ChannelWorld June 2014 Isuue 3

FOCAL POINT: How Western Union is using analytics with a mix of mobile and social technologies to beat its competition. PAGE 49

ChannelWorld STRATEGIC INSIGHTS FOR SOLUTION PROVIDERS | COVER PRICE Rs.50

(L) JAIDEEP CHAKRABARTI, CEO, Future Netwings, and DEEPAK JADHAV, Director, VDA Infosolutions, see big data as a revenue generator.

Inside JUNE 2014 VOL. 8, ISSUE 3

News Analysis There’s renewed interest in augmented reality but is it time to take a risk on the technology? PAGE 14

The Grill: Anil Bhasin, MD, India and SAARC, Palo Alto Networks, on why its offerings beat the pants of the competition. PAGE 31

BIGDATA BIGMONEY Big data can mean big money for channel partners—if they know who to partner with, and which verticals to target. But that requires wetting their toes. >>PAGE 36

On Record: Suresh Reddy, VP, Huawei Enterprise India, on what differentiates the company—and why Chinese doesn’t mean cheap. PAGE 34

Feature 11 reasons why encryption is dead. PAGE 43

Case Study Ever been asked to build a datacenter in just three months, and then do it with half the promised space?

CNT has. PAGE 46

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5/21/14 10:30 AM

n EDITOR’S NOTE

Vijay Ramachandran

Embrace the Chaos “One day you will take a fork in the road, and you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go… In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you have to make a decision: to be or to do.”

— Col. John R. Boyd

G

IVEN HOW cyclical the nature of business and

life is, it amuses me to no end when ‘experts’ coin acronyms to describe how today’s world is oh-sodifferent from before, and then go breathless in hypying them up. Take VUCA (volatile; uncertain; complex; ambiguous) or RUPT (Rapid; Unpredictable; Paradoxical;

Turbulent), for instance.

Can’t figure out how to outdo competiton? Grappling with talent attrition? Going round the bend as clients squeeze out your margins?

What else do you expect in a VUCA/RUPT world.

Both terms do describe what the business landscape looks like, but when was the external reality any different? In fact, it might interest you to know that ‘VUCA’ was first coined in the 1990s.

Bob Johansen, former CEO of the Institute of the The Future, concludes that VUCA will get worse in future; it will create both risk and opportunity; and that business leaders must learn new skills in order to handle the disruption that VUCA causes. Johansen’s way out is that you learn to turn volatility into vision, uncertainty into understanding, complexity into clarity, and ambiguity into agility.

4

That’s easier said than done, of course. Life is about chaos and disorder, however much we try and bring in order and meaning. That’s the way it’s been since the primeval spark that brought our Universe into being.

It’s the same randomness that caused life to take root on Earth. That caused the dinosaurs to die out and for mammals and humans to thrive. Instead of trying to create order, wouldnt it make more sense to harness the chaos? Instead of creating disruption, how about disrupting the disruptor?

n Instead of trying

to create order, wouldn’t it make more sense to harness the disorder and disrupting the disruptor?

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

For a hundred years now, fighter pilots have inhabited this world, specially when taking on an enemy aircraft in a dogfight that requires agility of thought, rapid response and nerves of steel. Slip up and you perish in seconds.

John R. Boyd was instinctively good at dogfighting—the US Air Force veteran could win any dogfight in 40 seconds or less, even when flying an inferior aircraft.

Boyd’s structured his success at disruption into the OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act—a strategy that has directed the training of US Air Force piots since the 1950s.

At one level, Boyd’s loop simplifies how humans make decisions, at another, however it contains the blueprint for building competitive advantage. Working in a loop that’s faster than an enemy’s, Boyd observes “make us appear ambigu-

ous, [and] thereby generate confusion and disorder.”

In a business environment, Observation is about gathering data on what’s really going on in your company and externally. It’s critical to monitor the critical pieces and dump the rest.

Orientation involves putting human intelligence and past experiences to give correct context to key external indicators and make predictions.

Decision-making is clearly about using the data and its contest to consistently make better and faster decisions at lower costs.

Action refers to triggering activities that follow the first three aspects.

Want to out-think your competition? Want to rapidly prototype solutions, test them out, get customer feedback, and launch in the market fast?

Then make the OODA loop your main strategy.

Success in the enterprise channels is defined by many as being about spotting a trend early, of creating brand awareness or even of pushing the best solutions, however, true success requires you to do this and also outmaneuver your rivals, sow confusion in their minds, figure out the landscape, and attack. Agility wins in war and business.

Act. Fast. Now. n Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of ChannelWorld. Contact him at vijay_ramachandran@ idgindia.com

FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN

Inside INDIAN CHANNELWORLD ■ JUNE 2014

■ NEWS DIGEST 09 SAP Apps Get on Azure |

SAP has moved its apps and other software on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. This, in turn, is taking Microsoft and SAP’s existing partnership to a new level.

10 Check Point Builds Threat Intelligence Sharing Alliance | Check Point Software Technologies

■ OPINION

04 Editorial: Instead of trying to

create order, wouldn’t it make more sense to harness the disorder and disrupting the disruptor, asks Vijay Ramachandran.

54 PlainSpeak: Yogesh Gupta explains how the rapid expansion of coffee houses over time is similar to the changes the technology world has been witnessing.

■ THE GRILL

31 Anil Bhasin, MD, India and SAA-

RC, Palo Alto Networks, talks about

will now be able to gather threatintelligence data about malware sources and impending attacks from seven security firms with which it has recently tied up.

12 Cisco Brings VC to Desks |

Cisco is all set to revolutionize the world of video conferencing by launching a stream of products that would enable a flexible video and voice call experience that doesn’t require a fixed desktop and can be carried on in any virtual room.

■ NEWS ANALYSIS

31 the company’s Layer-7 architecture which is far ahead of other players in the security industry.

■ FAST TRACK

33 Amarish Shah, Director and

Co-founder of Unified Data-Tech Solutions, shares how building a strong brand image and staying close to the customer helped the company bag a Rs 12 crore project.

14 AR: The Real Deal | How

■ COVER STORY

36 Big Data

Big Money

Big data might be a new technology but it’s gaining ground faster than most emerging technologies. And channel partners have realized that. They are acknowledging the fact that big data can mean big money if they know who to partner with and which verticals to sell. But that requires wetting their toes in the big data pool.

augmented reality can attract customers and bust the myths about its drawbacks.

Cover Photograph by: KAPIL SHROFF & F O T O C O R P Cover Design by UNNIKRISHNAN A.V

36

■ CASE STUDY

46 Fit to Size

33

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Inside

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD ■ JUNE 2014

■ ON RECORD

34 Suresh Reddy, Vice President, Huawei

Enterprise India, believes that the company’s

CHANNELWORLD and introduced the company to a world of mobile, social and analytics technologies.

The company aims to go digital, and creatively so. It plans to leverage the power of new and emerging technologies to get ahead of competition and provide its customers with the best experience possible.

Here’s how.

52 Go Forth: Web Analytics ANALYTICS: Even the smallest of organiza-

tions today require an analytics tool to man the traffic that comes to their websites, but

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

CHANNELWORLD.IN

Publisher, President & CEO Louis D’Mello ■ EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief Vijay Ramachandran Executive Editors Gunjan Trivedi, Yogesh Gupta Deputy Editor Sunil Shah Features Editor Shardha Subramanian Assistant Editors Gopal Kishore, Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya Special Correspondent Sneha Jha Principal Correspondents Aritra Sarkhel, Shweta Rao, Shubhra Rishi.

Senior Correspondent Eric Ernest Senior Copy Editor Vinay Kumaar Video Editor Kshitish B.S. Lead Designers Pradeep Gulur, Suresh Nair, Vikas Kapoor Senior Designers Sabrina Naresh, Unnikrishnan A.V. Trainee Journalists Bhavika Bhuwalka, Ishan Bhattacharya, Madhav Mohan, Mayukh Mukherjee, Vaishnavi J. Desai Trainee Sejuti Das ■ SALES

strong customer-centric values have already made the three-year-old venture reap profits.

■ FOCAL POINT

due to a lack of knowledge, they don’t utilize the tool optimally. Here are eight tips from experts on how to use analytics.

■ FEATURE

49 On the Move

TECHNOLOGY: For a company like Western Union that caters to a customer base of about two billion, having a strong IT

43 11 Reasons Encryption is Dead Massive leaps in computing power, hidden layers, hardware backdoors—encrypting

& MARKETING

President Sales & Marketing Sudhir Kamath Vice President Sales Sudhir Argula Associate Publisher Parul Singh General Manager Marketing Siddharth Singh General Manager Sales Jaideep M. Manager Key Accounts Sakshee Bagri Manager Sales Support Nadira Hyder Senior Marketing Associates Arjun Punchappady Archana Ganapathy, Benjamin Jeevanraj, Cleanne Carol Serrao, Margaret Sunitha Dcosta Marketing Associate Lavneetha Kunjappa, Shwetha M. Lead Designer Jithesh C.C. Senior Designer Laaljith C.K. Management Trainee Aditya D. Sawant, Bhavya Mishra, Brijesh Saxena, Chitiz Gupta, Deepali Patel, Deepinder Singh, Eshant Oguri, Mayur R Shah, R. Venkat Raman ■ OPERATIONS

backbone is a no-brainer. But that was far from true. Until its new CIO took charge

sensitive data from prying eyes is more precarious than ever.

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Cisco Systems India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC

HP Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

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Emerson Network Power India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . BC

Juniper Networks India Pvt.LTd . . . . . . . . . . . . .IBC

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Hitachi Data Systems India Pvt. Ltd., . . . . . .18 & 19

Redignton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions.

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News

WHAT’S WITHIN

PAGE 10: Global IT Spending Dips, Says IDC

PAGE 10: Check Point’s Threat-Intelligence Sharing Alliance PAGE 12: Cisco Launches on-the-go Video Conferencing PAGE 14: Augmented Reality Vying for Customer Attention

F I N D M O R E A R T I C L E S AT CHANNELWORLD.IN

CLOUD COMPUTING

SAP Apps Get on Azure

M

ICROSOFT AND

SAP’s long-standing partnership is being strengthened with the pending certification of SAP’s ERP and other software for deployment on the Azure cloud infrastructure service.

By the end of the second quarter, SAP’s Business Suite, Business All-in-One, mobile platform, Adaptive Server Enterprise database, and the developer version of the Hana in-memory computing platform will be certified for Azure, the companies said.

SAP’s Cloud Appliance Library will make it possible to launch preconfigured SAP software packages to Azure within just a few minutes, they added.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will support customers if a problem crops up at the infrastructure level, while SAP would take over if the issue involves an application error, said Kevin Ichhpurani, SVP, head of business development and strategic ecosystem at SAP. If the problem’s source can’t be immediately targeted, SAP and Microsoft would

work together to resolve it, he added.

SAP and Microsoft also announced the general availability of an integration between SAP BusinessObjects and Microsoft Power BI through Excel; an upcoming release of SAP’s Gateway that will tie together SAP applications and Office 365; and plans for SAP mobile applications that support Windows and Windows Phone 8.1.

SAP’s announcement follows moves by both Oracle and Infor to certify their software for Azure.

The deal has positive implications for both Microsoft and SAP, said analyst Ray Wang, chairman and founder of Constellation Research. “This is SAP trying to show its cloud cred with a Microsoft partnership, and Microsoft trying to show enterprise cloud cred with SAP,” he said.

But SAP’s arrangement with Microsoft only goes so far, given it doesn’t currently include Business One, which competes with some members of Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP family, as well as the enterprise edition of Hana.

The announcement represents the beginning of what will lead to more SAP software heading to Azure, according to Ichhpurani.

JUNE 2014

—Chris Kanaracus INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

9

DATACENTER

Veeam’s Availability Suite Veeam Software has launched the Veeam Availability Suite, an integrated solution to ensure that data and applications are always accessible whenever and wherever they are needed.

The Availability Suite integrates the Veeam Backup & Replication v8 and Veeam ONE solutions into a single

management platform for datacenters. “The modern business cycle is no longer confined to five days a week, eight hours a day,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam.

“IT organizations must make data and applications available to all stakeholders every minute of every day.

New features in the Veeam Availability Suite v8 include NetApp Integration for quicker backups, EMC Data Domain Boost Integration for more efficient backups, and AES 256 bit encryption for end-to-end VM backups.

-Antony Savvas

-

IT SPEND

IDC Cuts IT Spend Forecast

A

SLOWDOWN in the economy for Europe and growth rate for Asia, an erosion of mobile tablet and mobile phone prices, and a slowphone sales and down in the tablet market economic uncertainty in caused IDC to cut expectaemerging markets are puttions for IT spending. ting a damper on global IT Part of the problem is spending, according to IDC. that it is difficult for smartWorldwide IT spending phone and tablet vendors to will increase 4.1 percent maintain the extraordinary in constant cursales growth they rency this year, experienced over to $3.7 trillion the past years.

The increase in (about Rs 222 “As smartglobal IT spending lakh crore) said phone growth this year—that’s down from last year’s 4.5 IDC. That’s continues to cool percent growth. down from last from the pheyear’s 4.5 percent nomenal expangrowth and from IDC’s sion of the past few years, prior forecast of 4.6 pertablet shipments have cent growth. performed weaker than exThe move to cloud techpected over the past couple nology and pent-up demand of quarters,” said Stephen to replace old servers, Minton, vice president in storage and network gear IDC’s Global Technology & provides a solid foundation Industry Research Organifor IT spending, according zation, in a statement. to IDC. Especially in the In March, IDC forecast latter half of the year, enthe total tablet market, terprises may end up doing including tablets and some catch-up spending to 2-in-1 devices, to grow replace old equipment.

19.4 percent in 2014, down But “wild cards” in the from a growth rate of 51.6 Source: IDC

4.1%

percent last year. IDC also said earlier this year that worldwide smartphone shipments would be 1.2 billion units—that’s a 19.3 percent jump over last year, but represents a smaller increase in terms of 2013’s 39.2 percent rise.

