ARN July 2018

JULY 2018 | Vol. 23 No. 5

IN THIS ISSUE ADAM WILKINSON ALEX GAMBOTTO ANDREW ROBERTS BRAD FREEMAN CLINTON WATKIS

IoT

INNOVATORS Fujitsu: Bringing IoT to life

CRAIG HUMPHREYS DAVID MILNE DAVYD NORRIS DR ALEX BAZIN JEREMY DEUTSCH KYLE PAGE MARCELO SCALIA MATT WYNN-JONES MICHAEL DYSON MICHAEL WARNOCK MICHELE BUCKLEY NATHAN KNIGHT NEVILLE JAMES NICK BROWNE NIKOLAS ROBSON PETER ASHTON PETER GATT PHIL JONES RHYS EVANS ROB MERKWITZA ROBERT IRONMONGER RONNIE ALTIT SEAN MURPHY STEPHEN HEMSWORTH TARA RIDLEY

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Contents

July 2018 VOLUME 23_ISSUE 05

Interviews 12

Introducing the early IoT pacesetters As IoT hype turns into market realities, Julia Talevski charts the rise of Australia’s leading innovators.

Maximising IoT Iot adoption in Australia has changed in the past five years due to

Analysis 04

Innovating through IoT

for the channel, yet choice creates

Dismantling the data centre to drive customer value

complexity in a market overflowing

This ARN Roundtable outlined the

with connected devices — James

blueprint of the modern-day data

Henderson cuts through the numbers

centre, assessing infrastructure

to assess the state of play in Australia.

opportunities and ongoing channel

IoT represents an ocean of opportunity

technology advancements and lower price tags on solutions — Samira Sarraf outlines how MOQdigital is monetising IoT through every angle.

Innovating from within to commercialise IoT IoT, in whatever form, is a concept catching the imagination of partners, vendors and customers across Australia.

challenges.

Driving IoT adoption through distribution If customers are going to embrace the Internet of Things en masse, then partners must be well-equipped

to capitalise — James Henderson outlines how Dicker Data is driving change through the channel.

Building the blocks for hybrid cloud growth through the channel As the early rush to the cloud settles into considered deployments, a hybrid state of adoption is emerging.

Columns

Capital Gains: Omni IT

Channel Chat with Cisco

Start-up Spotlight

Channel Confidential

arnnet.com.au July 2018

02 Editorial AD INDEX

BRINGING IoT TO LIFE

APC ARROW ECS CYBER POWER DATTO DELL EMC DICKER DATA GLUH GOOGLE HPE

59 15, 37 21 IBC CW IFC 47 17 33

HUAWEI I-LAN INTERACTIVE LENOVO NETAPP RHIPE SOPHOS STM TOSHIBA

11 51 23 57 55 7 29 39 3

PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER susan searle susan_searle@idg.com.au

EDITORIAL editorial director: james henderson james_henderson@idg.com.au

head of news: samira sarraf

ook at the numbers: 400 million. 1.5 billion. 1.75 billion. 8.4 billion. 20.4 billion. Attempting to calculate how many connections are available through the Internet of Things (IoT) is akin to counting grains of sand, an impossible endeavour guaranteed to provide little, if any, insight. Yet vendors — and industry experts — continue to wax lyrical about statistics that stopped being comprehensible at least five years ago. The channel doesn’t care about piein-the-sky projections, nor do they value information that cannot be translated into real life. Yes, the opportunity is enormous but is that the best the market can conjure up? Will that be the uninspiring billboard slogan designed to drum up industry excitement? The collective can, and should, do much better to raise the stakes in an emerging — and lucrative — industry. Partners want case studies and deployments, local examples of providers executing on the promise of IoT. Our cover story this month features Fujitsu, a global giant bringing IoT to life across Australia through bite-sized projects and pockets of innovation. In a bid to commercialise IoT, the technology provider is leveraging an internal innovation fund to endorse new ideas, create proof of concepts and trial new technologies. “It’s hard to develop innovative solutions in such a big company, that’s just a reality,” acknowledged Brad Freeman, vice president of business application services at Fujitsu.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

“Through establishing an innovation fund we’re encouraging good ideas to come into the business from our own staff and customers, and we fund proof of concepts and early stage trials.” The initiative has already yielded strong local results, with one IoT initiative — dubbed Project Owl — now used by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. Acting as a leading example for partners struggling to take the next — or even first — step in IoT, the work of Freeman and his team is also commercialising solutions in Victoria and Queensland through a Smart Drains deployment. In addition to Fujitsu, this issue profiles the leading IoT innovators across the country, including customer case studies from Olive Grove IT, RIoT Solutions and MOQdigital. Through our sister publication CIO, we also speak to end-users both locally and globally, examining the IoT deployments of Roy Hill in Western Australia, and Ben and Jerry’s in San Francisco. As the market moves toward mainstream adoption, this issue showcases how the channel is bringing IoT to life in Australia.

samira_sarraf@idg.com.au

journalist: julia talevski julia_talevski@idg.com.au

graphic designer: damon taylor damon@taylormadedesign.com.au

photographer: christine wong info@christinewongphotography.com

ADVERTISING account director: cherry yumul cherry_yumul@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2756

account director: eduardo silva eduardo_silva@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2769

account manager: jackson raddysh jackson_raddysh@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2778

events manager: amy woodhead amy_woodhead@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2775

data and campaigns manager: nik gorbachev nik_gorbachev@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2784

marketing and events coordinator: christine wong christine_wong@idg.com.au (02) 9902 2737

managing director: davy adams idg founder: patrick j mcgovern Editorial published in ARN may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission. Copyright 2018, IDG Communications ARN is published by IDG Communications Pty Ltd PO Box 1753, North Sydney, NSW, 2059. Phone: (02) 9902 2700

JAMES HENDERSON EDITORIAL DIRECTOR – ARN

IDG is the publisher of ARN and its website (www.arnnet.com.au). If you choose to accept offers, enter competitions or complete surveys contained within them you may be required to provide information about yourself to IDG. IDG will use this information to provide you with products or services you have requested, and may supply your information to contractors that help IDG to do this. IDG may also use your information to inform you of other IDG publications, products, services and events, or give your information to organisations that are providing special prizes or offers and that are clearly associated with the offer. Unless you tell us not to, we may give your information to other organisations that may use it to inform you about other products, services or events or to give to other organisations that may use it for this purpose. To gain access to the information IDG holds about you, please contact IDG’s Privacy Officer at IDG Communications Pty Ltd, Level 10, 15 Blue St, North Sydney, NSW, 2060.

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04 Analysis IoT

THE INTERNET OF THINGS REPRESENTS AN OCEAN OF OPPORTUNITY FOR THE CHANNEL, YET CHOICE CREATES COMPLEXITY IN A MARKET OVERFLOWING WITH CONNECTED DEVICES â&#x20AC;&#x201D; JAMES HENDERSON CUTS THROUGH THE NUMBERS TO ASSESS THE STATE OF PLAY IN AUSTRALIA.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

IoT Analysis

IoT has rapidly become one of the most familiar — and perhaps most hyped — expressions across business and technology. The words of Mark Hung, vice president of research at Gartner, who echoes the view of many a partner, distributor, vendor and customer in the Australian channel. For those that can process such large numbers, the world expects to see 20 billion internet-connected things by 2020. These “things”, according to Hung, are not general-purpose devices, such as smartphones and PCs, but dedicated-function objects, such as vending machines, jet engines, connected cars and a myriad of other examples. However, the ways in which enterprises can actualise any benefits will be diverse and, in some cases, painful. “The biggest barrier to the IoT is that most enterprises do not know what to do with the technology,” Hung said. “And if they do have plans for IoT, there is concern over who will be leading these initiatives. This need is an opportunity for CIOs to fill that IoT leadership void.” Likewise the channel, who can help customers take advantage of a technology infiltrating the Australian market at speed and at scale. Yet as most providers can attest, the generality of the term IoT and the wide variety of delivery forms

and back-end services can make it difficult to identify how to capture business value. “Your first step is to move the conversation from talking about IoT in general to talking about what it can do,” explained Hung, referring to specific organisational outcomes. “IoT can deliver business benefits ranging from operational improvements, such as predictive maintenance, to digital business transformation, such as selling

“IoT was essentially a solution looking for a problem” product usage as-a-service. “Initially, leaders viewed IoT as a silver bullet, a technology that can solve the myriad of IT and business problems that their organisations faced. “Very quickly, though, they recognised that without the proper framing of the problems, IoT was essentially a solution looking for a problem.”

READY TO CAPITALISE Locally speaking, Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) ranks among the top four countries in Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) that are the most capable and ready to generate efficiencies linked to IoT solutions. That’s according to IDC findings, which provides a comparative assessment of APeJ countries’ readiness for sustained IoT adoption, as well as their ability to facilitate its accelerated development. The report reveals that the countries at the top of the index like South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia ranked well in all measures of stature, business readiness and technological preparedness. Other countries included in the benchmarking exercise are China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, and ASEAN countries namely Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam. IDC predicts that the APeJ loT market will grow from US$335.6 billion in 2016 to US$565.5 billion in 2020 as the global IoT landscape continues to mature. With such growth and business opportunities at hand, loT vendors and service providers are faced with an increasingly complex set of choices as to which markets to enter to gain the most value and globalise their offerings.

arnnet.com.au July 2018

06 Analysis IoT

Enterprise Adoption

Defining IoT

Production

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of dedicated physical objects (things) that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal

18%

Test Dev

states or the external environment. The connecting of assets, processes and personnel enables the capture of data and events from which a company can learn behaviour

29%

Investigating

and usage, react with preventive action, or augment or transform business processes. The IoT is a foundational capability for the creation of a digital business.

14%

Basic

Mark Hung — VP of research, Gartner

25%

Not using

Not aware

“On the impact for vendors operating in the market, A/NZ must be considered attractive investment targets by virtue of their level of overall infrastructure maturity, size of the digitally-aware skills base and the level of innovation expressed in those markets,” observed Hugh Ujhazy, associate vice president of IoT research, IDC Asia Pacific. “Knowing where a country stands in the loT index will help global and local IT vendors identify the opportunities that lie ahead of them as they line up their strategies at federal, local, and enterprise levels.” As explained by Ujhazy, assessment findings show that New Zealand scores “exceptionally high” on measures such as ease of doing business and start-up procedures, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and innovation. “All of which point to necessary components for a business environment that is ready for the growth of IoT,” Ujhazy added. “This is considering they have a relatively small GDP and population

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

compared with G20 countries.” Meanwhile, A/NZ ranked in the second quartile in terms of country competitiveness, a combination of GDP and the Global Innovation Index. New Zealand edged out Australia in infrastructure investment however, having higher overall ICT spend per capita than Australia, while Australia had a higher ratio of secure server deployments. In terms of regulation and ease of doing business, both countries were on par, falling slightly behind Hong

“A/NZ must be considered attractive investment targets”

Kong and Singapore in this respect. Specific to skills to support IoT deployments and the creation of intellectual capital through the number of local patents, both Australia and New Zealand were on par with each other, sitting slightly behind South Korea in this category. “Governments in A/NZ are startup and business friendly in general, fostering an innovation market where there is fierce competition for venture capital funds,” Ujhazy added. “This aspect may lure IoT experimentalists to capital markets outside of A/NZ as they seek funding to scale beyond early proof of concepts.” At the country level, the IoT readiness index also hopes to provide the public sector and policy makers the opportunity to look at specific concerns or opportunities for their country, regardless of their high or low ranking. “For example, a country with a high level of patents but a low number of tertiary graduates may be able to create innovation but lacks a

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08 Analysis IoT

skilled workforce to roll-out real life solutions,” Ujhazy said. “Then, the action could be to either import skills, develop local gap training programs or go somewhere else.”

ENTERPRISE ADOPTION Delving deeper, Australian enterprises are in the midst of a wave of technology adoption driven by the desire to stay relevant through creating new products and services, according to Telsyte research. Specifically, more than half of organisations are currently undergoing large scale IT transformation leading to widespread investigation, planning and roll out of emerging technologies. Telsyte undertook a detailed analysis of nine emerging technology areas to better understand the rapid growth

in adoption of transformative technologies by Australian organisations, which includes IoT. “Most IT leaders predict five to ten times as many connected devices in their organisation within five years,” Telsyte managing director, Foad Fadaghi, said. “This boom in both end-user devices and industrial machines such as sensors and cameras is creating massive volumes of data which can be used to enhance productivity, modernise processes and help leaders make better strategic decisions.” Fadaghi said nearly 90 per cent of Australian CIOs see IoT becoming important or critical to their organisation within five years. Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of organisations are in the test, development or the production phase of IoT.

Meanwhile, Fadaghi said early adopters are showing positive ROI with 59 per cent claiming costs saving from using IoT technologies, and 30 per cent claiming increased customer satisfaction. “The biggest barriers are the costs of rolling out IoT solutions and legacy IT infrastructure requirements,” Fadaghi added. In addition, two-thirds or more see a positive role for IoT in operations and IT, but there is also a similar level of interest for customer service and marketing applications. “IoT gives organisations an opportunity to overhaul their systems and modernise processes, the challenge is doing this while maintaining legacy systems,” Fadaghi added. “A complete overhaul is often required with IoT creating barriers for organisations which are not yet at the right phase to make large scale investments.”

GLOBAL VIEW

Top Industries Based on 5 Year CAGR (2016–2021) Value (Constant Annual)

21.0% 20.1% 17.7% 17.1% 16.7% 13.0% CONSUMER

INSURANCE

HEALTHCARE

CROSS INDUSTRIES

RESOURCE INDUSTRIES

OTHERS

Source: IDC Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide, 2017H1

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

In taking a global view of the market, worldwide spending on IoT is forecast to reach US$772.5 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 14.6 per cent over US$674 billion in 2017. According to IDC research, worldwide IoT spending will sustain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.4 per cent through the 2017-2021 forecast period, surpassing the US$1 trillion mark in 2020 and reaching US$1.1 trillion in 2021. From a channel perspective, IoT hardware will be the largest technology category in 2018 with US$239 billion going largely toward modules and sensors along with some spending on infrastructure and security. Services will be the second largest technology category, followed by software and connectivity. Software spending will be led by application software along with analytics software, IoT platforms, and security software. Software will also be the fastest growing

IoT Analysis

Federal government launches AI and IoT projects

Additionally, the council will also

new research projects — investigating artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet

“AI and IoT devices have and continue

receive $208,595 to examine IoT, and

to advance all parts of our lives — from

consider ways to foster technological

creating more productive farms, through

leadership while ensuring responsible

to diagnosing rare cancers earlier, and

deployment.

on to creating more tailored services for

In addition, key findings will explore The federal government has hatched two

business and their customers,” according

the economics of IoT, social and

to Minister for Jobs and Innovation,

cultural perspectives of deployment,

Michaelia Cash.

educational needs, governance requirements and

of Things (IoT) technologies — in a bid

technological

to advance Australia’s knowledge and

standards.

expertise in these emerging areas.

