ChannelWorld July 2012 by Sreekanth Sastry

FOCAL POINT: Unified communications certainly garnered attention, but why isn’t it catching on as expected? PAGE 39

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

GIRISH MADHAVAN, CEO, Quadsel Systems, spun off a separate company to maximize on the unexplored opportunities of the cloud.

Inside JULY 2012 VOL. 6, ISSUE 4

Cover Story

How the channel can profit from gaps in the cloud that businesses need to fill. PAGE 26 The hybrid cloud’s popularity is growing among SMBs. What that means for channel partners. PAGE 32 Binary Systems helps Bizprout move from the public to a private cloud environment. PAGE 34 CLOUD COMPUTING SPECIAL

Integrating systems with the cloud is a challenge for CIOs. That’s an opportunity you can tap. PAGE 36

The Grill

Gregg Ambulos, SVP, Global Channel Sales, EMC, on the opportunities for channel partners. PAGE 19 The channel can throw light on the challenges enterprises face with the cloud—and profit. But do they know where to start? >>> Page 25

Opinion

Are you a risk-averse leader who shies away from new technologies? PAGE 24

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JN_CW_AD_V1.3.indd 2

6/27/2012 6:00:57 PM

n EDITOR’S NOTE

Vijay Ramachandran

Subscription Era

OU’D EXPECT that the 192 CIOs who shared their

thoughts with our sister publication CIO in its MidYear Review Survey would describe their horror with an economy in flux. You couldn’t be more incorrect! Yes, enterprises big and small, are having to deal with shorter business horizons. And, yes CIOs and their teams

are thus having to tackle multiple projects, fast rollouts and quicker change requests from business. Given this tactical nature of IT, it’s no surprise that close to 40 percent of CIOs flagged a shortage of time for strategic planning as one of their biggest barriers to success. Unclear business expectations and inadequate in-house skillsets are only making the situation worse. But, and this is significant, just 17 percent of IT leaders said that they were inadequately funded! Throw in the 49 percent who state unequivocally that their organization’s risk and growth appetite remains high and a strange picture emerges. While the fear of stumbling exists, a significant number of organizations seem to be hoping that the Darwinian nature of the current slowdown will take out the competition. More than facing a liquidity crunch, India Inc. seems more uncertain of when to spend and how much.

And, more than a few are trying to widen the gap by actually making the right moves, albeit cautiously. It’s heartening that more organizations have worked on creating better customer connect than those that have focused primarily on cutting cost. To punch through the current slump organizations are considering models like the cloud to gain short-term tactical advantage while trying to build cost variability as a longer-term strategy. I observe two interesting trends. One has to do with how business outcomes have become the sole driver for IT spend since the first slowdown in 2008-09.

n These funding

models, I believe, will be the basis of a new age of leveraging IT, with cost variability at its fulcrum.

Clearly, without drawing a direct causal link between an investment ‘A’ and a business impact ‘B’ no CIO can reach for budgetary allocations—the uncertainty in the air has increased the rigor of justification. In the best of years this has been an issue for CIOs, now it’s definitely a challenge. It’s an area that solution providers will have to work on to provide justification models that make business sense to client organizations. The other trend is of more recent vintage. Over the past few months, I’ve noticed an increasing number of IT leaders looking to fund their investments in extremely different ways. Leasing, transaction fees, pay-per-use, interest-free loans, deferred payments, and outcome-linked charges are among the options that CIOs are tossing into the mix. A host of CXOs tell me that this also forces technology providers to have greater skin in the game; that it ensures that the relationship

is neither tactical nor transactional. Vendors and integrators who can manage to offer terms other than outright purchase definitely stand a better chance at pushing their wares in the near future. And, for those that aren’t so inclined, life is getting to be grim. Some integrators bristle at terms that call for an upfront investment on their part, with a payment schedule spread over many years. I believe that subscription-based models will increasingly dominate, specially for longer-term, higher-value projects. But, it’s more than a mindset change that’s required here. These new funding models will demand new ways of both measuring and monetizing IT investment. Companies, both end-user and solution provider must break out of the shackles of yore if they are to succeed. These funding models, I believe, will be the foundation of a new age of leveraging IT, with cost variability at its fulcrum. The Subscription Era is going to be one where SLAs, are backed by metrics and oversight; and where the solution provider-client relationship will have true strategic attributes.  Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of ChannelWorld. Contact him at vijay_ramachandran@idgindia.com

JULY 2012

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN

Inside INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n JULY 2012

■ NEWS DIGEST 05 End of the Road for the Cloud? | Cloud computing is not the

future of IT, but commoditization is, says analyst house Forrester, although the two support each other. 06 Disk Storage Revenues Rise | External disk storage systems

saw big year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2012, with revenues rising 7.1 percent or $6 billion (about Rs 33,000 crore), according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. More than six petabytes of capacity was shipped during the quarter.

ments, and outcome-linked charges are among the options that CIOs are tossing into the mix. 24 Thornton A. May: A slew of technologies out there that can bring real advantage to enterprises. But too often, risk-averse leaders want to take the cautious, slow approach. Do you really want to be one of them?

■ THE GRILL 19 Gregg Ambulos, senior vice

president, global channel sales,

06 HP Unveils NAS Box for SMBs | HP unveiled a

lightweight version of its Windowsbased network-attached storage (NAS) array that’s aimed at small-tomedium-sized businesses.

08 Microsoft Opens Azure to IaaS, Linux | Microsoft unveiled

new capabilities for Azure that move the cloud offering from PaaS into the competitive landscape of IaaS, while embracing open-source operating systems.

■ NEWS ANALYSIS 12 Windows 8 is IPv6 Compatible | The dual compatibility

feature in Windows 8 will assist in a smooth transition to IPv6.

■ OPINION

01 Editorial: Over the past few months, Vijay Ramachandran has noticed an increasing number of IT leaders looking to fund their investments in extremely different ways. Leasing, transaction fees, pay-peruse, interest-free loans, deferred payCover Photograph by SHARP IMAGES & Cover Design by UNNIKRISHNAN A.V

EMC, talks about the colossal opportunities for channel partners.

■ FAST TRACK

16 Amit Tacker, director, audio/ video sales & design, Tacker Technologies, says that change will never go out of style. He believes that the biggest challenge is to constantly evolve in this dynamic industry to stay profitable, and ahead of competition.

CLOUD COMPUTING SPECIAL

■ SPECIAL REPORT

25 The Cloud’s New Pitch

As more Indian enterprises move to the cloud, they are facing new challenges—challenges that channel players can turn around into opportunities.

■ FEATURE

32 SMBs: Yes To Hybrid

The hybrid cloud’s popularity is growing among SMBs. What that means for channel partners.

■ CASE STUDY

34 The Big Switch

Within months of moving to a public cloud Bizprout Corporate Solutions wanted out. That’s when they turned to Binary Systems, which got them on a private cloud in just four months.

■ FEATURE

36 Integration Opportunity

Integrating internal systems with a public cloud is the second largest challenge Indian CIOs face with the cloud. That’s an opportunity channel partners can tap.

FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN

Inside

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

CHANNELWORLD.IN Publisher, President & CEO Louis D’Mello Associate Publisher: Rupesh Sreedharan

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n JULY 2012

n EDITORIAL

18 Lawrence Albert,

founder and director, believes that a focus on brand servicing will strengthen their hold on SMEs. He says that their business has survived due to the smart strategies they execute.

39 ■ FOCAL POINT

■ ON RECORD

22 Vikas Chadha, director, security systems,

Honeywell India, talks about how the company addresses the knotty electronic security market.

39 Hanging Up On UC

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: UC technology has garnered a fair amount of attention due to its promise of helping workers keep in touch with colleagues, business partners, and customers in a highly frenetic, increasingly-mobile business world. But, it isn’t catching on. Here’s why.

42 Going Mobile and into the Cloud

He also throws light on Honeywell’s revamped partner strategy and their SI division.

■ FACE OFF 44 Automation Showdown: Between BMC’s Control-M and CA’s Workload Automation, who comes up trumps?

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: With the explosion of technology trends such as mobility and cloud computing, to name just two, UC is growing to be much more than just video conferencing and accessing work e-mail at home. It’s evolving with the times. The technology offers flexible collaboration tools and the ability to work—with all of the capabilities enterprises need— anywhere in the world.

Editor-in-Chief Vijay Ramachandran Associate Editor Yogesh Gupta Deputy Editor Sunil Shah Assistant Editor Online Varsha Chidambaram Special Correspondents Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya Principal Correspondents Aditya Kelekar, Gopal Kishore Correspondents Ankita Mitra, Aritra Sarkhel, Kartik Sharma, Shubra Rishi Senior Copy Editor Nanda Padmanabhan, Shreehari Paliath Copy Editor: Vinay Kumaar n DESIGN

Lead Designers Jinan K.V., Jithesh C., Suresh Nair Senior Designer Unnikrishnan A.V. Designers Amrita C. Roy, Lalita Ramakrishna, Sabrina Naresh n SALES

AND MARKETING

President Sales & Marketing: Sudhir Kamath VP Sales Parul Singh GM Marketing Siddharth Singh Manager Key Accounts: Sakhee Bagri, Varun Dev, Jaideep M. Manager-Sales Support Nadira Hyder Marketing Associates: Dinesh P., Anuradha Iyer, Benjamin Jeevanraj n CUSTOM SOLUTIONS & AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

Senior Manager Projects: Chetan Acharya, Pooja Chhabra, Ajay Adhikari, Ajay Chakravarthy Manager Tharuna Paul Senior Executive Shwetha M. Project Co-ordinator Archana Ganapathy, Saurabh Patil, Rima Biswas n FINANCE

& OPERATIONS

D-LINK (INDIA) LTD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Juniper Networks India Pvt.Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC

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

Ricoh India Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Finance Controller: Sivaramakrishnan T.P. Sr. Manager Accounts: Sasi Kumar V. Sr. Accounts Executive: Poornima Manager Credit Control: Prachi Gupta Sr. Manager Products: Sreekanth Sastry Sr. Manager Production: T.K.Karunakaran Sr. Manager IT: Satish Apagundi

Fujitsu India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

n OFFICES

HP PSG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC

Socomec UPS India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Dell India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . 7, 17 & Cover Gate fold

IBM India Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

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

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company. Printed and Published by Louis D’Mello on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. Editor: Louis D’Mello, Printed At Manipal Press Ltd, Press Corner, Manipal-576104, Karnataka, India.

Bangalore IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore 560 027, India. Tel: 080-30530300. Fax: 080-30586065 Delhi IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. DLF Corporate Park, Tower 4 B, 3rd Floor, Room 301, MG Road, DLF Phase 3, Gurgaon- 122001, Haryana Tel: 0124- 3881015 Mumbai IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. 201, Madhava, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai 400051. Tel: 022-30685000. Fax: 022-30685023

News

WHAT’S WITHIN

PAGE 06: Disk Storage Revenues Rise

PAGE 06: HP Unveils NAS Box for SMBs PAGE 08: Microsoft Opens Azure to IaaS, Linux PAGE 12: Windows 8 is IPv6 Compatible

Illustrations by UNNIKRISHNAN A.V

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

CLOUD COMPUTING

End of the Road for the Cloud?

LOUD COMPUTING

is not the future of IT and commoditization is, says analyst house Forrester, although the two support each other. Forrester says that as a result of commoditization and modernization, IT portfolios will evolve so that many applications will become suitable for cloud deployment, but many will not. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester, says in a report: “Not everything will move to the cloud as there are many business process-

es, data sets and workflows that require specific hardware or proprietary solutions that can’t take advantage of cloud economics. For this reason we’ll likely still have mainframes 20 years from now.” The Make the Cloud Enterprise Ready report, which is part of Forrester’s Playbook on Cloud Computing, urges CIOs to “leverage cloud services today and reap the early education from doing so” to gain competitive advantage in the future. The Playbook on Cloud

Computing is a framework for adopting the cloud, going into detail on the benefits and disadvantages of public and private clouds, cloud economics, and addresses “cloud washing”— the efforts by a number of vendors in branding their “businessas-usual IT services” and virtualization products as “cloud” offerings. The report says: “Long term, enterprises will have a hybrid portfolio of cloud and non-cloud workload deployments that uses these options to optimize resource and agility requirements.” It adds: “In this future state the majority of system workloads will be cloud- resident while your own systems of record will evolve to cloud at a slower but deliberate pace. The end result will be a mixed environment managed through a decision tree and a series of workload automation systems that ensure governance and regulatory compliance across this portfolio.” The report also warns that those companies that have chosen private cloud architecture as their main cloud strategy will not realize the savings that can be made through public cloud services or through a hybrid cloud architecture.

