to provide us the reach as new customers and new partners are evolving in smaller towns,” says Arun Dharmalingam. VP, Distribution Channels, Cisco India & Saarc. PC penetration in India is still very low, less than 7 percent, so the potential that several of the upcountry markets offers is huge. Many distributors see this as the biggest opportunity. For example, Rashi wants to reach every district in the country through a hub and spoke model by 2015. “One of the biggest values which volume distributors will need to provide in future is expanding reach. They will need to ensure that as the market expands they reach more partners across the country,” says Vishal Tripathi, Principal Analyst, Gartner India. Nevertheless, there are costs associated which distributors need to be mindful of. “Apart from the direct overheads associated with an additional branch, there are also management costs. The challenge over the next few years would be to cost effectively add new branches and cover more territories by creating an effective supply chain,” Tripathi adds. Channel financing will be critical to expanding business in the SMB segment. At present only Redington provides channel financing. “Working capital has always been at a premium in the IT distribution industry. Many partners find it a challenge to match their capital availability to their growing business requirements and also to differing payment receipt cycles. That is why we have set up Easyaccess Financial Services Ltd, a fully-owned NBFC,” says PS Neogi, President, IT Business, Redington India. In April 2012 India is set to roll out the Goods & Services Tax (GST) which is perceived to be one of the biggest tax reforms. While the finer details of the GST are not yet clear, there is speculation that it will create disruption in the way goods are distributed. “GST will have a significant impact on almost all aspects of businesses operating in the country, including the supply chain, sourcing and distribution decisions, inventory costs and cash flows, pricing policy, accounting and IT systems, and transactions management,” says Sunil Gabhawalla, CEO, SB Gabhawalla & Co., a leading tax consultant in Mumbai.

cover story “The biggest value volume distributors will need to provide is expanding reach. They will need to ensure that as the market expands they reach more partners”

“GST will have a significant impact on all aspects of business including supply chain, sourcing and distribution, inventory costs and cash flows, and pricing policy”

Vishal Tripathi

Sunil Gabhawalla

Principal Analyst, Gartner India

CEO, S B Gabhawalla & Co.

Distributors are divided over the likely impact. “Based on the impact of a unified tax in other markets such as Europe and the US, many distributors will downsize the number of branches or downsize operational overheads within these branches,” predicts J Ramesh, VP, Ralco Synergy, an independent distributor. The logistics industry is gearing up with services for the distribution market with warehousing and even payment collection solutions once the GST system takes off. However, not everyone feels that GST will have any impact on the way IT distribution works. “IT distribution is quite complex, and it is relationship-driven. Since technology is changing, partners need to be constantly managed. We have seen that local branches, warehousing and localized management go a long way in helping

channels sell better,” says Pansari of Rashi. He puts his case in a simple manner. “Why are we having multiple warehouses in a single state today? Why are we having multiple branches in a single state despite having the same tax structure? GST will not have any major impact in the way business is being conducted.”

Conclusion The new disruptive technological trends may be a game changer. However, IT distributors have seen many battles over the past decades, and have emerged stronger. Their further emergence would depend on two things: their ability to add value, and convince solution providers and vendors about the same, and their ability to adapt, and adapt well to the changing market scenario. n

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

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special focus

gaining ground

The size of the unified communication market in India was $465 million in 2010, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11 percent till 2017 with increased adoption by SMBs n amit singh & sonal desai

ccording to Frost & Sullivan, the size of the market for unified communication (UC) in India was $465 million in 2010, a growth of 30 percent from the $357 million in 2009. Conferencing and collaboration contributed $89 million with a growth of 33 percent over 2009, messaging saw tremendous growth of 52 percent at $7.5 million, mobility grew by 16 percent to $2.8 million, and unified client, presence and integrated applications grew by 19.1 percent over 2009. The market is expected to grow at 11.8 percent CAGR from 2010 to 2017. Though interoperability, network performance and UC security continue to cause concern, the demonstrable ROI and newer implementation options are spurring UC adoption. According to Gartner, IP telephony and voice conferencing are the most sought after elements of UC. “The changing business models due to travel costs and time constraints are motivating organizations to adopt UC solutions that enable live communication sessions,” explains Uday Birje, Country Manager, Network Consulting & Services, HP India. “In our organization, we were able to bring down travel expenses from approximately $750 million a year to $200 million,” adds Manu Bansal, Regional Manager, Advanced Technology Channels, Cisco. According to Neeraj Gill, MD, Polycom India, “These solutions are being used to enable live training sessions and immersive discussions across geographies.” “UC solutions help businesses to reduce product development cycles, enhance team communication, and move products to the market sooner, thus resulting in higher productivity and increased customer satisfaction,” states Arun Shetty, Head, Avaya Aura Sales & Consulting, Avaya. The current growth is fuelled by the adoption of UC in the government, BFSI and services verticals. Growth projectionS for the Indian UC market (in $ million)

