FOCAL POINT: Green IT projects usually go hand-in-hand with operational efficiency. Here’s how. >>> PAGE 39
ChannelWorld STRATEGIC INSIGHTS FOR SOLUTION PROVIDERS | COVER PRICE Rs. 50
Swan Solutions & Services has successfully managed to build a strong hierarchy which has improved its brand image among customers and vendors.
Inside DECEMBER 2013 VOL. 7, ISSUE 9
News Analysis
Is Cisco trying to ignore the SDN movement with the Nexus 9000? Its competitors certainly think so. PAGE 13
inc. Channels
Read how channel partners have transitioned from familyrun establishments to robust corporates. >>> Page 24
On Record: Laurent Amestoy, EVP, R&M, underscores the company’s strategy to engage its growing partner base. PAGE 20 The Grill: Andrew Littleproud, President, APAC, McAfee, says the company’s large addressable market is a goldmine for its channel partners. PAGE 17
Opinion
Having a prenup agreement will help you avoid data custody battles and orphaned services. PAGE 44
Case Study
DM Systems delivers a best-of-breed solution to Fore School of Management. PAGE 32
CHANNELWORLD.IN
n EDITOR’S NOTE
Vijay Ramachandran Quest for the Truth “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan
T
HE TRUTH is a strange, multi-hued beast. It has
many dimensions and flavors to it. Definitions too; since no one seems to agree on a single description. Many moons ago, I retired hurt, while breaking my head trying to distinguish between the Coherence Theory of Truth and the Constructivist Theory (for the sake of your sanity, I don’t recommend that you try covering that ground). But the Truth is what a lot of people are after. In large organizations it’s a bit like the quest for the Holy Grail. While it doesn’t involve either organized religion or exotic cults or a Dan Brown film deal, it does, however, entail a lot of people chanting the mantras of Data Deduplication, Integration, Business Intelligence and Analytics, while bemoaning the detrimental effects of Siloes, and Legacy and Organizational Culture. The treasure being sought is a “single version of the truth”, which it’s believed will set an organization free from the shackles of guesswork and gut-feel. It’s a worthy goal, since little can be fixed or improved until one can at least view how bad the situation is. So, what really happens when a organization does manage to hit this pot
of gold at the end of the rainbow? Take the case of a Bangalore-based pharmaceutical company, which faced a not-so-unique problem—multiple sets of sales figures. The Finance department had one set, the Logistics department had its and, of course, the Sales team insisted that both of these were wrong. The funny thing was that each had a firm basis for the numbers (based on the points in the production and sales cycle that they were drawing their data from). Voila! Multiple versions of the truth.
n The treasure
being sought is a “single version of the truth”, which it’s believed will set an organization free from the shackles of guesswork and gut-feel.
Since each department wanted to view the data in the way that impacted it most, there was little that could be done to get to any unity of this issue. You can also imagine how tough it must have been for the company to properly forecast sales or maintain inventory or plan production. It was then, a couple of years ago that it decided to cast off this inefficiency. The company brought all of its departments onto the same page, by using an application that allowed various departments to look at the data in the different ways they wanted— but based on the same set of figures. The result: Improved forecasting, lower cost of production, and higher sales. In fact, while the Indian pharma industry grew by about 6 percent last year, this company grew by 20 percent.
So why is this “single version of the truth” so elusive? After all, is it really rocket science? Well according to an Aberdeen Group study of a 152 companies, the majority of organizations spend time, effort, and a whole ton of money to put in place business intelligence and analytical capabilities, only to discover that different “versions of the truth” still exist (and, what’s worrying, many don’t have any definite way of determining which version is real or accurate). Companies, that did manage to lick the problem did so not by throwing either technology or money at the problem. They did it by creating “a data-focused corporate culture” around a “single version of the truth”. For instance, the pharma company’s head of IT used a combination of cajoling and threats to get everyone in line and out of their comfort zones. Garfield creator Jim Davis hit the nail on the head when he said: “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” Me? I don’t go about meddling with the truth. I muddle along with facts. What about you? Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of ChannelWorld. Contact him at vijay_ramachandran@ idgindia.com
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
5
FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN
Inside INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n DECEMBER 2013
■ NEWS DIGEST
■ THE GRILL
09 Sued for Stealing Trade Secrets | EMC has sued Pure Storage
APAC, McAfee, says the company’s
17 Andrew Littleproud, President,
for allegedly colluding with some of its former employees to misappropriate and bring to the startup confidential EMC information and trade secrets. 10 Mobile Security’s Most Deployed by CSOs | Research by
IBM has found that mobile security
17 large addressable market is a goldmine for its channel partners. They have a massive opportunity to expand growth and operations, he believes.
is the number one most recently deployed initiative by CSOs. A quarter of respondents in ‘The 2013 IBM Chief Information Security Officer Assessment’ said they deployed mobile security strategies in the past 12 months. 10 Cloud-Based Security Services on the Rise | Gartner is
predicting the cloud-based security services market to hit $4.13 billion.
■ NEWS ANALYSIS
■ FEATURE
35 Set in Stone
Big data might be big business, but overzealous data mining can seriously destroy your brand. Will new ethical codes be enough to allay consumers’ fears?
■ FAST TRACK
19 Rajat Mohanty, CEO and Co-
Founder, Paladion Networks, says that he wants the company to hit Rs 500 crore in the next five years. With a panAsia focus and robust growth, the company looks well-set to achieve this target.
13 Taking the Fight to SDN |
Is Cisco trying to ignore the SDN movement with the Nexus 9000? Its competitors certainly think so.
24 Channels Inc.
For enterprise partner organizations which surf the tide and ebb of IT, a tryst with corporatization becomes inevitable. Are India’s IT channels truly on their way to being corporate, irrespective of being family-driven or not? Read how channel partners made the transition to a company that is well-delfined and well-structured. This significant move has helped chart a new course in their history.
32 Core to the Fore
05 Editorial: Vijay Ramachandran
says that seeking one version of the Truth takes time, effort, money, and quite of few ulcers.
44 Bart Perkins: Having a prenup
Cover Design: Unnikrishnan A.V Cover photograph: Fotocorp
■ COVER STORY
■ CASE STUDY
■ OPINION
agreement can make all the difference as it will help you avoid data custody battles and orphaned services.
24
19
DM Systems leveraged in-house technical expertise with external industry experts to emerge as a true systems integrator for Fore School of Management.
I f y o u r B u s i n e s s d e p e n d s o nC h a n n e l P a r t n e r s G r o wt hmu s t d e p e n d o nt h e i r c o mmi t me n t
Y oune e dt ok e e pt he me nga ge d, mot i v a t e da ndi nc e nt i v i z e d. AtGr a s sRoot swe ’ l l r e i nv e nty oure nga ge me ntpr ogr a m, i f y ouha v eone … Andwe ’ l l c r e a t eabuz zt ha tc ha nge st hel e v e l of Cha nne l P a r t ne rc ommi t me ntt oy ourbus i ne s s . Gi v e nt hel a s tqua r t e ri sa r oundt hec or ne r , wa s t enot i mec a l l usnowa ndma k et ha tl a s tqua r t e rc ont r i but es i gnic a nt l y t ot het opa ndbot t om l i ne .
T ok nowhowwema k ei tha ppe n, Cal l Now:
FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN
Inside
CHANNELWORLD Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India
CHANNELWORLD.IN
Publisher, President & CEO Louis D’Mello
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n DECEMBER 2013
n EDITORIAL
34 Jitesh Chauhan, Director, Rubik Infotech,
says that he wants the company to reign as a
■ FOCAL POINT
39 Green Is Good
GREEN IT: The hype and excitement over
security expert to enterprise companies across India by 2015.
■ ON RECORD
20 Laurent Amestoy, EVP, R&M, believes
that India is an important market for structured
green IT has diminished over the past few years, and the specter of carbon taxes has faded, organizations have begun to put sustainable IT initiatives on the back burner, or even dismiss them entirely. But successful green IT projects usually go hand-in-hand with operational efficiency initiatives, where benefits drop down to the bottom line while meeting corporate sustainability goals.
42 Seven Things About Hardware Disposal
GREEN IT: From the first day that you plug
in a new piece of IT hardware, the clock starts ticking toward the day when it will be pulled out of service. When that day comes,
Editor-in-Chief Vijay Ramachandran Managing Editor T.M. Arun Kumar Executive Editor Gunjan Trivedi Associate Editors Sunil Shah,Yogesh Gupta Features Editor Shardha Subramanian Special Correspondents Gopal Kishore, Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya Principal Correspondents Anup Varier, Debarati Roy, Sneha Jha, Varsha Chidambaram Senior Correspondents Aritra Sarkhel, Eric Ernest, Ershad Kaleebullah, Shubhra Rishi, Shweta Rao Senior Copy Editors Shreehari Paliath, Vinay Kumaar Lead Designers Jinan K.V., Pradeep Gulur, Suresh Nair, Vikas Kapoor Senior Designers Sabrina Naresh, Unnikrishnan A.V. n SALES
& MARKETING
President Sales & Marketing Sudhir Kamath Vice President Sales Sudhir Argula Vice President Special Projects Parul Singh General Manager Marketing Siddharth Singh General Manager Sales Jaideep M. Manager Key Accounts Runjhun Kulshrestha, Sakshee Bagri Manager Marketing Ajay Chakravarthy Manager Sales Support Nadira Hyder Senior Marketing Associates Anuradha H. Iyer, Archana Ganapathy, Benjamin Jeevanraj, Rima Biswas, Saurabh Patil Marketing Associate Arjun Punchappady, Cleanne Serrao, Lavneetha Kunjappa, Margaret DCosta, Nikita Oliver, Shwetha M. Lead Designer Jithesh C.C. Senior Designer Laaljith C.K. n OPERATIONS
cabling. He underscores the company’s strategy to engage its growing partner base.
responsible IT execs ensure that component is either repurposed, resold, or recycled.
ADVERTISERS’ INDEX EMC IT Solutions India Pvt Ltd . . . Cover on Cover
HP Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC
Emerson Network Power India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . BC
NetApp India Marketing & Services Pvt Ltd. . 22 & 23
Epson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC
Trend Micro India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14&15
Grass Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company. Printed and Published by Louis D’Mello on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. Editor: Louis D’Mello, Printed At Manipal Press Ltd, Press Corner, Manipal-576104, Karnataka, India.
Vice President HR & Operations Rupesh Sreedharan Financial Controller Sivaramakrishnan T.P. CIO Pavan Mehra Senior Manager Operations: Ajay Adhikari, Chetan Acharya, Pooja Chhabra Senior Manager Accounts Sasi Kumar V. Senior Manager Production T.K. Karunakaran Senior Manager IT Satish Apagundi Manager Operations Dinesh P., Tharuna Paul Manager Credit Control Prachi Gupta Sr. Accounts Executive Poornima n OFFICES
Bangalore IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore 560 027, Karnataka Tel: 080-30530300. Fax: 080-30586065 Delhi IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. DLF Corporate Park, Tower 4 B, 3rd Floor, Room 301, MG Road, DLF Phase 3, Gurgaon- 122001, Haryana Tel: 0124- 3881015 Mumbai IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. 201, Madhava, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai 400051, Maharashtra Tel: 022-30685000. Fax: 022-30685023
News
WHAT’S WITHIN
PAGE 10: Cloud-Based Security Services on the Rise PAGE 10: Mobile Security’s Most Deployed CSOs PAGE 12: Will the PC Live to Tell the Tale? PAGE 13: Taking the Fight to SDN
F I N D M O R E A R T I C L E S AT CHANNELWORLD.IN
LEGAL
Sued for Stealing Trade Secrets
E
MC HAS sued Pure
Storage for allegedly colluding with some of the storage giant’s former employees to misappropriate and bring to the startup confidential EMC information and trade secrets, including lists and notes on current and potential customers. Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen described the suit by EMC as a sideshow to the real competition between Pure Storage and EMC: Delivering next-generation all-flash storage that is “rapidly replacing incumbent
mechanical disk systems of which EMC is the market leader.” In a complaint in EMC has alleged that “dozens of former EMC employees have joined Pure Storage and stolen tens of thousands of pages of proprietary, highly confidential and competitively sensitive EMC materials,” in violation of their employee agreements. Many of them broke their agreements with EMC by inducing team members to join Pure Storage, it added. The materials are said to include specific information on EMC’s “directly compet-
ing” flash storage product, selling strategies for the product, and detailed information on customers and their buying patterns. The conduct was “apparently orchestrated by or known to the highest executive management levels of Pure Storage,” EMC said in its complaint. Various members of the board of directors of Pure Storage and significant early investors are former executives of EMC or its VMware subsidiary, it said. In specific instances of misappropriation cited in its complaint, EMC referred to the theft of lists and notes of key decision makers at current and potential customers, besides presentations and other sales information. EMC is objecting to at least 44 of its technical engineers and sales professionals, some of them high performers at the company, joining Pure Storage since August 2011, and who now apparently comprise over 50 percent of the startup’s sales force. It wrote notices to the former EMC employees and to Pure Storage reminding them of obligations to EMC under “key employee agreements,” which covered return of confidential materials when leaving the company, and commitments not to disclose secret company information to outsiders.
