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ANNIVERSARY A KRISHNAKUMAR (L), Gemini Communication SAURIN SHAH(R), Ashtech Infotech APRIL 2012 VOL. 6, ISSUE 1

WWW.CHANNELWORLD.IN

SPECIAL

n Editor’s Note

Vijay Ramachandran

Dump Incentives

A

nyone who runs a team or a business will tell

you that the three most complex conundrums are the recruitment, motivation and retention of talent.

For a while, let’s focus on the issue in the middle, so to speak, on how you can inspire your staff to greater heights.

While reams of paper have been expended on this subject, from how to lead by example or how to give staffers a ‘challenging’ job to do, I’ve typically seen that in more organizations than not, it’s incentives or compensation that’s expected to drive employees to deliver more, better and faster.

But is this a good way to keep a team going forward?

Over a dozen years ago, the company I worked for then was a start-up carved out of larger group. The CMD was visionary, inspirational and very different.

In a bid to get our division off the ground fast he came up with a package of incentives for team leaders tied to various deadlines and milestones. On paper, a great way to kick-start operations. Again, on paper, a really good method for the team to co-operate and get things done.

But that’s not how the dice rolled. Every team leader got so focused on his or her goals, that in the resultant chaos they lost track that the company was nothing more than the sum of its parts.

Myopia became so much a part of our DNA, that shutters came rolling

down three years after we launched operations.

I bet you’re thinking, how can one lousy example prove that incentives are a rotten option?

Bear with me.

In 1945, German psychologist Karl Duncker cooked up what is now known as The Candle Problem. He handed out three objects: a candle, a box of drawing pins and a match-sticks and asked his subjects to fix the candles on a cork-board wall without any additional elements, while ensuring that when lit, the candle wouldn’t drip wax on the table below.

The only way to do this successfully is to dump

n Where you require creativity, the increase in focus that a financial incentive entails creates a kind of myopia to the obvious solution.

the drawing pins out of the box; pin the box to the wall; light the candle and use the box as if it were a candle-holder.

Incidentally, people found it much easier to get to the solution if the drawing pins weren’t in the box to start with.

Because, when the pins were in the box, participants in the experiment saw it only as a pin-box, and not something they could actually use to solve the problem. This mental block or bias is called “functional fixedness”. It’s what comes in the way of out-of-the-box thinking.

Then some years later, Prof. Sam Glucksberg, added a twist to The Candle Problem – he offered a financial incentive for solving it. You’d expect that this would spur participants to do it faster.

It has the opposite effect, the incentive makes people slower! In fact, the higher the incentive the slower people get.

And why is this? Because what psychologists

have found is that with straight, simple, routine and repetitive tasks financial incentives work perfectly well and are a great motivator.

However, where you require creativity or conceptual thinking or an ability to think out-of-the-box, the increase in focus that a financial incentive entails creates a kind of myopia to the obvious solution.

So, what you get with doling out cash incentives to your salesfolk is a bunch of people with single-minded determination, who can be pretty clueless about what to do when the sale requires thinking laterally or ingeniously—like when an economic slowdown crimps IT spend.

As author Daniel Pink states in his recent book Drive: “too many organizations… still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. They continue to pursue practices such as short-term incentive plans and pay-for-performance schemes even in the face of mounting evidence [which shows that such practices] usually don’t work and often do harm.”

What do you feel about incentives? Do write in and let me know.  Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of ChannelWorld.

Contact him at vijay_ramachandran@idgindia.com

april 2012

INDIAN Channelworld

1

For Breaking News, Go to Channelworld.in

Inside Indian Channelworld n april 2012

■ news digest 05 SAP Goes After SAS, IBM |

SAP is hoping to stake out some turf in the predictive analytics software market with a new application, BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software, which was announced early this month 06 Android Expected to Eclipse Windows | Windows will lose its

place as the dominant computing platform over the next four years, supplanted by ARM-based devices running Google’s Android OS, according to an IDC report 06 Hitachi Releases First 4 TB Hard Drive | Hitachi’s

former disk-drive division announced what it said was the first enterpriseclass 4 TB hard disk drive.The drive has a greater areal density and offers 33 percent more capacity in the 3.5inch form factor .

08 Red Hat Warns

Against Cloud ‘Open-Washing’ | Open source software company Red Hat believes that companies like VMware and MS are skewing the definition of open cloud

■ news analysis 10 Switching Sides | Why are

partner organizations in India hiring executives from vendor companies?

■ opinion

01 Editorial: Vijay Ramachandran on how financial incentives offered in organizations often do not produce even the most obvious solutions 28 Mike Elgan: Bluetooth 4.0 has an extremely low-energy feature, which means supporting gadgets can run off wristwatch batteries, or hold charges for years

26 ■ On Record

26 Rafiq Somani, Area Vice

President & Country Sales Manager, PTC India, talks about competition, co-opetition and channel strategy

■ case study

30 Erasing The Paper-Trail

When Mumbai’s Datamatics decided to expand its operations in the BPM market by testing the waters in the domestic market here, it saw great opportunity to show-case its capabilities in automating the processes at Blue Star

32 ■ cover story

32 Most Valued Principals 2012

The start of new fiscal year is the perfect moment in time to gauge the performance of vendor companies and the expectations of channel partners. As partners implement their new business plans, the vendors leave no stone unturned to accomplish the targets in the new fiscal year. The third edition of ChannelWorld ‘Most Valued Principals – 2012’ Survey provided a neutral platform for partners in India to rate the vendors they work with. A total of 437 partner organizations participated in the survey.

Cover photograph by Fotocorp & Srivatsa Shandilya Cover Design by Unnikrishnan A.V

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Inside

indiAn CHAnnelwORld ■ APRil 2012

CHANNELWORLD ■ FOCAl POint

51 Pushing the limits

dAtA CenteR: Most companies don’t optimize the components of their data centers, and therefore, bump up against their limitations faster than necessary.

Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India

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14 sumit garg, Chairman, Immunity Networks

says that the focus and the entire bandwidth of the organization are centered around deploying solutions that are unique in the market rather than going after typical run-rate projects.

17 Ram lal luthra & Manoj tharian of

MicroGenesis say that their concern for the clients is what helps them stay in the business. Without the customer support, business just fades off.

They further add that the customer would eventually return to them after a thorough market analysis, given their service quality

Here are some strategies that IT leaders suggest using to help push data centers utilization farther.

54 Readying ethernet For the data Center

dAtA CenteR: Ethernet has emerged as the

dominant network protocol but it has to overcome several key limitations if it is to become the foundation of choice for the converged data center

■ FACe OFF

56 On Razor’s edge: Both Cisco and Dell

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Emerson Network Power India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . IFC

IBM India Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .IBC

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News

What’s within

PAGE 06: Android Expected To Eclipse Windows PAGE 06: Hitachi Releases First 4 TB Hard Drive PAGE 08: Red Hat Warns Against Cloud ‘Open-Washing’ PAGE 10: Switching Sides

I l l u s t r a t i o n s b y U N N I K R I S H N A N AV

f i n d m o r e a r t i c l e s at C h a n n elwo r l d . i n

M&A

SAP Goes After SAS, IBM

S

AP is hoping to

stake out some turf in the predictive analytics software market with a new application, BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software, which was announced early this month.

The application is now in “ramp-up,” SAP’s term for a controlled initial release period. It comes with a set of predictive algorithms and also allows the use of algorithms from the opensource R language for statistical analysis.

Predictive analytics differs from traditional BI (business intelligence) software. Instead of running static reports on sales data or inventory levels, the point is to explore and model business data, searching for correlations and trends that provide insight into future events, customer behaviors and other areas.

“The market and our customers have been anxiously waiting to hear a concrete predictive strategy from SAP,” said Mani Gill, vice president and general man-

ager of business intelligence solutions in a recent blog post. “The time has come.”

SAP will compete with well-established predictive analytics products from the likes of SAS Institute, IBM’s SPSS division and Oracle, as well a number of startups, such as Revolution Analytics, that are based on supporting R. BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis will be offered in stand-alone form, but SAP also plans to couple it with the HANA inmemory database, which has a library of statistical functions, according to a statement. The software will also support access to other databases, including Oracle’s, according to Gill’s blog post.

Users will have access to “beautiful advanced visualizations and data exploration, all with a dragand-drop interface for data selection, preparation, and processing,” SAP said. It will be possible to push results out to other SAP BI applications, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, SAP said.

“Predictive analytics is still a data statistician game, but people across the organization are demanding predictive insights,” Gill said in the blog post. “We want to give all users what they need.”

april 2012

— Chris Kanaracus, IDG News INDIAN Channelworld

5

M&A OUT OF THE LAB

Dell to Buy Wyse Dell is acquiring thin-client hardware and software company Wyse Technology to expand its desktop virtualization offerings.

Running a virtual desktop instead of running the desktop OS and applications on a PC allows enterprises to manage their users and devices efficiently and securely.

By acquiring Wyse, Dell gets both hardware and software it can integrate with its own products to offer more complete pack-

ages. Wyse’s hardware portfolio includes both thin and so-called zero clients.

Desktop virtualization is not a new market for Dell.

They offer DVS (Desktop Virtualization Solutions) Simplified appliance that provides preconfigured hardware with factory-installed software for small and midsize deployments.

- Mikael Ricknäs , IDG News Service

-

Computing

Android Expected To Eclipse Windows

W

feels Tom Mainelli, director lose its place as of IDC’s Mobile Connected the dominant Devices program. computing “Android’s growth is tied platform over the next four directly to the propagation years, supplanted by ARMof lower-priced devices,” based devices running Mainelli said. “So, while we Google’s Android OS, acexpect dozens of hardware vendors to own some share cording to an IDC report.

A “dramatic shift” will take in the Android market, many will find profitplace, IDC says, ability difficult with the market market share of to sustain.” share of Windows Windows devices in What’s more, devices based on 2016 sliding from the Android marthe x86 architec35.9 percent in 2011. ket won’t leech ture dropping to developers from 25.1 percent in 2016, a significant slide from the smaller iOS realm. He 35.9 percent in 2011. says, “[W]e expect a large Meanwhile, devices runpercentage of application ning Android will see their developers to continue to share grow to a market-lead- focus their efforts on iOS ... ing 31.1 percent by 2016, up because iOS end users have from 29.4 percent in 2011. proven more willing to pay Devices based on Apple’s for high-quality apps.”

As more “smart connectiOS operating system will ed devices” — smartphones, also gain during the period, tablets, and some personal to 17.3 percent of the market, computers — enter the from 14.6 percent in 2011. market, the multiple device Despite the burgeoning user will become the norm, market for Android devices, many makers will find it according to IDC. That will difficult to stay in the black, create a challenge for makindows will

25.1%

ers of those devices.

“The trick will be to integrate all these devices into a unified whole through use of personal cloud-type applications and services,” Bob O’Donnell, IDCs VP for clients and displays, explained.

“That’s the real challenge of what we have often called the ‘PC Plus’ era.”

916 billion smart connected devices were shipped in 2011, generating $489 billion in revenue, IDC reported.

It predicted shipments would reach 1.1 billion this year, and 1.84 billion by 2016.

The IDC report, although careful to avoid the volatile phrase “post-PC era,” will add gasoline to the heated discussion on that topic.

Before his death, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs declared the world had entered the post-PC era. His sentiments were later echoed by IBM. Nevertheless, there are those who would argue that post-PC devices supplement a PC infrastructure and are not a substitute for it. Yet others would point out that the death knell for PCs have been sounded many times in the past, but somehow they always find a way to survive.

— John P. Mello Jr., PC World (US)

Storage

Hitachi Releases First 4 TB Hard Drive Hitachi’s former disk-drive division announced what it said it the first enterprise-class 4 TB hard disk drive.

The drive has a greater areal density and offers 33 percent more capacity in the 3.5-inch form factor at 24 percent lower watts-per-gigabyte.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), now 6

owned by Western Digital , introduced the new Ultrastar 7K4000 line, which uses the new 512e Advanced Format.

Hitachi’s Ultrastar 7K4000 4 TB hard drive is the third generation using the Ultrastar design. It has five platters that spin at 7,200rpm. The drive uses a 6 Gbps SATA interface and a 64 MB cache buffer. It

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Scaling up: Hitachi’s enterprise-class 4 TB hard disk

has a 2 million hour meantime-between-failure rating.

Using the Advanced Power Management API , it can take advantage of four modes and

Short Takes  HP announced a new

line of servers – the HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8). This is a result of the two-year program of Project Voyager, the company’s initiative to redefine data center economics by automating every aspect of the server life cycle.  CA

Technologies appointed Sunil Mangalore as Vice President for its India operations. Sunil’s charter includes optimizing sales coverage, winning new customers, building the partner ecosystem, and managing the operations. He was earlier CEO of Datacraft - India and SAARC.  India

PC shipments are expected to reach 12.5 million units in 2012, a 17 percent increase from 2011, according to Gartner. The PC industry is benefiting from the Tamil Nadu state government deal which will add approx. 920,000 units to total shipments in 2012. Without the deal, PC market is expected to grow 8.4 percent in 2012.

achieve up to a 59 percent reduction in power usage.

Western Digital is marketing the drive for use in 24x7 enterprise applications such as big data, cloud computing, data warehousing, video-on-demand, disk-to-disk backup and scaleout storage implementations.

The Ultrastar 7K4000 family is now shipping in limited quantities. Models are available with a native data encryption option.

- Lucas Mearian, Computerworld (US)

CLOUd

red hat Warns against Cloud ‘Open-Washing’

O

PEN sOURCE soft-

ware company Red Hat believes that companies like VMware and Microsoft are skewing the definition of open cloud by claiming that their virtualization products are open when in fact they are closed. speaking at a recent round table conference in london, scott Crenshaw, head of Red Hat’s Cloud Business Unit, said that several virtualization vendors have started to claim they are open as a marketing gimmick. “i’ve noticed that VMware has been joining a lot of consortiums with the word ‘open’ in the title,” said Crenshaw. “VMware’s technical architecture reflects its business model, and that’s lock-in. The day they open source their core virtualization is the day that they can truly claim to be open.”

He added that VMware’s recent decision to change its licensing model and charge per virtual machine has forced many iT executives to wake up to the necessity for open cloud, and realize that they do not want to be controlled by a single vendor.

Crenshaw also criticized Microsoft’s approach of persuading customers to use one portion of its cloud technology and then “walking them into the complete stack”.

“Why would you ever lock yourself into a single vendor?” he said. “it doesn’t give you a rich choice of

8

which public clouds to run on, and it means cutting yourself off from innovation, unless that vendor happens to endorse it.”

Red Hat advocates the creation of open hybrid clouds that allow customers to build out their resources at the pace they want to, and replace any part of the stack with an alternative piece from another vendor. The company’s Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) and Openshift platform-as-aservice (Paas) products both adhere to this model.

Crenshaw said that open hybrid clouds provide users with the elasticity and self-service that they need,

Around

TheWorld iBM, red hat to join Openstack IBM and Red Hat could soon join the ranks of OpenStack supporters, giving the open source cloud project a big boost.

The addition of Red Hat and IBM has not been confirmed by either company or OpenStack. OpenStack started two years ago as a partnership between Rackspace and NASA, but has since grown to include more than 150 companies and more than 2,000 developers. Other big-name backers of the OpenStack project include HP and Dell.

— Brandon Butler, network World (Us)

indian ChannELWOrLd APRil 2012

while providing iT departments with enterpriseclass governance tools.

However, he didn’t take kindly to the suggestion that Red Hat is falling behind fellow linux distributor Canonical in the enterprise sector. “it may be selective data that they’ve put out, and it’s their prerogative to

turn the numbers the way they want,” he said. “When it comes to the heavy lifting, building serious scale clouds, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on proprietary software and making it open source, they are not anywhere in the same ballpark as Red Hat.” — Sophie Curtis, Techworld.com

sophos acquires diaLOGs

intel plans hPC ‘superchip’

Sophos announced a definitive agreement to acquire DIALOGS, a Germany-based privately-held provider of mobile management solutions. DIALOGS, reportedly one of Europe’s leading mobile device management (MDM) providers brings twenty years of experience in mobile product development. This acquisition further solidifies Sophos’s leadership position within enterprise mobile protection.

The combination of Sophos’s encryption and data protection capabilities and DIALOGS’ SaaS-based, onpremises mobile management technology provides a unique value proposition — secure collaboration from everywhere.

— Lucian Constantin, idG news service

Intel said it was investing in the development of a “superchip” for high-performance computing systems. The superchip is aimed at providing highbandwidth throughput with the use of InfiniBand interconnect technology, said Diane Bryant, VP and GM for the datacenter and connected systems group.