908 812 726

465

2010

520

2011

581

2012

650

2013

2014

Source: Industry estimates

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2015

2016

Trends driving adoption Analysts and industry experts are banking on the following trends to drive UC adoption. Mobility and BYOD: Mobility and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) are two key trends that will in many ways drive the consumerization of UC. A recent survey by Infonetics Research revealed that mobile UC will be a top priority for enterprises in 2012. “With advancements in mobility, professionals can use their tablets to collaborate face-to-face with their colleagues joining via desktop and immersive video room systems, tablets or notebooks,” says Gill. India’s mobile workforce is expected to grow by about 53 percent to reach close to 20.5 crore by 2015. According to Springboard Research, nearly two-third of them would have their own smart mobile devices and employers will have to allow their workforce to use their own devices interchangeably between work and personal use. “Mobility and BYOD will be a big driver for UC. However, one aspect that CIOs are not ready to compromise on is security, and a lot of enterprises are reassessing their security posture and framework in relation to new devices,” notes Kshitij Mishra, Head, Unified Communications & Collaboration, India Region, Huawei Enterprise. IP telephony: Today, IP telephony is the fastest growing UC element and is seen as a cost-effective and potent tool for increasing productivity for businesses of all sizes, hence there is a visible transition from traditional telephony to IP telephony. “Traditional telephony is currently moving toward IP owing to lower voice networking cost, [lower] equipment administration cost, increased communication capabilities, and greater productivity for remote and mobile employees. In fact, about 80 percent of the voice deployment is happening on IP,” remarks Birje. Emergence of video: Video conferencing is growing to become a market-changing trend. Currently, the market is at the tipping point where fundamental business models are being built around new video-enabled endpoints. “We are seeing a demand for video on one’s desktop as compared to a demand that was previously limited to the conference room. TelePresence encourages businesses to cross borders and interact at a personalized level,” says Bansal. Opex model: According to a Forrester Research study of deployment models, between 2009 and 2013 the demand for managed services will grow significantly, outpacing the traditional deployment model of buying and then managing UC and collaboration technology on-premise.

special focus “Changing business models due to travel costs and time constraints are motivating organizations to adopt UC that enables live communication sessions”

“SMBs are keen on UC, but it is mainly IP telephony or voice conferencing as different components. End-to-end UC in SMBs is yet to evolve”

Uday Birje, Country Manager, Network Consulting & Services, HP India

Kshitij Mishra, Head, UC & Collaboration, India Region, Huawei Enterprise

Comments Gill, “SMBs and mid-sized enterprises are keen to adopt the opex model of UC, especially the video conferencing component, considering the pace at which technology advancements take place in this industry.” Enterprise social networking: Corporate IT planners are attempting to use the concept of social media to improve productivity at work. “Social media is in demand because the need for socially-driven collaboration has increased. Virtual teams and communities can quickly share ideas through blogs and Wikis; schedule meetings; and enable IM, voice and video communication,” says Bansal. Many vendors are making the transition to softwarebased UC platforms, supporting virtualization and centralized implementations in a private cloud environment. Centralized management and multi-modal support eliminate many of the complexities associated with UC in these scenarios.