JULY 2012

— By Antony Savvas INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

SECURITY

F5’s New Suite F5 Networks announced dynamic services to help organizations intelligently respond to DNS queries and application requests, consolidate infrastructure, and provide end-to-end protection for their essential DNS systems. “As applications and DNS infrastructures have become more complex to address security and performance concerns, organizations are finding it impossible to scale and efficiently manage their systems,” said

Anil Pochiraju, managing director, F5 Networks. With the added efficiency IT teams can significantly reduce the number of DNS servers required to support their systems, consolidating deployments and cutting costs. And as DNS services are easily deployed with BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager, they can be combined with other BIG-IP products. -ChannelWorld Bureau

STORAGE

Disk Storage Revenues Rise

tinued to show strong sales storage systems saw with 17.6 percent revenue big year-over-year growth compared to the (YoY) growth in the same quarter in 2011. Dell first quarter of 2012, with led the iSCSI SAN market revenues rising 7.1 percent with 33 percent revenue or $6 billion (about Rs share, followed by EMC and 33,000 crore), according to NetApp with 18.9 percent IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly and 13.7 percent market Disk Storage Systems shares, respectively. Tracker. More Even though than six petabytes monsoonal of capacity flooding in Thaishipped during land shut down the quarter. manufacturing Year-on-year increase EMC continued facilities last year in revenue from to lead in exterand caused hard external disk storage systems in Q1 of 2012. nal disk storage disk drive shortsystem sales with ages, the external 29 percent of the overall storage systems market revenue share in remains strong, said IDC the first quarter, followed by analyst Liz Conner. Hardest NetApp with 14.1 percent of hit were entry-level systems the market. IBM followed that have an average selling with 11.4 percent, and HP price of less than $25,000 ended the quarter with 10.2 (about Rs 13.75 lakh). Those percent market share. system sales suffered most The NAS market declined because they typically use 1.9 percent YoY. EMC led in serial ATA (SATA) or lowerNAS sales with 42.6 percent priced near-line serial SCSI revenue share, followed by (SAS) drives, which experiNetApp with 36.4 percent. enced the highest price inThe iSCSI SAN market concreases due to the flooding. XTERNAL DISK

$6 billion

“However, strong overall growth in emerging regions and the slowdown in price-per-gigabyte erosion helped the market post YoY growth,” Conner said. IHS iSuppli released a report that predicted hard drive prices will remain high and are unlikely to fall to pre-flood levels until 2014. In the wake of the flooding, hard drive prices rose to an average of $66 (about Rs 3600) in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 28 percent jump from the $51 (about Rs 2,800) average price in the previous quarter, says IHS iSuppli. IDC analyst Amita Potnis said the high-end storage segment, represented by systems with price tags north of $250,000 (about Rs 137 lakh), remained flat YoY and declined 13 percent sequentially in the first quarter of 2012. “The high-end segment grew significantly in 2010 and 2011 owing to the loosened storage budgets after the economic crisis of 2009. IDC believes that the softened growth in the high-end segment this quarter is reflective of what will be a long-term trend,” Potnis said.

HP Unveils New NAS Box for SMBs

older X5000s run the Windows Server OS. HP’s original X5520 G2 Network Storage System, which runs NFS and CIFS file protocols, is aimed at the same midrange market as NetApp’s FAS 3020 filer. The array can now accept 3TB drives (it’s past capacity was 2TB drives) meaning it can scale to 48TB in a base 3U (5.25-in

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

 Red Hat India head,

Anuj Kumar, has quit after just 18 months since his promotion as the managing director. Kumar left Red Hat after almost a decade-long stint with the organization. Although officials at Red Hat were unavailable for comments, sources say that he is moving back to the USA to join another company.

 EMC appointed Praveen

Sahai as the new Channel head for EMC India. Sahai was heading the business for Iomega as Director of Sales, India & SAARC, and Strategic Marketing Director – Asia Pacific for the last six years. He succeeds Alok Tandon who left EMC to pursue other opportunities, according to EMC India.

 Huawei Enterprise

launched two new products: S5700-LI Series Gigabit Switches and AR150 and AAR200 Series Enterprise Route as a part of their strategy to enhance their enterprise presence in the India market.

— By Lucas Mearian

STORAGE

HP unveiled a lightweight version of its Windows-based networkattached storage (NAS) array that’s aimed at small-to-mediumsized businesses. Based on the same architecture as the HP X5000series NAS box, the new X5000 devices for SMBs use 2.5in drives and can scale to 32.4TB. Both the new and

Short Takes

BUILT FOR SMBs: The HP X5000 will target the SMBs

high) form factor and, using expansion units, up to 192TB in a 15U form factor. HP said the new X5520 NAS will target companies looking

to address the proliferation of unstructured data brouught on by the proliferation of employees using personal devices at work. The SMB version of the X5520 can scale to 36 drives for up to 32.4TB in a 3U high base unit and, with expansion units, it can scale to so 122TB in a 15U form factor. It is built on a blade server architecture using active-active controllers.The X5520 starts at $31,317 for a 16TB model using 7200RPM hard drives. — Lucas Mearian

SERVICE

Microsoft Opens Azure to IaaS, Linux

ICROSOFT UNVEILED new

capabilities for Azure that move the cloud offering from a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) into the competitive landscape of infrastructureas-a-service (IaaS), while embracing open-source operating systems. “Enabling IaaS gives customers the ability to host and deploy durable virtual machines running Windows or Linux,” Scott Guthrie, CVP of Windows Azure’s application platform, said during an unveiling broadcast. “You may be surprised to hear about Linux, but our support of Linux is one example of how we are embracing openness in a fundamental new way.” The IaaS service is available now and allows users to configure virtual machines in one of five sizes, supporting up to 20 virtual machines at once running either Windows or Linux operating systems. The IaaS offering comes with a 99.95 percent availability service level agreement and the service allows customers to save virtual machine images and relaunch them on other VMs, giving them persistent and durable qualities. Guthrie also said the software development kits (SDKs) associated with the Windows, Mac, Linux installations will be available on GitHub. The move launches Microsoft into the busy IaaS field, where market leader Amazon Web Services competes with various other 8

providers, including Rackspace, Terremark, GoGrid and others. Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, a company that helps users migrate to cloud environments and works with a handful of cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, said the company would support Azure’s IaaS offering. “When we learned a while ago that Azure would be coming out with IaaS, we got really excited,” he said during Microsoft’s Azure debut, which the company webcast. The integrations between Azure’s PaaS and IaaS environments, he says, are an “industry first.”

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

Around

TheWorld Symantec, Red Hat’s Expanded Collaboration

Symantec and Red Hat jointly announced an extended collaboration to deliver solutions that help customers deploy agile private and hybrid clouds and create highly resilient datacenters. The expanded relationship spans engineering, marketing, support, and sales groups in both companies. Based on proven real-world deployments, the new solutions will harness the power of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Symantec storage and availability solutions to deliver higher availability and increased agility while

James Staten, a research VP at Forrester, agrees. “Only Microsoft, as of today, offers the broadest IaaS and PaaS from a single vendor cloud platform,” he wrote in a blog post. There were other major announcements from HP, Oracle and Red Hat related to the cloud plat-

helping organizations deploy business-critical applications with confidence. — ChannelWorld Bureau

Extreme Networks’ SDN Strategy

Extreme Networks threw its hat into the SDN ring by disclosing its programmability strategy for datacenters, mobile carrier networks and campuses. Extreme said it will provide OpenFlow support across its ExtremeXOS-based Ethernet switch line, while supporting multiple OpenFlow controllers including those from NEC and BigSwitch. Extreme Networks said that it will also introduce a plug-in for OpenStack, the open source cloud operating system, to manage network switches using the OpenStack Quantum API. — Jim Duffy

forms of other companies as well. Oracle, for its part, released the news of its cloud-based delivery of applications, while HP rolled out the next generation of its converged cloud infrastructure platform, which is based on OpenStack technology. — By Brandon Butler

Google to Launch IaaS Compute Engine

Expanding its portfolio of cloud computing services, Google is launching an IaaS package, called Google Compute Engine (GCE). The service will be available as a limited preview, with access available only through Google’s salesforce. The company did not offer an estimate of when the service would be generally available. By entering the IaaS market, Google is following Microsoft, which also recently added Linux IaaS services to its Windows Azure PaaS. — IDG News Service

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n NEWS ANALYSIS

Taking Collaboration to the Cloud Cisco’s new WebEx Social should appeal to its new customers. By Sharon Gaudin

ISCO ANNOUNCED

at the Enterprise 2.0 conference that a cloud-based version of its social collaboration software will be available in North America in July. The new cloud-based offering is one of a number of updates to the collaboration offering that Cisco unveiled. The company also said it’s changing the name of the product from Cisco Quad to WebEx Social as part of a move to unify the Cisco collaborative business apps. 10

“We want to be a broader integrated collaboration provider,” said Raj Gossain, a Cisco vice president of product management. “We wanted to let people know that we’re expanding [WebEx business app]. We’re unifying our eforts.” Gossain also noted that users are increasingly looking for cloud-based social collaboration tools. While he says that customers are already using the onpremise version of Cisco’s collaborative software, new customers are more apt to go with the cloud version.

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

“There are a number of customers who are looking at the cloud so they don’t have to manage infrastructure,” he added. “They don’t have to worry about it. They’ll be able to deploy these solutions more quickly and easily. They can simply buy this as a service.” Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research, applauded the move to come out with a cloud-based solution. “Between WebEx, Quad and Jabber, Cisco has optimized their solution for the post-PC world,” he said. “Cloud is a much easier de-

livery model than premise software, especially when you’re dealing with different kinds of devices. Scaling software through traditional, legacy means is very difficult when you’re dealing with consumer devices.” Kerravala also pointed out that the cloud-based offering will make Cisco more competitive with social collaboration tools from Microsoft, Jive Software, Novell, Yammer and IBM. Gossain said the tool arrives as enterprises gain more confidence about moving forward with social collaboration software. Until recently, many IT executives have been hesitant about bringing social software—wikis, document sharing, video, blogs and Facebook-like collaborative setups—into their companies. They felt that such tools nix the idea of a business hierarchy and lets workers seamlessly connect with employees of any rank without going through their boss. “There’s been a marked shift,” he added. “There’s an acceptance. We’re bordering on an expectation that organizations are going to socialize their enterprise. And that’s not just mid-market. That’s large enterprise customers, and mid-market and small customers, as well.” Cisco also announced that it has integrated WebEx Social with Microsoft Office so that people can make updates. Cisco also updated its WebEx Social clients for the iPhone and the iPad, enabling users to move from social networking to real-time IM, online conferencing and voice calls directly from their mobile application. — Computerworld (US)

n NEWS ANALYSIS

Windows 8 is IPv6 Compatible

The dual compatibility feature in Windows 8 will assist in a smooth transition to IPv6. By Tim Greene

INDOWS 8 has a bias in favor of IPv6 but can handle IPv4 connectivity when it’s the only option, something that will help the IPv6 transition for businesses and individuals. This also fits in with Microsoft’s overall commitment to IPv6 in many of its other products, although many of its services lag. In Windows 8, the company tries to address the varying scenarios that customers will face; if their infrastructure supports only IPv4, if it supports both IPv4 and IPv6; if it tries to connect with networks that have IPv4 or both IPv4 and IPv6 or just IPv6, according to a Building Windows 8 blog post.

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

The way Windows 8 support works, it tests for IPv6 connectivity when it first contacts another network that advertises its ability to route IPv6. If it works, Windows 8 will utilize it. Rather than relying on detecting a set of IPv6 addresses alone to make that decision, the software determines whether an IPv6 connection would improve or hurt the user experience. If the network has dual IPv4/ IPv6 stacks, this will help improve the performance of applications using standard Windows APIs, the blog says. The information gathered about IPv4 and IPv6 support in other networks is cached by Windows 8 and

repeats the test every 30 days. If both are functioning, IPv6 gets priority. A major goal in designing Windows 8 IPv6 features was to do no harm in existing corporate routing environments, says Christopher Palmer, a member of Microsoft’s core networking management team who wrote the blog. To accomplish that, Windows 8 has two safeguards, he says: “If the enterprise has provided specific routing information to a particular destination, then Windows 8 will honor that preference, regardless of the connectivity determined by Windows. In enterprise environments, Windows assumes that network administrators who configure such routes specifically thought it was a good idea to use those routes. “This change isn’t implemented on networks with Web proxies. In these networks, the proxy provides connectivity to the Internet; so end-to-end testing of IPv6 connectivity is not useful. Instead, Windows 8 simply opens connections to the proxy in the most efficient manner possible.” He says this ensures that Windows 8 can stay connected as the Internet transitions to IPv6, even if local networks are misconfigured to handle it.

STAPLES ON WINDOWS 8 Business supply chain Staples is promoting Windows 8 via a support and upgrade package it says is worth $100 (Rs 5500). Aimed at small businesses, the offer promises that customers who buy new Windows 7 computers before Nov. 31 and upgrade them to Windows 8 Pro when it’s available get a $15

n NEWS ANALYSIS (Rs 875) gift card to compensate for the $14.99 upgrade fee Microsoft charges. They also get online training in the operating system and phone support. In announcing the program, Staples released results of a survey it commissioned about small businesses’ feelings about Windows 8. Of those who were aware of Windows 8, 70 percent have upgrade plans underway. The most exciting thing about Windows 8 for 28 percent of them is that in combination with Windows Phone, it offers similar user experiences on phones, tablets and PCs.