Cash said the new projects will help guide government decision-making across a breadth of policy areas that impact all Australians and create jobs. “This research will inform the

Under the plan, the Australian Council of

government’s planned artificial intelligence

Learned Academies will receive $209,346

roadmap and ethics framework

to examine the opportunities, risks and

commissioned as part of the budget

benefits of AI applications and uptake and

and ensure Australia optimises

consider its impact.

the opportunities these

Findings cover economic, social,

technologies can provide.”

environmental, ethical and cultural Jennifer O’Brien — CIO Australia

impacts to guide AI development in Australia over the next decade.

“The biggest barriers are the costs of rolling out IoT solutions and legacy IT infrastructure requirements” technology segment with a five-year CAGR of 16.1 per cent. Services spending will also grow at a faster rate than overall spending with a CAGR of 15.1 per cent and will nearly equal hardware spending by the end of the forecast. “By 2021, more than 55 per cent of spending on IoT projects will be for software and services,” IDC vice president of IoT, Carrie MacGillivray, said. “Software creates the foundation upon which IoT applications and use

cases can be realised. “However, it is the services that help bring all the technology elements together to create a comprehensive solution that will benefit organisations and help them achieve a quicker time to value.” The industries that are expected to spend the most on IoT solutions in 2018 are manufacturing (US$189 billion), transportation (US$85 billion), and utilities (US$73 billion). Cross-Industry IoT spending,

which represent use cases common to all industries, such as connected vehicles and smart buildings, will be nearly US$92 billion in 2018 and rank among the top areas of spending throughout the five-year forecast. “Consumer IoT spending will reach $62 billion in 2018, making it the fourth largest industry segment. The leading consumer use cases will be related to the smart home, including home automation, security, and smart appliances,” IDC research director, Marcus Torchia, added. “Smart appliances will experience strong spending growth over the five-year forecast period and will help to make consumer the fastest growing industry segment with an overall CAGR of 21 per cent.” Furthermore, the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will be the geographic region with the most IoT spending in 2018, at US$312 billion. 

arnnet.com.au July 2018

10 Capital Gains

Michael Warnock Director, Omni IT

Refreshed and ready for business OMNI IT HAS BEEN OPERATING IN THE CANBERRA MARKETPLACE FOR THE BEST PART OF 20 YEARS — JULIA TALEVSKI EXPLAINS WHY THE PROVIDER REBRANDED TO DRIVE NEW GROWTH.

Michael Warnock, founder of the home-run business, named the company OfficePCs before rebranding to Omni IT. The new name and new office location — issued a few years ago — has helped set a new pace, as the provider capitalises on new business opportunities across the Canberra marketplace. Warnock said the name change followed a discussion with his peer group, who openly confessed they never liked the brand in the first place. OfficePCs wasn’t entirely relevant to what the business does in terms of IT services and market offerings. And so, Omni (meaning ‘of all things’) IT was born. “The name change, office relocation and refresh has sparked a lot of business in the July 2018 arnnet.com.au

past 14 months,” Warnock admitted. As a result, the company has hired extra technical and sales staff to help keep on top of demand. Omni IT has a lot of government clientele, and deals with a mix of business verticals from real estate through to finance and manufacturing, ranging up to 100 seats, but has found its sweet spot within the 20-seat mark. Warnock said one of the biggest requests from clients at the moment is cloud, with Office 365 deployments increasing. On top of running his IT business, Warnock also runs his own business networking group, which meets up twice a month, and is also a part of the HTG Peer Group. “There’s a tonne of business here in

Canberra, and there are other businesses that complain about how quiet it is, but if you keep telling everyone who you are and that you still exist, there’s a lot of business opportunities around,” Warnock said. “There are a lot of business owners out there that don’t know how to run their business in terms of how to do processes and procedures, and we’re constantly developing those and I hope we’re leading in that area.” Warnock explained being a part of a peer group, such as HTG, has been a beneficial experience for his business. “When I first joined, we were not profitable and now we are,” he added. “They were questioning why we did certain things, how we made money, etc. “It helps keep us accountable. When you’re a business owner, who else keeps the owner accountable for their actions and decisions? It’s a bit of a reality check to make sure you’re doing things the right way.” The fast pace of the tech sector often means that companies can lose their point of difference quickly. This is something that Warnock has experienced first-hand. “I like to think that we’re an early adopter of new technologies in the market,” he added. “We’ve had remote monitoring tools for about eight years, which used to be our point of difference, but now, everyone offers that.” In the year ahead, Warnock said he would like to grow his business at least a 30 per cent and sees an opportunity to expand into new technology areas such as print and security. “I’ve always stayed focused on what we do and try to do it well,” he added. “We’re trying to do one thing (IT support) and do it well, rather than trying to be all things to all people.” Market fluctuations are also another challenge, but Warnock explains the Canberra market is different to other areas of the country, due the region’s heavy government focus. “Canberra is pretty much recessionproof,” he said. “We do see a bit of fluctuation in the market, but we’re nowhere near as affected as other parts of the country, but when the market is quiet, we see it as an ideal time to reach out to customers and plan their IT for them.”

12 Analysis IoT

INTRODUCING

THE EARLY IOT PACESETTERS AS INTERNET OF THINGS HYPE TURNS INTO MARKET REALITIES, JULIA TALEVSKI CHARTS THE RISE OF AUSTRALIA’S LEADING INNOVATORS.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

uilding his own electronic devices along with the software platform that supports them, is something that sets Davyd Norris apart in the Internet of Things (IoT) world. As a research physicist by trade, Norris was used to building his own equipment, setting him up to play within the emerging technologies space. Norris spent more than 13 years at IBM, which he joined in 2003, after the vendor acquired a company he was working for called Rational Software. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Norris studied magnetic materials, alongside research at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) based in Lucas Heights in NSW. Coupled with his interest in electronics, the technology specialist garnered many skills around building and designing his own devices (sensors included) along with the program user interface, back-end data collection and sometimes the firmware inside the device. “My training as a physicist was the perfect playground for moving into IoT,” Norris said. “I would have to present seven to eight dimensions of data in ways that could be easily understood and that’s actually put me in good stead in terms of

presenting and analysing the data. “One of the things I found with IoT is that people often go through silos. They’ll collect a particular value but they won’t look at it in the big picture.” In 2016, Norris embarked on setting up his own consultancy outfit called Olive Grove IT. The boutique agency is based in Melbourne and has two facets to the business — stemming from servicing IBM clients, focusing on improving their business systems, and the other aspect is focused on IoT. Norris said he has about half a dozen IoT projects that he’s actively taking part in. “Turning such ideas into an engineering project is a challenge,” he explained. “We’re 90 per cent done, with 90 per cent left to go.” Norris’ musical interests also played a part in one particular project through his CIO role with Adelaide-based company, Cognilitics – joining fellow enthusiasts’ CEO, David Grice and chairman, Philip Vafiadis. This project is focused on measuring noise around music venues for compliance purposes using sensors scattered around the CBD. Venue managers are then provided with a real-time heat map displaying

IoT Analysis

“We’re 90 per cent done, with 90 per cent left to go” where most of the noise is coming from to help remedy the volume situation. “We wanted to be proactive with venue managers when they’ve exceeded the noise limits, so they can deal with it,” Norris said. “We started to investigate this, and looked at what might cause noise complaints. “One of the things may be that they don’t have adequate sound proofing in their venue, or it may just be one part of a wall or particular frequencies that their sound proofing doesn’t stop.” But it’s not just venues that have taken to the idea, so have local councils, in which the devices can help pinpoint the source of noise complaints from residents. On top of this, Adelaide City Council has expressed interest in using the devices to measure traffic noise — taking the device a step further than measuring noise levels. “The motive is to have councils come up with better noise policies and when they do, we need to then change the policy and notifications within the sensor’s platform without having to talk to each of the devices,” Norris added.

Sensor city In Australia, the channel has only just began to scratch the surface of what IoT can potentially bring to the market, with IDC predicting that IoT endpoints will blow out to more than 82 billion in 2025. And so far, Norris counts more than 30 other cities globally that have expressed interest in running pilots with his sensor device, but using it in a way to help map out a microclimate for an entire city looking at measuring aspects such as air quality and pollution. “We now have a combined sensor device that is incredibly cheap to build and can be

placed on light poles to map a microclimate of CBDs,” Norris added. “This can assess where pollution is accumulating on certain days. “And can we predict for instance that people’s hay-fever and allergies are going to go through the roof? “What we’re finding now is that we’re able to take different sensor readings, which are seemingly unrelated, but bringing them all together, creating a clear picture on what is happening in a city and how it breathes.” Norris’ other projects include a patent pending on a new solid state sensor design that focuses on wind speed and direction. “We have a NASA engineer and he has a couple of graduate students,” he added. “I showed him the principles of the wind and speed sensor and he got his students to build the electronics boards, 3D print the sensor housing itself and had it tested in NASA wind tunnels.” Norris is also involved in a project

placing sensors into waste management devices and another that involves collecting health data for patients. “It’s actually collecting a bit of data, very frequently and in real time, and analysing long-term changes and patterns, using predictive analytics to predict different types of life threatening issues,” he added.

Maturity Despite all its potential, a Cisco study uncovered that more than 60 per cent of IoT initiatives stalled at the proof of concept (PoC) stage and that only 26 per cent of companies had an IoT initiative they considered to be completely successful. Even more so, a third of completed projects were not considered a success. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Among the carnage, Brisbane-based RIoT Solutions managing director, Rob Merkwitza, spotted an opportunity to provide industry

arnnet.com.au July 2018

14 Analysis IoT

“We’ve only been talking about IoT properly for the last two years”

maturity and thought leadership. “Everyone is rushing to it,” he added. “We’ve only been talking about IoT properly for the last two years, and it’s very disjointed. “The business cases are very interesting, but the momentum that is pushing through, it’s forcing organisations to do stuff they don’t necessarily need to do. But they want to be seen to be doing something different, new, digital or smart. That’s really what it comes down to.” A lot of organisations, Merkwitza said, don’t really know what they require, but know what they want, without considering the entire network and security scope. “They’ve seen a widget, smart light, smart parking or robotics automation process, and they concentrate on that piece or outcome,” he added. “What we find is that often, they’re going too fast to the shiny object as opposed to getting that blue print right. “We see how many IoT projects fail, that’s why, it’s because there’s no planning going into place. “A lot of IoT projects involve a lot of players and we’re very much focused on the digital plumbing — getting the design and the blueprint right so you can then build on top of that and making sure security is built in by design, rather than tack it on later.”

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

Building intelligence For RIoT, Merkwitza said the business predominantly focuses on building and securing an intelligent network that will support the sensors deployed among various environments. “We tend to focus a lot more on the industrial IoT and operational technology integration, which is more the enterprise, government level of project as opposed to selling 30,000 sensors,” he said. “We’re more about how to build a network that can support 30,000 sensors and what’s next? What else will you put that’s intelligent on the network? How do you make sure it’s got visibility, it’s secure and so forth.” RIoT Solutions is about to mark its third year in business. The company, which Merkwitza started in September 2015, took notice of the wave of the IoT and IoE (Internet of Everything) trends sweeping through Europe and North America. “It was coming to A/NZ and there was plenty of people in the market focused on cloud, apps, sensors and widgets, but there wasn’t much focus happening in the technical architecture space or even the cyber security element around critical infrastructure,” Merkwitza said.

RIoT landed one of its first projects in providing intelligent transport systems and has since done work for Queensland Transport and also with the light rail tram system on the Gold Coast in preparation for the Commonwealth Games that were held in April. The aim was to assist in designing, constructing and supporting a purposebuilt Transport Coordination Centre (TCC), and provide a central location for all agencies involved in the Games such as police, ambulance, fire, light rail, roads, city council’s, city safe, Translink and QLD Rail. “We had to connect different video streams from third parties as well for emergency services and other departments that wanted access to that video,” Merkwitza explained. “There was an underlying network that had to be built, but we also put a lot of focus on security in vulnerability and penetration testing of the road networks.” Since starting out, RIoT has grown to 25 staff, and one aspect Merkwitza was keen on, was cross training staff, as well as expanding outside of Brisbane and into markets such as Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. “Smart cities, digital transformation — it all calls for a lot of cross-skilling,” he added. “We’ll do as much cross-skilling as possible, in particular the network security side. “We’ve got specialists in the network, and specialists in security, but getting them across both disciplines, is not only good for their own development, it also helps from a business perspective. “This is because you’re not so isolated based on whether we have those skilled people.” 

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certifications in a more timely manner than having to do it themselves, the Arrow team itself has been a major resource both in terms of technical support and pre-sales assistance.”

Helping to win customers Jones pointed to a customer Counterparts Technology won from a competitor even after the competitor had begun work on the project. “The competitor had dropped the ball with this customer, and we were able to leverage our close relationship with Arrow to bring the customer to the Arrow demonstration centre, where Arrow’s technical and presales team were able to work directly with them to get a better understanding of the project,” he said.

ounterparts Technology may be just three years old but in that time it has amassed an impressive customer list featuring some of Australia’s most well-respected and well-known brands including Macquarie University Hospital, Aussie, the Art Gallery of NSW, Racing NSW and Fastway Couriers. Key to the company’s success has been its ability to deliver competitive solutions using leading technology. As a partner of HPE, Counterparts Technology instantly saw the benefit of joining the Arrow APEX program to further deepen its HPE capabilities, according to Counterparts Technology strategic alliance director, Kirk Jones. “I’ve been around for a while now, and having worked with all the distributors over the years I’ve become familiar with their value-adds,” he said. “We already had a relationship with the Arrow team around some other vendor’s products, but then they approached us to let us know about the APEX program which, I admit, I hadn’t heard

of before. I saw instantly that it offered a lot of value-add as far as pre-sales support and technical certification were concerned. For a small business like us, those are major benefits. “Certification, in particular, can be very expensive and time consuming. Based on that, we saw Arrow APEX as a really good program that would help us grow our business and provide our teams with expertise we wouldn’t otherwise have access to.” Startup businesses need to run lean, and the focus on billable hours and productivity needs to be absolute. With limited technical resources, to send staff to certification training can have a draining effect on the health of the business. The ability for the Arrow APEX program to provide a “boot camp” to help fast-track certification has been a major benefit to the Counterparts Technology business, according to Jones. “We look at Arrow as a partner, not just a distributor. The support it provides is extensive. In addition to helping my team get their

“Our competitor was unable to provide this demonstration so we were able to take the lead on the playing field. Without being part of the Arrow Apex program such opportunities would have passed us by. It’s an example of why we see this program as adding real strategic value to our business.” The Counterparts Technology team themselves also love what the Arrow APEX program offers, Jones said. “APEX offers a sales incentive but that in itself is not what drives the team. It’s an additional benefit, but as far as the whole company is concerned, the real benefit is in having that access to the HPE experts at Arrow. It enables us to be more strategic with who we target. “The APEX program is making the relationship between our two organisations even stronger, and even more of a genuine partnership.” To find out more, visit ecs-anz.arrow.com

16 Analysis Roy Hill

How Roy Hill is using IoT to manage lighting towers WESTERN AUSTRALIAN MINING GIANT ROY HILL HAD A PROBLEM: A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF VITAL LIGHTING TOWERS THAT ILLUMINATE MINING TENEMENTS WERE SIMPLY BEING LOST BETWEEN SHIFTS — BYRON CONNOLLY OUTLINES THE SOLUTION.