Otherwise, the crisis in Ukraine has provoked a sense of uncertainty in Europe, and IDC expects IT spending in Russia to decline by almost 1 percent this year. The slowdown in Russia will have an impact on other countries in the region, IDC said.

In Asia, “China remains a wild card,” IDC said in its report. Demand for IT spending after the slowdown of 2013 could help buoy IT spending in the country. However, IDC noted that some economists are forecasting that Chinese GDP growth could slump below 7 percent in 2014 and 20 15.

Based on exchange rates in the first quarter, the 4.1 percent growth in constant currency terms translates to just 3.4 percent growth in US dollars, as currency volatility hits US-based vendors, IDC noted.

Check Point Builds ThreatIntelligence Sharing Alliance

10

used for defensive purposes is a part of CheckPoint’s Softwaredefined Protection program.

Alon Kantor, VP of business development at Check Point, said that each of these security firms has valuable information about malware sources or impending denialof-service attacks that can now be consolidated by Check

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

 F-Secure appointed

Amit Nath as Country Manager, India & SAARC. He will handle India relations, strategy and growth for channel’s enterprise business. With 17 years of industry experience, he is expected to position F-Secure as a strong channel-driven company.

 EMC has merged all its partner programs under a global, unified structure, claiming it will provide resellers with a more predictable experience.

The Business Partner Program (BPP) intends to reward businesses which build “deep and broad investments across EMC” and its subsidiaries.  Cyberoam

reported its results for FY2013 registering an impressive 50% growth over FY2012 with enterprise business contributing 20% of total business.

The company has been making efforts to break in emerging growth markets and expanded network portfolio security solutions.

—By Marc Ferranti

SECURITY

Check Point Software Technologies announced an alliance with seven security firms to make use of their threat-intelligence feeds to block attacks.

Some of these security firms are iSIGHT Partners, CrowdStrike and NetClean among others. Their cooperation in providing their threat-intelligence information in a way that can be

Short Takes

Building Relations: The alliance includes seven security firms.

Point in its ThreatCloud IntelliStore service.

“We’re opening up our existing ThreatCloud to third parties for threat-intelligence indica-

tors,” said Kantor. The feed from a source such as iSIGHT Partners, which specializes on adversary-focused intelligence, might provide information on how to immediately block URLs, IP addresses and malicious files.

Check Point would provide the security firms with an anonymized report of customers that makes use of their threatintelligence stream so that the report would list the industry the customer is involved in but not identifying information.

- Ellen Messmer

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS CUSTOM GROUP INTERVIEW FORTINET HP

A new way of setting up infrastructure for compute and storage is cropping up, and in that new scenario, SDS is the only answer.

SURGING AHEAD

boxes sold. But it does not happen that way; disruptive technology will have to come in.

SDS gives organizations the flexibility to use storage the way they want. A new way of setting up infrastructure for compute and storage is cropping up, and in that new scenario, SDS is the only answer.

J.B. Hooda, Co-Founder and Director, Progression Infonet, elaborates on the benefits of HP’s storage technology and throws light on why HP is a highly revered name in the channel space.

Could you please elaborate on why you plan to adopt HP’s SDS-based storage portfolio?

If we stick to conventional storage technology in the future, we will be able to meet neither the capacity requirements nor performance requirements of our customers. Therefore, we are seriously considering implementing the HP range of SDS solutions.

HP leads from the front when it comes to delivering transformational technologies in the market. It also leads with regard to the completeness of offerings. Additionally, it is a partner-centric company with whom new channel partners can collaborate confidently, considering there would definitely be profitability and predictability in the relationship.

IN STORAGE

By Aritra Sarkhel How long has Progression been partnering with HP? It’s been close to 18 years since we started collaborating with HP, but it became more prominent when HP took over Compaq.

HP’s portfolio is comprehensive and its storage offerings are completely specific to applications and disparate business areas.

Storage utilization and consumption in any organization is huge, and HP’s strategy, which advocates deploying the same storage architecture from entry level to the highest, enables easy management of resources and lowers cost for companies.

Such a beneficial approach is reason enough for us to align ourselves with HP. How has HP helped you enhance the competencies required to drive the Converged Infrastructure Solutions portfolio in the market?

HP has crystal clear plans, right from ideation to implementation to management of the infrastructure. HP’s team proactively

conducts timely and regular training for customers. The pre-sales team, especially, has been stellar in this regard. It trains key personnel of Progression Infonet on various aspects such as understanding the business, the underlying technology, the perspective of different stakeholders at the customers’ side and others, making the employees more aware and sensitive to customer needs. As a result, the entire implementation process has become smooth and transparent. The HP team has, thus, been consistently helping partners and customers manage their storage infrastructure effectively.

In the storage space, has SoftwareDefined Storage (SDS) cannibalized hardware sales?

SMBs’ and enterprises’ consumption of storage and computing power has been increasing rapidly due to the surge in the number of projects they handle. Had SDS not emerged, there would have been more

This interview is brought to you by IDG Services in association with HP

VIDEO CONFERENCING

Cisco Brings VC to Desks

C

ISCO WILL target individual video conferencing users with new desktop devices and a cloud-based service.

“We want to bring a great video conferencing experience to every room, every office, every pocket,” said Peder Ulander, VP of Cisco’s marketing solutions.

The new products include the DX line of video conferencing devices. They run the Android OS and have a large touch-screen display, integrated camera, microphone and soft phone.

“These new products bring telepresence to the desk,” Ulander said.

They are designed to improve video and audio quality while consolidating the mish-mash of communications peripherals, like standalone webcams and external speakers.

The Cisco devices have HD displays and the company’s Intelligent Audio technology, which filters out background noise, and Intelligent Proximity technology, which links them up with users’ cellphones.

The devices come with Bluetooth headsets and can also be used for Web browsing and running Android apps. “It’s like having a large-screen Android tablet on your desk,” he said.

They can also act as external displays for tablets and laptops running a variety of operating systems, including iOS, MacOS, Windows and Linux. “It’s a personal collaboration device for

12

your desktop,” Ulander said. According to Cisco, each machine can be used by multiple users, each with their own log-in credentials, settings, contact lists and the like.

The DX 80 has a 23-inch touch screen display and has a “list price” of about $3,000 (about Rs 1.8 lakh), while the DX 70 has a 14inch touch screen display and costs $1,000 (about Rs 60,000). Cisco plans to ship them this month.

Meanwhile, Cisco’s new Collaboration Meeting Room (CMR) is a SaaS VC intended to complement WebEx Meetings software by offering a more ad-hoc user experience.

Around

TheWorld Openstack Added to IBM Cloud

IBM has added its distribution of the OpenStack cloud hosting software to its recently launched online market of products and services.

The software—IBM Cloud Manager—will be used by organizations to run hybrid clouds, where workloads can be run either within data centres of organizations, or on a public cloud run by a vendor.

IBM is testing a selfprovisioning service that would allow OpenStack workloads to be moved from

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

While this is designed for more formal, pre-planned sessions like webinars and group meetings, CMR gives individuals their own cloud-hosted video conferencing space where they can host meetings just by sending invitees a link to their “virtual” room.

Participants can join from endpoints like Cisco and non-Cisco video conferencing devices and clients like Microsoft’s Lync.

Cisco will also announce a new line of IP telephones.

The 8800 Series features the Intelligent Proximity technology for importing contacts and call history and lets in-progress voice or video calls get transferred from smartphones.

Other companies following suite include Microsoft, IBM, Google, Avaya, Siemens’ Unify, Alcatel-Lucent, Mitel and ShoreTel. —By Juan Carlos Perez

a private cloud to IBM’s SoftLayer-based cloud.

—Joab Jackson

The production should begin by 2016.

—By Lucas Mearian

SanDisk and Toshiba to Create 3D SSDs

RSA Group’s CIO Joins the EC

Toshiba and SanDisk will team up to produce threedimensional NAND flash chips that will increase solid state drive density and performance.

Toshiba plans to demolish its Fab 2 plant in Japan, and replace it with the wafer fab facility where SanDisk will also invest resources to begin creating the 3D NAND. They will support 3D memory production with leading-edge equipment for lithography, deposition and etching through joint ventures.

RSA has appointed Group CIO Darren Price to its executive committee.

Price’s appointment demonstrates RSA’s commitment to the use of effective technology and is a core plank of its new strategy.

He will work across the Group leveraging best practice and improve regional capability.

—By Gaurav Sharma

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n NEWS ANALYSIS

AR: The

Real Deal

Bad examples of augmented reality turned off users, but that could change as companies get creative and make apps more engaging.

By Matt Hamblen

14

F

OUR YEARS have

passed since augmented reality (AR) apps for smartphones started appearing in app stores for consumer use, but the trend has been slow to catch on.

While military AR applications for pilots and soldiers have been around for years, AR apps are just now expanding to other work-related areas. One example is fighting fires, where a helmet-mounted display provides a building schematic to indicate where gas lines or people might be located.

“We didn’t see AR hit the mainstream until location-based services got big

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

three or four years ago, so you point your phone up at Big Ben and get added information,” said Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen.

“While the military has been using AR for a long time, now we all have devices in our pockets which have made AR accessible to the mass market.”

Even so, the mass market for AR apps is still so new that Gartner and other research firms haven’t precisely measured its size or financial impact.

“Even though AR is quite prolific for consumers and we’ve seen a lot of it in the last three years, in terms of AR picking up and engaging consumers, that hasn’t happened,”

Nguyen said.“There are just so many bad examples of it,” Nguyen added. “Let’s say I see an ad in a magazine and say, ‘Hey, this is AR-enabled’ and so I pull out my phone to point at the ad and something comes up, like an animation or a Web site. But I’ll say, “OK, that’s interesting, but I could have done it at home on my big screen and all you are offering me is the same thing on a smaller screen that costs me data use, so I’m not likely to do that again.’”

There are some interesting consumer AR campaigns, but they are trickling out slowly, Nguyen said. “There are so many solution providers with bad AR campaigns that it’s turning people off to AR and giving it a bad name.”

Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar WorldPanel Comtech, agreed that AR hasn’t been successful with consumers, partly because so many of the app experiences are “quite gimmicky” and not always easy to use. What’s needed is a way to make the AR experiences more relevant and engaging to users, she said.

“AR is very hard to do well,” added Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates. “Even small errors in AR cause major issues, and users perceive the lack of coordination or quality.”

Conde Nast Traveler was one of the first to use a simple version of AR with its app guides for four popular tourist cities, while Nokia in 2013 upgraded its locationbased AR features in the Lumia 1020. With the app, a user can point the Lumia smartphone to a city

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n NEWS ANALYSIS street scene to see names of shops appear above certain buildings in the display.

One of the more successful recent uses of AR, in Nguyen’s opinion, uses the Ikea home furnishing catalog that debuted last year. With Ikea’s AR app, a user at home points a smartphone or tablet at an item in the catalog to see on the device’s display a couch, chair or table within that user’s living space.

For its catalog app, Ikea relied on AR-provider Metaio, which boasts Macy’s, Audi and McDonald’s among its clients.

Other AR approaches for use with handheld devices are also emerging.

Seacoast Media Group, a regional newspaper chain in the Northeast, plans to launch in June a free AR app for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets called SMG Shine.

A photo, headline or ad in one of SMG’s six print newspapers could act as a trigger to launch a streaming video or other content, according to Colin Smith, digital marketing specialist for SMG. “You might hold your phone or tablet over a picture of a high school basketball player taking a jump shot and get to see the rest of the play and other game highlights,” Smith said. “From an advertising standpoint, if you see a picture or a listing of a house in a real estate ad that catches your attention, you could ‘shine’ a tour of the house immediately, rather than looking up the website or calling to hear information.”

16

Anyone Can Buy Google Glass Now

G

oogle is ramping up its efforts to get its wearable computer onto as many heads as possible by opening up Glass for general sale.

The company announced this month that after keeping a tight reign on Glass sales, the computerized eyeglasses now are up for sale—as long as Google has them in stock to sell.

Google’s Glass team made it clear in a post on Google+ that the product is still in beta testing and the company’s looking for early adopters, also known as Explorers, while engineers continue to work on the hardware and software and third parties add to the ecosystem of apps.

“We told you we’d be trying out new ways to find Explorers,” the team wrote in the blog post. “Well, we weren’t kidding.

We learned a lot when we opened our site a few weeks ago, so we’ve decided to move to a more open beta.”

For now, Glass is only available for sale in the United States, though the team noted in comments on the blog post that they hope to make Glass more widely available “in the future.” The team didn’t specify a timeframe. Glass is expected to come out of beta and be officially available for sale sometime this year.

Google has recently begun to escalate its efforts to push Glass out to an increasingly large user base.

Smith said he understands how some users might want to avoid an AR app that promotes ads, but said the “strength of the idea is that it promotes user-engaging advertisements. Users hate advertisements that don’t deliver content, and this app sets up a platform for that content to be delivered in an entertaining way.”

User-driven engagement is more important than ever in advertising and marketing, Smith said. “The movement happening in content marketing, whether digital

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

The company started by enlisting thousands of Explorers in the spring of 2013, selling its first prototypes. Then in October, the company moved to triple the number of testers, asking Explorers to invite three people to join the program.

By this spring, it was generally thought that Google had 8,000 to 10,000 Explorers on board.

Then on April 15, Google gave US users the chance to buy Glass during a one-day sale. Customers had to pay $1,500 (about Rs 88,500) for the digital eyewear and could choose their own design of prototype. Google declined to say how many pairs it sold that day.

Recently, the company put Glass up for sale at the Player’s Championship golf tournament. In a blog post, the Glass team said it was bulking up its inventory and getting ready to sell a lot more of the devices.

The wearable computers have a transparent display over the right lens and enable users to take photos, shoot video, search the Web, send e-mail and share images and info across social networks. Glass, which can be controlled by voice, touch and gesture, has a growing ecosystem of apps from partners like Facebook, CNN, Twitter and Elle.

—Sharon Gaudin

or not, is user-driven,” he said. “We are doing this for users, not advertisers.