The company has not yet made specific disclosures about future InifiniBand-related implementations.

— agam shah, idG news service

n News Analysis

Switching Sides

Why are partner organizations in India hiring executives from vendor companies?

By Ankita Mitra

10

A

ttrition is an

age old nightmare for all kinds of businesses across the globe. And technology world is no different.

The executives at partner organizations while pitching vendor solutions would often join the same vendor to propel their career. Interestingly, many vendor executives are now eyeing senior management positions at partner organizations for their next level of professional growth.

A common trend is movement of executives from one vendor to another. It is a relatively easier route to fortify their job profile as a Country Head or an APAC leader at a

Indian Channelworld april 2012

global technology vendor.

Many vendor executives however are traversing the unconventional path to strengthen their career graphs with partner organizations in India.

A New Trend The last quarter of previous fiscal year witnessed SonicWall’s National Channel Manager Syed Wasiq quit the security vendor and took charge as National Sales Head at Secure Network Solutions (SNS). SNS is a Chennai based partner organization specialized in security solutions. In March 2012, Sanjay Chhugani, Country Manager at Barracuda Networks for five years joined

RAH Infotech. Head for Enterprise Sales for three years at Avaya, Sanjay Gupta left in 2011 to join Dimension Data.

“I believe this trend is a reflection of the maturity in our industry. This will continue to grow stronger because the larger OEMs/ MNCs would not expand at the same pace as they did earlier and would often start bulging at the top. This will compel more senior executives to take this route to growth,” says Pawan Khurana, former IBM executive and now CEO at QuantM Net Technologies.

Khurana was General Manager - Channels (Services) - India/South Asia at IBM for four years before joining QuantM Net Technologies in mid 2010.

Another vendor executive preceded this trend in the same year. Ganesh Mahabala quit VMware as regional director to work with Bangalore based Valuepoint Systems as Senior Vice President.

Sanjay Chhugani, Director – Sales, RAH Infotech says, “It is bit too early to label the migration of vendor executives to partner organization as an trend in the Indian IT landscape. Some executives have succeeded while others have not while shifting sides from vendors to partner organizations.”

Khurana with fifteen year plus experience in the IT industry states, “The advent of technology would keep reducing the entry barrier for new entrants from capital and time to mark a stand point.

Thus making it easier for more people to break the shackles of corporate race and launch into the channel industry.”

n News Analysis The Career Growth Syed Wasiq, National Sales Manager at Chennai based SNS comments, “The growth aspect in an individual’s profession drives them to take a different path. There is bound to be bit of stagnation in career while switching from one vendor and then to another vendor company.” After handling channel business across India at SonicWall, there were nothing more challenging and interesting which I could do there,” he adds.

Chhugani’s career span includes successful stints at Portwise and Ingram Micro believes, “Such career shift is more about taking up newer challenges. At RAH, I would be needed to play a much bigger role and add a better value to the organization.”

RAH Infotech headquartered at Gurgaon is a value added distributor with strategic alliances with dozen plus vendor companies for solutions in networking and security.

He would handle a much larger product portfolio than his previous role at Barracuda, says Chhugani.

Wasiq agrees as he says, “I would have grown into much larger Asia Pacific roles at Sonicwall or some other vendor company.

Those are more or less an excel sheet kind of jobs at the end of the day.”

However at SNS, he has an abundance of opportunity available for business development, in terms of revenue and expertise.

“Another reason people move out from a vendor organization is that partners also make good money like the vendor. Hence it hardly makes a difference to the executive’s 12

I Am Living My Dream Of An Entrepreneur from junior to middle to top management. At partner organization, it’s not the race to the top but more of a continuous journey to dream new goals and set the pace with the team to achieve them.

Pawan Khurana, CEO, QuantM Technologies traverses his career path from ‘Big Blue‘ to QuantM. What made you switch from IBM to QuantM Technologies?

I had been harboring a dream to be an entrepreneur since a long time.

It was a God sent opportunity when Sanjay Bakshi – Founder and MD of QuantM was keen to hire an executive to strengthen their top management and propel business to the next level.

At QuantM I got the ideal platform to run one of the most respected SI in this business. The only regret that I have is that I should have done it sooner.

Hailing from a vendor company, what are the opportunities and challenges at a partner company today?

I now build my own strategies to run this business and most importantly implement them at a speed which influences immediate results. With a good sense of judgment, one can capitalize the forthcoming business opporearnings,” says Wasiq.

Worth the Investment An organization today invests money, time and resources to train a new recruit quite unsure about his tenure at their company.

Hiring executives from the channel community can be an easier option for top management of a partner organization. However, N. K. Mehta, CEO, SNS comments, “If you recruit and

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Pawan Khurana

tunity to gain significant competitive advantage.

This career move has increased the business acumen and management skill sets in me.

Getting right people at the right cost and retaining them is a far bigger challenge than what it was at IBM. Earlier I was paid a salary and now I have to worry about paying salaries. Profitability of SI business is a very important challenge.

How has the transformation been in terms of handling the IT business from a partner’s perspective?

There has been a paradigm shift in my approach. In a corporate environment, one joins his / her dream company and then sets growth path invest in an executive from other partner organization, you might not know much about him / her. If you appoint a senior executive from a renowned vendor company, the recognition factor and industry experience is invaluable.”

Appointing a vendor executive at a managerial position is a big and at times a costly decision for CEO/ Director of a channel partner organization. The vendor executive brings a

Have the strategic changes implemented by you resulted in more business for QuantM? Over past couple of years, we have successfully ventured into strategic outsourcing, managed services, cloud services,BCS, Shared CIO advisory services. We built our own datacenter with an expansion capacity of 15000 sq ft and setup a 24x7 NOC to grow managed hosted services portfolio. We also strengthened presence in US and Middle East operations which will contribute at least 40% to revenue and bottom line over the next 3 years. Year on year, the revenue at QuantM grew by a healthy 15%, profitability by 48% and services business by a whopping 430%. vast experience of working at different levels across geographies at a global MNC. Ashok Kumar, Managing Director and CEO, RAH Infotech recruited Sanjay Chhugani from Barracuda Networks. “My perspective to hire the sales head for our company was not based on the fact that he should be from OEM or partner organization. I wanted the best person in IT business.” Chhugani’s domain knowledge, indus-

try experience and channel relationship would be beneficial to the company’s growth, he adds.

Wasiq would have taken a role at some SI or another vendor if he did not choose to be part of SNS, says Mehta. “The problem of attrition still remains .However, I feel he has a larger and more challenging role here than his previous job.”

Wasiq is one of the key executives at top management of SNS whereas in a MNC, he would just be a part of the giant spectrum. He was earlier selling one product range but today he has a wide umbrella of alternatives with us, reasons Mehta.

Sanjay Chhugani, Director – Sales, RAH Infotech

If you appoint a senior executive from a vendor company, the recognition factor and industry experience is invaluable.

Shift of Strategy Shifting from a vendor to a partner organization holds tremendous career growth opportunities for an executive though coping with a new work culture (than a vendor) poses few chal-

N K Mehta, CEO, Secure Network Solutions

lenges at times.

“Opportunities are enormous here even though the partner community is

Grass Looks Greener On The Other Side KayBee IT solutions recruits middle level to top level management IT executives for partner organizations, vendor companies and distributors. Ketan Barai, Founder & MD, Kaybee IT Solutions expects attrition to increase as every individual wants to grow their career graph.

Vendor Execs join partners: Partners often feel that vendor executives do not have risk of financial investments and get heavy packages to meet quarter targets, which is not true. The vendor executive feels investment of a small amount in infrastructure leads to freedom of business with no multi-level reporting and partner makes hefty margins, which again is not true.

One gets into the other

Here to Stay

I am handling a team of more people, diverse product line and a vast customer portfolio which will help my professional growth and management skills

pasture for the greenery.

The vendor execs joining partner organizations is nothing but encashing their vast experience and more exposure to corporate relationships.

Checks before hiring: A clear long term plan for win-win mutual benefits and a “let-go” attitude has to be taken into account between partner organizations and vendor executives.

Attrition - 9 month cycle: 1st Quarter: The individual understands the organization and vice-versa.

2nd Quarter: Both sides set targets for each other.

3rd Quarter: Failure on any one’s part pushes the other to look for an alternative.

as dynamic as the vendor landscape. I joined SNS because they are focused primarily into security, which is a very lucrative domain space today. Working with a systems integrator company places my career escalation directly proportional to partner company’s growth.”

Chhugani is determined for a much bigger responsibility at RAH compared to his previous role at a vendor company. “I am handling a team of more people, diverse product line and a vast customer portfolio which will help my professional growth and management skills”, he says.

“My aim is to increase the company’s revenue five-fold and making it a 200 employee organization in next few years.

The plan is to expand the company geographically as a much bigger PanIndia VAD,”says Chhugani

Unlike a vendor, a channel partner is always geared up to try different business strategies and possibly win all the deals in the market. “It is practically an impossible thing. Hence, I organized the customer base of SNS and the team follows with the companies listed under it. The rest of the deals would be dealt as and when an opportunity comes in,” says Wasiq.

There are executives successful with established vendors but they may not grow or justify their roles at partner organizations as per Kumar at RAH Infotech. “Chhugani has a strong customer background, having worked earlier with SI companies like Apara and Sify. He is a well-known personality in the IT space and other vendors speak extremely well about him,” he says with confidence.

Syed Wasiq of SNS reveals, “My decision to join a partner organization (from a vendor company) was inspired by the story of Pawan Khurana, with whom I got acquainted during our stint at IBM.” I am personally very glad to have inspired one such friend and an ex-colleague, remarks Khurana.

The transition of a vendor executive to a partner official had died down almost a decade ago but surely reviving now. “I am aware that many senior executives who have taken this decision and made million dollar corporations from it. I wish all the success to everyone who walks on this route ,” says Khurana, QuantM Net Technologies. 

april 2012

INDIAN Channelworld

13

n FAST TRACK

Immunity Networks

Ph o t o s by : Foto c o r p

T

he last recession has

had markets reeling under tremendous pressure from the global economic crisis. It was the worst of times for entrepreneurial dreams to take shape amidst the prevalent pessimism. But Sumit Garg had different plans altogether. After a long stint in the IT industry, Garg decided to take the plunge when he started Immunity Networks in 2009. Within a year, Garg proved that the risk was worth taking, and the company came out of recession with flying colors. It clocked a highly impressive top line of Rs 25 Crore in the very next fiscal.

The whopping growth was clearly due to the SI’s strategy to utilize the recession period to its advantage. The company’s idea was to establish themselves as a brand before they started talking to the customers. “We exploited the time frame of the lean period to complete all those initial activities such as establishing the organization’s processes, policies, basic infrastructure, and compliance and regulatory requirements,” recalls Garg. Immunity Networks thus had a strong backbone of internal processes in place before hitting the road.

One of the youngest companies to get an ISO certification, the SI has always focused on quality as their differentiator. The SI routinely conducts a Quality survey for their customers through which it takes feedbacks from customers on sales, delivery, and post sales.

“Being an ISO certified organization, the survey was made more streamlined with structured documentation. The feedback helps us know our standing in the market, and fuels the overall growth of the organization,” says Garg.

Business reinvention is the key to success, says Sumit Garg, Chairman, Immunity Networks.

14

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Preparing for success Even as the effects of recession slowly ebbed from the market, Immunity Networks never went after the typical run-rate business. “Our focus and the entire bandwidth of the organization are centered on deploying solutions that are unique in the market rather than going after typical run-rate projects,” says Garg.

This selective approach has always helped the SI. The SI is one of the first few to venture into some of the growing markets. Data Loss Prevention is one such areas. “We had envisaged DLP as one of the technologies that is going to come up in the security space. It was a new concept and very few customers were going for it at that time. This gave us a tremendous edge over others in the market,” points out Garg.

Within the very first sixth months, Immunity did an interesting Disaster Recovery solution project for Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank (SVC) in partnership with NetApp. “Being a relatively new organization, this was a mammoth project for us.

It brought a lot of recognition to Immunity Networks,” points out Garg.

This project helped the SI establish themselves despite the fact that it was a late entrant and there already were many well-known partners in the market.

The SI also did a storage and replication solution project for the same customer soon. Storage is in fact a key stream of revenue for the SI. The ever-increasing flux of data, makes this market huge in terms of volume, believes Garg. “The storage business has great impact on our cash flow considering the volumes that come in,” says Garg.

The SI constantly strived to reinvent themselves with the changing dynamics of the IT market. Careful selection of portfolio, focus towards growing markets and customer centricity helped the company in quickly building a strong brand in the market.

PARTNER BUSINESS

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP FORTINET

SUCCESS STORY

FORTINET IS A

DEFAULT CHOICE WITHIN THE ACROPETAL NETWORK In its longstanding relationship with Fortinet, Acropetal has tasted great success and still thirsts for more.

ASHOK PRABHU

Sr. VP & Country Sales Partner (India), Acropetal Technologies

An industry veteran with vast experience in Sales, Marketing, Branding, Vendor and Distributor Management, Prabhu is a man of positivity and has kept pace with technological advancements through certifications such as CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional).

There are five different security vendors in your list of partnerships. How different is Fortinet from the others?

We, at Acropetal, offer business technology solutions, wherein we contribute to our customers’ business growth and participate in their journey to innovate their core processes by enhancing them with our support processes. In this journey, we have multiple relationships in place and Fortinet is one of our leading vendors in the network security area. Our relationship with Fortinet began ever since they entered the Indian market. We, in fact, went on to clinch the very first deal for Fortinet in India. Fortinet products offer high performance, scalability, high availability and robustness, besides offering a stable security platform to support customers’ new business initiatives. Today, Fortinet is a default choice within the Acropetal Network.

What has been the key factor in retaining your enviable list of customers over the years?

We are happy to acknowledge the fact that we are blessed with an enviable list of customers.

I strongly believe that our competent sales department comprising highly committed and loyal sales professionals, along with

our consistent customer interactions at various levels are the primary reasons for this success. Also, our timely technical support, critical vendor tie-ups in various domains and regular communication with our customers on new offerings help us stay on the top of the table always.

How are advanced persistent threats (APT) going to change the way CSOs look at network security?

The security solutions deployed till recently comprised of implementing various security mechanisms at the perimeter, implementing end-point security solutions, evaluating newer security technologies after a period of time, and responding to the new threat landscape as and when needed.

While the above strategy is perfect, it is assumed here that the scope of perimeter remains unchanged. The perimeter is facing a great challenge today with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) gaining momentum alongside social networks. CSOs will be seriously considering housing all core systems and critical assets under this new perimeter and treat anything outside as untrusted. Thus, CSOs will be able to protect their key assets more effectively. Otherwise, all an attacker needs to do is to break into perimeter defense to have an easy ride inside the network. Since advanced persistent threats involve slowly extracting data from a remote location over a long period, CSOs will take a serious note of their critical assets, make an assessment of typical attacks for a given critical asset and build security defenses which run 24x7.

Some CSOs may prefer to build this defense internally or may decide to outsource.

IDC reports frequently state that Fortinet is the revenue leader in the UTM market.

What according to you is the reason for Fortinet’s success in this area?

Besides an able leadership, Fortinet also has a loyal team which creates effective solutions for difficult problems, and a dedicated channel community which delivers the required outcome at the required time. Fortinet, also, prioritizes high customer focus, retention, apart from technological excellence and innovation over other aspects. The organizational structure is fl at and all the executives are easily approachable.

Their timely case studies for various industry verticals are also highly useful.

We clinched the very first deal for Fortinet in India.

How would you summarize your journey with Fortinet over the years?

It has been a very rewarding association with Fortinet over the years, and I truly believe that Fortinet will continue to innovate in the area of security with the changing landscape so that the relationship between Fortinet and Acropetal becomes even more strategic.

This Interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group in association with

Authorized Distributor

Picking their Path While BFSI is one of the key target markets for the SI, Immunity has equal focus on ITES and manufacturing sectors — their key revenue generators. Immunity targets these markets through a focused set of OEMs. Garg explains that they go about their engagement with the OEM’s in a very clear-cut way. “We identify the principals based on their offerings and our skill sets, and depending on the merit of the product, we go forward with the solution to the customer.”

