March 2014 issue 12

FOCAL POINT: With big shifts in the IT landscape, which vendor is ready to embrace change? >>> PAGE 39

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

VISHAL BINDRA, CEO, ACPL Systems, has set up a robust framework of operations in the North American market over the last few years.

Inside MARCH 2014 VOL. 7, ISSUE 12

News Analysis

More acquisitions, an increased cloud push, and better connections to the rest of Microsoft’s products may be on tap. PAGE 14

FlyOut As the IT world continues to open up, enterprise partners in India look to expand— across countries and continents. >>> Page 26

On Record: Naji Almahmoud, Senior Director, Global Business Development, SUSE, is confident of open source witnessing a meteoric adoption across organizations. PAGE 20 The Grill: Marc Randall, SVP and GM, Avaya Networking, believes Avaya will win through application driven networking. PAGE 23

Feature

There is a lot being said and made about big data. But how much of it is true? PAGE 36

Opinion

Your frenemy, in the years to come, could become an additional revenue contributor. PAGE 44

CHANNELWORLD.IN

n EDITOR’S NOTE

Vijay Ramachandran Productivity, Interrupted “Being constantly the hub of a network of potential interruptions provides the excitement and importance of crisis management. As well as the false sense of efficiency in multitasking, there is the false sense of urgency in multi-interrupt processing.”

A

—Michael Foley

FEW MONTHS ago, I tracked each time I was inter-

rupted at work. I did this not for a day or a week; I maintained a record over an entire month. I clocked in a text or a phone or a colleague walking into my cabin or an e-mail alert or a post alert on our collaboration platform once every 13 minutes! Each time I was disturbed it wasn’t exactly easy to regain my chain of thought and go right back to what I was doing.

A study, conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, found that “workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ”.

Big deal, right? Then consider that the study found that interruptions at work lowered IQ by as much as ten points, while smoking marijuana regularly, caused only a four point drop in intelligence!

Pointing to the ‘infomania’ in today’s work environment another study has discovered that organizations employing knowledge workers are greatly impacted by information overload.

Infomania, the studies authors observe, is the mental state of continuous stress and distraction caused by

the combination of queued messaging overload and incessant interruptions.

In one organization, the authors found that staff “averaged 11 minutes on any one “working sphere” before switching to another altogether.” This extreme fragmentation of work resulted in a severe cumulative time loss, with some estimates as high as 25 percent of the work day. Their research found employees in a chronic state of mental overload in practically every company and organization in the industrialized world.

n Multitasking and

dumb methods of forcing collaboration like open-plan offices cost organizations dearly in productivity losses and bad decision making.

An increasing volume of research holds the openplan office the biggest culprit responsible for interrupted productivity. The buzz is getting so strong that it recently led to an article in The New Yorker magazine titled The OpenOffice Trap.

Just a minute, wasn’t the open-plan office with few or no cabins designed to promote collaboration, transparency and greater team-work? Well, it does do all of that, but with lower levels of productivity and creativity. Organizational psychologist Matthew Davis has found that though open offices led to employees feeling that they were working in a less-formal, more-creative environment, in real term they negatively impacted attention spans, creativity, satisfaction, and, yes, productivity. Research has also pointed to on-job performance rising with

proportional to the levels of privacy and the ability to control environmental factors like lighting or temperature. A Danish study even found that the higher the density of employees in a room the higher the levels of sick leave they took.

And, of course add in the noise, the constant interruptions, the espousal of multi-tasking as today’s corporate prerequisite, and you’ve got a recipe for overwhelming any individual.

If that doesn’t truly describe a stressful working environment, what does?

Multitasking and dumb methods of forcing collaboration like open-plan offices cost us and our organizations dearly in productivity losses and bad decision making.

So what is the option?

Get employees to work out of a caves in a deep jungle away from constantly being bothered? Or, perhaps you can actually create zones in your offices that provide your staffers some much needed ‘me’ time and space to help them gather their thoughts, focus their attention, and, yes, also collaborate.

That would be a smartoffice, wouldn’t it?

Where do you stand on this? Mail me your thoughts.  Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of ChannelWorld. Contact him at vijay_ramachandran@ idgindia.com

MARCH 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

5

FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN

Inside INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n MARCH 2014

■ NEWS DIGEST 11 Towards Cheaper Connectivity | Fujitsu Laboratories and Furukawa

Electric have developed an optical connector that could reduce connectivity costs for servers.

12 IBM Explores Sale of Semiconductor Business | IBM is exploring the sale of its semiconductor unit shortly after agreeing to sell its

■ OPINION

05 Editorial: Vijay Ramachandran

says open plan offices and multi-tasking cause organizations more productivity loss than any gain from collaboration.

44 PlainSpeak: Yogesh Gupta says that two or more companies (read frenemies) can collaborate to win the big deal. The next door competitor is likely to become your additional revenue contributor.

■ THE GRILL

23 Marc Randall, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Avaya

low-end server business to Lenovo Group, according to newspaper reports. The company is said to have appointed Goldman Sachs to sound out potential buyers.

12 On-Premises ERP will get Legacy Label | The highly

customized ERP in place at companies around the world are looking a bit long in the tooth, to the point where by 2016 it will be common practice to refer to them as “legacy” software, according to Gartner.

23 Networking, believes Avaya will win through application driven networking.

■ FAST TRACK

22 Ramasamy B., Founder-Director,

KKM Soft, says the company that started as a CAD services company and has blossomed to be specialists.

■ NEWS ANALYSIS 14 The Future of Dynamics | More acquisitions, an increased cloud push, and better connections to the rest of Microsoft’s products may be on tap.

26 ■ COVER STORY

26 Fly

Out

As the IT world continues to open up, enterprise partners in India look to expand— across countries and continents. Here are four channel partners who are steering the course of their companies to a new dawn. Read about the fascinating journeys of these partner organizations that seized the right moment to fly out and record a new phase of growth.

Cover Photograph SUMEET SAWHNEY Cover Design UNNIKRISHNAN A.V

■ ON RECORD

20

22

Naji Almahmoud, Senior Director, Global Business Development, SUSE, is confident of open source witnessing a meteoric adoption across organizations of all sizes.

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25 Pradeep Visvanathan, CEO, Blue Harp

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■ FOCAL POINT

39 Hang in the Balance

CLOUD COUMPUTING: For both IT and business executives, knowing which vendors

PERIODICITY OF PUBLICATION: Monthly PRINTER Name: Louis D’Mello Nationality: Indian Address: Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore 560 027 PUBLISHER Name: Louis D’Mello Nationality: Indian Address: Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore 560 027 EDITOR Name: Louis D’Mello Nationality: Indian Address: Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore 560 027 Names and addresses of individuals who own the magazine, and partners or shareholders holding more than one per cent of the total capital: International Data Group, 5, Speen Street, Framingham MA 01701, USA I, Louis D’Mello, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

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Publisher, President & CEO Louis D’Mello n EDITORIAL

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News

WHAT’S WITHIN PAGE 12: On-Premises ERP will get Legacy Label

PAGE 12: IBM Explores Sale of Semiconductor Business

PAGE 14: The Future of Dynamics F I N D M O R E A R T I C L E S AT CHANNELWORLD.IN

NETWORKING

Towards Cheaper Connectivity

F

UJITSU LABORATORIES and Furukawa

Electric have developed an optical connector that could reduce connectivity costs for servers.

The connector precisely aligns multiple fibers to make optical interconnects. While the companies did not go into detail, they said savings can be achieved because the technology eliminates the need for expensive, highprecision polishing at connection points.

The jointly developed connector can carry data at speeds of 25Gbps, but could

be faster in the future.

It reduces the cost of connecting optical fibers by more than half, Fujitsu said.

The manufacturer believes the technology could deliver large cost benefits to data centers. The connector incorporates a spring mechanism that bends the optical fibers slightly to make up for small differences in their lengths. The mechanism pulls back the fibers so they line up precisely when being plugged into a multi-fiber connector. When used with a housing accommodating four connectors that Fujitsu and

Furukawa developed in 2011, the setup can link up to 96 optical fibers. The companies will present the research that led to the new connector’s development at the SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco this week.

Aside from possible savings, the optical connector was designed to exhibit lower noise and higher speed than conventional electrical wiring connections. It could accelerate data transmission between boards and improve server performance, the company said.

The high-bandwidth connections provided by optics are faster than traditional electrical wiring technology used in most computers.

However, the cost of using optical transceivers and fibers can be five to 10 times the cost of using copper, according to a Corning white paper. “Finding a fiber facet formation method suitable for a physical contact connection was the most difficult problem in this development,” said Tsuyoshi Aoki, a researcher in the Photonic Devices Laboratory.

“We attempted many conditions and many methods.

Finally, we found by chance that laser processing realizes this. We think that we solved one of the issues for deploying optical interconnects to servers.”

MARCH 2014

—Tim Hornyak INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

11

SUPPORT

Pay Up for Server Updates Getting those firmware updates for HP’s servers are about to get a little more difficult. HP says that from it will start charging for access to firmware updates through the company’s support center.

Only customers with an active warranty, an HP Care Pack subscription, or support agreement will be able to download the updates directly from HP.

Previously, HP firmware updates were freely available.

“This decision reinforces our goal to provide access to the latest HP firmware, which is valuable intellectual property, for our customers who have chosen to maximize and protect their IT investments,” HP’s Mary McCoy vice president for technology services said in a blog post. It’s not clear if HP will restrict access to critical firmware updates that are sometimes necessary to keep a device from misbehaving.

—Ian Paul

-

ERP

On-Premises ERP will get Legacy Label

T

HE HIGHLY customGartner. ERP customers ized ERP in place at have received “real busicompanies around ness value” while software the world are lookvendors have made plenty ing a bit long in the tooth, of money, the report states. to the point where by 2016 “However, the main it will be common practice beneficiaries were the to refer to them as “legacy” major consultancies who software, according to managed the business proGartner. cess re-engineering and These systems implemented the are showing ERP solutions,” their age in a the analysts per year is the number of ways, wrote. “These average cost of chief among implementation change requirements them their in order to ensure that service providers ERPs are in sync with monolithic, allsecured thembusiness needs. in-one structure, selves a prosperGartner analysts Source: IDC Whitepaper ous future by utiDenise Ganly, Andy Kyte, lizing lucrative continuous Nigel Rayner and Carol service contracts that went Hardcastle wrote in a rebeyond implementation port. into extensive customizaERP systems came into tions.” favor in the 1990s because It’s easy to find businessthey held the promise of es that have actually spent a better-integrated set of 10 times as much money on business applications and customizations as on the processes than what had initial license fees, and still come before. more money to support Since then, three groups and carry these customhave benefited from the izations forward during a ERP boom, according to software upgrade, accord-

1.2mn

ing to Gartner. “The net result of 15 years of continuous customization is that these ERP implementations are now extremely ‘arthritic,’ incredibly slow and expensive to change,” the analysts wrote.

The notion of a single, integrated ERP system to handle a company’s every need “is being replaced by the emergence of cloud point solutions that deliver functionality business users want that the ITcontrolled and centrallymandated ERP megasuite previously struggled to deliver,” they added.

It may take 10 years or longer for a majority of companies to move to cloud-based ERP, but some segments, such as professional services, will take this path much sooner, according to Gartner. That’s partly because traditional ERP suites have done a better job of catering to companies that deal in products and assets, the report said.

Expect core functions such as manufacturing and finance to mostly remain on-premises, however, according to Gartner.

—Chris Kanaracus

M&A

IBM Explores Sale of Semiconductor Business IBM is exploring the sale of its semiconductor unit shortly after agreeing to sell its low-end server business to Lenovo Group, according to newspaper reports.