Rebecca Kerr GM of technology, Roy Hill

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

The $10 billion Roy Hill iron ore mine — majority owned by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting company — is the most recent mine to open in the Pilbara region, consisting of a 344-kilometre railway line, a process plant and a twoberth port. Previously, mining field workers would monitor and control lighting towers in the mining pit, which was a costly and time consuming exercise, Roy Hill general manager of technology, Rebbecca Kerr, told the audience at the CIO Summit in Perth. “You would be surprised how many lighting towers would go missing between shifts,” Kerr said. “Once they found them, often [the lights] had no fuel so they had to go and get maintenance to [refuel them]. Our strategy was to drive around at night looking for the lights for refuelling.” To overcome the problem, Roy Hill installed a GPS telemetry solution on the lighting towers, which provides field workers using mobile tablets with maintenance information — gathered by Internet of Things (IoT) sensors — such as how long towers have been switched on and how much fuel has been burned by their generators. This helps them make decisions that will cut energy costs for the mine. The solution also adjusts lighting levels during sunrise and sunset and automatically reduces lighting during planned shutdowns. “The [towers] can also be turned on and off now by users back at the remote operations centre,” Kerr added. “We seemed to have lost way less of our lighting towers since then.” The miner is also looking at placing IoT sensors on conveyors, which Kerr said generate “buckets and buckets of data.”

“We have a reference architecture that we can apply to that,” Kerr added. “So, when the vendors come to the operational people and they ask us how that might fit in with our approach, we can articulate to them what the requirements are of that vendor and what would be a good outcome for the business.” Roy Hill’s IT team is also using data analytics to gather data from every point of the mining operation from the processing plant to port. Early last year, the company engaged Ajilon to provide a business analytics platform that runs on Microsoft Azure. To create the platform, Ajilon had a direct line to the development team at Microsoft’s Redmond research campus. “You need to be able to explore and understand the data and, in particular, how the data relates to itself,” Andrew Hall, manager, technology planning and architecture at Roy Hill said at the time. “We don’t want to be doing analysis that takes days to run. We want to be able to run multiple scenarios in a time-effective way.” Hall said at the time that Roy Hill wanted to go beyond using Azure as a static analysis environment. “If we want to change driver attitudes or we want to optimise performance, we need to do it in real time,” Hall told CIO Australia last year. “You need to be providing feedback at the appropriate times so appropriate action can be taken.” In some cases, that may be at the start of a worker’s shift and in others that might mean immediate corrective action, he said. This article originally appeared on CIO Australia.

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18 Interview MOQ Digital

MAXIM

O T

INTERNET OF THINGS ADOPTION IN AUSTRALIA HAS CHANGED DUE TO TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS AND LOWER PRICE TAGS ON SOLUTIONS â&#x20AC;&#x201D; SAMIRA SARRAF OUTLINES HOW MOQDIGITAL IS MONETISING THE MARKER

Nick Browne (MOQdigital)

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

ISING B

y connecting computing devices with everyday objects such as watches, fridges or switches through the internet, businesses – big or small, and even individuals – have been able to extract masses of valuable data. The monitoring of a heart rate or sleeping pattern could assist a doctor understanding an individual’s health. Or, monitoring the water temperature in a fish farm could save money while improving productivity. As the name says, the Internet of Things (IoT) is made of the interconnection of different sources of data. However, having sensors installed to monitor an area won’t achieve a business result unless the data can be extracted and analysed. Today, Australian service providers – such as publicly-listed MOQdigital – have the skills required to maximise IoT. “If you look at the people who are providing IoT solutions, they tend to have one thing which is in their sweet spot,” MOQdigital practice manager for application integration and development Nick Browne said. There are companies who have built IoT centres but fall short when it comes to extracting data to be used in predictive analytics. “There are companies like Cisco who are very good at the networking side of IoT but they don’t provide sensors and they don’t have the software capability,” Browne

explained. “Then there are those who offer software managed systems for managing IoT devices in the field but they don’t have that last mile solution.” There are several organisations in the IoT market but, in Browne’s opinion, they are all focused on one part alone, while MOQdigital supports different areas. “MOQ is all about bringing a business outcome to an organisation and that includes everything within the problem set,” Browne said.

“PEOPLE PROVIDING IOT SOLUTIONS, TEND TO HAVE ONE THING WHICH IS IN THEIR SWEET SPOT ” MOQdigital partners with several vendors, one of them being Cisco. “We use Cisco to provide elements or solutions for all sorts of different business outcomes, like more traditional Cisco implementations such as building networking infrastructure for larger organisations,” Browne explained. “But because we have that partnership we can take the Cisco element that is valid for an IoT solution and use just what is required and then we can augment that with

MOQ Digital Interview

better, simpler, cheaper platforms and processes, and software to give a complete IoT picture.”

Reach and challenges Across education, health care, agriculture, transport, there is an IoT application for possibly every vertical. However, the vast application possibilities do not mean organisations are getting all the benefits of IoT. “If you take smart cities, for example, there are lots of vertical solutions in place that provide an end-to-end solution but they are very insular,” Browne added. “If you look at modern parking management systems they will have an element of IoT in them where they have IoT sensors buried in the ground underneath car parks that can detect how long the car has been parked there. But they are provided by the vendor that’s selling the parking management system. “So, you have all this information about what’s happening within your environment, but it’s only really available through that parking management system.” Browne explained that businesses could benefit from the information provided by the parking management system, for example, in other applications. In this case, making sure the organisation can extract that data and consolidate into one platform to use it in other applications is key.

Connected devices IDC Spending Guide forecasts IoT spending will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.6 per cent over the 2017–2022 forecast period and reach US$1.2 trillion in 2022. According to Browne, around 20 per cent of ideas he discusses with new and existing customers at least touch on or are focused in the IoT space. It has become easier now for

arnnet.com.au July 2018

20 Interview MOQ Digital

organisations of all sizes to invest in IoT. Not only the larger enterprises can invest but with the latest advancements in technologies, IoT has become more accessible to organisations of all sizes. “It’s much more difficult for smaller organisations to invest that time to get an outcome when there’s no outcome guaranteed. “So, we are able now, with our experience, to talk to smaller organisations, like small councils, or small businesses, small to medium sized businesses and help them get outcomes from the new wave of IoT stuff that’s coming. This includes the cheaper sensors, the affordable options to store in the cloud and the machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities of cloud that you can consume quite cheaply these days,” Browne explained. Today, businesses are considering IoT to get a competitive edge and offer a better outcome to customers. Browne said that with solutions allowing for a faster development, proof of concepts can be turned around within weeks. “And the capital investment to produce those is a couple of thousand dollars rather than a couple of hundred thousand dollars,” he said.

agriculture and other areas in Australia. MOQdigital has been talking to regional councils about communications sensors for smart cities. In fact, Browne said he prefers the term “smart environments” because, as he explained, it is not just about the city. “There is a real growth area,” Browne. “Lots and lots of cities these days are getting federal funding to provision some things using IoT.” MOQdigital has built a framework for smart cities to help them make decisions and navigate their way through the complexities of the IT world. “It could be overwhelming because this is such a broad reaching thing,” Browne added. “IoT touches on all aspects of IT and touches on different

Market dynamics

elements of the business. “So is extremely broad and very difficult to navigate as an individual or team to work through to make sure you are making the right decisions.” Ultimately, MOQ has shown users what they need to think about, the decisions to be made, outcomes to look for and help to build a framework. This ensures customers can be sure that they are investing in the right areas across the market. Furthermore, the agriculture sector has matured when it comes to IoT Browne observed. “Agriculture is a big deal in Australia, the agricultural

According to data from analyst firm Gartner, cross-industry devices, such as those targeted at smart buildings — including LED lighting, HVAC and physical security systems — will take the lead as connectivity is driven into higher-volume, lower cost devices. In 2020, cross-industry devices will reach 4.4 billion units, while vertical-specific devices will amount to 3.2 billion units. With over 20 billion things expected to be connected worldwide by 2020, more trends and use cases are likely to appear. Currently there is quite a lot of IoT being done in councils, mining,

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

environment in Australia is very different to pretty much anywhere else in the world. Monitoring fleets of vehicles has also become more accessible and affordable from an IoT perspective. “It’s very easy for mining companies now to deploy IoT sensors into a fleet of vehicles and have those vehicles tracked so that they can better and more cheaply maintain,” Browne added. “This is rather than just every three or six months, such as changing the oil when the vehicle’s only done 2000km and doesn’t really need an oil change, but it’s on the schedule because that’s how we’ve always done it. “You can extend the lifetime of a vehicle and reduce the cost of maintaining it.” Health care will also see the benefits of IoT from sensors when building data driven profiles of patients. “A lot of the work we do these days is in that healthcare space, and a lot of it is about trying to move that healthcare space into a more forward looking data driven, total quality delivery kind of environment,” Browne added. IoT has a big part to play and changes in the health space are already happening. “I think the trend with IoT isn’t really about big healthcare and it isn’t really about big mining anymore,” he explained. “It’s about everybody. It’s about the shop or cafe down the road. “Everybody has got the ability now to get an IoT solution that’s going to reduce the cost of them doing business and increase the value they get from the assets within their business. ““And because of this I think it’s a much more open and chaotic world, and in chaos, there’s always opportunity. “A lot of people can’t see how it gets done, but I think it’s a democratisation of IoT that’s happening now that’s actually what’s really interesting.” 

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22 Analysis Security

Internet of Things (IoT) security spend is expected to reach US$1.5 billion this year, if the latest forecasts by industry analyst, Gartner, are anything to go by. The latest IoT security spend figure represents a year-on-year increase of about 28 per cent from the US$1.2 billion spent on security in the IoT space in 2017. The substantial increase comes off the back of a rise in attacks on IoT infrastructure, according to Gartner, with a survey carried out by the analyst firm finding that nearly 20 per cent of respondent organisations observed at least one IoT-based attack in the past three years. The IoT landscape has long been considered a potential landmine in terms of cyber security thanks to the increased

attack surface with which the growing number of connected devices tends to imbue enterprises employing such technology. “In IoT initiatives, organisations often don’t have control over the source and nature of the software and hardware being utilised by smart connected devices,” Gartner research director, Ruggero Contu, said. “We expect to see demand for tools and services aimed at improving discovery and asset management, software and hardware security assessment, and penetration testing. “In addition, organisations will look to increase their understanding of the implications of externalising network connectivity.

IoT security spend to hit $1.5B this year THE INTERNET OF THINGS HAS LONG BEEN CONSIDERED A POTENTIAL LANDMINE IN TERMS OF CYBER SECURITY — LEON SPENCER HIGHLIGHTS WHERE CUSTOMERS ARE SPENDING MONEY.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

“These factors will be the main drivers of spending growth for the forecast period with spending on IoT security expected to reach US$3.1 billion in 2021.” From a technology perspective, endpoint security is expected to account for US$373 million during 2018, with gateway security and professional services totalling US$186 million and US$946 billion respectively. “Although IoT security is consistently referred to as a primary concern, most IoT security implementations have been planned, deployed and operated at the business-unit level, in cooperation with some IT departments to ensure the IT portions affected by the devices are sufficiently addressed,” Contu explained. “However, coordination via common architecture or a consistent security strategy is all but absent, and vendor product and service selection remains largely ad hoc, based upon the device provider’s alliances with partners or the core system that the devices are enhancing or replacing.” At the same time, however, Gartner suggests that a lack of prioritising and implementing security best practices and tools among enterprises will stand as the biggest inhibitor to growth for IoT security. This is expected to hamper the potential spend of IoT security by around 80 per cent. While Gartner doesn’t go into detail about how it comes to the 80 per cent figure, Contu said that for most IoT security implementations, coordination via common architecture or a consistent security strategy is all but absent, leaving vendor product and service selection remains largely ad hoc. That said, Gartner expects regulatory compliance to become the prime influencer for IoT security uptake by 2021, a factor which will no doubt see more structure and planning around IoT security implementation. “Industries having to comply with regulations and guidelines aimed at improving critical infrastructure protection (CIP) are being compelled to increase their focus on security as a result of IoT permeating the industrial world,” Contu added. 

24 Analysis Dicker Data

Driving IoT Adoption through

DISTRIBUTION IF CUSTOMERS ARE GOING TO EMBRACE THE INTERNET OF THINGS EN MASSE, THEN PARTNERS MUST BE WELL-EQUIPPED TO CAPITALISE — JAMES HENDERSON OUTLINES HOW DICKER DATA IS DRIVING CHANGE THROUGH THE CHANNEL.

pending is sky-rocketing, connections are exploding and customers are enquiring, but the Internet of Things (IoT) market still remains a tough nut to crack for the channel. On paper, the opportunities appear endless, with limitless ways to capitalise on arguably the most disruptive trend in the technology industry today. But — and it’s a big but — adoption isn’t reflecting market hype, as customers confirm interest but refuse to commit dollars.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

For partners well-versed in hearing the latest and greatest technologies, commercialisation once again remains the biggest barrier to growth. This almost appears too big a market to make money from, too large a pool of technologies to build with and too complex a solution to even get started. “The next 12 months will be important for the IoT market as it transitions to a larger number of engagements across a wider range of partners,” said Jason Hall, general manager of services and IoT at Dicker Data. “At Dicker Data our priorities will be to support our partners as they engage and deliver these IoT solutions.” According to Hall — when addressing the channel during a nationwide IoT roadshow — the number priority for partners centres around making such solutions “real”, delivering tangible business benefits to customers as a result.