DECEMBER 2013
—John Ribeiro INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
9
COLLABORATION
HP Launches OneView HP unveiled HP OneView, an industry-first, consumer-inspired infrastructure management platform for HP Converged Infrastructure that simplifies the most basic steps that underlay all data center processes—allowing IT teams to dramatically improve operations while reducing costs and manual errors that cause downtime. The proliferation of as-aservice technology, an in-
flux of tech-savvy workers and an increase in business complexity is widening the gap between business demand and traditional IT supply. Designed for the HP BladeSystem, HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8), and HP ProLiant Generation 7 servers, HP OneView offers a single management platform to foster collaboration and communication with IT across the datacenter. —ChannelWorld Bureau
-
CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud-Based Security Services on the Rise
G
ARTNER IS predict-
crore) by the end of this ing the cloud-based year, climbing to $942 milsecurity services lion (about Rs 6,000 crore) market, which in 2015 and $1 billion (about includes secure e-mail or Rs 6,200 crore) in 2017. But web gateways, identity and this segment is expected to access management (IAM), have a lower year-over-year remote vulnerability assesslevel of growth, as measured ment, security information from 2010 to 2017, in comand event management to parison to the other cloudhit $4.13 billion based service (about Rs 26,000 segments, such as crore) by 2017. IAM, for example. According to Today, IAM is the revenue expected from the its Market Trends: stands at about cloud-based security Cloud-based $500 million (Rs services market Security Services 3,157 crore) but is by 2017. Market, Worldexpected to see Source: Gartner wide, 2014, Gartgrowth to $860 ner is predicting growth is million in 2015, and then likely to come because of to $1.24 billion in 2017 for a the adoption of these cloudtotal 28.3 percent combined based security services by annual growth rate, accordSMB in particular. Certain ing to Gartner. Within this market segments mentioned area of authentication as a in the report will see higher service, the most growth is overall sales and year-overexpected to come from what year growth. Gartner calls “multifuncGartner says the biggest tion identity as a service spending happens today in (IDaaS).” It is described as secure e-mail gateway as a a combination of adminisservice which will see about tration and account provi$800 million (about Rs 5,000 sioning, authentication and
$4bn
authorization and reporting functions. Cloud-based IAM can be used to manage software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and internal applications as well. “Within the IAM space, interest in cloud-based security has been driven mostly by SMBs’ needs to extend their basic IAM functions and serve employees who are accessing SaaS and some internal Web-architected applications,” says the report. “An increasing number of organizations seem to be adopting cloudbased IAM services to replace IAM on-premises tools. Larger businesses are often looking to use IAM as a mixture of legacy- and Web-architected cloud and on premises applications.” Cloud-based encryption services are expected to be a “new area of growth,” according to the Gartner report. But Gartner sees some issues there, saying, “however, service providers’ relative lack of interest in cloud-based encryption means it has remained a complex activity, requiring organizations to initiate complex, build-your-own deployments. —Ellen Messmer
SECURITY
Mobile Security’s Most Deployed by CSOs Research by IBM has found that mobile security is the number one most recently deployed initiative by CSOs. A quarter of respondents in The 2013 IBM Chief Information Security Officer Assessment said they deployed mobile security strategies in the past 12 months. Locally, IBM Asia Pacific institute for advanced security director, Glen Gooding, said 10
most of the businesses the vendor talks to already have a BYOD strategy in place. “Each organization takes a different approach, but many organizations have adopted ‘point’ solutions, which don’t really address the broader security issue,” he said. Gooding emphasises the importance of viewing mobile security within a strategic
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
SAFETY FIRST: Mobile security cannot be compromised.
review of the organisation’s overall security posture. “Until an organization has this kind of holistic view and security intelligence, you cannot effectively
Short Takes IBM announced the
launch of IT Operations Analytics in India, a new category of software which leverages both cognitive computing and predictive analytics to help companies more easily predict and respond to opportunities and challenges hidden in data. Honeywell
announced the appointment of Jim Bujold as President, Southeast Asia, and Anant Maheshwari as President, Honeywell India. Maheshwari, who has been the MD of Honeywell Automation India Limited (HAIL) since March 2010, will succeed Bujold who is currently President, Honeywell India. Polycom announced
the appointment of Minhaj Zia as MD, India and SAARC. Zia will be responsible for leading Polycom’s growth and revenue share in the region, and driving new opportunities in South Asian markets.
manage risk,” he said.While the report points out that this “short sighted” approach is a global issue, Gooding said this should be an opportunity for to learn from others’ mistakes. Another key result in the survey was that 76 per cent of CSOs have deployed some type of cloud security services. It also showed that over 90 per cent of security leaders track the number of security incidents, lost or stolen records, data or devices, and audit and compliance status. —Patrick Budmar
PERSONAL COMPUTING
Will the PC Live to Tell the Tale?
T
HE PC industry’s
hemorrhaging continued as Acer announced that it lost nearly half a billion dollars in the last three months— an utter disaster that prompted the company to boot CEO J.T. Wang out the door, along with 7 percent of Acer’s staff. Financial statements and personnel shuffling is usually enough to induce a boredom-induced coma, but Acer’s troubles drive home just how much turmoil the PC industry is in with the en masse shift to “good enough” computing. Since the iPad’s launch in 2010, PC sales have tanked; Dell has gone private in order to reshuffle its business away from the eyeballs of investors; HP considered ditching its PC business entirely, at a time when its PC business was the largest in the land; Lenovo, the new largest PC maker in the land, sells more mobile devices than proper computers; AMD has shifted focus to crafting custom processors for large businesses; Windows 8, the devicespanning would-be savior in a many-screened world, landed with a thud; and users view PCs as little more than microwaves. Even the cornerstones of the old Wintel hegemony are wavering. Both Intel and Microsoft have replaced their long-tenured CEOs, as each company shifts their respective tunes to sweet songs about mobile-friendly futures. The times indeed appear dark for traditional 12
PC companies. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t light at the end of the tunnel. For one thing, while shipments have plummeted from their high-water mark of just a few years back, the industry is still on pace to sell more than 300 million units this year—far more than tablets. Sure, sales for the two form factors will converge down the line, and the bleeding is still far from over, but the PC’s rate of decline is already showing signs of slowing. “The PC industry may be slowing, but it’s certainly not dead,” Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. Moreover, the tides of change have resulted in
Around
TheWorld Akamai Acquires Velocious Networks
Akamai Technologies announced that it has acquired Velocius Networks, a provider of quality of service technology for optimizing application traffic across enterprise networks, in a cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to complement Akamai’s hybrid cloud optimization strategy. —IDG News Service
Hitachi GST Turns to Helium
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), a
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
a much-needed shake-up for the computer industry. Cheap, good enough devices have never been more abundant. (Some) high-end laptops are finally focusing on the overall user experience, rather than just speeds and feeds. We’re also witnessing
Western Digital company, is putting helium into its hard disk drives (HDDs) to boost their capacity. The storage vendor started substituting fresh air for helium in its HDDs last September and claims to have created the world’s first 6TB HDD with the help of the super-light gas. HGST said its new 6TB Ultrastar He6 HDD harnesses the gas-based technology to deliver 50 percent more storage space compared to an air-filled 4TB HDD. It points out that there are several other benefits to be gained by allowing the disks to rotate in helium, the world’s second lightest element, as opposed to air. —Sam Shead
CommScope Expands Partner Program CommScope offers an
a wave of nigh-unprecedented experimentation, as PC makers turn to Android and ChromeOS and laptop-tablet hybrids and itty-bitty desktops and ginormous tablet thingies in a bid to stop the pain. —Brad Chacos
extensive partner network of skilled professionals focused on solving customers’ most complex technological problems. Entering its second year, the extensive CommScope PartnerPRO Network is expanding to include two new programs offering intelligent building— performance lighting solutions and datacenter infrastructure management. Partners can now apply to receive designations as an iTRACS CPIM Accredited Integrator or a Redwood Installation Partner. —ChannelWorld Bureau
NEWS ANALYSIS n
Taking the
FIGHT to SDN
Is Cisco trying to ignore the SDN movement with the Nexus 9000? Its competitors certainly think so. By Jim Duffy
C
ISCO’S NETWORK
competitors VMware, Arista, and HP predictably found holes in the launch of the Insieme Networks product line and strategy. Cisco acquired its remaining interest in Insieme for up to $863 million(Rs 5,500 crore), and unveiled the spin-in’s Nexus 9000 switches, Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) strategy, ACI-optimized NX-OS operating system, and Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). The Nexus 9000 hardware supports both custom Insieme ASICs and merchant silicon in the form of Broadcom’s Trident II chipset. The merchant siliconbased “standalone” mode of Nexus 9000 is intended to appeal to those opting for that hardware and open source software. Cisco is
making some of Insieme’s software available through the open source community. The custom ASIC-based ACI mode of the Nexus 9000 provides full ACI fabric features managed by the APIC controller. Observers believe ACI mode will appeal mostly to Cisco’s enterprise installed base while the standalone mode will be targeted primarily at cloud providers interested in low-cost hardware and open source software. Insieme is Cisco’s response to the softwaredefined networking trend permeating the industry and its perceived threat to Cisco’s very lucrative dominance through its availability in open source software and commodity hardware. With Insieme, Cisco is looking to combat the software overlay approach to network virtualization provided by VMware and its NSX platform; and low priced, extensible merchant silicon-based datacenter and cloud switching delivered by companies like Arista Networks, and start-up Cumulus Networks with its Linux network operating system.
WHAT OTHERS SAY VMware, which has significant customer overlap with Cisco, actually sees Insieme validating the purpose of NSX and the goals
behind the company’s software-defined datacenter strategy; where they diverge is in the approach. “The difference is in how we solve the problem” of a more agile, application responsive datacenter, says Chris King, vice president of marketing in VMware’s networking and security business unit. “Cisco has chosen more proprietary hardware.” “All of that agility, visibility can be done in a software-defined datacenter and a hardware-defined datacenter,” says Brad Hedlund, engineering architect in VMware’s networking and security business unit. “We have all of the aspects of agility at the speed of software.” Hedlund says VMware’s NSX network virtualization platform could actually help joint customers migrate from the older Cisco Nexus switches to the new Nexus 9000 line. Cisco has said that the Nexus 2000 fabric extenders will be supported in ACI, as will the Nexus 7000 as a datacenter interconnect and fabric “pod.” Other Nexus and Catalyst switches will serve their various purposes, but Cisco has technology migration programs in place for customers looking to move to the Nexus 9000 and ACI, which Cisco claims delivers a 75 percent reduction in total cost of ownership over a merchant silicon-based infrastructure running a software-based network virtualization overlay when upgrading from 10G to 40G. That has VMware scratching its head. “We’re a little bit confused on how they got there,” says King. “There are some pieces missing in
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
13
CASE FILE
DEEP DIVE
INTO SECURITY Today’s advanced threats require security to be more proactive than reactive. Micro Clinic discovers how to make it happen. By Yogesh Gupta
M
TARUN SETH, MD, MICRO CLINIC
aintaining the confidentiality of customer information is of great importance in any vertical—more so in the healthcare vertical. Early this year, a huge healthcare conglomerate detected the presence of advanced threats and malware in its network. That’s when Micro Clinic, a gold partner of Trend Micro, entered the scene. It conducted a POC of Trend Micro Deep Security to test the solution’s effectiveness against the malware threat at the customer’s location. A comprehensive security platform for physical, virtual, and cloud servers, Deep Security was installed in over 1,000 machines at the customer’s headquarters in Mumbai. Deep Security, which is specifically designed to ensure great levels of protection for virtual environments, addresses AV storms, minimizes operational complexity of security, and allows organizations to increase VM densities and accelerate virtualization and cloud adoption through its agentless architecture.
“There were dozens of machines that were infected with advanced malware. As a result, critical information pertaining to customers, and other confidential information belonging to the company were going out of the network,” says Tarun Seth, MD, Micro Clinic. In such a volatile environment where stealth malware threatens to crumble the security perimeter of the organization, it is important to detect critical incidents before they cause huge losses. “With new security solutions, it’s all about the cost of risk versus the cost of mitigation,” says Seth. Micro Clinic further plans to deploy the solution across the other branch offices of the healthcare major across India.
Strategy for Strong Security Satisfied with the highly positive results that the customer has seen, Micro Clinic intends to deliver Trend Micro’s security solutions to more customers. “Another compelling security appliance from Trend Micro is Deep Discovery, which monitors incoming traffic and detects bugs that try to steal critical data. It’s up to the customer to choose whether they want to deploy either or both Deep Security and Deep Discovery,” says Seth. “We have conducted POC of Trend Micro offerings across our enterprise customer base, including our top five customers. These products helped detect malware and other threats within the environment, which competing products couldn’t. That single factor differentiated Deep Discovery and Deep Security from competition,” he adds. Micro Clinic is now focusing on the BFSI, manufacturing, and IT and ITes sectors as there is always a huge demand for security solutions in these verticals. “Customers are evaluating competing products too, but we stand a good chance. Our experience with conducting POC of Trend Micro solutions has been extremely good. The trial deployments convert into full-fledged deals because of competition’s inability to
address the loopholes in the security posture,” he says.
A Complete Win–Win Since early 2013, Micro Clinic has been focusing actively on Trend Micro’s latest enterprise offerings: Deep Security and Deep Discovery. In today’s highly evolving threat landscape, both products help organizations ‘know the unknown’ threats such as spyware, malware, and advanced persistent threats (APTs). Deep Security fits well into virtualized and cloud environments. It’s more like a firewall for virtualized servers, which is easy to install, easy to manage, and improves the overall efficiency of the IT infrastructure. Deep Security and Deep Discovery together are formidable additions to Micro Clinic’s arsenal. “Today, organizations invest in various security solutions, including anti-virus, firewall, and IPS. However, threats such as malware, spyware, and APTs are not captured by these traditional security offerings. That’s where Deep Security’s and Deep Discovery’s value proposition come into play,” Seth says. Micro Clinic has dedicated pre-sales and sales teams which consolidate the new security offerings with the solution provider’s existing customer base. Trend Micro’s new versions of Deep Security diligently spot stealth malware— something that traditional firewall and IPS solutions are incapable of. “We foresee huge demand for Deep Security in enterprise and mid-market, especially where there are several Internet-driven applications and users who surf the Internet excessively. This solution helps companies keep their network clean and block loopholes,” he says. “With the security landscape moving towards a more virtualized environment, Deep Security will help us stay relevant to the changing needs of customers. Therefore, we are moving that extra mile with Trend Micro with respect to their solutions to counter new-age threats and secure organizations,” says Seth.