The company is said to have appointed investment bank Goldman Sachs to sound out potential buyers, but could also seek to set up a semiconductor joint venture, The Financial Times reported.

12

The semiconductor business is described as the company’s most technology intensive, and contributes technologies for some key initiatives including the Watson cognitive computing system and high-end servers.

IBM plans to retain its chipdesign capabilities while selling the manufacturing operation, The Wall Street Journal reported.

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

BEST BUY: IBM is said to be on the look out for a buyer.

The company said in January it had entered into an agreement to sell its x86 server hardware business and related maintenance services business to Lenovo for

Short Takes  Juniper Networks appointed Ashish Dhawan as the MD for its India and SAARC operations.

The company was on the look-out for its next MD since Ravi Chauhan chose to resign from the top post.  HDS announced that Redington and iValue will now offer the Hitachi Cloud Services Connection program (HCSC) to enterprises in India. This program is a public cloud offering built on HDS cloud infrastructure and solutions and managed

by HDS for partners to resell.  Brocade announced the rollout of an enhanced channel program, including a new component specifically designed for software networking partners. The Brocade Alliance Partner Network (APN) channel program further expands the company’s mission to lead the SDN market by including SDN-focused deal registration and demo program discounts.

$2.3 billion. The company is also reported to have approached other vendors to check their interest in acquiring its software defined networking business. IBM could not be immediately reached for comment on the reports on its plans for the semiconductor business. Besides designing chips based on the Power Architecture for use in its own systems, IBM Microelectronics offers design and foundry services, through which it manufactures chips around Power for other companies.

—John Ribeiro

n NEWS ANALYSIS

The Future of Dynamics

More acquisitions, an increased cloud push, and better connections to the rest of Microsoft’s products may be on tap.

By Chris Kanaracus

14

M

ICROSOFT’S DYNAMICS ERP

and CRM product lines seemed safe immediately following former CEO Steve Ballmer’s sweeping reorganization of the company last year. But now that longtime Microsoft executive Satya Nadella has been named Ballmer’s successor, the time is ripe for more focused speculation on the future of Dynamics. Here’s a look at what could be in store.

He knows Dynamics well: Nadella served a stint in the Dynamics business from 2001-2007, so he has an intimate knowledge of the ERP applications and their user bases, as well as Dynamics CRM, which

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

has made strides against the likes of Salesforce.com, thanks to factors including aggressive pricing and the option of cloud or on-premises deployments.

“It’s not as if he’s going to take a lot of time to come up to speed,” said analyst Frank Scavo, managing partner of IT consulting firm Strativa. “I think Dynamics increases in stature at Microsoft under Nadella.”

Nadella played a “fairly prominent role” at a Microsoft analyst event Scavo attended several months ago, taking part in a lengthy session that primarily focused on Dynamics and Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, which Nadella oversaw

before taking the CEO job, Scavo added.

Meanwhile, Nadella has said that to be a leader in enterprise cloud computing, a vendor must have “best-in-class first-party SaaS applications,” running on its own cloud infrastructure.

All in all, Nadella will likely be a strong advocate for Dynamics as he settles into the CEO slot.

“We are very happy about Satya’s appointment as CEO,” a spokesperson for Dynamics said via email Thursday. “Microsoft Dynamics is on a strong growth path and is seeing great traction market. We are innovating at a rapid pace and are excited about what we plan to deliver to our customers in the upcoming months.”

Customer enthusiasm: Customers are happy too.

“We’re extremely excited about it,” said Frank Vukovits, co-founder and director of programming for the Dynamics AX User Group, regarding Nadella’s appointment. In fact, Nadella spoke at the group’s first summit meeting in 2005, Vukovits said. “He has always been a big supporter of the community and sees a lot of value in users and customers getting together and sharing their knowledge to allow them to do more with the product.”

Nadella understands business applications and the needs of users that work with them, Vukovits added. “What would have made me nervous is if they brought someone in with a history focused just on sales and licensing, the volume side of the business, versus the need to truly embrace the business customer,” he said.

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n NEWS ANALYSIS Eyes on the enterprise: In order to substantially grow the Dynamics business, Microsoft will have to go after ERP deals with large enterprises. To that end, it’s been building out its global services capabilities, even though traditionally Dynamics has mostly been sold through partners around the world, who tweak the software for customers’ needs. Many have also built out industryspecific functionality for Dynamics.

“Customers at the larger end of the spectrum want some direct Microsoft involvement,” Scavo said.

But on the product front, Microsoft will have to fill out Dynamics’ functionality for HCM (human capital management), SCM (supply chain management) and other areas, he added. The faster they do so, the more easily they can beat out the likes of Oracle and SAP in enterprise deals.

Shopping trips: Nadella’s arrival could see Microsoft make additional acquisitions for Dynamics, said China Martens, an independent analyst covering the enterprise applications market. Dynamics CRM has benefited from the purchases of MarketingPilot, NetBreeze and Parature, but it’s an open question whether Microsoft will make more deals, both for CRM and ERP. Multibillion dollar acquisitions to build out Dynamics ERP seem less likely given Microsoft’s propensity to pick up functionality built by partners that is already integrated with a Dynamics application.

One example of this came last year, when Microsoft bought some supply-chain modules from Blue Horse16

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gains with Parature Acquisition

M

icrosoft Dynamics CRM gains key technology and team on customer assets with its acquisition of Parature for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition, the division’s largest to date, “shows its seriousness about customer experience”, notes Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst of Constellation Research.

Wang says the acquisition is significant for both Parature and Microsoft Dynamics customers because the start-up fills a key gap in the Microsoft offering.

Originally named Cyracle Technologies, Parature’s first product addressed the live chat market. Microsoft CRM currently has a customer care offering that delivers core customer service with case management, universal queuing and routing, and light scheduling and field service.

Parature provides key self-service knowledge base software, core customer service, live chat, mobile access, survey and feedback capabilities, social monitoring, and Facebook portal capabilities to the Microsoft service offering.

Wang notes Microsoft’s core strengths have come from the sales automation product and the tight integration with Office. Since 2012, with the arrival of corporate vice president, Bob Stutz, the Dynamics CRM team has sought to

shoe. But a “more substantial investment,” particularly in HCM, may not be off the table, according to Martens. Available vendors in this area include Ultimate Software and Cornerstone on Demand.

Getting crowded in the cloud: Microsoft has made some steps to put the Dynamics ERP products on Azure, but it’s not clear when all four applications will be available for deployments there. It needs to move faster, because cloud-based competing offerings such as Plex Systems and NetSuite won’t wait, according to Scavo.

“Eventually these cloud players are going to have more fully functional manufacturing which right now is Dynamics’ bread and butter,” he said. “They have

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

round out the rest of the customer experience offering. Stutz, Wang points out, was key in the development of Siebel CRM and SAP CRM. The acquisition, meanwhile, adds 70 million end users to Microsoft Dynamics CRM ecosystem. Wang notes Parature has built a strong foothold in key industries such as education, gaming, high-tech, non-profit associations, online media, public sector, and travel. These include technology companies Asure Software, HDS, and IBM. Microsoft will need to retain key Parature talent and augment them to continue this level of momentum, he says. More importantly, Microsoft will need to maintain the same level of marketing and sales support if it hopes to maintain the growth trajectory. “This may prove to be challenging given the current One Microsoft reorganisation in progress.”

Wang says Dynamics CRM is the fastest growing part of the Microsoft Dynamics franchise, and the unit is giving Salesforce.com the most competition in head to head deals.

Dynamics CRM partners should get to know the Parature product lines as soon as possible in order to increase cross-sell opportunities.

—Divina Paredes

a little bit of time but that window is closing.”

Microsoft could make other moves as well, such as a tightly integrated suite composed of Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM Online, Martens said. This could give it an additional edge over Salesforce.com, since the latter relies on partners for ERP applications.

“Another issue is how to deal with ERP rivals’ focus on further verticalizing their apps,” Martens added. “It’s a tricky path for Microsoft as it aims to offer customers some of its own industry specificity in financial services, manufacturing, professional services, public sector, and retail while not venturing too deep into its Dynamics partners’ vertical turf.”

One Microsoft: Nadella has inherited former CEO Steve Ballmer’s “One Microsoft” strategy, which was rolled out last year.

The plan’s goal is to get Microsoft’s many disparate divisions and products working together as a more cohesive whole, down to the engineering level.

There was already a stated intent from Microsoft to integrate Dynamics with products such as Yammer and Skype, but much more could be possible if the One Microsoft plan comes to fruition. With Nadella on board, hopefully Dynamics will have more consideration during the planning process for new products that could be beneficial to it, “versus later on when the product’s fully baked,” Vukovits said. 

CASE FILE

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By Aritra Sarkhel

P RAJESH MATHKAR, director, wysetek systems technologists

icture this: One of the largest BFSI players in the country, a co-operative bank, was using a leading security vendor’s legacy solution to counter the prevailing threat landscape. Unfortunately for them, the solution was not efficient and comprehensive in terms of offering protection for datacenter and cloud workloads. In a virtualized environment, legacy security leads to decrease in host performance and VM density, and, as a result, increase in operational complexity. “As effective as today’s server and end-point security solutions may be in physical environments, implementing these for the virtual world creates new challenges because their inherent differences are not taken into

account. And this was the most important concern for the bank,” says Rajesh Mathkar, director, Wysetek Systems Technologists.

Wysetek put forth Trend Micro Deep Security as a solution to secure the bank’s virtual environment. The USP of Deep Security—a comprehensive and customized solution for servers or datacenters that hold physical and virtual servers, and for VMware virtualized servers—is that it provides agentless security and can be installed on physical servers. The system integrator conducted a POC of Deep Security at the bank’s premises. “When we did the POC, they straightaway understood Deep Security’s value proposition and gave us the green signal as they were aware of the solution’s technological benefits,” says Rajesh Mathkar, director, Wysetek.

Comprehensive Protection Following the successful POC, Wysetek deployed Deep Security solution as it is superior to traditional security solutions. The solution has enabled achieve cost-effective compliance across virtual environments. “At the bank, Deep Security runs on a hypervisor, thus protecting all the VMs residing on that hypervisor. Deep Security has a deeper integration with VMware from vCenter to VMware APIs,” points out Mathkar.

Mathkar opines that Deep Security, with its centrally-managed, multi-purpose virtual appliance, reduces the cost of deploying numerous software clients and eliminates complexity with tight integrations to management consoles from Trend Micro and VMware.

“The overall feedback from the customer was fabulous, considering that with security solutions, everything depends on the cost of mitigation against the cost of risk,” he says.

Apart from Deep Security, the other strong product in Trend Micro’s arsenal is Deep Discovery. But as Mathkar explains, there is a subtle but significant difference between the two. “Deep Security is custom-made for servers or datacenters that hold physical or virtualized servers. It is installed on servers and protects them from any kind of malware

attack. Deep Discovery, on the other hand, is an anti-advanced persistent threat (APT) solution which provides actionable reporting by applying threat intelligence on the network traffic coming from multiple channels,” he says. These solutions are ideal for large enterprises as well as SMB customers holding critical servers or deploying virtualization solutions across their IT setup or migrating to a public cloud.

The Way Ahead Mathkar now plans to deploy the Deep Security suite of solutions across different locations of the BFSI client. In addition, the great results have encouraged Wysetek to take forward Deep Security to other customers across India.