Partner opportunities Indian SMBs are looking at UC as a low-cost tool to communicate effectively with customers and suppliers as well as to facilitate communication across multiple branch locations. According to AMI Partners, Indian SMBs spent approximately $165 million on UC in 2010, with close to three-fourth of all businesses deploying UC applications. Mumbai-based Insight Business Machines has done eight UC deployments so far, many of them in SMBs. The biggest deployment, valued at `45 lakh, was for connecting 200 users of an insurance company. “We first connected 50 users, trained them, then connected 150 more users in presence, messaging, Web conferencing and EPBX,” says Gunjan Shah, Director, Technical, Insight. “We have done about 10 deployments since 2009 in

Opportunities & Challenges Mobile UC will be a top priority in 2012 as per a recent

survey conducted by Infonetics Research. IP telephony will see increased uptake as 80 percent of

voice deployment is happening on IP. Opex model growth in UC will outpace the traditional

on-premise deployment model growth by 2013. With their plans to add new employees and branches,

SMBs will adopt UC in the next five years. Interoperability continues to be an issue that limits the

feature richness of UC. Enterprises with legacy infrastructure are reluctant to invest

in new-age technology.

various mid-sized organizations with 100-400 nodes,” informs Chetan Shah, MD, Xpress Computers.

Challenges While the concept and business benefits of UC are quite visible, most enterprises have accepted the technology only in bits and pieces. According to Gartner, among the elements of UC, IP telephony and voice conferencing have seen huge adoption among organizations. Video conferencing and collaboration, IM and messaging, have also been implemented in organizations, but in isolation from each other in many cases. “The SMB market is keen to take up UC; however, this is primarily going to be IP telephony or voice conferencing as different components. The realization of end-to-end UC solutions in SMBs is yet to evolve,” says Mishra. One of the major limitations to UC adoption is the issue of interoperability. “Not all UC platforms are interoperable because they support some proprietary variant. This limits enterprises from creating a free mix-and-match of components,” says Bansal. Interoperability problems have also risen because BYOD and mobility were not considered during R&D, explains Sukhvinder Ahuja, Lead, Unified Communication, Microsoft India. “However, the use of open standards can tackle this issue. Many suppliers have developed products which support open standards such as the Session Initiation Protocol,” he adds. Enterprises having legacy infrastructure are also reluctant to take the next step to invest in new-age technology. Gartner points out that many organizations have traditional telephones in their facilities. Moreover, they may have other elements of UC—such as email, IM and voice conferencing—that may not integrate with the new solutions, hence they are inclined to save their investments in the existing infrastructure and they hesitate to spend on new solutions. Another common problem faced is the quality of bandwidth available. “A 2 Mbps connection continues to be quite expensive, prompting many organizations to opt for connectivity of poor quality. This sometimes affects the performance of enterprise technologies and tools, and does not leverage the true capabilities of the applications in question,” says Ahuja. “As 3G and BWA networks spread in India, they will certainly spread the benefits of broadband connectivity to the SMB and SOHO segments and also take broadband beyond the confines of the tier-1 cities to the tier-2 cities and beyond,” Gill states. n

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role model growing in customer trust What started in 1991 as a computer repair shop is today a `51 crore company handling large virtualization projects for MNCs. Nikesh Sakaria and Ankit Desai, co-founders of CDP, recount the highlights of the past two decades n SONAL DESAI

aving earned a degree in electronic engineering from the KES Engineering College in Pen, Maharashtra, in 1989, Nikesh Sakaria interned with Infoton and learned the nitty-gritty of the computer industry. He strengthened his basics in computer support and services at IDM in 1990. “I had decided to start my own office for computer data products during my third year in engineering, and since I come from a business family, financing it was not difficult. Computer Data Products came into existence on July 1, 1991. Ankit Desai (now also Director) joined as a co-founder after two months. Within the first four months we signed on Citibank to service their network. As our relationship with the group strengthened, we started providing them PCs on rent,” recalls Sakaria. Desai, who takes care of techno-commercial aspects and support, chips in. “We started the company as a service center for Intel, HP and IBM, and graduated to assembling and selling branded PCs. We had one of the biggest repair centers with equipment such as the hot air gun, IC remover, which was rare in those days. We closed 1991-92 with a turnover of `21 lakh; of this, renting PCs contributed 30 percent, selling our own branded PCs brought 40 percent, and servicing the rest.” Computer Data Products started manufacturing PCs (under the brand name Venus) at a manufacturing unit in Vasai, Mumbai, in 1994. “In the first year we sold about 100 PCs, which was a big figure at that time,” says Sakaria. The company won its first major deal to supply (and support) 150 desktops to a bank in 1996. “It was a large order for those days. People would form long queues outside the customers’ offices for a single order of that scale. We bagged the order amid stiff competition from larger SIs,” he recalls, adding, “We have sold 25,00035,000 PCs to a large bank over the years. But then in 2004-05 we decided to stop manufacturing PCs because it was no longer viable, and we decided to renew our focus on services.” In 1995 Computer Data Products set up the entire IT infrastructure for an MNC asset management company in a project valued at `5 crore. “The asset management company proved to be a boon for us,” notes Desai. “Following that project, 30-35 asset management