The app obviously requires success from an advertising standpoint, but we are far more excited at the prospect of having users of the app feel more connected to both our printed materials as well as local companies in general. My goal is to make the experiences richer. It’s not a trap at all, just technology making an experience deeper.”

There’s little doubt that AR apps will be used with Google Glass and other emerging wearables,

although its value might take years to be fully realized, analysts said.

“AR hasn’t been that successful yet because it is still looking for that killer ‘must have’ application,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group.

“It remains more of a science experiment now.”

Gold said augmented reality “isn’t ready for prime time yet, certainly not with current smartphone tech” and only in beta for headsets and glasses. “It will likely be several years before AR is consumer grade and ready for mass deployment.” 

“Last year, Avnet Technology Solutions and Hitachi Data Systems announced a pan-India and SAARC distribution partnership, extending a successful 13-year relationship in the US and EMEA regions”.

SOLIDIFYING PARTNER BONDS NARESH DESAI, Country General Manager, Avnet Technology Solutions India, speaks on Avnet’s journey with HDS marking a focus for both companies on empowering the channel to deliver enterprise-class infrastructure solutions to customers across India and SAARC.

By Shweta Rao

CUSTOM INTERVIEW HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS Avnet Technology Solutions is an award-winning Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) distributor in India. How does this status help you as a solution provider?

HDS India’s solutions have helped us tremendously further our solutions distribution strategy and accelerate our success. This augments our approach of building the value channel and our current value offerings on virtualization, mobility, infrastructure solutions, analytics, networking & security, DR/BCP, and other solution practices.

How has HDS India’s overall channel engagement and vision helped Avnet Tecnology Solutions grow as a partner?

How would you rate HDS India in terms of its channel strategy?

HDS India is now building a 100 percent indirect business model. It is creating an ecosystem of solution distributors, resellers, systems integrators, and value channel partners. Over the last one year, we’ve seen a growing base of channel partners duly enabled on solution-selling. With this approach, we foresee a larger and matured channel ecosystem in days to come.

How has your journey with HDS India been so far?

It has been a truly exciting journey with an increased focus on building a value proposition in the channel ecosystem. Our sell-to and sell-through approach has helped in channel engagements leveraging our solutions distribution strengths. With help from HDS India, we have incorporated their Unified Compute Platform (UCP) comprising of Hitachi blade servers and storage showcasing unique features of virtualization and manageability in our Avnet Innovation Centre.

What growth drivers can partners realize by collaborating with HDS India?

The global market for enterprise datastorage systems is already valued at more than $30 billion (about Rs ), with anticipated growth at 4-6 percent over the next five years (IDC 2012). Hitachi Data Systems revenues have been rising at the rate of 50 percent arising from software and services.

The company has deployed in 75 percent of Fortune 100 and 79 percent of Global 100 organisations. This business has recorded 12 record quarters in a row and exhibited faster growth than any other competitor.

At this juncture, partnering with HDS India means investing in a forward thinking

organisation that is already transforming itself from being hardware-oriented into a software and services company. Hitachi understands the need to turn data into value, including the vast swathes of unstructured data now being generated organizations.

The industry is about to see a surge in storage and archival solutions such as email archival, file archival, voice & video archival etc. Data protection and compliance will be another key driver. We also anticipate a lot of customers to adopt Converged Solutions to cut down on cost and time to deploy technology and enhance manageability and simplicity. Big Data Adoption, Analytics, Technology Refresh, Mobility, Virtualization are other areas which we will see grow in the near future. Though we see such key drivers we foresee challenges in quick adoption by the customers and a reduced sales cycle. Customers also will be keen on protecting their current investments in the IT Infrastructure and the overall growth of the business economy will pose some challenges in selling the solutions.

In your opinion, what has changed in terms of storage consumption at the customer end?

How is Hitachi Data Systems helping address those demands?

Storage consumption has now moved from the traditional pure block and file to object files, media files, archival data, compliance etc.

Flash Storage will see a marked improvement in performance coupled with longevity of data which will see a huge demand in enterprise class customers. HDS India offers a comprehensive range of storage solutions to meet such consumption patterns such as VSP (Virtual Storage Platforms), Hitachi Content Platform, Unified Compute Platform and Hitachi Unified Storage.

More than plain vanilla storage solutions, Hitachi Data Systems offers a strong focus on a lot of service oriented enterprise storage solutions. Have you had any recent wins in this space?

Yes, we have registered two wins in the Enterprise Storage Solutions space. The first one is in the banking vertical for providing solution on Cheque Truncation Systems and the second for the Finance Vertical.

Can you highlight some projects which demonstrated Hitachi Data Systems’ value proposition?

We have successfully proposed the Unified Compute Platform to a Medium Sized

Manufacturing unit, which until now would have looked at standard market offerings.

Our value proposition of an integrated Server and Storage Platform coupled with the Integrated & Unique Virtualization features has helped convince the customer on the time and cost of deployment of our technology.

Could you tell us what differentiates HDS India’s storage virtualization, consolidation and migration capabilities from other solutions in the market?

HDS India’s in-built virtualization capabilities in the servers, storage solution with integrated data protection, archival capabilities, unified computing and content storage capabilities are some of the most sought after features in the market. HCP and UCP serve as clear differentiators and provide customers with the benefit of low acquisition costs, a clear winner during pricing evaluation.

As a key Hitachi Data Systems partner, you seem to have made significant investments towards developing your business with the company. What has been the outcome?

Our investments are focussed in accelerating the success of our partners and customers. We aim at creating, building and augmenting our solutions business approach which strengthens our competitive advantage. We have built our technical and solution selling skills and invested in HDS India’s Infrastructure in our Avnet Innovation Centre. This has helped us build opportunities in the end customer (aligned with Avnet Managed Partners) space, leverage our Innovation Centre for Technology Demonstrations, Proof-of-Concepts as well as build effective solutions around customer demands. We see good business traction due to these investments in the near future and provide the end customers and channel partners the best of breed solutions.

This interview is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Hitachi Data Systems

SPECIAL AWARDS PARTNERS

PRESENTING PARTNERS

5-6 JUNE, 2014 JW MARRIOTT, PUNE

ASSOCIATE PARTNERS

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

– Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The ChannelWorld Premier100 Award 2014 is a testament to perseverance. A confirmation that excellence has a place. A demonstration that ingenuity can overcome the most difficult odds.

This year’s award theme is the Ingenious 100, which recognizes organizations that undertake inventive strategies to conquer challenging times. The Ingenious 100, thus, are organizations that drove to innovate and create business value during hard times. They championed new ideas and practiced new ways of looking at their business and industry; they are resourceful, imaginative, yet firmly grounded in reality.

The honor is a recognition of the organizations who have changed the way their organizations went about their business. Ingenuity, which was about being agile, and the ability to roll with the punches. Ingenuity that allowed for swifter reactions to changing market conditions. Ingenuity that allowed business to grow during a turbulent period, marked by customers that are harder to please, teams that have shrunk, and competition that’s gotten only more fierce.

To be selected, applicants need to show not only that they have executed their strategy well, but that they have done so in uncommon, innovative ways. And they must demonstrate clear business value that was derived from their ingenious strategies—for their clients and themselves.

What we are looking for is to recognize and honor the output of legion of men and women whose work is profoundly reshaping the Indian enterprise IT landscape—solution providers who take the ‘road less travelled’ and without any regrets.

Here’s looking forward to welcoming you to this year’s ChannelWorld Premier 100 Symposium & Awards.

Vijay Ramachandran Editor-in-chief, IDG Media

KEYNOTE SPEAKER | PAVAN BAKSHI & KRISHNA KUMAR

Pavan Bakshi

M. Krishna Kumar

Veteran Colonel and Certified Executive Coach

Founder and Director, Intrad School of Executive Coaching

Inspiration and motivation towards building a successful and profitable organisation Renowned executive coaches’ talk on ‘Leading Without a Title’ and ‘Revamp the Champ: Your Journey to Peak Performance’ to empower the technology companies to stand the test of time.

P

avan Bakshi is a distinguished veteran colonel, who is a certified executive coach and trainer from the Army War College, Military College of Telecom Engineering. He has also been a trainer in the prestigious Indian Military Academy, Dehradun. Pavan specialises in the field of performance, growth, leadership, crisis, transition and change management. His coaching experience ranges from coaching senior executives in leadership positions in multinational companies to large Indian corporate organisations.

Bakshi is the only chief certified facilitator in India certified to facilitate “The Lead Without a Title (LWT) System TM for building leaders at every level of your organisation” created by globally respected leadership expert Robin Sharma.

At Premier 100 Symposium & Awards, Bakshi’s speech on LWT is bound to inspire the delegates of partner organisations to create a niche in the technology market. Bakshi will talk on how technology companies can create good competent leaders within their organisation to excel over the competition.

K

rishna Kumar is a pioneer in Leadership and Executive Coaching in India and the Founder Director of the Intrad School of Executive Coaching (ISEC). As an Executive Coach, he specializes in the Inner Game and Flow methodologies that use concepts and practices drawn from sports psychology and organizational behaviour.

In a varied career spanning three decades, he has been a top management executive, an Executive coach, a visiting faculty at leading B-schools, independent board member for several companies and a sports coach.

Revamp the Champ: Your Journey to Peak Performance will be the topic for the second keynote session on June 06 by M. Krishna Kumar at Premier 100 Symposium & Awards.

A Founding Fellow of the International Coaching Professionals Association (ICPA), an affiliate of Harvard Medical College, Krishna Kumar will throw light on how organisations can plan their entrepreneurial journey to success in an effective manner to achieve excellence in their sphere of work.

CAPTAINS’ TABLE

Alok Ohrie

President and MD, Dell India

Rajesh Janey

President India & SAARC, EMC

Surendra Singh

Regional Director, India & SAARC, Websense

Nikhil Pathak

VP & Country GM - IT Business India & SAARC,Schneider Electric

PARTNERING FOR PROFIT F Technology companies work in tandem with a robust channel ecosystem to cultivate the market and move ahead of the competition. Hear industry leaders talk about market development at the sixth annual ChannelWorld Premier 100 Symposium & Awards ceremony.

rom technology providers having a single national partner to the multi-tiered channel of today—a lot has changed in the three decades since the formal enterprise channel began to take shape in India.

Yet, even today there are issues that require thought leaders to articulate the way forward and ensure that the principal-partner bond not only strengthens, but also becomes the basis for the mutual benefit through a singleminded strategy.

‘Captains’ Table’ is a power panel of technology provider CEOs that will address the delegates about their company vision of transforming the principal-partner

relation and the roles that you see each play in enabling and empowering this change, and taking the market development to the next level. The industry experts Alok Ohrie, Rajesh Janey, Surendra Singh and Nikhil Pathak will indulge in discussions around the market opportunities they foresee and how as a technology company they can synergise in a more streamlined manner with the channel partners in India.

The delegates - business owners of enterprise partner organisations – are bound to benefit from the experience, expertise and advice of the panellists.

Key Talking Points Who really takes the ownership for market development?

What role does the on-ground channel partner take on?

What’s the best approach to build pipeline for principal and partner?

How collaborative can this process be for mutual benefit?

How can RoI (Return on Investment) be derived from the joint activities?

CAPTAINS’ TABLE

Dr Alok Bharadwaj

Executive VP, Canon India

Anil Valluri

President, India & SAARC, NETAPP

Ashish Dhawan

MD, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

Sanjay Rohatgi

President –Sales, Symantec India

EMPOWERING THE WORKFORCE F Training, developing and incentivising the workforce of the partner companies is an important constituent in the vendor - channel relationship. Catch the industry leaders discuss employee responsibility at the sixth annual ChannelWorld Premier 100 Symposium & Awards ceremony.

rom technology providers having a single national partner to the multi-tiered channel of today—a lot has changed in the three decades since the formal enterprise channel began to take shape in India.

Yet, even today there are issues that require thought leaders to articulate the way forward and ensure that the principal-partner bond not only strengthens, but also becomes the basis for the mutual benefit through a singleminded strategy.

‘Captains’ Table’ is a power panel of technology provider CEOs that will address the delegates about their company vision of transforming the principal-partner relation

and the roles that you see each play in enabling and empowering this change, and taking the employee responsibility to the next level. The industry experts Alok Bharadwaj, Anil Valluri, Ashish Dhawan and Sanjay Rohatgi will talk about empowering the workforce of the employees of partner organisations. They would discuss on the importance of T&C for partners and how as a technology company they can sync in an enhanced manner with the employees of partner companies.

The delegates - business owners of enterprise partner organisations – are bound to benefit from the experience, expertise and advice of the panellists.

Key Talking Points

Who truly is responsible for the employees of a partner organisation?

Should certifications be tied to association with a partner organization?

Where do principals and partners stand on no-poach pacts?

What’s the RoI of directly incentivizing the partner staff?

Is there call for maintaining a national skills roster of partner staff?

SPECIAL AWARDS | CLOUD CHAMPIONS

PRESENTED BY

These awards identify those who have played a pivotal role in bringing the cloud down to earth

Winners 2013

They recognize partners’ ability to provide a solid foundation and work with their customers to succeed in the cloud.

I

f cloud computing is a disruptive force within the enterprise, just imagine what the cloud is doing to the vendor landscape. The sheer number of cloud players - or companies that claim to be cloud players is staggering. Given the hype, anticipated exponential growth, and ambiguous definitions, many technology companies are claiming to be cloudcomputing providers. A large number of channel partners appear bullish

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

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

What sets the best cloud solution providers apart

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

AASHNA CLOUDTECH ASHTECH INFOTECH CHOICE SOLUTIONS ORIENT TECHNOLOGIES QUADSEL SYSTEMS

SPECIAL AWARDS | DATACENTER

PRESENTED BY

These awards recognize the architects of the most resilient and responsive datacenters

Winners 2013

It honors those that ensure that their customers run datacenters which adapt to accommodate higher expectations for growth.

T

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

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

to meet the overall project objectives, while not compromising the uptime and availability of mission-critical applications. Customer needs are varied and it takes a thorough understanding of the client business to service the client efficiently.

No doubt, partners need to be abreast of the latest datacenterrelated technologies.