Needless to say, such consistent successes have strengthened Wysetek’s relationship with Trend Micro as well, over the last six quarters. “Our relationship with Trend Micro is not only centered on Deep Security but our commitment to Deep Security as a technology is very focused and dedicated,” says Mathkar. “Trend Micro is the best security vendor to work with in terms of security for virtualization and cloud servers. They have made substantial investment in creating security technology for these areas, which, in turn, has catapulted them to a higher level altogether,” he adds.

Going forward, innovations such as software-defined datacenter (SDN) would also need Deep Security’s agentless security platform. “Trend Micro solutions will fit into the scheme of things very smoothly. It is definitely a good tool for customers across different verticals,” says Mathkar.

Overall, it is a total win-win situation for Wysetek. Its already strong virtualization practice has received a huge boost in the security area with Trend Micro’s solutions.

Mathkar opines it’s a perfect fit for partners with great focus on virtualization.

“Such a niche solution is in big demand among end-customers because they need watertight security for their virtualized systems,” he says.

Nilesh Jain Head - Channel Sales, Trend Micro “ We have endeavored to provide superior security solutions and products to our customers across geographies. Deep Security’s unique proposition is that it is custom-designed for servers and datacenters which hold physical or virtualized servers.

It is installed on the servers and protects them from any kind of malware. The other product, Deep Discovery, is an anti-APT solution that provides threat intelligence on incoming network traffic. Both these solutions are available for large enterprises as well as SMBs. ”

IDG SERVICES

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

revenues. This acceleration is in tune with the analysts’ prediction of highlighting the capability of Linux to bring down the cost of datacenter and also provide a great platform for innovation. Few customer surveys point to that around 70 to 75 percent of organizations preferring Linux platform for deployments around cloud and big data.

ON RECORD n

Naji Almahmoud, Senior Director, Global Business Development, SUSE, is confident of open source witnessing a meteoric adoption across organizations of all sizes.

By Yogesh Gupta

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As frontrunner in enterprise Linux solutions, SUSE competes with proprietary companies and open source companies like Ubuntu and Red Hat. What will keep you ahead in the game?

ALMAHMOUD: Our advanced adaptability of the open source software across horizontal platform helps maintain our market leadership in specific segments like mainframe, retail, HPC. SUSE grew 22 percent YOY globally—ahead of the average market rate. And the 2014 too is headed in that direction. In terms of the technology pillar, we continue to invest into the core business of enterprise Linux by adding more capability into HA stack and Linux management.

We continue to observe the trend of UNIX to Linux which is probably the core in terms of contribution to

VMware vCloud hybrid service offering, a fully supported SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, is one of the first commercially supported Linux OS that the cloud service plans to offer. In view of this, where do you think is the cloud headed?

ALMAHMOUD: Couple of years ago, we ventured into ‘cloud infrastructure as a service’ based on open stack. We recently shipped SUSE Cloud 2.0. SUSE’s revenues from the cloud are not significant today but the growth expected is almost double every year.

Our approach in cloud infrastructure is extending support for all hypervisors including Hyper V, Xen, KVM, and VMware.

With a strong movement

by Oracle and SAP to push mission critical apps in the cloud, there are additional cloud service providers entering that market.

We signed recently with Google compute engine.

Are you building an additional market for SUSE and its partners?

ALMAHMOUD: We announced the foray into distributed storage market few months ago. By second half this year, we will launch a product based on open source technology Ceph, which is an object store and file system that brings

NAJI ALMAHMOUD | ON RECORD n

Do you sincerely believe Linux is a ‘money saver’ option for SMBs and enterprises than erstwhile proprietary solutions?

ALMAHMOUD: For a UNIX heavy customer there is a definite initial savings with this platform .The price performance ratio is an impor-

25%

SOURCE: SUSE INDIA

performance, scalability and reliability to distributed storage. We expect the distributed storage to be available in both versions — on-premise and cloud. Distributed storage might bring in the same effect (like UNIX to Linux) wherein organizations move away from proprietary storage solution (or commodity hardware) to open source storage platform.

YOY growth of Suse’s business in India last year

2006. For joint customers, we work closely to put our customer first. We are conscious that we compete across other parts of the market. For example, if 50 percent of customers select SUSE or Windows as an OS, then the other 50 percent might work with both OSes for different workloads. The strategic alliance is addressing this important set of customers that deploy both technologies.

ALMAHMOUD: Around 18

months ago, SAP launched an ERP offering—Business One on SAP HANA. They are empowering their channel ecosystem to deploy SAP HANA as DB with another OS; Linux instead of Microsoft. This is a true technology change for partners. There is a partner program including free installation tools, presales support, and certified Linux administrator academy. Since April 2013, there are over 400 SAP channel partners (and not SUSE partners) who benefited from this program.

We will continue alliances with large partners like IBM wherein our solutions have a direct impact to their channel ecosystem

the customer. SUSE cloud products have been pre integrated with the installation and management tools. The open stack or private cloud can be deployed within 20 to 30 minutes. This quick time-to-market is a great pitch for channels to their customers. SUSE stack enables customers to understand its value proposition through a quick implementation and services approach by our SI partners.

With virtualization supporting XEN and SUSE 12 to be available later this year, all the organizations running XEN virtualization will receive support for 13 years.

Which are the key areas for enterprise channels to increase their business in

To tread the middle ground for the benefit of our customers has been in SUSE’s DNA from the very beginning. We do not talk about enemies in the tech world as there is enough and more market and business revenues for everyone. tant factor for open source, not only Linux. It is same for cloud or virtualization. Even for big data, you can take an open source Hadoop file or go private. Maybe compared to Microsoft that is run on same hardware (x86), the price is not clear. However in mission critical datacenters, with HA and virtualization, the capability by open source or Linux does reflect a definite price difference.

How do you plan the technology alliances with other vendors in the industry?

Do you still consider Microsoft to be an enemy, as in the past?

ALMAHMOUD: There is strategic alliance between SUSE and Microsoft since

We collaborate with SAP, Oracle, and others. We understand the fact that many vendors will compete with us and also compete with each other. To tread the middle ground for the benefit our customers is in SUSE’s DNA from the very beginning. We do not talk about enemies in the tech world as there is enough and more market and business revenues for everyone.

Despite fierce competition with Red Hat, we work jointly on standardization and code contribution for open source projects.

Do such alliances between vendors increase business opportunity for enterprise channel partners?

and follow enablement, pre sales, and support activities through relevant programs.

Interoperability between different vendor technologies is a big concern as VDI, cloud, and BYOD become prominent across enterprises. Comment.

ALMAHMOUD: The days of having one type of systems or one proprietary system at the customerend are over. It is more of a hybrid environment not only on OSes but in terms of hybrid datacenter, cloud—private and public—and Apps.

Interoperability is growing in complexity on the vendor and technology side, but we constantly make it simple and easy to use for

2014 and beyond?

ALMAHMOUD: Cloud and IAAS are big opportunities.

The partnership between SUSE and WSO2 to provide certified and supported middleware and PaaS offer good potential too. The storage market will never shrink and it is important to have control of that IT infrastructure through an effective storage system, one which is agile, scalable, and flexible. Hence the upcoming distributed storage

by SUSE will help channels add a new revenue stream.

Apart from migration accounts, we gained 4000 plus customers last year. Channels have a huge play in this customer set opting for SUSE as the initial platform. 

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n FAST TRACK

Snapshot

KKM Soft

Founded: 1995 Headquarters: Chennai JA Revenue 2011-12: Rs 20 crore Revenue 2012-13: Rs 22 crore Revenue 2013-14 (Expected): Rs 30 crore Key Executives: Subramani, Executive Director; Kirubakaran, headConsulting; Surya Prakash, headTraining Business Key Principals: Autodesk, Cimatron, Altair, IBM, ARCHIBUS Key Activities: CAD/CAM/CAE product reseller, Autodesk Gold Partner with multiple specializations, software development and consultancy on ETO, IBM, ARCHIBUS products, mobility and cloud solutions for business process automation

Niche is where the growth is, says Founder-Director, Ramasamy Balasubramani, KKM Soft.

W

HEN ONE thinks

of KKM Soft, one thinks niche. In over a decade and half, the company has made no bones about the fact that it will operate in a space that it sees value in—a knowledge based domain such as CAD/ Consultancy.

“We started as a CAD services company and have now blossomed into specialists,” says FounderDirector, Ramasamy Balasubramani.

KKM Soft tied up with Autodesk in 1998. Since the time, the company has not looked back. From being a mere tie-up, the relationship with Autodesk graduated to exclusivity (year 2000) to being an Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) Partner in 2006, to being an Autodesk Gold Partner, a rare honour.

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Also, KKM Soft has also been recognized for the Manufacturing “Flavours” in 2012, 2013, and 2014, three years in succession. Ramasamy adds, “Recognition validates our efforts and gives us a sense of being

REVENUE SPLIT 10%

Consulting and development

15%

Training and education

75%

Product sales and resellership

SOURCE: KKM SOFT

Photograph by R. CHANDROO

Website : www.kkmsoft.com and www.kkmconsulting.com in the right direction.”

Apart from product sales and consulting business practices, another big chunk of the company’s business is the fact that they are one of Autodesk’s biggest training partners in the country. KKM trains students across professional colleges, and prides itself on having till date imparted knowhow to about 5000 engineering students across the country.

Ramasamy observes, “Training and consultancy are areas of growth for us, to the tune of 50 percent yearon-year.”

The services and consulting being niche, KKM’s clientele span across India, Australia, and the US. KKM has also tied up with Cimatron (CAM) and Altair (CAE) to boost its portfolio and composite offerings to customers. Ramasamy feels that the industry has to standards to automate, adopt and also grow. So, KKM, he feels will be a part of the ecosystem that will help implement standards and grow to be one of top movers/specialists in driving the change.  —Shantheri Mallaya

P h o t o g r a p h b y D E LT R I M E D I A

n THE GRILL

Marc Randall,

Senior Vice President and General Manager, Avaya Networking, believes Avaya will win through application driven networking.

Over three years ago, you had listed out about five focus areas for Avaya. How far has Avaya come in those and would these be relevant in 2014? The theory remains the same. We have the three core technologies around UC, contact center, and services, which remain the core product offerings. In addition, we look at four areas for increased growth, which are application development, cloud services, video, and networking. That is our strategy and structure.

Apart from these, we are focussing on market segments, the enterprise and mid-market. We have had to bifurcate the two, in order to have the right product to go-to-market. There can be shared

technologies between the two, but the models are different. Enterprise has a greater touch to it, while the mid-market has a greater channel play.

The second thing we are concentrating on is taking the entire solution stack and selling to the enterprise and the mid-market. This means clients, be it hard or soft clients can make use of anything, right from application to infrastructure. For instance, one big focus is how clients can use Avaya Flare technology which can be downloaded right off our App store, for real-time office collaboration, and so on.

In effect, we have been executing the strategy for a while and we have been

Dossier Name: Marc Randall Designation: SVP and GM, Avaya Networking Company: Avaya Present Role: In this role, Randall oversees the foundation for the data networking business with a focus on growing the networking business into a world class innovative market leader. Randall has also been instrumental in setting up Avaya’s R&D facilities, particularly in India.

Career Graph: In a career spanning three decades, Randall has had stints with Cisco, Brocade, Force 10 Networks and Amdahl in senior positions where he has led strategy decisions for the organizations, besides also setting the R&D facilities of these companies in India

n THE GRILL | MARC RANDALL business more effectively. Partners can support their customers better.

What gave credence to this theory is that what Avaya did in certain markets.