“Word-of-mouth publicity and the efforts of our sales and techno-marketing executives helped us bag service contracts with banks such as HDFC” 30

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Ankit Desai and Nikesh Sakaria

companies came to us for end-to-end solutions.” The company registered itself as CDP Pvt Ltd in 1999. Today, it has more than 85 employees across six offices in Ahmedabad, Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai. Between 1999 and 2000 CDP tapped opportunities in office infrastructure for dotcom companies. Says Sakaria, “Start-ups and the bigger companies were our clients. After the bust, we focused on another emerging segment— BPOs. iSmart was our first customer.” CDP got a major break in the banking sector in 2002. What started as a RAM upgradation project for a big bank snowballed into a full-fledged office automation order involving multi-location desktops and servers. Over the years, through word-of-mouth publicity and the efforts of its sales and techno-marketing executives, other majors such as HDFC and another bank signed on CDP as a service partner. One thing led to another, and CDP was soon servicing entire corporate groups.

Current business CDP ended FY2010-11 with a turnover of `51 crore, a 21 percent rise from the `42 crore of the previous fiscal. Solutions contributed 38 percent, corporate reselling 42 percent and services 20 percent. The company is currently servicing more than 20,000 nodes across verticals, of which BFSI, audit services and IT/ITeS contributed 45, 30 and 10 percent respectively. Since 2010 CDP has started concentrating on new domains such as virtualization, cloud computing, and backup and managed services. It spread its service footprint to approximately 250 cities and towns across India. This helped it to clinch multi-location enterprise orders especially in the banking sector and PSU segment. CDP also developed specialization in end-to-end

Role model

2011

2010-11 2010

2002

1999

1996

1994

1991

benefits of server virtualization. and multi-location solutions, MILESTONES “Once customers understood the and provided end-to-end IT benefits, many signed up for projects. infrastructure solutions coupled with The exercise also helped us develop all-India support. “Virtualization, Started Computer Data our brand as a complete solution however, remains our main revenue Products provider,” Desai says. grosser,” remarks Sakaria. “We have The company trained its done many projects for IBM and Started manufacturing and engineers for sales and marketing VMware. For example, for a large selling PCs under the brand in virtualization, data center and customer in the finance vertical, we name Venus cloud computing in 2011. “It is now virtualized the number of servers a continuous process at CDP, and used to host various applications Supplied 150 desktops to we will send more engineers for from 20 to four.” a bank training in 2012,” says Desai. “The For one deal valued at `75 trained engineers work in a technolakh, the company migrated all Registered the company as commercial capacity in our office. the applications for a large BFSI CDP Pvt Ltd We have the best engineers, sales customer from the Exchange server executives and marketing executives. to the HP Blade Center solution Signed by large bank as They approach the customer as a (C7000) along with HP P4500 storage service partner unified force, talk about the customer in three working days. pain-points, and win deals.” It also deployed infrastructure Started deep-selling to (including file and print servers, firewalls, a power solution, routers, Future plans existing customers networking, and desktops and CDP plans to double its revenue in Clocked `51 crore in laptops) for a PSU general insurance the next two years. company with 20 branches across The company is launching a revenue India in a deal worth `3.5 crore. cloud-based solution for the broking In another deal worth business in the next three months. Broadened portfolio to include `2 crore, CDP migrated the data for The solution will include integrated AIOs, and laser and mobile a multinational shipping company hardware, system software, printers from the servers in one of its infrastructure and application overseas offices to servers in Mumbai software on the cloud. “Since the and Singapore in six working days. services are in the final stages of development, all I can In 2011 CDP broadened its product portfolio to include tell you now is that they will help brokers to automate AIOs, high-end laser printers and mobile printers from HP, the entire trading process. We will be launching similar Dell, Brother and Canon. services for other stakeholders in the BFSI vertical CDP is a now a Business Partner for Cisco, D-Link, gradually,” Sakaria informs. APC and HP in networking; Platinum Business Partner Besides, the company will strengthen the skill-sets of for HP and Partner for Brother, Canon and Epson in its employees in virtualization, and focus on storage and peripherals; Partner World Member for IBM, Business backup software, power auditing and green IT solutions. Partner for HP and Enterprise Partner for Dell in servers; It is also eying services opportunities in the US, Advance Business Partner for Lenovo, and Business Canada and the Middle East, and will tap the BFSI Partner for HP, Dell and Acer for desktops; Advance segment for application support to begin with. Business Partner for Lenovo, and Business Partner for HP, Dell and Toshiba for notebooks; and Partner World On a personal note Member for IBM, Business Partner for HP and EMC, and Desai is philosophical, and wants to do something for Authorized Partner for Dell in storage. India. Kashmir is his favorite holiday destination, Audi his favorite car. Sakaria is passionate about education, and wants to Best practices contribute toward building institutes whose students do Deep-selling to existing customers has opened up new not require tuitions. avenues for CDP. “The order sizes have got bigger and A true nature lover, Sakaria fondly remembers his better. Besides, this has improved the relationships hiking expedition in the Solan Valley last year. Other between our customers and us,” explains Sakaria. favorite destinations are Spain and Switzerland. He is CDP also started educating customers about the currently reading Making the World Work Better, which was distributed by IBM on the completion of its centenary. “We have done many projects for IBM and Sakaria drives a Skoda, but keeps an eager eye on the latest models unveiled by his favorite car-maker, BMW. VMware. For example, for a large customer The two partners share a passion for cricket, and have in the finance vertical, we virtualized the high regard for MS Dhoni for his leadership qualities and commitment. n number of servers used from 20 to four”