HARDWARE GLUT At the Computex 2012 conference, it seemed that it was nearly impossible to turn around without bumping into a new device sporting Windows 8, according to published reports. Acer showed two new tablets as did Asus, which also revealed a Windows 8 all-in-one and a hybrid laptop/tablet that can dual boot and has two screens—one of them a touchscreen—that can simultaneously display separate applications. Asus also put out a Windows 8 version of its Android Eee Transformer Prime. Meanwhile, during a keynote, Intel’s senior vice president Tom Kilroy said more than 20 Intel Clover Trail-based devices designed for Windows 8 were on tap from several vendors.

HTC LEFT OUT While hardware vendors bragged about their upcoming Windows 8 products, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft turned down HTC to receive early versions of Windows 8 to put on its tablets. Part of the 14

WINDOWS TO GO: THE DO’S AND DON’TS Windows To Go feature in Windows 8 has IT pros all aflutter about the abilities to boot from a USB. But before you do boot from a USB, check out these instructions and do’s and don’ts THE DO’S n Use a machine that’s certified to run Windows 7 or Windows 8. n When booting from USB when Windows 8 is running on the host PC: From the start menu, search for “Windows to Go startup options” and select “Yes, to boot from Windows To Go when it is present.” If your computer supports it, you can also try to use the onetime boot menu (often F12) to select USB boot on a per-boot basis. n When booting from USB when Windows 7 is running on the host PC: Go into the firmware/BIOS setup utility (this differs depending on the manufacturer but is usually done with one of the function keys, F1, F2 or F12). Once you’ve entered firmware setup, check that boot from USB is enabled, and then change the boot order to “boot from USB drives” first. As with Windows 8, if your computer supports it you can try to use the one-time boot menu (often F12) to select USB boot on a per-boot basis. n Always shut down your host machine before connecting and booting into the Windows To Go USB drive. n Always shut down Windows To Go and wait until shutdown has completed (when the light on the Windows To Go drive is off) before removing the drive. THE DON’TS n Don’t use it on a machine running Vista or Windows XP. Microsoft originally said this would be ok, but now the recommendation is Windows 7 or higher (i.e. Windows 8). n Do not pull the thumb drive from a running machine. If it does get pulled out accidentally, reinsert the drive into the same USB port within 60 seconds to resume where you left off. Otherwise you will have to start your session over. n You must connect the USB thumb drive directly into the PC. Do not connect the Windows To Go drive to a USB hub. problem was that HTC wanted to customize the home screen and Microsoft said no. Also, Microsoft was concerned that HTC doesn’t have enough experience in the tablet market, the report says. But, HTC may jump into the Windows 8 device fray sometime next year.

A GOOGLE THREAT Google has bought Quickoffice in a move that could be a threat to the ARM version of Windows 8 known as Windows RT. Google could package Quickoffice with its Chromebooks, which would help the devices compete with Windows 8 tablets and notebooks when they come out later this year. Windows RT will come with native Office applications. Full versions of Office will run on Windows 8 x86 laptops,

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

notebooks and tablets. So while Quickoffice isn’t Office, it can edit Officeformat files. With Chromebooks starting at $299 (Rs 16445), they could become a more attractive alternative to Windows 8 tablets, iPads and even the little Nook and Kindle tablets from Barnes & Noble and Amazon if they ship with Quickoffice onboard. Or Google may be making a defensive move based on the heavily rumored Office for iPad package that The New York Times says Microsoft is working on, but hasn’t decided when to launch it or how much to charge.

PRIVACY? WHAT’S THAT? Microsoft drew a line in the sand this week, saying it would switch on by default the do-not-track option in Internet Explorer 10, the

version that comes with Windows 8. A committee of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) responded with a new provision in its do-nottrack policy as posted by Wired that makes such a default setting fall outside its recommendations. That means Microsoft can’t say it supports the W3C’s policy, but it could keep do-not-track switched on by default anyway. Do-not-track is an honor system in which browsers state their preference not to be tracked and websites agree not to. If IE10 violates the W3C policy, websites could ignore the requests from IE10 browsers with the rationale that the browser is non-compliant. No word yet on what Microsoft will do. n — Network World (US)

n FAST TRACK

TECHNOLOGY SPLIT

Tacker Technologies

34%

12%

Audio visual (AV)

Surveillance and access

48%

Data and network (Passive, active IT security & firewalls)

Others

Photograph by IMAGES

SOURCE: TACKER TECHNOLOGIES

Snapshot Founded: 1988 Headquarters: New Delhi Other Key Executives: Ashok Tacker, Owner Revenue 2010-11: Rs 21 crore

O IMPROVE is to

change; to be perfect is to change often,” said Winston Churchill. That’s an adage Amit Tacker, director, audio/video sales & design, Tacker Technologies, lives by. Take for example how he completely changed the company’s focus since it launched in 1998. From using a product-selling model, Tacker Technologies established itself as an end-to-end systems integratorm when Tacker realized that end-customers wanted multiple solutions to be converged—not point solutions. “The biggest challenge is to keep evolving in this dynamic industry,” he says. Today, Tacker Technologies offers a set of solutions across different verticals, helping it clock Rs 24 crore in 2011-12. But in the beginning, it

Revenue 2011-12: Rs 24 crore Employees: 60 Key Principals: Honeywell, Samsung, Panasonic, Polycom, Avaya, Rittal, Tyco, Kramer, Emerson, Schneider, NEC Key business activities: Systems integration covering design and implementation of key infrastructure technologies including data, voice, audio visual, surveillance, automation and access Focus verticals: IT/telecom, manufacturing, hospitality, education, consulting services, government Website: www.tackerit.com was difficult to establish themselves. “Convincing end-customers of the efficacy of a particular solution or integration was a challenge.”

UNIFIED APPROACH Tacker Technologies usually combines five infrastructure technology components—data, voice, audio visual, surveillance and access—into one solution and customize it according to the needs of the customer. If there’s one project that sticks out in Tacker’s mind, it’s when they worked with Alstom Technologies. That assignment, he says, helped them surge ahead with audio-video solutions, which soon became one of their major portfolios. “We were doing a data infrastructure project but ended up doing AV automation and access control. That was when the idea of doing all five solutions came to us. This allows us to dig deeper into the needs of each customer and increase our top and bottom-lines by packaging technologies. Packaging technologies also gave us access to the services business, too,” says Tacker. Continuing with this growth story, Tacker partnered with the likes of Polycom, Tandberg, and Dell, among others, to offer a dynamic range of AV solutions. The company trained its team according to its plan of integrating IT with AV solutions. This resulted in a whopping 45 percent of the company’s revenue being generated from this sector. Looking forward, Tacker Technologies intends to add specialized technologies to its array of skills, do more consultative selling, and consequently, win more customers.  — Aritra Sarkhel

Change, says Amit Tacker, director, Audio/Video Sales & Design, Tacker Technologies, will never go out of style. 16

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

n FAST TRACK

TECHNOLOGY SPLIT

LA Technologies

20% 20%

Networking

15%

Enterprise Applications

Security

10%

Servers

10%

20%

Services

Power & Cooling

Photograph by KAPIL SHROFF

Storage

Snapshot

Founded: 2003

Headquarters: Mumbai Branches: Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune

F YOU thought that LA Tech-

nologies was named after its Founder and Director, Lawrence Albert, you’re wrong. “LA stands for layered architect, as we work on all the seven layers of OSI (Open System Interconnect),” says Albert, whose company offers a slew of products and services for turnkey projects across all layers including cabling, routing, security, and applications. That’s the sort of pragmatism that’s allowed it to grow fast. Here’s another one: “We believe in the bottom line alone—not the top line. There should be cash in the bank, not the balance sheet,” says Albert.

BIG ON GROWTH The company commenced its journey with repairs (reverse engineer-

Other Key Executives: Anita Lawrence , Dir. (HR & Ops); Satwant Singh Matta, Technical Head; Meenakshi Bahal, Sr.Manager (HR & Ops); Bharat Gosia, Sr.Manager-Finance Revenues 2010-2011: Rs 12 crore Revenues 2011-2012: Rs 18 crore Employees: 80 Key Principals: Checkpoint, Cisco, Juniper, Schneider Electric, Oracle, Tyco Key Business Activities: IT infrastructure business solutions, datacenter design, RIM Focus Verticals: BFSI, real estate, retail, utilities, IT/ITeS, FMCG, pharma and healthcare Website: www.la-technologiesindia.com

ing) for Cisco. But from 2007, once the market got a whiff of its technical strengths and service levels, orders flowed in thick and fast. Between 2007 and 2009, the company doubled in size every year, and has since,

SOURCE: LA TECHNOLOGIES

grown at average of 40 percent. Today, 70 percent of its revenues come from SMEs, 40 percent from SMBs, and 30 percent from mid-market enterprises. “Addressing small, rural towns through alliances is on the agenda,” says Albert. Part of its success stems from an understanding of its market. “We propose only a bundled offering at unmatched rates in this very pricesensitive segment. SMBs want the best technology at bare minimal costs,” says Albert. An inventory of all OEM products and a leasing option are two other big advantages they have over competition. “Our business has survived mainly due to this smart strategy,” he says, referring to the leasing option.

THE WAY AHEAD Diversifying from a product-centric model, the company’s emphasis is on brand servicing this year, says Albert. The company is also building a 24x7 NOC / SOC to facilitate RIM. Why not increase focus across enterprises? “The relationship between enterprises and vendors is quite dynamic. Accounts change hands (amongst partners) every few years which is not good from a long term perspective,” he reasons. And because the local market won’t be able to provide enough head room for exponential growth, the company is building a platform for services to operate across international markets.  — Yogesh Gupta

A focus on brand servicing will strengthen our hold on SMEs, says Lawrence Albert, founder and director, LA Technologies. 18

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

Dossier Name: Gregg Ambulos Designation: SVP, Global Channel Sales Company: EMC Present Role: Ambulos is responsible for developing and executing global go-to-market strategies for EMC’s channel and distribution partners. He is focused on maintaining a consistent channel program globally. He also oversees EMC’s distribution, direct marketing, and national reseller relationships. Career Graph: Prior to his current position, Ambulos was SVP for EMC’s Global Channel Operations and Americas Channel Sales. Ambulos joined EMC from Hitachi Data Systems. Storage has been and will remain our core competency. From a single product, Symmetrix, we transitioned from being a hardware-centric company to a storage-solutions company. We also have ownership in VMware (a non-storage company) and will continue to diversify across innovative technologies.

n THE GRILL

Gregg Ambulos

SVP, Global Channel Sales, EMC, talks about the colossal opportunities for channel partners. Is there a push within EMC to move away from its storage vendor image? If you look at our cloud and big data play, we are extremely well positioned. Our portfolio is second to none. The amount of data we will all create by 2020, will be about fifty times what it is today—and 50 percent of that will be big data. A lot of that data will be

unstructured in nature and that’s where our Isilon technology provides us a real competitive edge. Analytics from Greenplum appliances is also another vital piece. EMC continues to add vital pieces to the overall picture through acquisitions and portfolio expansion to enable customers on their journey to the cloud.

NetApp is replacing EMC accounts at a fair clip. How are you safeguarding your enormous installed base? I wasn’t familiar with NetApp replacing EMC. In and outside India, we are taking market share from NetApp. Not only does VNX compete aggressively with Network Appliance, but NetApp has no answer to Isilon’s scale out technology. From EMC’s perspective, we continue to work with partners and stay close to our customers with any opportunities they have. And we try to keep competition away. The private cloud reference architecture, VSPEX, is a game changer. Whether it is HP, IBM, or NetApp in an account, the objective of VSPEX is to address customer challenges. We have the best of both worlds with VSPEX, and with Vblock that was launched 18 months ago. JULY 2012

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n THE GRILL | GREGG AMBULOS to go down the private cloud route with different technology alliances, then VSPEX is an apposite choice. A partner often approaches an account that already has an investment in x86 technologies around HP, IBM or Dell and virtualized on VMware, Citrix or Microsoft. Maybe they have invested in Brocade rather than Cisco. That’s why we created alternatives through VSPEX, and therein lies a big opportunity for partners around cloud infrastructure.

The objective of VSPEX is to address customer challenges. We have the best of both worlds with VSPEX now and with Vblock launched 18 months ago.