NILESH JAIN, Head Channel Sales Trend Micro It is our constant endeavour to avail products to our channel which are quality adept. Deep Security is an advanced protection for physical, virtual, and cloud servers. It effectively delivers comprehensive, adaptive, highly efficient agentless and agentbased protection, including anti-malware, intrusion detection and prevention, firewall, web application protection, integrity monitoring, and log inspection. Furthermore, it accelerates virtualization investments, minimises security impact, ensures cost-effective compliance and adds safety to the cloud. IDG SERVICES
n NEWS ANALYSIS that comparison.” And Cisco’s openness claims regarding ACI are not unique either, Hedlund says. “Open interfaces is just table stakes,” he says. Analysts believe Cisco’s ACI may be most challenged in those sites where VMware hypervisors have been entrenched for years for server virtualization. “The big question will be how customers that have virtualized their datacenters, typically with VMware’s hypervisor, and that are moving relatively quickly to private/hybrid cloud will respond,” says IDC’s Brad Casemore. “Much will depend on whether those organizations have reorganized their internal IT constituencies to facilitate the journey to cloud. Are the server/virtualization teams now calling the shots on infrastructure for those organizations? If so, then NSX, as a linchpin of VMware’s SDDC, is definitely in the picture. “VMware...is a long-term threat to Cisco’s desire to not only protect its core business, but also to get a bigger share of overall datacenter expenditures” in compute, networking, storage, and management, Casemore says. Arista is a threat in datacenter and cloud switching, but the company also believes Insieme underscores a mission it’s been on for years before the Cisco spin-in’s arrival.“Insieme is a validation of Arista’s direction and strategy for the last five years: merchant silicon and an extensible operating system,” says Arista CEO Jayshree Ullal. “Customers will need to decide on a closed path and a best-of-breed path (for 16
Insieme FAQ: A Few Key Facts n What is Insieme Networks? Insieme is a Cisco spin-in start-up company comparable to Andiamo Systems and Nuova Systems. They are funded by Cisco to develop products strategic to Cisco’s key target markets. n What is Insieme developing? Insieme is developing the Nexus 9000 line of datacenter and cloud switches that feature application awareness to make the network infrastructure flexible and agile for dynamic response to application needs and virtual machine workload mobility. Insieme also developed a 40G Ethernet transceiver designed to drastically lower the price of 40G optics. n Why did Cisco choose a spin-in approach versus developing internally or acquiring? Cisco enlists its three best switching and silicon engineers—Mario Mazzola, Luca Cafiero, and Prem Jain—to put together a team of hardware and software developers who focus intently on a product line intended to specifically insert or fortify Cisco’s presence in a key strategic market. Cisco earmarks hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and eventual acquisition of this company once particular product or revenue milestones are met. This spin-in technique is apparently intended isolate engineers from the distractions and politics datacenter and cloud fabric networking). There’s room for both.” Ullal also criticized Cisco’s 40G BiDi optics on the Nexus 9000 as proprietary. These optics are intended to allow users with installed multimode fiber for 10G to use that same cabling as they upgrade to 40G. Though Ullal acknowledged that multimode 10G is the predominant deployment in datacenters, she says single mode fiber should be used for 40G and 100G. “You don’t want to compromise the distance” of 40/100G with multimode fiber, she says. “At 40 km to 100 km, single mode is preferred.” HP is not really on Cisco’s radar screen in data-
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
of Cisco internally, while focusing personnel on their work and rewarding them financially when it’s complete. n What market is Insieme addressing? Insieme is a response to the SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV) trend sweeping the industry right now. Cisco’s switching and routing hardware business is the company’s core competency and is highly profitable for Cisco. But there’s a belief that SDNs and NFV threaten Cisco’s profitability by making hardware-based functions less important in a network that is software programmable. For example, one popular implementation of SDNs proposes separating hardware control and intelligence from the hardware itself and centralizing it on a server which would communicate with the forwarding network via an open, open source and industry standard protocol like OpenFlow. This would essentially virtualize the physical network and separate its operational control and management from the physical implementation. With applications, hypervisors, and softwarebased controllers managing network functions, network hardware itself can be relegated to low cost, commodity, generic “white box” platforms based on off-the-shelf, non-specialized silicon available industrywide. —Jim Duffy
center networking. But HP is big into SDNs, especially those based on OpenFlow and the decoupled control and data plane architecture. HP also views Insieme as responding to the SDN wave with proprietary hardware. “Cisco ignores the SDN movement and instead seems to continue their focus on creating a ‘hardware-defined’ alternative that locks customers into a proprietary Cisco network—denying customers the economic and game-changing simplification, automation, and application development benefits promised by SDN,” states HP Networking CTO Dave Larson. He claims the Nexus 9000 and ACI is incompatible with
existing Nexus switches, lacks a migration path for those customers and does not protect those investments. He says ACI is a lock-in to a Cisco-only architecture, while HP’s OpenFlow-based SDN switches and controller, and 23-partner ecosystem are designed for HP and non-HP infrastructure. “It’s clear from this announcement that Cisco is late to the SDN game and is trying to defy the SDN movement with hardwaredefined proprietary infrastructure,” Larson states. “At the same time, this announcement validates HP’s leading and proven vision that the application is the most important part of the infrastructure.”
Dossier Name: Andrew Littleproud Designation: President, Asia Pacific Company: McAfee Current Role: He is Responsible for McAfee’s business operations in the Asia Pacific region, including China, Korea, SouthEast Asia, India, Australia, and New Zealand. Since 2008, he has managed McAfee’s channel business across the region. Career Graph: Littleproud has over two decades of sales and management experience having held senior positions with EMC, Oracle, and Xerox. He holds a bachelor’s degree with honours in information technology from the Hallam University in Sheffield, UK.
Ph o t o g r a p h by FOTO C O R P
independent study shows a lower TCO with this approach. With Intel [which acquired McAfee in 2011], we have adequate budgets for R&D. For example, Intel transferred 200-250 engineers to work on a particular project. Compared to other vendors, it puts us ahead of the pack in terms of ‘time to market’, to deliver this strategy.
n THE GRILL
Andrew Littleproud,
President, APAC, McAfee, says the company’s large addressable market is a goldmine for its channel partners. Modern day threats are multi vector— Web, e-mail, social, mobile, virtualized datacenter, etcetera. Doesn’t it increase McAfee’s R&D costs and impact its profit margins? Earlier, organizations procured technologies to plumb the perimeter, secure data, Web, gateway, and endpoints. These products, developed by individual vendors, were the
company’s main focus and organizations had no alternative but to engage with different vendor technologies in a reactive fashion. With McAfee, the value proposition is through the ‘Security Connected’ framework. Companies need to have components to share information across the IT architecture and
FireEye and Palo Alto have been addressing APTs for a while now. Isn’t the ‘McAfee Advanced Threat Defense’ appliance, which uses sandboxing, late to the market? Possibly, but not in terms of what the customers need to achieve today with these modern-day threats. The mentioned technologies are good at continuing to block attacks, and that’s great. Our appliance not only blocks, but freezes malicious software and fixes the rest of environment by taking information in real-time to lift the security standards of infrastructures. Enabling organizations to proactively update with its own threat landscape is the next generation of security. The big boys—Dell [acquired SonicWall], Cisco [acquired Sourcefire], HP [acquired Tipping Point], have deep pockets and widespread channels to cross-sell or up-
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
17
n THE GRILL | ANDREW LITTLEPROUD as they [big vendors] only have subsets of our portfolio. As an Intel company, we have deep pockets too.
Each time an organization needs a new security widget, we encourage partners to chalk out a long-term strategy for atleast three years for them, than be a mere box dropper.” sell across the market. Your competition just got fiercer. I am delighted that the market has recognised the consolidation phase and the fact that there should be more than one security technology in your umbrella. Companies like Palo Alto and FireEye excel around one piece of technology. The big vendors acquiring security technologies are a vote of confidence for McAfee’s strategy that multiple components are needed to integrate and communicate in real-time to keep the environment safe. We are years ahead 18
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
Organisations, earlier, used to switch vendors in a jiffy in case of a breach. Do security vendors struggle to enjoy a loyal enterprise customer base? With desktop AV in yesteryears, one could swap every second year. The cost and the implications were not enormous. With the security connected reference architecture, organizations want to see the value of moving away from being reactive to not being proactive. They want to be optimized. The security posture today works realtime with business related solutions like DLP, for example. This is more of a partnership than contemplating ‘which vendor do I want this year?’. But, Websense DLP is gaining more traction than McAfee in India. McAfee’s DLP is selling quite well for the past three years in APAC. Again, there is renewed interest around the technology due to the ‘Security Connected’ framework. A clear understanding is needed to resize the amount of business, consulting, and communication by organizations before adopting DLP. DLP is a journey that needs a proper communication strategy and employee willingness to embrace it. In the last 18 months, we accomplished complex and wide-scale DLP projects in India. Websense DLP is another example of an organization that understands the value of ‘Security Connected’ architecture as it is part of its solution portfolio. The enterprise and SMB teams at McAfee India don’t work in tandem, according to the partner community. Some even believe McAfee loses SMB deals due high pricing than competition. Is this the reality? The aspect of one segment not talking to another is flawed. We implement different GTM strategies with enterprises and SMBs with different products and then package it accord-
ingly. Partners and distributors feel that McAfee portfolio is competitively priced and we are easy to do business. We access the market against competition, against value to money, and induct more bundles. We announced big price revision earlier this year. We are doubling SMB investments in India and that segment is the big focus in 2014. What are the reasons for channels to align with McAfee in 2014 and beyond? Plenty. The industry consolidation and enterprise customers are fast embracing the ‘Security Connected’ strategy. They need a trusted advisor—reseller or big SIs—with a longevity-based approach. In the past, enterprises added various technologies in an ad-hoc manner which increased maintenance bills, and training further increased opex. Each time an organization needs a new security widget, we encourage partners to chalk out a longterm strategy for atleast three years for them than be a mere box dropper. We rely on partners’ expertise around McAfee’s services delivery like preconsulting, strategy setting, architectural design, implementation, and on going maintenance at the customer-end. A partner can scale the value chain by adding dollar for a dollar in services on top of products as an additional business opportunity. Not a single transaction in the five and half years of my APAC tenure has gone directly to the customer. We have never ever carteled a partner. Do you still have the arsenal to beat your traditional competitor, Symantec? McAfee offers broader portfolio of technologies compared to the rest [including Symantec]. Gartner places our technologies at number one and number two in the security world, and in certain domains, at number three. Our customers, hence, have the option in terms of breadth of investments from endpoint to network to the cloud to management. Since the mid 2012, security information and event management is the fastest growing technology for us. The endpoint suite repackaged earlier this year has more functionalities than earlier add-ons. Advanced threat defence and Stonesoft [acquired by McAfee] are also gaining momentum in the worldwide market. —Yogesh Gupta
n FAST TRACK
Snapshot
Paladion Networks
Founded: 2000 Headquarters: Bangalore Revenue 2012-13: Rs 107 crore Revenue 2011-12: Rs 81 crore Revenue 2010-11: Rs 80 crore Branches: Bangalore, Mumbai, London, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Toronto, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Jakarta Key Executives: Vinod Vasudevan, COO; Eswara Kumar Burle, CFO, Firosh Ummer, EVP-GRC Services; Jose Varghese, EVP-Managed Services; Binu Thomas, EVP, ISOME Services Key Principals: HP, IBM, CA Technologies, Splunk, Checkmarx, F5 Technology, Symantec, Websense
P h o t o g r a p h b y D E LT R I M E D I A
Website: www.paladion.net
We want to be a Rs 500 crore company, says Rajat Mohanty, CEO and Co-Founder, Paladion Networks.
T
HE GOLD-SEEKERS of the
California Gold Rush were not a particularly successful bunch. While many encountered hardship and bankruptcy, there were few who flourished. These people were not gold-seekers or miners themselves, but they saw great business potential in providing services to the growing number of people who had come looking for gold. Their successful legacy has inspired Rajat Mohanty, CEO and co-founder of Paladion Networks. When Mohanty and other cofounders set up Paladion in 2000, the potential of e-commerce was gaining ground. His intent was to secure the Internet for organizations looking to leverage e-commerce activities. “But often, as an entrepreneur, what
you believe in does not always come true,” says Mohanty. “The e-commerce boom had a few more years to mature. As we were not heavily invested, we decided to manage our money better and focussed on building our brand image in the security
REVENUE GROWTH Rs 107 cr
Rs 81 cr Rs 80 cr
2010-11 SOURCE: PALADION NETWORKS
2011-12
2012-13
space through hard work.” By 200405, as banks transitioned to core banking and telcos grew in stature, the first-mover advantage allowed the company to reap rewards. “Till then we were a Rs 3 crore company, but the security solutions market opened up and made up for lost time rapidly,” he adds. As a three-time winner of Red Herring’s Top-100 technology innovator award, the SI takes great pride in constantly churning out something new. Mohanty believes that this gives employees a space to grow. “Through trial and error we have ensured that our solutions carve a niche. Additionally, the people working on it learn immensely,” he says. “This approach is helping us launch solutions targeted at the mid-market which we plan to introduce through channel partners [that Paladion plans to induct] in a couple of months,” he adds. Paladion’s focus has primarily been on being a pan-Asia player. “While the demand for customization is high in this market, opportunities are plentiful compared to the US or European markets,” says Mohanty. As it begins to focus more on the mid-market, Paladion’s planning to expand beyond the metros in India too. But in the next five years, “we want to be a Rs 500 crore company,” he says. -Shreehari Paliath
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
19
AMESTOY: Typically, we
are looking at boosting the sales marketing team and technical team. Besides, we are also looking at brand and channel building activities across a specific number of cities. We are hiring now, and I think that places us in a comfortable position.
ON RECORD n
Laurent Amestoy, EVP, R&M, believes that India is an important market for structured cabling. He underscores the company’s strategy to engage its growing partner base. By Shantheri Mallaya 20
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
What are your expectations from your current India visit? AMESTOY: The expectation for the rest of the year is positive in terms of growth – business, revenues, and people. My current visit focuses on working on the business plan for the next year, with the current fiscal closing in end December. And yes, we are actively looking at expansion plans too. Our expectation for the next year is to record a double-digit growth; modest, but realistic and very specific. We are enjoying double-digit growth in China already. India is significant from an APAC perspective, and the marketplace investments will continue. What do the expansion plans for India entail?