In Canada, US, Mexico, and Brazil, we identified a small group of partners to go sell the entire stack. This meant we bring them into account to see how we sell from a direct standpoint, train their sales and support teams, compensate them in a manner that brings value to help them sell. It has worked very well. We are now extending the idea to the larger partner community. So, it is not complicated at all. You are not going there to say you have something new or confusing, what you say is “I have everything you need, pre-packaged and it will be unique since it is from Avaya; we have the capabilities to tie it all and make it easy.” Partners can do this messaging well, and make it a clear win-win for all.

We want to ensure that the network is subservient to the applications riding on it. The old network architectures cannot stand the onslaught.

aligning our resources, R&D, and sales efforts around these areas.

Recently Avaya made it clear that only partners who sell end-to-end will be incentivized. Isn’t that a bit unfair on your partners as a mandate? It isn’t exactly a mandate; it is more like a direction that we want partners to go. We have partners who sell merely bread-andbutter UC offerings, while there are partners who see value and want to sell end-to end. As the size of the deal goes up, so do the economics. Buying an entire stack also helps customers to do 24

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

You had been radical when you recently remarked that Cisco comes from the networking end while Avaya is more application driven, and went on to suggest the subservience of the network. Avaya has people who have had long stints with competition, so we know where they come from and how we can handle that. Very few companies can bring the pieces together besides Avaya. That’s the inflection point in the market today; a change that has to come quickly. We want to ensure that the network is subservient to the applications riding on it. The old network architectures cannot stand the onslaught. The change is there for all to see.

So, when they (competition) make a recent announcement on more interface ports, we come out with new applications. Our conversations with some big customers indicate the drift; the wave of change, they see value in the mix of tools.

What enables all this is Fabric Connect.

It seeks to do is built on this premise— build as many servers or networks virtualized on our physical infrastructure.

It allows the customer networks to be more discreet, allows for partitioning guest networks, adhering to PCI compliance, and so on. Clearly, it is the story of change, which cannot subsist on traditional networks.

Will this turn the wheels in terms of markets share for Avaya, with atleast

half a dozen other big names in the fray, mainly Cisco still being formidable with the cream of the market? Yes, the Avaya networking business has grown over the last three consecutive quarters.

We have got marquee names that have decided to go down this path. Proof points being the Sochi Olympics, which are perhaps the biggest fabric and wireless Olympics. We are the supplier of UC, video, fabric, and wireless, amongst all the networking infra at the event. At the Vancouver Olympics where we were the supplier as well. We are now able to replicate the same story at airports. Slowly, surely, change will percolate into the larger numbers.

How are you replicating your collaboration story for the Indian enterprise? What are the proof points? Well, the storyline is similar around the world. In India, the twin advantage we would have is that customers are very choosy about what they want and that networking technology has been stuck over a decade. Here comes Avaya. Our fabric technology is mature and reduces complexity. The whole management becomes simpler, fewer people to manage the networks.

India is undergoing transition, being where China was in 2000. Huge investments are happening. The next decade is poised for huge growth.

Avaya realigned its channels recently and also said Opex is the way to go. Tall order for partners, don’t you think? We have taken the channel organization across tiers and put them under one umbrella, under the head of the Partner Organization, Richard Steranka to give consistency to the partner strategy.

The Opex model is purely what the customer and the partner decide.

It is simple, neatly laid out—ease of commerce. We also have third-party finance models laid out for partners and customers to use. And all this ties back to our enterprise and mid–market strategies. We have a rewards system for each category, each segment. Our efforts are focussed on each set of partners. Importantly, Avaya’s SDN solution on Aura will also be a torch bearer of the opex model, that is the direction we want to drive the market.  —Shantheri Mallaya

n FAST TRACK

Snapshot

Blue Harp Technologies

Founded: 2011 Headquarters: Bangalore Branches: Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Kolkata Revenue 2011-12: Rs 1 crore Revenue 2012-13: Rs 5 crore Revenue 2013-14 (expected): Rs 15 crore Key Executives: Shaji Kumar, VPSales and Business Development; Manoj Maveli, VP-Operations; Jeevesh Pandit, national headStrategic Accounts Key Activities: Integrated IT and communication infrastructure and applications, transition services Key Principals: Avaya, Cisco, Vidyo, Brocade, Shoretel, Aastra

My motivation comes from the people I work with, says Pradeep Visvanathan, CEO, Blue Harp Technologies.

T

HREE DECADES is a long

time to be in the IT business. Then why, one wonders, would anyone wish to start up and begin anew? Ask Pradeep Visvanathan, CEO and MD, Blue Harp technologies, and pat comes the answer.

“Motivation comes from the market and people I work with. Youngsters are excited and willing to join a new organization that offer unique solutions in disruptive technologies. It keeps you on your toes,” he says.

Before founding Blue Harp in 2011, Visvanathan has already founded a telecom solutions company and decided to begin this one when he thought there was something more he could offer to the market. What helped was that he knew the rigours of starting up.

“The senior management here consists of people I have worked with for nearly three decades. So, we understand the needs and challenges of the market. But what we find tough is finding the right talent for what we offer and wish to offer, and

REVENUE GROWTH Rs 15 cr*

Rs 5 cr

2012-13 SOURCE: BLUE HARP TECHNOLOGIES

2013-14

P h o t o g r a p h b y D E LT R I M E D I A

Website: www.blueharptech.net retaining that talent,” he says.

The Bangalore-based company through its UC and collaboration services is expecting to record Rs 15 crore in FY 2013-14. That is a whopping 200 percent increase from the Rs 5 crore it recorded in FY 201213. Visvanathan attributes it to the value addition that the team offers in all solutions. “We have created a team that can add value and has in-depth knowledge. We also have a vast network with a presence in over six major cities,” he says.

Blue Harp sees great potential in the cloud and BYOD and believes that it will open up more avenue for growth in the future. “When we started, we thought that there was a dearth of SIs in the mid-market who can offer great solutions. We want to fill that gap.”

The company has achieved their startling numbers in a short span with only 35 percent of employees that it originally planning to recruit. “As we acquire the right talent, we should be able to double our numbers. For now, we want to consolidate our processes,” says Visvanathan.  —Shreehari Paliath

*Expected

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VISHAL BINDRA, CEO, ACPL Systems, has ensured a robust setup in Toronto by facilitating a cross-cultural mix of people, processes, and experiences to script its first success on foreign turf.

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P H O T O G R A P H B Y S U M E E T S AW H N E Y

n COVER STORY

FlyOut As the IT world continues to open up, enterprise partners in India look to expand— across countries and continents.

By Shreehari Paliath

W

HEN Columbus set sail in search of a new route to India many moons ago, he never could have fathomed the enormity of his journey. Though he never made it to India, his was a journey of remarkable possibilities.

As was with him centuries ago, partner organizations in India have set sail to explore new lands to seek newer possibilities. And these are not big tier-1 partners that are omnipresent in the overseas markets. Vishal Bindra of ACPL Systems leveraged his experience in the security domain in Canada, while Prashanth S. of Quadra Systems utilized the inherent advantages of the robust business framework of the North

American market. Sanjiv Khushu of New Delhi-based Emicro Data Technologies ingrained his company’s skillset in a logistically tough market like Africa, and Biswas Nair of Pune-based Aashna Cloudtech has plenty of business from the US and Dubai.

These enterprising partners have steered the course of their business to a new dawn along with their well-established setups in India. When geographical expansion becomes an obvious choice, the opportunities—technological, revenue, and internal—open a portal vast in expanse for the channels.

Read the fascinating journeys of these partner organizations that seized the right moment to fly out.

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n COVER STORY

Seeking

Limitless Opportunities

ACPL Systems has found a big market for its security services in Canada.

It has found favor with customers quickly, and even acquired a company.

VISHAL BINDRA, CEO, ACPL Systems

V

ISHAL BINDRA was sipping freshly brewed coffee in his hotel room in Toronto while he prepared for a meeting with a client. As he paused to make a note, his mobile rang. The 45-year-old CEO of New-Delhi based ACPL Systems was expecting the call from the client, but not the request they made. The client wanted a postponement of the meeting in light of the revelations made by 28

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

the local weather bureau. “It had predicted snowfall by noon and the client was adamant on following the advice to stay indoors. I had my doubts about the prediction coming true, especially with little evidence of it outside and also because back home in India, we never bothered about the weather,” states Bindra. But when locals trust their weathermen, there is little else that can be done. “I agreed to the client’s request

and decided to linger on at the hotel.

Sometime past noon, lo and behold, it was snowing. It was an important lesson for a company looking to establish itself in a foreign location: Heed and acclimatize to the local culture if you want to be successful.” “Another one,” he chuckles, “closely monitor the weather channel.”

This was 2011.

Over the last couple of years Bindra’s company has done well here. His

24-year-old security services focused company clocked about Rs 47 crore last fiscal, of which, he estimates, nearly 10-15 percent came from its overseas operations. “Security is a colossal market outside India, especially the Northern Hemisphere which is highly compliance driven. A project we implemented for a global telecom company’s offices abroad gave us the confidence that the work we do here was at par with international standards. This prompted the move to expand internationally,” he says.

TAKING FLIGHT While most solution providers move to locations like Singapore and the MiddleEast which are closer home, ACPL saw merit in the North American market, more specifically, Canada. “This is a strong market which is uncrowded and its proximity to the US is an additional advantage,” says Bindra.

For any company, starting operations is tough but doing so in another country is a whole new learning. While Bindra was confident of matching up to the technical aspects, it was the new culture and the professional approach that required tweaking. “There is the obvious cultural difference, but workwise, the clients expect all the paper and documentation to be proper even before the project can get to an intermediate stage.

Even POCs can be classified as relatively large projects there,” says Bindra.

ACPL had to learn to keep pace with

ACPL Systems Passenger Name Vishal Bindra

Departure Date June 2011

From New Delhi DLP,SIEM ,Database Security To Canada Overseas Rev# 15% ACPL Systems specializes in information security services and availability solutions. www.acpl.com

and you are good to go as long as you keep up the good work,” says Bindra.

CONSOLIDATION The experience ACPL gained through its security related implementations in India has been a pillar of strength.

“Often, the competing solution provider in Canada is strong at a domain or two.

But we have been able to offer multiple domain competency, which isn’t to be found here. This helps the customers reduce cost and improve efficiency. Additionally we always insist on a small pilot. This helps in letting them know that we are in no hurry to do business unless they are convinced about our capabilities,” says Bindra.

Its core technical team that helps leverage ACPL’s experience and expertise

For ACPL, the move has helped etch itself on a global scale. The customers in India and outside tend to show more confidence when they realize our capabilities to execute internationally. Additionally, vendors only play a small part in their operations here. “Vendor involvement is very different there in Canada. They are more deeply entrenched with customers. The recommendation has to come from customers. But as far as we are concerned, we want to focus on people, process, and technology,” he says.

Although expanding overseas comes with economic and financial implications, Bindra isn’t too worried about it. “Indian companies are far more resilient and hardy. Often, companies there shut shop quickly if

You don’t have to feel obliged to the customer every time. You need to work hard once to prove yourself there [North America] and you are good to go, as long as you keep up the good work. the local processes. It was a different cycle from what was followed in India.

“You can’t just walk in and initiate a process. You have to engage them in trade forums, magazines, etcetera, to gain their confidence,” he says. Although, initially, the results were slow things picked pace as they gained acceptance. “You don’t have to feel obliged to the customer every time. You need to work hard once to prove yourself there

is based out of India. But ACPL follows a hybrid model by locally recruiting project managers and employees for certain other specific roles. The SI has also acquired a company in Toronto to help better what it already offers. “We were looking to partner with this company.