VSPEX competes with NetApp’s FlexPod and others. But VMAX means VSPEX competes with Cisco’s UCS server (which forms the cornerstone of VCE). How do you address the possible dichotomy here? I think they (VSPEX and VCE) compliment each other. For fullyconverged infrastructure, Vblock is the only solution out there today. I believe NetApp introduced FlexPod as an answer to Vblock but it (FlexPod) does not provide fully-converged infrastructure. If an enterprise wants 20

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

Does that imply that VSPEX is a subset of VCE? No. VSPEX is an EMC brand working with tech vendors, while VCE is a separate entity selling Vblock. VSPEX, from EMC’s standpoint, is an opportunity to empower channels working with technology alliance partners. We were tactical with alliance partners like Cisco, Brocade, Microsoft earlier, but we are marketing VSPEX solutions together with joint initiatives around demand generation and joint-training. An enterprise partner can sell both. EMC is spearheading reference architectures like VCE and VSPEX which means solution providers need to invest in skilled manpower and T&C. Where’s the money for those partnering with VSPEX? The entire non-named business is exclusive for partners including mid-market, SMBs, and number of large accounts. In the past, it was restricted to channel-only segments within the EMC selling model, but now, virtually the entire spectrum is dedicated to the partner community. The entire landscape is open to the partner community, which creates a greater opportunity and more significant ROI for them. In non-named areas, certified EMC partners can deliver services for margin enhancements and stickiness with customers. We bring in the partner (in non-named account) by the second call into an EMC-found opportunity. Articulating their value to the customer, they can get good margins as they control deals including designing solutions and services around it. EMC wins because they have reach, and the partner wins by being a strategic advisor.

How are you building an army of partners for VSPEX in India? Are you limiting it to EMC channels? Distributors Ingram and Redington have been trained and they are aggressively identifying partners interested in VSPEX, irrespective of whether they are EMC partners or not. They are training partners to position VSPEX effectively. In 2011, we announced the first channel-exclusive product, VNXe, and later followed with dd160. Now VSPEX is 100 percent a channel model. EMC has transitioned from being a direct sales organization to a place where almost 50 percent of our business comes through channels. The EMC Velocity Solutions Provider Partner Program is quite successful. How has the program evolved? The Velocity program, which was earlier based purely on revenues, is today a competency-based program. We added specialties and encouraged our partners to build capabilities like back up recovery and archive, advance consolidation around VMax, and others. As a result, a regional partner with superior specialties could lose out to a national partner in terms of revenues. Hence a big change was made in the program. More specialties are being added to the program around big data for partners to enhance margins and revenues. Under the Focus program, we streamlined the process for a single point PRM for Isilon, BRS, and others. Velocity is the umbrella program and then specialties like VSPEX, Cloud Builder, and other programs fall under it. EMC is more excited over big data than other vendors. But few large enterprises in India have data sets in that size. Your comments? Big data is not just about the volume of data but also the velocity and complexity of data. Hence smaller organizations that need real-time analytics will go down the big data route. We are educating partners to understand which enterprise customers are fit for big data. They are trained to pitch VNX versus Isilon accordingly. Besides partners deploying Isilon, partners buying into cloud and big data are adopting Greenplum too. n — Yogesh Gupta

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ON RECORD n

Vikas Chadha, Regional Director, Honeywell Security Group, South Asia, talks about how v the company addresses the knotty electronic security market. By Radhika Nallayam

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

Electronic security is a very segmented market with different types of players including MNCs, domestic players and small importers. How does Honeywell carve a niche in this market? CHADHA: As an MNC brand, we operate at the high-end of the market. So our target-customers are those who are not looking for cheap products, but instead are more focussed on the total cost of ownership and how they can acquire it back over a period of time. Having said that, we are spreading our product basket to cater not just to the very highend customers, but also the mid-segment of the market. In the course of a year, we have introduced many ‘value-for-money’ products and designed for the next tier of custom-

So who exactly are your high-end customers? Are you referring to customers who do large projects? CHADHA: It is not the size of the deal that defines whether the customer is high-end; it is actually the type of project. Any customer for whom the cost of downtime is higher than the additional money they are going to spend on buying our products, is a high-end customer for us. There are a number of such customers in verticals like hospitality, gas refinery, power plants among others. These are customers who cannot afford any downtime. They don’t want their products or services to go faulty when they need them and basically look for products that have in-built redundancy. A lot of global banks also use our products as they cannot afford any kind of downtime or non-availability of information. High-end products are our mainstay in India. But we are seeing good growth and momentum in the ‘value for money’ product space as well. An interesting trend in this industry is the marriage between the IT systems and electronic security systems. for traditional security players, this introduces new competitors like Cisco or D-link. How do you deal with that? CHADHA: This marriage

VIKAS CHADHA | ON RECORD n is inevitable and is happening mainly because of the technology shift from analogue video to digital. For digital technology, the back-bone is actually the IT infrastructure. A lot of IT players have products on the networking side and they provide the backbone for the surveillance system too. So these vendors naturally become a part of the overall solution. But, we see this as an opportunity more than a threat. We don’t compete with them exactly in the same shape and form. In fact we complement each other. While we focus on the front-end of the infrastructure, they

$953

million: The expected market size of Indian video surveillance by 2016 cus areas—the front-end hardware and the management software layer. This is where our value-proposition lies. We not only play on the video side, but also focus on applications like access control, intrusion, home automation and many more. Moreover, all our products can talk to

high levels of automation, which in turn helps in save cost. There are strong reasons other than security that drive this market. In the last year, Honeywell seems to have improved its focus on channels. Could you elaborate on your partner strategy for India? CHADHA: Our partner strategy in India is twofold. We have partnered with some of the country’s large integrators who work on big projects directly. These include partners from the government sector, the big MNCs and also large regional players who have become strong in security over a period

to address this market especially at the solutiondesigning level. Most of these partners are working on developing these skills internally. Those who do not have the skillsets to address this market rely on Honeywell to a large extent. Our idea is that a customer should not over-spend or underspend on a solution. Honeywell has an SI unit. How do you ensure that there is no conflict between the internal arm and other SIs? CHADHA: We are totally different entities. We work with them as one of our partners and they treat us as one of their suppliers.

Our biggest USP is that we are not new in this market. We have a product basket that spans the spectrum. All the new entrants, especially from the IT-side, are trying to focus only on a particular space which is adjacent to their core competency. focus more on the backend. We have expertise in areas like camera and video management software, while the IT vendors focus more on areas like storage and networking. But some of these IT vendors have competing offerings too. CHADHA: Today there is a very thin line separating these two categories and we can see some of these players entering into our space. As of now, our biggest USP is that we are not new in this market. We have a product basket that spans the spectrum. All the new entrants, especially from the IT-side, are trying to focus on a particular space which is adjacent to their core competency. But Honeywell has built strong competencies around fo-

each other and can be integrated with each other. We are much stronger than some of our competitors in the IT space, when it comes to the integration. Security or surveillance is still projected as the single largest value proposition that video systems provide. Is that how customers look at it? CHADHA: Surveillance is definitely not the only driver for video. Many customers deploy it for process management and monitoring. Often in places, aberrations in various industrial processes are identified with the help of cameras and are then passed on to the operator with the help of analytics tools. It also improves productivity as it provides

of time. We provide them support in terms of presales, marketing, training and post-sales. Right from demand generation to installation, we work closely with them. We have a very good mechanism for leadgeneration in Honeywell and a huge sales team that goes along with these partners to close deals. We also work with a lot of small integrators in the country who have entered into this market from the IT, telecom, or office-automation space. We address them through our distribution company, ADI. While a lot of small IT VARs want to get into surveillance, isn’t it still a whole new ball game for them? CHADHA: They definitely need different skills sets JULY 2012

They also have a mechanism of ‘locking’ a project with us just like any other partner of Honeywell security. If there is a conflict, it will be similar to that between any of the other partners of Honeywell Security Group. We treat them like any other third-party partner and the same policies and support are applicable to them as well. But does the SI unit of Honeywell compete with your other SIs across the spectrum of deals? CHADHA: They are, in fact, focused more on very large deals. Most of our large integrators for that matter have a specific focus and space they want to operate in. This allows in limiting the conflict among our integrators.  INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n OPINION

THORNTON A. MAY

Forget Baby Steps A slew of technologies out there that can bring real advantage to enterprises. But too often, risk-averse leaders want to take the cautious, slow approach. Do you really want to be one of them?

Thornton A. May is author of The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics and executive director of the IT Leadership Academy at Florida State College in Jacksonville. 24

ICTOR HUGO, the great writer of 19th century

France, said: You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” The same can be said of technologies.Currently, four transformational technologies define the

IT agenda: Big data, social networking, mobile and cloud computing. You can’t resist these technologies, but the question is whether you’ll deploy them resignedly—that which can’t be resisted must be accommodated — or exploit them in ways that really make a difference. In the pattern of technology adoption called ‘mirroring’, an organization identifies a new technology, ‘sandboxes’ its properties via a series of controlled-risk internal experiments and applies it to existing work processes. The new technology is deployed to mirror the existing way of doing things. If you don’t see that, think of the classic case of mirroring: As people transitioned from radio to television, the initial rollout of the new technology featured radio performers reading scripts. The only thing that changed was that the technology had moved beyond the microphone to include a camera. Today, we can all see how that approach under-utilized the potential of television. Can we see how we are under-exploiting new technologies available to us? Do we really need to take baby steps with these powerful and potentially game-changing tools? Shouldn’t we aggressively explore what previously impossible things these new technologies allow us to do? I believe we should. IT should aspire to more than KTLO (keeping the lights on). But too often we don’t. A

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

management framework in widespread use today divides IT investments and technologies into three buckets: Running, growing and transforming the business. On average, 65 percent of IT spending goes to running the business, 25 percent to growing it and a mere 10 percent to transforming it. This has to change. Are you the leader who can make that happen? If you’re wondering where to start, there’s no question that big data in general and high-performance analytics in particular are a source of competitive advantage. The convergence of improved analytics, larger bandwidth, cheaper storage and increased computing power gives senior management the opportunity to materially compress the time it takes to know key things about markets, customers, competitors and events. Retailers know this. In the past, a retailer might have looked at product data by class or subclass, aggregated at a company level, at monthly and sometimes weekly intervals. Today, retailers need data granularity that focuses on specific SKUs and stores, analyzed and acted upon every day, if not several times a day. Let me close with another quote, this one from Renaissance poet Giambattista Marino: Let him who cannot amaze work in the stables. With regard to big data and high-performance analytics, he who does not aspire will not work at all. 

B R E A K I N G

THROUGH The cloud is opening new opportunities for the channel, but they have to know where to look. By Team ChannelWorld

OU know that the cloud is taking over the world when an Anglophobic French ministry of culture decides it’s time to create a French term for cloud computing. (They hate following the English and have refused, for instance, to coin a new word for high-tech). It’s official: Cloud computing is here to stay. The cloud’s become even more relevant during these challenging economic times, as organizations look for new ways to purchase and consume IT. By all accounts 2012 has been a taxing year and it’s no coincidence that we’re seeing fewer fence-sitters and more ‘cloud embracers’. As Indian enterprises move steadily to the cloud, they’re opening new opportunities for channel partners. This cover story package looks at some of the hottest areas for growth in the cloud space breaking it down by area of expertise (the security and cloud integration market is where forward-looking channel partners are focusing), by company size (see SMBs: Yes to Hybrid), and by role (cloud brokers are the new black). This package also has a survey that points to other areas CIOs say they need help in. And, finally, it studies the maturity of the Indian cloud market to see what the future looks like. By the way, French for cloud computing is “informatique en nuage”.

Inside 26 | SPECIAL REPORT | THE CLOUD’S NEW PITCH One man’s ‘cloudy’ is another’s opportunity. How the channel can make money from gaps in the cloud that CIOs need to fill.

32 | FEATURE | SMBs: YES TO HYBRID The hybrid cloud’s popularity is growing among SMBs. What that means for channel partners.

34 | CASE FILE | THE BIG SWITCH Binary Systems helps Bizprout move from the public to a private cloud environment. In just four months.

36 | FEATURE | INTEGRATION OPPORTUNITY Integrating systems with the cloud is a challenge for CIOs. That’s an opportunity you can tap. JULY 2012

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

THE CLOUD’S NE W

PITCH

How the channel can profit from gaps in the cloud that businesses need to fill. By Radhika Nallayam & Shantheri Mallaya

OVE IT or hate it, but you can’t ignore the cloud—not when it’s growing at 40 percent CAGR in India. That’s an assessment, a recent survey of Indian IT leaders by CIO magazine (CIO is a sister publication of ChannelWorld) concurs with. But if there’s no doubt that Indian enterprises see cloud computing as the way forward, they are also, just as undeniably, unprepared for it. The survey points to a surprising amount of cloud unpreparedness among Indian enterprises in multiple areas including where cloud security, architecture, management, skills, etcetera. (See Gaps in the Cloud). This represents an untapped opportunity for the solution partner community. The question is: Do partners know what these gaps are? Have they estimated how much can be made from filling cloud gaps such as a lack of integration abilities or strategic thinking? And are they preparing the groundwork to address these opportunities? Based on inputs from enterprise channel partners and Indian CIOs, here are some unexplored opportunities for the channel community, and a round up of where different players find themselves in this new cloud market.