“This is our focus, to provide endto-end IoT solutions to our partners so that they can engage with opportunities and build their own IoT Practice at their own pace as the market matures,” Hall explained. “With our ecosystem of established and pure play IoT vendors along with white label service providers who can design and deliver the solutions we can implement real IoT solutions that can be customised to suit specific

“Partners feel that now is the time to ‘get into IoT’”

Dicker Data Analysis

customer requirements. “Our focus is to support our partners as they invest time and resources in this space and accelerate their speed to monetise the opportunity.” In assessing the current state of the IoT market in Australia, Hall cited industry verticals as key areas of opportunity for the channel to capitalise on in the months ahead. “While Australia certainly has significant opportunity in some of the key global verticals such as mining, oil and gas and utilities these are not widely spread opportunities within the channel,” Hall observed. “Where we are being asked to engage is more closely aligned to the Australian economy, areas such as smart construction, smarter buildings, retail innovation, agricultural technology, logistics and vehicles. “Secondly, and this is anecdotal, partners feel that now is the time to ‘get into IoT’, not at the technical or enthusiast level, but training sales teams, enabling people to engage with line of business customers, ensuring there are technical resources who can have a

Anthony Rowley (CCP Technologies); Adam Schutz (Buddy); Jason Hall (Dicker Data) and James Henderson (ARN)

Jason Hall (Dicker Data)

conversation and start to map it out. “And thirdly it is the state of readiness of the leading vendors to take solutions to market, solutions that are real, that work and that encompass a range of the required elements.” For Hall, the channel today has a “realistic idea” on where to focus for the Australian market, with providers currently “ready and willing” to invest in IoT. Coupled with partner enthusiasm, vendors are also building out more mature solution offerings, as the market evolves from niche deployments into mainstream adoption.

Customer focus From the perspective of the enduser, Hall said changing customer demands only represent part of the equation in terms of shifting market dynamics, in reference to the transformation of customer profiles across Australia. “Previously. customers for IoT tended to be the IT departments of the infrastructure heavy, companies or organisations that could invest in researching the technology over the long-term with multiple POCs and pilots and a sales cycle of around 18 months,” Hall explained.

“Or they were government customers, predominately councils, that utilised grants to fund smart city initiatives, again a long sales cycle with multiple pilots and POCs.” But in 2018, such technology buyers have been joined by a new type of customer, a customer who is looking for “business value”. Specifically, and according to Hall, this is a customer “not particularly interested” in the underlying technology, rather a buyer who views IoT as an element of a wider digital transformation, representing all business sizes in the process. “These customers are looking for much shorter times to implementation, they are looking to smart small then grow in an agile fashion,” Hall said. “These are the customers who are now driving a faster time to value and are prepared to pay for that value. As long as the RoI is clear and realistic they are prepared to move forward.”

Channel focus In response to a maturing market, and increased customer adoption, Dicker Data will continue to evolve IoT capabilities across the channel, chiefly through the newly launched IoT Channel Community.

arnnet.com.au July 2018

26 Analysis Dicker Data

“This will include an event later in the year that will showcase some of the leading vendors in the space, both big and small,” Hall added. “Secondly is greater engagement and enablement with the channel. “The time is right and we have developed an ecosystem of professional service providers who can work with our partners

to design, implement and manage customised IoT solutions that specifically meet the customers’ requirements. “This is not a capability that has been available to the channel before and will provide our partners with the confidence they need to engage with their customers and have those discussions about digital

About Buddy Buddy Ohm is a complete end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) solution that supports commercial tenants, building owners and operators to better understand and manage their building’s energy profile. Industry standard sensors track temperature, humidity, electricity, gas consumption, and solar power generation. Through data rich, glance-and-go dashboards, building managers and occupants can see the direct connection between their actions and a building’s energy consumption. Whether a facility already has a building management system or not, Buddy Ohm will provide new insights to save money — Buddy Ohm often helps to pay for itself through the savings that can be made in energy reductions. The system can be easily configured to deliver a full range of benefits or focus on one area, for example monitoring the internal temperature of a building for comfort, energy monitoring for reporting and cost reduction, data centre monitoring and water leak detection. Highly affordable and easy to install, Buddy Ohm represents one of the easiest and most practical ways for commercial businesses of all sizes and types to get started with the Internet of Things. For partners, Buddy allows you to expand your business into the exploding IoT sector with a turn-key solution that is easy to sell and easy to deliver. As a reseller of Buddy Ohm, this provides opportunities in a new market with existing and new customers, offering an attractive incremental revenue stream. Buddy is also extending the sensor network to accommodate partner sensors through a “Works with Ohm” program, offering additional ways to collaborate.

Adam Schutz — General manager A/NZ of Buddy Platform

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

transformation strategies. “We will of course continue to bring on board new vendors with a clear value proposition in this space.” In looking ahead, Hall said the onus is now on partners to “kick off ” those conversations with customers about where the value from IT could lie in the future. “In many ways, this is a confidence question,” Hall explained. “For most of us in the industry we pretty much know what the high level solution will look like before we discuss customer requirements. “With IoT we don’t, partly this is because we are talking business problems, partly this is because we are dealing with an area of the industry that is not yet mature. “And this is where we at Dicker Data are really placing ourselves, behind the partner with a range of real solutions that can be sold and delivered and that support the partner as they grow their skills and knowledge, helping them to cost effectively grow their business in this space.”

Partner focus Given that no standout specialist or provider essentially “owns this space yet” with regards to IoT expertise, Hall said the opportunities for the channel during the next 12 months are “wide and varied”. At this stage, few partners across the country have deep IoT skills, and

Adam Schutz (Buddy)

Dicker Data Analysis

“Partners must now begin to create IP, develop skills and knowledge” often the skills they have are within a small pocket of the organisation. “The opportunity is there to have conversations with customers about their businesses, to uncover business drivers that can be supported by technology,” Hall advised. “Partners must now begin to create IP, develop skills and knowledge, understand what technologies are available and which vendors are leading the pack. “It is also worth bearing in mind that this is not just an opportunity, working with our partners to help them develop the skills and knowledge to confidently engage is also a defensive play. “Operational technology partners and other non-traditional partners are also seeking to engage with the same customers and the first partner who can assist the customer to develop a future roadmap will assume a lead position, so there is an element of threat mitigation at play in the market also.” Upon closer examination of the channel ecosystem in Australia, Hall said successful IoT partners are partners capable of being “inquisitive”, incorporating a mindset that allows the business to “look forward”. “It is easy to dismiss IoT, way too many predictions have hyped the concept through the roof, and

About CCP Technologies CCP Technologies offers its Internet of Things (IoT) critical control point management system to the food industry, where real-time temperature monitoring is used to strengthen food safety, reduce food waste and optimise refrigeration. CCP captures data using smart tags (edge-computing sensors) and an advanced connectivity topology which leverages wi-fi and various low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) options. Data is delivered to the company’s big data cloud platform where it is analysed to deliver business intelligence. Customers access this information through web and mobile dashboards; and receive real-time alerts via SMS, email and push notifications. Since temperature is the most critical environmental parameter affecting the perishable food supply chain, it is commonly referred to as the “cold chain”. All cold chain stakeholders have a requirement for temperature monitoring to comply with food safety legislation and regulations. In most developed countries, every food business handling perishable food is required by law to monitor temperature. According to Forbes, food is the world’s largest industry; and this creates a huge

understandably people are a bit over it,” Hall added. “However, all the major vendors are investing very significant amounts of money in this area, so we know it is going happen in some day in some form. “A successful IoT partner is having conversations with customers about mundane stuff, not earth shattering, how can the customer be a bit better at doing what they do today, how can they be a bit more cost effective, a bit more efficient.”

market opportunity for CCP. Being a low-cost, adaptable and reliable product, CCP has built a solid customer base across diverse market segments in Australia, North America and South East Asia. Our customers include: hospitals, aged care, hotels, casinos, clubs, pubs, restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, convenience stores, caterers and a variety of businesses in the food supply chain from farm to consumer, including dairy farmers, food producers, transport and logistics firms.

Anthony Rowley — COO of CCP Technologies

Anthony Rowley (CCP Technologies)

While IoT can represent new business models and total transformation, Hall said the “biggest payback” across the broadest range of Australian businesses will be to utilise the technologies to make incremental change. “IoT is not a destination for a customer, it is a journey and the successful IoT partners are positioning themselves with their customers as long term guides and partners on that journey,” Hall added. 

arnnet.com.au July 2018

28 Analysis Gartner

Why tech sales cycles take so long MANY TECHNOLOGY SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE EXPERIENCING ‘LONG SALES CYCLES’. BUT HOW LONG IS LONG? MICHELE BUCKLEY, RESEARCH DIRECTOR AT GARTNER, EXPLAINS.

A recent Gartner study of 506 technology buyers indicated that buying teams spend 16.3 months on average to complete a new IT purchase. You might find this fact surprising. Interestingly, buyers find this surprising as well. Seventy-eight per cent of respondents said their last technology purchase, from initial idea to contract signing, took longer than expected. Technology service providers, on the other hand, report an average sales cycle of 7.4 months for IT purchases — which suggests that they’re only participating in less than half of the buying cycle. Consistent with this finding, B2B customers in general have completed 57 per cent of the purchase process before they interact with a supplier. What are the buyers doing with all this time? Buyers spend a lot of time developing a common point of view and driving consensus across a diverse team of IT and business participants — buying teams typically comprise of 14 individuals on average. Stakeholders can reside within any function at any level of authority across multiple locations. They bring competing priorities, new perspectives and different

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

criteria for purchasing to a buying decision. Buying teams also perform extensive research across a wide spectrum of sources: colleagues, partners, analysts, external peers and online information from vendors and independent parties. As a result, sales and marketing have a very small time window to influence buyers. Almost all buying teams revise the project’s business case repeatedly in their buying process, which they may or may not inform service provider about. Repeating tasks delays the buying process further. Business cases are most likely revised repeatedly because of unacceptable cost and risk; the two most frequent objections internally to purchase decisions. These are also the two most time consuming objections to resolve, taking two to three months on average to do so. So, what can you do to increase your sales effectiveness given today’s buying behaviour? Avoid using outdated sales expectations and customer communicated intentions to estimate when a deal will close. Instead, evaluate the length of a sales cycle using historical internal data, as well as data from independent research. Lead with business outcome messaging

at all stages of the sales cycle. Make sure you articulate what impact your solution will have on the business, beyond a list of features or benefits. Establish a strong business case early. This reduces the need for clients to revise it throughout the sales cycle. It also proactively prepares a defence against the common objections of cost and risk and facilitates the many approvals required by stakeholders the salesperson isn’t exposed to. Focus sales and marketing efforts at the stakeholders that can drive consensus within a large buying team. The Challenger Sales Model provides specific guidance on how to identify the individuals that will truly help move your deal forward and those that won’t. Use content and sales actions to prevent further delays and help buyers be more efficient. Assist decision making by providing “prescriptive” content and guidance with clear recommendations for all stages in the buying cycle. After all, you have a lot more experience with successful purchases of your solution than your prospects do. 

Thursday September 20 | Hyatt Regency, Sydney

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Sophosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mission is to be the best in the world at delivering complete IT security to our customers, and the channel that serves them. As modern security threats continue to become more complex, Sophos is focused on ensuring IT security remains simple, reliable, and effective. Sophos is proud to sponsor this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Partner Value Award. The ARN Innovation Awards are a keystone for rewarding excellence in ICT. We are privileged to join our peers in celebrating all that we have accomplished together over the last 12 months. Jon Fox

SOPHOS Channel Director - ANZ

www.arnnet.com.au/innovation_awards

IOT THE

30 Interview Fujitsu

INSIDE JOB

CHRISTINE WONG

THE INTERNET OF THINGS, IN WHATEVER FORM, IS A CONCEPT CATCHING THE IMAGINATION OF PARTNERS, VENDORS AND CUSTOMERS ACROSS AUSTRALIA. YET DESPITE SUCH MOMENTUM, A CLEAR STRATEGY STILL CEASES TO EXIST — JULIA TALEVSKI EXPLAINS HOW FUJITSU IS FAST TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SUCH MARKET INNOVATIONS.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

or a company the size of Fujitsu, it can often be a challenge to take advantage of the latest developing innovations in a timely manner. To help combat this, the technology giant turned on an innovation fund, which seeks to endorse new project ideas through proof of concepts or early stage trials of new technologies. “We have the benefit of leveraging off our global business,” explained Brad Freeman, vice president of business application services at Fujitsu. “Through establishing an innovation fund we’re encouraging good ideas to come into the business

from our own staff and customers, and we fund proof of concepts and early stage trials. “It’s hard to develop innovative solutions in such a big company, that’s just a reality.” On the flip side, such an approach exposes Fujitsu to new skills and the start-up community; as well as the trials and tribulations of getting an idea off the ground and bringing it to a form of commercial reality. “It provides a vehicle to do all the right things around agile development, quick go-to-market, getting funding quickly and then demonstrating that idea,” Freeman said. “The company has set up two sides

Fujitsu Interview

Dr Alex Bazin (Fujitsu) and Brad Freeman (Fujitsu)

to this initiative — one that provides funding while the other aspect specifically leverages solutions from its Japanese headquarters and local ecosystem. “The innovation fund has been an interesting experience — we had trouble getting people to bid for the funding, which didn’t need to go through a big approval process. “If applicants come up with a good idea, we will fund it, but we also needed to prove that we could fund the idea on the spot, and all we ask is to track its progress.” As a result, Freeman said the technology provider has witnessed some “interesting reactions” to the innovation fund, discovering over six to nine months that some applicants developed full solutions that are now in pilot mode with the potential to take the next step in commercialising the idea. “Others fell by the wayside, recognising that it was a challenging experience — it’s hard work to build these things from scratch,” he said. “The aim is, for every 10 projects, if we can get two or three of them commercially launched or injected into the business, that’s a positive step.”