An example of this is Immunity’s association with Symantec. “I am an ex-employee of Symantec. So, selling Symantec was something that was always at the back of my mind,” says Garg. Immunity’s engagement with Symantec is of a great value as the SI sells most of Symantec’s mainstream products such as backup, application virtualization, archival solution, and disaster recovery solution. “Immunity is specialized across all the products of Symantec. You name it, and we have done it,” says Garg. This strategic alliance with Symantec has brought a lot of value and brand recognition to the SI. In partnership with Symantec, the SI implemented complete security solutions for JSW ISPAT. In this particular project, Immunity deployed endpoint, email, and web security across the entire group. “The particular deployment holds a great significance as the level of criticality was very high. The project was scaled across the entire group, and had it not been implemented properly, the entire business functioning would have been crashed,” says Garg. In the process of implementing the project, Immunity accelerated ahead in the security space.

The commitment and performance of the SI sealed their place as a platinum partner for Symantec, despite being a relatively young channel partner for the vendor. “It’s the highest level of partnership an entity can have with Symantec worldwide,” says Garg.

However, security is not the only focus area for the SI. Networking is an equally big focus areas for Immunity 16

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Technology split 20%

Networking & Gateway Security

25% UC

30%

Information Security

vertical split 15%

Others

20%

Education

25%

Storage & availability

15% PSUs

15% ITES

10% BFSI

25%

Manufacturing

Source: Immunity Networks

networks. Citing the growing importance of networking solutions, Garg says, “Networking is something that is always very essential unless we move to a level where the entire organization is virtualized.”

In a partnership with Avaya, the SI had deployed an entire gamut of networking solutions such as routing infrastructure, core switching, and IP telephony for Abhijeet Group.

The scale of the project was huge, and helped the SI establish themselves in the niche networking domain and implement the customer’s network across 17 locations. “As far

Snapshot Founded: 2009 Headquarters: Mumbai Key Executives: Sumit Garg, Chairman; Pratha Jain Garg, Director Revenue 2009–10: Rs 2.5 Crore Revenue 2010–11: Rs 25 Crore Revenue 2011-12: Rs 48 Crore Employees: 45 Key Principals: Avaya, Cisco, Symantec, Blue Coat, IBM, HP Key Business Activities: Security, Storage, Unified Communication, Datacenter Solutions, Enterprise Mobility Website: www.immunitynetworks.com

as skill sets are concerned, we are one of the most scaled implementation partners for Avaya,” says Garg.

The SI is planning to take this association to the next level by becoming a pan-India partner for Avaya.

Mining for opportunities in the networking domain, Garg explains, “Mobility has taken up a good amount of space, and customers want their complete infrastructure to be wireless. Going forward, wireless networking is a great focus area for our business proposition.”

Marching Ahead With the advent of technology, things are changing at a fast pace and the SI is strived hard to identify the next wave. Immunity Networks has also added Unified Communications (UC) as a new addition to their portfolio of solutions. Garg explains, “Instead of having different communication devices, if we can integrate the various communication methods, it’ll accelerate productivity.”

The SI is already in the process of taking up some of the biggest projects in the UC space, says Garg Today, the SI is present across eight cities and they plan to go forward for a pan-India presence. Immunity Networks also plans to venture into the enterprise business applications and document management. “Geographical expansion, portfolio expansion, and capability expansions is what we are focused on going forward,” sums up Garg.  — Aritra Sarkhel

n FAST TRACK

MicroGenesis this year. Their ability to smartly manage cash-flow during the slump, taking care of the top-lines while balancing the bottom lines carefully, gives them an added advantage of continuous growth.

Customer support is vital to business, say Ram Lal Luthra & Manoj Tharian of MicroGenesis

W

hich company

in its right mind would prefer saying no a customer and let go of a deal when conventional wisdom suggests retaining a client at all cost?

Bangalore-based system integrator, MicroGenesis, prefers to walk the unknown path.

Established in 2000, the SI started

off as a niche partner for Rational Software. Since then, MicroGenesis has come a long way by becoming a premium partner of IBM. Headquartered in Bangalore and with branches in Chennai and Hyderabad, this SI focused on the defense sector, has an interesting growth story.

Headed by Ram Lal Luthra, CEO, and Manoj Tharian, MD, MicroGenesis is expecting Rs 12 crore revenue

P h o t o s b y : S r i v at s a S h a n d i lya

Documenting Growth MicroGenesis holds the certifications and expertise in IBM Websphere, IBM DB2, IBM ECM and Kofax.

Along with this, MicroGenesis also specializes in development using rational tools, extensive product implementation, comprehensive maintenance and support with unique solutions for document management.

“Considering the industry specific needs like document management, our development capabilities, and the domain understanding of document management put together is an added advantage for us when compared to the other SIs in the field,” says Tharian.

He further adds that as every Document Management Services (DMS) customer’s needs are unique customization and end-user acceptance are challenging. To succeed in this MicroGenesis is shortly launching a special product based on IBM technology.

Another added advantage MicroGenesis has over the other SIs in the market is that it has a niche focus on application lifecycle management (ALM) side of solutions. “A tool can give you certain capabilities, but there is a lot more outside the tool which meets an end-customer’s need. That is where MicroGenesis comes in, customizing the needs, understanding the requirement, conceiving a solution, doing a proof of concept (POC) and making a working model available for a customer delivery along with providing support,” says Tharian.

He also says, in terms of ALM, MicroGenesis takes into consideration the design analysis configuration management and testing. The SI provides an all round support service as compared to the other SIs in the field.

MicroGenesis has a long association with defense sector where they april 2012

INDIAN Channelworld

17

provide IBM support and solutions for various customers. MicroGenesis focuses on the defense sector with a stress on systems engineering, an area where it sees high growth.

“Working with the defense sector has its own advantages,” says Luthra. He says that when the whole SI community was facing the impact of the economic slump, MicroGenesis as a company did not face a setback since the sector almost never sees a setback.

Tharian says that it is a very difficult for a vendor to establish their foothold in defense by themselves, considering the margins, bank guarantees to be taken into account, and the extent to which the cash-flow can be supported. Hence, very few SIs focus on this sector. He feels this might be a reason why vendors appreciates a partner with a focus on this sector.

“Besides, customers in the defense sector are accustomed to free services and support, which makes it quite difficult for us to provide since we have to answer our vendors.

Secondly, the process of obtaining the money is still the same, affecting cash-flow,” says Luthra.

Deployment of technical resources is another aspect of the services provided by this SI. According MicroGenesis, they provide the customer proper training and an understanding of the solution which in turn helps the client team to deliver better services.

This goes far beyond the standard SLAs and AMC for upgrades on support, claims Luthra.

“Principals typically provide online support which is quite unlike the customized support that our clients need, ‘that’s our differentiator,” states Tharian.

Customer Centricity While customers do not invest in development tools, they still require both the tools and support. For this, a client always looks for all-round benefits like MicroGenesis.

MicroGenesis believes that it is better not to take up a project and let it go, even if the cost is compromised upon, than to undertake it and deliver a poor performance. This might include factors like the SI bearing the burden of excess cost of production 18

Indian Channelworld april 2012

vertical split 10%

Education

technology split 10% BFSI

60%

Government

60% Others

10%

Security

30%

20%

Services

IT/ITes

Source: MicroGenesis

and cutting down upon the services that MicroGenesis would have ideally provided their client at a fixed rate.

Tharian says, “When we are handing a project worth a particular amount of money, and a customer approaches us asking for a reduced rate; we prefer saying no to them and let that deal slip through our hands than bear the burden of cost production on ourselves by delivering a poor performance and a terrible name in the industry.” He further adds that this is because MicroGenesis firmly believes

Snapshot Year of Foundation: 2000 Headquarters: Bangalore Key Executives: Ram Lal Luthra, CEO; Manoj Tharian, Director; K Dhananjaya, Tech Head - Rational Group; MG Daniel, Head – Solution Group Branche offices: Hyderabad and Chennai Revenue 2011-2012: Rs 12 Crore Revenues 2010-2011: Rs 10.25 Crore Revenues 2009-2010: Rs. 11.80 Crore Number of Employees : 70 Principals : IBM and KOFAX Key Technologies: IBM Rational and WebSphere Software, Scanning solutions Web Site : www.mgtechsoft.com

that the customer would eventually return to them after a thorough market analysis given the service quality.

Emphasizing the customer support aspect of business, Tharian says, “If I’m able to sell today, it’s all thanks to the support that we have been providing. The concern for our clients is what helps us stay in the business.

Without the customer support, business just fades off.”

Mapping the Future For this financial year, MicroGenesis is planning to focus upon the market requirement and growth area. This SI also wishes to focus on application lifecycle management and systems engineering in the defense and aerospace sectors.

“We also want to focus upon the ‘consultative services area’ which is very dormant and has a huge potential in the coming year,” says Tharian.

Packaged Applications are another area of services that MicroGenesis deals in. Since it is only at a subscription level, this SI is also looking at it as a revenue opportunity.

Document Management is something that MicroGenesis will continue to focus on due to the high market demand and growth options related to it. E-governance too is likely to add to the potential will of this area.

MicroGenesis sees a bag full of opportunities ahead.

Tharian says that MicroGenesis will try to explore the options in application virtualization in times ahead. He believes that even though it might not be an immediate money-spinner for the company, it can become a stepping-stone to the cloud.  — Ankita Mitra

KEYNOTE SESSION & HALL OF FAME AWARDS PRESENTED BY

SYMPOSIUM & AWARDS CEREMONY

SYMPOSIUM PARTNERS

SPECIAL AWARDS PARTNERS

ASSOCIATE PARTNER

“One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

—Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson For the past three years, the ChannelWorld Premier100 Symposium & Awards has been more than a mere gathering of IT channel organizations who are on the fasttrack to growth.

The continuing aftershocks of the global recessionary quake have proved how uncertain and dynamically changing the economic landscape can be.

The Premier100 Award therefore recognizes leaders who have changed the way their organizations went about their business in increasingly uncertain times. Change, which was about building resolute teams. Change that accelerated innovation. Change, which helped tackle the issues of scale. Change that was about growing the business, and yes, about making operations more efficient.

Change, which was about maximizing customer delight.

It doesn’t surprise me that over the years the lessons that we have learned from evaluating the hundreds of nominations are thus: Business leadership entails a willingness to get into the game, a willingness to take on responsibility as well as a self-disciplined ability to face big decisions, make them, and learn from the challenges that ensue.

The Premier100 Symposium too has reflected the changing realities of the game.

In each edition we’ve set out to present to thought leaders and industry experts to prepare channel business leaders for the year ahead with the best practices and innovative approaches that will keep you ahead.

Since the ChannelWorld Premier100 Symposium & Awards is limited “by invitation” to only the 100 winners, this makes it the most powerful gathering of the drivers of Indian Enterprise IT.

Vijay Ramachandran Editor-in-chief vijay_ramachandran@idgindia.com

KEYNOTE SPEAKER | Paul Dunn

PRESENTED BY

Meet the ‘Wizard of Wow’ Paul Dunn is the marketing guru behind the success of many ground-breaking ventures.

People call him ‘Wizard of Wow. Find out why at the 4th annual Premier 100 symposium and Awards ceremony.

P

aul Dunn is at the forefront of management and marketing action on a global basis. Paul is an engineer by training but he soon discovered people were more interesting than “things”. He began his career in Australia at Hewlett Packard where he was one of just ten people in the Australian start up of the company. Paul wrote some innovative software that became the basis for one of Australia’s early technological successes— Hartley Computer. Paul was the marketing genius behind the company growing globally to a $23 Million enterprise.

In 1980 Paul decided that his real love was marketing AND speaking so

he formed The Results Corporation (TRC). He grew that to a $20 million company serving 23,000 businesses. All told, Paul’s audio and video programs are now in use by over 156,000 businesses around the world. In 1992 Paul formed Results Accountants’ Systems (RAS) teaching Accountants in Public Practice how to leverage their skills to create far better businesses for their clients. By the year 2000, the company was serving over 3500 practices and their clients worldwide — it became the largest network of leading-edge Accountants yet seen in the world.

In 2000, Paul sold his interest in RAS to mentor his many friends and cli-

ents to give them far more successful businesses. His second book, ‘The Firm of the Future’, launched in the US market in April 2003 and is now regarded as a standard text for professional service firms.

Now Paul helps create successful businesses around the world and is passionate about giving back to Social Causes to increase the level of joy in our world.He now serves as Chairman of the revolutionary Buy1GIVE1 organisation, making giving an effortless habit and making a huge impact in our world in a totally new way.

Join him at the fourth annual Premier 100 symposium and Awards ceremony

hall of fame AWARDS

PRESENTED BY

These awards showcase the partners who have reached the highest levels of excellence The ‘Hall of Fame’ winners have consistently proved that they are the ones who push themselves to transform rather than merely improve.

W

hen success repeats itself it reflects the highest level of achievement. The ChannelWorld Premier 100 in its fourth year is proud to present the Premier 100 ‘Hall of Fame’ awards. ‘Hall of Fame’ awards honors the partners, whose work has made a profound difference to their customers.

Solving complex IT challenges can be complicated, and it requires innovative solutions and unparalleled experience.

Whether their customers

are looking for ways to streamline and modernize their IT infrastructure or want to understand how mainstream IT technologies and solutions can be used to support their ever changing business requirements, the winners have helped their customers improve infrastructure and application performance, while helping to control costs, enhance productivity, and improve constituent services. They have worked to achieve two

basic objectives: to come up with the strategies or solutions needed to overcome their customers’ business-IT challenges and to implement those solutions efficiently and effectively.

They push themselves to transform rather than merely improve. They recognize and run with opportunities fraught with risk, but ultimately worth the reward. And this, they have done it consistently, year after year.

We want to be the vendor of choice “Our channel initiatives are designed to provide customers with more choice, flexibility and value when investing in Dell Solutions. We want to be the vendor of choice for our channel partners and are investing in tools to make it easy and efficient for partners to register deals, make purchases and obtain certifications to help them grow their business. The channel is our true partner and we are honored to recognize their role in growing the IT business.”

Suresh Reddy

General Manager, Global Commercial Channel, Dell India

Special Awards | Storage

PRESENTED BY

These Awards identifies pioneers in delivering innovative storage solutions More data means more storage — and more complications. The winners ensured that their customers get the best storage solutions

C

loud storage, virtual machine (VM) backup, big data and vendor consolidation have caused a significant change in today’s storage market environment. As organizations understand the importance of data management and increase their investments in implementing storage solutions, channel partners have an important role to play in educating their customers on innovative storage technology and providing them with a

proven, high quality and cost-efficient solution. The award-winning partners also maintain strategic relationships with the IT industry leaders which ultimately allows them to deliver best-in-class solutions with a significant competitive advantage.

These awards honor channel partners who have delivered exemplary solutions for their customers during the past year and have accomplished extraordinary business challenges. These select

few have chosen to keep their focus on helping companies connect disparate pools of storage, use disk capacity more efficiently and harness storage resources into a leaner machine — all of which have translated into greater efficiencies for the client. They are the storage integrators, and they are passing on the benefits from the intense competition brewing among storage vendors to their customers.

Creating More Opportunities “Our partners are playing a critical role in helping their customers overhaul their storage strategy and plan carefully so that they can align IT with their business needs. By presenting the Premier100 Storage Special Awards for the fourth consecutive year, we reiterate our commitment to our channel partners and we are proud to honor the partners who have delivered exemplary storage solutions.”

Prakash Krishnamoorthy

Country Manager, HP Storage, India

Special Awards | Cloud Champions

PRESENTED BY

These awards identify those who have played a pivotal role in bringing the cloud down to earth They recognize the partner’s ability to provide a solid foundation and work with their customers to succeed in the cloud

I

f cloud computing is a disruptive force within the enterprise, just imagine what the cloud is doing to the vendor landscape. The sheer number of cloud players - or companies that claim to be cloud players is staggering.

Given the hype, anticipated exponential growth, and ambiguous definitions, many technology companies are claiming to be cloud-computing providers. A large number of the channel partners

appear bullish about the opportunities in cloud computing, however only a select few have distilled the hype from the benefits.

The Cloud Champions Special Awards honor those partners who are in the forefront when it comes to adopting new opportunities, understanding new technologies, and tackling the myriad challenges that come along with them in the cloud computing space.

What sets the best cloud solution providers apart

is their ability to provide a solid foundation for any solution that they implement for their customers. Whether their customers are taking an evolutionary approach through virtualization or a more revolutionary approach by building an infrastructure from scratch, these partners bring the cloud down to earth for them and provide support from conception to implementation and beyond.

Committed to Our Partners’ Success “EMC has the best partners in the industry, and we are committed to enable our partners take more market share and increase their profitability with industry-leading solutions, programs and world-class support. IT is undergoing a tremendous transformation. Cloud computing is changing how organizations architect and consume IT services. We are delighted to present the Cloud Computing Special Awards to partners who are at the forefront of this transformation.”