THE SECURITY GAMBIT One of the biggest fears among Indian enterprises about going to the cloud, immaterial of their size or industry, has been—and remains—the security of their data. Sure, there are some organizations that have gotten passed this issue, but there exists a sizeable number of companies that still need help in that area. 26

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

According to CIO’s survey, 45 percent of Indian businesses admit that their current security measures are not designed for cloud computing; 29 percent say they do not have a formal process to ensure security and compliance for cloud computing; and 41 percent say they do not have—or need— governance for cloud computing. At Forrester Research, senior analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia believes that the security hurdle will be straddled, if slowly, given the amount of attention that’s been directed at it. “2012 will see better user cases and adoption (of the cloud), but the scenario won’t change overnight. Concerns like security and a lack of knowledge about the cloud are now being replaced by different challenges, like privacy concerns and integration challenges. Security is not a technical concern; it’s always been a mind-set related issue.” On the ground, however, channel partners are a little less optimistic. “That cliche, “where do you keep your money and jewelry?” (referring to the fact that if people can trust banks with their money, they should trust the cloud with their data) might work in selling the cloud story to a few flexible organizations, but not for skeptical customers,” says Sandeep Vahi, director, at New Delhi-based Compton Computers. One way around the challenge, says Vahi, is to get customers to visit your datacenter and run PoCs with them until they are convinced the cloud is safe. “Customers get a live demo at our datacenter, demonstrating to them that all is well when their data resides with us.” High bandwidth and data encryption are some means and ways of mitigating the risk of a data breach, he adds. Working towards these goals, the SI is looking at between

SPECIAL REPORT |COVER STORY n

To address the growing demand for cloud-related services, Girish Madhavan, CEO, Quadsel Systems, has spun off a new company, Infracloud, with an initial investment of Rs 40 lakh. Cover Photograph by SHARP IMAGES

30-35 percent growth in cloud and datacenter services over the next two years. Sanjay Kulkarni, CEO and director at Pune-based Sunfire Technologies, a key player in the virtualization market, also believes that security fears and a lack of a robust cloud strategy are two of the main reasons that large adoption of the cloud will only take place after a couple of years, in the Pune market. “Some customers might have moved non-core applications to the cloud,” he says, “but moving their production environment to the cloud is still a distant goal for customers in Pune,” he says. That said, Kulkarni firmly believes that the cloud is the next natural driver for growth, and says he is party to plenty of discussions around the cloud, which is why Sunfire Technologies has already started work around cloud security. This way, says Kulkarni, they can be prepared with the right answers when more serious cloud discussions take place. Besides this, the SI has also expanded its capabilities in storage and networking, keeping in mind future opportunities in private cloud implementations.

SIs need to pull up their socks and get into the value chain by developing specific capabilities around consulting and integration.” SANCHIT VIR GOGIA, SENIOR ANALYST, FORRESTER RESEARCH

tion and support are big opportunities for them, because service provider partners currently do not bring in those capabilities.” (For more on cloud brokers, turn to page 36). Pawan Khurana, CEO of QuantM Technologies in New Delhi, has already latched on to some of the opportunities Gogia is talking about. “Customers tell us that they are not yet able to get a consolidated view of the cloud. A solution provider essentially, as in our case, has to focus on whether the disparate applications a customer has THE INTEGRATION PLAY from different service providers can be There’s more to the cloud than secuintegrated seamlessly.” rity issues, believes Girish Madhavan, QuantM has also developed its own CEO, Quadsel Systems, “Customers cloud offerings which it is taking to cushave to be sensitized to some fundatomers; the company’s recent acquisimental ideas regarding the cloud,” tion of Teamworks Solutions is a part of Madhavan says. the overall cloud strategy of the compaGogia agrees. Customers, he says, are ny. Teamworks (renamed TeamworkQ), pre-occupied about how different applications, from different public cloud pro- is an application software company, will help in leveraging application software viders, will talk to one another. That’s as an umbrella integration offering to an opportunity for the channel that’s customers. “We work on the multiple waiting to happen. “SIs need to pull up public cloud applications of customers, their socks and get into the value chain offer low-cost QuantM offerings, and by developing specific capabilities also design and support a customer’s around consulting and integration,” he private cloud,” says Khurana. says. “They can act as a broker of cloud While offering Oracle CRM On services and look at things like user Demand to its customers, Delhi-based agreements, SLAs and unified billing as possible opportunities. Besides, applica- Path Infotech has bumped into many integration projects. The SI has been taking a SaaS platform as a service to its customers for some years and has been doing reasonably well. “When we Customers tell us they’re not implement a SaaS offering for a cusable to get a consolidated view tomer, it requires of the cloud. A solution provider has to customization focus on whether the disparate apps and integration. a customer has from different service This integration can be with their providers can be integrated seamlessly.” existing on-premise PAWAN KHURANA, CEO, QUANTM TECHNOLOGIES As far as cloud compliance and governance is concerned, Vahi at Compton Computers says it only affects a very small percentage of customers, specifically large buyers, PSUs, and government bodies that have compliance and governance issues. “Smaller companies do not have the bandwidth for these problems,” he says. “All they need is a safe, secure and seamless flow of applications.”

SPECIAL REPORT |COVER STORY n or cloud applications. We have different use cases including SaaS-to-SaaS, SaaS-to-on-premise, and SaaS-to-SaaSplus-on-premise integration scenarios. We believe that implementation and integration are two large opportunities and we are a serious player in that space,” says Pankaj Ratra, director of Path Infotech. Madhavan at Quadsel Systems wants to focus on both security and integration, and adds that a vertical approach helps drive the cloud. That’s probably why Quadsel has spun off a separate company, Infracloud, which specializes in cloud solutions. Infracloud, which was launched with an investment of Rs 40 lakh, will front end all of Quadsel’s cloud initiatives. Madhavan says he isn’t expecting Infracloud to turn a profit in the first two years, although he adds that investments in the company may touch Rs 7 crore in the near future. Infracloud, adds Madhavan, has already acquired customers in mid-segment education and healthcare. He also feels that the application layer is where the cloud roadmap is headed, and that is what serious players should focus on.

THE ROUNDED APPROACH Despite concerns from the buying community around the cloud, a section of channel companies have already developed their cloud roadmaps and know exactly where they are headed. New Delhi-based Albion Informatics is a good example. Albion has been selling its in-house developed ERP, CRM, enterprise e-mail, HR solution, and back-up services using a cloud model for the last three years, primarily in the US. It is also one of the few players that has developed proprietary apps for the cloud. And now the SI wants to replicate that success in India.

Some customers might have moved non-core apps to the cloud, but moving production environments is still a distant goal.” SANJAY KULKARNI, CEO AND DIRECTOR, SUNFIRE TECHNOLOGIES

As a next step, it is customizing these apps to suit industry clusters. Sanjeev Gupta, MD of Albion is pretty confident. “We already have about 5,000 customers in the US for these services and in India, we currently have 1,800 customers. The response in India has been very encouraging and we have been witnessing a 30 percent growth in our cloud business.” Albion’s experience in the US market, a far more mature cloud market than India, gives them a competitive edge, believes Gupta. At the same time, its fairly long list of Indian clients, has exposed it to all types of customers, at various levels of understanding and adoption, he says. “There are people who ask, ‘what will happen to the cloud if it rains?’. But that’s just a small percentage. The market is transforming and we have effectively addressed certain concerns around security, integration and governance,” he says. Bangalore’s New-

There are people who ask, ‘what will happen to the cloud if it rains?’. But that’s a small percentage. The market is transforming and we have addressed concerns around security, integration and governance.” SANJEEV GUPTA, MD, ALBION INFORMATICS

Wave Computing is another key player in the cloud space. The company has partnerships with various tech vendors including IBM, Netmagic, TCS and Microsoft in the public cloud space. But that’s just one part of its cloud story. NewWave has a full-fledged strategy to tap various segments ranging from small to large enterprises. While a lot of SMBs are struggling to get on to cloud, due to lack of processes, large enterprises are fuelling the private cloud market, says Ajit Andrew Mohanraj, director, cloud services, NewWave. And, that’s where Newwave is spotting the money. (For more on how SMBs see the cloud, turn to page 32) “Customers are at various points in the maturity curve. While some are in the process of virtualizing their environments, some have moved IT-shared workloads to cloud. Though only very few customers have moved business critical apps to (private) clouds, there is a clear trend towards true private cloud implementations among large enterprises,” he says. Mohanraj agrees that there are concerns around security and integration, and constraints in terms of apps, which are not cloud ready, but he believes that as the market and offerings mature, the cloud story is going to get far more exciting. Newwave says it is ready with all the required partnerships and capabilities to address these multiple opportunities. But instead of getting into an aggressive bidding mode

for private cloud projects, the strategy that works best for the company, says Mohanraj, is to conduct workshops for its customers, followed by select oneon-one discussions that will result in PoCs, and later in implementations.

CHANNEL CLOUDSCAPE The cloud computing market is still fluid and different stakeholders are in the process of understanding and positioning themselves. “Iaas and Saas and virtual private cloud are playing out in a big way. Paas is not seeing much traction as of now,” says Nirupam Chaudhuri, research manager, Software and Services, IDC Centre for Consultancy and Research. Archon Consulting Systems, a Bangalore-based SI, is currently in the process of reselling some interesting cloud offerings from vendors to its enterprise customers. The idea is to read the minds of customers and test the waters. This approach helps the company understand customer perceptions around the cloud better, as compared to throwing random questions related to the cloud. Sachin S. Rao, CEO of Archon says, “Currently, customers do not have a clear-cut cloud roadmap for their businesses. Neither do vendors seem to have clear answers for everything. However, when we go and pitch simple offerings like mail or messaging on the cloud, customers open their minds. Security is a big concern even when a dialogue around cost or what apps should be moved to cloud takes place. They have a lot of other apprehensions as well and we are in the process of collating it all that so that we can be ready when actual adoption happens,” he says. In closing, Gogia says that channel partners “need to understand the business models of their customers and their sales force need to re-look at the way they have been selling solutions so far. While SIs are evolving by improving their skills sets, they need to realize that the speed of change has also changed. It’s a far more dynamic industry and they need to play catch up faster. Survival will be tough if you’re just a box-pusher,” he says. 30

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

GAPS

CL UD IN THE

A survey of Indian CIOs clearly demonstrates that despite the eagerness of enterprises to move to the cloud, there are plenty of gaps they need to fill, if they want to do it right. That represents a sizeable opportunity for channel partners. The question is where are the gaps that they can take advantage of? Here they are:

When asked to describe their IT architectural capabilities for cloud computing,

thirty-eight percent

said that they had no such capabilities. Only 10% said their cloud computing architecture is deeply INTEGRATED into the broader scope of their enterprise architecture.

4 out of 10

Indian enterprises say they do not have or need MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES for cloud.

who say they have Compare that to the a comprehensive framework that provides FEDERATED MANAGEMENT across cloud and non-cloud environments.

41% Say their security measures are currently NOT DESIGNED for cloud computing. 25% Employ POINT solutions. 13% Have a COMPREHENSIVE cloud security framework.

1/3

of Indian enterprises say they DO NOT

have a formal process to ensure

security

and compliance for cloud computing.

41%

When asked how their organization establishes ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES for cloud computing initiatives,

Of Indian CIOs say they have neither defined nor measured the potential value of cloud computing and only say value METRICS are regularly tracked, reported and reviewed for continual improvement.

forty percent

said they do not have dedicated staff for the cloud.

1-in-3

CIOs say that their companies have no plans for specific training around

7 percent

cloud computing vs that say they have defined training and TALENT ACQUISITION programs, and deploy role-based training.

41%

Of CIOs say they DO NOT currently have or need cloud computing

governance.

Methodology

50%

Just under of Indian organizations say they do not have a CHARGEBACK process for their cloud initiatives, although only 8% say they DONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T BELIEVE in such a process.

The Cloud Survey 2012 was administered online over a week in March, 2012. Two-hundred-and-fifty IT leaders participated. Forty-three percent of respondents were from organizations with annual revenues under Rs 1,500 crore; 32 percent from companies between Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 10,000 crore, 14 percent from enterprises between Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000 crore and 9 percent from organizations over Rs 50,000 crore. The degree of error is +/- 5 percent at a 90 percent confidence level. JULY 2012

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

SMBs: Yes

TO HYBRID The hybrid cloud’s popularity is growing among SMBs. What that means for channel partners. By Aritra Sarkhel

IRST CAME utility computing. Then came the rage known as cloud computing. It’s a term every business entity seems to harp on in their quest for better scalability, but the cloud’s complexity requires maturity to manage it seamlessly. Both public and private cloud models have been at the center of investment for most vendors and channel partners globally. But more recently, hybrid cloud computing has found center stage in most cloud discussions. In a survey of Indian CIOs by CIO magazine (a sister publication to ChannelWorld), 50 percent of SMB organizations say they are heading towards a hybrid model—and a mere 2 percent say they are going the public cloud route.