There is the long standing debate on fiber versus copper. India, as a traditional market, has seen the resurgence of copper over the last year. What, in your opinion, would be the significant trends in this market over the next year? AMESTOY: Yes, this is indeed an age old debate. I have been in this industry for about two decades now and I am asked this question all the time. There is no doubting that copper is still predominant. However, in the traditional cabling and the Fiber to Home (FTH) segments, fiber has been increasingly witnessing more usage. Also in the datacenter, fiber is more popular. Different types of fiber optics are used for datacenter requirements, given the scalability needed for high-end applications residing in them with the rise of colocating datacenters. So, it is a slow increase by percentage usage of fiber visa-vis copper. This trend is not specific to India, it persists across places such as Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, and other SouthEast Asian countries. In APAC, between China and India, which is the bigger or faster growing market for R&M? AMESTOY: Both markets are important and similar
LAURENT AMESTOY | ON RECORD n in terms of size, growth, and responsiveness, but incomparable on the same scale. In India, we sense high responsiveness [potential] to the idea of FTH. In the last year, our discussions with customers across the board, including India, indicate a shift to quality. People understand the disadvantages of poor cabling. And when I say, this is across the board, I also refer to the fact that the awareness is not restricted to segments like the datacenter [due to the proliferation of video or high-end applications], but also in the core IT, where time-to-customer is equally critical.
5%
of R&M’s total annual sales is invested in research and development. SOURCE: R&M
talking about the tier-2 and -3 cities and its expansion plans in these cities over the last few years, but not much has happened. What is the action plan this time round? AMESTOY: We have consistently mapped our market. It is now that R&M has started to decisively look at markets beyond the metros.
active approach? AMESTOY: Our messaging is driving the change; people are coming to us. It is a free market, it is for us to select. We don’t want to sell anything at a low price merely to win numbers and partners. Potential partners have to convince us as to why they would make value added collaborators. The partnerships are mutual, based on the conviction in one another, and not based on the need to take away someone from somewhere. But, TE Connectivity’s complex widespread four-layered channel, distribution, and sub-
boot camps and training programs and sessions. The premium is worth the while for them. As a result, we are seeing a shift in quality of installation practices across customer sites. These are being brought in line with R&M policies and standards. We are also hiring technical people to help boost training initiatives across partner organizations. A lot of traditional partners are talking convergence – IT, electric, and building systems, and how to take these to the market as one composite piece. So, we find the conversation perfect,
We have consistently mapped our market. It is now that R&M has started to decisively look at markets beyond the metros. We are targeting SMBs which are receptive to ideas and solutions. The idea is to replicate our metro strategy to the smaller cities.” Why aren’t some of the big ticket government orders in R&M’s kitty as yet? TE Connectivity clearly has an edge, and has been talking about big wins in India in 2013. Where do you stand? AMESTOY: As of today, IT/ ITES, automobile, and manufacturing verticals form a major part of the R&M focus and business. Now, we will build upon these and step into the government sector. Last year, we did see some wins on the solutions side, indicating a demand for top-end R&M offerings. These deals encourage us to aggressively look at newer opportunities and move beyond our established spaces. R&M has been consistently
We are targeting SMBs which are receptive to ideas and solutions. The idea is to replicate our metro strategy to the smaller cities. Over the last year, we have slowly and consistently built up a decent partner base in the metros and beyond. Going ahead, channel building in the tier-2 and tier-3 cities will become a huge focus for us in order to grow rapidly. Training, awareness, and education in greater numbers will change the dynamics of the market for us. It is a matter of time. R&M has announced partners across regions, some of whom have been partners to competition. Will this continue to be an
distribution structure, and its market share leadership would be hard to break into, wouldn’t it? AMESTOY: We are actually talking about a several decades old player with a particular channel structure vis-a-vis a less than a decade old player. R&M will build conversations to the next level. With time, the trend will change. Initially, brand awareness was the issue; we have passed that now with roadshows and seminars happening very aggressively. The R&M Qualified Partner Program (QPP), in the last six to seven years, has been successful. Our SI partners are now ready to pay for
since we are also pitching convergence in a big way. Analysts predict that about 25 percent of the structured cabling revenues in India will come from FTH in 2015. Is it far-fetched an expectation? AMESTOY: That is huge potential. But, one cannot pre-empt anything from an R&M standpoint. We have an objective for every market and we are working towards that. Dollar fluctuations, price rises, and costs of setting up market will continue to remain challenges, but will not deter us or any serious player from making sense of the potential that exists.
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
21
Insight
Venkat Murthy, Founder and CEO, 22by7, delves into the consolidation strategy of enterprises and what gives NetApp an upper hand over competition in this area.
Masters of Consolidation
Authorized Distributor
How do you see the storage domain and specifically the unified architecture market evolving? There are two areas that we need to mainly evaluate: First, storage technology as a whole; and second, the buying pattern of customers. As a technology, storage is gaining prominence. Customers are moving towards consolidation from an application point of view, and as a result, adoption of cloud computing is on the rise. One needs to realize that the three important aspects in a consolidation layer are storage, hypervisor, and application. This has created a clear distinction between the vendors who can provide a unified solution and the ones that provide only regular server storage. As a result, customers are looking at solution providers like us (22by7) over regular storage movers. Also, the number of customers who used to be fine with the storage attached with the server is reducing. They want more out of their storage, have improved knowledge of their requirements, and are serious about evaluating a storage solution. What role do you feel NetApp has played in expanding your storage portfolio? NetApp’s offerings in the consolidation space fit the bill to a T. For example, if you look at FlexPod—a scalable infrastructure solution that NetApp created in collaboration with Cisco—it enables partners like us to sell a consolidated platform for customers. Now, instead of just selling the storage, we can sell a complete package. Could you draw links between customer benefits and your association with NetApp? I certainly can. Take, for instance, a customer who is already using a NetApp storage solution and is planning to take the consolidation route. When they add backup to the requirements, we, as partners, find it easier to recommend a solution from NetApp. It makes up-selling a cakewalk.
Also, from our experience, upgrading from an old NetApp solution to a newer one is quite seamless with respect to data migration. And technical convenience of this level helps to a great extent. If the migration isn’t seamless, customers will be forced to look elsewhere for better options. Things like these ensure customer loyalty. Gone are the days when an organization’s IT roadmap spanned a period of three to four years. CIOs, today, are handling more than one project at a time, and project cycles are reducing as well. They need an agile partner
NetApp’s leadership in storage and data management products is well known to our partners and customers. We will continue to invest in our partner ecosystem to help them deliver outstanding storage efficiency and agility solutions. — Krithiwas Neelakantan, Director Channel & Alliances, India & SAARC, NetApp India
who can meet the specific needs and stick to the proposed SLAs. Why would a customer want to choose NetApp over the competition? Each vendor operates in its own niche. As I mentioned earlier, NetApp fares high when it comes to unified, customized storage solutions. The hypervisor integration and network compatibility of NetApp’s storage solution is exemplary. The ecosystem around their storage is robust. Their proficiency in this space can be attributed to a great legacy. Can you identify a few trends that you see with respect to enterprise class storage and market for the same? Frankly, the line between enterprise class and mid-segment storage is slowly disappearing. The one thing that differs between an enterprise and the SMB is the employee strength. There is a direct correlation with data. Data integrity might take a hit when the volume increases. Irrespective of the size of the data, SLAs are going to remain the same, contrary to my earlier opinion that size might be a cause of differentiation. The expectations in terms of high availability, SLAs, and lower TCO are going to remain the same across the board. This is where our solution approach comes into picture because we can list the benefits of a unified architecture. We personally believe and try to instill this same belief in our customers that newer technologies can bring down TCO drastically, distinguishing us from our competitors. What are the benefits of partnering with NetApp? NetApp’s partner strategy is crystal clear. They cater to and work with some of the best partners across the country. Partnering with NetApp gives us a competitive edge because they are pioneers in the storage space. It also helps us immensely when it comes to acquiring customer mindshare.
IDG SERVICES
n COVER STORY
inc. Channels
For enterprise partner organizations which surf the tide and ebb of IT, a tryst with corporatization becomes inevitable. Are India’s IT channels truly on their way to being corporate, irrespective of being family-driven or not?
By Shantheri Mallaya and Shreehari Paliath
24
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
Photograph by KAPIL SHROFF
By Yogesh Gupta
From L-R: Vishwas MOre, CFO, Murtuza Sutarwala, Executive Director-Board Member, and Nitin Alsi, President-Sales, Swan Solutions & Services, believe that a structured hierarchy, over past two decades, has proven to be a successful strategy. DECEMBER 2012 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
25
n COVER STORY nizational hierarchy. Each of the beautifully painted and embellished wooden dolls encompasses a smaller reproduction of the original. Much like this Russian collectible, organizations are pieced together by small integral blocks nested at each level to create a superstructure.
T
HE YEAR was 1989. Moham-
med Sutarwala, founder and MD of Swan Solutions & Services was transitioning from a traditional family-owned business to IT/ITES. He had a clear goal to pursue a radical approach. “An education in the US opened a new perspective and a whole innovative world of ideas and methods. There was nothing wrong with how we ran the family business, but I wanted to put together my IT business beyond just an individual,” he says. Building a legacy became core to this Mumbai-based organization turning corporate. Soon, the company grew
by leaps and bounds by ensuring new employees became an integral part of its growth and were not mere bystanders. “We created a profit-sharing model where an individual grew with the company,” says Sutarwala. (Read full interview on Page 31) While Sutarwala took the plunge to corporatize earlier than most tier2 enterprise channel companies, Hyderabad-based solution provider vCentric Technologies made the transition recently. The company introduced a technology-driven strategy over a year ago. “When the roles and responsibilities of employees are welldefined, all stakeholders—internal or external—find it easy to reach out and work efficiently,” says Satish Suri, COO at Hyderabad’s vCentric Technologies. Though the company had a hierarchy, it wasn’t as structured as it is now. Suri believes that with increased growth, there are certain processes that need to be in place to iron-out mild inadequacies. “There is no place for ambiguity.
Pal Natrajan (L), CEO and MD, and Rama Krishna, SVP, APAC Sales and Global STG, Bodhtree Consulting, believe that for companies to achieve a certain size in terms of revenue or global presence, they need to introduce a well laid-out structure. 26
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
Ph o t o g r a p h by S U R E S H
Matryoshka dolls embody the spirit of orga-
Having a structure and hierarchy has improved clarity.” At Swan, for the past 25 years, the roles of each employee have been wellentrenched and form an intrinsic part of its daily business routine. “Executives are chosen according to their individual potential and industry experience. Each person at the senior level embodies a core competency that complements the role of their colleagues,” says Murtuza Sutarwala, Executive Director-Board Member, Swan Solutions & Services. “This protocol weaves a strong pattern for the company’s growth.” Rama Krishna, SVP, APAC Sales and Global STG, Bodhtree Consulting, emphasizes the need for assigning specific roles to counter such a situation. “It should be a part of an organization’s DNA from inception. Small organizations can look at boxing multiple responsibilities to individuals, and slowly motivate them to grow into bigger roles. As a company grows, depending on the business requirements, the individual should be given the freedom to choose what fits the best for him or her,” he says. CIOs too prefer solution providers to have a clear vision that engages customers and vendors in a proficient and professional manner. “As a customer, I would prefer companies with a proper structure. They must have a business plan in mind and have a dedicated team handling various portfolios. Often, in proprietor-led organizations, the decision taken by the owner is final. But with a well-structured organization, you have an escalation option,” says Paruchuri Raghukumar, head-IT and Business Applications, Tata Power SED. This single point of contact for project handling is what corporatization has introduced. Many technocrat-driven, young organizations with novel initiatives lose focus and mileage due to a dearth of resources who can engage effectively with vendors and customers. Their growth is hampered, and the superstructure envisioned, remains a hollow, pipe-dream. Nitin Alsi, President-Sales, Swan Solutions & Services agrees, “Customers too feel comfortable that there is escalation possible as tasks will be executed by different departments. There is no single-point dependency effect.”
It was not easy for the structure to be accepted widely at Swan. There was initial skepticism, says Alsi. Even vendors are aware that they have to work up the hierarchy and do not have direct access to senior management unless necessary, he says.
NO MICRO MANAGEMENT New Delhi based Albion Infotel, like vCentric, implemented the process of corporatization couple of years ago, when Sanjeev Gupta, Chairman and MD, Albion Infotel was mulling huge expansion plans. He appointed expert professionals from different fields with a long-term dream of turning Albion into a bigger global entity. The key idea was enabling the founder (Gupta) to not focus on micro managing the company but look more at the company strategy with these experts. “Necessity is quite an understatement. For a fast growing company as ours, an organizational rethink was indeed the call of the hour,” says Gupta Albion Infotel, today, effectively has a well layered management team; heads at the rank of Executive Directors, a Head of Finance and Strategy, Head of Technology, Research and Corporate Affairs, two Senior Vice Presidents responsible for Albion’s global consumer and enterprise businesses, and a Vice President for Product Management and Service Delivery. “Two years ago, we were repositioning ourselves as the company; hence the idea of formulating this organizational arrangement essentially was to divest the management responsibility. We delegate day-to-day operations to professionals instead of ‘one man’ taking all the management decisions by himself,” says D. Vasudevan, Head-Technology, Research and Corporate Affairs at Albion. In this critical transition from a system integration company to a cloud services company, Albion has created separate departments for technology, product management, service delivery, and research and has inducted professionals from all these disciplines with rich experience to head these divisions. Does this enhance the impact from a brand and customer perspective? Vasudevan says an emphatic “Yes,” adding that a professionally managed company with different set of people with diverse
VENDOR SPEAK “Having clearly defined roles makes it easier for us to reach out to channel partner organizations and gives us a clearer idea of which individual should be reached out to for a specific situation.” PIYUSH PUSHKAL, Country Manager, Global Commercial Channel, Dell India
“Possessing skilled professionals at every level and a proper structure reflects the maturity of a partner organization for enterprise customers and OEM vendors.” PRAVEEN SAHAI, Vice President, Channels, EMC India and SAARC
“Several of our business partners have witnessed significant changes in their organizations. It augers well for strengthening our partnership because their maturity, a higher degree of competency, and capability helps us communicate and articulate more easily.” ANOOP NAMBIAR, Director, Global Business Partner Organization, IBM India South Asia experience and expertise definitely enjoys more respect and enhanced recognition from enterprise customers, OEM partners, and solution providers than a ‘single man’ run company. Mumbai headquartered Datamatics Global Services is another example of how a family business has spun into a corporate entity with a global outlook. While founder Raj Kanodia still holds the post of Chairman, it is son Rahul Kanodia, who, as Vice Chairman and CEO, steers the company decisions
with the able support of a core team of directors and experts. The traditional archetypal IT business, founded in 1975, has transformed into a Rs 550 crore modern corporate. Today, Datamatics has business operations across four continents and has won several awards of excellence from various industry associations. “A true corporate is that in which the organization is empowered to run in a manner that the top person becomes redundant, in a manner of speaking,” says
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
27
n COVER STORY The Corporate Way: A Quick Checklist Corporate Governance Model: Effective corporate governance by setting up committees to watch over stakeholder requirements.