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

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

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

ASSOCIATED BUSINESS COMPUTERS DYNACONS SYSTEMS & SOLUTIONS GEMINI COMMUNICATION TARGUS TECHNOLOGIES VALUEPOINT SYSTEMS

SPECIAL AWARDS | SECURITY

PRESENTED BY

These awards honor partners for their unconventional approach towards security

Winners 2013

They recognize those who excel at planning and implementing security programs that improve their customer’s security posture.

T

he need of the hour is to empower organizations to more effectively manage risk, protect critical infrastructure and maintain regulatory compliance.

And while they are at it, they need to reduce complexity, manage costs and not compromise on application performance.

No wonder then, that this is a momentous challenge for the channel community, and a huge responsibility on them to help ease the worries of their clients with

regard to information risk management and allow them to concentrate on their core operations. They need to provide the bestin-class technology to help customers get the most from their IT investments.

This award recognizes those in the channel community who are redefining the benchmark of excellence by planning, implementing and managing security programs that significantly improve their customer’s security posture.

They are the leaders in their

field and the dedication and expertise they exhibit in serving their clients and addressing specific security requirements is unparalleled. By comprehensively addressing security vulnerabilities, these channel partners help their customers to explore new models of revenue, enable collaboration inside and outside of their organizations, and create a growth strategy, knowing that this will help clients be tuned with the changing threat landscape.

CCS COMPUTERS DIGITAL TRACK SOLUTIONS ESTEEM INFOTECH META INFOTECH RAKSHA TECHNOLOGIES

S

SPECIAL AWARDS | STORAGE

PRESENTED BY

These awards identify pioneers in delivering innovative storage solutions

Winners 2013

More data means more storage, and more complications. This award honors best storage solutions by partners, for their customers.

C

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

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

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

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

ARCHON CONSULTING SYSTEMS GALAXY OFFICE AUTOMATION QUANTM VEERAS INFOTEK WYSETEK SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGISTS

SPECIAL AWARDS | HALL OF FAME

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

W

hen success repeats itself it reflects the highest level of achievement. The ChannelWorld Premier 100, now in its sixth year, is proud to present the Premier 100 ‘Hall of Fame’.

‘Hall of Fame’ honors the partners, whose work has made a profound difference to their customers.

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

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

have worked to achieve two basic objectives: to come up with the strategies or solutions needed to overcome their customers’ businessIT challenges and to implement those solutions efficiently and effectively.

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

Honorees 2013

ACMA COMPUTERS ACPL SYSTEMS ALBION INFOTEL CDP CENTRAL DATA SYSTEMS COMPUTERS NETWORK & TELECOM MUKESH INFOSERVE NETWORK TECHLAB SIGMA-BYTE COMPUTERS SPARK TECHNOLOGIES

Dossier Name: Anil Bhasin

Designation: MD, India and SAARC Company: Palo Alto Networks

Photograph by KAPIL SHROFF

Current Role: Bhasin joined Palo Alto Networks in March of 2013.

He has over 25 years of industry experience, and joined Palo Alto Networks from Cisco, where he spent 12 years in leadership roles.

n THE GRILL

Anil Bhasin

MD, India and SAARC, Palo Alto Networks, explains how the company’s next-gen security architecture is miles ahead of the competition.

Palo Alto only launched full-fledged India operations a year ago. How are you muscling into a crowded security market?

We have been in India for three years, although our operations were relatively small. We’ve put in place the support infrastructure of RMA depots, and a technical advisory committee, and the biggest objective in the last year was creating customer mindshare. Compared to any of its peers, Palo Alto has made substantial forward-investments in India—and I’m talking across all sizes. From a team of three a year ago,

our team today (pre-sales and sales) has swelled to 17. We have hired senior executives with 15-plus years of industry experience from renowned companies.

Security is the biggest barrier to the adoption of the cloud, BYOD and the SMAC stack. This opportunity prompted us to build a talented team backed by a robust channel ecosystem. Today, we’ve created a significant amount of mindshare in a number of industries including BFSI, ITeS, manufacturing, retail, telco, and the public sector. Our growth in the past 12 months has been phenomenal.

Career Graph: Prior to joining Cisco, Bhasin had a two-year stint at Getronics (formerly known as Wang Global) in Dubai.

As a national sales manager at Getronics, he was responsible for network integration of Cisco Systems. Bhasin was also a senior account manager for M/s Computer World in Bahrain.

During his six years tenure there, he managed strategic accounts in multiple verticals including banking, government and manufacturing.

What advantage does a new-age security company like Palo Alto enjoy over its more traditional rivals? Fifteen years ago, the stateful inspection of traditional technologies was data protection through mail and browsing. Technology hasn’t evolved as much as much as the threat landscape has changed; today applications are what are most targeted. To be fair to the competition, there is no visionary who design solutions according to today’s threat landscape. So the question is: How does Layer-3 technology understand the threat landscape at Layer 7?

That’s the big disconnect. The industry is attempting to deal with today’s security threats, using solutions based on technologies created 15 years ago.

We are disrupting the market with a next-generation Layer-7 firewall that authorizes applications, safely enables them, and blocks everything else in the network.

It is a huge paradigm shift. Palo Alto, we believe, is the Apple of the network security industry. We’re transforming it just like Apple transformed entertainment.

FireEye launched at about the same time as Palo Alto, and it’s been a market disruptor too. Is it a threat? We do not look at the JUNE 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

31

n THE GRILL | ANIL BHASIN tion, creating challenges for customers.

Most vendors are talking about application visibility in their portfolio, but the huge difference we bring is granular, user-based policy control at the customers’ end.

We don’t see direct competition as others need to change from their foundation (a focus on layer 3) and move towards next-gen architecture. Being the fastest growing ‘network security’ company is a certification of our technology’s value proposition to a modern company’s security posture.

We are disrupting the market with a next-gen, Layer-7 architecture. Palo Alto is the Apple of the network security industry. We’re transforming it just like Apple transformed entertainment.” market from a point-product-solution perspective, as there may be best-inbreed players for particular areas.

Customers need firewalls that talk to other components. Recently, FireEye acquired an IPS company (Madiant). Cisco acquired Sourcefire, and McAfee bought Stonesoft. These are strong endorsements of our vision (to offer a holistic solution set).

Fire Eye is a great company but it lacks a ‘totality’ of solutions. Our nextgen APT solution can track zero-day attacks within 30 to 60 minutes and create signatures—something no vendor company can do today.

But many other vendors are acquiring newer security companies to fight you.

They might acquire those companies but the integration is tough. Traditionally, product lines often get killed in an acquisi32

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

Supposedly, Palo Alto is more expensive.

Why should CIOs abandon their investments with existing security vendors? Security is a binary situation: Either you have it or you don’t. More than 95 percent of applications (there are four categories including ERP, CRM; social media; nonencrypted; and proprietary) run on today’s network. Traditional technologies paint a hazy picture of application visibility to CIOs. We offer complete application control through user and application identification and content scanning.

That’s our value proposition as a Layer-7 company, which allows us to understand applications better than others.

The evolution of threats saw best-ofbreed solutions deployed by multiple vendors for firewall, IPS, AV, web security, and APTs. Now, if there’s a security attack, which OEM will be held accountable? And how can a Layer-3 technology prevent an attack taking place at Layer-7? Switching security parameters also pulled down performance. We provide throughout performance matrix at Layer-7 with all applications that are identified and enabled. All our peers talk about UDP Throughput which is not the real world. With all features enabled in our box—including AV, IPS, URL filtering, and ATP—performance does not drop below 50 percent.

What about security-focused partners?

What’s the upside of aligning with Palo Alto? It makes no sense for partners to implement security solutions that add little value to customers. If the current set of security offerings do not fulfil the needs of a changed threat landscape, that’s an opportunity for a Palo Alto partner to make money. Partners should remember that security is our breadand-butter, unlike many OEMs that offer

storage, routing, and also security. Our technological depth, product innovation, and T&C is more specialized.

We work with companies that perceive security as a specialization and not part of a bigger portfolio. Partners who sense that customers are moving towards nextgen security fit in our strategy.

Some Indian customers of Check Point have shifted to Palo Alto. How did that happen?

Our strategy is not to focus on competition. We first understand a customer’s pain points, and if the customer sees a difference in using our technologies, they will replace Cisco, Check Point, or whichever other vendor they have.

We also invest in free POCs. Channels are also involved in this ‘application visibility and accessibility’ process that typically lasts two to three weeks. This differentiated strategy often leads customers to telling us: ‘You’ve shown us the problem, now give the solution.’

Palo Alto’s belief in not pushing boxes elongates the sales cycle for security partners.

Our discussions with customers and channels are not based on reactive data to fix threats; those days are gone. We want to implement strategic proactive solutions and become a partner—rather than a vendor.

Channels should identify the customers’ business pain-points, design architectures, and become lifelong trusted partners—rather than sellboxes. This migration calls for competent channel partners with excellent skillsets who can deliver value. Transaction-based deals only lead to a price war. Many partner companies have multiplied their businesses multifold— 2x to 3x—with us.

Palo Alto’s acquisition of Cyvera plugs in the hole in your end point security armour.

Aren’t you late to capture this market?

The end-point layer is fast transforming with the advent of cloud computing, BYOD, and social media. This acquisition is a part of a grand plan to disrupt the market through proactive solutions. We are building the intelligence to extract data and inspect for threats, and how the end point layer talks to the network layer.

But we are clearly not after traditional solutions from McAfee and Symantec . —Yogesh Gupta

n FAST TRACK

Snapshot

Unified Data-Tech Solutions

Founded: 2010 Headquarters: Mumbai Branches: Pune, Ahmedabad Key Executives: Hiren Mehta, Director Revenue 2013–2014: Rs 52 crore Revenue 2012–2013: Rs 49 crore Employees: 38 Principals: IBM, HP, Check Point, EMC Key Business Activities: System Integration

Landing its first Rs 12-crore project changed everything, says Amarish Shah, Director, Unified Data-Tech Solutions.

H

AVING STARTED in 2010,

Unified Data-Tech Solutions has, in the span of just four years, turned out to be a successful venture for its co-founder and director Amarish Shah.

Prior to founding this system integrator company along with his friend and colleague Hiren Mehta, Shah had worked for almost a decade in another firm which also used to specialize in system integration projects.

However, sometime around 2008, that company was acquired by a US MNC that was primarily into the distribution segment.

But Shah found this new model to be rather restrictive. “As a distributor, we coulndn’t execute orders as per the customer, and we were losing out on direct interfacing with them,” explains Shah, adding that “given our

background in system integration and our accompanying strengths in this field, we decided on a new start.”

Shah quickly went about establishing the reputation of his new company by trying to engage with the customer as much as possible. As he

TECHNOLOGY SPLIT 6%

Others

7%

Security

2%

Networking

30%

Storage

30%

Services

10%

Virtualization

15%

Datacenter Solutions

Ph o t o g r a p h by FOTO C O R P

Website: www.udtechs.com

puts it, “Initially the biggest challenge was to establish the brand image of the company, although it helped that customers already knew us as individuals. Our goal for the first two years was to ensure that we earned a good reputation and created the required brand image for the company.

Now I can say we were quite successful in doing so.”

It’s a testament to Shah’s work ethic and vision, that within the first six to eight months Unified Data-Tech Solutions was already able to land a Rs 12-crore project from a major customer. He points out that this was one of the most significant achievements in the company’s history, adding that “this high-value project put us in a different league, and changed the entire paradigm for us.”

Unified Data-Tech Solutions provides integrated solutions to its customers built around the four pillars of mobility, virtualization, security software and backup and management software providing the complete IT infrastructure landscape needed to address a customer’s business challenges.

In observing how the IT industry is continuously developing, Shah states that he is looking at how business analytics and cloud technologies can help his company. “We are trying to improve our skills to be more effective in the analytics and cloud arena,” he concludes. n —Eric Ernest

SOURCE: UNIFIED DATA-TECH SOLUTIONS

JUNE 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

33

P h o t o g r a p h b y S U M E E T S AW H N E Y

ON RECORD n

Suresh Reddy, Vice President, Huawei Enterprise India, is confident of the company’s robust roadmap and the value proposition it offers enterprise channels.

By Yogesh Gupta

34

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

Huawei Enterprise is now three years old in India.

What challenges and opportunities are you seeing in the Indian market?

REDDY: A key roadblock is the perception of Huawei as a Chinese technology vendor. Huawei is a Chinese brand—but certainly not a cheap one. Nearly half of the total strength of its 1, 50,000 employees work in R&D, which makes Huawei a truly innovative company. It’s also important to note that only 33 percent of our revenues ($40 billion or about Rs 2,40,000 crore) come out of China. That means that the majority of our revenues emerge from other markets, which proves our global acceptance.

More importantly, perhaps, when our enterprise products run in a customer’s environment, invariably the results exceed

expectations—and that changes perceptions. It is a good challenge to work towards long-term results in India; and we continue to educate end customers and channel partners.

Huawei Enterprise launched three years ago, and has come a long way in a short time. Today, it ranks number four in server shipments worldwide. It is also the fastest growing storage company, and also ranks second in routers. It ranks number one in telepresence in China.

Huawei believes that the future lies around enterprise IT becuase fixed telecom operators show limited growth beyond a point. Huawei’s enterprise business works closely with the telco and terminal business to cater to 100 percent of our customers’ ICT needs.

You fight HP, IBM, and Dell with an end-to-end product portfolio and also niche vendors like Avaya in UC, and Juniper in networking.

What’s really your forte?

REDDY: We are not really fighting OEMs head on because indulging in a price war to win deals is not our focus. We do not deal in products or solutions that cater to the lower end segment.

The heart of Huawei lies in developing a portfolio as per customers’ needs—be it Battery Switches (for ISPs), MicroDC (integrated micro datacenter), E9000 (converged blade server), or S5600T (storage). Customized solutions are our biggest strength and we aim to deliver true value.

Huawei E9000 is a converged infrastructure blade server. It integrates computing, storage, switch-

SURESH REDDY | ON RECORD n ing, and management subsystems—all in one box.