Building tech smarts In the case of IoT proof-of-concepts, Freeman added that the technology provider develops skills within Fujitsu to use a variety of different business partners, sensor devices, software platforms, and build an experience with that, which can then be used in other parts of the business. “It’s been an interesting mix for us to learn from,” he added. “The

outcome is both skills development and commercial ideas that we can take to market, giving us direct links into the start-up community. “We’re working directly with a couple of start-ups, providing some technology equipment and expertise off the back of that funding to help support them. For us, it’s been a good learning curve, helping us to develop new products and it’s also been a good challenge for our business culture. “This is how we need to develop solutions locally and then leverage the power of the Fujitsu global engine room to bring that into the local environment in Australia and New Zealand.” As a result, a couple of projects are currently operating in pilot mode. One case is what Fujitsu has dubbed ‘Project Owl’, which is being used by NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. The project uses drone technology

“It’s hard to develop innovative solutions in such a big company, that’s just a reality”

and image recognition to detect flora and fauna that may be hidden or thought to be extinct. There are thought to be about 1000 species of endangered flora and fauna in NSW alone, according to Fujitsu Oceania head of sustainability, Lee Stewart. The idea behind Project Owl is to also gain further insights into the endangered flora and fauna regarding whether they’re thriving, and other influencing factors and environmental conditions. Then, the data will be used to help train the artificial intelligence engine and program the video analytics so that the drones can then go back into the field, and cover more ground, at a higher altitude, in a quicker amount of time. In assessing the local market, the potential for IoT stretches across a range of industries from healthcare, to transport, manufacturing, the food supply chain, utilities and beyond. Specifically, Freeman noted that the Australian healthcare sector has shown a keen interest in pursuing IoT technologies, particularly with devices that will allow patients to be treated in their own homes. Using sensor technology, it would provide early warnings and be able to track if things aren’t working the way they should. Some of the other projects that Fujitsu has its hands in, include a LiveTalk for healthcare, which is an AI-based diversity communication tool featuring multilingual translation functions with real-time speech recognition and automatic translation.

arnnet.com.au July 2018

32 Interview Fujitsu

Fujitsu also has about three pilot projects underway regarding water protection involving tracking where water leakage is occurring and early warning signs of flooding. In one pilot project, dubbed ‘Smart Drains’, Fujitsu was a joint investor and collaborated with Downer and EYEfi, to help significantly reduce the risk of flooding due to overflow from storm water drains. The Yarra Ranges Council in Victoria, piloted the solution in March this year, which is made up of a network of sensors to monitor drains in real time — removing the need for manual drain inspections and enabling response and maintenance teams to manage a blocked drain before it causes a flooding issue. Within the Yarra Ranges Council’s remit, there are more than 4900 properties that are at risk of flooding from waterways or underground drains. Yarra Ranges Mayor, Len Cox, revealed it was the first time this innovative technology had been used in storm water pits in Australia. Downer and Fujitsu worked

closely with EYEfi to develop the solution with a view to further commercialise it — the project has already garnered interest from other states such as Queensland, which also has high-risk flooding areas. “We’ve used local partners to provide technology solutions with us, but we’re the integrator for that solution,” Freeman added. “In the case of Smart Drains, it provides an early warning of leakage and surges in drain systems. “With the combination of flood mitigation, protection of the water asset, is a really big deal. “We’ve also done similar work in Queensland, on the Gold Coast around flood monitoring. There’s a lot of mitigation processes in place, but if you can get an early warning of where the water may be coming quickly, you can get into action, to move people or protect assets in that area.”

Next steps Investing in new platforms and partnerships is on top of the agenda for Fujitsu in the IoT space during the coming months and years. This particularly pertains to

“We’re developing new AI techniques that can be brought about on IoT” July 2018 arnnet.com.au

its connected services strategy that involves cloud, IoT, artificial intelligence and cyber security, according to Dr Alex Bazin, global vice president head of IoT at Fujitsu. “We’re continuing to invest in the fundamental technology underpinnings of IoT,” he added. “We’re developing new AI techniques that can be brought about on IoT and are also investing in new platforms, partnerships and putting a much greater focus on verticalising that capability.” Bazin noted that a lot of customers were starting to move beyond proof-of-concept projects and simply collecting data. “We’re now doing much more around using that data and bringing it together with AI and advanced analytics,” he explained. “As the market continues to grow, the lines between IoT, AI and advanced analytics will continue to blur.” Bazin pointed out that many CIOs were taking on a larger responsibility for operational technology. “CIOs are getting wider operational technology responsibility and that helps cement the engagement or success for IoT deployments,” Bazin said. ”That’s changing the way they’re having conversations in their business, and changing the way that we, as a company, go to market.” According to Bazin, some of the studies that Fujitsu had conducted on the key drivers of IoT — operational efficiency and cost savings ranked high on that list. “It’s increasingly changing the way they do business, changing the way they sell their product and services, and changing the way they can charge for things and manage large capital assets,” he said. “Companies are doing much more around bringing together AI and advanced analytics with the data coming off sensors, which is starting to deliver real business value.” 

Thursday September 20 | Hyatt Regency, Sydney

PROUD PL ATINUM SPONSOR OF THE

DISTRIBUTOR VALUE CATEGORY

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is proud to again be a Platinum sponsor of the ARN Innovation Awards in 2018 and to be presenting the Distributor Value Awards which recognise distributors innovating through the supply chain, providing value to vendors and partners across the channel. We continue to be a channel driven organisation and strive to make significant enhancements to our partner programs and to increase the level of engagement with our partners. Distribution plays an integral role in the HPE strategy for the Australia, as we work in strong partnership to deliver solutions to our mutual resellers and customers. We congratulate all the Distributors that have been nominated for awards in this category and wish them every success for the future. Stephen Bovis

HPE Vice President and Managing Director

www.arnnet.com.au/innovation_awards

34 Analysis TBR

BIG IOT IS DEAD Customers and vendors alike will abandon their irrational expectations for big Internet of Things (IoT) transformation projects to refocus on smaller, incremental IoT tools. Technology Business Research findings expects customers and vendors to implement a two-part view, focusing on connected operations for their industryspecific operational needs and connected business tools for their horizontal business functions. Vendors will focus on delivering prepackaged IoT applications and services that help task-oriented customers eliminate IoT sprawl and help employees get their work done — EZRA GOTTHEIL reports.

PREDICTION

IoT hype will give way to a focus on giving businesses the tools to get work done in 2018 TREND: The air will leak out of the IoT hype balloon in 2018 as the term IoT loses its valence as a new way of thinking about outcomes around connected operations and connected business takes hold DRIVER: Customers will focus on connected operations for their industryspecific operational functions and connected business tools for their horizontal business functions. Vendors will create solutions that plug into these respective needs and will focus on use cases such as operational controls and maintenance (connected operations), leading to cost savings. They will also provide separate solutions that enable business management, planning, marketing and selling functions. Customers will seek application or solution packages that meet their modernisation needs through connected operations and connected business. These packages will further automate operations while connecting employees to the insights needed to make more effective, higher-level decisions RESULT: Vendors will market connected operations and connected business solutions, as the business case for both can finally be made with reasonable certainty due to current customer experience levels and vendors’ efforts to create prepackaged IoT solutions around operations, transportation, logistics and business functions

Ezra Gottheil is a principal analyst in TBR’s IoT and Devices Practice, leading team coverage on commercial IoT, PCs, smartphones, tablets, consumer IoT devices, productivity platforms, content and service ecosystems, and social media.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

It’s not the beginning of the end for IoT, but the end of the beginning. Vendors and end customers are figuring out what they want from IoT, but immaturity will hold back the market as the supporting technologies still lack interoperability and ease of deployment features. So far, we’ve just been exploring the potential

TBR Analysis

LONG LIVE LITTLE IOT

PREDICTION

IT will act as the helmsman as businesses navigate the new waters of IoT TREND: IT will bless IoT, making adoption of the technology smoother and more commonplace and cementing small IoT projects as the steppingstones to achieving business goals through IT modernisation and digital transformation efforts DRIVER: Companies are experiencing IoT sprawl and shadow IoT. In response, IT organisations will seek to control, not foster, these IoT projects. They will set standards; settle on key products, services and vendors; and establish their roles as the internal service providers for IoT projects throughout the enterprise RESULT: Cumulatively, lots of little IoT projects, along with other transformative technologies, will drive incremental transformation for customers. Small IoT projects will become door openers for IoT vendors. Vendors will benefit by making slow, steady inroads into corporate IT modernisation and business transformation efforts The IoT ecosystem is real, and vendors will fall into their places. Some vendors will focus on industrial IoT, while others will target horizontal elements of the IoT stack, such as cloud-to-edge platforms and business consulting or implementation services, making sure they can deliver the full spectrum of capabilities needed by businesses and employees. Customers will become smarter about what they need and more savvy about acquiring it. Vendors that are more realistic about leading customers to investing in step-by-step rollouts will win

PREDICTION

The success of artificial intelligence is governed by its ability to be democratised TREND: Utilisation of artificial intelligence (AI) in IoT will begin to increase as more user-friendly analysis tools become available DRIVER: Until now, few IoT projects have leveraged the potential of AI to unearth value insights in gathered data. Little IoT, which has prevailed over large IoT deployments over the last three years due to its accessibility, tends to place little reliance on AI, using customer expertise to respond to incoming data. Once IoT systems are up and running, however, users will look to AI to generate additional value, but this will be inhibited by the high cost of the experts required for AI RESULT: Businesses, lacking the resources to hire data scientists or access to the services those scientists provide, will invest in AI tools in a manner similar to how they transitioned from paper-based calculations to spreadsheets. Vendors, including Microsoft, are developing tools with which business users can apply AI, and especially machine learning (ML) techniques, to IoT-generated data without the need for data scientists As user-friendly analysis tools become available, utilisation of AI will increase. We liken AI-based and other emerging technology tools to the spreadsheet, which enabled business people to, in effect, write simple programs to analyse data. As Microsoft is a long-term advocate of end-user computation, is committed to AI and ML, and has a long track record of enhancing Excel with analytic tools, we expect the company to make ML extensions to Excel available starting in 2018

arnnet.com.au July 2018

36 Analysis Ben & Jerry’s

How IoT keeps Ben & Jerry’s ice cream safe SMART TECHNOLOGY SUCH AS TEMPERATURE SENSORS HELP UDDER VENTURES KEEP FREEZERS AT ITS BEN & JERRY’S FRANCHISES RUNNING AND PREVENT ICE CREAM MELTDOWNS — MICHELLE DAVIDSON REPORTS.

If a dropped ice cream cone is one of the saddest images in the world, then the loss of tens of thousands of dollars of ice cream—especially Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—is a tragedy. It’s also a huge financial hit, and one that Udder Ventures experienced when a new walk-in freezer malfunctioned at its Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop in the Haight-Asbury section of San Francisco. The equipment wasn’t installed perfectly — it wasn’t localised for temperature variances in San Francisco properly, said John Slater, chief euphoria officer (the managing member of the company) at Udder Ventures. So, it kept tripping the system, and when the system tripped, the freezer shut off — and the ice cream melted. “It turned off 230 times in nine months,” Slater said. “That loss of product is substantial — tens of thousands of dollars of lost product. “I had many sleepless nights. And I’d come in every morning and have this anxiety: ‘Is all my ice cream melted again or did it stay on last night?’” The scoop shop had a security system that included a trip alarm connected to the freezer. It would send an email notification if it sensed a problem, but no specific information about the problem, so Slater didn’t know, for example, if the freezer was shutting down again or if it was simply the defrost cycle, which occurs four times a day. And if he received an alert in the middle of the night, he would have to go to the shop to make sure the freezer was still running. “I had a lot of sleepless nights,” Slater added. “I lost a lot of money. I finally decided this was giving me an ulcer and I needed a solution.”

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

“I had a lot of sleepless nights. I lost a lot of money”

Thursday September 20 | Hyatt Regency, Sydney

PROUD PL ATINUM SPONSOR OF THE

VENDOR VALUE CATEGORY

The rise of digital transformation makes innovation an apt theme for this year’s ARN Innovation Awards. At Arrow, we champion innovation. More importantly, we champion the people that guide innovation forward, which is exactly what we’ll be doing on the awards night. As a proud sponsor, we want to congratulate all winners and finalists – the people who play for legacy and affect positive change through innovation deserve to be celebrated. Nick Verykios

Arrow ECS ANZ Managing Director

www.arnnet.com.au/innovation_awards

38 Analysis Ben & Jerry’s

Temperature sensor to the rescue After nine months, the scoop shop’s freezer was recalibrated and stopped tripping the system and shutting down. After what Slater went through, though, he was on edge wondering if the freezer was going to fail again. The email alerts were still unhelpful and were often false positives. Slater needed a better sensor system. Slater decided to use a temperature sensor system from Monnit in Kayesville, Utah. The system takes what’s essentially a dumb piece of equipment and makes it smart, said Brad Walters, CEO of Monnit. Specifically, it includes a probe that goes into the freezer; a wireless, battery-operated sensor; a gateway to receive the data and then send it to a cloud-based portal. Finally, software analyses the data and alerts users when sensors detect a problem. The sensors run on a quarter-size battery that will last two years, and they operate long range — 200 feet to 300 feet through walls, Walters said. Monnit’s sensors operate on lowfrequency wireless technology Monnit developed specifically for IoT. Many other companies use existing wireless technology, which is less efficient and less reliable for IoT devices, he said. “A lot of the companies out there are typically trying to use existing wireless technologies like wi-fi to deliver IoT connectivity,” Walters added. “The challenge is wi-fi was developed for streaming audio or streaming a video. “It’s like using a Mack truck to try and deliver a little red wagon worth of data. So, inherently it’s much less efficient.” Walters also said wi-fi-based sensors consume much more battery power, and transmit about one-fifth the range of Monnit sensors. Slater said the sensor system was relatively inexpensive and easy to install, and it provides useful information — more than what Slater said he could get from any other sensor system. “I took out the security system’s probe in the freezer, inserted the Monnit probe, put a battery in the sensor, logged into the iMonnit

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

capabilities for one sensor network and viewonly permission for all other sensor networks on the account. Monnit also provides local PC software (Monnit Express), which runs on the user’s computer and does not need access to the internet. The software is limited to 10 wireless gateways and 50 wireless sensors at a time. The data can also be exported to APIs to run in a company’s own applications.

“It’s a lot smarter than the security system I used to have”

portal and turned the sensor on,” he said. “And immediately my probe started feeding me information.” And when the system issues an alert, it includes detailed information to help Slater quickly determine if it’s an emergency or not. When Slater gets an alert, he can log in to the portal via the iMonnit app or through Monnit’s web-based software. The online software uses SSL encryption for web access, and user access and permissions are managed through the software once logged in as an administrator for their account. The software supports a variety of user permissions that the administrator controls, ranging from `view-only’ for individual sensor networks to creating additional administrators at the account level (and everything in between). For example, a user can have manage

Data allows for better business decisions

Slater said the alerts from the Monnit system provide useful information, which helps him make good decisions — does he need to wake up a manager to go into the store, does he need to call an emergency 24/7 repair person, or can he relax because he knows the defrost cycle triggered the alert? “It’s a lot smarter than the security system I used to have,” he said. “And the whole thing, including a year’s subscription to the portal, is about US$300. It’s a minor investment for all of the information you get and compared with the cost of lost product.” Also, because the sensors are so accurate, Slater said he can adjust the freezer to the temperature he wants the ice cream to be. He can handle the product better, as well as better manage the power usage. And he hasn’t lost any product — or sleep — since the sensor was installed. “Unfortunately, I had to go through a crisis to find out this technology was available,” Slater said. “But I went through it and thought there must be a better way, and sure enough there was.” This article originally appeared on Network World.