Organizational Hierarchy: Hiring and inclusion of independent professionals/external experts for key decisions of the business.
Replicate Leaders: An effective ‘cloning’ or succession planning for middle- and senior-management professionals.
Push Social: Investments in social media and digital marketing to interact internally and externally.
Onus on CSR: Setting up CSR initiatives. Raise Finance: Increasing funds through public listing, venture capitalist, or other external sources.
Attain Certifications: Acquire certifications like ISO, awards of excellence in corporate governance, HR, leadership, etcetera, to establish credibility.
Talent Retention: Effective HR policies with compensation plans/ SOPs to employees.
Expand Geographically: Pursuing expansion plans for rapid growth and wider reach.
ple who, along with me, will help this organization realize its highest potential for growth,” says CMD Sanjiv Gupta. “Vendors like to deal with channel companies with a structure to ensure that
the business owner does not become a bottleneck for routine transactions. A corporate structure assures that the ‘Swan’ brand outlives the founders,” adds Vishwas MOre, CFO, Swan Solu-
Top management at Albion Infotel (from L-R): Zafar Saeed, VP-Products and Service Delivery; Ashish Shukla, Head–Research and Product Development; Sanjeev Gupta, MD ; D. Vasudevan, Chief Advisor-Technology and Research; S.K. Ghosh, Head-Finance and Strategy; Atul Tiwari, SVP- Global Consumer Business.
28
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
Ph o t o g r a p h by D. R . LO H I A
Rahul Kanodia Datamatics, true to this agenda, has left no stone unturned to hire experts across HR, finance, technology, and sales. With about eight key people across the departments as part of the management team, the company, in Kanodia’s words “is driven by a passionate neutral workforce of 6500+ and only around three family members at the helm.” The company is expected to grow by over 45 percent compared to the previous fiscal. Similarly, Albion’s growth is proof of ‘reinventing of the wheel’. S.K Ghosh, head-Finance and Strategy, asserts, “This transformation has resulted in increased business opportunities and resultant sales.” To substantiate, Albion’s financial figures from Rs 65 crore in FY 2011-12 zoomed to Rs 118 crore over the last fiscal. Ghosh, a finance veteran with over three decades of experience, joined Albion a couple of years ago, and has been instrumental in formulating strategic decisions for the company including financial arrangements with banks, adding or dropping of lines of businesses, hiring of people, amongst others. “My core team is a mix of peo-
IRONING CREASES A well-oiled multi-layered organizational structure is good. But, does having more people involved in decision making add complexity and slow down the process? N. Ravishanker, CIO, Tata Sky, believes so. “Yes, [calling them]bottlenecks is an understatement,” he says. “Larger an organization more is the complexity. It varies between organizations and the processes they outline. Some organizations believe that more the bottlenecks, the risk taken can be absolved.” For vCentric, the new corporate model threw fair share of challenges. “Well, it’s mostly to do with change management. We are giving it time to settle and gain acceptance. But even if it seems more complex, we feel that it is good for the organization, employees, and customers considering the growth and expansion,” says Suri. This is a sentiment echoed by most enterprise solution provider companies. For organizations targeting global expansion, a protocol has to be in place sooner than later, no matter what teeth-
Ph o t o g r a p h by FOTO C O R P
tions & Services. “Today, the role of IT and how it is consumed with enterprises has changed dramatically. It’s no longer a box approach but a solutions approach; and deployments aren’t upfront capex but pay-as-you-use,” he says. Many vendor organizations understand the need for their channel partners to build a hierarchy. A parochial vision of growth that piggy-backs on a founder’s or an individual’s skills is a thing of the past. “Partners need professionals that can understand these transitions and business models and can address client needs,” says Praveen Sahai, VP, Channels, EMC India and SAARC. Vendors agree and quite emphatically. Dell India’s Country Manager of Global Commercial Channel, Piyush Pishkul encourages such a move within channel partner organizations. “Yes, we do encourage such transitions within channel partners’ organizations whenever we feel that such a transition will help them in their growth. We support our channel partners through training and enablement programs and give them personal attention as and when possible so that we can help them find the most suitable route for their transactions with us,” he says.
Rahul Kanodia, VC and CEO, Datamatics Global Services, says a true corporate is empowered to run in a manner such that the top person becomes redundant.
ing troubles they face. “Initially it could be uncomfortable, but if you [company] want to climb the growth curve, there is no other way than having a well-defined structure,” says Pal Natrajan, MD and CEO of Bodhtree. The companies wanting to achieve a certain size in terms of revenue or presence across the globe have had to introduce a well-laid out structure, he adds. Ghosh at Albion, however rationalizes the word ‘conflict’ as he says,” There are some disadvantages like diverse viewpoints from different heads of departments at times that can delay decision. This requires moderation from the top management, and at times
Larger an organization more is the complexity. It varies between organizations and the processes they outline. Some organizations believe that more the bottlenecks, the risk taken can be absolved.” N. RAVISHANKER, CIO, TATA SKY
conflict resolution might be required. However, in the long term point of view, the advantages far overweigh the disadvantages.” Vasudevan at Albion adds, “All important decisions taken by the company are collective decisions involving all stake holders with due diligence, discussions and debate. This is helping the organization in the long run, in terms ownership, quicker and better implementation and team play.” Yatendra Kumar, CIO at Bangalore’s Gokaldas Exports, believes the whole corporate versus family run set-ups debate is subjective; both have their merits and demerits. His own past experience with both kinds of companies—from basic IT infrastructure to an environment where mobile apps are a way of life—have taught him to keep an open mind. He observes “In a promoter driven set up, decision making is much faster vis-à-vis a corporate CEO who may not be the owner of the business. As a result, his powers of autonomy may be limited hampering quick decision making.” However, Kumar also feels that a larger corporate companies has a greater degree of professionalism and
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
29
n COVER STORY
RIGHT PEOPLE, RIGHT JOB Change is a constant and in the world of technology, the change is more dynamic and faster. Having the right set of people assigned for the right roles becomes a challenge. There evidently is no secret sauce to picking people to perform roles or tasks. Each company tackles it differently with the underlying commonality of ensuring a cultural fit of a new employee into the system., “The biggest challenge is instilling a corporate culture. Making sure each one of us think big and act big. I am inducting qualified talent in my department to take us to the next level. Implementing a new software system is easy, but executing new processes and mindsets is a tough task,” says MOre. The finance head at Albion, Ghosh, also heads the company’s HR function
as he has immense experience in that domain as well. We are planning to corporatize my lean team further by hiring chartered accountants, he says. As a professionally managed corporate entity the SI does not shy away from hiring external consultants either. “We do engage professionals with outstanding expertise and knowledge of best practices to improve the services, research, and quality of our products. We at times also engage professional research organizations for specific tasks,” says Vasudevan. Although these resources do turn out to be expensive, the company management believes that in the long term, they result in increased revenues. For Swan, the job recruitment is the task of an operational manager. “Once the due-diligence is done, the final interview is conducted by company’s CEO. Otherwise, the process is quite decentralized,” says Murtaza Sutarwala.
KEEP THEM WITH YOU The corporate word often has a dizzying effect. Trained and experienced professionals carry a ‘premium tag’. Instilling loyalty and motivating them to stay
on is not an easy task for tier-2 systems integrators. Even the best of plans cannot prevent individuals from exploring other opportunities though companies attempt always to give a perfect the work environment to their employees. “We always try to focus on growth. Monetary benefits seldom are a solution purely because many companies are willing to offer more. But if people see that there is immense satisfaction in growth and learning opportunities they are provided with, they more often than not stay back,” says Suri of vCentric. “It is a double-edged sword,” says Rama Krishna at Bodhtree Consulting. The transition to this model has to gain wide acceptance across customers and employees, he believes. “People might be comfortable with what existed earlier, but majority of them that I’ve observed appreciate the presence of a hierarchy.” His CEO, Natrajan, agrees. “Change has an impact and that is true at all organizations. Some people move on and others who accept the changes take the process forward,” he says. The strong internal process helps most
Venu Gopal Uppalapati (L) CEO, and Satish Suri, COO, vCentric Technologies agree that the introduction of a protocol has enhanced clarity within the organization and has strengthened the company’s image in the market. 30
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2012
Ph o t o g r a p h by S U R E S H
have the basic processes in place, with KPIs and KRAs well defined, vis-à-vis the other end of the spectrum, where the owner of a traditional business might tend to depend on the information and advice of a few people, which might not always be a prudent course of action.
companies move forward and confront the ‘attrition’ factor too. A succession plan is vital to hasten the process to normalcy or fill the vacuum faster in case of employee quitting the job, he adds. But such planning is only a remedy for attrition, not a cure as per him. Swan Solutions & Services, over the years, has strongly believed that their employees write their own pay check and not the company. “This inculcates the idea of empowerment,” says its
founder Mohammed Sutarwala. Even though the company follows a structured hierarchy of employees across the organization—senior and junior levels executives—share personal and professional moments on their social collaboration platform called SwanCom. “There is a human face to every organization. Once people, across various locations correlate over subjects, topics, or an event on such platforms, the bonding becomes stronger and the
An Organizational Structure Gives Wings For Flight Mohammed Sutarwala, founder and managing director, Swan Solutions & Services, knows the technology industry like the back of his palm. He highlights the importance of a strong organizational structure for partner organizations which aids rapid business growth. What was the need to introduce a hierarchy at Swan? We had been working with tier-1 companies like Wipro and HCL and hence we understood the corporate structure. I always envisioned a need for a well-defined organization wherein different people took on individual responsibilities. Since inception, our mindset was to have a corporate approach. One should be able to differentiate between what is good for you and what is good for the company as a whole. That’s how you build a strong legacy and a strong organisation. How different is this approach compared to a proprietor-led business model? In a proprietor-led model, your customers expect to see you all the time. But a well created structure lets them interact with a specific set of people who handle defined services or roles in the company. This makes life much easier for both the parties as they can escalate decision making to a particular person. Does involvement of many people due to a hierarchy create bottlenecks and delay decisions? Execution of decisions depends on the scale of its impact. At each level, the employees are bestowed with the power to execute their decisions in accordance with company procedures. However, decisions impacting the overall company are taken by the CEO and his team. Some decisions are decided by the board too. The time delay varies as it depends on the enormity of the issue; but they are not bottlenecks. How did this transition translate into reality? If you have a big vision to grow, it cannot be a one-man show. We always pursued a profit-sharing model wherein employees make the money and give it to the company, not the other way round. This is empowerment for a new-comer and encourages people to move up the ranks. But you run the risk of losing out if your company’s key people quit. That exists at all organizations. One has to compromise, and let go. The ‘cloning’ process ensures that the next line of people are ready to take over and ensure minimal business impact to the company. — Shreehari Paliath
work becomes more enjoyable and hierarchies are better accepted then,” he says. Albion too has separate departments for digital marketing department and invests heavily in the social media and online marketing, a must do ‘leverage’ for a growing cloud computing services company to engage with all its stakeholders. “Like most successful companies, we offer stock options to our senior management team. The salary hikes we offer to our employees are one of the best in the industry and purely driven by performance and market conditions,” says Ghosh. The hallmark of a true corporate entity is perhaps defined also in the amount of investments into setting up of its governance policies. Kanodia of Datamatics asserts that many companies in India, whether listed or not, leave alone the SI companies fail to get this one right. The company has a fairly robust governance model and has set up independent committees encompassing numerous areas such as audit, sexual harassment, CSR, amongst others. Albion too notes the importance of a governance model with Ghosh playing a key role in various committees set up such as the Audit and Investor Grievances Committee. Despite the few minuses, given the momentum, the pace of growth and quest for success, Channels Inc. has surely found its strong foot inside the corporate door, surmounting limitations of markets, size of organizations and family driven protocols. As Darshan Appayanna, CIO, at Happiest Mind Technologies, sums it up neatly, “There are no clear-cut benchmarks for a corporate. Family-run businesses or not, it is all about the hunger to scale up and drive professionalism and excellence. These are the dictates.” In essence, what Appayanna refers to is that professionalism is not about getting outside people to work in a family run business but bringing the right people to drive customer satisfaction and efficient operations. Like the Matryoshka dolls, what you nest and nurture will always reap rewards. Just ask Mohammed Sutarwala. He has done this successfully for over two decades.
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
31
n CASE STUDY
FROM L-R: AURABINDA BISWAS, System Manager, Fore School of Management; D.K. BAJAJ and AMIT BAJAJ, Directors, DM Systems.
CORE to the FORE DM Systems leveraged in-house technical expertise with external industry experts to emerge as a true systems integrator for Fore School of Management. By Yogesh Gupta
32
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
A
T START of this year, Fore
School of Management (FSM) was setting up three classrooms for the new curriculum that was to commence in mid-2013. It seemed a quick and simple IT project that involved desktop installation with networking and basic infrastructure components. But there was a huge challenge. “There was less space to fit the required desktops as per the number of seats (60 students per classroom),” says Aurabinda Biswas, system manager, Fore School of Management. The state-of-the-art classrooms were expected to handle various applications
including few heavy statistical and financial applications. Due to the space constraint, FSM explored the thin client solution to make the solution agile and accommodate new applications, at the same time keeping security controls in line with today’s environment. FSM approached various vendors including HP, Lenovo, and Dell for thin client offerings in the market. “It was a blessing in disguise as thin clients consume less power and its hardware cost’s lesser compared to desktops,” says Biswas. After due diligence, HP Thin Clients was finalised.