During discussions we realized that they we looking at investments, and it seemed to be good fit. So we acquired it last November,” says Bindra.

things don’t do well. Our Indian attitude of fighting it out and bouncing back has served us well,” he says.

Bindra has decided to consolidate growth here and not be pompous by trying to overachieve. “With the acquisition coming through and the market improving I think there are plenty of opportunities here,” he says.

As for how far it can build on, sky is the limit; weather willing of course.  MARCH 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

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n COVER STORY

T

BISWAS NAIR MD, Aashna Cloudtech

P H OTO BY FOTO C O R P

HE CLOUD business

Advancing

with the Cloud

Aashna Cloudtech’s aspirations to be a cloud aggregator in the global markets is coming true—and fast.

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has made the world of IT a lot smaller in many ways. Ask Biswas Nair, MD of Aashna Cloudtech, and he would concur. For this Pune-based cloud aggregator the opportunity to look for growth possibilities outside the country appeared in 2012. Of course being a cloud aggregator has come with the baggage of ensuring that Aashna’s customers are well versed and aware of the cloud’s benefits. But that is an aspect Aashna is more than happy to resolve considering the ever burgeoning interest in the cloud.

“The North America and SouthEast Asia markets are comparatively mature and we had to make a mark in those growing markets whereas in Middle East we wanted to be a pioneer and establish our credentials.

We decided to expand when we saw that we had done enough and the growing opportunities excited us,” he says. Aashna has operations in Dubai (UAE) and North Carolina (US).

The partner organization has evolved its business strategy over time. Today the company is perceived globally in a different light due to the subtle tweaking it made to its approach on foreign shores during the early phases. “We used to manage projects from India where most of the business requirement study was gathered onsite and rest of delivery was handled by the team through a 100 percent offshore model. Also, we did not have in-country sales people to handle the inquiry and used to manage the same remotely from India,” says Nair. This prevented some of Aashna’s clients from committing to engage as they found the organization not committed to the market. “They feared that we could be a fly-by-night operation, “he recalls.

Nair decided to put in all the experiences gained from its India operations for the geographical expansion. “We did not change any of our key processes though we fine-tuned some of them to specific geographies, like in the Middle East, where organizations still prefer to see their implementation partner in person,” he says. This even when the

We did not change any of our key processes though we fine-tuned some of them to specific geographies, like in the Middle East where organizations still prefer to see their implementation partner in person. executed by our team. In the Middle East, the market is still nascent in terms of cloud adoption and hence we spend a lot of time educating the clients on the cloud’s benefit. Here the approach is more consultative,” says Nair.

Its experience of more than a decade in India is the backbone of Aashna’s success outside of the country.

A project implemented for a leading Global CPG company in India helped Aashna to win similar deals with larger enterprises globally. “The leading Global CPG company was so happy with our success that it decided to launch the same in Latin America and Asia markets too, which we are currently executing,” he says.

cloud does not require people onsite.

“But it is a comfort factor,” he says.

Currently 25 percent of Aashna’s overall revenues emerge from international operations. We expect this growth to double to around 50 percent in FY 2014-15.

GAINING ACCEPTANCE When Aashna began operations in India more than a decade ago, the world was only faintly acquainted with the cloud. “It was difficult initially considering the adoption rate varies in different regions,” Nair says. But as it has expanded globally its role hasn’t changed much though the focus is now on growing both domestic and international business. “We don’t want to miss any growth opportunities in the cloud arena.”

Aashna has tackled each market to its merit. The competition, Nair believes, is different in different geographies. This has urged the company to implement appropriate measures depending on local factors. “As a new player in North America we focus on creating a comfort zone for our clients based on the experience we gained in India and the projects

THINKING BIG The company’s brand recall and image has improved tremendously, both, in the domestic as well as international market. This has helped in the North American market because companies here value the fact that Aashna has operations in other regions as well. This has allowed it to provide customers a hybrid model of delivery compared to the 100 percent offshore model that

Aashna Cloudtech Passenger Name Biswas Nair From Pune

Departure Date Jan 2013

DLP,SIEM ,Database Security

To US, UAE, Singapore Overseas Rev# 25% Aashna Cloudtech offers niche cloud-based services. www. aashnacloudtech.com

existed. “Clients are more comfortable dealing with an entity that has local presence but also one that has the financial muscle to expand geographically—a sign of a growing enterprise company. Many clients want to engage with a global company instead of a local one which helps increase the quality of services delivered,” says Nair.

But, while Aashna’s growth is upwardly mobile, there are few risks that are inherent in every business.

“Our experiences taught us that having different operations for different regions increases focus, work on specific budget, and tailor the expectations based on client needs,” he says.

“There is a risk that a turmoil in a specific country may impact the business. Also, there could be a financial turbulence in the market. I would say that the opportunities weigh out favorably, especially for an SI like us. Hence, I strongly recommend all SIs/partners, that can, to expand,” says Nair.

The success for Aashna Cloudtech has not come easy as the company had to make adjustments in change management, process refinement, cultural adjustments which includes time zone management. “For one, we have to keep our offices open on Sundays too to service the MiddleEast. Therefore we need to help our employees make the adjustment to deliver to expectations that change according to the geographies we service,” he says.

Aashna is still in looking to expand to more regions, especially new markets in Europe and Africa in the next three years. “Presently, we want to consolidate the activities in the geographies we operate in,” says Nair.

With the cloud becoming ubiquitous, Aashna’s objective to reach the 60 percent revenue mark from the international market looks inevitable.  MARCH 2014

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n COVER STORY

SANJIV KHUSHU, DIrector, Emicro Data Technologies

Tryst With

a Big Continent

Emicro Data Technologies’s business in Africa and SAARC is growing at a quick pace owing to its skills-based approach.

A

FRICA HAS always been a fa-

voured destination for many Indian companies. This has been true through the ages.

For Sanjiv Khushu, director, Emicro Data technologies, the need to service customers in Africa became apparent when his enterprise customers in India started expanding their business to these locations. “Some of customers, mainly VAS providers, that were based out of India have been doing well internationally, especially in Af32

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rica. We have customers in SAARC region too, but not in as many locations as in Africa,” he says.

The countries in Africa have had a tumultuous past and continue to fight political and economic instability. But that has not stopped companies from offering better infrastructural support for the continent’s vast population.

“There isn’t much local competition here. Whatever there is exists because of other Indian companies,” he says.

“But things are not easy. One of our

biggest challenge is to sort out the logistics, especially in remote locations.”

Emicro Data Technologies was founded five years ago when unified storage and virtualization were witnessing growth. The domain was new and providers were few hence we developed our niche around it, he says.

BREAKING BARRIERS Emicro does not, presently, have a significant amount of its revenue from the overseas market, but Khushu says, getting support from vendor companies is tough in some locations. “It is tad difficult to manage cross geography shipment. Not all OEMs are comfortable with it. We need to have in-depth discussions and need to understand how revenue is shared across geographies.

There cannot be a conflict between the revenue sharing models between the geographies.”

There was an issue with one of the storage vendors in Africa in 2012, recalls Khushu. “This geography was

Emicro Data Technologies Passenger Name Sanjiv Khushu

Departure Date Jan 2012

From New Delhi DLP,SIEM ,Database Security To Africa Overseas Rev# 15% Emicro Data Technologies specializes in unified storage and virtualization www.emicrotechnologies.com

not covered from a support perspective. We had to leverage another OEM who sells this particular product under its own brand and involve a local SI for services while we did the integration. We had to talk to different geographies as one OEM had offices in Africa, while the other OEM’s transaction were done through France (their base) for EMEA market. This shows how complex the logistics is.”

The relationship with OEMs has to be built by working closely the local account manager. “We involve the senior management, sometimes at the country level to avoid complications because there is a possibility of losing accounts if we are not careful. Hence we are conscious about choosing only those OEMs who we can give us the

to be understood in detail, so should the local labour laws and work permits,” he says.

SURMOUNTING CHALLENGES But these teething issues have not deterred Khushu and his team from going headlong into the Africa market. One advantage he believes is that they have a major office in Jebel Ali. “This facilitates a cross-cultural experience and ensures that its employees working here are acquainted with the market to some degree. We also leverage it for billing requirements,” he says.

The systems integrator company does not generally utilize the local workforce much. “We work remotely from India. If at all, we use the local workforce for rack stacking, other-

issue,” says Khushu.

This attitude has opened doors for Emicro in a tough market like Africa.

The solution provider has been able to talk to new enterprise customers and has certainly stepped up its game. “We have strong SI skills and understand technologies across different domains. We also offer multidimensional support capabilities when many local players are unable to do so,” he says.

Khushu accepts that although the company does not have a programmatic approach to training employees about the new markets in Africa and SAARC presently, the company would look into it as it grows. “At present, the opportunities are beginning to surface for us. It forms only 10 percent of our revenues. When the overseas revenues touch around 30 to 40 percent, we would need to expand and modify our approach,” he says.

Emicro does not have a segmented budget for its overseas operations, but with the growth opportunities and the customer requirement, scaling operations will become inevitable. “Some fine tuning is required. We would like to think that what we have acquired is just a stepping stone,” he says.

Outside of its current operations in couple of countries in SAARC , Emicro is open to explore the markets in South America provided potential opportunities come along its way. The

We are conscious about choosing only those OEMs who we can give us the assurance of working across geographies to avoid a situation wherein the local person does not allow warranty. assurance of working across geographies to avoid a situation wherein the local person does not allow warranty,” says Khushu.

The other challenging part about working in these regions, according to Khushu, is ensuring that the company does not break the local laws inadvertently. “We have to be aware of the legal requirements before we proceed.

At least the supply chain details have

wise the market dynamics are the same as exists here.” But there have been occasions where it has had to step up to help provide solutions for customers. “A customer in the VAS space, for whom we had supplied material, was facing a persistent problem. The issue could not be resolved locally due to lack of trained personal. Although our relation was only storage related, we managed to fix the

global expansion has refreshed its global outlook and allowed to utilize its skillset to be tested in foreign shores.

Often during its operations, Emicro has had to be content with imperfect scenarios which are far from the comforts of its operations in India.

But these are just temporary. The company expects to hit a rich vein of form in the future as it inches its way forward.  MARCH 2014

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n COVER STORY

PARSHANTH S., Executive Director, Quadra Systems

Moving On the Fast Lane

Quadra Systems has leveraged a partnership and its vast experience in integration to gain momentum in new regions.

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Photograph by R. CHANDROO

P

RASHANTH S., executive

director of Quadra Systems likens the overseas market to a river. It, he says, can be in spate or could be in the throes of a lean season, but there is always a pale of water to be had. “There are always opportunities,” he says. He concedes that his company may not be among the top tier-2 partners in the country, but that has not stopped the company from looking at opportunities in the US and Europe. “In spite of not having the scale of larger IT services providers, we have been able to serve customers overseas, aided by our strategic business partners and niche, high-end technical skills,” he says.

Coimbatore-based SI’s foray into the US was a result of a partnership with a US-based company. This model, where the revenue sharing is almost 50 percent between the two companies, has strengthened the company’ framework. “Expansion offers an opportunity for better growth.

By partnering with a local entity, it helped us leverage their ability to open doors to new deals and contacts locally. They focus on front-end and sales and we focus on the delivery,” says Prashanth.

With long-term experience in cloud computing, enterprise software solutions, business productivity in India, Quadra Systems saw this overseas move as an obvious choice. “We performed consistently well for successive years as a Microsoft partner on the strengths of our technical skills and ability to deliver successful projects for customers. This boosted our confidence and motivated our team’s ability to deliver in foreign land too,” he says.