CHRISTINE WONG

L-R: Peter Gatt (Vibrato); Robert Ironmonger (Equinix); Marcelo Scalia (Ekulus Consulting); James Henderson (ARN); Andrew Roberts (JB Hi Fi); David Milne (Araza); Nikolas Robson (NBR Technologies); Jeremy Deutsch (Equinix); Michael Dyson (Advance Mobile IT); Rhys Evans (Versent); Neville James (NetApp) and Peter Ashton (InfoTrust)

Hybrid Cloud Roundtable SPONSORED CONTENT

BUILDING THE BLOCKS FOR

HYBRID CLOUD GROWTH THROUGH THE CHANNEL

AS THE EARLY RUSH TO THE CLOUD SETTLES INTO CONSIDERED DEPLOYMENTS, A HYBRID STATE OF ADOPTION IS EMERGING ACROSS AUSTRALIA — JAMES HENDERSON REPORTS.

n a market dominated by different clouds, and different use cases, organisations are mixing and matching cloud services and solutions depending on business requirements. Such a state of play is placing new demands on the channel, with enterprises demanding the ability to move workloads between multiple clouds at speed, and at scale. Consequently, providers must turn

to the data centre to transform services offerings, leveraging on-demand and increased connectivity to deliver on the promise of hybrid cloud. “Hybrid is here to stay,” observed Jeremy Deutsch, managing director of Equinix Australia. “Multi-cloud adoption has accelerated across the market and we’re a case study for this. “As the world’s largest data centre company, and the largest in Australia, we also adopt a multicloud hybrid approach.”

Spanning many clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Oracle, alongside ServiceNow, Salesforce and Workday — Deutsch said Equinix leverages the best of the cloud across software-as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments in conjunction with private infrastructure to deliver their own IT infrastructure to the business. “These clouds are melded together and leveraged across the world,” Deutsch explained. “This allows us to be at the leading edge of innovation and reflects what customers are also doing in the market. “Data is a core asset of most businesses today and customers want this data to talk to other clouds. Many customers now operate in an environment which provides the best of both worlds in a multi-cloud highly interconnected solution.” Across Australia, organisations are strongly moving in the direction of hybrid cloud, with a range of businesses finally settling on a strategy following years of industry uncertainty. In a local market expected to spend $84.4 billion on technology in 2018 — according to Gartner findings — central to such growth will be cloud, predominantly through hybrid environments. “Hybrid cloud is a reality for customers,” added Marcelo Scalia, consulting director at Ekulus Consulting. “There’s a huge market opportunity for Equinix to help provide a fast-scale connection between multiple clouds. “The number one challenge facing customers today is performance.

arnnet.com.au July 2018

42 Roundtable Hybrid Cloud

Customers can move an on-premises application to a SaaS solution but the performance struggles, this is a gap in the market because fast speed connectivity is key. “Cloud is a key strategy for our business, as is hybrid. Our business model four years ago has changed significantly to more of a cloud managed services play. “We’re building IP in the cloud and have changed our business to align with the market. Our business is better today than before cloud.” Delving deeper, Gartner research suggests that a multi-cloud strategy will become the common approach for 70 per cent of enterprises by 2019, up 10 per cent from 2018. Because as organisations embrace digital transformation, while increasing cloud consumption, multi-cloud environments are becoming the new normal. According to IDC CloudView Survey results, the clear majority of users are running more than one type of cloud deployment and work with more than one major cloud provider, with this new world of “multi-cloud” coming with new priorities. Such overwhelming statistics combine to paint a clear picture of future market trends both locally, and globally. “Hybrid is the market play,” said Neville James, director of channels and alliances Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) at NetApp. “The market has an advantage now compared to three years ago in that we now know customers have went all-in with cloud and have realised that isn’t always the best strategy. “Customers are realising that economics don’t always make sense and that cloud isn’t always cheap and easy.” In assessing the state of play across Australia, James observed that a “retreat” is underway in the context of cloud, with businesses now scaling back deployments in favour of a

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

“As the world’s largest data centre company, and the largest in Australia, we also adopt a multi-cloud hybrid approach” more balanced approach. “It’s not a 100 per cent retreat as such but most early adopters are starting to pull workloads out of the cloud,” James added. “The economics and the lack of agility have been the driving forces for businesses pulling out. “While certain workloads make sense, and security has improved, for those organisations accessing data on a regular basis, a hybrid environment is the preferred choice.” As a result, an “enduring theme” is occurring in the boardrooms of businesses nationwide, with both customers and partners now in fast pursuit of a “nuanced” outcome. “Whenever there is complexity there is opportunity for the channel and partners are well positioned to capitalise,” James added. “Customers don’t want to think about which cloud specifically, they want an outcome, rather than being dogmatic about which brand.

Above: Jeremy Deutsch (Equinix) Below: Neville James (NetApp)

“For those partners that can provide an outcome, then customers will be willing to listen.” Echoing James’ comments, Peter Gatt — founder and CEO of Vibrato — acknowledged that many businesses are going back to the drawing board in terms of cloud adoption and migration strategies. “We’re seeing customers that previously rushed into cloud now assessing their options,” Gatt said. “Some customers moved everything to the cloud but realised it was too expensive, which is usually because it wasn’t architected correctly. “Agility is also key for customers, especially given the importance of data.”

Hybrid Cloud Roundtable

Best of both worlds

Above: Marcelo Scalia

As new technologies flood the market, and customer buying patterns shift at pace, CIOs are leaning towards a “best of both worlds” strategy in the context of the data centre. No longer is marketing hype demanding a full-scale migration of workloads to the cloud, and nor is it advocating for a complete withdrawal back to on-premises. Instead, technology and business leaders are incorporating the best of both worlds as part of a strategy designed to fuel innovation both internally and externally — in essence, it’s cherry-picking in the cloud. “Some verticals have settled on whether they will adopt public or private cloud, those conversations have been had in Australia,” said Nikolas Robson, founder of NBR Technologies. “But data is key and lots of customers treat data differently. “Some are against moving data to the cloud because of the nature of their business, which can originate from security fears or simply an oldschool mindset. “But commercially it’s starting to make more sense and customers are seeking different ways of thinking. Not all of our customers have moved to the cloud but hybrid provides an opportunity to have different

(Ekulus Consulting) Below: Nikolas Robson (NBR Technologies)

conversations with the business.” Despite market metrics suggesting a shift towards hybrid and multi-cloud, the pull of public cloud continues to lure enterprises in Australia, evident through local spending forecast to reach $4.6 billion by the end of 2018. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bulk of the Australian public cloud services spending this year is expected to be on software-asa-service (SaaS), which is also the fastest growing segment at 24.4 per cent in 2018, according to Gartner research. “We believe that if customers have made the choice with regards to public cloud, then they will go there,” added Rhys Evans, general manager at Versent. “Our customers operate at the top end of town and include banks, telecommunications firms and heavily regulated industries, as well as government agencies.

“We’re seeing customers that previously rushed into cloud now assessing their options”

“We’re helping them all move workloads to the cloud and we’re seeing the core applications usually sit in a single cloud because of performance. But also, for customers running a cloud already, it’s too costly to replicate that across multiple platforms.” Yet the attraction of multi-cloud remains strong, with the onus now on businesses — through the assistance of the channel — to identify which workloads are fit for public cloud and which workloads are better run in a private cloud. “We believe customers want the best of both worlds with regards to cloud,” said Andrew Roberts, solutions manager at JB Hi Fi Commercial. “When we’re debating the plausibility of different solutions for different requirements, that’s when multi-cloud works. “This approach allows us to design a solution that is right for the customer. Our role is to understand what we do well and go deeper with our customers in those key areas. “We have a large breadth of products which requires us to stay across the many changes in the market, and constantly re-evaluate our strategy. “We can’t be everything to everybody which means we must align to which technologies suit our managed services and system integration capabilities.” Robert Ironmonger, senior sales manager at Equinix, shared an example of a customer maximising multi-cloud in Australia. RACV, the largest member organisation in Victoria, offering motoring, insurance, finance, and security services to its 2.1 million members, leveraged an interconnection-first strategy on Platform Equinix to help meet business goals. Specifically, the business significantly increased WAN capacity and established a stable

arnnet.com.au July 2018

44 Roundtable Hybrid Cloud

digital platform for future expansion and innovation, while also tapping into platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Salesforce. “RACV adopted a multi-cloud strategy,” explained Ironmonger. “They wanted options and agility but not for today, for the next four to five years. “Our role is to keep our partners up-to-date because technology is moving so quickly in the market today.”

Outcomes Irrespective of cloud platform or provider, Evans — in spearheading Melbourne operations for cloudcentric start-up Versent — said that in “simple terms”, customers are motivated by two key factors. “Customers want cost reduction and agility,” he said. “The business wants agility because they want to experiment with technology, try new things and see change whether they fail or succeed. “But IT want to reduce cost because they generally have smaller budgets and different challenges

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

Above: Rhys Evans (Versent) Below: Peter Gatt (Vibrato)

to contend with. Customers want an outcome, which can only be delivered, in my opinion, through a cloud platform. “We will keep having the hard conversations and challenging the status quo because we firmly believe you can reduce cost and increase agility in the cloud. We’ll keep fighting that fight.” Meanwhile, Advance Mobile IT operates at the other end of the technology spectrum, as a supplier of rugged mobility solutions across Australia. “In our area of the market, our customers don’t operate inside four walls,” said Michael Dyson, general manager of Advance Mobile IT. “We deal with communications and connectivity, which suffer from black spots and means moving an application to the cloud can be challenging. “That said, I don’t know of any of our customers that aren’t using cloud in one form or another. Some want certain workloads in the cloud while some will never move specific applications, sometimes because of security.

“We believe customers want the best of both worlds with regards to cloud” “Either way, our role is to assess what the problem is and then provide a solution, whether that is cloud or on-premises.” For David Milne — consultant and director at Araza — customers today have a different set of challenges in the form of allowing staff to work anywhere and from any device. “Microsoft is a big disrupter in the cloud market in Australia,” Milne added. “In particular, Office 365 is driving change among customers and influencing cloud strategies as a result. “But blockers still remain in the form of customer contracts and the fact that not every workload can be maximised in the cloud. “For example, email for employees works but the volume emails required by banks and telcos — who send thousands of emails daily — can’t be handled through Office 365. “Therefore, this is creating a hybrid scenario in which customers leverage multiple environments to achieve an outcome.” As customer buying patterns change, the channel is changing alongside, driven by a new breed of partners providing new technologies in new ways. It’s a recalibration of the channel as the market moves away from a linear supply chain into a spider web state of innovation. “We don’t see value in just sending an invoice to a customer,”

Hybrid Cloud Roundtable

said Peter Ashton, enterprise account director at InfoTrust. “We’re deep into cyber security and cloud and we provide flexibility and innovation to our customers. Our strategy is built solely around that. “Customers are asking for innovation which means we’re looking to vendors to see what we can wrap around as-a-service.”

Innovation With innovation levels heightening, forward-thinking customers are seeking forward-thinking partners in the year ahead, in a bid to create competitive advantage across the market. “Innovation for customers is key,” Deutsch said. “Cloud represents something a lot bigger than one cloud or one platform. All cloud players are innovating at speed and are constantly leapfrogging each other in terms of new updates and innovation. “There’s a huge opportunity for partners to position themselves in the middle of this change to deliver innovation to customers. And to do this, they must be in an environment capable of leveraging all of them.”

In looking ahead, and from a NetApp standpoint, James said value can be found by the channel collaborating to deliver customer innovation, through vendors and partners outlining over the horizon projects that can transform business operations. “We must start a conversation around the next project that will grow your customer’s revenue by 20 per cent,” James added. “It’s a harder conversation for the channel to have because it takes vendors and partners outside of their comfort zone, but it’s one that will ultimately resonate with the customer. “If partners can encourage

“Cloud represents something a lot bigger than one cloud or one platform”

Above: Michael Dyson (Advance Mobile IT) Left: David Milne (Araza) and Robert Ironmonger (Equinix)

customers to talk about how they are going to innovate, that’s more powerful than simply taking care of legacy systems. Our opportunity is to lead the market.” For Deutsch, the “good news” for providers is that the channel — and the wider industry — has now moved away from speeds and feeds dominated conversations, swapping out product features for outcomedriven strategies. “Nobody is now arguing over which technology is faster or better and that’s a positive step for the market,” Deutsch added. “CIOs want to take advantage of the next building blocks and they want to know what transformation is coming in six months’ time.” “Equinix will continue to do what we believe we do best, and that’s solve the interconnection problem and provide the channel with solutions to leverage cloud and onpremises environments. “There’s different types of flavours in the market and we are here to help partners accelerate innovation for their customers.” This roundtable was sponsored by Equinix. Photos by Christine Wong. arnnet.com.au July 2018

46 Channel Chat

Channel Chat with

CISCO

JAMES HENDERSON CHATTED TO TARA RIDLEY, DIRECTOR OF PARTNER ORGANISATION AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (A/NZ) AT CISCO. Tara Ridley | Director of Partners A/NZ, Cisco

From a channel perspective, what are Cisco’s top priorities during the next 12 months? Over the next year, our top priorities with our partners are; building practice development along with enablement aligned to high growth technology to help our partners accelerate in these markets. Creating new selling motions by expanding the ecosystem and transforming our resale process via programs that will strengthen our joint go to market and enhance the customer lifecycle. What are the major trends currently impacting the market? We live in a multi-cloud world, so we must reinvent the network, leverage the power of the data, and secure it to create meaningful experiences. Cyber security is no longer an IT discussion, it’s at the boardroom level. The trust and brand reputation associated with cyber security and a business goes hand in hand. Security is foundational to everything we do, from the cloud to the endpoint to the network. We need a security architecture that can bring together threat intelligence from all around the network, and the network must to provide a layer of security that hasn’t existed before.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

Another trend is the customer’s choice for a multi-cloud world: on premise, hybrid and public. We will not just embrace and enable the complexity of multi-cloud world, but we will power it and secure it. The network must play a more critical role in managing and deploying policy across IT environments. Cisco is building on its partnerships with key cloud players like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. How are the changing demands of the customer impacting the channel? It is the changing customer expectations that are forcing our partners to rethink their value and their business models entirely. Digitisation as well as the customer and employee experience is critical. Building a customer lifecycle practice is now the number one challenge our partners are facing. When you couple this with the buyer and decision maker being more informed and moving closer to the line of business, our partners are having to reinvent customer relationships. It is an exciting time for the partner community, the value they can add across the life cycle of any technology offer if enormous. Customers want more from their IT providers.