WHAT’S HYBRID, ANYWAY? Hybrid is combine of public and a private clouds to better manage data and storage. Analyst firm Gartner outlined hybrid cloud computing as one of the five cloud computing trends that will affect cloud strategy through 2015. According to Gartner, hybrid IT is transforming IT architectures and the role of IT. “Many organizations are testing 32

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

cloud architectures inside and outside the enterprise and over time the cloud will simply become one of the ways that we do computing, and workloads will move around in hybrid internal/ external IT environments,” said Chris Howard, managing VP, Gartner. “As a result, the traditional role of the enterprise IT professional is changing and becoming multi-faceted. A hybrid model requires internal and external IT professionals to support the business capabilities of the enterprise.”

LIVING UP TO THE HYPE? In the last few years, the cloud has

moved from concept to reality. Many key IT services companies have announced that a significant part of their revenues will be derived from the cloud. And that is helping create momentum in the domestic as well as the global market. The concept of hybrid clouds is not just hype anymore. “Earlier one had to depend on costly software to integrate both the clouds, but now you can design your applications in such a way that they make use of both clouds right away. The queries around this model have increased,” says Abhishek Datta, CTO, Taashee Linux Services. “Over the years, we have realized that the hybrid model has valid roles within the SMB and enterprises. It is trying to mix and match the public and local IT assets to give the best bang for every buck enterprises are spending,” says Tejas Mehta, director, Parth Technocomm, a Kolkata-based systems integrator. Neha Goenka, senior associate, AMIPartners points out, “Going forward, the hybrid model has potential. Our survey of end-users tells us that they are looking toward the hybrid model to enhance business functionality. A business may have certain on-premise applications which are critical but they may want to increase its functionality and go for cloud-based CRM, ERP or cloud-based business intelligence. That’s where hybrid plays its part, and now an increasing number of SMBs are moving to the cloud.” Strong opinions from analysts and partners seem to affirm that the hybrid model is here to stay. Not only are large enterprises interested, but a significant chunk of SMBs are also looking at such

The use of a hybrid cloud is validating the fact that not all IT resources should exist in the public cloud today. You can actually safeguard important data and be compliant as security issues are taken care of by a hybrid model. This is the model going forward.” TEJAS MEHTA, DIRECTOR, PARTH TECHNOCOMM

FEATURE | COVER STORY n hybrid strategies where critical data needs to be within their firewall.

SMB’S GOING THE HYBRID WAY India’s SMBs are increasingly interested in adopting cloud services. Over two lakh SMBs in India are expected to adopt cloud solutions by 2015, according to a forecast by AMI-Partners. SMB spending on cloud-based software solutions, hosted infrastructure, and managed services is growing as hosted solutions are enabling Indian SMBs to leverage solutions they would otherwise be unable to afford and maintain. “With over three-fourths of Indian SMBs lacking even a single fulltime internal IT staff member, they are dependent on third parties for the management of their IT infrastructure, making managed service solutions and hosted infrastructure an extremely attractive option,” points out Goenka. “The connection between publiccloud applications and private-cloud infrastructure is an area where IT companies are increasingly focussing on. SMBs too want to seamlessly move from a public cloud environment to a private one and vice-versa,” says Praveen Bhadada, director-market expansion, Zinnov Management Consulting. In the same light, Biswajeet Ma-

Our survey of endusers tells us that they are looking toward the hybrid model to enhance business functionality. Now an increasing number of SMBs are moving to the cloud.” NEHA GOENKA, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, AMI-PARTNERS

hapatra, research director at Gartner explains, “SMBs have seasonal patterns of consumption capacity. So you cannot expect them to buy a high-end server and put up infrastructure just to get past a certain period of work and be idle for the rest of the time. This is an area where I see the adoption of a hybrid model. ” In this way, the end-customer is always on top because they have access to the best technology in the market. In such a market, the opportunities for channel partners will grow immensely as they act as a bridge between partners and service providers. According to AMI-Partners, channel partners offering cloud solutions now derive nearly 30 percent of their revenues from hosted solutions. Partners, who have a direct connect with SMBs have a tremendous opportunity to influence them as their trusted advisors and consultants, and offer cloud solutions through a variety of business models. A hybrid model works particularly well for Indian SMBs, especially

We take a consultative approach and work out strategies for the endcustomer. We ensure that their needs are met and advice them on interoperability provided by service providers to them to leverage both cloud models.” PRASANTH S., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, QUADRA SYSTEMS

those having fewer than 50 employees, for whom the scalable, monthly, fixed-costs and ondemand nature of cloud solutions is a perfect fit. Mehta from Parth Technocomm says that they are in the process of having an integrated hybrid model. “The use of a hybrid cloud is validating the fact that not all IT resources should exist in the public cloud today. You can actually safeguard important data and be compliant as security issues are taken care of by a hybrid model,” says Mehta. “We take a consultative approach and work out strategies for the endcustomer. We ensure that their needs are met and advice them on interoperability provided by service providers to them to leverage both cloud models. We are taking a holistic approach towards hybrid adoption,” says executive director Prasanth S. of Bangalorebased Quadra systems. But Anand Karapurkar, director, Infobahn Technical Solutions remains circumspect. “We are weighing the pros and cons of a hybrid approach. The partner community will have opportunities in making money through this model.” The future certainly looks positive for hybrid cloud computing. Once the ecosystem evolves and matures there will be an increased adoption. Praveen from Zinnov sums it up by saying, “with some channel partners investing in hiring people with the required skill sets, the hybrid cloud will have a significant potential in the years to come.” JULY 2012

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

Binary Systems

THE BIG

SWITCH W

HILE A lot of companies are just starting on their cloud journey, others have come a full circle. One of them is Bizprout Corporate Solutions, a Bangalore-based company that specializes in payroll, accounting, consulting and compliance, with customers in India, Singapore, Australia and the US. Lured by the promises of business efficiency and lower costs, Bizprout moved to a public cloud in March 2011. But it was a short-lived experience. “For eight months, we had a terrible experience with our public cloud service provider, especially with uptime,” says Raghunandan H. Vasan, co-founder and director, Bizprout. By October 2011, Bizprout decided it had enough and started evaluating alternate solutions. With the fiscal yearend closing in, time was running out. Bizprout desperately needed a competent ‘cloud specialist’ company.

helps Bizprout move from the public to a private cloud environment. In just four months. By Yogesh Gupta

a tweaked solution of what we had proposed. But we required an immediate and fool-proof solution. Binary Systems delivered that,” says Raghunandan, explaining why they went with Binary Systems. One of the many reasons, Bizprout wanted a cloud was its business model. “We preferred the cloud because it allowed our customers to access our online solutions anytime. And live packages, including a Document Management System (DMS), were on the public cloud,” says Suresh Raja Kandadai, co-founder and MD, Bizprout. But the public cloud also came with

THE ‘PRIVATE’ CALL One of the companies Bizprout turned to was Bangalore-headquartered Binary Systems, which had a four-year track record of successful IT projects with Bizprout. The team at Binary conducted a series of meetings to understand Bizprout’s business challenges. “Other contenders for the project came up with 34

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

EDWARD JEEVAN, Director, Binary Systems (sitting) and RAGHUNANDAN H. VASAN, Co-founder and Director, Bizprout, worked in tandem to ensure a seamless transition from a public to a private cloud.

CASE STUDY | COVER STORY n challenges. “The public cloud inflicted hardships on us; we suffered production losses and uptime issues. Because our peace of mind was important, we decided to look beyond just saving money, and invest in IT infrastructure through a private cloud,” says Kandadai. There was another reason, says Jeevan. Bizprout wasn’t comfortable putting customer data on the public cloud anymore. “We were convinced that data confidentiality, which is critical in our line of business, would be better served with a private cloud,” agrees Kandadai. “Due to uptime issues we built a robust virtual infrastructure within their datacenter to move DMS applications back to a private cloud,” says Jeevan. A secure Internet gateway and Web security by Cyberoam were integrated into the solution which runs 24x7x365 to address security challenges, and at the same time scale-up seamlessly.

WITHIN 24 HOURS The public to private switch was scheduled for March of 2012, after four months of planning and extensive testing. To avoid “business discontinuity”, the migration was earmarked for a weekend, says Jeevan. But, expecting increased online traffic during the last week of March, decided to move up the schedule. “The migration was advanced to mid-March. More efforts in terms of manpower hours and additional technical resources were put in place accordingly. The complete migration was done within 24 hours; leaving us with an extra day,” says Jeevan, who adds that he had a parallel set-up ready for any eventuality. The one little hitch was an app which required a 32-bit form. It was a minor compatibility issue during migration which was resolved. “There were few issues at times with Microsoft but the team requested for another downtime from them and resolved the issue. There was not a lot of involvement from principals other than this,” says Jeevan. To further ease worries at Bizprout’s end, Binary Systems deputed one of its engineers to Bizprout’s office to manage IT infrastructure. “Edward clearly understood our business challenges and he was there during the set-up,” says Raghunandan.

The public cloud inflicted hardships on us; we suffered production losses and uptime issues. Because our peace of mind was important, we decided to look beyond just saving money, and invest in IT infrastructure through a private cloud.” SURESH RAJA KANDADAI, CO-FOUNDER AND MD, BIZPROUT

So, was it a smooth exit from public cloud? “Most of the processes are automated and the exit was not delayed much. We made it clear to the (public cloud) service provider that we had to exit as soon as possible due to bad customer service,” says Raghunandan.

LESSONS LEARNT This was by no means Binary Systems’s first successful cloud. But Jeevan says, “This project was very

Case File Parties: Binary Systems, Bizprout Location: Bangalore Implementation time: Four months Project Cost: Rs 15 lakh (Approx.) Key Technologies: Virtualization, private cloud

Main Vendors: Microsoft, Cyberoam People Involved: Raghunandan H. Vasan, director, Bizprout; Suresh Raja Kandadai, MD, Bizprout; Edward Jeevan, director, Binary Systems

Key Challenges: Business continuity, performance issues, migration, SLA adherence

Post Implementation ROI: Consolidated and virtualized infrastructure, better uptime, high availability, scale-out architecture, improved data security

specific in nature. Besides moving applications from public to private, we had to work closely with them as they had a ‘not-so-good’ experience with the cloud in the past,” he says. “It became vital to win their confidence. We ensured a time-bound, perfect cloud solution,” he says. According to Raghunandan, the biggest learning was the need to conduct more due diligence on which cloud (private or public or hybrid) to adopt. “We have to be extremely clear on SLAs and the scalability roadmap before freezing on the ‘type of cloud’ solution,” he says.

MORE CLOUD Today, Bizprout is consolidating more processes into its private cloud. “Not only for customers but also internally. Programs on a private cloud offer flexibility as overseas clients work at different hours,” says Kandadai. Bizprout, which launched its Webbased payroll in 2005, has now integrated DMS into this accounting solution. “With the private cloud infrastructure we are offering a pay-per–use model of PACC solution(DMS is part of it) which is affordable for SMEs,” says Kandadai. The company is keen to explore the African and European markets. “IT resources are in place to scale. With an increase in load, a scale-out might be required in the future,” says Jeevan. But for now, crucial issues at Bizprout have been resolved through a private cloud. “The data resides onpremise and the perception of security and concern with uptime has been resolved,” says Jeevan. JULY 2012

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

Integration

Opportunity Integrating systems with the cloud is a challenge for CIOs. That’s an opportunity you can tap. By Robert L. Mitchell

UST TWO weeks after Mo-

hawk Fine Papers made the decision to sell its products on Amazon.com, things were looking good for the company: Integration work was complete, connections to its ERP system had lit up and sales were rolling in. “Amazon generated tens of thousands of dollars in revenue immediately,” says Paul Stamas, vice president of IT at the $300 million (about Rs 1,500 crore), 725-employee manufacturer of premium papers. Best of all, the data integration project, which cost less than $1,000 (about Rs 50,000) to get off the ground, required no in-house investment in integration tools or staff resources. Instead, cloud-services provider Liaison Technologies performed the integration work and then set up— and currently manages—the connections through its cloud-based service. Two years ago, a project like this would have been handled as just another point-to-point EDI integration. But the Amazon deal and the 100-plus other business-tobusiness connections that Mohawk has set up through Liaison over the past 18 months represent the culmination of Stamas’ vision to

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

create what he calls a “service-oriented architecture in the cloud.” The model has allowed Mohawk to quickly and inexpensively set up new business relationships without worrying about the technical details, thereby producing new revenue opportunities and millions of dollars in cost savings. “SOA was the answer because it works based on the concept of looselycoupled services, and geography doesn’t matter,” Stamas says. He briefly considered building an SOA in house, but “my head was spinning at the costs and complexity,” he says. So, early in 2010, he began working with Liaison on his idea. Since then, the services that Liaison provides have moved beyond straightforward provisioning and management of B2B data

mapping and EDI connections. Liaison now handles all connections, whether they’re between on-premises applications, from on-site systems to the cloud or cloud-to-cloud. Recent projects include a process by which another cloud service provider, StrikeIron, provides up-to-date currency exchange rates to Mohawk’s on-premises ERP system at the time of invoice for international orders. Another inserts freight costs into each customer order on Mohawk’s website by way of cloud-based transportation logistics service broker Mercurygate. And a Web service created by Liaison checks Mohawk’s websites and its ERP system to ensure that items are in stock and relays availability information to customers before they place their orders. “We have over 30,000 of these checks a month and they happen in real time, synchronously, in two to three seconds,” Stamas says. Liaison serves as the intermediary for every type of transaction, performing the necessary integration and data management work with Mohawk’s customers, suppliers and other business partners. The vendor also presents the connections as services for Mohawk to use as it wants, and offers a business activity-monitoring tool that keeps tabs on service levels from end to end. “With Liaison, all types of data integration flow through the same service-oriented infrastructure, all [data] payloads are defined as services, all interactions are managed via Web services, and all integrations use a publish-or-subscribe model” in which services are either provided or consumed, Stamas explains. “They have the tools and platforms, the enterprise

Gartner estimates that by outsourcing to a cloud services broker, small and midsize businesses can save 20 percent to 30 percent over what it would cost to do the integration work internally.