Rajesh Janey

President, EMC (India & SAARC)

Special Awards | datacenter

PRESENTED BY

These awards recognize the architects of the most resilient and responsive datacenters The winners ensured that their customers run datacenters which adapt to accommodate higher expectations for growth.

T

he environment in which the modern datacenter operates is fast changing. ‘Doing more with less’ has become a mantra for our times and the channel community has risen to the occasion in an extraordinary manner.

They have helped their customers to embrace new trends and broadened their IT capabilities by improving security, boosting operational efficiency, and delivering customer-centric services

to meet the overall project objectives, while not compromising the uptime and availability of mission-critical applications. Customer needs are varied and it takes a thorough understanding of the client business to service the client efficiently. No doubt, partners need to be abreast of the latest datacenter-related technologies.

Behind every great implementation, solution or service is a great idea

and these awards are about recognizing the ideas and thinking that shape the best datacenter solutions. They celebrate the success of those who have managed to balance their responsibilities in providing a resilient and responsive facility and making the operations energy efficient, thus showing their concern for the environment.

The partners have been relentless in their endeavor to grow the datacenter business.

Our programme is all about you “As part of Schneider Electric we are the world leader in energy efficiency as it pertains to critical power and cooling and will continue to work with our partners as their trusted advisors.

Our policies and growth objective are aligned to channel and we continue to invest on the educating, training and enabling the channel. We are extremely proud to be associated with the premier 100 datacenter awards in recognizing their achievement in this field.”

Shailendra Shukla

Director Sales - Enterprise Channel & System Integration, APC by Schneider Electric

ON ReCORD ď Ž

Rafiq Somani,

Area Vice President & Country Sales Manager, PTC India, talks about competition, co-opetition and channels

By Shantheri Mallaya 26

INDIAN CHANNeLWORLD APRIL 2012

PTC is in a space that allows for intense competition from other players such as Oracle, SAP, Dassault, to name a few. What is PTC really bringing on board to its customers and partners?

SOMANI: About two years ago, people started saying that PLM has as much scope as ERP. What PTC is seeing now is tremendous scope in manufacturing process management. Effectively, ALM (Application Lifecycle Management), QLM (Quality Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain Management (SCM) and SLM (Sales and Service Lifecycle Management) are becoming important pieces in the PLM suite.

We have made some interesting acquisitions to match these demands.

We have acquired 4CS for SLM, Flex CLM for SCM and MKS Integrity on the ALM front.

These are sure fire value propositions for customers keeping in mind the fact that environment norms are getting stringent and we are constantly exploring new aspects in the PLM product development space, such as the carbon footprint associated with each product.

Needless to say, all our products suites are cutting edge. Our company has grown to USD 1.2 billion as an open software company with solutions that work in heterogeneous environments.

PTC’s ALM, SLM and qLM acquisitions, as an extension of your portfolio, actually make you a contender with an entirely new set of vendors in the BPM space.

How do you view this?

SOMANI: We were not

addressing that market as such. With MKS, we have integrated PLM with ALM. Also SLM as such, is quite niche, there is very little competition for PTC in this space. Yes, analysts such as Gartner do track these markets and we do get positioned as a vendor with a unique, broad PLM portfolio, which are subsets of BPM. Does co-opetition with other PLM players help? Is PTC taking this route worldwide or in India?

SOMANI: In a lot of industries, yes, co-opetition is possible. We are coopting with some of our complementary products in analytical products and industrial design. We still work very closely with players such as Ansys, amongst others. We believe that PTC software should be as open as possible, which allow us to work with competitive or complementary brands.

It is a well thought out strategy, depending on the verticals we operate in. It also depends on customer preference. We, as a company, have grown on co-opetitive environments, and do not believe in uprooting customer legacy investments.

Some of our competitors are resorting to monopolistic practices, and insist on their suites in toto. As a result, customers are now approaching us out of frustration or as an alternative. Whether it is enterprise, automotive industry or industrial design, we have 24 processes and standard best practice templates based on technology. Customers can use these as building blocks since they can

Rafiq Somani | On Record n be used directly or they can use their own quality templates and combine it with our best practice templates.

Our ‘product first strategy’ is based on understanding customer growth or profitability map.

Based on these objectives, we fine tune our suites to increase their capabilities/processes in such a manner so as to help achieve optimal growth on their objectives. Customer feedback has been phenomenal. We think this is a strategy that will continue to work.

Is PTC going to pursue its services strategy aggressively in India? And how?

SOMANI: PTC is essentially a product development company, and we aspire to become a USD 1.5 billion company by 2014. The consulting and services revenues are around USD 300 million.

As we grow, we have to focus more on product than service, since we do not believe that services will contribute in a big way to growth.

Hence, we are trying to outsource most of the services to our partners.

Last year, out of the USD 300 million, about USD 230 million was done by partners. By 2014, if we have to achieve our target growth in global toplines, our services component would be around USD 570 million.

Out of that, a good USD 335 million would be PTC’s share, while the remaining USD 235 million would be partners’ services share. The good news for India is that our services partners here are global implementation

Having made

some interesting acquisitions, PTC has grown into a USD 1.2 billion open software PLM company with solutions that work in heterogeneous environments. partners. ITC Infotech is a global PTC services and implementation partner, besides, players such as TCS and CapGemini and Tata Technologies. There is huge potential for services partners in India.

How big or significant is your open source initiative for India?

SOMANI: Open source is quite valid where there is mass application. For example, a product/solution such as MS Office, an OS or an ERP can be opensource. PLM is still so strategic to the core business value of a customer that one cannot forsake the IP, which is quite critical. At this point of time, open source cannot be a very big trend for us. Having said that, one cannot be dismissive of any development in this day and age.

PTC had expressed a keenness to work with more

VARs in the SMB space as far as India is concerned.

Any new developments?

SOMANI: In the last three years, we have doubled revenues without adding any head count. Today, 65 percent of India revenues come from partners. We have added partners in the tier 2 and 3 cities where there are SMB customers, about 3000 in number, of which 500 are in the education space.

We have defined that any company less than Rs 500 Crore is an SMB customer. PTC is working directly with only about 150 top accounts. The significance of the channel is quite evident from all these facts. One of our national partners has about 23 VARs under them with bandwidth in smaller cities, so that adds to our partner net.

Wouldn’t ‘PLM- on- demand’ be a big trend in the SMB? SOMANI: Absolutely. We are creating CoEs where PLM on demand can be hosted. We are also seeing traction in geographies such as the US and Europe. We are seeing signs of potential in India too. The SMB would possibly be a significant buyer for PLM -on – demand, if and when, it is introduced in India.

What is the status of the CAD pool that came out in June last year?

SOMANI: PTC launched Creo 1.0, a design suite of purpose built Apps to suit different roles in Product development in June last year.

Also, PTC launched Creo 2.0 recently, a release which delivers sigapril 2012

nificant productivity enhancements to its existing Creo apps and additional Apps, Creo Layout and Creo Options Modeler - two new role specific apps that extends how organizations can approach conceptual engineering & modular product design totaling to 10 standalone interoperable Apps.

During this phase Creo license revenue grew by 35% YOY. What are the growth rates and priorities planned for India?

SOMANI: As far as revenues go, the split comes chiefly from automotive industry, OEM and Tier-1, aerospace, defence, all of which constitute a good 50 percent. We also see a lot of opportunity in apparel. With regard to customer acquisition, we are adding about 350 -400 customers per annum.

Our customer acquisition rate is quite high as compared competition. I have a list of priorities charted out. These include adding vertical focused resources, focusing on the R&D center in Pune where we have witnessed significant growth. We expect there will be more hardcore product development activity in India, Looking at the growth rate in India, we will be investing as much here as in China. India is the second fastest growing market in the world after China. From an R&D perspective, we have about 1000 people in India, out of a total of 2500 people in R&D globally. This speaks volumes about the way this geography is spreading out for us.  INDIAN Channelworld

27

n opinion

Mike Elgan

A Truly Magical iPad

E

verybody’s excited about the new Apple iPad’s

high-resolution screen. But ultimately, just about all of the features that are considered “new” in the new iPad are really just bigger helpings of the old capabilities. There’s more of everything. But what’s fundamentally different? One of the least appreciated new features is one that truly brings entirely new capabilities to the iPad — Bluetooth 4.0 support.

One common complaint about Apple’s mobile devices by fans of alternatives is that Apple is slow to include new technologies.

And it’s true. In fact, Apple’s industrial design chief, Jonathan Ive, told a British newspaper this week that Apple’s competitors don’t succeed like Apple does because they’re too “interested in doing something different, or want to appear new” Those are the wrong goals, he said.

In other words, new technology isn’t a goal at Apple. Yet the new iPad is the first tablet that supports Bluetooth 4.0. Similarly, the iPhone 4S was the first major smartphone to support Bluetooth 4.0.

Why is Apple so much more aggressive than other companies with this particular technology?

Bluetooth is a shortrange wireless technology that’s been around for years. But Bluetooth 4.0 28

isn’t just a little better than the version currently built into most mobile devices.

It’s massively better.

Bluetooth 4.0 has an extremely low-energy feature, which means supporting gadgets can run off wristwatch batteries, or hold charges for years, rather than weeks.

Wireless iPad keyboards don’t have to be charged at all for the life of the iPad, thanks to Bluetooth 4.0.

Another magic trick Bluetooth 4.0 performs is that it allows pairing and data exchange without user involvement. If the user has granted permission in advance, two devices can connect and sync data

Bluetooth 4.0 isn’t just a little better than the version currently built into most mobile devices. It’s massively better.

Indian Channelworld april 2012

without even informing the user, just by being in range.

Bluetooth 4.0 also, ironically, even simplifies the connection of Wi-Fi devices. Right now, adding a Wi-Fi gadget often requires users to hand-enter configuration information.

To oversimplify, Bluetooth 4.0 enables new Wi-Fi devices to get configuration information automatically; instead of asking the user, Bluetooth 4.0 enables devices to communicate configuration information with each other. The only user involvement required is permission.

What devices?

What devices will the iPad connect to via Bluetooth 4.0? Well, just about everything Apple makes, for starters. Apple’s iPhone 4S supports it. So will the company’s full line of Macs, from the MacBook Air to the iMac. I also believe all future versions of Apple TV, and the rumored Apple TV set, will support Bluetooth 4.0.

However, how does the mobile device “wake up” the Apple TV? How does the TV “wake up” your mobile device with new information, such as the fact that a program you wanted to watch is about to begin?

Bluetooth 4.0 would enable that capability beautifully.

Beyond Apple products, Bluetooth 4.0 facilitates a world of third-party accessories and apps that will be unlike anything we’ve seen before. “Quantified self” gadgets that actually work.

Keyboards that never need recharging. Home energy appliances that auto-update your iPad constantly, alerting you to waste. The possibilities are endless.

The iPad is a gadget unlike anything that has come before. It’s being used in corporate offices, airplanes, schoolrooms, factories, sports fields, and all kinds of professional settings. It’s even replacing cash registers. The addition of Bluetooth 4.0 technology is one of those upgrades that will spawn a thousand unanticipated new products and services.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the screen on my new iPad. But I believe Bluetooth 4.0 support will really set the iPad apart and usher in a new generation of connectivity options that consumers and professionals alike never even imagined.  Mike Elgan writes about technology and tech culture. You can contact Mike at Elgan.com

Datamatics used

in-house R&D and an overseas legacy to make BPM a reality for Blue Star.

By Shreehari Paliath

I

Erasing the

n these times, when technology is all-pervasive, it would be a rarity to come across a company that has not automated its back-end operations. So, when Mumbai’s Datamatics decided to expand its operations in the BPM market by testing the waters in the domestic market here, it saw great opportunity to show-case its capabilities in automating the processes at Blue Star.

Air- conditioner manufacturer Blue Star works is no small name, and works out of as many as 22 locations across the country and all their sales are made through nearly 450 channel partners.

Given these circumstances, the gigantic pile-up of paper work was inevitable considering there was no automation, and this was affecting the productivity of the organization. It was vital that the billing and invoicing for all dealers were executed perfectly to avoid unsavory situations.

Rahul Kanodia, Vice Chairman and CEO, Datamatics

30

Indian Channelworld april 2012

photograph by Kapil Shroff

paper-trail

CUSTOMIZE IN-HOUSE Interestingly, Blue Star had earlier evaluated Xerox and Newgen for this implementation before zeroing in on Datamatics.

Datamatics had done similar implementations successfully in other parts of the world. Though, they hadn’t executed anything similar in India, they were confident of success.

Datamatics pitched its own in-house BPM solution to win the deal. “We have products that were developed in-house by our R&D team. We had to manage the service division at Blue Star that

case study n contributes to bottom line of organization. With their services starting to expand, the paper work started to pile up.

Our team assessed the situation and decided to use our e-PM platform for the implementation,” says Rahul Kanodia, Vice Chairman and CEO, Datamatics.

Datamatics was initially entrusted with a small project of automating the central processes in the back office. After successful implementation, Blue Star gave them another small project, and soon realized that Datamatics was the ideal team to get the entire automation process done. “We had not worked with them before and so could not have a bigbang approach. This small project acted as a POC which helped impress upon the customer our technology-centric approach,” states Kanodia. The entire back office was given to them with a mandate to automate it using Datamatics property stack The fact that technology had not been used earlier expectedly aroused concerns at Blue Star. “There was a cultural shift — from the physical presence of paper to accessing the information electronically. The processes, till then, were non-standardized. There was an entire re-learning process that they had to undergo internally. There were fears of lay-offs now that technology was handled by us. So a new outlook was needed to manage soft issues,” adds Kanodia.

INTEGRATION BENEFITS During the implementation stage, like any other project of this scale, Datamatics had their share of hiccups. The project was challenging not only for the sheer scale of integration it offered, but also the level of customization it demanded. Secondly, with varied group of stakeholders involved from across departments, coordinating with the teams, which included Service Division, SAP Team, Finance Team from BSL, Product Team, Internal IT Team, and Delivery Team from Datamatics, was a challenge. And with the involvement of so many departments, came frequent changes in the requirement and delay in finalization, making timely delivery a constant challenge.

Last but not the least, integration with SAP with the new solution was a task by itself. “We were handling the

Key Technolgies: Business Process Management (BPM)

pened every 24 hours. Importantly, the dealers did not receive the “invoice received” confirmation earlier. This confirmation was important for them.

Thanks to the automation process, these could now be sent out, reducing the duplicate invoices. This avoided confusion and improved their relationship with the dealer,” mentions Kanodia

Key competitors: Xerox, Newgen

THE POSITIVE SPILLOVER

Snapshot Key parties: Datamatics, Blue Star Location: Mumbai

Duration: 6 months Total Cost: Rs 1.5crore per annum (for 5 years)

Challenges: Total overhaul from manual to automated process, integrating different departments and processes seamlessly

Post implementation RoI: Reduced operational cost by 30 percent, improved accuracy to 99.99 percent, introduction of FIFO in accounting.

billing which contributes to nearly Rs 300 Crore of their topline. There were 50,000 invoices worth Rs 110 Crore being produced annually. Even an error of even 0.1 percent would mean a loss of Rs One Crore. Therefore, accuracy was top priority,” emphasizes Kanodia.

Datamatics was able to deliver a number of benefits to Blue Star after implementing this BPM solution. Blue Star was looking at reducing the operational cost by 30 percent and invoice processing time from 30 days to seven days. They introduced FIFO (First In First Out) principle in accounting, which meant the dealer who sent the invoice first received the payment first.

Datamatics also increased the data accuracy to 99.99, which meant better cash management.

Another vital component was that they eased the pressure to on the regulatory compliance, which required them to save documents for seven years.

Earlier they were using the services of a different organization for this. Now, they could avoid going through a pile of documents to retrieve an invoice.

Document retrieval was reduced from one week to a real-time response. MIS reports went out on a weekly basis from monthly, and payment verification hap-

A satisfied customer makes for a happy ending. Blue Star was all praise for the joint efforts in making the project a success. K P Sukumar, Vice President, Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Service Division, Blue Star, comments, “Channel partners are our backbone and face to our customers. It was, therefore, a pleasant experience to develop a comprehensive bill processing system, fully customized to handle volumes and eliminate response time for our channel partners.”

The project was accomplished in four stages over six months. Datamatics approached it with a consultative approach for each process which encompassed installation, proposal, billing, and channel partner billing. The fallouts of this project were multi-fold for the SI. Firstly, the project was undertaken with a team of 80, who after the implementation were absorbed into Datamatics’ payroll. “They were regrouping the entire organization and wanted to focus on the core services than the non-valued added service.