According to him, the cost of sales operations is expensive in the US and Europe, but the revenue for such efforts is higher. “The solutions and services we provide there also do not necessarily need our team to be physically present at the location.”

THE SYMBIOSIS The partnership struck in 2006 has allowed the local entity to record incremental growth while allowing Quadra to focus on what it does best.

“The biggest barrier is sales presence

and an ability to influence a deal. If that is taken care then things work out fine. Through this model we are able to keep our delivery team occupied and well-utilized.” But the company is not removed from the engagement process entirely. It does not want its partners to be burdened to see the deal through by themselves. “We are always involved in presales which is vital for quality delivery,” says Prashanth.

Quadra’s experience at being able to deliver quality has ensured that in terms of technology the company is never found wanting. “Probably the customer relationship and sales process is different, but technology from delivery perspective remains the same. But we have to be aware of the cultural differences. For instance, in India, companies accomplish documentation in an ad hoc manner at times. In the Western markets they want a precise process, and there is no compromise on that,” he says.

To ensure that the needs of their customers in the overseas markets are up to the stipulated standards are not compromised, Quadra underscores the requirement to respond and match up appropriately. The employees going into a project in any of foreign locations are sensitized about the cultural and attitudinal adjustments. “Although the internal process is not very intensive like at a big SI company, there is sensitization and

Quadra Systems Passenger Name Prashanth S.

Departure Date Aug 2005

From CoimbatoreDLP,SIEM ,Database Security To US, Europe Overseas Rev# Undisclosed Quadra Systems is a niche player in cloud, collaboration, and DR www.quadrasystems.net in a foreign market. This is an aspect that is time tested, and one that has it has extracted from its implementation in India. “We up the ante by bringing a breadth of skills that we have acquired through all our implementations in India. Due to our substantial experience in India we are able to deliver as promised,” he says.

But this does not mean that the company has never had to make changes in approach. While it trains greenhorns and sensitizes them to a new market, it has learned to accept the inherent contrasts in its experience working in India and abroad. “Ours [India] is a relationship-driven market. Often the customer might ask us to do that bit extra even if it was not a part of

on the lookout for new customers, Prashanth underscores his company’s principle of not losing an existing customer. “We work with select customers as it is easier to get more business from the same customers that helps strengthen our business.”

The SI company reinvests the profit garnered from its overseas business back into the overall business. This not only helps Quadra consolidate its standings, but also builds contingencies for an economic slowdown. “We do not splurge. Our model is such that does not matter where the customer comes from, as long as we can deliver to their expectation, we are on the right path,” says Prashanth.

For now, Quadra Systems is happy

By partnering with a local entity, it helped us leverage their ability to open doors to new deals and contacts locally. They focus on front-end and sales and we focus on the delivery. hand-holding by mentors who have enough experience of the market requirements,” he says.

GAINING GROUND As Quadra is never detached from any of its foreign project—from presales to delivery—it knows exactly what accomplishing a project successfully entails. This helps stay updated on customer expectation and competition

the contract. At the same time we could also ask for some leeway. This evidently works both ways. But, in Europe and the US, the contact is all-encompassing and has to be abided by,” he says. “This is a cultural adjustment that all companies who work overseas have to make.”

Another aspect is that Quadra is essentially conservative in their approach. Although it is always

about where it is positioned in India and overseas market. The company is keeping a vigil eye for new opportunities into other geographies too, but not at an aggressive manner.

“We look to acquire more customers in the markets where we operate in.

Geographical expansion is not on the cards for now,” says Prashanth. But a change of mind could be just an opportunity away.  MARCH 2014

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data, house it, and catalog it, says Farrell. Indiscriminately collecting large masses of data can divert those resources from more worthy projects.

Farrell recommends that companies have a clear idea of the specific metric or key performance indicator that they’re looking for before they start collecting data.

“You want to get to the point where you have a handful of nuggets of wisdom that are valuable to you,” he says. “The data by itself, sitting there, is not enough.”

There is a lot being said and made about big data. But how much of it is true? By Maria Korolov

B

IG DATA, which we’re defin-

ing as data collected in large volumes, at high velocity and in a variety of formats, isn’t a cure-all for every problem. In fact, if companies that believe in some of the myths surrounding big data, could head off in the wrong direction, waste a lot of time and money, cost a company its competitive position in the market, or damage a company’s reputation.

Here are some of the biggest myths surrounding big data.

MYTH 1: Only data scientists can deal with big data In fact, data scientists by themselves are not enough.

“Data scientists by themselves aren’t going to be able to pull off getting the information out of big data if you don’t know what you’re looking for in the first place,” says Pat Farrell, senior director of data analytics 36

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at Penn Medicine. “You need people who are familiar with the industry, the domain of knowledge, understand what kind of questions are out there, what insight would be valuable to your particular industry.”

Penn Medicine, for example, includes both a health system and a school of medicine. For a long time, the health system has been collecting clinical data in a data warehouse. Meanwhile, in the school of medicine, new technology is allowing for the sequencing of human genomes, which entails a huge amount of data. “We know there’s value in there somewhere, and we finally have the computing power to access it,” says Farrell. Combining data analytics with expertise in medicine opens up a brand new field of predictive healthcare. .

MYTH 2: The bigger the data, the bigger the value It takes time and resources to collect

MYTH 3: Big data is for big companies Large companies may have more internal sources of data, but even small firms can take advantage of data coming in from social media platforms, government agencies, and data vendors.

“Regardless of the size of your organization, it’s better to make decisions based on data than to simply rely on intuition or gut feelings,” says Darin Bartik, executive director of product management for Dell Software’s Information Management Solutions.

Smaller companies may make datadriven decisions less often than their bigger counterparts, he says, but, when they do, they can make course corrections faster.

“Smaller companies can use best practices to be more data-driven and actually outpace or outmaneuver bigger, slower competitors,” he says.

MYTH 4: Collect it now, sort it out later Storage is getting cheaper all the time, but it’s not free. However, for many companies, the appetite for data is expanding faster than storage costs are decreasing, says Brad Peters, CEO of San Francisco-based Birst, a cloudbased business intelligence vendor.

Companies think that if they just collect the data, they’ll figure out what to do with it later, he says. “I see a number of large corporations collecting boatloads of stuff, their expense on it goes up, and they don’t get any value out of it.”

In fact, with some data sets, the law of diminishing returns starts to apply.

Say, for example, you’re polling people to predict an election. You need a

BIG DATA | FEATURE n certain number of people to get a representative sample. But after a point, adding more people won’t significantly affect the margin of error.

“Do you store a bunch of data you may need, that might give you a couple more digits of precision?” he asks.

“Or do you buy more people power?

Do you secure your networks better?

We’re not going too fast as an economy, and budgets aren’t increasing.”

And it’s not just storage costs, says Dean Gonsowski, global head of information governance and big data management at San Francisco-based Recommind, which specializes in unstructured data analytics.

For example, it may cost the company if the data gets out, he says. And having data sitting around in warehouses means that it’s subject to ediscovery arising from court cases.

Finally, the more data, the longer it takes to sort through it. “When the repositories get into the billions of records, searches take hours or weeks,” he says. “The volume of information really start clogging systems that were never built to handle those volumes.”

MYTH 5: All data is created equal The state of Virginia has been collecting data on student enrollments, financial aid, and degree awards for the past 20 years. But that doesn’t mean that the data collected 20 years ago and stored in the same data field is necessarily the same data.

“The biggest problem I deal with, is that just because it’s in the data dictionary, researchers think it’s fair game,” says Tod Massa, the policy research and data warehousing director for Virginia’s State Council of Higher Education. “For example, data on student test scores on the ACT and SAT were initially only collected on in-state students, then there was a gap, then it was collected on both in-state and outof-state students.” Similarly, race and ethnicity is tracked differently at the K-12 level and in higher education.

In fact, any particular data point might be reported differently by different institutions, or at different points in time, or by different people at those institutions. “If you’re in an isolated shop or enterprise that is solely responsible for the data it collects, then you might

Ignoring Big Data is ‘Risky’: ISACA

E

NTERPRISES that avoid using big data analytics techniques because of possible dangers, such as security and privacy breaches, may be creating risk of another type, according to a new ISACA report.

“There are risks inherent in implementing big data, such as ensuring privacy laws are not breached. But the risk of inaction may be far greater, with a company being left behind as its competitors embrace the technique to leap ahead,” says Norman Marks, a member of ISACA’s Emerging Business and Technology Committee, which developed the report.

The report, Generating Value from Big Data Analytics, calls on information technology professionals to look at big data holistically and consider the cost of inaction.

Understanding the business case is just as important as understanding the technology and compliance risk, the report states.

Enterprises need to understand the business rationale for adoption, the anticipated return on investment and the impact if the enterprise chooses not to adopt while its competitors do.

The report lists at least three challenges that may hinder the ability to realise gains

have a different situation,” he says. “But then even, I suspect that the meanings of data change over time.”

As a result, analysts need to have not just statistical skills, but also local knowledge of the data and knowledge of trends in the industry as a whole, such as SAT and ACT scores being recalibrated. “You can’t program all those things into a data repository,” he says.

The same applies to external data sources, he adds. “Data collections at the federal level have changed dramatically over the past 50 years,” he says. “Understanding the culture and context of data collection is really a necessity for using the data well.”

MYTH 6: The more specific the prediction, the better It’s human nature to think that something that is more specific is more accurate. That `3:12 p.m.’ is more accurate than `sometime in the afternoon.’

That the metereologist who predicts

from big data projects: Skills gap, internal silos, and ‘shadow IT’.

Most enterprises do not currently have specialised analytics skills in-house, and these personnel are expected to continue to be hard to find and expensive to maintain in the short-to-intermediate term.

Another challenge is enterprise silos, especially in organisations with a history of competitiveness, antagonism or resistance to outside influence, which will make them less willing to share information or act on information they receive.

The rise of ‘shadow’ or ‘roque’ IT—technology adopted without the IT department’s approval or awareness—may result in large volumes of hidden data that get missed by big data projects planned centrally.

“Before enterprises go ahead with any significant investments in big data analytics, they need to take a candid and realistic assessment of organisational culture and structure. If knowledge is power, then big data can equal big power,” says Robert Stroud, a member of ISACA’s Professional Influence and Advisory Committee and vice president of strategy, innovation and service management, CA Technologies.

—Divina Paredes that it will definitely rain on Sunday morning is more accurate than the one who predicts a “fifty percent chance of showers this weekend.”In fact, the opposite is true. In many situations, the more exact prediction is less likely to be accurate.Say, for example, a customer buys a very specific laptop, in a very particular configuration. And the only other customer to have bought that same product in the past also bought a pair of hot pink stilettos.

“A recommendation for hot pink stilettos may be very specific, but may be too specific – and have a high margin of error,” says Jerry Jao, CEO of Retention Science, a marketing firm in Santa Monica, Calif.

“This is actually something we see pretty commonly among business and marketing managers,” he says.

MYTH 7: Big data equals Hadoop Hadoop, a popular open-source database for unstructured data, has been MARCH 2014

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n FEATURE | BIG DATA getting a lot of attention lately.

But there are other options.

“There is a whole NoSQL movement,” says Irfan Khan, general manager and senior vice president at SAP Big data. “There is MongoDB, Cassandra—a whole rack of other technologies.” Some of those technologies may be a better fit for a particular Big data project than others.

In particular, Hadoop works by dividing data into chunks, and working on multiple chunks simultaneously.

This approach works on many Big data problems, but not all of them.

“While YARN and Hadoop 2 address some of this, sometimes you need to deal with things in ways that Hadoop isn’t ideal for,” says Grant Ingersoll, CTO at Redwood City-based LucidWorks, a Big data consulting firm. “People need to keep a level head and decide what is best for them, not just what is the shiny object that all the cool kids are using.”