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tech focus Perfect timing for an offspring The Oracle Database Appliance is customized for channel-based solutions, and provides significant value as a dedicated appliance for data n Edward F Moltzen

f you thought the last 10 years brought forth an explosion of data—particularly of use to small and mid-sized businesses—just wait for the next 10 years. With the ubiquity of mobile devices including tablets and smartphones each becoming incredibly powerful data collection devices, and with social media, new use patterns and powerful processing, database technologies would appear to face a mountain of challenges. Enter the Oracle Database Appliance. The combination of a powerful, Linux-based, Intel Xeon-based Sun server and Oracle database software, the system provides redundancy, massive processing power and redundancy in a 4U rack-mountable box. Taking a look at the Oracle Database Appliance in the CRN Test Center Lab, we found this to be full of opportunity for VARs to deliver significant value. The system we reviewed shipped to us with two, 6-core Intel Xeon X5675 processors with 96 GB of memory. The system is built with 12 TB of storage that is mirrored—again, far more than many currently deployed servers now maintain. While deploying the Oracle Database Appliance, VARs can lift it out of the box and put it into the rack. The 4U box weighs in at about 167 pounds and is a serious piece of metal. At least two people, preferably three or four, would be on hand to install this system into a rack. As a redundant system, this 4U server has redundant power supplies, Gigabit Ethernet ports and two exterior fans for each server system for a total of four external fans. As this unit is meant for a rack in a data center or a closet, the 50 to 80 dB of noise is fine. Actually, given the computing horsepower in the Oracle Database Appliance, we never noticed any significant heat thrown from this server and it remained at room temperature even while running for several hours. If you’re going to deploy major server hardware of any kind, great thermals are always a relief and the Oracle Database Appliance provides outstanding thermals. Additionally, VARs will add value through the configuration and deployment process that could take a couple of hours of working through line commands and ensuring the software installs and configures properly.

What the Oracle Database Appliance provides in a $50,000 box is much more processing power and computing capability than even mainframes that are less than a decade old 32