This was a non-core activity and the automation reduced the need for people. It was also was a huge capital expenditure for them. But for us it was matter of redeploying them at other locations on similar projects and was only an operation expenditure,” explains Kanodia.

Secondly, the project allowed Datamatics to leverage its success with other customers. The SI is in the process of taking this success to other MNCs who are into consumer white goods; presumably, this will add to the revenue stream. Further, the SI fully knows that analytics based on the data produced will help customers streamline their internal business function and in turn reduce cost considerably.

Having tasted success with a project of this magnitude, Datamatics has surely broken new ground.  april 2012

INDIAN Channelworld

31

photograph by Fotocorp & Srivatsa Shandilya

A KRISHNAKUMAR (R), Gemini Communication SAURIN SHAH(L), Ashtech Infotech

COVER STORY n

85 vendors. 14 categories. Solutions Providers rate the best vendor companies of India.

T

he start of new fiscal year is the perfect moment in time to gauge the performance of vendor companies and the expectations of channel partners. As partners implement their new business plans, the vendors leave no stone unturned to accomplish their targets in the new fiscal year.

The third edition of ChannelWorld ‘Most Valued Principal – 2012’ survey provided a neutral platform to partners to rate the vendors they work with, in India. A total of 437 partner organizations participated in the survey.

According to A Krishnakumar, CEO, Gemini Communication, “Customers today are highly intelligent and they are ready with their requirements and expectations, even before a technical proposal is given.

Only vendors with good technology offerings will be able to win deals.”

Saurin Shah, Managing Director, Ashtech Infotech says, “The stability of a vendor company in terms of its longetivity and empowerment to the channel community is extremely significant for today’s enterprise solution providers. The vendor’s customer support is crucial as it is often the parameter to ‘make or break’ a deal,” he says.

What should the solution providers expect from the vendors they work with?

“From a long term perspective and for

profitable business, vendors should have key attributes including high level of QoS and responsiveness, long standing market presence, good customer acceptance and financial viability,” says Krishnakumar.

A competent vendor needs to have the right mix of technology and partner base. “Over-distribution by most vendors in India has been a persistent challenge for solution providers to sustain their profitability,”Shah adds.

Ashtech Infotech prefers to be a neutral systems integrator though it has alliances with many vendors, both niche and multi technology. “Most of the niche vendors (in a specific domain) encompass an aheadof-the-curve technology roadmap and they tend to be more SMB focused. With multi - technology vendors, the attach ratio between different technologies becomes mandatory and has to be coupled with good incentives for partners. One has to create a fine balance between the two sets of vendors,” he comments.

With rapid changes in technology landscape, a vendor with future - ready roadmap is likely to score over others.

Did the principals get acknowledged for exceptional service or thrashed for dismal performance by the channel partners?

What’s the report card of vendor companies in 2012? Read on...

>>>

april 2012

INDIAN Channelworld

33

Methodology Weightage & Calculation

T

he ChannelWorld Most Valued Principal — 2012 survey was conducted online during March 2012.

Channel partners were invited to rate the performance of vendors in 14 different categories across six key parameters - Technology Solutions, Marketing Assistance, Training and Certification, Customer Support, Financial Terms, and Management Styles. Solution providers were asked to rate the vendor performance in only those categories that they operated in and rate only those vendors that they worked with. Partners who did not deal in a particular

RELATIVE IMPORTANCE Parameter

category were not allowed to rate any vendor in that category. The ratings were on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest.

For the overall analysis and ranking, the ratings of only those respondents who disclosed their basic information was taken. Ratings of partners who did not disclose their identities were ignored.

On a random basis about 10 percent of the respondents were contacted to verify and validate their ratings.

Since some parameters are more important than others, each of the parameters were assigned weightages for calculating the final scores objectively. The weight-

Vendor & Category Selection

T

he 14 vendor categories were included based on the number of vendors present in Indian marketplace. All vendors who have at least one product or solution in a category were included in that category. Since most solution providers deal in multiple categories and engage with multiple vendors, many respondents rated vendors in multiple categories and rated more than one vendor in each category.

Categories in which there were fewer than five vendors (which essentially 34

makes them monopolies or oligopolies) were not included as part of the survey. Hence, there are no categories for microprocessor, or mainframe, or virtu-

85

Unique vendors were rated across fourteen categories in the MVP 2012 survey

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Weightage (%)

Technology Solutions

26

Marketing Assistance

15

Training & Certification

13

Customer Support

21

Financial Terms

13

Management styles

12

age for various parameters were arrived at by conducting a sample survey of our past Premier 100 awards winners. The weightages remain the same for all the categories. (Check ‘Relative Importance’ table).

A final weighted average score has been calculated for each vendor in every category by multiplying the average score that a vendor received for each of the pa-

rameters by its respective weightage and then adding them up. This weighted average score was later converted to a base of 100.

The vendors were ranked based on the final weighted average score. The tables with final scores for 14 categories show the rounded off scores in whole numbers (for easy readability).Decimals have been taken into account for ranking.

alization, which have very few vendors.

Of the 85 unique vendors, 34 of them were present in more than one category with 14 of them being present in three or more categories.Hewlett-Packard was present in the maximum number categories at eight, followed by IBM, which was present in six categories.

The systems and network management software category had the lowest number of vendors at seven, while client security software and structured cabling had the highest number of vendors at 13.

Though the number of vendors in the tables for the fourteen categories is restricted only to the top five,

there were, on an average, between nine and ten vendors in each category.

ESET was eliminated from the final calculation of winners in ‘Client Security Software’ category. About 25% of the total responses received for ESET were filled in by their distributor, ESS Distribution. Out of these 50% responses were sent from the same IP address. Most entries gave extremely high ratings for ESET across all parameters and no ratings for other vendors in the category. As these multiple entries from a single organization is likely to skew the results, ESET was excluded from the survey. Read on to know more about your principals.

Stay informed.

Stay Ahead.

I

nformation drives businesses and we cannot stress more on the criticality of having it at your finger tips. The challenge is to have relevant information that equips you with the power to stay ahead.

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Business Intelligence

36

I firmly believe that we will continue to grow our BI business with Microsoft through our partnership.

Suresh Mishra, CEO, Wizertech

the top five, and SAS being ousted out of the group.

Microsoft has consistently scored well across all the six parameters laid out in the survey to emerge number one. CA scored well in technology, marketing assistance,

and management styles to inch its way to be number five. SAP and Oracle have scored 63 and 64 respectively, their scores being consistent across the board, to garner rankings four and three.

Partner perception about

— Shantheri Mallaya

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

Microsoft edges out IBM and Oracle Marketing Assistance

to be a space rich in possibilities. BI is expected to be a big support for trends such as the cloud, mobility, and social media. Combined with the forces of big data, BI will soon assume a pivotal role to track humongous amounts of data and its influx. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets in the enterprise, and the need to make decisions anywhere, anytime accessing real-time analytics make mobile BI remain a hot topic, leading most BI vendors to develop a mobile version. Cloud-based BI will boost the use of BI. Although there are concerns about implementing BI on the cloud (mainly security), the vendors and the market as a whole have matured.

As far as India markets go, Gartner reports stand testimony to the growth charter. Estimates state that the market for BI software in India is expected to reach revenue $81.5 million in 2012, a 15.6 percent increase over 2011. Also, worldwide BI software market revenue is slated to grow 8.7 percent to reach $12.7 billion in 2012.

If Channelworld’s MVP Survey 2012 is any indication of how partners see the market and perceive the vendors, then Microsoft is going to see bright days ahead. Market share and position notwithstanding, where Microsoft is quite not there, the vendor is forging ahead and retains partner confidence and its position vis-à-vis last year.

MVP 2011 saw the five traditional vendors, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Oracle and SAS fight it out; this year sees a surprise inclusion of CA in

Microsoft as a potential leader in BI seems quite balanced. Sanjay Sharma, MD and CEO, MM9 Technologies, comments, “Microsoft is a very astute vendor; they are keeping pace with changing times, and manage partners well.” Sharma further elaborated that MM9 was growing at an exponential pace and was planning to grow its Microsoft BI business by 100 percent. This includes a move to tap into the vendor’s cloud offerings.

Says Sharma, “Microsoft is very good in the core parameters of technology, marketing assistance, and customer support. They are prompt in promoting their latest wares and cloud is the buzzword now. We get a lot more say in many matters since the time we have grown and our business is now a lot more non-transactional.”

Suresh Mishra, CEO of Kolkata’s Wizertech, says that while it is still early days to comment on Microsoft in the BI space, Wizertech believes that they will continue to grow their BI business with the vendor through their partnerships. 

Technology Solutions

B

usiness Intelligence promises

1

Microsoft

75

63

63

62

64

64

66

1

2

IBM Cognos

74

58

59

62

62

66

65

2

3

Oracle

74

59

58

60

64

64

64

4

4

SAP

66

63

62

64

61

62

63

3

5

CA Technologies

63

60

50

58

59

63

59

6

Rank Company

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Client Security Software

S

ECurITY IS a top

priority for enterprises of all sizes from enterprise level to SMBs. The prolerification of mobile devices, popularity of social media and enterprise mobility further compels organizations to devise a comprehensive security strategy around End Point.

According to IDC Asia/ Pacific Semiannual Security Software Tracker, all the security software functional markets registered a double-digit year-on-year (YoY) growth in the first half of 2011. The security software market grew 18.5% over 1H 2010 to $796 million in 1H 2011.

Symantec bounced back strongly to attain the top position in the ‘Client Security Software’ category in this year’s survey. McAfee claimed second position just ahead of Websense. The fourth and fifth position was fought closely by Trend Micro and Quick Heal as they interchanged their positions than last year’s results. last year’s winner Websense slipped this year primarily due to low scores

Symantec’s data availability solutions translate into an excellent upsell for partners deploying security portfolio at the customer end. They regularly introduce technology-rich offerings in new domains.

MadhU MadhVan, MD & CEO, CUBiC COMPUtiNG

CLIENT SECURITY SOFTWARE Technology Solutions

Marketing Assistance

Training & certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

sYMantec & Mcafee sHoW iMPressiVe gains

1

Symantec

74

70

65

67

70

65

69

2

2

McAfee

67

64

56

63

67

66

64

6

3

Websense

65

63

58

64

64

65

64

1

4

Trend Micro

67

63

57

59

61

63

62

5

5

Quick Heal

68

64

51

65

57

59

62

4

Rank Company

in ‘Training & Certification’ and ‘Technology Solutions’.

Symantec scored highest ratings across all parameters except ‘Management style’ where McAfee scored marginally more.

McAfee made a remarkable comeback than its low ranking at sixth position in last year’s survey. It however scored a low score for ‘Training & Certification’.

Madhu Madhvan, MD & CEO at Cubic Computing says, “Symantec’s Availability solutions (data backup and data recovery) translate into an excellent up sell for partners deploying security portfolio at customer end.

They regularly introduce technology rich offerings in newer domains like virtualization to help the enterprises simplify their complex IT environment. They also have a well etched roadmap for Cloud.”

In ‘Marketing assistance’ and ‘Customer support’ parameters, Symantec scored much more than the other vendors in the list.

Deepak Jhaveri , Director, Magnamious Systems says, “Symantec’s marketing assistance is far better than its competitors through lead generation, POC and other pre-sales issues. Their team ensures that we end up closing the customer deal on maximum occasions.”

IDC expects companies to continue to invest and install the latest detecting and defending tools to protect their assets. Thus, the overall security software market will continue to experience a decent growth in 2012,despite the signs of economic slowdown. 

APrIl 2012

— Kartik Sharma IndIan Channelworld

37

Desktops & Notebooks

38

DESKTOPS & NOTEBOOKS Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

Hp Leads The Pack, followed by dell Technology Solutions

T

he market for desktops and notebooks, in a stark contrast to last year, is predicted to witness an upswing this year. India PC shipments are looking at a 17 percent increase in 2012, and are expected to reach 12.5 million units in 2012, according to the latest forecast by Gartner. This is a great improvement compared to the gloom witnessed in the last quarter wherein the worldwide PC shipments had increased just by 2.8 percent, as opposed to the forecast of 4.2 percent for 2011 according to a report by IDC. Amidst such positive vibes in the PC market, HP, once again has retained its top position in the Desktops and Laptops category with an overall score of 75 in the survey, surpassing competition from the other vendors across all parameters.

Market heavyweights like Dell and Lenovo continued to maintain the second and third positions respectively in the list. HP clearly seems to lead the pack with huge gains on all fronts and has clearly been more focused on improving its channel relationship. Sheetal Nahar, Director, Nahar Integrated System Services says, “Our association with HP has been good for the last six years. Unlike other vendors who introduce changes every fortnight in terms of people and products, HP has been consistent throughout in terms of products. Our satisfaction ratio is very high because dealing with known people is much easier.” He asserts that HP’s service in terms of training and certification has been good, compared to other vendors

1

HP

82

75

68

75

70

72

75

1

2

Dell

71

68

47

68

55

56

63

2

3

Lenovo

70

63

50

56

57

55

60

3

4

Sony

73

61

45

51

56

53

59

5

5

Toshiba

70

60

53

51

61

54

58

4

Rank Company

Our association with HP has been good for the last six years. Unlike other vendors who introduce changes frequently in terms of people and products, HP has been consistent throughout.”

Sheetal Nahar, Director, Nahar Integrated System Services

Indian Channelworld april 2012

in the market.

Interestingly, Ramanujam, Director, Archon Consulting Systems is satisfied with the vendor’s channel management, but rates HP relatively low in customer support.

He says, “Responsiveness on behalf of HP in terms of customer support has been generally on the lower side and has been sluggish.

But HP still is much better compared to Dell or Lenovo in terms of technology solutions or design and aesthetics of the product.” He admits that HP as a brand has added value in terms of getting them recognition in the market.

While Sony pushed a step ahead from last year and was placed fourth in this year’s list with an improvement in terms of its technology solutions, Toshiba fell marginally short of the mark in the segment of marketing assistance and became number 5 in the list.

However, the days ahead for this market post the floods in Thailand and the rise of excise duty in India will be challenging.  — Aritra Sarkhel

Enterprise Networking

T

He GROWTH of enterprises is often based on the infrastructure they invest in, and networks form the bulwark of IT infrastructure. It forms the framework of their IT capabilities, and therefore, it also provides a huge opportunity for hardware networking vendors to cement their position in this market.

IDC forecasts that the network equipment market will grow to $51.4 billion by 2014. For 2011, IDC pegged the market at $39 billion.

According to IDC, in 2012, enterprises are expected to invest $39.4 billion in both network intelligence and network bandwidth upgrades to consolidate the networking infrastructure.

There is no doubt that this market looks bullish in terms of growth, and the next year would probably see another dramatic rise or fall in fortunes, at the hands of partners.

This year’s most Valued Principal (mVP) survey is some indication of the vendor sway among partners in

we have been working with Juniper closely.

In the last year, we have done more deals with them than with most vendors. This has improved our relationship with them, and we are one of the strongest partners in the North.”

KAMAl KHANNA, vP, targUS techNoLogieS

India. The survey findings reveal the drastic fall of extreme Networks from the top slot to number four and

the rise of HP and Juniper to the top. This substantiates the overhaul that this market is capable of facilitating.

ENTERPRISE NETWORKING — HARDWARE Technology Solutions

Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall score

Standing 2010-11

Hp & JUNIpeR oN Top, cIsco LaGs beHINd

1

HP

67

64

67

64

63

65

65

3

1

Juniper

74

58

59

62

62

66

65

5

2

D-Link

74

59

58

60

64

64

64

4

3

Cisco

66

63

62

64

61

62

63

2

4

Extreme

63

60

50

58

59

63

59

1

Rank Company

Juniper was placed fifth in this category last year, while this year, the vendor shares joint honors with HP. With an overall score of 65, HP and Juniper are only marginally ahead of D-Link. Partners are satisfied with the progress of business as they assess their choice of top vendor. Secunderabad-based partner Shailesh Gumidelli, mD, Cache Peripherals says, “HP is very quick on responding and educating the customers. This is important for business. They have been able to react faster on the features that are available when it comes to networking.”

Juniper, too, has its share of loyalists. The vendor scored well on the management Style parameter. kamal khanna, VP, Targus Technologies, a Juniper partner, comments, “We have been working with Juniper closely. In the last year, we have done more deals with them than with most vendors. This has improved our relationship with them, and we are one of the strongest partners in the North.