Unlike other OEMs in the converged infrastructure space, our products are made by Huawei and run

by Huawei so that we can deliver stellar performance.

Of Huawei Technologies’ revenues originate from markets outside China.

Does R&D of Huawei Telecom strengthen the positioning of your enterprise offerings?

REDDY: The enterprise offerings designed using Huawei’s telco background ensure minimal failure rates, the highest level of redundancy, and high performance levels. Huawei does not OEM any of its products. Hence, the products built at our factories deliver high IOPS on stor-

egy—Connect, Engage & Build—focuses on identifying channels who address key markets and prime verticals, and, also focuses on figuring out how we can bring value to customers and partners.

We don’t believe in moving boxes. We are crystal clear about our channel strategy, which is to align with serious partners with technical expertise and

67%

mid-market, and SMBs— and with companies in these verticals: BFSI, IT/ ITeS, and media and entertainment.

Many large companies are undergoing tech refreshes this year and we are being evaluated technically against the competition. A tech refresh is a sweet spot for Huawei because we can bring value by offering leapfrog technology and deliver both ROI and TCO to organizations.

What factors will compel channels to work with Huawei Enterprise?

REDDY: We are not looking at the traditional model of selling servers and storage.

We are flexible in terms of

tions like the MicroDC, which is an absolute fit for SMBs who do not have the deep pockets to invest in a large datacenter. The product occupies approximately six feet by six feet, operates without the intrinsic details of a typical datacenter and delivers substantial savings in power and cooling. Our virtual desktop infrastructure solutions are scalable from 500 users to 5,000 users.

How would you ensure an army channel of loyal partners, when many work closely with competing vendors?

REDDY: I would not use the word ‘loyal’ for partners.

Every partner organization has a P&L and hence

I wouldn’t use the word ‘loyal’ for partners. Every partner organization has a P&L and hence often relooks vendor alliances to stay profitable.

Many long-term partners who work with other OEMs, also work with us. age, for example. With the product layer, cloud layer, and then the application layer, we intend to deliver value to the channels and end customers.

Huawei’s technologies are Open Source. Our extensive R&D ensures that enterprise product lines (hardware, software and applications) comply with interoperability standards.

Huawei has built over 330 datacentres worldwide—including the largest of them.

We are taking baby steps to ensure we get it right the first time because customers and channels seldom offer second chances.

How are you building the all-important channel ecosystem in India?

REDDY: The recently launched channel strat-

established sets of customers. We are working closely with system integrators as value-added partners; we certify and train their pre-sales, sales, and technical teams on Huawei technologies including our services business.

We are not in the game of price-cutting by shrinking feature sets and specific IOPS at a ‘run-down’ price. We want to be niche player to organizations and partners, who can earn good margins in terms of products and services.

Green field projects, migrations, or tech refreshes: Which are the most favourable opportunities for you?

REDDY: We continue to cater to organizations of all sizes—enterprise,

product range as we can develop specific products according to a channel partner’s customer needs.

In a developed channel ecosystem, many partners fight for one bid. Our approach is different as we don’t have mass product lines. We want to ensure our partners cash in on enough business opportunities across the breadth of the market.

With over 200 registered partners in India, the mid-term objective is engaging with 50 enterprise partners. For channel partners, Huawei offers a complete stack and can be a one-stop-shop for their enterprise customers. And be it products or solutions, we stand tall in front of the competition.

We have innovative soluJUNE 2014

often relooks vendor alliances for the kind of margins that allows them to stay profitable. Many longterm partners who work with other OEMs, do work with us. We are betting big on channel partners who have the appetite to become the next largest SI company.

Partners have to be cognizant of the technologies needed by their customers—irrespective of OEMs. They should not be vendor-centric beyond a point—though a robust vendor-channel partnership should exist. Putting the customer at the center of a deal and powering it with the value of a vendor’s technology is the way forward. And if Huawei fits the bill, the channels can partner with us. n INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

35

n COVER STORY

BIG DATA

BIG MONEY

Big data can mean big money for channel partners—if they know who to partner with and which verticals to sell. But that requires wetting their toes in the big data pool.

By Shantheri Mallaya

I

N 50 AD, an idea was born that wouldn’t see mass adoption

for over 1,800 years. The first vending machines, which wouldn’t become popular until the mid-19th century, were created by a Greek mathematician and engineer to dispense holy water in the temples of ancient Greece.

What’s that got to do with big data? Until a few months ago, big data, too, was an idea whose time hadn’t come.

That’s begun to change quickly. There’s growing interest— and investment—in big data from all stakeholders of the IT industry, including vendors, channel partners, and enterprises.

And a small, but growing, number of savvy enterprise channel partners want to claim first-mover advantage.

Among the most prominent of this bunch is Kolkatabased Future Netwings. At a time when most channel partners still have their noses pressed up against the big data glass, Future Netwings already has big data projects in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

“The Indian market began to feel a bit crowded with some large system integrators offering big data solutions,” says Jaideep Chakrabarti, CEO, Future Netwings. “We decided to take our solutions to Myanmar and Bangladesh where we saw immense opportunity. Cellular players in Bangladesh are bleeding, and they’re convinced that big data solutions can bring in the extra revenues needed to beef up their bottom lines.”

According to Chakrabarti, Future Netwings has been working closely for a while with telcos and ISPs, helping them with their big data and analytics projects. The company’s solutions have helped these industries increase their revenues and average revenues per user by enhancing the experience of their customers. Big data helps track network outages and congestion. It also analyzes unstructured data within telcos and ISPs, allowing them to create more targeted marketing campaigns, an ability that can go a long way in helping other verticals like retail and hospitality be more profitable.

Future Netwings is also capitalizing on a new cellular wave in Myanmar, which is just about rolling out cellular networks.

The new players want to deploy big data solutions from the get go, says Chakrabarti. They were well-informed of the benefits of using analytics and are happy to find a channel player that could customize solutions for the local market.

Ph o t o g r a p h by FOTO C O R P

n COVER STORY

We definitely see big data as a money spinner and a game changer for our business in the very near future.”

JAIDEEP CHAKRABARTI, CEO, FUTURE NETWINGS

“We definitely see this as a money spinner and game changer for our business in the very near future,” says Chakrabarti.

A BIG DEAL Big data wasn’t always this hot. According to a CIO research (CIO magazine is a sister publication of ChannelWorld), a full 71 percent of Indian CIOs said that big data wasn’t on their technology roadmaps in mid-2013. Six months later, that number fell drastically to 42 percent. And the number of Indian IT leaders saying they would implement big data within six months to a year rose to 43 percent from 29 percent. A majority of these companies, 31 percent, are large companies (Rs 2,000 to Rs, 9,999 crore). Another 26 percent of those are with plans to launch big data initiatives in 2014.

These are the ones with revenues above Rs 10,000 core.

38

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

Gartner’s numbers are even more optimistic. According to the research firm’s figures, in 2013, nearly twothird—or 66 percent—of organizations it surveyed had invested, or were expecting to invest in big data technology over the next 24 months. Big data investments in 2013 continued

43% The number of Indian CIOs who say they will implement big data within six months to a year.

SOURCE: CIO RESEARCH

to rise from 2012, with 64 percent of organizations investing or planning to invest in it compared to the 58 percent the previous year. Of those 64 percent, 30 percent said they had already invested in big data technology, 19 percent said they plan to invest within the next year, and an additional 15 percent, within two years, says Gartner.

According to CRISIL, Indian big data industry is expected to grow at 83 percent CAGR between 2012 and 2015. By 2015, it expects the market to be worth $1 billion. According to another study, the market is divided into services (40 percent), hardware (38 percent), and software (22 percent).

Forward-looking enterprise channel partners like Future Netwings are moving quickly to get a big piece of that pie. And Future Netwings is not alone. VDA Infosolutions, a fastgrowing, Mumbai-based solution provider, is also looking at big data as a potential way to drive growth. The company sees itself plunging into the technology over the next year, and becoming a key player in the next three years, says Deepak Jadhav, director, VDA Infosolutions.

“The market and customer requirements are still fluid,” says Jadhav. “We cannot claim to be experts in what end-users want.” VDA, according to Jadhav, intends to introduce a verticalfocused big data solution that can help it maximize competencies.

The company has a list of BFSI customers, and it plans on targeting them in the coming year. Being an early bird will be an advantage, says Jadhav, although he cautiously adds that VDA will step up its investments only when it’s absolutely sure of sizeable returns.

Given that the company has seen topline growth of over 30 percent in 2014, and that investments to the tune of Rs 75 lakh have been made to get various technical and sales competencies on board, it is a matter of time that VDA will be raking in the moolah with big data.

Pune-based Shro Systems is at a similar juncture. “It is still early and we don’t have any success in this space—yet. That said, we are gaining momentum and conversations have started happening. We are building up the practice and it is one of our main

focus areas in 2014,” says Anirudh Shrotriya, MD, Shro Systems.

There are now several companies in India seeing their big data practices take off. This includes the large tier-1 system integrators like TCS, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, and Cognizant among others. Boutique big data consulting firms like Opera and Latentview Analytics are also making their presence felt.

In 2013, most of the top vendors in the big data space including IBM, HP, Dell, SAP, Teradata, Oracle, and EMC, went to market via their partners.

Ranga Vasudevan, principal consultant, big data, Teradata International, says, “Our partners are working with us to extend established, industryspecific accelerators and solutions by integrating big data into their frameworks. Such accelerators provide a planned integration for big data initiatives allowing customers to see the benefits that can accrue from going beyond the hype of big data.”

On their part, enterprise channel partners have started making big data investments too. Future Netwings, for example, has made major invest-

ments in terms of data scientists. “We have experts for mining, managing, and analyzing data. For hardware and software, we have strategic alliances with leading global solution providers,” says Chakrabarti.

The company is also working very closely with a few mid-sized companies in the US and may look at acquisitions when the time is right. Revenues from big data are kicking in gradually, says Chakrabarti.

At Shro Systems, too, there’s a drive to ramp up skills. “We are focusing around big data, specifi-

“Big Data Will Witness 36 Percent Growth by 2017” Shalil Gupta, consulting and insights director, IDC, talks about the growth opportunities around big data technologies and how vendors and the channel can approach big data to maximise on the opportunity.

A number of players like IBM, HP and SAP realize the potential of big data.

How much money will this market make in the near and long term? The big data technology and services market in India is expected to witness a phenomenal growth of 36 percent CAGR between 2012 and 2017—from $40.7 million (about Rs 244 crore) to $171 million (about Rs 1,026 crore).

What should vendors be doing to grow the market? There are three ways of establishing this.

Vendors should engage with enduser organizations in a consultative mode to introduce pilot versions of this technology and handhold clients, and in doing so, make them realize the value of big data.

Alternatively, the vendors must also work hard to raise general awareness levels about the benefits of big data and address the general misconception that big data is only about data volumes, technology, and analytics.

Vendors should recognize that for big data solutions, a one-sizefits-all approach does not work.

Different workloads, data types, and user types are best served by technology that is purpose built and customized according to a specific case.

Vendors should also make sincere efforts and invest heavily in building their big data resources and capabilities. This not only includes the products and solutions part, but also a substantial increase in the pool of skilled professionals that can work in and manage big data environments effeciently is expected.

In your opinion what would be the SWOT analysis for both, the vendors and the channel partners, in this market in the near and long term?

Here’s a SWOT. Strengths: Market drivers are all ripe for big data adoption. Organizations are relating big data implementation to a bevy of business benefits. These

include increased productivity and agility, increased sales, greater service innovation, the ability to streamline business processes and, achieve cost optimization.

Both vendors and channel partners can take advantage of this situation.

Weaknesses and threats: High costs are associated with the implementation and maintenance of big data. Another challenge is the shortage of skilled professionals.

Opportunities: There has been an emerging demand for big data technology-related services among the end users. Some of these are business consulting, business process outsourcing, IT project-based services, network consulting and integration services, IT outsourcing, storage services, security services, software and hardware support, and training services.

Do you think big data has reached the point where it will see mass market adoption. If not, when do you see this happening?As you would have seen in Q1, the growth rate is high but the install base is very small.

In a recent survey we conducted, we found there is approximately 15 percent adoption rate which is not very high. It will take at least three to five years for a full scale adoption of big data.

—Eric Ernest JUNE 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

39

n COVER STORY cally in the analytics space. We are engaging with clients to understand their big data requirements. We are training our workforce around these solutions and to talk in that language,” says Shrotriya. “I don’t want to comment on figures but we are investing in manpower, marketing and training.”

VERTICAL PLAY

The expected size of the Indian big data industry by 2015.

SOURCE: CRISIL

two years are highest in transportation, healthcare and insurance.

However, every industry vertical shows big data investments and planned investments.”

According to CIO research, the industries most likely to invest in big data technologies include BFSI, IT/ ITeS and telecom operators.

Photograph by KAPIL SHROFF

Interest in big data technologies and services among customers and channel partners might be high, but it doesn’t go across the board. According to Biswajeet Mahapatra, research director, Gartner, “Industries leading big data investments in 2013 are media and communications, banking and services.”

He continues, “This is a change from last year’s leaders—education, healthcare and transportation.

Planned investments over the next

$1bn

We will plunge into big data over the next year. We want become a key player in the big data space in the next three years.”

DEEPAK JADHAV, DIRECTOR, VDA INFOSOLUTIONS 40

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

One of them, for example, is telecom player MTS, which generates over 100 TB of data a day, including call records, customer usage patterns, location-based services, billing and Internet usage. Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS, is using that deluge of data to create real-time, targeted marketing campaigns. If, for example, an MTS customer makes a number of calls to the same number in the span of an hour, MTS’ big data analytics engine could possibly offer that person a discount on the next call.

For vendors and channels, big data has essentially emerged from Internet-enabled industries of e-commerce and digital marketing, which continue to be the innovators and push the big data envelope further. “Globally big data is being adopted in all verticals— for every vertical the use case and the solutions are different. In India there is a varying degree of responses from verticals on big data. Those who have taken the lead are telecom, BFSI, retail and Web 2.0/3.0 companies,” says Amit Chatterjee, country director, HP Software India.