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From a software perspective, Oracle has integrated its database software, Oracle 11g, with Oracle Linux; configuration can be performed remotely or at the appliance itself. Oracle has taken great pains to provide detailed documentation, as well as the option for wizardbased configuration—steps that could make the process less time-consuming during deployment for VARs. VARs and ISVs have an opportunity to deliver application-based solutions inside the box to extend its value and functionality. What the Oracle Database Appliance provides in a $50,000 box is much more processing power and computing capability than even high-end mainframes that are less than a decade old. The servers support the installation of Oracle Database 11g, Enterprise Edition (The default has the software downloadable on to the server once it is shipped and set up into a rack, although it can also be preinstalled and ready for onsite configuration.) With two servers in one box (with redundant power and networking), the Appliance supports Oracle Real Application Clusters or Oracle RAC One Node depending on the failover choice of the organization. Oracle’s timing appears to be perfect for many reasons: The continued–even accelerated–explosion of data that businesses are now required to exploit and manage on a 24-by-7 basis has become an increasingly complex factor for enterprises of all sizes. Oracle’s approach is to simplify what can be simplified. Data shows that while enterprises and VARs are preparing for meaningful transitions to cloud computing, it will take several years. In the meantime, a solution like Oracle Database Appliance will provide a boost in performance and reliability with a relatively small footprint for data centers of all sizes. Not only that, but Oracle’s ‘pay as you grow’ model means that enterprises should look at this as a scalable solution should they choose to put off any cloud transition for even longer. While so many elements and best practices go into securing data in an enterprise, we think that Oracle’s approach—including the use of Oracle Linux—provides a net gain in security. With compliance becoming a key issue for more enterprises, this is not insignificant. The CRN Test Center likes and recommends this appliance for that reason, for the performance, and for the strong security offered by the underlying Oracle Linux in the box. It’s more than a solid offering for the SMB space, it’s potentially a game-changer as data and security needs race to keep up with the oncoming generations of technology. n

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tech focus More than just security Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 keeps up with threats, and gets a boost from the cloud in the process n Edward F Moltzen

he problem with the major players in desktop security is that they continue to provide what they say are significant upgrade releases annually— leaving us to wonder each year whether the technology improvements are significant or whether it’s just part of a pricing or licensing strategy. With Kaspersky Labs’ Internet Security 2012, we’re happy to see that the application that launched last year does a great job of keeping up with—and often ahead of—malicious software providers. With so much discussion about cloud-based security and other trends of the moment, it’s great to discover that a security vendor stays true to the basic blocking and tackling. In this case, Kaspersky’s Internet Security 2012 blocks malware and tackles security so that work can continue without interruption. In its message to the market, Kaspersky puts a lot of energy into highlighting its cloud-based approach to providing protection against malicious domains, Trojans, botnets and the vast buffet of suspicious and damaging code. At its core, Kaspersky’s cloud-based approach means that it continually updates its registry of malicious URLs and signatures, making the constant updates available to the desktop. Kaspersky isn’t the only vendor to use a cloud-based approach to security,

The feature we loved most was the network monitor with real-time graphical info about threats suppressed during a given day or week

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but we found its approach particularly compelling during our testing. Once installed on a desktop running Windows 7 Ultimate, we took Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 out for a spin for several days of reckless browsing. That is to say that we repeatedly used Web browsers to click into the latest malicious domains provided by the Malware Domain List—an aggregated list of suspicious URLs with Trojans, botnets, rootkits, Blackhole exploits and more. Hitting 50 of these Web sites, often minutes after they were posted on to the list, Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 blocked all but one. In that one case, we updated the software again and then retried the site several minutes later—and Kaspersky provided the necessary protection. The application also includes an anti-spam feature, and we took a look at that as well. For the enterprise, we continue to prefer a network-based approach to filtering out spam and malicious email. We gave Kaspersky’s anti-spam feature a shot. While it’s hard to see this as an area where Kaspersky stands out, it does what it needs to do. We were disappointed that, on several occasions, spam that Google’s Gmail identifies and blocks from inboxes went unrecognized by Kaspersky; additionally, marking spam objects as spam should be expected to teach the application to block similar items in the future. We found two occasions when this didn’t work. The anti-spam performance of this suite isn’t a deal breaker, but it serves to support our preference for a network- or appliance-based approach to spam. Kaspersky does provide a few other features that we love in Internet Security 2012, including a straightforward network monitor with nifty, real-time graphical information about threats suppressed during a given day or week. Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 is billed as a personal security offering, which is to say it doesn’t provide management controls and other enterprise features its higher-end products provide. We believe it is a sound option for a small business or workgroup or ad-hoc scenarios. n

channel buzz In search of the next big idea Thought provoking. That sums up the second edition of ISODA’s 4-day Tech Summit which was held in Singapore last month n amit singh