They have provided us with great support and technology since our association and we are very pleased with the functioning.”

HP seems to score well with partners on the Training and Certification front with an overall score of 67.

“The training is really good when it comes to HP. The people I have been associated with have been great, even though there has been a lot of chopping and changing internally. But of late, the changes have improved relations further,” says Dk Bajaj, Director, Dm Systems. 

APRIL 2012

— Shreehari Paliath INdIAN CHANNelwOrld

39

IP Surveillance

40

Our business is focused on facility maintenance and strategic outsourcing of IT infrastructure. For these business activities, Honeywell’s support played a crucial role.

Devang Jasani, CEO, Meridian Infotech

‘Market Assistance’ parameter. He explains, “They generate business leads for us through their market intelligence mechanism. They assist us organize market-

ing events like business seminar etc. which helps us to execute more business.

Honeywell updates us about all the technology advancements in the industry. It

is easy to sell Honeywell’s products and services due to its great acceptance in IP Surveillance market.”

Rajeev Patayeet, Director, VinTech Electronics Systems comments, “Honeywell is a highly focused vendor with a great mindshare and an end-to-end solution portfolio. It is probably the only vendor which is a onestop shop in IP surveillance space,” Patayeet concludes.

Jasani informs, “Our business is primarily focused more on facility maintenance, strategic outsourcing of IT infrastructure, and lease and rental of IT infrastructure equipment. For these business activities, Honeywell’s ‘customer support’ played a crucial role for us.”

According to U.K.-based firm IMS Research, the growth in worldwide market for video surveillance equipment was mainly driven by sales of IP-based network video surveillance equipment. IMS forecasts global network security camera market to exceed 4 billion USD in 2015.  — Kartik Sharma

IP SURVEILLANCE Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

Cisco Gives A Tough Fight To Honeywell Marketing Assistance

is a definite emergent trend primarily due to recent spate of terrorist activities, and the advent of compliance issues. Government and Corporate in India are investing a significant amount of security budget on IP surveillance projects.

India Video Surveillance market is expected to reach $952.94 million by 2016, with a CAGR of 32.49% from 2011-2016 according to 6Wresearch. In 2011, though analog based surveillance systems have accounted for majority of the share i.e. 67.80% in the overall market but IP based surveillance systems would grow with relatively higher CAGR of 41.78% from 20112016, according to the research firm.

It was a tough tussle between Honeywell and Cisco but the former won though with a small margin.

Honeywell received highest scores in three parameters – Market assistance, Customer support and financial terms.

Cisco came in a close second mainly due to high scores for ‘Training & Certification’ and ‘Management style’.

Pelco by Schneider had a huge fall to number five from its top position in last year’s survey.

Siemens scored highest in the parameter of ‘Technology solutions’, which pushed them a rank higher to third this year. D-Link scored low scores across most parameters compared to top three but the vendor was at number four this year.

Devang Jasani CEO at Vadodara based Meridian Infotech, observes that Honeywell’s market intelligence makes it a best vendor in

Technology Solutions

I

P video surveillance

1

Honeywell

70

72

60

68

64

66

67

3

2

Cisco

71

68

62

63

63

69

67

5

3

Siemens

76

66

48

64

60

61

64

4

4

D-Link

62

60

53

57

63

60

62

6

5

Pelco by Schneider

66

59

51

58

60

58

59

1

Rank Company

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Network Security Appliance

U

NIFIED THREAT

Management (UTM) forms a vital block in the security posture of today’s enterprises. An important network security appliance, UTMs has sprawled its importance across SMBs, mid market and enterprises.

According to ‘Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management’ report, “In 2009, the worldwide UTM market was worth approximately $1.5 billion, representing 25 percent growth over Gartner’s 2007 estimate, with a forecast of 2025 percent CAGR through 2012. This market is largely driven by turnkey appliance solutions, although there are pure software UTM solutions available.”

For the Network Security Appliance category in this year’s survey, Cyberoam and Checkpoint held the top two positions similar to last year’s survey. Cyberoam, a provider of identity-based UTM security appliances won the category this year though by a narrow margin.

Cyberoam trounced Checkpoint, Sonicwall,

Technical support of Cyberoam is quick and efficient, which is a huge advantage for sales support of a security product. we work very closely with the responsive Cyberoam technical staff.

SanJeeV GUPTa, dirECtOr, VELtrOniCS

NETWORK SECURITY APPLIANCE Technology solutions

Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

Customer support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

CyBeRoAM holDs onTo The ToP sloT

1

Cyberoam

75

68

64

70

68

66

70

1

2

Checkpoint

80

65

63

66

67

69

69

2

3

Sonicwall

73

67

63

69

71

68

69

5

4

Cisco

74

67

67

69

65

66

69

6

5

Juniper

72

63

63

69

64

66

67

4

Rank Company

and Cisco primarily due to high scores in Marketing Assistance and Customer Support.

Indore-based Veltronics mainly works with Cyberoam for security projects across their enterprise customer base. Sanjeev Gupta, Director, Veltronics says, “Their technical support is quick and efficient, which is a huge advantage for sales support of a security product. There is not much of complaint logging required as our engineers have a direct telephone call with responsive Cyberoam technical staff.”

The second rank in the survey was closely fought with Checkpoint just ahead of Sonicwall and Cisco.

Checkpoint scored the highest points for Technology Solutions and Management Styles than other vendors.

With good ratings for financial terms, Sonicwall made a remarkable comeback at third position, up by two ranks since last year’s survey. Cisco and Juniper bagged the fourth and fifth rankings respectively.

Hitesh Mehta, Director, Hitech Network Solution says, “The geographic reach of Cyberoam is wellentrenched across metros and Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

Coupled with effective marketing assistance, the brand is well known in the security market.”

Spending on network security appliances and software grew 3 percent in 2011 and it is expected to show an 8 percent increase in 2012 as per Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research.  —Yogesh Gupta

APRIL 2012

IndIan CHannelwOrld

41

Network Security Software

42

NETWORK SECURITY SOFTWARE Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

Sonicwall gains, Websense loses top place Technology Solutions

T

he network security software space is seeing consolidation, with the top five vendors making acquisitions by the day to strengthen their portfolios.

Gartner reports in 2011 estimated that about 44.3 percent of the $ 16.5 billion security software market lay vested with Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, IBM, and EMC. The trend might continue unstopped in 2012.

Gartner also states that market expansion and innovation are driven partly by new start-up players entering the market with innovative technology solutions to cater for end-user requirements.

This year’s MVP survey clearly sees SonicWall scoring very well among a crosssection of its India partners to emerge a winner, closely followed by Symantec, Websense, McAfee, and Checkpoint. Apparently, the recent Dell acquisition has not really affected partner perception or ratings and the vendor has notched top scores in three out of six parameters. Symantec, runner up scores in financial assistance to partners, while Websense seems to have an edge in marketing assistance and training and certification. Interestingly, Websense was a clear winner in 2011 scoring phenomenally in the areas of technology, marketing assistance and management styles. Checkpoint and Symantec were in the second and third places respectively, with Symantec garnering top scores for marketing assistance. Tables have clearly turned in favor of SonicWall this time round. This year, Checkpoint clearly seems to have

1

Sonicwall

79

70

67

71

63

72

72

4

2

Symantec

79

69

67

65

71

68

71

3

3

Websense

74

70

70

69

66

70

70

1

4

McAfee

70

60

58

68

65

69

66

8

5

Checkpoint

71

66

68

57

64

64

65

2

Rank Company

While SonicWall operates in a different space as compared to the other established security vendors in the market, they have their unique strengths in technology and have tremendous market potential.

Anuj Gupta, Director, MIEL e-Security

Indian Channelworld april 2012

lost momentum, and stands at number five.

In the light of these interesting scores, Atul Gosar, Director, Network Techlab India, a SonicWall partner for the last eight years is quite unequivocal about his allegiance with the vendor.

He says, “Our relationship with SonicWall has grown from strength-to-strength over the years. They have, within a short span of time addressed partner issues quite effectively.”

Anuj Gupta, Director, MIEL e-Security, a SonicWall partner for the last few years also comments, “While SonicWall operates in a different space as compared to the other established security vendors we work with, they have their unique strengths in technology and have tremendous market potential.” Whether the Dell acquisition will hot up the security software market and add to Dell’s portfolio will be an interesting angle to explore in the coming year.  — Shantheri Mallaya

Network Storage

T

HE EXPLOSION of

data worldwide has precipitated the need for storage. In the last year, the global situation owing to the EU crisis and natural calamities dealt a blow on the storage market. But the market has stood resilient to their affects, and so have the vendors’ position, from their channel perspective. According to IDC, enterprise storage revenue totaled $7.6 billion. revenue for external disk storage increased 10.8 percent to just under $5.8 billion.

This shows the extent of possible growth for the storage players.

Trends like big data are shooting up the demand for storage. An EMC-IDC study revealed that India generated nearly 40,000 petabytes of data, which is 50 percent more data generated than can be stored. This simply paves the future for storage.

In the light of these figures, the MVP survey 2012 reveals partner perception of their storage vendors.

The network storage segment, according to the sur-

Today, when the onus of doing business is on the partner, it is important to be guided at all times. This is where netApp does well.”

VIShAl BIndrA, ceo, AcPL

vey has seen NetApp retain a healthy lead to emerge winner. They stand at the helm with an overall score of 79 followed by HP with

a score of 76. Both HP and EMC have seen a rise in their ranking compared to the previous year, where there were placed at third

NETWORK STORAGE Technology Solutions

Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

netapp topS, ibM SlipS

1

NetApp

85

77

76

78

75

76

79

1

2

HP

81

73

72

79

72

76

76

3

3

EMC

76

73

70

70

65

67

71

4

4

IBM

76

70

67

67

69

71

71

2

5

Oracle /Sun

78

63

62

65

54

59

66

6

Rank

Company

and fourth respectively. The biggest surprise, however, is the drop in IBM’s ranking to fourth from being runner’s up last year. This should certainly be a cause for concern at the Big Blue. IBM was rated poorly in Training and Certification, Financial Terms, and Customer Support. The top two vendors performed exceptionally in these sub-categories compared to IBM. For NetApp’s partners, their victory does not come as a surprise at all. “When we decided to move into storage business, we subscribed to prominent players.

The best response we got was from NetApp. It was not just engagement but also the fact that they are keen on ensuring certification and market engagement among other things. In today’s scenario when the onus of doing business with the vendor is on the partner, it is important to be hand-held even when we are not doing business.

This helps strengthen the relationship. This is where NetApp does well,” says Vishal Bindra, CEO, ACPL. “We have been associated with NetApp for nearly four years now. As our business is focused on network storage and security, we found that we got the best support and response from them when compared to the other vendors. Their support has been exemplary. But in the future, we would like to see recognition from them at a regional level more, than the national. This should help streamline the process better,” says S.T. Muneer Ahmed, MD of Chennai’s Digital Track.  — Shreehari paliath

APrIL 2012

IndIAn ChAnnelWorld

43

Servers

44

Unlike many other vendors, IBM does not dictate margins and is flexible when it comes to pricing. They value the efforts of the partner and are open for discussions.”

Rahul Meher, Founder, Leon Computers

their respective positions in the server category in 2012.

Leon Computers, an SI that has been working closely with IBM for the last three years has closed many

key deals with the vendor.

Rahul Meher, Founder, says, “Unlike many other vendors, IBM does not dictate margins and is flexible when it comes to pricing. They value

the efforts of the partner and are open for discussions. Besides, they don’t decide the level of support based on our level of partnership. IBM has worked very closely with us on many key accounts.”

IBM led the pack with its strong ratings in technology and marketing assistance.

Bangalore-based Navigator Systems has a decadeold partnership with IBM and is planning to take this relationship to the next level. “IBM has been exceptional in terms of support and marketing. This helped us migrate some of our customers from Sun to IBM platform, immediately after Sun got acquired by Oracle.

There was a lean period during which Sun customers were looking for other options and IBM wisely capitalized on this opportunity,” says Suresh R, Director.

At the same time, HP’s forte turned out to be its customer support, in which the vendor was better-rated than IBM itself. Oracle could not improve its rating this time around too, and is still at number 4 spot, below Dell.  — Radhika Nallayam

SERVERS Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

Top five continue to rule Marketing Assistance

server market has always been an interesting space to watch out for. As the enterprise hardware budgets started shrinking gradually, the server market was predicted to spiral down over a period of time. This, coupled with the recent hard-drive shortage has clearly shaken this market up. However, the good news is that the market has been growing, contrary to the predictions by industry experts.

According to IDC, worldwide server revenue for the year 2011 increased 5.8 percent to $52.3 billion when compared to 2010, while worldwide unit shipments increased 4.2 percent to 8.3 million units. Just about back to the pre-recession days, the server market at present is evolving positively with new technology advancements, new product form factors, and above all, new players who are literally changing the market equations. IDC believes that server demand will begin to improve in the second half of 2012 “following a number of critical product refreshes occurring in the first half of the year.”

The India market figures, however, do not seem to be very bright. According to IDC, the overall server shipments in India declined in Q4 2011. The x86 shipments were the worst affected.

IBM has been a leader in this market, followed by HP and Dell, when it comes to market share. Interestingly, in the ChannelWorld MVP survey, IBM held on to the number 1 spot, while HP emerged number 2, in a neck and neck competition. In fact, all the top 5 vendors retained

Technology Solutions

T

he world-wide

1

IBM

82

77

74

72

72

72

76

1

2

HP

81

74

72

75

69

71

75

2

3

Dell

73

65

55

69

64

60

66

3

4

Oracle/Sun

70

59

59

62

60

64

63

4

5

Fujitsu

61

50

44

53

51

63

54

5

Rank Company

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Storage Management Software

d

ATA GROwTH, information management, and big data are the prime catalysts accelerating demand for storage software market. enterprises need to manage and store spiraling data efficiently across their IT infrastructure.

Technology vendors including HP, IBM, eMC, NetApp, and Symantec offer latest, sophisticated, and featurerich storage management software to enterprises.

The sales of storage software produced record revenues of more than $14 billion in 2011, according to IDC. During the calendar fourth quarter of 2011, storage software sales increased 10.5 percent year over year to almost $3.8 billion, pushing the full year revenue total up 11.6 percent over 2010 to a record high of $14.16 billion.

In the MVP survey, NetApp, Symantec, and HP emerged as the top three contenders in the Storage Management Software category.

NetApp claimed the top spot scoring high than other vendors across parameters.

MN world enterprises has been working closely

our core focus is virtualization and Netapp is best in the market for this technology. Features like deduplication at block level and Unified Storage place Netapp ahead of its competitors.

PRaVeeN dwaRKaNaTh, dIreCtor, mn WorLd enterprIses

STORAGE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE Technology Solutions

Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

neTApp & Hp Bounce BAcK

1

NetApp

79

77

79

82

79

81

80

3

2

Symantec

85

77

76

74

77

77

78

2

3

HP

80

68

69

79

73

77

75

6

4

EMC

78

68

68

71

72

69

72

5

5

IBM / Tivoli

82

67

67

67

67

73

71

4

Rank Company

with NetApp for the past four years. Praveen Dwarkanath, co-founder & director, MN world enterprises says, “The features of storage management software of NetApp are a great value proposition. Our core focus is virtualization, and NetApp software is best in the market for this technology.

Features like deduplication at block level and Unified Storage concept places NetApp ahead of competitors.”

Symantec came in second scoring high on technology solutions in the survey while HP sprung a surprise at number three ahead of eMC from number six in last year’s survey. eMC at number five last year inched one rank higher this time displacing IBM to number five. IBM scored high in technology solutions and management styles but lost on other four parameters.

Sudarsan Ranganathan, CeO, Veeras Infotek states, “Being an exclusive storagefocused vendor NetApp displays a more robust technology portfolio and more partner-centric initiatives. It works very closely with vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, and Symantec, and also has an alliance with VMware.

From customer perspective for virtualization solution, NetApp becomes a single point of contact.”

“The Auto support of NetApp makes its customer support a notch over others.

If something goes wrong in storage system at the enterprise-end, a ticket is raised automatically, and the new hard disk reaches the site at the earliest. It is like a self-healing feature,” says Dwarkanath. 

APRIl 2012

— Yogesh Gupta INdIaN ChaNNelwoRld

45

Structured Cabling

46

STRUCTURED CABLING Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

TE Connectivity ahead of Systimax Marketing Assistance

of digitization, structured cabling has found a strong foothold in the IT scenario. Be it the private or public sector, the demand for structured cabling has escalated considerably as compared to the previous years.