PERMUTATION AND COMBINATION In April 2013, FSM approached a dozen prominent solution providers as per routine practice. Delhi-based DM systems—an SI partner of FSM for over a decade—was also a contender for this project. “There was no loyalty factor. We were on ground zero like the other contenders for this project,” says Amit Bajaj, director, DM Systems. FSM was investing in thin client technologies for the first time and wanted a robust and future ready infrastructure. DM Systems knew that it would be an uphill task to beat a dozen companies to win the deal. “VDI-based solution and its security control gels well with thin client architecture, but selecting the right virtualization platform that worked in sync with the hardware and storage took some research and time,” says Bajaj. Among VMware, Citrix, and Quest, Citrix Xen desktop solution was selected as it offered better functionality and was more suited to applications to be presented to the end-user. FSM defined a strict scope of work for delivering this project and shortlisted DM Systems as one of the two vendors (partners). “We wanted the best of breed products from all aspects as it was a large project wherein we were installing technologies like virtualization and thin client for the first time,” says Biswas. Server storage sizing, done with VM (virtual machines) to create a robust platform, was a tough task. “Our experience as a VMware partner and equal capabilities on Microsoft platform proved beneficial in selecting the best suited technology platform,” says D.K. Bajaj, director, DM Systems. Microsoft
though they could have managed a larger share. “Every vendor supported wholeheartedly and helped fit their products in this large project,” says Amit Bajaj. DM Systems, interestingly, did not take help from any vendor’s technical team. “We only took the delivery of products from them. We wanted to keep the project independent and did not want OEMs to influence the deal,” he says. “There was a budget, but we wanted best of technologies to build a future-ready infrastructure,” says Biswas.
Snapshot Key Parties: Fore School of Management, DM Systems
Location: New Delhi Project Cost: About Rs.1.2 crore Implementation time: Three weeks Main Vendors: HP,Dell,Citrix,VMware, Microsoft, and Ruckus
Key People Involved: Aurabinda
Biswas, System Manager, Fore School of Management; D.K. Bajaj and Amit Bajaj, Directors, DM Systems
DELIVERED THE BEST
Key Technologies: Thin client,
virtualization, application management , storage, networking (wired and wireless)
Post-Implementation ROI: Cost
savings on thin clients, reduced licence charge, improved productivity, seamless integration
provided better features and also offered the cost benefit for the institute. DM Systems was the only company to quote each and every possible combination of different technologies. “All other partners provided partial or definite OEM offerings,” says Amit Bajaj. Biswas agrees. “DM Systems could provide all the OEM options in terms of brand for various items requested in RFP.”
VENDORS AT A DISTANCE DM Systems had its internal technical team work aggressively on the project. “We did take support of external technology experts as additional help with each one having a decade plus industry experience in each technology. We had brainstorming sessions with them to utilize different OEM technologies in the best optimised manner,” he says. The SI designed each VM application and workload, and then mapped those VMs with servers. “There was no POC, but minute details about every possible aspect were provided. We sized everything accordingly and told FSM that we can prove the various calculations regarding cost savings and efficiency,” says Amit Bajaj. The four key vendors selected were Dell, Citrix, HP, and Microsoft. VMware, HP Networking, and Ruckus too formed part of the project. Each vendor only got a share of the big project even
The scope of work stretched for over 75 days, but the deployment by DM Systems which took three weeks was completed in October this year. “We won the project due to the visibility we provided in minute differentiation of a mix of OEM products and associated features, feels D.K. Bajaj. “DM Systems helped immensely with its implementation and sharp planning. The team’s service provisioning and installation was very good,” says Biswas. “Everything—what, where and how it was to be done—was worked out well in advance. The detailing around the scope of work was the backbone of the project,” says Amit Bajaj. The main benefits from the project have been space saving, less power consumption, and cost savings on a long-term basis. “The three classrooms (with 60 seats each) are now totally integrated with computer systems,” says Biswas. Even though the overall costing increased by over 28 percent due to thin client and related technologies instead of regular desktops, the running cost dropped by 22 percent as DM Systems conducted extensive analysis on the savings. “Thin clients are supported by user-defined policy for the various applications including internet policy for students which is secured by UTM to restrict visiting social/unwanted websites,” says Biswas. Essentially, the project comprised of six different technologies from six different OEMs and their integration with four existing technologies; all from different OEM. “This was a systems integration project in the truest sense,” says D.K. Bajaj .
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
33
n FAST TRACK
Snapshot
Rubik Infotech
Founded: 2000 Headquarters: Ahmedabad Revenue 2011-12: Rs 5 crore Revenue 2012-13: Rs 6 crore Revenue 2013-14: Rs 10 crore Key Executives: Ruchi Chauhan, Director; Prabhat Biswal, BDM; Hariom Kumar, Manager, Support and Pre-Sales Key Principals: McAfee, Symantec, Cyberoam , Mithi, Microsoft, Lansweeper, VMware, Fortinet, Sonicwall Key Technologies: Enterprise network security and management, backup management and HA solutions, enterprise software infrastructure and management Key Business Activities: Enterprise software integrator, professional services and consultancy Website: www.rubikinfotech.com
We want to reign as security experts across India by 2015, says Jitesh Chauhan, Director, Rubik Infotech.
R
UBIK INFOTECH com-
menced its journey as a broad-based distributor and reseller of IT products in 1999. “As a security focused partner, we realized in 2002 that a mere box-seller approach would not put us at the top,” says Jitesh Chauhan, director, Rubik Infotech. During the first three years, he says, it was tough to convince organizations about licenced software and solutions aspect of security offerings. But, providing a comprehensive portfolio of information security enabled a high degree of flexibility in services offered to customers. “We were always a step ahead. We were talking to the customers about AV way back in 2005. We have been educating enterprises about the benefits of DLP and encryption for the last 34
couple of years,” he says. Rubik Infotech has carved a niche as a trusted solution provider for enterprises. It has recorded nearly 70 percent of its revenue from the security domain. The company expects a 40 percent
VERTICAL SPLIT 10%
Retail and utilities
30%
Hospitality
10% BFSI
20%
Education SOURCE: RUBIK INFOTECH
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
30% IT/ITES
revenue growth this fiscal over FY 2012-13. The recent RBI guidelines around PCI compliance have compelled the enterprises to adopt DLP and encryption, says Chauhan. “We are aggressive on MDM which will be an industry benchmark by 2015-16,” he says. The SI believes doing its homework before executing a deployment. “Our team looks to completely understand their requirements before providing the white paper for final approval,” he says. More than 80 percent of its security revenue is software-based offerings. “Hardware appliances will exist for four years with virtual appliances becoming a preferred mode. Most UTMs offer end-to-end virtual solutions today,” says Chauhan. It will open offices in Baroda, Surat, Rajkot, Jaipur, and Udaipur in 2014. “This is the right time for expansion to nurture long-term relationship with existing customers and prove our value to new enterprise customers,” says Chauhan. —Yogesh Gupta
Big data might be big business, but overzealous data mining can seriously destroy your brand. Will new ethical codes be enough to allay consumers’ fears?
By Cindy Waxer
M
ORE THAN simply
bits and bytes, big data is now a multibillion-dollar business opportunity. Savvy organizations, from retailers to manufacturers, are fast discovering the power of turning consumers’ ZIP codes and buying histories into bottom-line-enhancing insights. In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of McKinsey &
Co., estimates that big data can increase profits in the retail sector by a staggering 60 percent. And a recent Boston Consulting Group study reveals that personal data can help companies achieve greater business efficiencies and customize new products. But while harnessing the power of data analytics is clearly a competitive advantage, overzealous data mining
can easily backfire. As companies become experts at slicing and dicing data to reveal details as personal as mortgage defaults and heart attack risks, the threat of egregious privacy violations grows. Just ask Kord Davis. A digital strategist and author of Ethics of Big Data: Balancing Risk and Innovation, Davis says, “The values that you infuse into your data-handling practices can have some very real-world consequences.” Take Nordstrom, for example. The upscale retailer used sensors from analytics vendor Euclid to cull shopping information from customers’ smartphones each time they connected to a store’s Wi-Fi service—a move that drew widespread criticism from privacy advocates. (Nordstrom is no longer using the analytics service.) Hip clothing retailer Urban Outfitters is facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly violating consumer protection laws by telling shoppers who pay by credit card that they had to provide their ZIP codes—which is not true—and then using that information to obtain the shoppers’ addresses. Facebook is often at the center of a data privacy controversy, whether it’s defending its own enigmatic privacy policies or responding to reports that it gave private user data to the National Security Agency (NSA). And the story of how retail behemoth Target was able to deduce that a teenage shopper was pregnant before her father even knew is the stuff of marketing legend. Online finger-wagging, lawsuits, disgruntled customers — they’re the unfortunate byproducts of what many people perceive to be big data abuses. According to a September 2013 study from data privacy management company Truste, 1 of 3 Internet users say they have stopped using a company’s website or have stopped doing business with a company altogether because of privacy concerns.
HONESTY’S THE BEST POLICY But IT professionals are discovering that balancing the power of sophisticated algorithms with consumer rights is about more than avoiding bad publicity or lost sales. These
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
35
n FEATURE | DATA MINING days, it pays to be honest—literally. “Organizations that are transparent about their use of data will be able to use that as a competitive advantage,” predicts Davis. “People are starting to become very interested in what’s going on out there with their data, so organizations that have practices in place to share that information ethically are going to be in a much better position to be trusted.” Yet many CIOs and data scientists are struggling with the question of how to derive real value and actionable insights from confidential data while still respecting consumers’ rights and even earning their trust. As the store of data grows, and techniques for manipulating data multiply, some IT professionals are taking matters into their own hands with innovative approaches to preventing data abuse. Retention Science is a perfect example. The Santa Monica, Californiabased data analytics firm uses predictive algorithms and data such as aggregated household income, purchasing histories and credit scores to help companies predict a customer’s purchase probability and build retention-marketing campaigns. In addition to the data supplied by a client, Retention Science also relies on the data it licenses from third-party providers to target the right consumers at the right time. To create targeted campaigns while still respecting consumer privacy, Retention Science has established hard-and-fast rules governing its use of consumer data. For one, Retention Science refuses to share data across clients. For example, if Gap were a client, and had supplied Retention Science with consumer data, that information would never be shared—even anonymously—with other retail clients. In another effort to preserve consumer privacy despite handling terabytes of confidential data, Retention Science insists that all of its data scientists, many of whom are professors and researchers, sign confidentiality agreements. “They are not allowed to share or use data anywhere else or for their own publications,” says Retention Science CEO Jerry Jao. 36
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
In addition to holding its own employees accountable, Retention Science also “works only with businesses that are fully committed to getting their consumers’ consent in advance to use their data,” says Jao. “We don’t want to include information from individuals if they didn’t grant access in the first place.”
FULL COOKIE DISCLOSURE While setting internal controls can help, you can go a step further by offering consumers a firsthand look at what’s known about them. One company that has an open-book policy like that is BlueKai, a Cupertino, California-based vendor that offers a data management platform that marketers and publishers can use to manage and activate data to build targeted marketing campaigns. In 2008, BlueKai decided to launch an online portal where consumers can find out exactly what cookies BlueKai and its partners have been collecting for them, item by item, based on their
browsing histories. Consider, for example, a woman who is shopping online for a red bicycle. As she visits different sporting goods sites that partner with BlueKai, a collection of anonymous cookies is stored on her browser. Based on this browsing history, BlueKai marketing partners will display behavioral ads on the woman’s computer that are relevant to her bike-shopping quest. These days, most online shoppers realize that it’s not a coincidence when they see ads that are clearly tied to their browsing histories. But the BlueKai Registry makes the process more transparent, and even allows visitors to opt out of the registry altogether or update their anonymous profiles by changing their preferences. BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol says the thinking behind the registry is that, “If there’s data known about you that’s tradable between any two entities, it should be completely controlled by the consumer.” For this reason, BlueKai also encourages its partners
to post private versions of the registry on their own websites to allay consumers’ concerns and promote greater transparency. “The beauty of what we do is we don’t know who you are,” says Tawakol. “We don’t want to know anybody’s name. We don’t want to know anything recognizable about them. All we want to do is show you that your cookies are accessible, and that they have these attributes associated with them.” BlueKai isn’t the only big data rock star that’s handing out backstage passes. Marketing technology company Acxiom recently made headlines by launching AboutTheData.com, a free site where people can view some of the information the Little Rock, Arkansas-based company has gathered about them. Details range from marital status to what kind of vehicle you drive. Visitors simply enter key personal information to find out what data advertisers are using to help tailor their marketing messages. The fact that powerful data brokers such as Acxiom are helping to demystify data-driven marketing initiatives is no surprise to BlueKai’s Tawakol. He believes that companies have no choice now but to respond to changing consumer sentiment around data privacy. “Years ago, people built data companies in the shadows where consumers had no control,” he says. “It’s a different age now—consumers should be in control.” Davis’ perspective on the move toward greater transparency is more cynical. Noting that “organizations are starting to face increasingly close scrutiny around their data practices,” he says companies have an ulterior motiving for coming clean about how they use information like ZIP codes and credit scores: Doing so helps them avoid legal entanglements and bad press. What’s more, Davis says, many initiatives that are touted as offering people insight into how they’re being tracked are more about public relations than full disclosure. “What they’re still not telling me is who’s buying that data and what they’re doing with it,” he says.