What can the channel expect from Cisco in 2018? We’re continuing to listen to our partners and innovate our portfolio. We also intend to remove the complexity and keep things simple for IT and line of business. Program simplification and ease of doing business continue to be key tenants of our partner program evolution. Where do you see opportunity for partners in 2018? Security and data are two key areas that partners would not normally associate Cisco with — our business has transformed and evolved, and our partners are having to upskill their teams to embrace the new normal that really drives our customers on the path of digitisation. The market is changing at rapid speed and there are some amazing opportunities in front of us — including how we demonstrate to our customers our capability to deliver the secure intelligent platform for digital business. What does a successful Cisco partner look like? Partners who can truly help customers understand how technology can transform their customers’ experience. In our region, we’re beginning to see partners that are more solutions driven rather than technology driven. These partners understand that there is no one size fits all approach and that by focusing on business outcomes for the customer, instead of the technology, they’re creating a form of customer intimacy with the partner. In one word, how do you think channel partners describe your company? Loyal.

Start-up Spotlight

(L-R) Frank Fera (CTO) and Ben Pearson (CEO)

Team Cloudcase

Mainframe Cloud

Cloudcase Software Solutions

FOUNDED 2015

HEADCOUNT 4-6

HEADCOUNT 15-20

KEY TECH Digital transformation

KEY TECH Software

KEY PARTNERS DXC Technology, Hitachi

KEY VENDORS Amazon Web Services (AWS),

Vantara, Digime and IBM

Green ID, Lixi, Google (Analytics) and Pexa

KEY CUSTOMERS Any organisation that uses

KEY CUSTOMERS Financial services,

a mainframe across banking, insurance, federal

government and telecommunications

and state government agencies

ARN UNCOVERS THE EMERGING TECH START-UPS CHANGING THE FACE OF THE AUSTRALIAN CHANNEL — LEON SPENCER REPORTS.

Born out of an idea to “modernise the mainframe”, Mainframe Cloud specialises in the development of enterprise software for mainframes, using technology designed to make mainframe data easier to access and interact with. Broadly, the Sydney-based software company’s platform and associated tools are aimed at simplifying the development and deployment of mainframe applications. According to Mainframe Cloud’s CEO Ben Pearson, this is done using the company’s MainSpace API Gateway, along with its adaptor options, InterActive and RunTime. Businesses relying on mainframe computers can gain the ability to develop mainframe micro-services without requiring them to be installed on the mainframe itself. According to Pearson, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) embraced Mainframe Cloud’s technology when the product was still in Beta. “Their guidance and feedback was instrumental in getting us to Minimum Viable Product,” Pearson said. Three years after Mainframe Cloud’s founding, business is going well, according to Pearson, a trend that is likely to continue given the introduction of the likes of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Open Banking. “To date we have established formal relationships with DXC Technology, Hitachi Vantara and Digime,” Pearson said. “It’s early days but we are particularly excited about the Hitachi Vantara opportunity as it demonstrates a brilliant use case."

Cloudcase Software Solutions began life as Axion Consulting, a management consulting practice headed by the four directors that together now run the company in its current form. The company, which resides at the Stone & Chalk fintech hub in Sydney, rebranded from Axion to Cloudcase Software Solutions once it launched its Cloudcase software platform in October 2015. In the company’s own words, the Cloudcase platform provides customer conversion and digital process automation for financial institutions. “[Cloudcase] is a highly-sophisticated rule-driven case management platform,” Cloudcase Software Solutions principal Roger Manu said. According to Manu, fellow Cloudcase Software Solutions principal Rian Fergusson started building the case management platform for use in the life insurance underwriting space. However, it was ultimately decided that the platform built by Fergusson would be better off being used to solve what the Cloudcase team identified as a significant problem in the banking marketplace in the on-boarding and origination space, which was very silo-driven, according to Manu. “We decided to target the banking and finance marketplace because there was a pressing need, and we knew the market space very well because that’s where we did a lot of our management consulting," he said. "We’ve basically blown the socks off the marketplace.”

Start-up Spotlight

Martin Boyd | Director, Vertex Technologies

Joanne Cooper | Managing director, ID Exchange

Vertex Technologies

ID Exchange

FOUNDED 2016

FOUNDED 2015

HEADCOUNT Four

HEADCOUNT Seven

KEY TECH Software-as-a-service platform

KEY TECH Two primary product sets, Opt-in

called ShellProtect

and Opt-out

KEY VENDOR AWS

KEY VENDOR Digi.me

KEY CUSTOMERS Businesses of all sizes and

KEY CUSTOMERS Individuals and enterprises

their IT partners

in various verticals

Vertex technologies started out as an IT and cyber security consulting firm, its primary activities revolving around helping businesses protect themselves from cyber security threats. Over time, however, the company’s leadership team realised that there are a lot of businesses out there that didn’t have the means to obtain the right help to meet their cyber security needs, due to constraints around time, money or expertise. In response, Vertex Technologies built a platform designed to enable companies and the IT resellers or outsourcers servicing them to manage and monitor their cyber security operations. The platform, dubbed ShellProtect, is designed for businesses of all sizes, up to the enterprise level, with Vertex often partnering with IT outsourcing providers and technology resellers for smaller businesses that rely on outside external support to manage and monitor their cyber security. According to Vertex Technologies director Martin Boyd, the ShellProtect platform can integrate with other products and services but it can also be used without other offerings. Now that the solution is seeing traction in the market, with several customers already on the system, Boyd and the rest of the Vertex Technologies team are hoping to see fresh growth with the help of an expanded roster of partners. “We have several different developments in the product on the board, and we’re looking to grow and grow quickly,” Boyd said. “We’re looking to working with more resellers and managed service providers to help as many as we can.”

The ID Exchange Innovation Campus in Sydney’s Glenwood Park House opened doors in May, the result of a partnership between Australian fintech start-up ID Exchange and UK-based firm Digi. me, the local company’s key technology partner. The move came just over half a year after ID Exchange announced its partnership with Digi.me, with ID Exchange’s technology stack effectively acting as a local distribution channel for Digi.me’s consumer data aggregation, sharing and consent offering. At the time, the parties said that the partnership would open collaborative opportunities across Australian and the UK economies, both regions where issues around personal data were expected to come to the fore hrough GDPR. “We basically had to build tech that would be military grade,” ID Exchange founder and managing director Joanne Cooper said. The launch of the ID Exchange Innovation Campus launch marked a point of confirmation for the start-up that its model and approach is getting traction. For Cooper, however, the Innovation Campus is just the beginning of the company’s growing role in an emerging market set to be driven by individuals’ digital rights. “We hope to really create a space and invite competition into it, and we would expect this market would become a regulated utility in time, but it’s a very, very important subject and it’s very important that the internet and the future of the digital economy drive value to individuals,” Cooper said. arnnet.com.au July 2018

50 What The Buyer Wants

How News Corp got 25,000 staff members using Okta MEDIA CONGLOMERATE NOW HAS ALL GLOBAL EMPLOYEES USING IDENTITY MANAGEMENT PLATFORM TO ACCESS ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS WITH A SINGLE SIGN ON — SCOTT CAREY REPORTS.

American media giant News Corp is an established customer of Okta, successfully on-boarding 25,000 global employees onto the identity management platform to date. How did it get there and what lessons did it learn? News Corp adopted Okta three years ago to solve two distinct security issues: single sign on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). “Those security concerns weren’t visible to our user community,” director of end-user computing at News Corp, Richard Perez, explained to Computerworld UK. “They were happily entering those repeatable passwords. ”So, we wanted to offer our users a clean way of connecting to internal systems, and that was in the form of Okta. “You can view all of your apps and access them without the burden of another password. “They can also self-serve to request new apps without asking the service desk and self-serve password resets. “So, all the things that benefit security and the business but also benefit the user to manage their own environment.” To keep users happy through this change, News Corp undertook a messaging offensive: insisting that the new system would not only be more secure, but would also make the users’ lives easier – no more worrying about “a load of passwords”. “Any change within IT is met with a little bit of trepidation and this was no different,”

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

Perez said. “However, it was embraced and they understood the benefits.” Perez admits that some staff members did “revert to old and still want to talk to someone on the service desk” — for example with password resets — but that’s “just change and you manage that change”.

Middle man Perez performs a pretty unique middleman role within News Corp, ensuring that vendors are keeping up their end of the bargain and liaising with the end users to ensure they have the tools they need. Speaking to Computerworld UK during the Okta Forum in London, Perez explained: “It is my job to ensure information, insights and feature releases are distributed across that whole business so everyone understands

the capabilities of Okta. “I have become that point of contact for Okta instead of going into nine different people and I help point them in the right direction, such as a certain business unit being able to benefit from a new capability.” This includes quarterly reviews with vendors, like Okta, where News Corp focuses “on performance” and “any initiatives that are current at that time and we will also look at roadmap”.

Roadmap As an established customer of the solution now, that roadmap piece is increasingly important. The media conglomerate owns wellknown brands in the UK including the Times newspaper, TalkSport radio stations and digital media companies Unruly and Storyful. “I look for two things in a roadmap: what our technical leads are looking for, and what business leaders are looking for, which

is what is happening across the industry and in security and technology as a whole and asking what Okta are doing about it to address certain issues that are becoming commonplace,” Perez said. In terms of specific products, News Corp is looking at going password-less, geolocation and device trust. “Nothing would stop us [from adopting these] but we want to make sure it works and we are happy with it,” he said. 

52 Elevate Data Centre

DISMANTLING

THE DATA CENTRE TO DRIVE CUSTOMER VALUE July 2018 arnnet.com.au

L-R: Kyle Page (Ericom); James Henderson (ARN); Phil Jones (Focus Group Technologies); Matt Wynn-Jones (Counterparts Technology); Sean Murphy (Nexus IT); Alex Gambotto (The Missing Link); Ronnie Altit (Insentra); Clinton Watkis (ASI Solutions); Adam Wilkinson (APC by Schneider Electric); Nathan Knight (Lenovo); Craig Humphreys (IQ3) and Stephen Hemsworth (NetApp)

THIS ARN ELEVATE OUTLINED THE BLUEPRINT OF THE MODERNDAY DATA CENTRE, ASSESSING INFRASTRUCTURE OPPORTUNITIES AND ONGOING CHANNEL CHALLENGES — JAMES HENDERSON REPORTS.

n swinging open the doors of the data centre, a new market reality is emerging. Blind-sided by new and emerging technologies, customers are turning to the channel to rebuild infrastructure strategies in the pursuit of innovation. In 2018, spending on data centre systems will account for $2.6 billion in Australia, spanning servers, storage and network equipment. But as the pace of business increases, demands placed on the data centre are changing, with IT departments no longer required to merely keep the lights on. “There’s a maturing of the data centre market in Australia,” observed Nathan Knight, channel sales manager of data

Data Centre Elevate

centre group at Lenovo. “We’ve moved through the process of flexibility and scalability and now we understand what the cloud beast is. “Customers now want choice, they want to be able to customise in the cloud and they want a local contact, especially from partners. Ease of business is also a big factor for customers today.” According to Knight, the softwaredefined environment allows businesses to have the flexibility to leverage public cloud but also to customise solutions, outcomes and services that meet local requirements. “Our strategy is around softwaredefined which is one of the key growth markets in Australia today,” Knight added. “This is about Lenovo providing strong partnerships with the industry innovators, vendors that are building great software meaning we can attach these offerings to our technology. “We want to provide partners with the best technology outcomes to meet the specific needs of their customers. “Through this approach, customers now have the opportunity to redeploy their human capital. Instead of people managing and maintaining legacy infrastructure, they are operating in a cloud-centric environment and innovating for customers. We’re seeing momentum in this space.” In assessing the local market, total spending on technology products and services in Australia is forecast to grow 2.5 per cent in 2018, reaching almost $84.4 billion. Central to such growth will be IT services, accounting for $30.4 billion of expected spend, spanning business IT services and product support. Albeit slight, data centre systems bucks the growth trend with a small decline in spending, with servers, storage, network equipment and unified communications expected to represent $2.6 billion of the market, down from $2.7 billion. “In the digital world, we’re blessed with options when it comes to

technology,” said Adam Wilkinson, national application manager at Schneider Electric. “But in the data centre, such options are causing a lot of challenges for business. “There’s insatiable appetite in the market but customers are having a lot of technology thrown at them, and not necessarily getting the desired outcomes that they are looking for.” As a result, Wilkinson believes such market dynamics represents a “strong opportunity” for the channel to bridge the gap between digital expectations versus digital experience. “At the end of the day, we are all trying to sell to a consumer somewhere

“There’s a maturing of the data centre market in Australia”

Nathan Knight (Lenovo)

along the line, and I think a huge gap exists between those two,” Wilkinson added. “When we start to focus on the outcomes of our customer’s customer, that’s when we understand how we can start to build a framework and a technical environment capable of delivering on those outcomes.” Wilkinson said the channel has the potential to play a “major role” in delivering the environment that the customer needs to capitalise on such a digitally-focused market.

“We’ve been in the market since before data centre was a cool word,” Wilkinson added. “That’s what we do and what we have always done. “Our role is to help channel partners plan, design and build data centre environments, whether that be from the edge, co-location or through to large cloud providers. But the key thing is, it’s not about the technology, partners can no longer start conversations there.”

Market dynamics As the demand for agility and flexibility grows, organisations are starting to shift more toward hybrid infrastructure, designed to optimise costs and increase efficiency. Within this shift however, one core asset is emerging for organisations of all shapes and sizes, in the form of data. “If you examine what customers are really trying to achieve, they are trying to access their data at the right time, in the right price, at the right cost,” said Stephen Hemsworth, manager of cloud data services at NetApp. “As a data authority, NetApp provides all three without compromise. “We are fundamentally moving towards being a cloud company, and taking advantage of the hybrid world, across moving data and reducing costs. “We are delivering this change through our channel partners and everyone in the market is starting to realise that NetApp has changed.” According to Hemsworth, modernising the data centre is based on the concept of simplifying technologies. “The market is now about simple scale and simple deployment, removing the need for technical conversations,” he added. “It’s a plug in and it works type scenario.” Flipping the conversation to that of the provider, Matt Wynn-Jones — managing director of Counterparts Technology — observed that from a platform perspective, the destination is now irrelevant. “It doesn’t matter if it’s on-premises, cloud or hybrid,” he acknowledged. “We

arnnet.com.au July 2018

54 Elevate Data Centre

“We spend a lot of our time moving workloads both into and out of cloud”

take a different approach and examine the needs of the customer from a consultancy perspective. “We ask the questions and look at the problems from an application performance perspective.” For Counterparts Technology, Wynn-Jones said that “hybrid is the answer”, insisting that customers will have some applications on-premises, some in public cloud and some in hybrid cloud. “It will always be a mixture,” he added. “From our conversations, customers are less concerned about where the technology is, more so how the applications are running. “We spend a lot of our time moving workloads both into and out of cloud but today, it’s not about technology. Once we understand the business problem and how to solve that, then there’s a process about vendor management and assessing which technology is the best solution.” Echoing the comments of WynnJones, Kyle Page — general manager of Ericom — also noted a significant shift in buying behaviour and spending patterns across Australia. “Our customer requirements are

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

changing,” Page added. “Typically our market involves laggard customers but our industry is changing dramatically and some customers are trying to drag out technology investments which is nothing new. “But then there’s new entrants to the marketplace which are driving different outcomes.” In assessing the on and off-premises markets in Australia, Sean Murphy - managing director of Nexus IT — estimates a 70-30 per cent split. But for the technology specialist, such measurements are irrelevant in a market which customers now demand the “right solution at the right cost”, irrespective of platform, technology or environment. “Partners want to act as trusted advisors and what we’re looking for is pods that can go into places, projects and customer types that can provide a smaller footprint than what we are used to,” Murphy said. “We don’t need a data centre, just a pod. But we need it to be able to deliver on storage, network, security and flexibility. We’re now moving into an application game.” Understanding the role of

Alex Gambotto (The Missing Link)

ELEVATE | APC by Schneider Electric The opportunity for the channel and for our collective customers is to bridge the gap between digital experience and digital expectations. It is when we truly focus on the outcomes our customer’s customer desires that we can begin the process to architect the technical environment that can deliver these outcomes. Hybrid IT, cloud — in its myriad of forms, colocation, hosting services, onpremises and edge all have a potential role to play in delivering the environment required to deliver the digital experience the consumers desire. APC by Schneider Electric is uniquely positioned to assist the channel to plan, design and build these bespoke environments and bridge the gap, but, it cannot start with technology.