FEATURE | COVER STORY n service bus, messaging bus and service registry — all of the components of a service-oriented infrastructure. It’s a foundation on which we build our own unique integrations.”

THE RISE OF THE CLOUD BROKER Liaison is on the leading edge of an industrywide trend in which traditional providers of managed B2B services are becoming what Gartner analyst Benoit Lheureux calls a cloud services brokers, or CSBs. In addition to offering data integration and customization services, CSBs provide an aggregation point for all types of business partner interactions. The differentiator for Liaison is that it has the in-house expertise necessary to perform integrations quickly, and it can draw upon thousands of integrations it has already built, Lheureux says. Competing vendors are starting to move in that direction as well. Gartner estimates that by outsourcing to a CSB, small and midsize businesses can save 20 percent to 30 percent over what it would cost to do the integration work internally. But there’s more to it than saving money, says Lheureux, explaining that such spending is now an operational expense rather than a capital expense. This setup could work for large companies, too. “If you’re good at B2B and have the economies of scale, it’s not about savings. It’s about what are your required internal core competencies?” he says. Since the economic collapse in 2008, many IT organizations in large businesses have been asked to scale up their B2B efforts but lack the capital or head count to do it. “A lot of them don’t even know that they have an option to outsource,” Lheureux says.

MOHAWK’S SOA MODEL B2B integration traditionally has used a messaging approach to synchronize data, but Mohawk uses a servicesbased model. Integration workloads are managed by two Web services: One at Mohawk and one at Liaison. Because Mohawk’s IT organization has been abstracted away from the technical aspects of creating and maintaining all the different types of connections, Stamas says his group can

In addition to offering data integration and customization services, CSBs, or cloud services brokers, provide an aggregation point for all types of business partner interactions.

focus on working with the business to develop new business models and connections with new business partners. Tony Hunter’s job is to pursue those business models. As Mohawk’s IT manager and business process architect, he helps to identify opportunities for the business and presents Liaison with the specifications. Right now, for example, he’s working on connecting Mohawk’s e-commerce website to a cloud-based service that provides real-time information on freight costs. Mohawk currently offers UPS and FedEx options on its website, but those aren’t the best-priced services for some customers. For instance, “less than truckload” (LTL) freight tends to be less expensive than UPS or FedEx for orders over 150 lbs. “We are losing order opportunities because of [not offering] a freight cost,” says Steve Giangiordano, Mohawk’s manager of accounting services. So Hunter created a specification for a Web service that pulls LTL freight charges from Mercurygate’s cloud-based freight brokerage service and presents the data in the customer’s order on Mohawk’s website. “They hit a function key and they know right away what the LTL rate is. It’s amazing,” Hunter says. “Once we have that in place, the problem will go away.” Mercurygate is a CSB like Liaison, but it provides freight data in the cloud, and on demand, rather than integration services. Using a CSB has also improved security, Stamas says, because everything flows through a single point by way of

a VPN connection. “Inside the cloud, they have all of the data security precautions you’d expect from a PCI standards-compliant datacenter,” he says, adding that Liaison supports the AS2 communications standard, as required by Mohawk’s bank. “Going through a single point gives you an extraordinary benefit in securing transactions. The alternative is anarchy—people doing this through Web browsers, coming in through Port 80 and poking holes in your firewalls.” The benefits of hosting a serviceoriented architecture in the cloud don’t come without risks, and Stamas does have two concerns. One is vendor lock-in. “If Liaison drops out of site or becomes too big, what happens to our intellectual property and the integrations we count on? It’s a real concern,” he says. Another is whether the cloud service provider can keep up service levels as Mohawk’s transaction volumes and customer base grow. While Mohawk has service-level agreements, he says, “the technical details of their underlying infrastructure are hidden from me.” Can Liaison scale effectively? “If we’re twice as big in a year, can they handle the volume? I don’t know,” he admits. Liaison CTO Bruce Chen says his company has 50 percent more capacity on hand than its customers need and has a distributed, service-based architecture that scales rapidly. But Gartner’s Lheureux says the technology that keeps data flowing is just one part JULY 2012

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n COVER STORY | FEATURE of the business. Growing the professional services and managed services that make up the bulk of the company’s revenue means scaling up people, methodology and expertise. “The cost is not in the mapping tools or processors in the cloud. It’s in the people,” Lheureux says. As a hedge, Mohawk retains a copy of all of its translations and mappings. The information is managed using Liaison’s Contivo technology, a tool designed for high-end mapping and best practices. The intellectual property that Mohawk receives from Liaison is better than what it might receive from other service providers because Contivo makes it easy to re-deploy or re-purpose data maps in different technology infrastructures, Lheureux says. Nonetheless, porting to a new platform would be painful. “You can’t just pick it up and drop it on another platform,” he says. But for Mohawk, the benefits outweigh those risks. The low cost per integration and the rapid turnaround

49%

Of Indian CIOs say that integration is among their top-three challenges with the public cloud. SOURCE: CIO RESEARCH

have given the company the agility to create new business relationships and build business processes on a trial basis. Mohawk can do all this without worrying about the investment of time, money and other resources required to do the integration work. And because its costs are lower, Mohawk can tackle smaller projects that it wouldn’t have considered before. Stamas points to the StrikeIron integration as an example. “It is a small little Web service,” he says, noting that in the future there may be hundreds—or thousands—of such initiatives.

BUT IS IT A CLOUD?

s a cloud service brokerage really a cloud-based service? A cloud’s architecture is optimized to respond quickly to sudden, large changes in workload demands. A cloud typically consists of a highly-standardized, distributed computing architecture, uses virtualization to create an ‘elastic’ infrastructure that can automatically provision and de-provision resources in response to changes in workload demands and includes usage-based metering for chargeback or pay-asyou-go billing. In the case of Liaison, the bulk of its revenue comes from people-intensive integration and data management services, which it lumps into two groups: Professional services for initial integrations, and managed services for ongoing support. Only the subscription piece, which maintains all of the connections for Mohawk and provides a tool for monitoring those, leverages the benefits of a cloud architecture. What a CSB does is not elastic, says Gartner analyst Benoit Lheureux. “But the reality is not all workloads and cloud deployments require it.” A strong increase in transaction volume for a CSB is more likely to be in the range of 10 percent a year overall, he says, and CSBs can scale to meet that demand. The bigger challenge lies in scaling up the professional staff. “Liaison’s biggest problem is hiring the right skills to add to the fulfillment group for things like mapping, EDI, XML and RosettaNet,” he says. From Mohawk’s standpoint, to focus on the technology is to miss the point. Stamas doesn’t care about technical details such as virtualization, economies of computing, elasticity of demand or pay-for-use models. Those are Liaison’s problems. Mohawk pays Liaison a flat annual fee plus an hourly rate to set up each integration, most of which come in around $1,000 (about Rs 55,000) or less. “It’s not about technology,” Stamas says “It’s about building business processes in the cloud. That’s what we’re focusing on.” —By Robert L. Mitchell

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD JULY 2012

END OF BIG IT ARCHITECTURES? Stamas sees this as the beginning of the end for monolithic enterprise applications. “They’re beginning to break apart into pieces. Rather than monolithic systems like SAP and Oracle, an ecosystem of cloud services will be interoperating with other workflows and processes that can be anywhere,” he says. For example, Stamas explains, “our ERP is the system of record for financials, but much of the functionality resides outside the system.” Orders entered via websites and CRM, expense management and HR systems are handled in the cloud, and advanced capabilities such as planning, scheduling, transportation, supply chain, asset management, manufacturing execution and warehouse management are performed outside the ERP software. Today, 60 percent of Mohawk’s IT portfolio resides outside the ERP system, up from 10 percent five years ago. “I see this rate accelerating,” says Stamas. In such a setup, “your ERP system may call Web services at StrikeIron for a currency conversion, and UPS or FedEx for a freight rate,” he says. “Then it may check inventory for an item at a customer or supplier” or ping other sites to perform credit checks, calculate sales tax, approve a credit card payment and more. As the financial bar has been lowered and turnaround times shortened for executing on such integrations, the number of projects at Mohawk has increased. “We can bring in a third-party manufacturer or logistics provider at the drop of a hat. That’s what’s fueling revenue generation,” Stamas says. “If it costs us $1,000 to try something, why not try it? If it doesn’t work, we just throw it away.” 

Focal Point EVERYTHING ABOUT UC

Hanging Up On UC

Why unified communications isn’t really catching on. By Bob Violino

NIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

(UC) technology has garnered a fair amount of attention, much of it due to vendors touting their UC offerings as the answer to problems workers have keeping in touch with colleagues, business partners, and

customers in a highly frenetic, increasinglymobile business world. While the technology is delivering benefits to the relatively few organizations that have adopted it, experts say UC is still evolving and vendors need to do more to integrate various products.

Exactly what UC is depends on who’s providing the definition, but in general it includes real-time communication capabilities such as telephony (including IP), video conferencing, instant messaging (IM), tele-presence and data sharing, along with non-real-time services such as voicemail, e-mail, unified messaging and fax. UC often involves multiple product components that together provide a unified user interface and experience across devices and media types. Among other capabilities, it allows a user to be reachable via the same telephone number over a variety of devices, and to receive messages on the medium of his or her choosing. The idea behind the technology is to optimize communication and collaboration—enabling workers to more easily reach and be reached by others, and therefore be more efficient and productive. But despite the promise, uptake of the technology has been somewhat sluggish, according to industry observers. “We have not seen significant growth in the number of companies doing something with UC,” says Robin Gareiss, executive vice president and senior founding partner of Nemertes Research Group. Based on surveys the firm has conducted, only 4.4 percent of companies have fully deployed UC. Two key issues are slowing adoption, Gareiss says. One is that companies are having a hard time establishing a hard-dollar business case for UC, and the other is that UC’s vendors are not making integration of various UC components easy. JULY 2012

Determining how much UC will cost can be tricky because of the various components involved. “Much of this depends on how you’re defining UC,” Gareiss says. “Which apps are included? Are they fully integrated to both tethered and wireless devices? The biggest unplanned expenses are integration costs, training/marketing internally to users and management tools.” Fortunately, UC can be deployed in increments, rather than require a major infrastructure upheaval, says Don Van Doren, principal at UniComm Consulting. Companies can purchase the UC capabilities and licenses as needed. “This means that savings from early improvements can be used to help fund subsequent application implementations,” he says. Despite the slow growth of the market overall, UC holds promise for organizations, Gareiss says. In fact, some believe that the boom in mobile communications will help spur demand for UC as a way of tying it all together, and to help enable the promise of anywhere, anytime connectivity across multiple types and brands of devices. Analyst firm InfoTech Research Group uses mobility as one key factor in its recently released UC scorecard.