According to IDC, the structured cabling market is likely to show a CAGR of 20.5 percent until 2013; this would encompass both the copper and fiber solutions of cabling. The data center market, which comprises 17 percent of the total growth of structured cabling, would alone add approximately 1,373 crore rupees or 46 percent of the overall structured cabling market by 2013, as per the analyst firm.

In this year’s survey, TE Connectivity (as Tyco acquired ADC Krone and was rebranded as TE Connectivity) emerged as a clear winner in the structured cabling category for the second time in row. TE Connectivity is rated high on principals like ‘technology and solutions’ along with ‘marketing and assistance,’ though it scored the least in ‘customer support’ category. This year Systimax inched ahead from the second to the first runner’s up position by replacing DigiLink.

Edward Jeewan, Director Binary Systems has been associated with TE Connectivity for ten years now and has rated the vendor high in marketing and technology in the survey.

He says, “TE Connectivity has a brand name when it comes to structured cabling. It is a ‘pull-market’

Technology Solutions

W

ith the advent

1

TE Connectivity

77

71

68

68

69

69

71

1

2

Systimax

80

71

65

65

61

63

69

3

3

Molex

75

65

62

65

66

65

67

4

4

R&M

71

60

64

61

70

65

66

-

5

Leviton

64

65

63

67

63

70

65

-

Rank Company

TE Connectivity’s portfolio, management style and service support is outstanding as compared to other vendors. Their supply chain is very strong.

Ujjwal Mhatre, Director- Corporate Sales, Orient Technologies

Indian Channelworld april 2012

for TE Connectivity and not a ‘push-market,” he said. Jeevan adds that TE Connectivity’s marketing and business skills have helped them to carve a niche in the structured cabling field.

For Systimax, its strong points remained, ‘technology and solutions’ and ‘marketing and assistance,’ but it could not get a good response in the ‘financial support’ section.

Molex was at number 3 while R & M gained the forth place in the survey.

Ujjwal Mhatre, Director- Corporate Sales, Orient Technologies says, “TE Connectivity’s product portfolio, management people and service support is outstanding compared to others vendors. We prefer vendors who are more flexible, reliable and efficient,” adds Mhatre.

Mhatre concludes, “TE Connectivity’s supply chain is very strong and their color coded system is very simple and customer friendly.”  — Ankita Mitra.

Systems & Network Management

n

ETWORK MANAGEMENT is a fairly

matured market, with steady players and constant demand. however, a few transformative trends within the data center, including server virtualization, cloud, and BYOD have drastically changed the way a network is expected to perform.

The very complexity of networks increased, while network uptime became a lot more crucial for enterprises. The result — a greater focus on network and systems management.

According to a recent iDC forecast, the worldwide revenue for the network management software and appliance market in 2011 was US$2.5 billion, growing 9.1 percent over 2010. iDC expects this market to grow at a CAGR of 7.5 percent to $4.0 billion from 2012 to 2017. in the ChannelWorld MVp survey this year, hp retained its leadership in this segment. it maintained a clear lead in Technology and Management Style, while scored

hP provides very healthy two-digit margins to us and has invested hugely in channels to come up with interesting incentive programs. Above all, they do proactive selling, than just pushing products.

VIPUl dATTA, ceo, FUtUreSoFt SolUtionS

relatively low in Training and Certification. The vendor had its partners rating it better in Customer Sup-

port and Financial Terms this year, as compared to the 2011 ratings.

The surprise entry was

SYSTEMS & NETWORK MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE Technology Solutions

Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

overall Score

Standing 2010-11

hP RaCES ahEad of miCRoSofT

1

HP

83

73

71

77

77

80

78

1

2

Microsoft

79

78

74

74

70

73

75

5

3

CA Technologies

76

68

68

67

73

70

70

2

4

IBM/Tivoli

80

58

61

60

64

66

66

3

5

Quest Software

76

58

58

57

58

57

62

4

Rank Company

of Microsoft, to the number two slot from number five last year. Microsoft witnessed significant improvements in Training and Certification, Management Styles and Customer Support — parameters for which the vendor was rated quite low in the MVp survey in 2011. The vendor, thus, pushed CA — and, in turn, all the other remaining vendors in the top five list — one step down from their last year’s standing.

Microsoft was ahead of all the other top four vendors, when it comes to marketing assistance and Training and Certification.

Chennai-based Quadsel Systems has been in this market for close to seven years now and is an exclusive hp partner. Girish Madhavan, CEO of Quadsel systems says, “hp is way ahead of others when it comes to their technology. it offers an impressive ROi to customer — a factor that has helped us tremendously to push hp solutions in this market. We have had some major wins with hp in the systems and network management space. We are surely keen to continue working with the vendor to take this to the next level.”

Vipul Datta, CEO, Futuresoft Solutions says that hp solutions provides sustained lower cost of operations to the customers. “hp provides very healthy two-digit margins to us and has invested hugely in channels to come up with interesting incentive programs. Above all, they do proactive selling, than just pushing products.” 

ApRiL 2012

— radhika nallayam.

IndIAn ChAnnElWorld

47

Wireless Networking

48

Cisco’s web-based portal is of great help for channel partners and customers. With their offerings, we provide network solutions for virtually every need of an enterprise.

Sanjay Kulkarni, CEO & Director, Sunfire Technologies

year, Juniper scored low points in customer support and training & certification.

Delhi based Arrow Technologies works closely with HP especially for

SMB projects.

Its CEO Gurpreet Singh explains, “Although HP is relatively a new player in wireless networking industry, its partner centric

approach and brand value is a huge plus point in the marketplace. They keep us updtaed with new technologies. HP is very aggressive in expanding its partner base backed with series of trainings and marketing assistance to help us close more deals.”

Sanjay Kulkarni, CEO & Director, Sunfire Technologies elucidates Cisco’s excellence in terms of technology solutions. He informs, “Cisco’s web based portal is of great help for channel partners and customers.

With their offerings, we offer network solutions for virtually every need of an enterprise. Cisco’s LAN controllers, network management solution and outdoor wireless and client devices are one of the best ‘wireless’ product portfolio across the industry. This provides the vendor with a great acceptability factor in the market.

There are many instances where Cisco provided us timely and excellent support to deliver post sales services to the customers.” Kulkarni comments on Cisco.  — Kartik Sharma

WIRELESS NETWORKING Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

Cisco & HP emerge winners Marketing Assistance

connectivity due to the proliferation of mobile devices has lead to huge demand in wireless networking market especially in past couple of years. According to IDC, wireless networking market is rapidly evolving as vendors and end users discover more possibilities and growth potential with mobile enterprise applications and cloud applications and services - including the fact that these are closely intertwined with each other.

According to a research firm Canalys, the total enterprise wireless LAN market, including access points and controllers, was worth $757 million in Q2 2011, with 1.6 million units shipped.

This is a 35% increase from the same time last year, when the market was worth $561 million. Asia Pacific was one of the fastest growing wireless LAN regions year-on-year at 45.7%.

The survey result for wireless networking this year was too close for comfort thus resulting in a tie for the first place between Cisco and HP. Cisco held on to the number one spot for two parameters – Technology solutions and Customer support, while HP proved its merit across three parameters – Training & Certification, Marketing assistance and Financial terms. HP made a huge jump from position six in last year’s survey.

D-Link climbed two ranks to claim the second position scoring highest in marketing assistance. Aruba is at number three while Juniper ended up at bottom of the table. From third rank last

Technology Solutions

T

he need for Wi-Fi

1

Cisco

78

68

67

71

66

70

71

1

1

HP

74

68

69

70

72

75

71

6

2

D-Link

74

69

59

66

67

65

67

4

3

Aruba Networks

75

64

61

63

59

60

65

5

4

Juniper

64

60

57

57

46

56

58

3

Rank Company

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Workgroup Printers & MFDs

a

CCOrDING TO

Gartner, the combined market for workgroup printers & multi function devices (MFD) in India totaled 641,274 units in the Q4 of 2011, a 5.9 percent decline compared to the Q4 of 2010.

The ambiguities in the global economy, combined with the crisis in US and European markets had a domino effect on the Indian economy. Coupled with India’s high inflation rate, the printer market registered assorted results as most organizations reduced their purchase of printers.

According to Gartner, HP still remains the leader in the Indian printer, Copier, and MFD market with a 53 percent market share in the fourth quarter of 2011 while competitions like Canon registered a market share of 21.8 percent while Epson and Samsung clocked scores of 9.8 percent and 7.9 percent market share respectively.

Amid such apprehensions in the market, HP still continues to lead the table in the MVP survey with an

We have been associated with hP since 1992. hP’s marketing strategies have been amazing over the years. Moreover, hP as a brand has immensely helped us leverage our business right from the beginning,” S.r. naIr, Ceo, tEAM frOntlinE

WORKGROUP PRINTERS & MFDS Technology Solutions

Marketing Assistance

Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2010-11

HP & CAnon HoLD ToP 2 PosiTions

1

HP

86

80

65

74

70

74

76

1

2

Canon

72

61

50

62

65

60

63

2

3

Xerox

78

59

54

61

59

54

63

6

4

Samsung

64

67

49

52

57

51

68

4

5

Epson

67

56

34

54

56

55

55

5

Rank Company

overall score of 76. Partners seem to have recognized the company’s effort on the channel front, with consistently high scores across most of the parameters.

“We have been associated with HP since 1992 and our relationship has remained strong despite the changes at the helm of HP’s corporate affairs. HP’s marketing strategies have been amazing over the years. Moreover, HP as a brand has immensely helped us leverage our business right from the beginning,” points out S.r.

Nair, CEO, Team Frontline.

Training and certification however turned out to be the only weak area of the vendor. “We have been associated with HP since 1998.

Despite being an exclusive HP partner, we feel that HP needs to scale up a bit when it comes to training and certification. But, our relationship with a global brand like HP has helped our organizations’ growth for a long time. ,” states reeta Budhay, Director — Finance & Logistics, Business Algorithms. Despite certain uncertainties like the merger of its Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) and its Personal Systems Group (PSG) for profitability and the appointment of a new CEO, channel partners seems to be positive about their array of work with the principal, A close competition between Canon and Xerox, ended in a tie, with both players emerging as Silver winners for the category.

While Canon retained its last year’s position, Xerox made a great leap as it was not in the top 5 list last year.  — aritra Sarkhel

APrIL 2012

IndIan ChannelWorld

49

Winners at a Glance CATEGORY

GOLD

Business Intelligence

Microsoft

IBM Cognos

Oracle

Client Security Software

Symantec

McAfee

Websense

HP

Dell

Lenovo

HP & Juniper

D-Link

Cisco

IP Surveillance

Honeywell

Cisco

Siemens

Network Security Appliances

Cyberoam

Checkpoint

Sonicwall

Network Security Software

Sonicwall

Symantec

Websense

NetApp

HP

EMC

IBM

HP

Dell

NetApp

Symantec

HP

TE Connectivity

Systimax

Molex

HP

Microsoft

CA Technologies

Cisco & HP

D-Link

Aruba Networks

HP

Canon

Xerox

Desktops & Laptops Enterprise Networking - Hardware

Network Storage Servers Storage Management Software Structured Cabling Systems & Network Management Software Wireless Networking Workgroup Printers & MFDs

50

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD APRIL 2012

SILVER

BRONZE

Focal Point eVerytHing aBout Data center

I l l u s t r a t i o n s by U N N I K R I S H N A N AV

pushing Data center limits

Best practices to delay costly data center expansions. By Sandra gittlen

t

HIS YEAR marks the 11th anniversary of the 1,200-squarefoot data center at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering — that means it’s been in use four years longer than CIO and vice president of opera-

tions Joanne Kossuth originally expected. The facility needs more capacity and better connectivity, but Kossuth has been forced to put those needs on the back burner because of the state of the economy.

“Demand has certainly

offsite options

i

F all else fails and it looks like you are going to max out your data center, don’t be afraid to move servers, software, or storage off-site. options abound for picking up the slack, and they might even give you enough leeway to squeeze several more years out of your current data center. Here are some possibilities that you can explore: 1. Head to the cloud. Companies such as Amazon, HP, iBM, and oracle all offer cloud-based services that enable you to boost computing capacity when needed. For instance, if you have a seasonal project that would push your internal data center to its limits, you can temporarily lease server resources from a provider. This will meet your short-term needs without forcing a long-term investment.

2. roll in a pod. if building out or relocating your data center is out of the question, a pod might be the answer. Cisco, HP, and Silicon graphics international are among vendors offering portable data centers. These self-contained units can help you boost your overall capacity without the expense of a massive construction project.

3. Say hello to colo. Colocation is nothing new in the world of data centers. However, it can be your best friend if you’re trying to avoid an overhaul of your existing site. By transferring some of your infrastructure to a provider’s site, you can free up valuable floor space, and power and cooling capacity, but still maintain control of your hardware and software.

— Sandra gittlen

increased over the years, pushing the data center to its limits, but the recession has tabled revamp discussions,” she says. like many of her peers, including leaders at Citigroup and Marriott International, Kossuth has had to get creative to squeeze more out of servers, storage, and the facility itself. To do so, she’s had to re-examine the life cycles of data and applications, storage array layouts, rack architectures, server utilization, orphaned devices, and more.

Rakesh Kumar, an analyst at Gartner, says he’s been bombarded by inquiries from large organizations looking for ways to avoid the cost of a data center upgrade, expansion, or relocation. “Any data center investment costs at minimum tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions,

of dollars. With a typical data center refresh rate of five to 10 years, that’s a lot of money. So companies are looking for alternatives,” he says.

While that outlook might seem gloomy, Kumar finds that many companies can extract an extra two to five years from their data centers by employing a combination of strategies, including consolidating and rationalizing hardware and software usage, embracing virtualization, and physically moving equipment.

Most companies don’t optimize the components of their data centers, and therefore, bump up against their limitations faster than necessary, he says.

Here are some strategies that IT leaders and other experts suggest using to help push data centers utilization farther.

ApRIl 2012

inDian cHannelworlD

51

n focal point | Data Center Relocate Data One of the first areas that drew Kossuth’s attention at Olin College was the cost of dealing with data.

As one example, alumni, admissions staff, and other groups take multiple CDs worth of high-resolution photos at every event. They use server, storage, and bandwidth resources to edit, share, and retain those large images over long periods of time.

To free the data center from dealing with the nearly 10 terabytes of data that those image files represent, Kossuth opened a corporate account on Flickr and moved all processes surrounding management of those photos to the account. That not only eliminated the need to buy a $40,000 storage array, but also alleviated the pressure on the data center from a resource-intensive activity.

“There is little risk in moving non-core data out of the data center, and now we have storage space for mission-critical projects,” Kossuth says.

retention,” she says.

More important, the Tandberg system is kept pristine for high-profile conferences and missioncritical distance learning.

Ease High-Value Apps

Standardize Equipment

Early on, Olin College purchased an $80,000 Tandberg videoconferencing system and supporting storage array. Rather than exhausting that investment through overuse, Kossuth now prioritizes video capture and distribution, shifting lower-priority projects to less expensive videoconferencing solutions and to YouTube for storage. For example, most public relations videos are generated outside of the Tandberg system and are posted on the college’s YouTube channel.

“The data center no longer has to supply dedicated bandwidth for streaming and dedicated hardware for

Dan Blanchard, vice president of enterprise operations at the Marriott International, boasts that his main data center is 22 years old and that he intends to get 20 more years out of it.

He credits its long life to IT’s discipline, particularly to its efforts in standardizing equipment.

Each year, the hotel operator’s IT team settles on a handful of server and storage products to purchase.

If a new project starts up or one of the 300 to 400 physical servers fails, machines are ready and waiting. Storage is handled similarly.

Even switches, though on a longer refresh cycle

Load-Balanced Data Center Risks

A

growing trend in the disaster recovery arena for cloud providers is the use of load-balanced data centers instead of hot-cold data centers.

If one data center suffered from a disaster, the other data center would be operating though at reduced capacity.

But there are challenges.

Tracking the various configurations of the infrastructure of an application is tricky. Each application creates server names, selects open IP addresses, addresses DNS mappings, defines servers and database clusters, and many more such elements.

All these elements exist for an application in each environment. Many of these application configurations are maintained by multiple web-based applications. The maintenance 52

applications are not integrated, and therefore, the metadata application configurations are not centralized. Worse yet, administrative changes are made to products at implementation time that are not captured in the change management system.

Hence, the metadata, too, is often out of date.

It would be great to have a tool to clone the configuration in one data center to the other data center it is load balanced with.

But creation of a tool or wizard would be difficult considering all of the valid permutations of products that could be configured.