Traditional businesses now have various channels of communication with their clientele and are thus slowly realizing the benefit of integrating data from all these channels for their core business to arrive at more comprehensive customer insights.

Though it is believed that manufacturing has been slow on the big data uptake, the industry is waking up to the new trend. The other vertical which generates a lot of data, and could potentially use big data, is retail, but it has been lagging behind for a couple of reasons.

“Data is a bit more unstructured, its transactions are not as high as telecom or banking. The slow big data uptake in retail is also a result of how the industry has, for the longest time, never seen any clarity with regard to FDI norms,” says Asheet Makhija, country leader, information management, IBM India/South Asia.

However, Makhija is cautiously optimistic about the impending changes.

He comments, “You have a lot of behavioral patterns, such as, what is the customer really looking at? What product did they pick up? Did they

interact over social media regarding that particular product?” Verticals that need such analytics at these levels are bound to embrace big data in a big way, and retail and manufacturing are likely to be major drives of this demand. Another vertical that isn’t embracing big data as much as other industries is healthcare, although that’s expected to change.

Vendors such as IBM believe that state governments are also key areas to watch out for. State government departments are the most promising adopters of big data—primarily because of the complex and mammoth structure of subsidies across state machineries in the country. This warrants an efficient system of tracking citizens and their families, who are otherwise hard to follow up with.

The bottom line? Big data adoption in traditional industries as well as sunrise industries is picking up.

Big Ticket Opportunities Technology vendors believe that there’s plenty of money to be made from big data and allied services.

There are a wide range of business problems being addressed with big data. HP Vertica, a big data solution for structured and semistructured data, is gaining significant momentum in the Indian market.

AMIT CHATTERJEE, Country Director,

HP Software India

It’s the perfect time for channel partners, big and small, to identify what they can offer in the big data space. They can offer niche or end-toend solutions. Partners will have to be smart and align to their core strengths.

That’s what really matters.

TOWARDS MASS ADOPTION Vendors and partners that are playing in the big data space believe that it will see mass market acceptance over the next two years. Chatterjee from HP Software India says, “Big data is a way to take advantage of 100 percent data in the system, whether it is structured, semi-structured or unstructured. Organizations today need to put in place a big data framework, giving them the capabilities to extract value out of all kinds of data existing in their system.”

While big data technologies seeing mass adoption is still some time away, there is no denying the fact that enterprises of all types are betting on big data analytics to help them better understand customers, create competitive advantage, and rapidly discover insights to improve products and services and increase profits.

In a recent ESG survey, two-thirds of IT and business professionals responsible for their organization’s data analytics strategies, technologies and processes, considered enhancing analytics a top-five business priority, and over one-quarter said that it was their top-most priority.

Given the high degree of interest in analytics and the vast quantity of unmined data, many believe organi-

ASHEET MAKHIJA, Country Leader,

Information management, IBM India/South Asia There’s already a huge demand for specialty skills in Hadoop, data science, in-memory computing, etcetera. That’s only expected to grow. Partners should gain domainspecific skills, which allows them to understand their customers’ needs better and drive value faster.

ARUN RAMACHANDRAN, Country

Head, Pivotal India

There’s a growing need to provide skill sets that can exploit data from a technology context, given that the industry is new and the options available aren’t yet as mainstream as, say, the RDBMS. This need is being addressed effectively by our partners.

RANGA VASUDEVAN, Principal Consultant,

Big Data, Teradata

n COVER STORY

We are looking into big data with interest and are gunning for 30 percent of our business coming in from it by 2015.”

PRAVEEN DWARKANATH, CEO, FOURTH QUADRANT LABS

zations will adopt big data analytics.

Srikanth Doranadula, senior director, Alliances and Channels, Oracle India, comments, “Though most enterprises are not starting entirely from scratch—having already developed data warehouses and related business intelligence solutions—most realize that big data analytics requires a different infrastructure than what they have used historically.”

Arun Ramachandran, country manager, Pivotal India, agrees. “We believe that monetizing big data requires a combination of skills (data ingest, data architecture and data science) as well as cutting-edge technology.” Pivotal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of EMC that specializes in big data solutions.

THINKING BIG For the most part, many in the big data arena know that there is a lot of 42

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JUNE 2014

money to be made. But SWOT analysis and strategizing are critical, before making the move at big data—that applies to both customers and implementation partners.

What should channel organizations really do to make sense of a big data plan? Makhija at IBM suggests that channel partners should tie up with an organization and start implementing a small aspect of big data, and then grow it from there.

To illustrate, if a system integrator starts with a data warehousing implementation, the next step is to apply an analytics layer on top of it. Once you deploy analytics, you need predictive analytics. Then you start putting up various other aspects and it goes on expanding, and as the customers’ data size grows and the enterprise starts seeing value, it creates a virtuous cycle of belief and investment.

Second, and more importantly, ROI

timelines for customer have to be shortened. Praveen Dwarkanath, CEO of Fourth Quadrant Labs, reflects, “We will have to pick up projects that are much quicker at the market and generate faster ROI. The other challenge is the way some of the customers are structured; a lot of them realize the need to change and they have made some changes, but in a lot of the organizations, many of the decisions are taken only by the CIO.” Fourth Quadrant, a Bangalorebased start-up that’s looking into big data on the cloud with interest, is gunning for 30 percent of its business coming in from big data by 2015. The company, which is building it own platform on a per-per-use model, has aggressively marketed itself amongst its SMB clients.

So, as the industry matures, it is a foregone conclusion that the number of partners will increase, and so will customers who need big data solutions. Says Makhija at IBM, “The potential is huge. If you look at anti-fraud monitoring space, there are thousands and lakhs of customers. That’s huge.

You look at manufacturing, nobody has even scraped that business.”

“Big data is not one technology. It includes Hadoop/ NoSQL, big data search, analytics, hardware/ software solutions, data warehousing DBMS, data integration/ federation and many more. The SWOT would presumably be different for different vendors and channel partners,” says Mahapatra.

It is important that one keeps in mind not to expect this market to be dominated by one or two players; there will be a plethora of vendors and service providers. The key to success is to build products and services which are flexible, easy to integrate, and also have more offerings in all the different technologies which will help increase customer stickiness. Building one’s own niche offerings along with a consultancy approach will go a long way in establishing steady revenues.

Big data is an idea whose time has come. Time to push those big data buttons. n With additional reporting

by Eric Ernest

n FEATURE | SECURITY

E

11

Reasons

Encryption is DEAD

Massive leaps in computing power, hidden layers, hardware backdoors— encrypting sensitive data from prying eyes is more precarious than ever.

By Peter Wayner

VERYONE WHO has

studied mathematics at the movie theater knows that encryption is pretty boss. Practically every spy in every spy movie looks at an encrypted file with fear and dread. Armies of ninjas can be fought. Bombs can be defused.

Missiles can be diverted. But an encrypted file can only be cracked open with the proper key—and that key is always in the hands of a dangerously attractive agent hidden in a sumptuous hideout on the other side of the world.

Alas, this theorem of encryption security may be accepted as proven by math geniuses at Hollywood but reality is a bit murkier. Encryption isn’t always perfect, and even when the core algorithms are truly solid, many other links in the chain can go kablooie. There are hundreds of steps and millions of lines of code protecting our secrets. If any one of them fails, the data can be as easy to read as the face of a five-year-old playing Go Fish.

Encryption is under assault more than ever—and from more directions than previously thought. This doesn’t mean you should forgo securing sensitive data, but forewarned is forearmed. It’s impossible to secure the entire stack and chain.

Here are 11 reasons encryption is no longer all it’s cracked up to be.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 1: No Proofs—Just an Algorithm Arms Race The math at the heart of encryption looks impressive, with lots of superscripts and subscripts, but it doesn’t come with any hard and fast proofs.

One of the most famous algorithms, RSA, is said to be secure—as long as it’s hard to factor large numbers.

That sounds impressive, but it simply shifts the responsibility. Is it truly that hard to factor large numbers? Not really.

Well, there’s no proof that it’s hard, but no one knows how to do it right all of the time. If someone figures out a fast algorithm, RSA could be cracked open like an egg, but that hasn’t happened yet. At least, that’s what it looks like.

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n FEATURE | SECURITY Encryption’s Weak Link No. 2: Disclosure is the Only Means of Detecting a Crack Suppose you figured out how to factor large numbers and crack RSA encryption. Would you tell the world?

Perhaps. It would certainly make you famous. You might get appointed a professor at a fancy college. You might even land a cameo on The Big Bang Theory.

But the encryption-cracking business can be shady. It isn’t hard to imagine that it attracts a higher share of individuals or organizations that might want to keep their newfound power secret and use it to make money or extract valuable information.

Many of our assumptions about the security of cryptography are based on the belief that people will share all of their knowledge of vulnerabilities—but there is no guarantee anyone will do this. The spy agencies, for instance, routinely keep their knowledge to themselves. And

rumors circulate about an amazing cryptographic breakthrough in 2010 that’s still classified. Why should the rest of us act any differently?

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 3: The Chain is Long and Never Perfect There are a number of excellent mathematical proofs about the security of this system or that system.

They offer plenty of insight about one particular facet, but they say little about the entire chain. People like to use phrases like “perfect forward security” to describe a mechanism that changes the keys frequently enough to prevent leaks from spreading.

But for all of its perfection, the proof covers only one part of the chain. A failure in the algorithm or a glitch in the software can circumvent all this perfection. It takes plenty of education to keep this straight.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 4: Cloud Computing

Microsoft Sharpens Encryption Management Tools

M

icrosoft is giving the IT admin crowd an updated toolset for managing encryption with the latest release of its Desktop Optimization Pack, better known as MDOP. MDOP 2014 has what Microsoft calls “substantial” improvements in managing the Windows BitLocker feature used to encrypt PC and server drives.

The focus on the BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) tool is timely, given recent high-profile cases of theft of massive amounts of sensitive user data.

Encryption has also become a hot topic given the global privacy concerns over government snooping into the records of telecommunications and Internet activities of individuals and businesses.

Version 2.5 of MBAM now lets IT administrators manage key FIPS configuration options for BitLocker for protecting and recovering drive data and for recovering passwords.

MBAM 2.5 also gives IT administrators greater control to remotely schedule and trigger the encryption process on their users’ devices, and to require that

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employees use strong BitLocker personal identification numbers (PINs).

The tool also has improved capabilities when installed on Windows Server clusters, including load balancing of its Web components and the ability to deploy its databases in SQL Server failover clusters, according to Microsoft.

Another component that was upgraded in MDOP 2014 is the Application Virtualization (App-V) tool, designed to let IT departments store applications in a central server and stream them on demand to multiple user devices. The new version, App-V 5.0 SP2, improves the process of publishing and refreshing applications and allows IT administrators to test upgraded applications while retaining the original ones in the same device.

MDOP also includes the User Experience Virtualization (UE-V), Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) and Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DART) tools.

—Juan Carlos Perez

Power is Cheap Some descriptions of algorithms like to make claims that it would take “millions of hours” to try all the possible passwords. That sounds like an incredibly long time until you realize that Amazon alone may have half a million computers for rent by the hour. Some botnets may have more than a million nodes.

Big numbers aren’t so impressive these days.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 5: Video Cards Bring Easy Parallelism to Cracking The same hardware that can chew through millions of triangles can also try millions of passwords even faster. GPUs are incredible parallel computers, and they’re cheaper than ever. If you need to rent a rack, Amazon rents them by the hour too.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 6: Hypervisors— The Scourge of the Hypervigilant You’ve downloaded the most secure distro, you’ve applied all the updates, you’ve cleaned out all the cruft, and you’ve turned off all the weird background processes. Congratulations, you’re getting closer to having a secure server. But let’s say you’re still obsessed and you audit every single last line of code yourself. To be extra careful, you even audit the code of the compiler to make sure it isn’t slipping in a backdoor.

It would be an impressive stunt, but it wouldn’t matter much. Once you have your superclean, completely audited pile of code running in a cloud, the hypervisor in the background could do anything it wanted to your code or your memory—so could the BIOS. Oh well.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 7: Hidden Layers Abound The hypervisor and the BIOS are only a few of the most obvious layers hidden away. Practically every device has firmware—which can be remarkably porous. It’s rarely touched by outsiders, so it’s rarely hardened.

One research “hardware backdoor” called Rakshasa can infect the BIOS and sneak into the firmware of PCIbased network cards and CD drivers. Even if your encryption is solid and your OS is uninfected, your network card could be betraying you. Your network card can think for itself! It will be a bit harder for the network card to reach into the main memory, but stranger things have happened.

These hidden layers are in every machine, usually out of sight and long forgotten. But they can do amazing things with their access.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 8: Backdoors Aplenty Sometimes programmers make mistakes. They forget to check the size of an input, or they skip clearing the memory before releasing it. It could be anything. Eventually, someone finds the hole and starts exploiting it.

Some of the most forward-thinking companies release a steady stream of fixes that never seems to end, and they should be commended.

But the relentless surge of security patches suggests there won’t be an end anytime soon. By the time you’ve finished reading this, there are probably two new patches for you to install.

Any of these holes could compromise your encryption. It could patch the file and turn the algorithm into mush. Or it could leak the key through some other path. There’s no end to the malice that can be caused by a backdoor.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 9: Bad RandomNumber Generators Most of the hype around encryption focuses on the strength of the encryption algorithm, but this usually blips over the fact that the key-selection algorithm is just as important.

Your encryption can be superstrong, but if the eavesdropper can guess the key, it won’t matter.

This is important because many encryption routines need a trustworthy source of random numbers to help pick the key. Some attackers will simply substitute their own

John McAfee Slaps Name on Private Messaging App

T

HE former anti-virus software creator and international fugitive is promoting a new app called Chadder, which claims to keep messages secure through key server encryption. The app is available now for Android and Windows Phone, and an iOS version is coming soon. However, the app appears to be in extremely rough shape, not even deserving the “beta” tag that the developers use in their description.

Theoretically, you should be able to look up the intended message recipient by name, phone or e-mail, and then exchange a four-digit code that acts as the encryption key. The key remains invisible to Chadder, ensuring that only the recipient can see the messages.

