CRN 15th Feb 2013 issue by UBM India

contents

February 15, 2013 l Volume 2 Issue 08

Cover Story The demand for smarter education continues to rise, and with the central and state governments also committing to several initiatives, the segment is ripe for the picking

20 Cover Design : Deepjyoti Bhowmik

NEWS Analyses

Channel Chief

CommVault confident of 400 percent growth

Citrix pushes VDI-in-a-Box

PTC woos channels for IT engineering services

CommScope eyes 40 percent growth 10 Riverbed expands partner base

Sakri IT goes aggressive in 2013

READ More Opinion

Feedback

Channel Buzz

New Products

Shadow Ram

Get Personal

Computer Reseller News

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16 Market Focus Three tales about etailing Anticipating a future where consumers will increasingly buy online, ECS Biztech, Aditi Computers and Aldous Glare have set up their own Web stores

26 Role Model

Editorial 12

Anand Naik Managing Director, Sales, Symantec, India & Saarc, responds to partner allegations and shares his companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s channel strategy

Executing with Precision Mathew Chacko, V Murali and TG Ramesh, the three Founders of Chennai-based Precision Infomatic, share their successful journey so far, and their future growth strategies

Tech Focus Malware rising Trojans designed to steal account credentials and drain bank accounts comprise the bulk of malware infections, according to a new threat report

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starting line MUST

CommVault confident of 400 percent growth

Citrix pushes VDI-in-a-box

n Amit Singh

Read

Citrix is going aggressive for its VDI-in-a-box, and is looking to push the solution through the channels of IBM, Dell, Cisco and Wipro, its ecosystem partners. The company has already bundled the software with IBM’s System x, Dell’s PowerEdge, Cisco’s UCS C260 rack and HP’s ProLiant DL380p Gen 8 servers, and is in the process of signing up with Wipro Infotech. “We are working with our existing partners through Avnet. However, we want to expand our reach beyond the tier-1 cities and penetrate deeper into tier-2 and -3 cities. This would also provide a cross-selling opportunity for the partners of these vendors,” said Kaushal Velluri, Director, Channels & Alliances, Citrix. The company has deployed the solution for 50 SMB customers across different verticals, with major traction coming from the education and manufacturing segments. “Our pitch to the partners is that the solution is very simple to implement,” Velluri informed. “It can be Kaushal Velluri downloaded to any customer server to virtualize 50 nodes. We offer subscriptions and perpetual licensing. Partners can make a lot more revenue around it in the form of the hardware and software of other products.” The VDI-in-a-box is priced at `3,025 annually per concurrent user, or `8,800 for a perpetual license. There is an additional charge of `1,925 for software maintenance. Chennai-based Futurenet Technologies recently deployed VDI-in-a-box for 150 users at Sudharsan Engineering College in Tamil Nadu. According to Velluri, “The solution is software-led and eliminates 60 percent of the cost of the hardware required for a traditional VDI infrastructure by creating a grid of generic servers with direct-attached storage which is perfect for SMB environments. It also eliminates 80 percent of the patching required for desktops and lengthens PC refresh cycles.” n — Sonal Desai

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ommVault is increasing its focus on the channel and will introduce its new partner program in April 2013. The company is planning a 2-pronged growth strategy in 2013— expansion of its partner base and an entry into the SMB segment. “We are now changing our outlook from customer-centric to channel-centric. Earlier, we were directly approaching customers to show the power of our products and acquired a huge customer base. We added more than 100 new customers in the last two years, including many big customers. However, the focus is now on partners,” said Vikas Pradhan, Country Director, CommVault India. The company wants to add about 100 partners to its existing base of 75. “We are strengthening our channel focus with our new Channel Management Program that will concentrate on enablement, certification and MDF for our reseller partners. We are looking for partners who are customer-centric, have physical proximity to customers, and are able to offer value-added services,” he said. On the channel enablement front, the company has increased the number of partner managers. It added six new channel managers in 2012—three partner managers as well as three managers to drive pre-sales. Until last year CommVault had a total of three sales managers in three regions. In addition, the company will consolidate its enterprise customer base in 2013. “We are focused on enabling customers to utilize our products better. We will help, educate and train them to use the full capacity of our products. If we are able to motivate customers to get more out of our products they will remain with us for a longer period

“In the past two years we have grown our revenue by 3-4 times. We intend to continue this and plan to grow 4-fold in 2013” Vikas Pradhan Country Director CommVault India

of time,” Pradhan reasoned. CommVault is also planning to leverage its channel for expansion in the SMB segment. With its larger channel management team, the company is looking at a substantial increase in business from SMBs. Informed Pradhan, “In the past two years we have grown our India revenue by 3-4 times. We intend to continue this growth rate with our channel-led strategy and plan to grow 4-fold in 2013.” The company’s flagship offering is Simpana 9, a data and information management software that is a single platform for backup, recovery, archiving, de-duplication, snapshot integration and search across any application—physical, virtual or the cloud—from the data center to the edge. Explained Pradhan, “Our competition has different solutions for each of these applications, hence customers end up with multiple products performing similar tasks and many of them do not talk to each other. By contrast, we offer a consolidated platform for these applications.” Moreover, customers now want to back up unstructured data as well. Simpana enables them to analyze their data growth and provides periodic reports, Pradhan added. n

starting line MUST

PTC woos channels for IT engineering services

CommScope eyes 40 percent growth

n RAMDAS S

Read

Structured cabling major CommScope is expecting to grow its India business by more than 40 percent in 2013 despite the slowdown. To achieve this the company has planned several initiatives— local manufacture of products, the launch of its value brand Uniprise, and the expansion of its distribution-led business. The company will begin manufacturing structured cables and other passive components at its Goa plant. “We have a huge manufacturing facility in Goa with nearly 1,000 employees where we presently manufacture Andrew Corporation’s RF connectivity products. We are in the process of installing the machinery and plan to start local manufacturing by July 2013,” said Stephen Kowal, VP, Global Channel Organization, CommScope. According to Kowal, local manufacturing will boost the company’s distribution-led business. “Last year we introduced the distribution-enabled business which we call the ‘run-rate business,’ and saw a growth of 30 percent. Under this program our distributors stock-and-sell run-rate products Stephen Kowal sold to mid-market customers. Manufacturing locally will make availability and logistics more agile,” explained Kowal. Another element of the high-growth strategy is the launch of its value brand, Uniprise, which is expected in August 2013. “Systimax is recognized as a technology leader and is available at a priceperformance which is 30 percent higher than that of its nearest competitor. It’s the most-preferred brand among large enterprises with large complex networks. We are launching Uniprise to target SMBs which are price-conscious and don’t require all the features that Systimax has. Uniprise will allow us to compete with other brands in the market,” explained Kowal. CommScope also plans to appoint sub-distributors. Informed Kowal, “We are currently finalizing the sub-distribution program and will soon launch it. We plan to have at least one sub-distributor in each of the top 20 cities.” n — Dhaval Valia

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TC India is wooing channels to go after opportunities in IT services that are emerging in the engineering industry. The vendor has launched new products targeted at specific segments within engineering services. PTC has also readied a channel program with a number of schemes and incentives. It will offer training and MDF which can be as high as 5 percent of revenue for a channel partner. PTC India has been through a transition from being a mostly direct vendor to a channelfriendly company. “A few years back more than 80 percent of our business was direct, the rest was through a handful of partners. Now our direct business is less than 50 percent of our revenue, and more than 90 percent of our customers are managed by partners,” said Rafiq Somani, Country Sales Manager & Area Vice President, PTC India. According to Somani, of the company’s 3,000 customers in India only 200 are direct, and its future direction would see more growth in the indirect business. “Till a few years back our product range used to start at around `30 lakh. Today we have solutions starting at less than `2.5 lakh which makes it easier for an SMB company to acquire them.” However, channel expansion for the core products will be limited. At present PTC operates with around six resellers, one distributor who manages around 24 value-added resellers, and a few OEM relationships. “We are not eager to add numbers in the core CAD/CAM and product lifecyle management (PLM) tool business. We have good market coverage, and we don’t want to add new partners as it will impact the profitability of existing ones,” Somani added.

“Till a few years back our product range used to start at around `30 lakh. Today we have solutions starting at less than `2.5 lakh” Rafiq Somani

Country Sales Manager & AVP, PTC India

PTC instead wants to recruit new partners who can build value-added services for engineering industries such as manufacturing, automotive, design and electronics, especially since the partner community is struggling to stay profitable with mainstream IT products and services. According to Nasscom, the exports of IT engineering services were valued at more than $1 billion in 2012. Outsourced IT-enabled engineering services include PLM systems implementation, design automation and engineering calculations. Somani said that while no definite statistics exist for India, the IT engineering services market could be as large as `2,000 crore annually. “Few software services companies are focusing on domestic opportunities, so there’s a huge void. There’s also lots of scope for specialization. For instance, we already have a VAR who does not service any other requirement except engineering calculations. We also have the example of Adroit Technologies which after selling a license for revenue of `1 crore bagged revenue of `3 crore in terms of services from a single client.” n

edit opinion Volume 2, Issue 08

The unsaid truth dhaval valia

BM recently blacklisted few of its partners and senior managers for their alleged involvement in forging customer purchase orders to source products, and in many instances diverting the products into the open market. This isn’t the first such instance. Two years back a similar incident happened at Lenovo and some partners and managers were fired. Other IT vendors too have witnessed such malpractices. Interestingly, everyone in the IT ecosystem seems to know about such malpractices. Many partners, I spoke to while doing the IBM story, candidly admitted that they too have indulged in such practices at some point or the other. They also suggested that the action taken by IBM against its partners and employees is symbolic and momentary. Two of the blacklisted IBM partners said that they were told by channel managers to lie low for a couple of months till the ‘storm’ passes away and that they will eventually be activated as partners again. Similarly, the blacklisted partners of Lenovo are back in the system and doing roaring business. I don’t know if the above claims made by partners are true— but it simply suggests a cavalier mindset of sab chalta hai. Both partners and vendors are equally responsible for such malpractices. On one hand vendors are motivated by the greed to meet sales targets and earn incentives, partners have the greed to earn more rebates or make quick buck by selling special-pricing products—meant for customer projects—in the open market. I don’t think such malpractices will go away anytime soon. No matter what systems and processes are put in place, greed will bend them. As some partners told me, “Legally and ethically, such practices are wrong. But when you see other partners doing it, and doing it with the full knowledge of distributors and vendors, you think it is an industry practice. And that you might lose out if you don’t follow it.” If such malpractices need to be uprooted from the industry then both vendors and partners will have to act. Vendors will have to ensure that anyone subverting the system even once has to be punished severely and an example needs to be set. Partners too need to be clear that in case they find other partners following such malpractices, rather than following them, they should take it up with vendors and distributors. And more importantly, we all need to get rid of the mindset that bending rules is essential to run a successful business. n E-mail CRN Executive Editor Dhaval Valia at dhaval.valia@ubm.com 12