POLICIES UNDER FIRE
doesn’t always translate into greater understanding. The privacy policies of industry titans such as Facebook and Google have recently come under fire for being hard to understand and far too long to slog through. Presented as 70-page novellas filled with vague terms like “non-personally identifiable information,” some policies have even sparked probes by regulators at the Federal Trade Commission. In fact, the results of an April 2012 survey by strategic branding firm Siegel+Gale indicated that users have little understanding of how Facebook and Google track, store and share their information. Survey participants were asked to review Facebook’s and Google’s privacy policies and then rate how well they understood them on a scale of zero to 100 (with 80 indicating good comprehension). Facebook scored 39 and Google 36—indications of poor comprehension. People don’t understand what they’re agreeing to,” says Davis. “Organizations make it a lot more complicated than it should be.” Besides,
he adds, “reading all of the terms of services that we receive would take us 76 days a year.” That’s not to suggest that privacy policies have no value in the world of big data. Rather, says Nans Sivaram, a client partner at IT consultancy and outsourcer Infosys, instead of sharing terms and conditions, companies need to “[communicate] the value consumers will receive if they part with certain information.” In a recent Infosys global survey, 39 percent of the respondents said that they consider data mining invasive. And 72 percent said they don’t feel that the online promotions or emails they receive speak to their personal interests and needs. Yet, Sivaram says, “consumers are willing to part with personal information, provided there’s good reason to.” The result is a high-tech Catch-22: On the one hand, consumers want to receive highly targeted and personalized products and services. On the other hand, they don’t want to feel as if their personal data is up for com-
Most Consumers Concerned About Privacy Online
I
N spite of assertions by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and others that the age of privacy is over, new research commissioned by civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch has revealed that over three quarters of consumers globally are concerned about their privacy online. In a survey of 10,354 people across nine countries, undertaken by market research agency ComRes, 79 percent said they were concerned about their personal privacy, with India (94 percent), Brazil (90 percent), and Spain (90 percent) showing the highest level of concern. The UK figure was below average at 68 percent, while Germany, which has one of the strongest data protection laws in the world, was the only country where a majority (56 percent) said they are unconcerned about their privacy online. “Germany has set an example to be followed, taking strong legal action against
companies who do not respect people’s privacy,” said Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch in a blog post. Globally, 41 percent of people feel consumers are being harmed by big companies gathering large amounts of data. Respondents in South Korea, UK, Australia, and France were the most critical of this practice, while those in Brazil, India, and Spain were the most sympathetic to them doing so. “Online privacy is a global issue of real importance to people and the overwhelming message is that citizens do not feel their authorities are doing enough about the desire of large companies to collect vast amounts of data on them,” said Pickles. The news comes amid revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI have been systematically gathering vast amounts of phone and web data for surveillance purposes, as part of its Prism programme. —Sophie Curtis
Unfortunately, greater transparency DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
37
n FEATURE | DATA MINING mercial grabs. “Retailers need to do a much better job of using the data that they already have to reach their customers,” says Sivaram. “At the same time, they have to be careful about being seen as invasive because they don’t want to get into trouble and lose the trust of their customers.” So what’s the solution? According to Sivaram, the answer is for big data collectors “to establish the right incentives” for people to divulge their personal details. For example, by showing people that sharing their information can earn them loyalty points or discounts, companies can create greater value for their customers while converting consumer trust into a competitive advantage. The same rule of reciprocity applies to online content as well. Says BlueKai’s Tawakol: “When we have asked people in surveys, ‘Would you prefer to pay for your content or would you prefer to have targeted ads alongside your content?’ it’s usually in the high 90 percent of people who would prefer sponsored content.”
SETTING A CODE OF CONDUCT However, not everyone believes that the burden should be placed on consumers to blithely agree to share their data, decipher confusing privacy policies, or swap credit scores for grocery coupons. For example, Michael Walker says that big data professionals should adopt a code of ethics. A managing partner at Rose Business Technologies, a Denverbased systems integrator and IT services provider, Walker has drafted a 12-page data science code of professional conduct covering everything from the role of data scientists to their daily responsibilities. “Companies are starting to understand the danger of secondary uses of information and how people’s personal data can be abused,” says Walker. “Once they start to think about it, they’re very much in favor of an ethical code.”If a data scientist questions the quality of data or evidence, he must disclose this to the client. If a data scientist has offered material evidence and later comes to know that it is false, he shall take reasonable remedial measures, including 38
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
disclosure to the client. A data scientist may disclose and label evidence he reasonably believes is false. In fact, in an August 2013 survey conducted by statistical software company Revolution Analytics, 80 percent of the respondents said they agreed that there should be an ethical framework for collecting and using data. And more than half of data scientists surveyed agreed that ethics already play a big part in their research. “My solution is to have some sort of code of professional conduct that data scientists would voluntarily agree to follow to protect people’s private data,” says Walker. By creating a kind of Hippocratic Oath for analytics professionals, Walker says data scientists will have both the moral and legal grounds for refusing to slice and dice numbers in ways that threaten to violate consumer privacy rights. Walker isn’t the first to conceive of
teresting insights from the data,” says Ryan Kalember, chief product officer at WatchDox, a Palo Alto, California based vendor of security tools.
MARKET WILL DRIVE ANSWERS Whether privacy is the purview of consumers, corporate executives, or data scientists, one thing is certain: Data privacy is a hot-button issue. Even the U.S. government is investigating organizations that collect and manage big data and pressuring them to provide consumers with appropriate control over their personal data. But industry observers aren’t holding their breath for sweeping governmental action. “It’s not like the Founding Fathers are getting together in Philadelphia,” says Davis. The ongoing revelations about the NSA’s Prism data-collection program have, if anything, further eroded the public’s confidence that
Whether privacy is the purview of consumers, corporate executives, or data scientists, one thing is certain: Data privacy is a hot-button issue. a code of ethics for analysts. Earlier this year, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) drafted a code of ethics to accompany the launch of its Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) certification program. Yet Davis believes that despite lofty intentions, it’s far too easy for a code of ethics to wind up “written on a piece of paper and put in a drawer.” The challenge, he says, “is that you have to get real about understanding what you actually do with your data and whether or not that aligns with the shared values in your organization.” Unfortunately, he says, determining what your values are as an organization, and whether or not your data practices reflect these priorities, “is a very different conversation than what we’re used to having in a business setting.” And then there are IT professionals who maintain that it’s simply not a data scientist’s job to protect privacy. Instead, “their job is to extract in-
the government will do anything to protect consumers’ privacy. Indeed, Tawakol says that shifts in consumer awareness about data privacy (or lack thereof) are more likely than federal investigations to drive reforms in data collection practices. “The market will provide a mechanism quicker than legislation will,” he says. “There is going to be more and more control of your data, and more clarity on what you’re getting in return. Companies that insist on not being transparent are going to look outdated.”Walker shares that vision of the future. “There are lots of benefits to having data analyzed and having companies narrowly tailor specific products and services to customer preferences. But it’s actually in a company’s best interest to respect people’s private data,” he says, adding that companies are going to lose customers “if consumers find out that a company has been spying on them and using data in a way that’s unethical.”
Focal Point EVERYTHING ABOUT GREEN IT
GREEN Is GOOD
When IT projects focus on operational efficiency, sustainability benefits usually follow. By Robert L. Mitchell
W
HEN KEVIN
Humphries talks about green IT at FedEx, you won’t hear much about reducing the company’s carbon footprint. FedEx embraced the new math of green IT when it engineered every inch of its new, LEED-certified 46,000-sq.-ft. datacenter for maximum operational
efficiency. “We found the most optimal mathematical model for capacities and efficiencies,” says the senior vice president of IT at FedEx Corporate Services. The result is what he calls “a perfect blend” of green energy usage, fiscal savings and rational utilization of equipment and resources. Elements of the design
included flywheel backup power generators, variablespeed fans that help keep the facility’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating low, and air-side economizers that generate 5,000 hours per year of free cooling for the Colorado Springs building. FedEx also raised the operating temperature in the datacenter by 5 degrees to cut the cooling bill. Meanwhile, specific rack cooling technologies, alternative energy sources and other systems were not included because FedEx felt they were risky, prone to failure or required undue maintenance. “We had to find the perfect blend of simplicity and advanced technology,” Humphries says. Because the hype and excitement over green IT has diminished over the past few years, and the specter of carbon taxes has faded, organizations have begun to put sustainable IT initiatives on the back burner, or even dismiss them entirely. But successful green IT projects usually go hand-in-hand with operational efficiency initiatives, where benefits drop down to the bottom line while meeting corporate sustainability goals. “Did we make any tradeoffs with efficiency versus cost? There were very few,” Humphries says. The good news is that there are still plenty of relatively easy ways to make your facilities more ecofriendly. “Your average datacenter remains relatively inefficient,” says Simon Mingay, an analyst at Gartner. And that means green IT affords lots of opportunities for gaining favor with the CFO as well as the corporate sustainability advocate. There’s even a road map to follow: The best practices
for energy efficiency are now well established and readily available from resources such as The Green Grid, and standards for water usage, carbon usage, renewable energy and e-waste are evolving rapidly. Ian Bitterlin, chairman of The Green Grid’s EMEA Technical Work Group and CTO at Emerson Network Power Systems, says there are three steps to maximizing efficiency: Cut consumption, make IT processes more efficient and think about alternative energy —in that order. “If you put them in the wrong order, you’ll just waste renewable energy,” he says.
VIRTUALIZATION END GAME When it comes to reducing consumption and improving operational efficiency, consolidation through server virtualization still offers the biggest bang for the buck. While many IT organizations are working to virtualize more of their legacy server infrastructures —FedEx is now 80 percent virtualized—Raytheon has already reached the finish line. “All legacy servers have been transitioned, [and] as a result, 2013 will be the last year that we capture and report on the energy and cost savings,” says Brian Moore, IT sustainability program lead. The emphasis now turns to desktop virtualization using energy-sipping thin clients, e-waste reduction, and the use of analytics and datacenter instrumentation to monitor, manage and reduce energy use. At Northrop Grumman, server virtualization was part of a datacenter consolidation effort, completed in August, that eliminated 4,000 physical servers while
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
39
n FOCAL POINT | GREEN IT consolidating 19 datacenters and 81 smaller server rooms into three facilities. But like its desktop power management program, which cut energy use for desktops by more than 21 percent, the server virtualization was driven primarily by a desire to improve operational efficiencies and the bottom line. Helping the company’s GreenNG environmental sustainability program achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent—a goal attained just one year into the threeyear initiative—was a bonus. “Power consumption reductions were one of the benefits, but it was just part of our overall IT transformation strategy,” says Brad Furukawa, vice president and CTO for Northrop Grumman’s shared services division. While server virtualization is well established, many organizations are still just getting started with
chilled water to multiple tenants in the local business district. Normally, each business would have its own closed-loop system, each with its own excess capacity. Virtual chillers let each business share capacity, improving energy efficiency and cutting costs, says Cole.
TURNING UP THE HEAT A more controversial green computing initiative involves raising the maximum air intake temperature on equipment racks in datacenters to as high as 80.6 degrees to reduce the energy demands of cooling systems, as Technical Committee 9.9 of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommended in 2011. But today, just 7 percent of all datacenters run at 75 degrees or higher, according to a recent Uptime Institute survey. The idea of raising the temperature
IT’s uniquely positioned to help make the business case for green initiatives that go beyond the datacenter, PCs, and office automation equipment. desktop virtualization. But First National of Nebraska is well into a project to replace between 70 percent and 80 percent of its desktops with virtual desktops accessed through thin clients. The move will cut the hassle and headaches associated with disposal of desktop e-waste, which has been piling up in warehouses. “It was driving us crazy,” says James Cole, senior vice president and CIO at the financial services firm. First National of Nebraska has even extended the concept of virtualization to its chillers. It uses an off-premises utility that provides 40
may seem anathema to many datacenter managers, but some organizations are slowly inching up their thermostats. At Earth Rangers, a nonprofit focused on environmental education, IT systems director Rob DiStefano raised temperatures in a small datacenter from the high 60s in 2010 to 77 degrees, but stopped there when network storage temperature alarms went off. “Storage units are the biggest heat monster in the room,” he says. He could have reconfigured the alarms from the fac-
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
tory defaults, but the idea made him uncomfortable. “We didn’t want to risk it,” DiStefano says. And with intake air temperatures at 77 degrees, air temperatures on the back of the racks were getting uncomfortably warm, says Andy Schonberger, director of the Earth Rangers center. For his part, Humphries raised the temperature in the FedEx Colorado Springs datacenter by 5 degrees. He declined to say where the temperature is now set, but he says if he set the temperature at 76 degrees on the intake side of the racks, the temperature in the hot aisle would top 100 degrees. “Sending in someone to replace servers in 100-degree heat is not what we want,” he says. Humphries says the law of diminishing returns kicks in as you approach the upper range of the ASHRAE limit: Fans run longer and equipment works harder, and adding heat containment would have gone against FedEx’s commitment to simplicity in the datacenter. But raising the temperature 5 degrees in Colorado Springs yielded cost savings that are significant enough for the organization to begin phasing in a similar change at another major datacenter in Tennessee. Savings also added up at Raytheon, which raised temperatures in the network distribution rooms in its Tucson, Arizona, facility from 65 to 75 degrees without running into problems. That step alone saved 112,000 kilowatt-hours per month— enough energy to power 100 homes, according to Moore. Raytheon has expanded the initiative to other facilities, but savings vary depending on location, total power use and other variables.
Roger Schmidt, an IBM fellow and chief engineer on datacenter efficiency, recommends that Web 2.0 and lower-tier datacenters turn the needle closer to the 80.6-degree mark, but he says that even Tier 1 datacenters in risk-averse industries such as banking can safely ease the mercury up to 75 degrees. Another underappreciated strategy is to set up instrumentation in the datacenter that lets administrators monitor and manage both temperature and power use. Most IT organizations still don’t do this, according to Gartner. Schonberger advises building a business case for this by tracking the half-dozen pieces of equipment that are your company’s biggest energy consumers. “It doesn’t save you any money, but it allows you to prioritize,” he says.