In our testing, I wasn’t able to find my fellow app tester by name, even when he had set his profile information to “public.” Entering a code in the “claim code” field simply caused that code to disappear. Even if there’s some crucial step we’ve missed, the app is far from being user-friendly. And once you’ve created an account, the app doesn’t give you any way to delete it.

Aside from lending some notoriety, the extent of McAfee’s involvement with Chadder isn’t clear. A press release says that McAfee’s company, Future Tense Secure Systems, released the app “in partnership with” Etransfr, and also says that a team of developers at Rochester Institute of Technology helped build the app. In the Google Play Store, Etransfr is listed as the sole developer and appears to be responsible for gathering feedback and answering user reviews. In response to one review, Etransfer said that it has been developing Chadder for only one month.

The only other available product from Future Tense Secure Systems (which also goes by the name Future Tense Central) is a privacy control app called DCentral1. McAfee had previously announced a hardware product with a similar name, which supposedly would have allowed for local, secure communications, but this product has not materialized.

Clearly, McAfee enjoys bashing the company that still bears his name. But without a little quality control, his new venture isn’t going to fare any better.

—By Jared Newman

random-number generator and use it to undermine the key choice. The algorithm remains strong, but the keys are easy to guess by anyone who knows the way the random-number generator was compromised.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 10: Typos One of the beauties of open source software is that it can uncover bugs—maybe not all of the time but some of the time.

Apple’s iOS, for instance, had an extra line in its code: goto fail. Every time the code wanted to check a certificate to make sure it was accurate, the code would hit the goto statement and skip it all.

Was it a mistake? Was it put there on purpose? We’ll never know. But it sure took a long time for the wonderful “many eyes” of the open source community to find it.

Encryption’s Weak Link No. 11: Certificates Can Be Faked

Let’s say you go to PeteMail.com with an encrypted e-mail connection, and to be extra careful, you click through to check out the certificate.

After a bit of scrutiny, you discover it says it was issued by the certificate authority Alpha to PeteMail.com and it’s all legit. You’re clear, right?

Wrong. What if PeteMail.com got its real SSL certificate from a different certificate authority—say, Beta.

The certificate from Alpha may also be real, but Alpha just made a certificate for PeteMail.com and gave it to the eavesdropper to make the connection easier to bug. Man-inthe-middle attacks are easier if the man in the middle can lie about his identity. There are hundreds of certificate authorities, and any one of them can issue certs for SSL. This isn’t a hypothetical worry.

There are hundreds of certificate authorities around the world, and some are under the control of the local governments. Will they just create any old certificate for someone? Why don’t you ask them? n JUNE 2014

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n CASE STUDY

Shyam Indus Power Solutions threw a daunting challenge at CNT: Build a datacenter in three months. And then it shrunk datacenter area by almost half.

What will CNT do?

By Yogesh Gupta

Racing Against Time: Dipesh Mangla, Director, and Anchal Verma, Solution Architect, CNT India

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Photograph by SUMEETH

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ESTLED IN West Delhi’s

upmarket Punjabi Bagh, Shyam Indus Power Solutions’ (SIPS) business has had an envious run. Since its inception a decade ago, the company has grown tremendously. It has engaged in turnkey projects of power distribution like procurement of transformers, insulators, hardware accessories, construction, execution of civil work, laying of cables and installation of transformers among other things.

But its IT infrastructure was not able to keep pace with the company’s growing business. “We kept adding new servers each time to accommodate new applications,” says Hrishikesh Dutta, CIO, Shyam Indus Power Solutions (SIPS). But it became difficult to manage the increasing number of servers. As a result, the ROI and other associated costs like power, cooling, and space shot up.

However, as the number of projects heaped up, Dutta had no choice but to obtain more servers. These servers were sourced from Delhibased Computers Network & Telecom India (CNT).

And as servers began to populate the company, its IT infrastructure began to crumble. But that was just one of Dutta’s many problems.

THE STOP LOSS STRATEGY As business grew, it was hard to track its distributors, suppliers, and other

spokes in the process chain. This, in turn, made it difficult to keep a tab on AT&C losses as the company’s .NET application wasn’t robust enough to process the required information.

“We wanted to develop and manage a sophisticated distribution system to improve the AT&C losses level with better synchronization between man, machine, and material,” says Dutta.

He realized that he needed a commercially viable distribution system for sustainable investment in power generation and transmission.

The answer lay in an effective MIS solution to identify and eliminate power theft. To start off, Dutta decided to implement SAP to improve the efficiency of business processes with reliable, accurate, and instant data.

THE CLOCK’S TICKING With the SAP environment in place, Dutta knew that adding servers in an ad-hoc manner would not be a good IT strategy. The company needed a robust datacenter. “With heavy investment in our business and a growing customer base, we did not want to compromise on IT infrastructure by outsourcing our datacenter. We wanted a state-ofthe-art datacenter at our Delhi office,” says Dutta. And it needed it fast.

In order to achieve that, SIPS once again turned to CNT. “The company was looking for an end-to-end IT infrastructure solution with the best ROI. And we wanted to prove our worth as a competent datacenter solution provider,” says Dipesh Mangla, director, CNT. For CNT, this project grew around 10x times the value of the earlier requirement of a few servers, which was a great opportunity. It was crucial for CNT to turnaround a datacenter in no time as the company wanted to curtail AT&C losses at the earliest.

“The datacenter build timeline was extremely short as SIPS wanted to halt the losses at the earliest,” says Anchal Verma, solution architect, CNT India, who headed the project.

CNT gave the first quote for the datacenter in the third week of December 2012. The datacenter—to be completed by April 2013—was a real challenge for the CNT team. It required proper project planning with

CNT provided the best assessment through a detailed PPT and business proposal for the datacenter as per our needs.”

Hrishikesh Dutta, CIO, Shyam Indus Power Solutions real time status update because any delay of a single product could derail the entire project delivery, says Verma.

CNT took a couple of months to design the datacenter, align with the relevant OEMs, negotiate prices, and confirm project delivery on deadline.

“CNT provided the best assessment through a detailed PPT and business proposal for the datacenter as per our needs,” says Dutta.

Snapshot Key Parties: Shyam Indus Power Solutions and Computers Network & Telecom India

Location: New Delhi and Odisha Project Time: Two months Project Cost: Rs 2 crore Key Challenges: Inefficient MIS system, ad-hoc purchase of servers, insecure access to corporate network Main Solutions : IBM PureFlex, Microsoft HyperV, SAP ERP, CheckPoint Firewall, Emerson UPS, Cisco Networking Key Executives : Dipesh Mangla, Director, & Anchal Verma, Solution Architect of CNT ; Hrishikesh Dutta, CIO, SIPS Principals : IBM , SAP , Microsoft, Cisco, Lenovo, Checkpoint, Emerson, Stulz PAC, ESSL Post Implementation ROI : Optimal utilization of resources, improved efficiency, easy manageability, HA and greater redundancy

A tier-2 datacenter at SIPS’ Delhi office equipped with IBM Pure Flex Technology, IBM Storage 10G Switch and firewall was all set. Virtualization on MS Hyper-V for SAP was implemented for about 300 users of the company, says Mangla.

A 165 sq ft. room was allocated for the datacenter. But CNT was in for a rude shock.

SCOPE CREEP Just when CNT’s datacenter-onsteroids project was cruising along, SIPS threw a spanner in the works: The area allotted for the datacenter reduced to 138 sq. ft. with only three weeks to go.

The CNT team rushed to the datacenter site to quickly rework the datacenter design. It changed the direction of RACK and PAC, after trying multiple permutations and combinations. After two days, the design team managed a breakthrough.

“Finally, we changed the RACK size from 800 X 1,000 to 600 X 1,000. Our design team reworked the placement of the datacenter component and some changes were made to adjust all the components perfectly,” says Verma.

CNT was able to achieve its target.

Today, about 300 users of the Odisha branch of the company use the solution. About 100 mobile users are securely connected through SSL VPN with the firewall at the datacenter.

“Implementing a robust ERP in a limited time span in a datacenter was a great learning experience for us.

And the last minute change to the real estate allotted to the datacenter tested our team’s performance in tight situations,” says Mangla.

Squeezed between time and space, CNT emerged a winner—and how! n JUNE 2014

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Focal Point EVERYTHING ABOUT ANALYTICS

Analytics

On the Move How Western Union is using analytics with a mix of mobile and social technologies to beat its competition. By Kim S. Nash

W

HEN WESTERN

Union sent its first telegrams across the frontiers of America in 1851, it struggled against companies with competing, incompatible technologies. Years of fierce wheeling and dealing helped Western Union acquire and neutralize rivals.

Then a prestigious 1860 contract to build the first

coast-to-coast telegram system—which critics said would never work—solidified the company’s dominance. Even the eventual spread of the telephone and radio didn’t derail the company, partly because Western Union had diversified from simply moving words to moving money, too.

In 2006, Western Union sent its last telegram. To-

day the $5.7 billion (about Rs 37,800 crore) company makes most of its money from the fees it charges when people transfer funds and pay bills—and by hedging exchange rates for currencies in over 200 countries.

But a history of scrappy transformation doesn’t guarantee the future. Western Union’s business is conducted mainly in person, and in cash, in a world where money cards, digital currency and mobile payments are proliferating. A friend can pay you back for his bar tab with a text message. Bitcoins can buy you a spot on a Virgin Galactic rocket. Big banks, meanwhile, are horning in on Western Union’s market: The estimated 2 billion people worldwide who don’t have checking, savings or credit accounts.

To anticipate where new, profitable niches will emerge and to keep costs in line, Western Union must transform itself into a digital company. But it also wants to preserve the core business that has provided so much for so long. CEO Hikmet Ersek says he searched for months to find the right CIO to lead the effort. And two years into the job, that man, David Thompson, says Web and mobile technologies, along with a few irreplaceable proprietary systems, will be critical.

But, Thompson says, big data may matter most of all.

Analytics could help Western Union sidestep mistakes.

Understanding how people react to global migration pressures, geopolitical struggles, economic changes and natural disasters will shape Western Union’s products and pricing, says Thompson, who is also EVP of global operations. “My team is starting to wake up to the

fact that they’re a partner in something that’s really changing our company.”

CEO Ersek is pleased with progress so far, but says, “We have a long way to go.”

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION Upheaval in the financial services industry is being created by established players and entrepreneurs.

Banks and credit unions offer mobile apps and onthe-spot loans. Startups are devising new ways to buy and sell with mobile phone swipes, scans and text messages. Bitcoins and other virtual currencies are now taken seriously.

These changes portend a “moment of creative destruction,” says Lisa Servon, a professor at The New School who focuses on economic development and urban poverty. “Western Union sees the writing on the wall and, like everyone, is trying to figure out how to leverage new technology to improve their own services.”

The question is whether Western Union will be fast and bold enough to emerge as a winner in the game of digital disruption. A slew of startups are clamoring to topple Western Union in the money-transfer business.

“Establishing an infrastructure to operate legally and efficiently in a variety of countries will take some doing for startups,” says Denee Carrington, a senior analyst at Forrester. “But Western Union can’t just count on the fact that it’s hard to insulate them forever.”

Western Union’s Ersek contends the company is already digital internally, conducting an average of 28 transactions per second. The real change the CEO wants is in extending digital capabilities to customers directly.

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n FOCAL POINT | ANALYTICS But timing is everything. If Western Union overhauls basic customer interactions by throwing a lot of new technology at consumers, it risks alienating and losing them.

If the company moves too slowly, competitors will steal customers. Analyzing customer behavior will help Western Union find the right pace, he says, reeling off a series of IT-based ideas, such as analyzing what customers do in social media and measuring the results of online and mobile marketing campaigns.

Details, details, details are important to him, to hone strategy. “We want to know when a Filipino customer in the UK goes to church on Sunday,” he says, by way of example. That way, Western Union can create customized products based on those life details. The Philippines is one of the most popular destinations for money transfers. Maybe a customer is in a family mood after church and will send money back home if offered a Sunday discount. “Not many companies have such global data.”

Western Union’s customers are both an asset and a risk. They don’t have bank accounts for a variety of reasons. Maybe they’re unemployed or they’ve abused accounts in the past. Maybe they have too little money to open an account. Maybe they can’t or don’t want to provide Social Security numbers.

Eight percent, or more than 25 million, of the 317 million people in the US don’t have bank accounts.

The unbanked market in the US alone is worth $78 billion (about Rs 491,400 crore), estimates the Center for Financial Services Innovation, a non-profit group.

If Western Union is right in estimating that 2 billion 50

Big Data Hype Not Feeding BI

A

ll the hype around big data last year didn’t drive big growth in the worldwide business-intelligence and analytics market, according to research firm Gartner.

While the BI and analytics market grew about 8 percent to $14.4 billion (about Rs 86,400 crore) in 2013, the uptick could have been even greater, Gartner said. “Even though big data hype reached a fever pitch [in 2013], this did little to move the dial for analytics,” Gartner analysts Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood wrote in the report.

Only 8 percent of organizations surveyed by Gartner have actually deployed a big data project, with some 57 percent still in the research and planning stages, according to the report. This level of experimentation is “prolonging upgrade cycles in more enterprise wide initiatives,” it said.

There was also a disconnect in 2013 between the vendors with the most revenue and how quickly they grew. The top four BI companies—SAP, Oracle, IBM and SAS Institute—grew more slowly than the market average, according to the report. Companies such as Jaspersoft and Pentaho, which provide lower-cost alternatives to those kinds of tools, grew more quickly than the market average last year.

Cloud-based BI also began gaining traction last year. Although it represented only 4 percent of the market, its growth rate was 42 percent. “Small businesses in particular have shifted their mentality around cloud and see it as an enabler to do more advanced things with big data and analytics,” the analysts wrote.

—By Chris Kanaracus

people are unbanked and under-banked worldwide, that’s 28 percent of the Earth’s population who, by definition, even global behemoths like JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank don’t reach. Western Union’s customer database, therefore, is of “enormous value,” Ersek says. “You can’t imagine.”