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edit opinion Remote presence is the future Srikanth RP

t is said that the real potential of a technology is achieved when organizations start looking at technologies beyond the traditional cost savings angle. UC is in a similar territory today. While recession initially powered the first wave of UC adoption, the next wave can totally transform sectors. As we explored this theme, we found that UC is powering some innovative concepts and approaches. Take the case of Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, which recently launched a cross-campus technology initiative using technologies like telepresence and high definition video conferencing. Besides empowering research collaboration and knowledge sharing among the faculty and students, the initiative allows professors to conduct courses from any of their campus locations. As seen in this case, UC can be a big game changer for education, and enable institutions to take big strides in reducing the teacher-student ratio. Similar examples can be seen in sectors like pharmaceuticals, healthcare, manufacturing, BFSI. India Inc is also taking notes from the huge success of social networking platforms. Many enterprises are mimicking the features of social networking websites, and have started building internal enterprise social networks to facilitate collaboration. As UC technologies mature, we can expect more such innovative examples. For instance, during the recent elections, Narendra Modi, CM, Gujarat, used 3D holographic projection technology to speak virtually at four cities simultaneously. Today, organizations typically use telepresence systems to communicate on a one-toone basis. In the future, we can expect CEOs to use 3D holographic projection technologies. And if you just had a smirk on your face thinking that technologies were no substitute for actually being in the office, think again! Today, a number of companies make telepresence robots that allow remote workers to not only see, hear and talk but also â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;walkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in remote locations. The device which shows the face of the remote worker on a large video screen can be controlled remotely and made to walk and follow co-workers using its wheels. While this is certainly ahead of its time, the possibilities are exciting. Doctors can monitor body movements of patients, while supervisors can navigate the shopfloor from a remote location. This is as close to teleporting that we can get today. We hope that you continue to explore new and innovative ways of collaborating using technology. n

Srikanth RP is the Editor of InformationWeek. Email him at srikanth.rp@ubm.com

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Distribution dynamics The cover story on changing distribution dynamics in the February 1, 2013 edition was timely. There is no doubt that the IT ecosystem is changing with emergence of cloud, tablets and online retail. Not just distributors but IT companies, retailers, solutions providers will have to adapt to the new market realities. We will have to change our outlook, business model and strategies in order to grow. Rajeev S Bengaluru

Tips for distribution business I read the tips provided by partners about improving distribution business and they were practical to implement. The tips about improving capital rotation by doing simple things were quite handy. Going

forward we will need to implement best practices in our organizations in order to grow. Anil Mahendran Delhi

IBM fires managers for malpractice The news story about IBM firing managers for malpractices was interestig. The sad part is that partners and sales executives resist daily reporting and auditing, and finally play with their jobs. I am proud to say HP has an 18 member audit team to tackle such issues. The only issue HP has is, it does not have partner data to be monitored on a daily basis. The data comes from the field sales people, and that may not be reliable. There are chances that it may be manipulated to earn incentives. Mitesh Gupta Mumbai

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

Advertiser Index Company name

Page No Web site

Sales Contact

Symantec-Norton

1 in.norton.com

in.norton.com/support

Symantec-Norton

2 in.norton.com

in.norton.com/support

Emerson

4 emersonnetworkpower.com

marketing.india@emerson.com

IBM

5 www.ibm.com

stgflash@in.ibm.com

NEC

7 in.nec.com

enquiries@necindia.in

Rashi

9 www.rptechindia.com

feedback@rptechindia.com

Seagate

11 www.seagate.com

www.seagate.com/goflexsatellite

CRN Online

ranabir.das@ubm.com

Compuage-Odyssey

34 www.compuageindia.com

odyssey@compuageindia.com

Western Digital

wdexpress.india@wdc.com

Compuage-Edifier

36 www.edifier-international.com

info@compuageindia.com

Quick Heal

harish.shukla@quickheal.co.in

Biz

38 www.indiaantivirus.com

sales@indiaantivirus.com

Epson

www.epson.co.in

pos@eid.epson.co.in

EMC

www.emc.com

ritesh.d@cdwindia.com.com

www.crn.in

www.westerndigital.com/support

info@quickheal.co.in

starting line Riverbed expands partner base n Ramdas S

“With the advent of cloud, virtualization and rich media applications, customers of all sizes are demanding application performance enhancing solutions”

iverbed India has expanded its partner network over the past six months by appointing around 80 new partners. The company has also revamped its partner programs and introduced several initiatives on solutions specialization. “With the advent of cloud, virtualization and rich media applications, customers of all sizes are demanding application performance enhancing solutions, and our customer base is no more limited to large enterprises or service providers. Hence, it is imperative we sign more partners, as we want to increase coverage across the country,” said Anil Batra, Managing Director, Riverbed India. Riverbed presently has 300 customers in India but Batra said that the numbers will go up significantly especially among SMB and mid-market customers. “We want to first build our capacity,

Anil Batra

Managing Director Riverbed India

and hence we have signed on new partners who are currently being trained and readied.” Riverbed is offering specializations across domains including application acceleration and delivery, virtualization and cloud, infrastructure optimization, data protection and disaster recovery, and WAN optimization.

“The biggest reason why channels must align with us is that we are the market leader with 52.5 percent share in this segment, and also have the widest partnerships with leading OEMs like Juniper, VMware, Microsoft, Amazon,” he added. Batra said that any mid-market customer who has moved significant part of its enterprise applications to the cloud is a potential Riverbed customer. “Many Indian customers have told us that they achieved ROI within six months using our solutions. To tap VDI opportunities, we have partnered with VMware to make available VMware View.” Riverbed has recently launched the 64-bit versions of its Whitewater appliances, an onsite device for data backup. “The product range provides online data protection by immediately replicating backup data to a storage cloud. We have made significant improvements including Active Directory integration to the new editions.” he added. n

Sakri IT goes aggressive in 2013 n Abhijeet Mukherjee

“In the next fiscal we want to garner `250 crore for which we have an aggressive business plan and market strategy”

akri IT Solutions, exclusive national distributor of Kaspersky Lab’s consumer antivirus products, is embarking on an aggressive growth strategy and is projecting a growth rate of 60 percent in the next fiscal. “In the current fiscal, we expect 25 percent growth to close at `150 crore, against `120 crore in FY201112. However, in the next fiscal we want to garner `250 crore for which we have an aggressive business plan and market strategy,” informed Ravi Lakshman K, CEO, Sakri IT Solutions. Part of the growth will come from Kaspersky business and the rest from product portfolio enhancement. Of the `150 crore expected in this fiscal, `130 crore will be contributed by Kaspersky business, while the company anticipates Cisco home networking products and Airtel data-

Ravi Lakshman K CEO Sakri IT Solutions

card distribution to add the rest. Sakri is looking at strengthening channel base for Kaspersky business in 2013. “We have 25 active Platinum partners, 300 Gold partners and close to 5,500 Silver partners, which we would like to increase by 30 per-

cent this year,” detailed Lakshman. He said that the company expects Kaspersky business to grow more than 50 percent next fiscal. “In addition, we have been chosen to represent Airtel in other regions and hence expect healthy growth in this business as well. Further, we plan to add UTM devices to our portfolio by April 2013.” Moreover, the company is planning massive geographical expansion in 2013 which includes opening 10 new offices in addition to the existing 9. “The focus this year will be more on the north, east and north eastern states apart from penetrating deeper in the south and west, where we have a stronghold. We will also double our sales force from 90 to 180 during the next 6 months to support our market expansion and penetration,” remarked Lakshman. n

Computer Reseller News

15/02/2013

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channel chief “We want partners to trust us” More in the news for its employee attrition than its products, Symantec has received a lot of flak from its partners. Anand Naik, MD, Sales, Symantec India, clears the air in an interview with Sonal Desai Take us through Symantec’s growth journey over the last year. In Q22012 results announced in October 2012, Steve Bennett, Chairman, President & CEO, Symantec, announced that we delivered solid results during the first quarter of a significant transition for the company. And that continues. While focused on running the company, the team is also hard at work building a strategy and operational plan to deliver greater than 5 percent organic growth and 30 percent operating margins on a sustainable basis within the next 2-3 years. Symantec intends to double its growth in India over the next 3-4 years, and we have aligned this journey with our macro goals since the last three quarters.

What have you done to align the growth of Symantec India with that of global operations? We want to help customers solve their information security and information management challenges. We have started some initiatives such as Connect With Customers whereby we want to reach out to the top 200 or 250 enterprise customers who had dropped out. Our approach will be to create a customer experience, which is in sync with what Symantec does globally, and not solution-selling. The second is our Channel Connect initiative. With this we want to reach out to more tier-2 cities and expand 5-fold before the beginning of the next fiscal. The third big area is to have a channel strategy, and communication which is well-articulated and wellpresented to partners. Vertical-wise, our investments in the government and defense sectors will increase. We are also onboarding partners and enabling them to participate in central and state government projects as well as defense projects, and preparing them to participate in core solutions and architecting.