SAVING GREEN WITH ALTERNATIVE ENERGY Only after an organization has analyzed and instrumented its datacenter, eliminated redundancy, and reengineered to squeeze the maximum efficiency out of its IT infrastructure should alternative power come into play. First National of Nebraska became one of the first organizations to power a datacenter entirely on fuel cells when it built a new datacenter more than a decade ago. But when it was time to order new fuel cells this year, it was able to cut the power requirements from 600 to 400 kilowatts because management of its datacenter infrastructure had improved. The operating cost, at 12 cents per kwh, is almost double the 6.2 cents First National’s utility would charge. But First National
had designed the building to use the waste heat from fuel cells to warm its interior and melt snow on some outdoor surfaces in the winter. Fuel cells also provide a very stable power supply and meet management’s goals of using renewable energy, Cole says. But, he says, “if we were building the datacenter today, it would be a more difficult business decision.” FedEx uses solar and fuel cells in other facilities. But after considering solar, wind, and fuel cells during the design phase for the Colorado Springs datacenter several years ago, it decided to pass. Of those technologies, fuel cells looked the most promising. The cost of power from fuel cells couldn’t match utility rates, but the business was more concerned about the availability of commercial utility power than the economics, says IT director Brad Hilliard. What killed the idea was the location of service, which at that time was concentrated on the East and West coasts. Today, however, the technology and associated support infrastructure is more mature. Were he reconsidering that decision now, Hilliard says, “We would spend more energy on that because that local utility risk is so important to manage.” Fuel cells can be very efficient for datacenters because the waste heat they generate can be used to cool the facility when fed into special absorption chillers. But from a purely economic standpoint, you still need fiscal incentives, such as tax breaks, to make them a viable business proposition, says Gartner’s Mingay.
BEYOND THE DATACENTER KPMG’s IT team has taken the lead in driving green IT
CONSUMERS WANT GREEN CORPORATES
G
fK’s fourth annual Green Gauge Global findings revealed that over seven in 10 consumers globally and in the APAC region are concerned about environmental pollution. However, only three in five, or 60 percent of respondents in the region said “they would do more for the environment but they don’t know how.” The study involved 37,500 consumers worldwide aged 15 and above. Interestingly, the study showed that among the country participants in the region, respondents from emerging markets, such as China, have indicated more concern for pollution. Respondents from China and India have also expressed concern that they do not seem to know what to do about the green issues. Consumers who sounded more confident about resolving the issues were those from Taiwan and Australia. But even if some consumers in the AP region are not quite sure how to address global warming, some consumers in the region are taking the lead in doing something about it, compared to their global counterparts. It also suggested that consumers from developing countries in the AP region are “more likely” to address the green issues, by conserving water and energy at home. “One particularly noteworthy observation is the fact that consumers globally are increasingly expecting corporations to do their part to address the environment,” said Jodie Roberts, regional director, GfK Consumer Trends. Among the respondents in the region, those from Indonesia, Taiwan, and India showed strong sentiments that companies should take responsible action to help protect the environment. “We live in an era where companies are evaluated not just on their products and services but also how socially responsible they are perceived to be, and this will have a great impact on their business performance going forward,” said Roberts. —Veronica C. Silva initiatives that go well beyond the datacenter. For example, IT pitched a 500 kW solar array to the real estate group for its Montvale, N.J., campus after sustainable IT leader Darren McGann heard a colleague at Microsoft discussing a solar project it had completed. The IT group also raised average operating temperatures to 79 degrees in its datacenters after seeing a demonstration where Microsoft moved part of a datacenter into an outdoor tent to demonstrate the robustness of IT equipment. McGann claims that KPMG’s datacenter was the first to generate power using gas micro turbine generators, and it reuses the waste
heat in combination with absorption chillers to help cool the datacenter. Gas-powered microturbines are more economical than fuel cells, but you still can’t make the business case on energy savings alone, says Mingay. In most locations, you still need tax breaks, capital allowances, or the policy tool known as “feed-in tariffs” to make them economically viable, although it can be more attractive in locations where natural gas is inexpensive. IT is uniquely positioned to help make the business case for, and drive, other green initiatives that go beyond the datacenter, PCs and office automation
equipment. At KPMG, for example, it was IT business process analysis and automation expertise that helped propel an initiative to create a paperless audit system. IT also collaborated with the in-house travel group to encourage video-conferencing in lieu of travel. To do that, it created a JavaScript program within the travel services portal that determines when users request travel between locations where video-conferencing services are available and offers to redirect users to a video-conferencing reservations page before they complete their flight arrangements. “That increased video-conferencing by 85 percent in just three months,” which increased productivity by reducing travel downtime, saved energy and reduced the company’s carbon footprint by 60 percent in one fell swoop, McGann says. “What I’m most proud of is that the IT organization has been a constant contributor by engaging with nontraditional partners within the organization,” he adds. Many companies have adopted virtualization-by-default policies, and IT needs to extend that to “design green by default,” says McGann. It’s easier to make the business case when starting fresh, because retrofits are more expensive. But it’s also important to have a clear understanding of what sort of commitment management is making toward energy and carbon reduction and align projects to meet those strategic goals. “Many projects will align with an energy reduction goal or a leadership commitment the CEO has made,” he says. “And once you connect the dots you can get leadership to go forward.”
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
41
ey is there in the budget to dispose of our surplus equipment responsibly, ensuring that Rackspace’s equipment does not cause any environmental issues.” The same approach is followed by Akamai. “We are committed to being environmentally and socially responsible, which means that we consider and include disposal costs in our TCO,” Peill-Moelter says. “In doing so, our goal is to budget for the ‘greenest’ equipment disposal, not the cheapest.”
7
2
Things About
Hardware Disposal
What IT managers need to know about safe hardware disposal. By James Careless
F
day that you plug in a new piece of IT hardware, the clock starts ticking toward the day when it will be pulled out of service. When that day comes, responsible IT execs ensure that the now-surplus component is either repurposed, resold or recycled—with none of its toxic components ending up in an unregulated Third World dump. Fortunately, it is possible for proactiveminded IT departments to prevent this from happening, thus protecting the environment, people, and the valuable public image 42
ROM THE first
(and stock price) of the company.
1
Build disposal costs into hardware lifecycle budgets Big corporations go through lots of IT equipment. “Akamai Technologies’ global content distribution network is made up of 127,000 servers and is growing daily,” says Nicole Peill-Moelter, Akamai’s director of environmental sustainability. “These servers are spread across 81 countries in 1,150 networks, and we refresh them on a four-year basis.” Every piece of IT hardware—be it a server, moni-
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
tor, router, keyboard, or mouse—has a value and costs associated with it throughout its lifespan. They include the cost of acquisition, installation, housing, maintenance, and ultimately disposal. Rackspace is a managed hosting and cloud computing company with nine data centers and 100,000 servers in use at any given time. Melissa Gray, Rackspace’s director of global sustainability says, “TCO includes the cost of responsible hardware disposal once it is past its operational lifespan.” She adds, “This means that the mon-
Be sure to find a disposal company that’s certified There are all kinds of IT equipment recycling firms promising to provide responsible equipment disposal to companies, institutions, and individuals. The key to ensuring that the company you choose does what it promises is to select a recycler with strong credentials, Gray says. Fortunately, there are certification programs to verify such promises. One of these is e-Stewards, which is backed by the Basel Action Network non-profit waste watchdog group, and endorsed by corporate heavy-hitters such as Alcoa, Bloomberg, Boeing, and Wells Fargo. Another is Responsible Recycling (R2) Solutions. Both programs are endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Once you know what to look for, certified hardware disposal firms are not that hard to find. For instance, Newport Computers of Rochester, New Hampshire, is “a certified e-Steward and R2/RIOS (Recycling Industry Operating Standards) Certified
GREEN IT | FOCAL POINT n Electronics Recycler,” says Anne M. McKivergan, one of the company’s two vice presidents. “We find that many of our customers are requiring one or both of those certifications these days as proof of our commitment to responsible handling of the assets.” Companies such as Newport who have undertaken e-Stewards and R2/ RIOS certification regularly open up their systems and procedures to an independent third party for auditing. McKivergan adds, “A reputable company who is handling the waste properly will be able to provide documentation showing the flow of the materials to their final destination and will not have a problem explaining where everything goes”. She cautions, “One of the clearest signs of a company who is merely dumping the electronic waste illegally and indiscriminately is anyone who says, ‘we’ll pay you for your e-waste’ before even asking what you’re trying to dispose of.”
3
Consider repurposing before recycling Within two years of deployment, the best servers and routers are already showing their age -- at least in comparison to the newest IT equipment that has subsequently come to market. Think of it as being the Curse of Moore’s Law: With the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubling approximately every two years, IT equipment made and deployed in 2011 is now definitely behind the curve! Google is a major consumer of servers and routers; for security reasons, the search engine giant won’t say how many they actually have. However, Google is very public about its commitment to environmentally sustainable practices, including how it deals with aging IT equipment. “We’re a carbon neutral company and have strong initiatives in place to reduce the environmental impact of our global operations,” says Google spokesperson Kate Hurowitz. “When it comes to equipment, our approach is to extend the life cycle of our equipment as much as possible, then dispose of it responsibly.”
Specifically, “Before we buy new equipment and materials, we look for ways to reuse what we already have,” Hurowitz says. “As we upgrade to newer, higher-speed servers, we repurpose older machines either by moving them to services that don’t require as much processing power, or by removing and reusing the components that are still in good working condition. Since 2007, we’ve remanufactured and repurposed enough outdated servers to avoid buying over 300,000 new replacement machines.”
4
Don’t forget data destruction At Google, destroying data on surplus hard drives is an internal matter: “We completely erase any components that stored data, and then resell them into the market, giving the equipment a second life,” Hurowitz says. As a certified hardware recycler, Newport Computers provides data removal services to its clients. In fact, “a big part of what we do is data destruction,” McKivergan says. This is available in various strengths. Newport Computers can use software to overwrite the drive, removing data while leaving the hardware reusable. But in those instances where data destruction must be 100 percent certain, “we can bring out the big guns and either degauss the drives or shred them, making them unusable again,” she says.
5
Make charitable donations In those instances where an IT department is disposing of equipment that had low-security applications—such as usage by customer service reps at a call center, or entry-level clerks in Administration— it may be possible to wipe it, and then donate this equipment to charity. Such donations can consist of complete machines and/or parts. Outdated software can also be a welcome gift, as long as donating it does not pose any licensing/ownership issues. Giving old equipment to charitable foundations such as TechSoup or Computers for Charity is both socially and environmentally responsible, and also good for
one’s corporate image. So is making equipment donations to local schools, social agencies, and churches, whose IT needs are easily satisfied by CPU speeds that are inadequate by current business standards.
6
Make green computing a way of life The reason that companies such as Akamai, Google, and Rackspace were able to make wellinformed decisions about equipment disposal is because all three have embraced environmentally sustainable practices as a way of doing business. “At Rackspace, we are a member of the Green Grid Association,” Gray says. “This means that we are actively involved in finding ways to improve green practices at data centers, including the development and adoption of the Electronics Disposal Efficiency (EDE) metric. The EDE is designed to allow companies to easily and effectively rate how well they are disposing of their surplus technology, with an eye to improving it over time.” Rackspace also governs its business practices in line with standards such as ISO14001 (Environmental Management Systems), OSHAS 18001 (Health and Safety), and ISO9001 (Quality Management)—and requires the same standards from its suppliers. By doing so, Rackspace is covering all of its bases when it comes to environmental and social responsibility.
7
Weigh costs versus rewards Choosing an equipment recycler who does it properly and under audited certification is more expensive than using a fly-bynight company. Finding the right recycler will require a commitment of staff time and other resources, but the benefits justify the expense. “Being environmentally responsible does affect the bottom line, but so does being irresponsible,” Gray says. “In fact, when you add in the impact on the community, the planet, employee morale, and your firm’s reputation, the cost of being responsible is actually less than not doing the right thing.”
DECEMBER 2013
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD
43
n OPINION
BART PERKINS
Got a Good Prenup? Having a prenup agreement can make all the difference as it will help you avoid data custody battles and orphaned services.
Bart Perkins is managing partner at Louisville, Ky.based Leverage Partners, which helps organizations invest well in IT. Contact him at BartPerkins@ LeveragePartners.com. 44
E
NTERPRISES REGULARLY change outsourcers,
cloud providers, and other suppliers. Such “divorces” usually come about as a result of irreconcilable differences, which might arise from a failure to live up to product specifications, contract metrics, or service levels. Or maybe the enterprise merges with or acquires a company that uses a different supplier. For a number of reasons, supplier relationships are rarely “till death do you part” arrangements, so it’s good practice to protect corporate interests by creating a solid “prenuptial agreement” before signing a contract. To do that, your enterprise has to have enough clout to change a supplier’s standard contract. If it does, there are certain terms you’ll want to specify. Data retrieval policy. Suppliers make it easy to load data into their systems. Most offer special tools to facilitate data uploads and are particularly helpful when porting data from a rival’s system. But getting data back can be another story. You should specify conditions and the format for eventually retrieving your data. Early termination costs. Many customers want to be able to terminate a contract early with minimal justification. But suppliers must shoulder high setup costs, and they usually plan to recover those costs over the contract’s life. If a supplier suspects you may terminate early, it might increase its prices to compensate for the expected loss of revenue. If you need early termination provisions, determine whether the increased cost is worth it. Fee ceilings. Though early termination fees vary widely, they can nearly equal the payments due for the remaining contract period. Termination costs can also rise if you need migration assistance. And if the supplier continues to provide you with a separate service, it might impose steep rate increases to recoup some lost revenue. A prenup should limit all of those cost oppor-
INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2013
tunities. But be reasonable and seek what’s fair to both parties. Ownership of proprietary elements. Occasionally, hosting services keep copies of proprietary data or custom extensions to ERP systems or other software packages. Some suppliers argue they have rights to software developed in their server centers. Avoid costly confusion by clarifying ownership of data and intellectual property upfront. Service levels. Suppliers are not motivated to assign their best people to help customers migrate to a competing supplier. It is critical to specify the type of help to be provided and the speed with which assistance will be performed. Data retention rules. Some organizations want all their data deleted immediately after termination. Most organizations with a hosted e-mail service want assurance that e-mails with personally identifiable information cannot be retrieved by anyone, ever. Supplier selection, like courtship, is a time of optimism. Both sides focus on the new relationship’s benefits, and nobody wants to think about possible dissolution. But be realistic before consummating the new contract. A prenup agreement can help you avoid data custody battles and orphaned services.