For example, analyzing the behavior of so many under-the-radar consumers tipped Western Union off to the developing financial crisis in 2008, he says. Customers were sending less money in the average transaction and conducting fewer transactions, the data showed.

This prompted Western Union to revise their financial expectations and warn Wall Street six months be-

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fore others in the financial industry caught on, he says.

BETTER BUSINESS Since he arrived, Thompson has been trying to make IT more responsive to business needs. He has built up analytics muscle with a Hadoop cluster and Tableau reporting tools. He also put six data scientists in strategic locations—two in the US, two in India, and two in China.

Instead of having to wait until the analytics guys in Denver headquarters wake up, the marketing, sales and operations staff can send queries to the data scientists on call. Follow-the-sun analytics keeps the momentum going, he says. “Our business is 24/7. We get questions day and night.”

Plus, each team specializes in different areas. In the US, the data scientists are experts in e-commerce and mobile analytics, for example. In India, it’s analyzing customer trends and doing segmentation. In China, modeling risk and demographic analysis.

Copying moves from the retail industry, Western Union’s Thompson talks about offering special deals for frequent buyers. Analytics makes it possible to sift out, say, customers who send $50 to Thailand every week.

That kind of regular customer could get a personalized offer—maybe a package of five transfers per month for a discounted fee. “We use your usage pattern to customize your experience,” he says. “That’s just for you.”

IT and marketing are working together to understand larger societal and behavioral trends that can affect business. For example, analyzing internal and external demographic data can predict migration patterns and help determine where to open a new retail location. And tracking the “migrant diaspora” that Western Union’s CMO talks about would let the company create special online promotions for customers who are culturally similar but geographically dispersed. Thompson wants his IT team to help business colleagues anticipate such trends, to “get ahead of the business with our data,” he says.

One recent insight Western Union found is that when customers who usually do business in person come to the website, they act differently from newer customers whose main interaction with the company has been online, he says.

By identifying who’s who as soon as someone arrives at the website, the site can present options in a different order, he says, so an individual gets the experience that makes the most sense to him. Changing the flow of screens and promotional offers can increase loyalty and yield higher revenues, he says. This kind of analysis is improving collaboration between IT and sales.

“The business says, ‘I got a half-point uptick because of [those changes].’ We say, ‘That’s great.’”

MARRYING ANALYTICS AND E-COMMERCE Improving e-commerce is a top priority for the company, something Wall Street investors frequently question executives about. Compared to regular retailers, Western Union does little business online, and it aims to change that. Electronic channels accounted for 2 percent of revenue in 2010. Now that number is 5 percent. By 2015, Ersek hopes it will be about 10 percent.

Aside from attracting customers who want to send funds and pay bills online, the website offers the company other financial benefits. Namely, Western Union doesn’t have to pay commissions to a sending agent online, though it does have to pay credit card fees.

Right now, while Ersek and Thompson spend money to enhance the site, transactions there carry lower margins than those conducted in physical stores. But by 2015, the margins should be up to par, CFO Scott Scheirman recently told investors.

RELENTLESS COMPETITORS It’s one thing to slice and dice data. But it’s another to

apply findings in a way that doesn’t cannibalize current business but rather moves at the customer’s pace, or perhaps just a touch faster, while keeping competitors at bay.

For Western Union to thrive, executives have to be careful not to over-rely on any one asset, says Dave Aron, a Gartner analyst who has studied business model disruption. Like ants at a picnic, competitors are constantly looking for ways to work around obstacles to get to the pie.

For example, banks are trying to win over some of Western Union’s customer base of unbanked and under-banked consumers by offering reloadable, prepaid cards that work like debit cards.

pre-populating data fields, to save time.

Such personalization is good, but Western Union doesn’t want to lose the genuine interpersonal relationships between customers and agents that feed trust in the brand. That’s a key difference between a bank and a company like Western Union, Servon says. Customers who come in regularly to conduct the same transactions develop rapport with agents. “For the companies that sell the products, their business depends on those relationships,” she says.

Technology like compliance systems and patented inventions is indeed an advantage, Aron says. But truly innovative companies also try to capitalize on broader concepts. That

about what a moneytransfer company can be.

ROI ON THE CIO One big investment Western Union’s CEO has made is swapping out one CIO for a new, more expensive one from outside the industry.

John Dick, who was CIO from 2008 to 2012, was reportedly asked to leave, telling an audience at a Forrester conference that Ersek sought someone with different skills. A Western Union spokesman confirms that the company rethought the CIO position.

“The role and priorities of the position were realigned around our technology and operations needs to better drive our customercentric strategy,” he says, declining to comment

Instead of having to wait until the analytics guys in Denver headquarters wake up and get to work, the marketing, sales and operations staff can send queries to the data scientists on call. Follow-the-sun analytics keeps the momentum going.

It doesn’t help that competitors have powerful allies.

The Federal Reserve and the World Economic Forum, among other entities, want to find ways to draw the unbanked into the mainstream financial system. They want to encourage saving, while a money-transfer company like Western Union doesn’t have regulatory approval to offer savings accounts.

These organizations see mobile banking as the key.

Ersek and Thompson agree about mobile’s potential. Western Union’s mobile app helps customers find local agents and stage transactions on the phone, so everything’s ready to go when they get there. One future enhancement developers are working on is prescheduling regular transactions and

might include ideas such as trust and customers “as whole people,” he says. For example, at 7-Eleven Japan, senior executives realized that the company’s fundamental asset was its knowledge of the small communities where its convenience stores have stood for so many years. The company expanded into adjacent businesses lines, adding dry cleaning, postal services and other ways to do chores inside 7-Eleven stores.

“Big data led them to say, ‘We understand the community better than anyone else,’” Aron says. “They realized they know how to solve daily problems.”

Western Union has no plans for a drycleaning business. But it is stretching its thinking

further. Dick, who is now CIO at staffing firm Towers Watson, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While Dick had spent nearly all of his 32-year career in financial services, Thompson hadn’t ever worked in financial services before. His most recent CIO jobs were at Symantec, Oracle and PeopleSoft. When Western Union’s board of directors discussed what to pay Thompson, they considered not only the going rate for CIOs but also the magnitude of what they were asking him to do, according to the company’s latest proxy statement. Earning $3.4 million, he is the secondhighest-paid officer at the company, behind Ersek. So far, the CEO calls Thompson “one of my best hires.” n

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Go Forth:

Web Analytics Experts share their top tips on how businesses should interpret and use Web analytics reporting to improve customer engagement and increase purchasing on their websites. By Jennifer Lonoff Schiff

J

UST ABOUT every online business or business with a website uses an analytics tool to track traffic. However, more often than not, business owners and managers do not take full advantage of the information contained in analytics reports—or they don’t know how to.

So how should businesses interpret Web analytics data—and leverage that information to decrease bounce and exit rates and increase sales on their website? Here are eight tips from dozens of Web analytics and marketing experts on how to use web analytics data to improve conversion rates and sales.

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[Note: Most of the advice below refers to Google Analytics. However, it can also be applied to other Web analytics software and services.]

See how people are accessing your site (mobile devices vs. laptops or desktops)— and optimize accordingly. “Look at how sales, especially conversion rates, differ by device type,” says Bill Elward, CIO, Castle Ink, a provider of remanufactured ink cartridges, laser toner and printer cartridges.

“With close to 40 percent of Internet activity generated via mobile devices, it’s critical to under-

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stand which devices are being used to access your website,” Elward says. “Be sure to look at conversion funnels and bounce rates by device for your key conversion pages as it could highlight issues such as page load [times] and layout [problems].” And if customers are using mobile devices to view your site, make sure the entire site is mobile friendly.

Track where traffic is coming from — to help determine where to invest marketing dollars and time. Ask yourself, “Is your traffic coming from other websites (referrals), social media or search engines (paid/organic)?” says Mike Wolfe, CEO, WAM Enterprises, a digital marketing agency.

“Knowing where traffic comes from can help you understand where to invest more time and money to increase traffic.”

“Analytics data can [also] allow you to understand what marketing channel is leading to the most conversions on your website,” adds Chris Meares, director of Analytics at MaassMedia, a boutique digital analytics consulting firm.

“By tracking marketing campaigns—e-mail, display and paid search — companies can understand what campaigns are contributing to conversion by utilizing the Google Analytics attribution model,” Meares says. “By understanding the conversion rates of each campaign, a company can move their marketing budgets to the most productive marketing channel.”

Discover where visitors are located, so you can better target those areas. “Use a geographic filter to figure out which countries, regions or states generate more sales than others,” says Noah Parsons, COO, Palo Alto Software, providers of business plan software. Then you can “use this information to create focused advertising campaigns for specific geographies.” You can also use the information to “try and figure out why some regions don’t convert and consider special offers, discounts or other incentives to boost sales for those regions.”

Use demographics data to better understand and target your audience. “Google Analytics recently released a Demographics and Interests segmentation in the Audience report,” says Katya Constantine, founder, DigiShopGirl Media.

“This allows sites to see the age, [gender] and interests of their site users— and which segments have a higher conversion rate,” Constantine explains.

“Based on this data, you can create better targeting criteria in future display and paid traffic efforts.”

Know exactly what your customers are

ANALYTICS | FOCAL POINT n looking for (with Site Search). “Use Site Search data in Google Analytics to find terms people are searching for while they are on your site, along with the page they were visiting at the time,” says Dave Cannon, co-founder, FindProz, a private instruction marketplace.

“This will help you pinpoint lost opportunities for product placements or additional mid-tolow-funnel content, and where they should be located on your site,” Cannon says. For example, “someone might search for ‘photographer’ and then refine the search with ‘wedding photographer.’

[So] now you know to advertise wedding photographers.”

Learn where visitors are landing. “Look at your Landing Page met-

rics,” says Nick Mather, COO, CyberMark International, an Internet marketing firm specializing in ethical SEO. “These are the pages where all your website traffic lands from search engines and other referrers. The content (text, images, call-toaction elements, etc.) on these pages should be perfected as to decrease the bounce rate and increase the conversion rate.”

Find out which calls to action generate the most interest. “When it comes to online conversion rates and lead generation, you can use in-page analytics to learn which calls to action are producing the best results on your Web pages,” says Brendan Cournoyer, director of Content Marketing, Brainshark, a provider of cloud-based business presentation so-

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lutions for sales, marketing and training.

“For example, Google Analytics allows you to view a web page and see which links on that page are driving the most clicks,” Cournoyer says. “Are some calls to action more effective than others? Does the placement of the call to action matter? Do some calls to action resonate better based on the topical focus on the page they live on? By using this data, you can further hone your messages to increase conversions based on the practices that work best.”

Pay attention to bounce rates to see where you’re losing customers. “Review the bounce rate of your landing pages,” says Steve Lamar, vice president, SEO Production, Volume 9, a

search marketing firm.

“Look for pages with higher traffic and high bounce rates relative to your other pages,” he advises. “Pages with high bounce rates can indicate a problem with the information, layout or call to actions. Use bounce rates as an initial indicator of problem pages.”

In addition, think about using “a conversion funnel to figure out where you are losing customers on the way to a sale,” says Parsons. “Are there steps in your checkout process that are causing users to drop out and not purchase? Simple changes might result in dramatic improvements in the number of people who end up purchasing,” he says. Moreover, “conversion funnels can be used for sites that aren’t ecommerce sites, too.” n

n PLAINSPEAK

YOGESH GUPTA

Freshly Brewed Technology There’s plenty you can learn from today’s coffee culture to add a kick to your enterprise technology sales. Time to get brewing.

Yogesh Gupta is executive editor at ChannelWorld. He is a computer engineer from Mumbai University. You can contact him at yogesh_ gupta@idgindia.com 54

O

RDERING A cappuccino or a café latte at your

neighborhood coffee outlet used to be a simple affair: You go in, grab a take-away, and dash off to work. Today, you are more likely to ponder for a few minutes at the ever-expanding menu before requesting a beverage of your choice. Then you’re thinking if you should have it there itself, or order a take-away? Then you’re tempted to sprinkle cinnamon or nutmeg perched in small jars on the

side table. I often indulge in this DIY mode for that perfect taste. So, what does your morning brew have in common with the technology business world? Plenty.

For one, the days of selling ‘plain vanilla’ hardware or off-the-shelf software enterprise technology are gone. In today’s brave IT world, organizational needs are becoming precise with the advent of cloud computing, big data and social media.

Welcome to the era of satisfying each individual’s taste buds with specific solutions, varied serving sizes, and DIY toppings.

Organizations need vertical-specific technology solutions, tweaked to accommodate their size, topped with the best TCO possible and the maximum ROI. It’s all about creating differentiators in the rough-and-tough competitive world, whether it’s coffee making or technology.Today’s popular coffee chains have been on transformation wheels for half a decade now, but that’s nothing compared to the speed of change that exists in technology, which keeps OEMs, their channel partners, and their customers on their toes, literally.

Organizations take steps (sometimes ad-hoc) to enhance (I like to think of it as toppings) an offering with ‘customized’ software or mobile application, or ‘shortterm’ social media strategies. They want to convert pre-quoted capex investments to purely opex or subscription-based models.

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Enterprise technology sales, today, are a lot like customizing your coffee with flavours of cocoa, vanilla or cinnamon. Have those little containers handy with sales and technical experts, think of those as new technologies and innovative business models and viola! that extra zing to your solutions is added. Invest in big data scientists, mobility experts and social media savvy professionals as they are bound to cook an excellent recipe for technology that your customers demand today--or will--in the near future.

Proof-of-concepts, too, have become more stringent as the integration of emergent technologies and its outcomes are relatively new for companies. The stretched sales mean that CIOs are making doubly sure of the technology usage and that each penny is well spent. One can take a cue from those coffee lovers who experiment with various permutations and combinations for that perfect taste.

How does a technology partner then brew the right enterprise solution for a modern organization? Make sure it is served hot (the latest technology trend) and freshly brewed (with plenty of technical expertise) to get the CIOs to embrace your company’s solutions.

Do not forget to stir the right brand of sugar for an unadulterated ‘sweet deal’ to benefit your business and your customers. n

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