“We will reach out to partners who are unhappy. A conversation can solve any issue. We want partners to trust us and engage with us as they did before” 16

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A constant feedback from your partners is that Symantec has the best technology and products, but that your people management is very poor. Attrition of good managers continues. In FY2012-13 we managed to control attrition. Amitabh Jacob, who joined us as Director, Channels, is consolidating the channel. He and his team have articulated the channel strategy, and now there is a lot of clarity and consistency in our communication to channel partners. Similarly, the tech team, which has been with us for years, has started coordinating with partners for solutions architecting. For the sales team we have outlined, and are rolling out various programs which will provide value to customers. Attrition is no longer a concern for me.

Perception is that Symantec has lost its channel focus. Loyal partners have moved, or are in the process of moving to competition. The numbers and our engagement with partners tell a different story. We are working with them consistently instead of on an ad hoc basis, as was done earlier. The consistency in messaging has also happened because all partners across the country receive the same message at the same time and not on a regional basis. We have gone into detailed account planning with our partners, and this has brought in not only clarity for customers but also opportunities in new solutions and newer avenues where partners can enter. Our enterprise VARs tell us that their profitability has grown with Symantec. However, we will take this as an input and reach out to partners who are unhappy. A conversation can solve any issue. We want partners to trust us and engage with us as they did before.

Apart from security, Symantec has been pushing storage, cloud and DR. How have you fared in these technology domains? In data protection, archival and data recovery, we have 40 percent marketshare globally. We are present in all the Fortune 500 companies globally, and in India we have a strong presence in all the top and second-tier names in the market.

channel chief In terms of information security we have solutions in GRC, information protection, authentication, DLP, encryption, archival, endpoint, server and data center protection. Mobility is yet another segment the company’s betting big on. Mobility is changing the way customers do business. The security of information transacted on mobile devices, as well as the applications that are used for validating identities, are critical enablers of this trend. Partners are in a position to help customers overcome the challenges BYOD presents by offering a complete set of solutions that provide organizations with the high level of supervision needed when dealing with employee-owned devices. Our mobility channel specialization program will cover the full Symantec mobile management suite and will provide partners with access to opportunity registration, expert resources, enablement programs and accreditations in a multi-tier model.

What are the key take-aways from the Partner Engage program? The majority of Symantec’s business comes from the channel. Our vision is to give Symantec partners, first, opportunities for predictable and profitable business growth; second, relevant market-leading solutions to secure and manage their customers’ information; and third, skills and tools to deliver superior value to their customers. We are realizing this vision by helping our partners to differentiate their business by offering the world’s leading brand of security and management solutions—a

“Amitabh Jacob and his team have articulated the channel strategy, and now there is a lot of clarity and consistency in our communication to channel partners” combined strength across storage, security, management and data protection.

What is your outlook for the overall IT market? What are you channel plans for 2013? I am very positive about 2013. The potential for technology adoption in India continues to be promising, especially as smaller and mid-sized businesses, and those in emerging cities, begin to understand how IT helps the business. Trends such as cyber security, cloud, BYOD, information explosion and data protection are getting due attention at the CIO level. We are working closely with customers and partners to solve their IT problems, and our optimism is based on the positive feedback we have been getting from them. We plan to expand our geo coverage in a big way in 2013. We had a physical presence in 7-8 cities, which we increased to another 8 cities in the last three quarters. We are looking at expanding 5-fold with solution sets for targeted partners. We rolled out solutions specialization program about two years back, and it has been a success. We are encouraging more partners in Class B and C cities to take the SMB specialization because it is a tried and tested model. 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 Goldmine or pipe dream? While it’s inevitable that the world will shift to the IPv6 protocol over the next few years, opinion is divided on the nature and size of the opportunity n RAMDAS S

Indian enterprises, and that by next year we will see ollowing the global exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, serious activity around IPv6 migration,” says Sachin there has been talk around the migration of Rao, CEO, Archon Consulting Systems, Bengaluru. network infrastructure from IPv4 to IPv6. “Unlike the cloud or any other new technology, it’s Gartner estimates that enterprises will spend 2-6 safe to say that since a transition to IPv6 is percent of their annual budgets on IPv6 migration inevitable there are bound to be and implementation strategies. A market research real opportunities.” report sponsored by A10 Not everyone is so Networks puts the total optimistic, and there is often global opportunity at a comparison with the Y2K $17.3 billion by 2015. opportunity which turned out to While there are no be largely hype. Others believe in a more specific market studies muted approach. “This, like any other industry for India, some expect standard transition, will bring in chaos, and that IPv6 migrations will the chaos is bound to bring in opportunities,” drive a market worth `2,000 crore annually comments Amandeep Singh Dang, Country over the next two years. Manager, Networking, Dell India. IPv6 solves the problem of IPv4 address depletion One bottleneck has been budget by offering a virtually limitless pool of IP addresses. cuts. “Today, ‘migration,’ ‘upgrading’ IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, and there are 4.3 billion and ‘changes’ are not welcome words 232 unique IP addresses. By contrast, IPv6 uses 128-bit in enterprises as they are all directly proportionate to addresses and supports 2128 devices. cost, hence most enterprises are playing this threat in a Since mid-2011 there has been no fresh allotment of low key,” remarks Shibu Paul, Country National Sales IPv4 addresses globally to any service provider. Over Manager, Array Networks. the past 18 months the resulting scarcity has forced global telcos and ISPs to increase the cost of IPv4 address rentals by almost three times. Mushrooming opportunities In India, the Department Says Purushottam Kaushik, of Telecom (DoT) has set 5 tips to leverage IPv6 opportunity Senior VP, Cisco India, March 2014 as the deadline “We have been working for all central and state with the service providers; Amandeep Singh Dang, Country Manager, government departments a majority of them have Networking, Dell India, gives a few tips for IPv6 readiness. The transitioned while others for solution providers National IPv6 Deployment are transitioning. Most of Build skills: Augment your skills in IPv6; Roadmap mandates that all the national SIs are ready. there are lots of training and certification ISPs with more than 10,000 We are now in the process avenues. subscribers must be ready to of getting our top tier-2 Thought leadership: Position your company as a thought roll out IPv6 services. DoT channel partners ready.” leader. The first wave of IPv6 will be a follow-me wave, has also set up an IPv6 taskThe immediate hence it’s imperative for a solution provider to register with force to help government opportunities are presented one of the IPv6 initiatives. organizations make the by the government sector. Specialize: The partner needs to look at the entire IPv6 transition. “A mandate from DoT opportunity spectrum and select what is best aligned to its Though IPv6 promises a has been received by all core competencies. lot, and can resolve several major departments in the challenges and limitations government sector, as well Strategize: Maintain a top-down (networking core to edge) associated with the current as by PSUs, and many or IPv6 island (part IPv6 segmental) strategy when engaging standard, channels and have budgets, so this is a customer. All short-term strategies to dethrone IPv4 will be vendors are divided on one market where action in vain. the nature and size of the is imminent,” points out Sectors to chase: Solution providers should prioritize opportunity. “We believe S Sriram, CEO, iValue efforts in the government, PSU, mobile, ecommerce, BFSI, that in 2013 we will start Infosolutions. ITeS, manufacturing and then SMB sectors. This is how the seeing the first set of The BFSI segment is adoption is expected. demands coming from another market that is

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special focus A comparison: IPv4 vs IPv6 Features

IPv4

IPv6

Advantage of IPv6

Address space

4.3 billion

2128

Approximately 7,00,000 times the number of IPv4 addresses

Configuration

Manual, often complex

Plug & play

Increased efficiency, less opex

Network reconfiguration

Manual and labor-intensive

Automatic

Less opex

Security

IPSec for data packet protection originally designed for IPv6

IPSec

More granular hence more secure

Anycast support

Unofficially supported

Standard

Can be easily adapted for futuristic devices

Cost of IP addresses

With shortages looming, costs are expected to shoot up

With more IP addresses costs are likely to go down

More cost-effective for long-term planning

Source: Brocade Communications

likely to open up during the next fiscal. “The National Payment Corporation of India has asked its 82 members to ensure that new purchases are IPv6-compliant, hence it’s just a question of time before big channel opportunities are realized,” says Sajan Paul, Marketing Director, Juniper Networks. The payment card industry has offered several projects which are partner-driven. Informs Satheesh Nair, CTO, Stickman Consulting, Bengaluru, “We have completed three assessments for leading ecommerce portals in the country.” Adds Dang, “With mobile payment gateways globally moving to the 128-bit standard, it’s imperative that any organization which would like to accept payments through mobile phones make the transition.”

Obstacles to migration A worrying factor for many enterprises remains the cost of transitioning to the new standard. However, according to Paul of Array, “Most devices acquired over the past few years may be fully IPv6-compliant, or can be made so by firmware upgrades, so the cost may not

be all that high.” Security threats are another reason for enterprises to put off a decision. Says Vishak Raman, Senior Regional Director, Fortinet, India & Saarc, “Most security threats can be mitigated by having a roadmap to replace legacy hardware on the network side.” Unnikrishnan KP, Director, Marketing, Brocade APAC, sees potential in three phases. “The immediate opportunity is for assessment, auditing and consulting. Then would be the rolling out of networks by replacing old hardware or doing firmware upgrades. This would be followed by auditing services, post roll-out security assessments, and application testing for IPv6 readiness.” Project costs vary. Typically, assessment studies are being billed at between `2 lakh and `20 lakh by channels, while migration projects are valued at between `55 lakh and `4.4 crore by vendors. Concludes Dang, “The migration opportunities will span over a decade. There are limitless possibilities for IT services and consulting in a world where IPv6 and IPv4 will co-exist. n

Shell Networks: Making the most of IPv6 migration

yderabad-based Shell Networks identified IPv6 migration as an opportunity almost 18 months back. The first step was to take help from Cisco, its main principal, on positioning the company for opportunities. “We were quick to realize that among all opportunities the biggest in the first two years would be the assessment and auditing prior to migration,” says AL Srinath, CEO, Shell. Since the government was the first sector to take an interest in IPv6, Shell started working with DoT to get its engineers trained in DoT’s guidelines on IPv6 migration. “Our first real opportunity came when AL Srinath an AP state department asked for a proposal for assessment of IPv6 migration in May 2012.” One of the challenges was that the department had, over the years, procured products from multiple vendors, some of them not existing as independent entities any longer. Over a period of

three months the Shell team conducted numerous tests to measure the effectiveness of all Internetfacing devices, and came up with a list of devices to be replaced and those which needed just a firmware upgrade. The whole project was billed at less than `2 crore. According to Srinath, the biggest challenge for IPv6 migration is the lack of professionals who understand the new protocol. “We are presently focusing on training and building a team of experts who understand IPv6 in detail.” Srinath says that in government business a company cannot be both a consultant and a supplier because a government project is not awarded to a vendor who consults on the project. He adds that during 2013 almost 10 percent of Shell’s revenue is expected from IPv6 consulting. n