UC SUCCESSES Companies that have deployed UC are seeing results. Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a global independent product-safety science company, two years ago, implemented a UC platform that includes components from Microsoft, HP and Avaya. INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n FOCAL POINT | UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS The company wanted to improve communications and collaboration throughout the organization and at the same time upgrade an aging communications and networking infrastructure, says Tom Boxrud, IT director, global operations at UL. As part of the upgrade, the company deployed Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 unified communications platform, which integrates instant messaging, audio, video, Web conferencing and telepresence into Microsoft Office. It also deployed a voice over IP (VoIP) telephony system from Avaya and network-infrastructure components including switches from HP. “We had outgrown our existing technology, but additionally UL was in a period of transformation, and one goal was to improve communications and collaboration with customers,” Boxrud says. In addition, the company wanted to reduce travel costs, shorten project cycles and be more agile in the marketplace. “We saw unified communications as a key tool that could deliver that,” Boxrud says. The company is in the process of moving to Microsoft Lync. As a result of using UC and VoIP, UL expects to reduce its telecommunications costs by as much as 50 percent, Boxrud says. Much of that savings comes from reduced long-distance calling costs among its global offices. Furthermore, UL has cut operating costs by 30 percent, consolidating nearly 40 e-mail servers worldwide to just one cloudbased e-mail system. Collaboration among its facilities in North America, 40

DOING UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS RIGHT

IRE consultants or integrators with expertise in the new system as well as legacy telecom systems in place. Knowledge about both will help the installation and transition go more smoothly and avoid integration and compatibility problems. Tap into resources such as other organizations that have deployed UC and overcome challenges your organization might face, such as cultural change or integration with legacy communications systems. Ask vendors for customer references. Make sure the vendor, systems integrator or consultant has the resources to set up and test the system in a lab setting before rolling it out within the organization. All functionality should be tested to make sure everything works as planned given the company’s network infrastructure, phone sets, mobile devices, and so on. Provide detailed training to users on UC features and capabilities, particularly to those who have never used the technology before. Without training and an explanation of the benefits of features, people are less likely to take advantage of them. If the company has a mix of vendor UC systems (for example, as a result of M&A activity), ensure that applications can be developed and deployed on multi-vendor infrastructures. Consider a phased rollout of UC if you are a very large organizations (10,000 users in multinational locations). Implementing the new services in small increments to a limited number of users enables the company to understand how each application works and what support structure it requires before a full-scale rollout. — By Bob Violino

Europe, and Asia is much easier and less costly since the adoption of UC, Boxrud says. “When we test products, we might have someone [in Asia] with knowledge about a product UL may be testing that someone in North America needs access to,” he says. “Instead of sending that person there we can do point-to-point demos or [Web] conferencing with the click of a button.” But the adoption of unified communications has come with some challenges. For one thing, it’s been something of a cultural shift for many people in the organization, who had never used the types of advanced features provided by UC. “Being that we have an older culture here, the key to the overall implementation [of UC] is having a good [internal] marketing, communications and training campaign—which we did through our Internet site and self-service tools—so people could see how to use UC features,” Boxrud says.

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The company rolled out features gradually rather than all at once to minimize struggle, Boxrud says. “We did a lot of feedback surveys about how people were feeling about the tools,” he says. “Some people had never been exposed to the video capabilities before.” As for financial payback, Boxrud says UL expects a return on investment on its UC technology and other network upgrades within about three years. “That’s pretty much on par with what we anticipated,” he says.

LARGER CHANGE Another UC user, The Agency Group, a Londonbased booking agency that represents more than 1,500 music artists worldwide, began deploying Avaya’s IP Office 7.0 in late 2010 as part of a telecommunications overhaul to improve communications among its worldwide offices. Part of the reason for the move was that the firm wanted to upgrade its com-

munications infrastructure from an older Nortel system that wasn’t IP-enabled and that the business had outgrown, according to Howie Gold, CIO at The Agency Group. “We needed more trunking capabilities and more overall features, such as video conferencing and support for iPhone and Android mobile applications,” Gold says. But another key reason for adopting unified communications was to achieve the firm’s goal of ensuring always-on, realtime service for clients, regardless of their location. The Agency Group also wanted to increase productivity among its employees, improve collaboration, save costs and reduce travel— and it has achieved those objectives with the new system, Gold says. Perhaps most important, UC enables the firm—which also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sweden and Nashville and has a large number of highlymobile employees—to

have a cohesiveness that it lacked before. “Our chairman’s main focus for IT was to unify the company, to enhance our level of communications and to get people from different offices to share information,” Gold says. Other immediate benefits for users included increased convenience and greater efficiency with managing communications. The system allows people to make calls to anywhere within the organization by dialing four digits. That eliminates the need for cumbersome international dialing, Gold says. “We have a lot of communications between agents in the UK and Canada [for example], and they now have the ability to just pick up the phone and dial a four-digit extension and reach someone 4,000 miles away without any concern that it’s a long-distance call,” Gold says. Even in this age of electronic communication the agency relies heavily on phone connections, Gold says. “You can do so much with e-mail, but our business is a relationship business that requires personal communications,” he says. “It’s better if people can get a feel for a person’s sense of humor or their excitement about a band.” The system has an application that allows users to send instant messages and see a colleague’s presence, among other functions, from a Web-based portal. This allows mobile agents to remain transparently available to clients, regardless of their location. UC has also allowed the firm to save through reduced long-distance calling and avoidng hotel calling

charges, Gold says. While he wouldn’t quantify total savings, Gold says executives and agents can avoid calling costs of as much as $3,000 (about Rs 1.6 lakh) for a single overseas trip. “There are so many different levels of savings that if you [consider that] and factor in the enhanced level of communications that goes with it, it’s hard to say what the total value of the technology is, but it is exceptional,” Gold says. Without concerns about calling costs, people are more inclined to make calls they need to make to

Corporate Technology and Data, at financial services firm Wells Fargo & Co. For now, he predicts, this integration improvement will happen in only “a subset” of UC areas, because most vendors see competitive advantage in having proprietary formats. “We would hope that as the capabilities evolve [we] might see this improve.” In addition, Spicer would like to see UC products better support the data archiving and discovery needs of companies, which he says are growing and currently require much

Providing a compelling UC business case can be a challenge when trying to justify the deployment across a large organization such as Wells Fargo, Spicer says. “Obviously, not everyone within the bank needs UC to get their job done well,” he says. “As the benefits continue to climb with new and more streamlined capabilities and the costs continue to fall with better integrated products and higher capacity infrastructure, the ROI will become easier to support.” UC will continue to evolve, experts say. Gareiss expects to see more inte-

Two key issues are slowing adoption. One is that companies are having a hard time establishing a hard-ROI for UC, and the other is that vendors are not making integration of various UC components easy. do their jobs. “One of the senior VPs told me that [in the past] when he would travel he would make a call to the office and then bounce around to different people in the office so he wouldn’t have to make separate calls,” Gold says. “Now he doesn’t have to get it all done in one call to save toll charges. It raises the level of communications because in the past people might have tried to avoid making calls.”

STILL EVOLVING Some IT executives see UC technology as a work in progress, with improvements still needed. “There is a need for more well-defined standards and protocols for communication between technologies, thus enabling simple integration,” says Jim Spicer, executive vice president/group executive and CIO, Wells Fargo

custom integration and effort. Many companies need this archiving capability for regulatory compliance purposes. “Convergence across some of the vendor products in the market to make this simpler and less costly would be valuable,” he says. Wells Fargo implemented a UC system—which Spicer declined to identify—in part to increase productivity and collaboration among staff and to meet demand for instant, realtime communication. The firm has seen benefits, such as the ability to connect teams across diverse geographical areas in a more real-time way, and in the future expects to see gains including reduced need for travel, the ability for users to see each other face-to-face in real time for interactive discussions, and more effective team meetings conducted remotely. JULY 2012

gration with mobile devices, or the ability to access a consistent set of UC features from any device. She also predicts more video on different types of devices, and more integration of the various video systems (tele-presence, room-based, desktop, and mobile). And, as with so many areas of computing today, the cloud is having an impact on UC. “Cloud-based UC is gaining interest, but not huge adoption yet among all sizes of companies,” Gareiss says. “For now, we see small-andmidsize companies, those with fewer than about 1,000 endpoints, making the strongest business case for cloud or hosted UC services.” UC “is not an IT project that is truly ever ‘completed,’” Gareiss says. “It’s an evolution, and IT staffs will always add new communications, collaboration, enterprise and mobile apps to an overall UC framework.”  INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n FOCAL POINT | UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

UC Goes Mobile and into the Cloud Unified communications evolves as more organizations align to new IT trends. By Andy Dignan work—with all of the capabilities enterprises need— anywhere in the world.

HARNESSING MOBILITY

FFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS,

many would argue, is the key to business. But finding the appropriate technologies to support effective communications can be challenging for IT professionals and enterprises. Unified communications is a concept that encompasses a variety of technologies, all of which are capable of working together, and, yes, while communication is a human process, technology can definetly enhance and improve it. Broadly speaking, unified communications (UC) is the convergence of communication solutions and collaboration tools such as video conferencing, unified messaging,

smartphones, contact centers and presence, to name a few. A highly-effective UC solution can support productivity of individuals and entire organizations, reduce IT operating costs, and increase collaboration between employees and clients alike. UC solutions can also offer employees capabilities like accessing work e-mail away from the office and helpful tools such as receiving voicemail messages via e-mail. With the explosion of technology trends such as mobility and cloud computing, to name just two, UC is growing to be much more than just video conferencing and accessing work e-mail at home. UC offers flexible collaboration tools and the ability to

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Now that many workers have multiple devices, whether it is a laptop, smartphone or tablet, UC’s mobile options are becoming a big benefit to organizations and workers alike. In fact, organizations report the most common UC solutions they deploy include smartphones (80 percent) and mobile desktops (80 percent), according to CDW’s 2011 Unified Communications Tracking Poll. The Unified Communications Tracking Poll also reports that one of UC’s top benefits is support of mobility. The top UC features organizations find most useful are access to e-mail and voicemail via smartphones and the ability to receive voicemail via e-mail. Additionally, respondents polled for the report list increased productivity as the top benefit they experience with UC. There are challenges. When employees have increased mobile access, including access to sensitive information, IT has to address the security implications. Additionally, if companies are allowing employees to bring their own device (BYOD), IT needs to handle the

challenges of supporting different platforms. IT needs to ensure the workforce receives mobile security training and should consider mobile security solutions such as mobile device management tools, data loss prevention software and e-mail encryption options.

UC IN THE CLOUD Cloud computing is, of course, another mega-trend in the IT world. Deploying a UC solution via the cloud can enhance the big benefits organizations are already seeing with cloud computing. Many organizations are already giving it a try; according to CDW’s Unified Communications Tracking Poll, 69 percent of organizations are evaluating, deploying or have fully deployed UC using a cloud model. Tools such as e-mail (Gmail), document management (SharePoint, Google Docs), and video and Web conferencing (Microsoft Live Meeting, WebEx) all bring the efficiencies and economies of cloud to unified communications. Cloud computing is also mitigating some of the pain points of UC, such as the upfront budget required or the time and complexity of implementing the solution. Three-quarters say that deploying UC in the cloud made it both faster and easier to deploy. And 65 percent say that deploying UC through the cloud made UC more cost effective to deploy. For organizations that would like to dip their toe in UC, implementing UC solutions via the cloud is an easy and effective way to test the waters. 

n FACE OFF

BMC Vs. CA Technologies

CHRIS WILSON,

SUBRATO BANDHU,

VP, Mainframe Business, CA Technologies

Country Manager, BMC Software, India

Workload Showdown Between BMC’s Control-M and CA’s Workload Automation, who comes up trumps?

MC’S WORKLOAD Automation solution Control-

M has been identified as a leader by analysts for over 12 years. Since its introduction in 1984, BMC Control-M has delivered value to users by supporting their evolving technology and business needs through continual innovation and the evolution of its capabilities. By reducing the overall complexity of batch-related workload and increasing productivity through greater automation, BMC Control-M has helped them reduce IT and business operations cost, support business growth and improve both the quality and availability of business services. BMC Control-M orchestrates and optimizes dispersed and disparate management processes across the enterprise and provides the ability to centrally monitor and manage workload elements required to support the batch portion of an organization’s business services. New BMC Control-M capabilities today allow customers to manage their workloads based on policies driven by business needs, and integrate legacy processing with real-time Web technologies. Through these advanced Web interfaces, along with integrated logical resources, BMC Control-M also enables the optimization of IT resources, as it can be made fully aware of physical resources contention as well as events such as hardware and software failures. BMC Control-M is the only workload automation solution that provides true enterprise scheduling, using a single interface and a single approach to create and monitor workloads. Through the use of BMC Control-M organizations elevate their business services management and therefore their IT infrastructure library capabilities. This is of strategic importance as companies strive to continually deliver high quality services while containing costs.

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A WORKLOAD Automation offers a comprehensive, proven approach, to help customers optimize different aspects of business workflow management. It simplifies the coordination of job streams across mainframe and distributed systems from a single point of control. It is distinguished by its breadth of platform coverage, event-based architecture, intelligent resource management, extent of automation, and ease of use. Additional benefits are derived from enterprise critical path analysis, enterprise reporting and forecasting, single security and access control, and most importantly, a single pane of glass and definition language to manage the entire enterprise; bringing true cross-enterprise computing to life. For decades, organizations worldwide, from the majority of Fortune 500 companies to fast-growing mid-sized businesses, have relied on CA Workload Automation solutions. CA Workload Automation is further leveraged by the close integration with the rest of CA’s Automation Suite portfolio, with solutions such as CA Process Automation. This provides end-to-end automation and orchestration capabilities across third-party solutions and manual processes, necessary for agile application and service delivery. It offers greater ROI and lower TCO without the costs and risk associated with writing scripts and introducing additional points of failure. The experience of CA Workload Automation is enhanced by its intuitive user interface which makes designing and deploying complex workflows simple. It’s tailored to facilitate administration, monitoring and control of business processes as well as integration with third-party applications and event management systems.

— As told to Shantheri Mallaya

JN_CW_AD_V1.3.indd 2

6/27/2012 6:00:57 PM