So, centralization of infrastructure configuration metadata is critical. Without this, the deployed application and its supporting infrastructure will drift in small ways over time and

Indian Channelworld april 2012

can cause problems in both the primary and secondary load-balanced datacenter. Without versioning, it may be very difficult to return the datacenter back to a stable state when a change leads to production errors.

Companies should also have a policy that states that only tested product configurations, such as versions of virtualized machines on kernel software or operating systems, can be deployed within the data center.

Only specific versions of firewall hardware can be deployed in the various data centers. Another danger is to have a lack of options for various infrastructure components. A common flaw in hardware or bug in software it could lead to a dramatic failure in multiple data centers.

-By Gregory Machler

of about five years, are standardized. “Uniformity makes it much simpler to manage resources and predict capacity. If you have lots of unique hardware from numerous vendors, it’s harder to plan [future data center needs],” Blanchard says. He recommends working closely with vendors to understand their road maps and strategize standardized refreshes accordingly. For example, Marriott might delay a planned refresh if feature sets on a vendor’s upcoming release are worth waiting for.

Virtualize Blanchard also is a fan of virtualization. Marriott’s pool of physical machines supports almost 1,000 virtual servers, freeing up floor space and saving on power and cooling. Though virtualization requires highpower, high-density servers, Marriott is able to consolidate the pool to several hundred physical machines that are energy-efficient saves on overall data center power consumption.

Gartner’s Kumar agrees that consolidation is a positive for data centers because low-utilization servers — those dedicated to just one or two applications — consume almost the same amount of energy as high-utilization ones. “Just to keep a [low-utilization] server on consumes 50 percent to 60 percent of the energy as it would if it were running full,” he says.

Also, older servers tend to be far less efficient than newer models used in today’s virtualization efforts.

Retire Devices Emphasizing the need for consolidation, Kumar says, “Organizations should

clean house.” Data center managers should conduct audits using asset management software or other tools that offer visibility into application and hardware usage.

Here’s what an audit is likely to turn up: Some 5 percent to 10 percent of hardware devices are either switched off or supporting a single, rarely used application, according to Kumar.

In light of the fact that servers consume energy and other resources at any utilization rate, either trash the application or virtualize it, and retire or reuse the hardware. “You have to make sure that every piece of hardware in your data center is doing productive work,” he says.

At Citigroup, uncovering idle servers is a regular exercise for those who manage the financial services company’s 14 data centers (the oldest has been in use for 20 years).

“Over the years, things get lost. Not only do we use asset management tools, but we also physically walk around the data center to make sure each device has a purpose,” says Jack Glass, Citigroup’s director of data center planning. However, he says you should consult with applications teams before unplugging anything.

Glass agrees that if an infrequently used application is consuming hardware resources, it should be virtualized. “Virtualization is definitely our standard here. If it can’t be decommissioned, then, where possible, it gets virtualized,” he says.

Contain Sprawl IT leaders concur that most test and development folks must be monitored closely

because they will consume whatever resources you offer them. In fact, Citigroup’s Glass says he often finds abandoned or concluded test and development projects during his utilization reviews.

Kossuth uses a proactive strategy to ensure that test and development efforts don’t overtake her data center. She has roped off a section of the data center, complete with server and storage resources, to be used as a sandbox. Usage is carefully monitored, and when projects end, resources are immediately reab-

Use Effective Coding While this advice might not seem relevant to a data center manager, Kutticherry insists that inefficient coding can suck away data center resources. For instance, poorly coded applications force servers to work harder, consume far more processing power, and increase the number of servers needed. “Ensure that your developers are using the tightest code they can so applications are most effective,” he says.

Data center managers should also require developers to use common data-

CFD can be expensive, at around $30,000, gaining a few more years from your data center makes it worthwhile,” he argues.

He also points to pacelayering, a design technique used to organize data centers in an optimal manner, with different pieces evolving at different speeds, or phases. Such an approach takes into account the fact that Web servers need to be managed differently from, say, Tier 1 storage.

Analyze Efficiency A CFD analysis, in addition to helping to map floor

Many companies can extract an extra two to five years from their data centers by employing a combination of strategies, including consolidating and rationalizing hardware and software usage, embracing virtualization, and physically moving equipment. sorbed. She calls it a way to protect the data center without stifling innovation.

Remove Duplicate Data Jason Kutticherry, Vice President of data center planning at Citigroup, says the company has made a concerted effort to reduce its storage footprint, saving on data center floor space and on power and cooling.

A key technology for this has been data deduplication, which keeps an eye out for duplication of files and, in some cases, of data within files.

“As a financial institution, we store a lot of data, so we want to make sure we’re not adding to the burden by saving multiple copies,” he says. Using deduplication consistently has helped the company reclaim storage at a fast enough rate that it has avoided unnecessary buildouts of storage arrays.

bases and not the custom variety. “Again, it makes for a more optimized computing environment and reduces the strain on hardware and software,” he adds.

Rearrange Furniture If a lack of floor space is your problem, consider moving IT equipment around. “What typically happens in most data centers is that once built and commissioned to a certain design specification, new equipment is added over the ensuing years with consideration to cabling and cooling requirements rather than an optimal floor layout,” Gartner’s Kumar says.

He urges IT teams to review layouts every three to five years and then redraw floor plans using tools such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis systems, which model proper airflow. “While a

space, is a useful tool for optimizing energy efficiency. Too often, companies overload certain areas of the data center with equipment, creating hotspots that max out power and cooling, Kumar says.

By analyzing the data center’s temperature, you can potentially delay the need to buy larger air conditioners and add power supplies. A simple repositioning of racks or equipment could buy you a few years, he says. Kossuth engineers her racks so that there is good airflow in the back of racks, and equipments are properly cooled.

“We have heat and humidity sensors all over the room and receive alerts if the temperature exits a certain band,” she says. “This has helped us maintain optimal power and cooling levels over the years.” 

april 2012

— ComputerWorld INDIAN Channelworld

53

n focal point | Data Center

Readying Ethernet For The Data Center How to improve and expand the role of Ethernet in the converged data center By Mark Teter build out converged data centers on an Ethernet base.

Data Center Bridging

E

thernet has

emerged as the dominant network protocol but it has to overcome several key limitations if it is to become the foundation of choice for the converged data center.

Ethernet’s most significant limitation is the lack of support for quality of service (QoS), which means it can’t supplant other network fabrics, most notably Fibre Channel (FC). QoS refers to the ability to create and manage networks to deliver different levels of service for different types of traffic.

Currently, Ethernet QoS doesn’t do enough to dis-

54

tinguish between types or classes of traffic. While it’s true that Ethernet can achieve some level of QoS, native Ethernet gives all classes and types of traffic equal access to bandwidth.

Another key Ethernet limitation is the fact that, when over-saturated with traffic, buffers overflow and packets are dropped. Ethernet tries to compensate by resending dropped packets, but that often only exacerbates the problem. Although these resends happen quickly (<25 milliseconds), they contribute to the lack of consistent response times.

There are, however, ways to address these issues and

Indian Channelworld april 2012

Ethernet utilizes upperlevel layer protocols (TCP) to manage end-to-end data delivery and integrity. FC provides a buffer-to-buffer credit that ensures packets aren’t dropped due to network congestion, making it lossless. As Ethernet is an 802-based network, we can make Ethernet lossless only by adopting higher-level protocols such as TCP/IP that have adapted to the intent of IEEE 802-based networks by incorporating end-to-end congestion avoidance and flow control algorithms.

Data Center Bridging (DCB) is an architectural extension to Ethernet designed to improve and expand its role in the data center. With DCB, organizations can logically manage networks end-to-end with QoS through: n Quantized Congestion Notification (QCN) — provides end-to-end congestion management mechanisms to enable throttling of traffic during traffic congestion. n Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) — enables control over individual data flows on shared lossless links. n Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) — Control/Negotiation protocol to negotiate QoS parameters and queuing and provides discovery exchange protocol

to ensure consistent configurations across the network.

With these enhancements, we now only need one type of network adapter, eliminating the redundant infrastructure cost by using one cable infrastructure to support both storage and IP traffic.

It should be noted that Ethernet does support storage, but mainly through iSCSI, the server-to-storage protocol designed to transport SCSI block storage commands over Ethernet using TCP/IP. iSCSI adoption is growing and has found considerable acceptance in small and midsize enterprises.

Data Center Bridging enhancements to Ethernet networks also enable Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), a specification developed in the INCITS T11 committee. With FCoE, we can transmit FC commands natively over DCB networks. FCoE specifies the mechanism for encapsulating FC frames onto DCB networks, allowing FC and Ethernet to coexist with a converged infrastructure.

By deploying a converged network, data center managers gain broad benefits such as: n Lower costs from a reduced need for dedicated single-use components such as FC-only HBAs and switches. n A common management platform, personnel, knowledge, and training across the data center. n A platform with a future that today looks to provide a performance upgrade path to 100 Gbps.

Though DCB can now provide an adequate transport for storage protocols, it still needs to overcome its shortcomings with the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). In traditional Layer 2 (L2) Ethernet networks, organizations create highly available

networks by designating paths through the network as active or standby using STP. While this provides an alternate path, only one path can be used at a time, which means that network bandwidth isn’t well utilized. Since one of the goals of server virtualization is increased utilization of the physical server, we can also expect increased utilization of network bandwidth.

To increase network utilization, MSTP (Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol) and similar protocols allow for separate spanning trees per VLAN. While this improves bandwidth utilization, it still leaves the STP limit of one active path between switches. Because traffic paths are manually configured with MSTP, complexity increases.

Another challenge with STP is network behavior when links fail. Links do fail, and when that occurs the spanning tree needs to be redefined. This can take anywhere from five seconds with Rapid Spanning Tree (RSTP) to several minutes with STP — and this situation can vary unpredictably even with small topology changes.

Finally, when a redefined spanning tree is reconverging, broadcast storms can occur causing more congestion.

These STP limitations are why L2 networks typically are kept small in the data center.

These limitations become more important when applications run as virtual machines (VMs) instead of on physical servers. VM mobility now occurs within a cluster of physical servers, and with the limitations of STP, the sphere of VM migration is constrained to L2 subnets.

The solution for flexible VM mobility is a more scalable and available L2 network

Exabytes growing faster than expected

G

lobal business has been caught off-guard by the recent explosion in data volumes and is trying to cope with short-term fixes such as buying in data centre capacity, research by Oracle has found.

The headline finding of the company’s Next Generation Data Centre Index Cycle II is that between 2010 and 2011 there was a rise from 40 percent to 60 percent in the number of businesses using external data centers.

Polling 950 senior IT personnel across the globe (but excluding the US), Oracle also found that the number of businesses looking to build new data centers within the next two years has risen from 27 percent to 38 percent.

Data centre capacity and data volumes should be expected to go up — this drives data centre capacity building — but the scale of what is happening is still striking. Oracle’s research indicates the scale of data overload, showing that volumes have soared from an estimated 135 Exabytes in 2005 to 2,720 Exabytes by 2012. The staggering prediction is that this will reach 7,910 Exabytes by 2015.

However, more than 90 percent of those asked saw the need for more data centers, 60 percent within only two years and one in five within 12 months. Most companies would with higher network bandwidth utilization.

What we need is a L2 network that: n Is highly available. n Guarantees high-band-

width utilization over equalcost paths. n Doesn’t stall traffic when links are added or removed due to failure or network reconfiguration. n Makes latency deterministic and is lossless.

DCB provides these features through the use of TRILL (Transparent Connection of Lots of Links).

The basic premise of TRILL is to replace STP as a mechanism to find loop-free trees within Layer 2 broadcast domains. It is an IETF standard that allows every switch to know the MAC address and World Wide Name (WWN) of all devices located on all the other switches.

prefer that these data centers were in-house, which raises the question of why they are having to buy the capacity instead.

“Wrestling big data is going to be the single biggest IT challenge facing businesses over the next two years,” said Oracle senior vice president of systems, Luigi Freguia. “By the end of that period they will either have got it right or they will be very seriously adrift.”

Where this data is coming from is no particular mystery, and neither is why the sudden boom should have taken organizations by surprise.

Heading the list of offenders is mobile data, which thanks to the take-off of social media has surged in ways that were not predicted even two years ago, ditto on-demand home entertainment growth.

Perhaps the least expected rise has come from machine-to-machine (M2M) systems, including services such as remote smart metering, something that 4G technologies will only accelerate.

All of this is good news for Oracle’s business, which is built on selling database, middleware, and Exadata storage technologies that fit into the data centre environment with the Sparc T4 processor and server hardware as a proprietary centerpiece.

— By John E Dunn Techworld.com

The shared view of the network lets you add a new physical link between two switches with no software configuration. The switches see the new link and add it to the network.

Ethernet DCB and TRILL allows data centers to broaden the sphere of application mobility and optimize server resources for applications just as it improves networking for storage. Unfortunately, different vendors are introducing different adaptations of TRILL. Brocade implements Virtual Chassis Switch (VCS) whereas Cisco uses its own FabricPath implementation. Juniper is approaching the problem with a TRILL-less implementation known as QFabric.

With DCB, Ethernet data centers can now: n Logically eliminate the

management of multiple switching layers. n Apply policies and manage traffic across many physical switches as if they were one switch. n Scale network bandwidth without manual reconfiguration of switch ports and network policies. n Provide a single, customized view of network status available to server, network, and storage administrators.

With DCB and these other enhancements, Ethernet will enable IT to simplify network architecture, more rapidly scale their networks, adopt higher speed Ethernet standards (40Gbps is already defined with 100Gbps soon to follow) and significantly reduce management overhead in the converged data center. 

april 2012

— Network World (US) INDIAN Channelworld

55

FACE OFF

CISCO Vs. DELL

SITARAM VENKAT

RAJESH REGE

Director Enterprise Solutions, Dell India.

Sr. VP, Datacenter and Cloud, Cisco India and SAARC.

On Razor’s Edge

Both Cisco and Dell compete closely in the blade server market. Who wins the race?

C

ISCO IS relatively a new entrant in this space, however, within a short span, Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) has over 11,000 customers and achieved top tier ranking. According to IDC Q4 CY2011 x86 Blade Server Market share report, we stand at #3 worldwide with 12.3 % market share. Initially, industry observers were skeptical that a new computing technology could take hold in this highly competitive market, but the cost and business benefits proved compelling across all industries and all workloads.

This rapid growth indicates two points; first, the data center industry was crying out for real technology innovation, which Cisco has delivered. Second, the industry is in a transition away from the rigid, inflexible platforms and is moving toward more flexible, integrated, and virtualized environments that Cisco UCS offers.

Designed from the ground up with a “clean slate” approach, Cisco UCS is an integrated solution designed to optimize compute, networking, storage access, virtualization, and management. UCS is the first fabric computing platform that combines industry-standard, x86 architecture servers with networking and storage access into a single converged system. Cisco UCS architecture provides the industry’s strongest investment protection for customers: computing and networking elements can be upgraded independently over time, with full interoperability.

We work very closely with industry-leading infrastructure and software vendors, including BMC, CA, Citrix, EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, VMware to provide pretested, end-to-end solutions that are designed to reduce TCO and increase business agility.

A

CCORDING TO the latest IDC reports on x86 server

market, Dell is ranked #2 in terms of Blade Server market share in India. Dell’s strategy and vision is to look holistically at the customers, not just solve their infrastructure challenges. Other vendors are concentrating on solving only part of the problem and are rigid, delicate, and proprietary.

We have taken a holistic approach to integrating hardware, management, solutions, and applications. We have a rich heritage of providing organizations of all sizes the essential building blocks — industry-standard servers, storage, networking, and solutions. The performance/watt ratio of the PowerEdge M620-based solution is 104 percent higher than the Cisco solution; even Dell’s previous generation’s M710HD solution is 75 percent more power efficient.

The PowerEdge 12th Generation Blade M620 offers redundant SD cards for a hypervisor, 14 percent better density, and a choice of network controllers over Cisco B200 M3.

Dell M620 extends data availability by providing RAID options with backup cache option and provides significant improvement in IO particularly for workloads like VDI, RDBMS using highly efficient PCIe SSDs. Dell has top benchmark results on TPC-H, SPEC rating scores over Cisco. We are open and integrated, NOT rigid.

Customers can use what they have and remain flexible to adapt to technology and business changes. Data center solutions are powered by computing infrastructure that is intelligent, by network services infrastructure that is virtual, and by data management architecture that is fluid. Dell solutions trounce the competition in a comparison like this.

— As told to Radhika Nallayam

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INDIAN CHANNELWORLD APRIL 2012