We were quick to realize that among all opportunities the biggest in the first two years would be the assessment and auditing prior to migration

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cover story

The demand for smarter education continues to rise, and with the central and state governments also committing to several initiatives, the segment is ripe for the picking n amit singh

ccording to India Ratings, a Fitch Group company, with close to 13 lakh educational institutes in the country, the financial size of the Indian education sector is likely to increase to `6,02,410 crore by FY2015-16 due to the expected continuing demand for quality education. The sector is estimated at `3,41,180 crore in FY2012-13. Forrester believes that ICT spending by the Indian education sector will increase by around 13 percent in 2013, and that 30 percent of the total spending will be on new IT initiatives. “Although hardware will continue to dominate IT spending in the education sector, the growth of hardware will be lower than that of software and services,” predicts Manish Bahl, Vice President and

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Country Manager, Forrester India. From a combined revenue and growth perspective, the software and services market categories—packaged and industry software, security solutions, systems integration and IT technical consulting—represent particularly lucrative segments for ICT players. Emerging solutions such as analytics, mobility, cloud and social media will lead growth, but their base of revenue will remain smaller compared to core market segments like hardware.

Private institutions Competition has started to play a role at all levels of private education. According to Bahl, “Private educational institutes are

cover story taking an interest in learning and adopting enterprise best practices and exploring how they can be leveraged in the education sector. One large private university in India is working with a technology vendor to develop its IT strategy based on corporate sector best practices.” Private schools in India account for nearly 40 percent of total student enrollments. These schools are trying to create a contemporary brand image and are receptive to bringing in engaging learning experiences for students. “The adoption of smart classrooms is on the rise,” says Sunil Sharma, VP, Sales & Operations, Cyberoam, India & Saarc. “Some schools, knowing that today’s kids are techsavvy, have also encouraged the use of iPads by students.” Besides, Bahl says, schools are investing in classroom technologies such as interactive management, collaborative environments, mobility and cloud. They are also implementing solutions such as CRM, ERP and BI.

Public education The twelfth Five Year Plan has an outlay of `1,84,740 crore. The share of higher education in the total budgetary allocation is 11.89 percent, while the share of technical education is 4.78 percent. According to Forrester, public education will continue to be heavily skewed toward building the basic IT infrastructure with greater demand for hardware. “For instance, the government’s Aakash-2 low-cost tablet initiative received about $146 million in the FY201213 budget. It is estimated that in the coming years the government will need 220 million more tablets—in addition to the initial order for five million tablets—to meet its educational objectives,” says Bahl. For tier-2 partners, government initiatives offer a big opportunity to fulfill the hardware requirements. Notes Sharma, “Supported by the World Bank, the Technical Education Quality Improvement Project (TEQIP), now in its second phase, is focused on applicable research, training faculty for effective teaching, strengthening governance and improving management systems. ICT will have a significant stake in this transformation.” Moreover, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan, a Government of India initiative, is providing funds for setting-up computing and IT facilities comprising computers, LAN and Wi-Fi-based Internet access. In Maharashtra alone there are about 60,000 government-aided schools with (what was at the start) an opportunity for more than three lakh PCs. “Although about 2.1 lakh PCs have already been put in place, the opportunity for 90,000 PCs still exists,” informs Yogesh Godbole, Director, Ace Brain Systems & Software. Godbole says that 2,500 schools in urban

“Although hardware will continue to dominate IT spending in the education sector, the growth of hardware will be lower than that of software and services”

Maharashtra have already implemented basic smart class solutions; 5,000 more will be covered in 2013. He also says that the government schools which have achieved basic levels of computerization will eventually graduate to smart class solutions.

Miles to go In terms of Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), India lags behind the worldwide average as well as emerging countries like Brazil and China. As per a recent joint report from Ernst & Young and FICCI, insufficient infrastructure remains a key constraint in terms of access to, equity of, and quality of higher education in India. In 2011, 14.6 million students enrolled in higher education institutes in India. By 2020, 40 million students will have to be enrolled if the GER target of 30 percent has to be met. This implies additional capacity of over 25 million seats within the rest of the decade. Comments Sharma, “High-speed broadband connectivity-based ICT education can be a true enabler and solve the challenge to a fair extent. This presents a massive opportunity for partners who can provide comprehensive expertise in building networking infrastructure.”

Smart classes Smart classes have seen rapid uptake in private schools. Several state governments are also taking up initiatives to enable smart classes. The Himachal Pradesh Government has begun a smart class initiative in some schools. Some state governments are also investing in similar projects. Says Mirza Adil Jahangir, General Manager, Marketing, Smart Technologies, India/South Asia, “Earlier, computers, content and projection devices were the major focus in educational institutions, but now interactive displays are in high demand. Futuresource Consulting, in its recent report for Q42012, estimated that India would adopt more than 1,00,000 interactive boards by 2016. With our partners we have installed more than 15,000 interactive whiteboards. Our category share for the quarter stood at 56 percent.” “While a smart class solution may cost from `1 lakh to `2 lakh per classroom, the decisive factor is the content, hence it’s necessary to partner with a content provider offering high-grade educational content,” notes Sudhir Kumar, Director, Digital Info Media, a Delhi-based AV integrator. He says that compared to national players such as Educomp, HCL Learning and NIIT, tier-2 partners can leverage their lower operational costs to offer economical prices. “Private schools are quite price-sensitive, and we

“In Maharashtra alone, there is a demand for 90,000 PCs in 18,000 government schools. Those with basic computerization will move to smart class solutions”

Manish Bahl

Yogesh Godbole

VP & Country Manager, Forrester India

Director, Ace Brain Systems and Software

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cover story CASE STUDY: Connoisseur Electronics

Countering the slowdown

onnoisseur Electronics identified education as a core vertical to bet on after the slowdown in 2009. “Following the slowdown we were badly hit in enterprise buying and saw a couple of years of negative growth. This forced us to rethink. We have been an Intel partner for long, and used Intel’s ODM partnership network to source products for the education segment,” says RP Harish Kumar, CEO, Connoisseur. The company identified three major areas within the education segment to develop product strategies: PC-based teaching solutions, specialized educational solutions, and power electronics. In 2010 the system builder rolled out its first generation of Classmate PCs, a rugged tablet-based netbook with an optional touch-screen. “With every generation of Intel processors we have been upgrading the Classmate PCs, and till date 50 percent of our education business is through Classmate PCs,” reveals Kumar. Connoisseur relies on the Intel Educational Series for content. To boost educational initiatives, Intel has partnered with a number of organizations such as the Khan Academy, the British Council and a number of Indian content providers so that Intel partners can leverage on the content. Specialized educational solutions account for nearly 45 RP Harish Kumar percent of the company’s revenue. “We have several branded products such as interactive podiums, digital whiteboards and digital markers, and now we have access to nearly 20 manufacturers for sourcing electronic equipment for elearning,” Kumar adds. Other areas which the company is focusing on are power electronics and eco-friendly products that currently account for less than 5 percent of the revenue. Says Kumar, “We have bagged a number of orders for Classmate PCs from north-eastern states through government tenders. One of the challenges in upcountry markets is the lack of quality power which prompted us to source solar power solutions. We also have eco-friendly battery charging stations for schools so that students can keep working on the netbooks throughout the school hours.” Education currently accounts for 40 percent of the `29 crore revenue of the company. n

One of the challenges in upcountry markets is the lack of quality power which prompted us to source solar power solutions. We also have battery charging stations for schools win many projects based on our pricing which is about 30-35 percent lower than those of the national players.”

Software solutions Software solutions, including security, packaged and industry software, represent a lucrative opportunity for

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“Earlier projection devices were the major focus but now interactive displays are in high demand. India is projected to adopt more than 1,00,000 interactive boards” Mirza Adil Jahangir

GM, Marketing, Smart Technologies

software partners. The opportunity is wider for valueadded partners. Institutions are looking for customized ERP and CRM to map student behavior, generate progress reports, identify caliber for a specialty, and train students accordingly. “Overseas education consultants are also looking at customized ERP and CRM to identify prospective students. They are compiling information, merging the data of students with similar interests, and consolidating their databases,” informs Devesh Aggarwal, CEO, Compusoft. The company implemented Microsoft CRM for the Furtados School of Music, which ties up with schools in and around Mumbai. “Furtados goes school-to-school, identifies students who have a talent for music, and trains them. We customized the faculty and student management modules of their CRM, and gradually changed it from customer relationship management to anything relationship management (xRM),” says Aggarwal. Similarly, there is a large opportunity in academic software solutions. Kolkata-based Duckback Information System supplied and implemented 35 user licenses of Catia, a multi-platform CAD/CAM/CAE academic software suite, valued at `50 lakh, for an engineering college in the north-east. “There is a vast opportunity in scientific software because there are very few players in the field and the requirement is high among technical institutes. With solutions in instrumentation, designing, statistics, mechanical engineering and civil engineering, we expect a revenue share of 15 percent from educational institutes in the current fiscal,” says Asis Chaudhuri, CEO, Duckback.