atriotic fervor amid the singing of the Vande Mataram and the national anthem marked the beginning of the ISODA Tech Summit 2012 in Singapore on India’s Republic Day. The second edition of the 4-day summit themed on ‘The Next Big Idea’ was a grand success and well attended by owners/directors of partner organizations and top executives of vendor companies. In his welcome address, Hemant Chhabria, Vice Chairman, ISODA, delivered his message (through a new version of the hare and tortoise fable) that collaboration can bring in better efficiencies and effectiveness. He said, “In the current scenario, one needs to identify his core strengths and competencies and then change the playing field to suit his competencies. We can achieve far more excellence with teamwork, which is mainly about situational leadership—letting the person with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.” Introducing the theme, The Next Big Idea, Sudarshan Ranganathan, Vice President, ISODA, urged the partners to scale new heights and search for excellence. “This is the

time for change, for doing things differently and better. When was the last time we did something for the first time?” he asked. “The search for excellence is the need of the hour, and it is transformational thinking which will help us survive in future.” He advised partners to concentrate on three areas—value creation, wealth creation and updating themselves in education. Besides vendor-partner breakfast meetings and networking, the summit saw sessions on change management, leadership, and value creation through finance from management experts and financial consultants. Chand Narayan, Director, Value Inc Solutions, shared insights about organizational change management and an organization’s tipping points, and how to leverage them for success. “It becomes difficult to manage an organization when the number of people grows to more than 150. However, an organization’s value system, structure and culture can help it to sustain itself beyond that,” he said. According to Narayan, people tend to work together due to operating values such as aspiration, belongingness, recognition, and fear of failure or punishment.

In his session on value creation through finance, Manoj Sharma, Senior Vice President, Finance, K Raheja Group, gave food for thought to delegates to evaluate the financial status of their companies. Executives from various vendors including RSA, SonicWall, Quest, BlueCoat, Symantec, NetCore, Fortinet, Cyberoam, K7 Computing and Microsoft highlighted value creation as part of their strategy and the opportunity that exists for channel partners. Amitabh Jacob, Head, Channels, India & Saarc, RSA, with a presentation on value creation for customers, forced partners to ponder the future of their business. “With customer requirements changing rapidly, we are in sync with partners adopting new business models to help them survive and make more money. We are targeting verticals such as BFSI, telecom, IT/ITeS and government with our focused approach on the mid-market through a range of products and revamped partner programs.” Anand Natarajan, National Channel Manager, Quest Software, spoke about the opportunities for software partners with Quest. “We

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channel buzz

n Biren Shah, Chairman, ISODA, inaugurating the summit by lighting the lamp

n Shubhomoy Biswas, Country Director, SonicWall India, making his presentation

have been increasing our partner base substantially in the past 12 months. Apart from our wide range of products, we support our partners in terms of marketing and sales as well as in partner development and communication.” The summit concluded with Delhi-based Futuresoft Solutions winning the ISODA-MP Kini National Award for Business Excellence 2011 for outstanding business performance, practices and innovations in the software reselling and solutions business.

n Sudarshan Ranganathan, Vice President, ISODA, elaborating on the event’s agenda

ISODA has decided to introduce five new award categories at the next tech summit in 2013. The new categories will be Lifetime Achievement and four regional awards. These awards will be sponsored by ISODA members. The Lifetime Achievement award will be sponsored by Hyderabadbased Choice Solutions. The southern region award will be sponsored by Bengaluru-based Ample Technologies, northern region award by Comparex, eastern region by Kiosk Technologies, and western region

n Amitabh Jacob, Head, Channels, RSA India & Saarc, speaking at the summit

award by LDS Infotech. Through the Singapore summit, while every delegate networked and brainstormed to get his/her next big idea, many agreed that the thought process gave them the opportunity to focus on their core strengths and work as a team to scale higher peaks. “The next big idea is not a common idea that everyone holds on to,” concluded Ranganathan. “From the summit, each partner would have the opportunity to get his next big idea—and that was the purpose of the summit.” n

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new products Iomega network storage

omega has launched the StorCenter ix2 network storage, an advanced two-bay network storage device. It is available in multiple configurations and is designed specifically for content sharing, data protection, cloud computing and video surveillance applications at small businesses, work groups, remote offices and distributed enterprises. The product provides up to 6TB of storage and supports up to five IP camera installations. Users have the option to utilize the downloadable MindTree SecureMind video service management software. One camera license is included free of charge. The product is available at a price of `12,000 for the diskless model.