Take, for example, all the data generated by the devices in an intensive care unit. Heart rates, respiration data, EKG readings. Too often, though, the doctors and nurses can only see a patient’s current readings. “I can’t look and see what it was 10 minutes ago, or draw a tend line for what it’s going to be an hour from now,” says Anthony Jones, chief marketing officer of Philips Healthcare’s Patient Care & Clinical Informatics.

But being able to see the historical data for a patient can be very valuable for a medical practitioner making a decision. “The guys sticking with a core data science team, they’re missing a big opportunity,” says Jones. The problem today is getting all the different devices that generate data to talk to each other even though they weren’t designed to do that, and use different platforms, operating systems and programming languages. And then once you do, to get the data in a useful form to doctors and nurses right when they need it.

MYTH 8: End users don’t need direct access to Big data With Big data moving in at a high speed, from a wide variety of sources, and in large volumes, it might seem that it is just too complicated for regular employees to deal with.

But that’s not necessarily the case.

MYTH 9: Big data is for big problems The CIO of a major bank recently gave a talk about Big data, and was asked about end user self-service. “And the CIO says, ‘I don’t believe in that,’” recalls Peters, CEO of Birst.

That’s a common attitude, he says, with some executives thinking that

Big Data Skills Pay Top Dollar

T

ECH salaries saw a nearly 3 percent bump last year, and IT pros with expertise in big data-related languages, databases and skills enjoyed some of the largest paychecks.

Average US tech salaries climbed to $87,811 in 2013, up from $85,619 the previous year, according to Dice’s newly released 2013-14 Salary Survey. Significantly, nine of the top 10 highest paying IT salaries are for skills related to big data, says the tech career site.

“Companies are betting big that harnessing data can play a major role in their competitive plans, and that is leading to high pay for critical skills,” said Shravan Goli, president of Dice, in a statement. “Technology professionals should be volunteering for big data projects, which makes them more valuable to their current employer and more marketable to other employers.”

Among all respondents, 34 percent of tech pros received a bonus as part of their 2013 compensation, and average bonuses totaled $9,323.

Silicon Valley tops the list of highest paid metropolitan areas when it comes to tech talent, with an average annual salary of $108,603 and an average annual bonus of $12,458.

When asked if they are satisfied with their salaries, respondents were divided. Nearly half were either very satisfied (17 percent ) or somewhat satisfied (37 percent ). Some were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (16 percent ). At the other extreme, respondents were somewhat dissatisfied (20 percent ) and very dissatisfied (10 percent ). A majority of IT pros (65 percent ) told Dice they’re confident they could find a new, better position.

—Ann Bednarz 38

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Big data only answers certain types of questions. The attitude can be summed up this way: “The goal of Big data for us is to solve very few, very high-value problems with a core set of data scientists. We don’t want data chaos where normal people have access to this information, because I don’t think they need it.”

Peters disagrees with this approach, but says it’s common in many industries. “It’s a rampant myth inside large insurance companies that business users aren’t smart enough to handle it.”

MYTH 10: The Big data bubble will eventually burst Hype cycles may come and go, but transformative technological changes stick around. The dot-com crash did not signal the end of the Internet.

Even when the hype dies down, companies will still have Big data to deal with. In fact, they will have more Big data to deal with than they ever expected, due to exponential growth – IDC projects that total amount of data collected will double every two years through 2020. And it’s not just that companies are simply collecting more of the stuff that they currently collect.

Instead, new types of data are likely to appear, requiring massive amounts of storage.

“We will get to the point where everyone who gets admitted to a hospital, the hospital maps their genome,” says Anthony Jones, chief marketing officer of Philips Healthcare’s Patient Care & Clinical Informatics. “This allows treatment to be customized to the patient. And when you talk about Big data, that’s a massive amount of data. I don’t think a lot of CIOs really appreciate how much harder things are going to get.” By thinking of “Big data” as just a phase, companies can miss opportunities to capture data elements that could have an impact on their business down the line, says Bryan Hill, CTO of Cadient Group, an interactive marketing agency in King of Prussia, Pa. “The term ‘Big data’ is likely to change, just like cloud computing came up, which is no different than the Web was, or the Internet,” he says.

“The term may change, but the spirit of Big data is here to stay.” 

Focal Point EVERYTHING ABOUT CLOUD COMPUTING

Hang in the Balance With big shifts in the IT landscape, which vendor is ready to embrace change?

By Bob Violino

T

HE MAJOR

technology shifts under way—the move to cloudbased services and reduced importance of the datacenter, the growth of mobile devices and apps and related decline in use of traditional PCs, and the greater emphasis on big

data/analytics rather than traditional analytics—are having a huge impact on corporate IT. But what do these shifts mean for key vendors in the industry? Which are most likely to adapt to the changes and even thrive in the rapidly emerging services-based, mobile-

Intel Invests In Cloud Providers

T

HE venture capital arm of Intel has invested in three Chinese cloud providers to take advantage of the country’s booming market for the services, and is also looking at backing local firms involved in creating wearable devices.

Intel Capital said it is investing an undisclosed amount in Shanghai Yeapoo Information Technology, Tianjin Zhongke BlueWhale Information Technology and Wuxi China Cloud Technoogy Service.

The chip maker is making the investment as its server business in China has witnessed double-digit growth over the last five years in the country. Cloud computing services have helped fuel the demand, as the nation’s companies and municipal governments move toward building services around the Internet and mobile devices.

“The age of cloud computing has come,” said Xu Shengyuan, general manager of Intel Capital China, on Tuesday. “We all know that cloud computing is a major opportunity,” he added.

Yeapoo, one of the companies Intel has invested in, is helping Chinese businesses build websites specifically for mobile devices. In addition, Yeapoo offers ways for companies to market their online services, and analyze incoming customer data.

BlueWhale provides network storage products, while Wuxi China Cloud is a major cloud infrastructure provider, operating its servers in data centers across the nation.

Outside of cloud computing, Intel Capital is also focused on investing in China’s wearables industry. Any investment, however, would be geared more toward component makers, such as those that specialize in making sensors, Xu said.

“We won’t necessarily invest in a product a consumer ends up buying,” he added. “We are still a technology company, so we are more interested in the technology.”

—Michael Kan

crazed environment, and which are in danger of becoming irrelevant? In other words, who can you continue to rely on?

For both IT and business executives, knowing which vendors seem to be moving in the right direction is a key factor in decision making, especially considering that these industry megatrends are now fully taking hold.

It’s always risky to predict what the future will bring when it comes to assessing companies. The landscape can change in a hurry, particularly in an industry essentially defined by rapid change. But industry experts can look at what the vendors have done so far to come up with a reasonable expectation of where they’re going.

Research firm Gartner has predicted that the “nexus of forces”— including cloud, mobile, and social—will reach mainstream status in 2014 and create new technology requirements, drive new purchasing and establish new competitive realities.

IDC has a similar view it calls the 3rd Wave. Gartner says these forces will drive more than 26 percent of total enterprise software market revenue by 2017, up from 12 percent in 2012.

The shift in technologies and business focus powering this predicted growth will play out largely in four areas: services, cloud, mobile, and big data analytics. This report assesses how the key enterprise vendors are adapting—or not—to the

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n FOCAL POINT | CLOUD COMPUTING changing face of business technology.

SERVICES GENERATION It’s clearly the era of cloud computing and everything as a service, and vendors built for that model or with the ability to adapt will lead the way.

As the market moves to greater consumption of services, companies that can help reduce the friction for their customers are more likely to do well, says Eric Hanselman, chief analyst at 451 Research. “The rewards will only go to those that understand how to make this service model work for their customers,” Hanselman says.

With many enterprises looking to move from huge datacenters to software as a service and the cloud, vendors that focus their business around services have the best chance of winning, says Greg Meyers, vice president of global IT at bioscience company Biogen Idec. “Google, Amazon. com, Salesforce.com, and IBM come to mind,” he says.

These companies already have businesses and profit centers “built around the concept of bundling hardware, software and services, which is what cloud is all about,” Meyers says.

“I think pure-play software and hardware companies like Oracle, SAP, and Dell might have a tougher time adjusting.”

Those latter companies have disincentives to let go of the older sales model of moving software or boxes of hardware, Meyers says.

He says a movement toward commoditized components in datacenters will drive the hardware market away from branded big-iron companies to cheaper components 40

EMC To Lean On VMware For Public Cloud

I

N lieu of launching its own public cloud lineup, storage giant EMC has decided to resell the cloud products of its VMware subsidiary.

Despite being one of the biggest enterprise IT companies, EMC has not been seen as a major player in the public cloud market. However, the company now plans to resell VMware’s private, public and hybrid cloud products in an effort to take on industry giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS). VMware’s cloud products will be EMC’s preferred sales option, although EMC will continue to sell other service provider options as well.

VMware is a publicly traded company and a subsidiary of

from Asian manufacturers.

As a result, margins will be squeezed for the pure-play hardware and software vendors, so they will need to rely on innovative leaps in technology to stay competitive.

Although it’s hard to pick winners in the cloud market, “I wouldn’t bet against Amazon or Google for anything,” Meyers says. Microsoft is an interesting hybrid, he says. While its bread and butter is still selling software, like the other old-line software companies, Microsoft has shown it’s embracing the cloud through offerings such as Office 365.

“Microsoft is somewhere caught in the middle,” Meyers says. “But it has a big legacy business in software and are sort of dabbling in the cloud. With the new CEO on board, the first order of business should be determining what kind of company it wants to be.”

Microsoft is working hard with the development com-

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

EMC since being acquired in 2003. VMware has made aggressive moves in the cloud computing market in the past year—most notably the fall launch of vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS), which is its public cloud computing platform that is meant to compete with AWS. On the private cloud side, VMware’s vCloud Suite uses vSphere virtualization software (based on the ESX hypervisor) and the vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) as the basis for on-premises private clouds.

As part of this new arrangement, VMware’s vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) will be EMC’s preferred partner for public cloud. EMC is also

munity to make the transition to the cloud as simple as possible for customers, 451’s Hanselman says. “It’s made some dramatic missteps, but look at what it’s been able to do” with the cloud, he says.

Oracle and other traditional enterprise software providers also have much work to do to make the transition to a service delivery model work well for their customers, and if they fail their customers are likely to abandon them for other service providers, Hanselman says.

One group of companies likely to thrive in the services environment is the large telecoms operators, principally AT&T and Verizon, says Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research.

“These companies are building a combination of cloud services, connectivity, application performance management, application mobilization, and other ca-

expected to deliver a storageas-a-service solution in vCHS, which would include backup, object, file, block, archive and database options. The move is meant to position EMC and VMware against AWS in an effort to counter the success Amazon has found in the public cloud market.

Stuart Miniman, a cloud industry watcher and analyst at Wikibon says EMC selling VMware’s products is like a parent selling their child’s Girl Scout cookies. “Of course EMC wants people to use VMware’s cloud services,” he says. EMC tries to keep sales in its family of businesses if possible, he says.

—Brandon Butler

pabilities, which are going to be very powerful going forward,” Dawson says.

“They have established relationships with many large enterprises and already provide ultrareliable infrastructure in the form of networks and to some extent hosting and data center services. As such, they’re well positioned to expand incrementally into cloud services.”

The datacenter is built for the cloud.

Amazon, on the other hand, is not changing its business model in any way to accommodate customers—because it doesn’t see a need to, Hanselman says.