Cloud solutions For educational institutes, the cloud computing trend is evolving into a model for data storage and exchange. “Academic players are majorly interested in the data storage and exchange model of cloud computing,” says V Ravishankar, CEO & Co-founder, Nevales Networks. According to Rajesh Shetty, VP, Cisco, India & Saarc, “Some schools have transferred complete student history database to the cloud, and outsourced management and maintenance to a partner. This frees the administration to better utilize the resources in a manner consistent with the purpose of the institution—to educate the students.” “We help students to get their certificates and marksheets stored on the cloud for free. Educational institutes can easily set up FTP to transfer notes, exam papers, study material, references and case studies to students. An online cloud submission site can also be created where students can upload their assignments for submission,” says Vivek Bhalavat, CEO, SafeCloud. The company has implemented cloud solutions for Government Engineering

cover story “A smart class solution may cost from `1 lakh-`2 lakh per classroom, but it’s also necessary to partner with a good content provider”

CASE STUDY: Futurenet Technologies

How one college reduced PC purchases

Sudhir Kumar

Director, Digital Info Media

College, Modasa; Nirmal Institute of Aeronautical Engineering, Varanasi; and SN College, Chhota Udepur. In one of the largest cloud initiatives, Microsoft and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have deployed Microsoft Live@edu at more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes in India through Live@ edu partners. Live@edu is a hosted communication and collaboration service which offers email, Microsoft Office Web apps, instant messaging and storage. AICTE’s more than seven million students and nearly 5,00,000 faculty members have access to these applications.

Lab on cloud Desktop virtualization solutions have also caught on with educational institutes. “We have sold desktop virtualization and lab on cloud solutions to many colleges. We are converting labs into virtual environments, and students are able to access the lab from their hostel rooms. They just have to log into the data center, do their assignment, and log-off,” explains Kaushal Velluri, Director, Channels & Alliances, Citrix. The initial pull is coming from private institutes, engineering colleges and some international schools. For a project worth `17 lakh, Chennai-based Futurenet Technologies implemented 150 licenses of VDI-in-a-Box for a large engineering college. “Initially, the college was scouting for new PCs, but with the demo and PoC, we turned around the deal into desktop virtualization for their computer lab,” states L Ashok, MD, Futurenet.

Virtual classes Virtual universities and virtual classrooms are getting quite popular among higher education institutions including those offering distance learning programs. Delhi-based Compton Computers has implemented a university management system project worth `10 crore for the Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak. The project includes eight virtual classrooms, online examinations, an online library, hostel management and an alumni portal. “The virtual classrooms can be attended by over 4,300 students in a single session. Currently, close to 2.85 lakh students and 112 professors are using the system,” informs Sandeep Vahi, Director, Compton. Adds Shetty, “The Shankar Mahadevan Academy uses Webex to teach music in virtual classrooms. Cisco, along with the Government of Karnataka, has launched a remote education pilot project using network collaboration tools delivered over video out of a highly secure cloud.”

Mobility Partners echo that educational institutions have taken

large Chennai-based engineering college was scouting for IT partners to replace 150 PCs which were up for refresh in September 2012. L Ashok, MD, Futurenet Technologies, learned about the opportunity and met the owners to explain the benefits of VDI— and turned the deal around. “I spoke with the owners, demoed the VDI-in-a-Box solution to them, ran a PoC, and the college sanctioned 150 perpetual licenses for VDI-in-a-Box for their computer lab in November 2012.” For the project, worth `17 lakh, Futurenet converted 100 old PCs into thin clients and installed 50 new thin clients. “The primary challenge was that they had a lot of old hardware which was up for refresh. The computer lab was also spending a lot on UPS. The first benefit that the college witnessed was a drastic reduction in their power bill. We have currently sized 10 desktops per core, and provided 1012 GB of storage space per student. Overall, the college is saving `8,000 per seat, including savings on power. The college now requires UPS only for the servers which have also been virtualized to do with two UPSs,” explains Ashok. Ashok says the college has 5,000 students and 1,200 computers. It now wants to deploy VDI-in-a-Box throughout L Ashok the campus in a phased manner. The reason the college chose the solution was because of its attractive pricing. Remarks Ashok, “VDI-in-a-Box is chiefly targeted at the education segment, and therefore the pricing is also more economical than those of other solutions.” Futurenet has trained the administrators onsite, and provided a manual to manage the site. The company is also remotely managing the site. Says Ashok, “Over a period of time all the PCs in the college will be on VDI. The number of PC purchases will come down by at least 50 percent.” n

The college is saving `8,000 per seat, including savings on power. It now requires UPS only for the servers which have been virtualized to do with two UPSs interest in buying tablets on an experimental basis. Says George Thomas, CEO, Aldous Glare, “There are many serious enquiries from schools for buying tablets. Since content is available from various service providers, tablets would be a better option than notebooks and netbooks.” In fact many intended PC deals are getting converted into tablet deals. According to Mihir Chahwala, Director, Innovative Telecom & Softwares, “A large school in Surat, which wanted to buy notebooks for students, eventually ended up buying 450 tablets bundled with applications and online tests.” Tablets are being adopted in schools as a medium for an interactive and compelling learning experience. “In

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cover story addition, the applications on the tablets offer insights about the student’s learning abilities and the efficacy of the content which gives teachers the opportunity to continuously refine the learning process,” explains Rupesh Shah, CEO & Co-founder, InOpen Technologies, an online content provider. Bengaluru-based Seshadripuram First Grade College is setting an example of how mobile technology can be used in education. The college distributes low-cost handsets to students after disabling services such as gaming. The system allows the college to create and administer tests, track results, and evaluate students.

Collaboration projects There have been several projects in collaboration, connecting universities both for peer-to-peer learning and elearning. Some of the notable projects have been at Visvesvarya Technological University in Karnataka, Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University (JNTU) in AP and Annamalai University in TN. Says AL Srinath, CEO, Shell Networks, which has bagged several projects from JNTU, “Apart from UNGC and other central government funds, there are a lot

of private initiatives for collaborative learning within universities and colleges. An example is a collaborative cloud-based elearning solution from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, which is now made available to other institutions. Availability of such Indian university-specific content help us to readily set up platforms for content.” There is a lot of interest from the government for using video and collaboration technologies that provide an interactive teaching environment for rural education. Explains Shetty, “With the video you can have a qualified teacher in a central location providing lectures to students spread across the villages. We have seen this play out in Chhindwara as well as in Raichur where Cisco has partnered with local authorities.” BITS-Pilani, along with BITSAA, its global alumni association, has launched a $5 million cross-campus technology initiative to connect 1,000+ faculty and students across its three campuses; it comprises telepresence, high-definition video conferencing and live streaming technologies.

Security solutions Schools and colleges are becoming concerned about their

INTERVIEW: Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, TCS iON

“Educational institutes prefer managed services” a candidate’s performance. iON has a strong focus on the education sector. What do you offer? What trends are you witnessing with regard to the iON manages the complete education lifecycle cloud? including campus management, learning The cloud is becoming a de facto medium for management and assessments. Our solutions are bundled differently for colleges, universities, schools IT, at least in the education segment. There are several reasons for this. It reduces the cost of IT and vocational institutes. The campus management is a complete infrastructure and brings updated solutions and features to the campus. Its greatest strength, education ERP. It manages students’ online however, lies in its ability to connect multiple entities applications, admission in batches, fees, facilities and communities online. such as library and hostel, academics including Educational institutes prefer managed services. curriculum, the time-table and faculty. The solution is bundled with administrative applications such as staff V Ramaswamy They would like the system to be a platform that payroll, HRMS and financial accounting. manages the lifecycle without requiring much staff On the learning management side we offer a involvement. For example, the process of admission can be automated through online applications. platform, Professional Virtual Community, where the students can learn on social media. This is a learning management system where content and curriculum can be organized in communities. What kind of institutes are adopting the cloud? Cloud adoption is prevalent among private universities, technical Faculty from the industry can be asked to participate in the facilitation programs. Students can add content (like a wiki) for colleges, multi-campus schools and vocational institutes. We have signed up about a hundred institutes. Our customers have the community and faculty to moderate. We also have a robust assessment engine which allows been acquired through a joint effort of the iON marketing team and the sales teams of our Cloud Service Partners (CSPs). CSPs institutes to hold regular exams and preparatory tests online. The have been involved in every sale. platform can generate a question paper based on pre-defined parameters with adjustable difficulty levels. The exams can Do you have a special pricing policy for education? be made proctoring-free with each student getting a different question paper in sequence and answer choices. It has the We have a standard price which is charged per student per month. The rate decreases marginally in slabs as the number of robustness to take a hundred thousand exams in a single session. students increases. n The results are computed in minutes with personalized analysis of

iON manages the complete education lifecycle. Our solutions are bundled differently for colleges, universities, schools and vocational institutes 24

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cover story “There is a vast opportunity in scientific software. With solutions in engineering we expect 15 percent revenue share from education in the current fiscal”

“We are offering edFusion solution in public schools in 17 states in the US. Building on our success, we will offer this solution to governments in India”

Asis Chaudhuri

KV Jagannath

CEO, Duckback Information System

Managing Director, Choice Solutions

physical security needs and have started investing in CCTV, biometric authentication and other surveillance solutions. “About 90-95 percent of private schools go for some kind of security surveillance solutions to deal with safety issues. About 60 percent of them opt for analog and the remaining for IP surveillance,” states Kumar. IP surveillance is preferred by engineering colleges, universities and some high-end private schools which have networking infrastructure in place. “Because IP solutions require skilled resources for trouble-shooting and are almost twice as expensive as analog solutions, most of the institutes opt for analog,” he adds. Many colleges are deploying biometric systems to automate the recording of staff attendance. Meanwhile, the department of education in Maharashtra is in the process of implementing a biometric solution in all government schools to monitor the mid-day meal scheme across the state. As part of this project Ace Brain has completed a pilot worth `60 crore in about 6,000 schools. “The total opportunity is worth `570 crore. We will implement the solution in about 40,800 schools in three years. The remaining schools will be addressed by three other solution providers,” informs Godbole.

Wireless networking Free Wi-Fi is a given at many institutions nowadays, and students are no longer restricted to certain locations for studying. In a recent implementation, New Delhi-based Proactive Data Systems completed a wireless networking project worth `1.2 crore for Shiv Nadar University, Dadri, Gautam Budh Nagar. “In the recent past we have also implemented wireless solutions for various NITs and IITs,” informs Rajiv Kumar, CEO, Proactive. Looking at the opportunity in the space, many vendors have started focusing on the education sector with their Wi-Fi solutions. NEC has plans to provide wired and wireless solutions to the K-12 segment. Says Abhilesh Guleria, Country Head, Multimedia Product Group & IT Platform Business, NEC India, “We have provided wireless connectivity to more than 200 nodes in a school in the north. We have also developed an application which can be downloaded from the Apple apps store and which can instantly share content with a larger audience using wireless networking in real-time.”