Belkin dual-band wireless router

elkin India has launched the N750 wireless router which includes five proprietary multibeam antennas and high-powered amplifiers to drive the wireless signal further. It is equipped with beamforming technology whereby the energy of the radio signal is focused toward the devices on the network instead of radiating in all directions. It uses the IEEE 3x3 standards to transmit data on three streams. The N750 also features hardware-based network address translation that enables lightningfast NAT speeds (up to 900 Mbps) without compromising the performance of the rest of the home network. The product is priced at `8,699, comes with a 1-year warranty, and is available with Belkin authorized distributors.

Zicom color video door phone

icom Systems has launched its 7 inch color video door phone with touchpad technology and TFT screen. The device supports two-way communication and unlocks the electric lock on recognizing the visitor. The LED mounted on the outdoor unit outside provides a clear and bright picture even in the dark. The device provides adjustable volume, contrast and brightness control along with eight melody ring tones to choose from. The 7 inch color video door phone handset with touchpad is available at `12,990, and the 7 inch color video door phone hands-free with touchpad is available at a price of `13,990. They come with 1-year warranty.

Digital Waves TabPlus Rio

igital Waves launched its new Android 2.3 tablet called TabPlus Rio. Powered with a 1 GHz Cortex A9 processor, and having a 7 inch HD five-point capacitive touch screen, it weighs 350 grams and measures 203x120x13 mm. It has memory of 512MB DDR2 and storage up to 32GB via Micro SD. It has a 4-side G-Sensor feature, 3G and wireless Internet connectivity. The product is priced at an MRP of `11,990, comes with a 1-year warranty, and is available with authorized distributors.

The products featured here have not undergone any benchmarking or testing. The trailers contain information provided by vendors and distributors. To feature your companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s products in CRN, send write-ups with photos to editor@ubmindia.com

Computer Reseller News

15/02/2012

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shadow ram GET

KR Naik: D-Link forced us to launch Digisol

Personal

n a candid admission, KR Naik, Chairman, Smartlink Network Systems, said that he was compelled by D-Link India to venture into the active networking business. In an interview with CRN Naik said, “When D-Link was demerged, I was entrusted to guide the company for a couple of years. However, within months, D-Link India’s new management appointed national distributors without my knowledge, bypassing the regional distribution (RD) model we had earlier.” As a result, many of the long-time RDs protested to Naik. “Most RDs have been selling D-Link since its launch in India. As the head of D-Link I had mentored them, and I owed an explanation to them.” It was at the behest of the RDs that Naik introduced active networking. Naik revealed that he was not happy with the de-merger. “I had an emotional attachment with the D-Link brand as I had invested a great deal personally in its success for over a decade. However, D-Link Chairman Ken Kao wanted Digilink to be a separate business entity from D-Link to grow both businesses independently. It is unfortunate that Kao expired from his longtime illness and was not present when the demerger announcement was made.” n

“I would like to meet Obama” Ausim Khan, Country Manager, Channel Business, Emerson Network, is focused on expanding the company’s reach. If not in the IT industry: I would have been a teacher. Biggest passion: Reading.

Ausim Khan

Behind the wheels: I drive an SX4. My dream vehicle is the Jaguar XJ for its power and class.

Gadgets I can’t live without: Panasonic video recorder. Weekends are for: My family. Favorite holiday destination: Mussoorie. That is where I went to school, and I have many fond memories associated with the place. Hate the most: Corruption. Favorite movie: Men of Honor. Favorite star: Aamir Khan. Role model: Lance Armstrong is a living legend. The steely resolve, the grit and the will power to overcome obstacles are a source of inspiration. Ultimate ambition: To start a school. Wildest thing I have ever done: Attended a three-day long camp in the wilderness. Thing I most want to do in life: I want to educate underprivileged children. If I became the PM: I would make public servants accountable. Celebrity I’d like to spend a day with: Aamir Khan. He is intelligent, has wonderful marketing and business skills, and is very passionate about his work. One person I would like to meet and why: Barack Obama. I would like to know how it feels being the President of the US, and how he handles the responsibilities and expectations. Deepest and darkest fear: Being misunderstood by my friends and well-wishers. n

Computer Reseller News

15/02/2012 www.crn.in

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