Visit our website to more information on how you can win and join in on the fun

www2.ecs-anz.arrow.com/netapp-arrow-accelerate

56 Elevate Data Centre

ELEVATE | Lenovo As one of the world’s largest data centre infrastructure providers, Lenovo enables businesses to redeploy human capital from management and maintenance of infrastructure to delivering innovation through cloud ready ecosystems. Our business partners leverage the hybrid cloud to deliver a personalised experience and ensure customers compete better in the cloud enabled environment. Lenovo delivers this experience through the partnerships we have formed with leading providers including Nutanix, Microsoft, Datacore, Cloudian, Nexenta and VMware. As Lenovo has no legacy, and our partner community are differentiating themselves though these best of breed and innovative technology partnerships.

disruption and innovation in the context of the data centre has become a crucial skill-set for the channel, as providers evolve from transactional sellers into value-added enablers. “We’re now seeing a lot more innovation and options for customers going forward,” said Phil Jones, director of Focus Group Technologies. “Going back five or ten years, customers would just buy servers and storage and deploy the technology in a co-location or data centre. “But now the market has cloud,

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

Above: Stephen Hemsworth (NetApp) Below: Phil Jones (Focus Group Technologies)

hybrid cloud and the edge. We’re seeing great technology around edge computing and hyper-converged. “As a result, partners are the edge-face with the customer which means we have to talk to them about those decisions and help them on that journey. We have a lot of options but also, we have an opportunity to help customers select the right options.” As a result, Jones said the onus is now on vendors to strategically engage with partners to help source the right solution for the customer, guiding end-users through the innovation cycle in the process. “The problem with vendors historically is that they usually have one mindset,” explained Alex Gambotto, CEO of The Missing Link. “If you introduce them to a customer, they are basically thinking — ‘okay, we have five different offerings’. “And even if the customer says they want X, Y and Z from a business outcome perspective, the vendor sales person is simply thinking — ‘how do I put my square peg into that round hole?’ “If it’s not quite square, they will make it fit and that’s been one of the

biggest challenges for partners in the data centre space.” Due to an influx of new technologies, Gambotto said that every vendor now has a “new story” to match alongside. “It’s the same lines — we’ve changed, we’ve evolved, we’ve done this and done that,” he said. “We decided quite some time ago to become specialists because the market is filled with too many options to become experts in every technology. “We believe we are experts in infrastructure and cyber security. The data centre has evolved and become much broader but I think lots of customers got swallowed up by the concept of public cloud solving every problem. “At the end of the day, there’s always going to be a need for us and the focus is specialisation. When you walk into a customer, it’s powerful to be able to deliver exactly what they need versus doing everything.”

Partner play Delving deeper, Craig Humphreys — CEO of IQ3 — acknowledged that in

The data center you’ll need tomorrow is already here

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58 Roundtable Data Centre

today’s climate, customer conversations are centred around resources, cost, technology and capability. “Cloud is not going away and will stabilise at some point,” he said. “We’re seeing cycles in Australia of organisations that have gone all-in with public cloud infrastructure as a transition and then some of those have gone through a process of pulling out. “They have realised that it wasn’t the silver bullet that was promised.” Specific to the data centre, Humphreys said the market is settling into a hybrid architecture, which reflects how customer’s are now consuming technology. “Most organisations are deploying

ELEVATE | NetApp NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud. We provide a full range of hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with our partners, we empower global organisations to unleash the full potential of their data to expand customer touch points, foster greater innovation, and optimise their operations.

July 2018 arnnet.com.au

software-defined for example, Office 365 as well, and perhaps a few workloads in the cloud also,” he explained. “Amazon Web Services did a great job of driving the value of public cloud into the minds of CIOs across Australia, and that was ten years ago. “That has driven a lot of the forces within organisations which has filtered across the wider business. Which is why a few years ago we experienced a flat spot in the market, because businesses started to assess and reassess technology options.” The knock-on effect for Humphreys is that traditional hardware vendors have had a “huge chunk” of market share ripped from them through the cloud. Consequently, the shift has caused the markets to revaluate how relevant they are to the customer — a change that is expected to continue in 2018 and beyond. “The biggest challenge we see is that there’s so many different technologies which creates customer confusion,” added Clinton Watkis, business development manager at ASI Solutions. “Customers are being pulled from pillar to post from every single vendor in the market. “Every vendor will say they have a better offering which adds complexity. The key question for the customer is, what is our best offering?” From an ASI Solutions standpoint, the provider’s engagement process with a customer centres around assessing the problem, before creating a solution capable of delivering a desired outcome. “But vendors can cloud that with a discussion intent on selling one product or solution,” Watkis added. “Although partners try to steer the conversation around business outcomes, the vendors usually keep trying to push the discussion back to a product. “Yes, there’s lots of solutions in the market but the key to becoming a trusted advisor is to understand the customer strategy and processes. Because until you understand what they

Above: Clinton Watkis (ASI Solutions) Below: Adam Wilkinson (APC by Schneider Electric)

are trying to achieve and the direction they want to move in, you can’t make those technology decisions.” In summarising the discussion, Ronnie Altit — CEO of Insentra — said value can be found from the channel adopting a “thoughtleadership” approach to the market, an approach which delivers new levels of customer innovation. “From an Insentra perspective, we’re trying to pick the technology that partners don’t necessarily have the resources or skill-sets in, and help the channel deliver a customer outcome,” Altit added. “For customers, there’s no doubt that hybrid cloud is going to be the answer. “That’s very clear and slaps the market in the face — it’s the default strategy. Economic theory shows that the market eventually levels out into a more balanced state. The question is around what environment makes sense for the customer? It’s that simple.” This roundtable was sponsored by APC by Schneider Electric, Lenovo and NetApp.

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60 Interview EMT Distribution

outh Australian-based Richard Rundle began his venture into the IT industry in 1994, starting as a consulting outfit primarily focused on enterprise and government customers. In fact, Rundle takes credit for being one of the first to provide Windows Server and Exchange Server into the South Australian Government. As email was a still relatively new technology in the early 1990s, issues such as spam and viruses were beginning to run rampant in the market. Take for instance the Michelangelo virus in 1992 that was expected to wipe information from ‘millions’ of computers at the time, despite the damage actually being quite minimal. It wasn’t until 1995 when one of

the first macro viruses began gaining global attention, with the Concept bug specifically attacking Microsoft Word documents. Consequently, Rundle spotted the security opportunity in the market many decades ago, and took the initiative to hunt down products to help solve some of the security issues that were beginning to make an impact. It was around this time when Rundle took on the distribution rights for security vendor, GFI Software. For a while, Rundle also took on the helm as the vendor’s vice president of Asia Pacific and Japan, up until it was bought by a private equity firm in June 2015 — this provided him with valuable insight into the vendor and distributor relationship tussle. “At our height, we were hiring

about 40 people in Adelaide, Sydney and Asia, and once we acquired some other products, we built a huge managed services practice, under a brand called LogicNow, which was eventually acquired by SolarWinds in June 2016,” he said. Since parting ways with GFI, Rundle reset and renamed the distribution arm of his business to EMT Distribution, which aptly stands for emerging markets technology.

SECURING THE CUSTOMER FROM SOUTH

CHRISTINE WONG

AUSTRALIA

SECURITY IS AN UNRELENTING FORCE IN THE MARKET TODAY, DOMINATING INDUSTRY HEADLINES AND CHANGING CUSTOMER SPENDING HABITS — RICHARD RUNDLE REFLECTS ON MORE THAN TWO DECADES OF SPECIALIST KNOWLEDGE WITH JULIA TALEVSKI.

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Threat response In undertaking the emerging markets theme, the distributor was adding niche products to its lineup, including security vulnerability management products such as Flexera, and a vulnerability scanner called Acunetix.

EMT Distribution Interview

A further opportunity presented itself in the guise of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) — the cyber arm of the Australian Defence Force, which was previously known as Defence Signals Directorate. In 2010, it established a Cyber Security Operations Centre to develop a comprehensive understanding of ICT security threats to critical systems, and how government agencies and companies should respond to those threats. One year later, in 2011, ASD published a top four mitigation strategy guideline involving application whitelisting, patching applications and operating systems, and restricting administrative privileges. This was later expanded to also include daily back-ups and multifactor authentication — the ASD also produces the Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM), which is the standard that governs the security of government ICT systems. Helping businesses adhere to ASD guidelines, proved to be a fruitful avenue for Rundle to pursue. In relation to this, Rundle also built up another business model, which eventually took form in the shape of Airlock Digital, an application whitelisting provider, exclusively distributed through EMT. Airlock Digital, which was launched in 2013, also involved co-founders David Cottingham and Daniel Schell. “We thought this was a really strong document for us to follow and model our business on,” Rundle explained. “We set about building up a product base that maps the ASD’s top four and top 35 strategies to

Richard Rundle Founder, EMT Distribution

mitigate targeted cyber intrusions. “Along the way, we found a glaring hole in the security product suite, which was application whitelisting. “At the time, there was nothing in the market that did it right, certainly nothing on the market that actually got people their audit tick in Federal Government.” Despite being recognised as the most effective strategy by the ASD, Rundle said organisations resisted application whitelisting because of the perceptions the it was onerous to administer, resource intensive to implement, and too reliant on a supplied list of known good files. “With Airlock, these perceptions are no longer the reality,” Rundle said. “The inclusion of reputational lookups from a trusted source significantly reduces the time for administrators to make decisions about whether to trust new files. “Not all people administering endpoint and server protection are security specialists, so the risk levels posed by unknown files has to be easy to understand.”

Messaging Rundle reflects that at the time, getting the message across to businesses and government agencies to protect themselves against cyber threats and gain audit approval, seemed to fall on deaf ears, but in the past two years, the tide has turned, and has begun to pay off in spades. “A lot of companies are now doing ASD as-a-service among other things,” Rundle said. “Was anyone Googling ‘ASD’ four or five years ago? No. Do they Google it now? You bet they do. “That really reinforced the strategic decision that we made some years ago and we continue to adjust

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62 Interview EMT Distribution

our product set to fit that. “There were a couple of tough years when no one was listening to that message, but with some good marketing noise, we really turned that on its head.” Rundle refers to his business attitude as being a ‘vendor representative’ rather than just a distributor. Since its establishment, the EMT business has grown from its Adelaide base to now include a presence in Dubai, Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong and Philippines. All up, the distributor has about 50 employees, with about 26 in Australia, and approximately 1200 actively transacting partners throughout those regions. “We are out there, carrying the cards of the vendor, setting them up, providing marketing or tech support and so forth,” he said. “When a vendor out grows us, then that means we’ve done our job. “Over time, you might see that we’ve lost vendors along the way, but we’ve never lost one because we’re not good at what we do, we’ve lost them because we’re really good at our job.” So, what’s sets EMT apart from other value-add distributors in the market? Rundle puts it down being focused and maintaining a deep knowledge of the security space. “It’s our focus,” he explained. “We don’t seek to be a broad-line threeper cent margin, box shifting type distributor. “We’re very focused on what we do and we hire the best in security, that’s our thing. We are more than just a distributor. We do take on the vendor model which points to our significant difference in the market.” Negotiation tactics and importance of maintaining an ongoing relationship with vendors are a couple of the key lessons that Rundle has learnt along the way. “Vendor negotiations are tricky

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and the ongoing relationships with them is an active day-to-day proposition,” Rundle said. “I’ve sat on both sides of the vendor and distributor table, and sometimes doing both at the same time, and I can say that vendors with a sensible margin and marketing proposition, are genuinely the ones that get the headspace, and are the ones that get the revenue results. “Vendors that get nasty about margins or feel that they’re being ripped off in some way, they’re the ones that don’t grow and disappear into the wilderness “The worst thing you can get is a vendor who just wants to squeeze right from the start. That’s never going to be a good relationship, and will never build them or us.”

“WHEN A VENDOR OUT GROWS US, THEN THAT MEANS WE’VE DONE OUR JOB”

Future plans In the 12 months ahead, Rundle said he will be undertaking a strategic review of EMT’s vendor portfolio, which includes Airlock Digital, Acunetix, Cybonet, ThreatConnect, Endpoint Protector, Flexera, Opswat, Matrix 24, Picus Security, Devo, ThreatTrack Security, Thycotic, Vipre, Ninja RMM, Temasoft and Stealthbits. “We might keep the same number of vendors by the end of the year, but we’re certainly re-evaluating a couple that we have,” he added. “It’s either time for them to go out on their own or they’re not behaving, and it may be time to go. What’s really important is who we are engaging with strongly.” There are a couple of points that Rundle considers when deciding whether or not a vendor is suitable, which is based on whether they are a high-end or an emerging player in the market; or if it has the foresight to reach that potential. “We’re happy with niche players in the market, as long they will become a good one for us,” he said. As an example, Rundle

highlighted their relationship with a vendor called Opswat. Since engaging with them in 2008 — deal sizes were predominantly within the $50,000 range, but that has continued to grow to the point where deals are now ranging between hundreds of thousands to millions in the last few months. “Their offering of malware analysis, content disarmour and reconstruct is really resonating with the market and they’re going to be a very strategic vendor into this year,” he said. Rundle tipped the next big trend to shake up the market involved bringing together big data and security orchestration. “Together, they become a very important piece of the security landscape,” he added. “There’s so many products on the market, intelligence feeds and noise, the winners out of all this, will be the ones who can normalise it and turn it into actual intelligence.” 

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