Campus management There is an increasing interest among higher education institutions for student-campus interaction analytics, student services management, integrated communications management, and career and placement management.

“We have solutions that help higher education institutions analyze transactional data and receive and manage feedback from students and others. We are offering institutions a platform which helps campuses to manage the entire student lifecycle,” informs Raj Mruthyunjayappa, MD, APAC & EMEA, Talisma. Choice Solutions is planning to offer its edFusion solution which provides analytics on student performance management, teacher education and competency, and gap analysis. “We are already offering this solution in public schools across 17 states of the US through Choice Solutions Inc. Building on our success there we will offer this solution to state governments in India as well,” says KV Jagannath, MD, Choice.

Apprehensions about growth The education sector grew at a CAGR of 16.5 percent from FY2005-06 to FY2012-13. However, many partners reported de-growth or flat growth in their education business. Vahi says that the mushrooming of various MBA and technical institutes and their subsequent closure has majorly contributed to this scenario. “Upcoming MBA institutes were readily offering notebooks to students and were setting up IT infrastructure as well. With the closure of many of these institutes that opportunity has come down and also spurred other institutes to keep their investments low.” Compton reported a mere 5 percent contribution from education in the last year against 20 percent in the previous year. The free notebook schemes offered by state governments are also affecting the business. “Since HP has bagged the UP government contract to supply 15 lakh notebooks, we expect a major downturn in state government projects because the government is likely to siphon off money from its IT and non-IT budgets to execute this deal. A similar situation may happen in other states too,” fumes Ajit Mital, CEO, Acme Digitek. Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director, Commercial Business, Lenovo, differs. “These deals will actually help to spread PC knowledge. This is a completely new market and will not affect the current opportunities. In a way, it will expand the market.” “There are bound to be some bumps along the road considering the macro-economic factors which are applicable to all sectors,” argues Chaudhuri. “Growth rates in the education space are still healthy considering the vast unaddressed opportunities and the requirements for customized and value-added solutions.” n — With inputs from Sonal Desai and Ramdas S

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market focus

Three tales

about etailing

If you can’t beat them, join them. Anticipating a future where consumers will increasingly buy online, ECS Biztech, Aditi Computers and Aldous Glare have set up their own Web stores n abhijeet mukherjee

nline retail has grown exponentially in India. As per industry estimates, ecommerce in India grew at 47 percent CAGR from $4.5 billion in 2010 to $9.7 billion by 2012-end. It will grow 3-fold to $30.8 billion by the end of 2015. In all this the share of IT products is very small— currently at less than 2 percent of the `51,410 crore revenue and amounting to `1,000 crore.

The question now looming over IT channel partners is whether online retailing will eat into their business, and if so, how much and how fast. While the threat perception is growing in the minds of IT sub-distributors and retailers, some partners, rather than playing victims, have decided to jump on the etail bandwagon. Here are the stories of three partners who have done so.

Aditi Computers: Slow but steady growth

RK Singh

elhi-based Aditi Computers’ online store, www. aditicomputers.com, was launched in January 2012. RK Singh, CEO, Aditi Computers, explains his reasons for entering etailing. “From 2009-11 we were partners for Microsoft India’s online store for north India where we experienced the growing culture of online buying among consumers. We saw monthly volumes of `8 lakh-10 lakh in online sales. When Microsoft discontinued this program we thought of starting our own online store to leverage this opportunity.” The company launched its online store with an initial

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investment of `15 lakh which included the cost of site designing, domain registration and hosting for 10 years. “In the last 12 months we have garnered `16 lakh from online sales. This year we are confident of more than doubling the growth to `36 lakh,” says Singh. This may be a small number for the `36 crore company, but Singh is excited. “The online store has given us access to customers outside Delhi. In fact most of our orders so far have come from south India.” At present Aditi sells Microsoft, Adobe and Norton products. Informs Singh, “Products costing less than `5,000 sell faster. These include licenses for Windows OS, MS Office and antivirus. Indian consumers are yet to come to terms with high-value online purchases, but we do see buyers of Visual Studio, InDesign or Photoshop on

In the last 12 months we have garnered `16 lakh from online sales. This year we are confident of more than doubling the growth to `36 lakh

rare occasions.” Singh says that because Aditi is an authorized software subdistributor it has better inventory management and lower logistics costs. As a result, it is able to offer rates which are 5-12 percent lower than those offered by others. Singh’s focus will now be on converting window-shoppers to actual buyers. “Currently we are able to convert 1-2 percent of our 150 unique visitors per day; we would like to increase both figures substantially.” Continues Singh, “We spend only on EDMs and Google Adsense to promote our website, and spent `1 lakh last year. In 2013, we plan to introduce more products and schemes, and expect to increase our visitor count by 50 percent.” Aditi plans to add more antivirus products and also low-priced tablets and phablets. “If we execute our plans and strategies well, I don’t see why we can’t achieve annual online revenue of at least `5 crore within the next five years,” says Singh. “We expect to break even in the next three years.” n

market focus ECS Biztech: Time to grow exponentially

u Raoul D’So

CS Biztech, the Ahmedabadbased sub-distributor, has been successful in IT etailing with online revenue of `10 crore in 2012. For the past six years the company had an etail store, www. emalldirect. com, which was an extension of its flagship retail store E-Mall. Then in January 2012, ECS launched a new and independent online store called www.bluOshn.com. “The blue ocean strategy suggests that an organization should create new demand in an uncontested market space and hence

we named the new store bluOshn,” explains Raoul D’Souza, GM, Ecommerce Business, ECS. The `260 crore ECS has 50 stores across India and revenue from retail stood at `60 crore in FY2011-12. “Our strong presence in retail has helped with customer referrals and fetches us 500 visitors per day. Our conversion rate is between 2-3 percent due to our competitive pricing which is 5-8 percent lower than that of others,” explains D’Souza. Young professionals, BPO executives and students from tier1 and -2 cities (such as Vijaywada, Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneshwar) form the buyer base which gets to choose from 8,000 products; 80 percent of the revenue comes

We are ready to scale up the online biz exponentially in coming years. In 2013, we expect 3-fold increase to `30 crore from online—30 percent of expected retail revenues

from notebooks, desktops and external storage products. “Notebooks from `25,000-35,000 are in big demand on the online store, in addition to tablets ranging from `15,000-20,000,” says D’Souza. ECS saved money by using Infibeam’s Build a Bazaar platform instead of investing in developing a site from scratch. Cash on Delivery (CoD) is the preferred payment option for bluOshn’s customers. “CoD boosts consumer confidence, and 60 percent of our customers prefer CoD to online payment,” D’Souza reveals. For delivery, the company has tied up with FedEx and Aramex because they have countrywide reach. ECS promotes its online store through its existing retail stores, Facebook, and product listings on Junglee.com. In 2013, ECS expects `30 crore from online store—30 percent of its projected retail revenues overall. “We are ready to scale up the online model exponentially in the coming years.” n

Aldous Glare: Starting small but aiming high

mas

o George Th

he Kochi-based `245 crore Aldous Glare Trade & Export (AGTE) is bullish about etail and launched its online store www.ezyby.com in November 2012 under its subsidiary ITnet Infocom which has three stores in Kerala and annual revenue of `15 crore. Though it’s still early days, AGTE is upbeat about the new venture. In the first two months the online store has generated close to `10 lakh in sales, and George

We aspire to become a national distributor. Our plan is to bring new category products to India. We felt that online retail may be in sync with our plans

discount offers to promote the online store. Our buyers are mainly students and young professionals, and the popular product categories are smartphones, tablets and accessories. The average value of an order ranges from `4,500-5,000.” For customers, who aren’t comfortable paying online, AGTE has offered the option to pay-and-pickup from 20 locations mentioned on the site. “These are locations of our retail partners, dealers and our own ITnet stores. Thus, we are creating demand for our partners too,” says Thomas. AGTE is presently focused on in-campus activities, bulk SMSs and direct mailers to the databases of its retail partners. “We also do a lot of direct marketing in IT parks,” Thomas adds. AGTE currently has 2,000 different products, but plans to increase the number to 5,000 within the next quarter. Thomas believes that the online venture will easily become a `30 crore business in the next 3 years. n

Computer Reseller News

Thomas, CEO, AGTE, expects to clock a monthly average of `10 lakh per month from March 2013 onward. Explaining the rationale for the online venture, Thomas says, “As a company we aspire to become a national distributor and open branches across India. Our plan is to bring new products to India and distribute them. We felt that online retail may be in sync with our plans.” The online store has begun attracting 500 visitors every day, the conversion rate is close to three per 100 visitors. “So far most online buyers have been from cities in the south where we have a strong presence; these include Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Bengaluru where we are running attractive

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role model Executing with Precision

Mathew Chacko, V Murali and TG Ramesh, the three Founders of Chennai-based Precision Infomatic, have executed their vision and strategy to precision by creating an organization that is recognized amongst India’s best system integrators. They share their journey so far, and future growth strategies n Sonal Desai

aving graduated from the Government College of Engineering, Madras University in 1987, Mathew Chacko, Founder Director, Precision Infomatic, joined HCL Infosystems as a service engineer and spent 9 years with the company. “My first assignment as service engineer was to maintain PCs and servers for Madura Coats in 1988. I was also instrumental in signing on Standard Fireworks and converting Loyal Textile mills—a Wipro customer, to HCL,” he recalls. Around 1994, HCL launched HCL Frontline to focus on the emerging SME market. “To address initial hiccups Mathew Chacko and improve operations, I was transferred to Mumbai in 1995. A year after, HCL decided to go completely indirect and appointed channel partners to take care of sales and services,” he says.

The beginning It was over a cup of tea at a local tea shop that Chacko discussed the prospect of starting business with his friends V Murali and TG Ramesh, who were Head, Sales, and Head, Accounts at HCL, respectively. Precision Infomatic came into being on July 1, 1996 in Chennai, with Ramesh as Director, Finance, Accounting and Backend Operations; Murali as Director, Sales, and Chacko, Founder Director, Technology. The partners borrowed loans to start the venture. “We decided to invest our profits back into the business. HCL also distributed its 18 named accounts equally amongst the three partners; we got six accounts in south India, and repaid the loans in two years.”

The journey In the beginning, Precision leveraged its relationship with HCL, which had a joint venture with HP. The turning point arrived when HP bought over HCL stock in the Indian entity, and launched the enterprise channels. “The direct partnership with HP increased our reach in market,

“MS LAR business can be a profit builder if the licensing policies are linked with services. If LARs function as plain vanilla VARs, they will find it difficult to sustain” 28

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account management and services, as also our topline. HP saw value in associating with us and made us their Premier Partner,” Chacko says. In 1998, Precision implemented a turnkey project involving HP servers, PCs and services for Chennai-based Software Solutions, an IT services firm. “The customer was expanding. It wanted 200 servers and 4,000 nodes for its offices and franchises in tier-1 and -2 cities across the country,” he says. “We clocked `15 crore from the project, which was implemented in phases over 2 years.” With networking boom in the country, a focused services approach was the next logical step; hence Precision launched its services arm, TechServe. The company signed on networking vendors such as Cisco, 3Com, Nortel, Molex, etc to complement its HP portfolio. Thereafter large orders started to come Precision’s way. It deployed 3,000 Cisco core switches and components of passive network for Software Solutions for `1.5 crore. It offered technology consulting for Allsec Technologies as they set up a 2,000 seat BPO on Nortel platform, for `2 crore. It also completed its first ever network infrastructure audit project for Bengaluru-based Apar Technologies (now Ness Technologies). Says Murali, “TechServe was growing at a rate of 20-30 percent since inception, and was contributing 15 percent to the overall business. Precision grew 40 percent over the next 4 years to clock revenue of `18 crore in FY2000-01.” Over the next 2 years the company set up offices across major cities witnessing an average growth of 30 percent. “We acquired ACP Computers in 2004. It was a `5 crore company with customers in manufacturing, banking and services. We acquired some good customers like the UTI Bank (now Axis), FirstSource, etc. With the skilled manpower and our guidance, the western region contributed 25 percent in the first year itself. We clocked `50 crore in FY2005-06,” Chacko says. In 2006, the company ventured in biometrics. “We realized that biometrics had large growth potential especially in the wake of the security concerns. We tied up with 3M for the equipment and developed attendance and access management solutions, and got them whetted by IIT Madras,” he says. He adds that Precision also invested in educating

Role model

2012

2011 2006

2004

2000

1999

1998

1996

financial inclusion initiative; these customers and prospects on the MILESTONES devices allowed the bank to accept maturity and benefits of biometric thumb-prints of people in rural areas technologies. to open no-frills bank accounts. Precision deployed solutions at Formed Precision Infomatic “Besides, we increased focus Reliance, TCS, SBI, Indian Bank. The with V Murali and TG Ramesh on products of big brands such major breakthrough came with UID. as Microsoft, Cisco and HP. We For UID, it sold its solutions Appointed as HP Premier work very closely with them and to the enrolment agencies such as Partner have dedicated resources to align Karvy, Wipro, IL&FS, etc. Says with their business plans. We Chacko, “We bundled our services Started Precision TechServe, invested in pre-sales and account as UID is a high uptime project. So executed a `15 crore project management teams, which is if any one component (notebook, for Software Solutions helping healthy topline revenues,” printer or webcam) is down even for Murali claims. a day, it results in a revenue loss of Started geographic expansion; A big contract for Precision in `2,000. We have created a service opened offices in metros 2012, was deployment of HP server desk with multi-lingual skills. For and storage systems for Vodafone hardware-related problems, our Acquired ACP Computers in for `15 crore. It also won `5 crore service engineers visit onsite.” Mumbai; acquired customers tender to deploy HP storage across Precision’s consistent growth ECIL offices in the country. The and business strategies impressed like UTI and FirstSource implementation which started InfoDrive Software, a Dubai-based toward end of December 2012 went IT service provider that purchased a Acquired ISO 9001 and 27001 live in January 2013. 51 percent stake in 2007 through a certifications Precision worked with Karvy structured payout model. “However, to implement data center solutions we bought-back the stake due to Was appointed Microsoft LAR; across 20 districts of north India certain market developments in clocked `280 crore for the state’s National Population 2010,” Chacko shares. Register (NPR) project. Pressed by stiff competition and Deployed HP servers and Another major development at increased concentration on services storage at Vodafone for Precision was its appointment as Mibusiness, Precision decided to goproject worth `15 crore crosoft LAR. While some of its peers slow on the transactional business were grappling with the large sum in 2008. they had to deposit with Microsoft, Murali saw this as an Reasons Chacko, “Dell had a direct model, and was opportunity for further growth. very aggressive on pricing. We decided to go slow on He explains, “We are trying to understand the business transaction business and focus on system integration differently. Partners who sell 500 licenses of Exchange are and solutions. PCs were a part of the fulfillment. The looking at services opportunities. It can be a good profit contribution of transactions reduced to 25-30 percent.” builder if the licensing policies are linked with services. If LARs continue to function as plain vanilla VARs, they Current business will find it difficult to sustain.” Precision Infomatic grew 39 percent to `280.6 crore in FY2011-12 against `202.6 crore in FY2010-11. Chacko explains, “With a clear focus on solutions and Future plans services, we re-modeled our organization and created Targeting 19 percent growth in FY2012-13, the company separate divisions for products, technology, value-added is aiming `330 crore topline and revenue of `1,000 crore services and transactional services. in the next three to five years. The year 2011 saw Precision gaining more ground. It “Hardware reselling should contribute `150 crore, clocked `100 crore for supply of biometric solutions along services and solutions around `160 crore, and about `15 with HP printers and notebooks to UIDAI, and the project crore should come from software business,” says Chacko. contributed 45 percent to its overall revenues. Meanwhile, the company is planning to set up a Last year, Precision set up a data center which has a cacompany-wide CRM solution that spans all functions, pacity to scale up to 8,000 virtual servers and 3 petabytes that’s expected to roll out later this year. of storage with an idea to offer RIM and hosting services. It installed 15,000 biometric devices at SBI for its On a personal note Chacko considers Shiv Nadar, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Nandan Nilekani as his role models for their achievements “We acquired ACP Computers, a `5 crore and contribution to society. He is fond of fiction, and books on management and company, in 2004. It had customers in philosophy. He loves to play badminton and cricket, and manufacturing & BFSI. This helped us grab was a part of the victorious Madras University team in 1985-86, and plays in the TN Cricket League. n several new customers in western India”

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tech focus Something for everyone The Office 2013 and Office 365 presents businesses and consumers with at least 15 licensing options between them. Annual prices range from $10 for students to $264 for workers n Edward J Correia

ith its release this year of Office 2013 and Office 365, Microsoft presents businesses and consumers with at least 15 licensing options between them, including 10 versions of its online contender to Google Apps. We have been using the free version of Google Apps in the CRN Test Center for years and have had little need for Microsoft Office, 365 or otherwise or the paid version of Google Apps, for that matter. It is clear that Redmond departments don’t talk to each other, at least not to share good ideas. For example, when it released System Center 2012 last year, Microsoft reduced the tool’s licensing options from more than a 100 to just two. That was one good idea that didn’t make it to Office. Another was the way it simplifies private clouds. So, the CRN Test Center simplifies it for you. To help resellers understand changes to Microsoft’s productivity suites, we analyzed all the options and grouped them into byte-size chunks.

Office 365 online push The 10 versions of Office 365 range from the $4-per-userper-month Exchange Online hosted email service to the $22-per-user-per-month full-on Office 2010 desktop suite for five devices. The latter includes online document storage and editing, hosted email and voice processing, PC-to-PC calling, configurable spam and virus protection, instant messaging and unlimited email storage for as many as 50,000 users. All Office 365 plans include community support, virus and spam filtering and work with desktop versions of Office 2007 and 2010 for Windows, and Office 2008 and 2011 for Mac OS X. All but the $6 plan for small business include configurable antispam filtering, 24/7 phone support,

For individuals looking to buy stand-alone software, the choices start at $139.99 for Office Home and Student 2013, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote 30

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Active Directory synchronization and unlimited updates.

Office 2013 for one For individuals looking to buy stand-alone software, the choices start at $139.99 for Office Home and Student 2013, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. For $219.99, Microsoft adds Outlook to the Office Home and Business 2013 suite. The Office Professional 2013 suite adds Publisher and Access, and costs $399.99. Office 2013 integrates with SkyDrive for online file storage, but not editing. Standalone packages include a single-user license for installation on one PC plus six months of download and installation support. Editing Office documents stored in SkyDrive requires the Office Web Apps browser add-on, which also helps facilitate sharing by emailing or posting links on social sites. For college students, Microsoft makes an offer too good to refuse. For the cash-strapped collegiate crowd, there’s Office 365 University, a four-year subscription to all the Office modules installable on two PCs or Macs with Office for Mac 2011 plus certain Windows Phone devices. Scholars get the whole lot for $79.99—that is $10 per user per year when fully deployed.

File, storage capacities All of Microsoft’s subscription-based Office 365 versions include 25 GB of SkyDrive storage, and all but the $4 and $8 versions can edit files online. People using Office 2013 with a free SkyDrive account get 7 GB storage but must switch to a browser to edit those documents online. For attaching files to email, Office subscribers are capped at 25 MB, the same limit imposed by AOL, Excite, Google, Yahoo and others.

Mac update Microsoft has also released Office for Mac 2011 update 14.3, fixing numerous PowerPoint defects as well as a time-related issue involving invitations from nonExchange calendars. The update requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 and applies to five versions of Office for Mac, including Standard, Home and Business, Home and Student, and Academic. The update is also good for anyone who wants to use Office for Mac 2011 as one of the five desktop installs they get with Office 365 Home Premium or the two with Office 365 University. n

tech focus

Malware rising

Trojans designed to steal account credentials and drain bank accounts comprise the bulk of malware infections, according to a new threat report n Robert Westervelt

here were 27 million new strains of malware created in 2012, according to an analysis of 2012 threats and vulnerabilities conducted by Spanish company Panda Labs. The company’s latest threat report said it is detecting about 74,000 strains of malware daily, most of which are generated by financially motivated cybercriminals. The company said it currently maintains a total of 125 million classified malware samples. The goal of most cybercriminal attack campaigns is to steal account credentials, harvesting them to gain access to sensitive data, conduct identity fraud or raid bank accounts.

Trojans dominate threat rankings Trojans accounted for most of the new threats. Three out of every four new malware strains created were Trojans, accounting for more than 76 percent of all malware in circulation. Trojans are designed to avoid detection by antivirus and mainly to steal data. Most Trojans are financially driven, such as Zeus and SpyEye Trojans, which are designed to drain bank accounts. A much smaller percentage is designed for targeted attacks used in cyber espionage activities, aimed at infecting a system and remaining stealthy for extended periods of time. These Trojans are at the core of Intellectual Property theft.

Weaponized Android applications Panda said it also saw Trojans exclusively designed to steal data from Android mobile devices in 2012. Cybercriminals are tricking users into installing Trojans by disguising them as legitimate mobile apps. The malicious Android apps are mainly on thirdparty Android stores based in China. A Trojan disguised as an app to purchase mobile apps from a device infected 600 million people, mainly China Mobile subscribers. It was delivered on nine unofficial app stores.

Flashback highlights Mac threats The PC remains the biggest target for cybercriminals, but the Flashback Trojan infected up to 600,000 Mac computers in 2012. It was a small percentage of Apple’s install base, but infections illustrated that Macs are not

The PC remains the biggest malware target, but the Flashback Trojan which infected upto 600,000 Macs in 2012, illustrated that Macs are not immune to threats

immune to threats. The Trojan targeted a browser-based Java vulnerability, taking advantage of Apple’s slow patching cycle. The infections prompted Oracle to begin phasing out support of Java on its systems. Java 7 is not supported on Snow Leopard.

Malware-infected PCs decline worldwide The proportion of infected computers worldwide decreased significantly from 38.49 percent in 2011 to 31.98 percent in 2012. The decrease could be due, in part, to the significant rise in use of smartphones and tablets. Driving much of the malware are nearly 30 automated attack toolkits available to cybercriminals on popular hacking forums. Panda and other security firms say BlackHole has become the most popular exploit toolkit. It is frequently rented out to cybercriminals and receives regular updates with new exploits.

Asia has most malware infections Not surprisingly, computer systems in China had the most malware infections, with more than 50 percent of the world’s infected PCs, followed by South Korea and Taiwan. Nine of the 10 least infected countries are in Europe, with the only exception being Canada. The country with the fewest infections is Sweden, followed by Switzerland and Norway. n

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channel buzz n Partners

during an Intel presentation at the Xplore & Evolve event in Surat

n Gautam Advani, EVP & Global Head, Mobility, HCL, and brand ambassador Unmukt Chand, with the HCL ME Tab

HCL appoints Unmukt Chand as brand ambassador

n Neoteric

showcasing products at the Xperience Live event in Bengaluru

Neoteric organizes Intel meet Neoteric Infomatique recently held Xplore & Evolve, and Xperience Live events for Intel. While Xplore & Evolve was held in Coimbatore and Surat, Xperience Live was organized in Bengaluru. The events demonstrated how partners can benefit from the latest Intel Core processor platforms. Rakesh Kaul, National Head, Sales, Neoteric, said, “Through this platform, we have been enabling our partners to explore new technologies and products, helping their businesses evolve through interaction with vendor representatives.” The Xperience Live event in Bengaluru was aimed at strengthening sales activation for Intel products. n

Comguard and WinMagic promote data encryption Value-added distributor, Comguard Networks and WinMagic jointly held end-customer events in Delhi and Bengaluru aimed at raising awareness about the importance of data n Ajay Singh Chauhan, encryption. Group CEO, Comguard The event provided Networks customers a platform to exchange knowledge, interact and develop a better understanding about encryption. Ajay Singh Chauhan, Group CEO, Comguard Networks, said, “Seeing the huge opportunity in India, we plan to double our existing base of 50 partners. We will also add more products in the security domain.” n

HCL Infosystems recently signed Unmukt Chand as the brand ambassador for its ME Tab range and unveiled the latest range of ME tablets. Unmukt as a part of this engagement will endorse HCL’s mobility products and will feature in upcoming marketing campaigns. Unmukt was the skipper of the under-19 Indian cricket team that won the ICC World Cup 2012. “We are delighted to have Unmukt as brand ambassador. Like Unmukt, the ME Tab brand is young, focussed and raring to go,” said Gautam Advani, Executive Vice President & Global Head, Mobility Business Unit, HCL Infosystems. n

Digilink awards Rashi Digilink awarded Rashi Peripherals as Best New Distributor at a recently held Schneider Elite Distributor event in Bengaluru. Rajesh Goenka, VP, Sales and Marketing, Rashi Peripherals, said, “Being awarded and appreciated always feels great but this award is special as it comes from our newly formed alliance with Digilink and this will motivate us to work better and in an efficient way for the future.” Rashi has been present in active networking business, but lacked a stronghold with the passive products, which it filled with Digilink products. n

n Rajesh Goenka, VP, Sales and Marketing, Rashi, receiving the Digilink Best Distributor award from Manish Pant, MD, Luminous

To feature your company’s events in CRN, send write-ups with photographs to editor@ubmindia.com 32

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new products Fujitsu Lifebook ultrabook

Asus VivoBook ultrabook

sus has launched its ultrabook, the VivoBook S550CM, which is powered by a third-generation Intel Core i5 processor. It comes with 4 GB DDR3, a 750 GB HDD and a 24 GB SSD. The ultrabook features a 15.6-inch HD LCD display and a HD webcam. The model comes with free 32 GB of WebStorage cloud space for three years. It supports USB 3.0, HDMI and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and comes with a 4-cell 3,000 mAh battery. The Windows 8-based ultrabook also boasts of Asus Super Hybrid Engine II technology that offers instant wake-up and hibernate modes. The ultrabook is priced at `57,999 and carries a 1-year warranty. The device is available with Asus authorized distributors. n

Dell Inspiron ultrabook

he Dell Inspiron 15z is powered by an Intel Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor. It comes with 4 GB DDR3 combined with an optional nVIDIA GeForce GT630M 2 GB DDR3 graphics card, 500 GB HDD and 32 GB SSD. It features a 15.6 inch screen with LED-backlit touch display. The Windows 8-based device features a built-in optical drive, Waves MaxxAudio 4.0 audio processing and Skull candy speakers. The device is 21 mm thick and weighs 2.16 kg. The product is priced at an MRP of `41,990 (exclusive of taxes) and carries a 1-year warranty. It is available with Dell authorized distributors. n

ujitsu has launched its ultrabook, Lifebook AH552/ SL, which is powered by Intel third-generation processors. It comes with 4 GB DDR3 expandable to 16 GB and 320 GB SSD. The ultrabook has a 15.6-inch display. The device comes with multiple port options which include USB 3.0 that lets you charge mobile phones and media devices even when the system is switched off. It supports WLAN and Bluetooth connectivity, and has an HDMI port and card

reader slot in addition to a webcam. The device is 25.4 mm thick and weighs 2.2 kg. The ultrabookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s price starts at `61,900; it carries a 1-year warranty, and is available with Fujitsu authorized distributors. n

Digisol 8 port Ethernet switch

igisol has introduced the DG-FS1008PF/E, an 8 port fast Ethernet unmanaged switch. The switch offers an 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PoE port complaint with IEEE 802.3af. The switch uses store-and-forward packet switching technology which ensures reliable data transfer. It supports automatic MDI/MDI-X detection which eliminates the need for cross-over cables or dedicated uplink ports.

The auto-negotiation and auto-sensing features of the switch eliminate the need to manually configure the switch for optimum performance. The switch is priced at `8,800 and carries a 1-year warranty. It is available with Digisol authorized distributors. n

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

15/02/2013

www.crn.in

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shadow ram Four resellers fleece subdistributors by up to `10 crore

llegedly, four resellers in Bengaluru are absconding after fleecing sub-distributors of anywhere between `6-10 crore. Affected sub-distributors have lodged police cases. According to sources, the four resellers bought the goods worth crores from sub-distributors and allegedly disappeared without paying. Interestingly, some goods have been traced to Flipkart.com, which suggests that the unpaid products procured by the alleged culprits were sold to the online retailer. In the past, there have been a few similar episodes where resellers owing crores in the market, disappeared after selling their products to online retailers. Many believe that such situations can be addressed in the future if vendors bring online retailers under regular distribution to ensure MOP isn’t compromised and that they are held accountable for buying from unscrupulous operators. n

GET

Personal

“I would not be a puppet PM” Joy Ghosh,VP, Sales and Marketing, Edaxis Systems, India, has more than 13 years of experience in the IT industry selling interactive educational projectors. Edaxis sells the Boxlight brand of projectors in India through SIs.

Joy Ghosh

If not in the IT industry: I would have done research in agriculture and food engineering.

Biggest Passion: My work. Behind the wheels: Honda City Gadgets I can’t live without: My Blackberry Bold. Weekends are for: To set goals, and start something new. Favorite holiday destination: Andaman Islands and Las Vegas. Hate the most: Undisciplined and dishonest people. Favorite Movie: 3 Idiots. Favorite Stars: Although I do not watch many movies now, I was very fond of Sylvester Stallone and Julia Roberts as a child. Role Model: I do not aspire to become anyone else. Ultimate ambition: Recognition as a brand maker. Wildest thing I have ever done: Somethings should never be disclosed. Thing I most want to do in life: Buy and drive Golden Ferrari. If I became the PM: I would not be a puppet. Celebrity I would like to spend a day with: Vidya Balan. One person I would like to meet and why: None. Deepest and darkest fear: Death. n

Computer Reseller News

15/02/2013 www.crn.in

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