“It’s a fairly unique case; there’s really only one Amazon in this space today,” he says. “If that service works for you, great.”

It’s not likely that most enterprises can move broadly to an Amazon cloud environment today, he says, but competitors and market

watchers count out Amazon at their peril. Google is hard at work trying to attract enterprise customers, but it’s too early to tell how successful the company will be. “As a cloud provider it’s done some good things as a first step, such as email,” Hanselman says. “But when you start looking at Google Docs and the Apps environment, companies still have a painful transition ahead in moving enterprise document workflow into Google.”

Others say Google, along with additional servicesfocused companies, are in good shape to succeed in enterprise IT. “I believe that Google, Salesforce, and Amazon are very likely to thrive due to their willingness to forge the future without the baggage of the past,” says Mike O’Dell, CIO of Pacific Coast Building Products. “Their forwardlooking strategy is consistent with the needs of their customers moreso than others’. Moreover, their products align themselves with the next generation of information worker.”

Another provider in the cloud market to keep an eye on is IBM. “I’ve always been impressed at its resources,” Hanselman says. But “will it dominate [the cloud or mobile] markets? No.” Traditional IT vendors such as IBM and HewlettPackard “have already made major investments in cloud to complement their data center offerings, and both realize the opportunity as well as the threat to traditional licensing models,” says Dave Bartoletti, a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

IT executives who’ve worked with IBM are also confident of the company’s

ability to adapt, but at the same time they’re keeping an eye on newer providers.

“IBM has proven time and time again that it will consistently deliver platform and services at strategic levels,” says Bill Thirsk, CIO at Marist College. “We also believe the Amazon model of fearlessly entering new markets is here to stay for some time.”

EMC VMware has its role and will remain a player in the distributed community, Thirsk says, “but with data sets getting larger, we are seeing a resurgence of big iron from IBM that can outpartition VMware virtual servers at scale and a lower cost. It is not yet a commodity, but it is moving that direction.”

Likewise, datacenter operations vendors such as CA and BMC are likely to face challenges from newer open source management tools popular in the cloud, as well as a new generation of developer-focused operations teams that have no experience with traditional infrastructure management suites, Bartoletti says.

Another longtime IT powerhouse, Dell, needs to find a way to monetize cloud. “Dell has chosen not to enter the public cloud market itself, in favor of working with partners and other cloud service enabling technologies,” Bartoletti says. “It will sell software to manage, integrate, and accelerate cloud, and likely build out a services business.”

That choice means Dell will not be directly in the public cloud market with a competitive offering and will instead compete with many other management software vendors for the cloud management dollar,

Bartoletti says. “Dell also sells hardware to cloud providers -- a sort of cloud arms dealer -- so it will benefit from cloud growth that way,” he says. “But [it runs] the risk of being behind the scenes and not seen by buyers as innovators themselves.”

IT’S MOBILE OR BUST Along with the move toward services-based IT is the rapid emergence of mobile technology as a key business resource, and this trend is having a huge impact on major players in the market.

Some see Microsoft as

and services, says Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research.

Apple is still seen by some as more of a consumer-driven company than a fully enterprise-focused provider in the mobility market. “Now and then it wanders into enterprise solutions,” Dulaney says. “But it’s very secretive, so you don’t always know what it’s going to do. What keeps it strong is its [large] ecosystem.”

Despite being best known for offering products popular with consumers, Apple “has succeeded in the enterprise largely without

It’s clearly the era of cloud computing and everything as a service, and vendors built for that model or with the ability to adapt will lead the way. being a key provider in enterprise mobility. “If you’re looking for stability, it has plenty of stability,” says Ken Dulaney, a vice president at Gartner. “Microsoft has lots of software ties into back-end systems for its Windows Phone and other devices,” and many companies today are looking to expand their investment in Microsoft technology rather than make big infrastructure swap-outs, he says.

That includes using Windows-based mobile devices and desktops that basically have the same user interface, Dulaney says. “It doesn’t matter how many apps are in the store if the enterprise is buying the device” to justify a Windows environment, he says.

Along with Microsoft, Google and Amazon will play increasingly important roles in the enterprise as they take a stronger focus on mobile applications

any huge effort on its part,” Jackdaw’s Dawson says.

That’s largely because of its popularity with users, who have brought the technology into the workplace, he says.

As a result, Apple now sells as many iOS units as Microsoft does Windows units, and Apple’s mobile devices have become the new corporate standard -displacing BlackBerry and being deployed instead of Windows Phone, Windows RT, and Windows 8, despite IT’s fondness for its traditional providers.

Furthermore, Apple has ramped up its sales efforts for the enterprise market, Dawson says, “but it doesn’t have broad ambitions beyond providing smartphones and tablets and some basic management in the enterprise,” he says. “It will leave the vast majority of the management and mobilization work that needs

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to be done to specialists and partners.”

Samsung is the major supplier of Android-based mobile devices, and for now is trying to assume the enterprise mantle as BlackBerry declines, but its long-term commitment as an enterprise provider must be proven, Dulaney says.

“Does it have a comprehensive program to stay in the enterprise?” he says. “I don’t see any Android player such as Google, [Google subsidiary] Motorola Mobility, or HTC that’s clearly long-term stable yet” as an enterprise mobile vendor, he says. BlackBerry for financial reasons and Nokia as part of Microsoft are also question marks, he says.

Large telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon are providing the connectivity and

ity management (EMM) space has so far been dominated by small niche players or startups. “In an immature market, the likes of Good Technology, [EMC VMware subsidiary] AirWatch, MobileIron, [Citrix Systems subsidiary] Zenprise, [IBM subsidiary] Fiberlink, and Soti have been able to take the lead in terms of features and innovation as they focused purely on the issue of how best to manage and secure data on mobile apps and devices,” says Richard Absalom, senior analyst for enterprise mobility at research firm Ovum.

Now, the market is maturing and some of the bigger IT vendors are taking an interest. “Many have bought directly into it to complement existing endpoint management offer-

bought Nukona and Odyssey Software.

IT’S GOING TO GET BIG IN BIG DATA The push to big data and analytics as key IT resources is also causing shifts in the technology market, providing opportunities for companies that have strengths in these areas.

“There is greater attention to big data analytics because of the growing spate of publicized success stories that have crossed over from Internet or classic financial services early adopters to more mainstream enterprises in consumer goods, digital media, and telecomm sectors,” says Tony Baer, a principal analyst at Ovum.

Microsoft has steadily demonstrated a focus on making its information management software richer,

While its bread and butter is still selling software, like the other old-line software companies, Microsoft has shown it’s embracing the cloud through offerings such as Office 365. With the new CEO on board, the first order of business should be determining what kind of company it wants to be. devices for enterprises’ mobile fleets, and as such are in a good spot to help them with mobilizing applications, managing devices, and generally enabling the mobile enterprise, Dawson says.

The telcos “are never going to be as good at core IT as IBM, as cheap for cloud storage as Amazon, or as nimble as Google or Salesforce.com, but they bring a combination of capabilities, an enterprise-grade approach, and an ability to integrate that I believe makes them strong candidates to succeed in the [back-end mobile] space,” Dawson says.The enterprise mobil42

ings and those leading niche players are being slowly picked off,” Absalom says.

“Symantec, LANDesk, Dell, CA, and Oracle, to name a few, have all made significant acquisitions. This consolidation is bound to continue as there are so many vendors in the space.”

For example, EMC VMware recently bought AirWatch, Citrix Systems recently bought Zenprise, and IBM recently bought Fiberlink, a sign that major providers see EMM as an important capability to offer enterprises. Before that, Dell bought Kace, Quest Software, SonicWall, and Wyse, and Symantec

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

more scalable, and more cloud-ready, says Merv Adrian, a research vice president at Gartner. “In 2014, Azure will assume its place as a crown jewel in the portfolio as Microsoft’s vision of a hybrid world—emphasizing seamless use of information across on-premise, cloud, and multiple databases and file architectures—matches up with many organizations’ determination to move to new deployment and database alternatives,” he says.

Amazon is likely to continue its growth as early adopters expand their footprint, Adrian says. But “if it remains a cloud-only play, traditional mainstream IT

organizations will continue to view it as only a partial solution, and it will not become a strategic partner for those organizations until its vision expands,” he says.

“If it chooses to wait out the lengthy transition to clouddominant architectures, its dominant position will have eroded, closing a unique opportunity.”

Cloudera has anchored its position as the leading commercializer of the Hadoop stack, Adrian says, and in 2014 the company will seek to expand its market identity to capture a broader array of workloads in the enterprise. “As its competitors continue to ramp up, it will need to ensure that it watches its flanks and sustains growth in its core offerings while it broadens its footprint,” he says.

Oracle’s significant sales force turnover; its late-tomarket scramble to ship an in-memory database after SAP, IBM, and Microsoft; and its continuing hardware “sinkhole” will mean substantial challenges, Adrian says, “even as it opens new fronts against several new competitive targets.”

A third-party ecosystem is also emerging, as dozens of new and existing tools providers are introducing data management and security capabilities for Hadoop and other NoSQL platforms that are taken for granted in the data warehousing world, Baer says. “In 2014, watch for new applications to emerge that are designed specifically for big data and emerging platforms such as Hadoop,” he says.The one constant in the IT market is change, and those vendors with a knack for predicting what users will want and where technology will go will clearly be at an advantage. 

CLOUD COMPUTING | FOCAL POINT n

To Switch, or not to Switch How do you decide thats its time to switch your AWS workloads over to GCE? By Brandon Butler

G

ENERALLY, GCE and

AWS are similar services: They both offer compute and storage on an as-needed basis, meaning that customers can spin up and down IaaS services without having to invest in capital hardware.

AWS has been offering cloud-based IaaS services for much longer than Google, so the company has a head start in the dozens of services it offers from its cloud and the reliability of those, says Cloudyn’s cofounder and Vice President of product Vitally Tavor.

GCE, meanwhile has only a handful of services, but the offerings it has put out in the market are generally higher-performing, giving customers more theoretical bang for their buck.

So, is it time to switch your AWS workloads over to GCE? Tavor says for some applications, the answer could be yes.

Generally, for short-lived applications that require a high-performance machine, Google’s cloud seems to be a good fit for them, Tavor says. For complicated applications that are hosted in the cloud for a long period of time and that use a variety of different types of cloud-based services - from warehouse database to load balancers to domain name systems and content

delivery networks - AWS still seems like the better choice, he says.

One easy way to determine if you’re a candidate to migrate workloads from AWS to GCE is to look at what AWS services are being used and see if those are available in Google’s cloud. Google has a base compute, storage, database and data analytics (named BigQuery) offerings. The AWS equivalents of those are Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Elastic MapReduce (EMR).

Of Cloudyn’s users, about half of them only use the basic compute and storage services in AWS’s cloud, which Google also offers.

So, they could theoretically move those workloads over to GCE, says Sharon Wagner, co-founder and CEO of Cloudyn. The other half of Cloudyn’s customers use advanced features in AWS’s cloud which Google has not yet rolled out and therefore they may not be as ideal candidates for moving applications over to GCE, he says.

DIFFERENTIATING BOTH One major difference between AWS and GCE is the pricing scheme. AWS has three pricing options for customers: The default is on-demand, which are

spun up and spun down at a customer’s request with no long-term commitment; Spot instances that are acquired in a biding auction and can be less expensive but are best for fault-tolerant applications because the services can be interrupted unexpectedly at any time; Reserved instances are less expensive than on demand but require a long-term one or three year contract.

GCE. GCE still has some issues to work on though: It has scheduled maintenance a couple times a year during which services are unavailable. GCE also currently only supports Linux OS, not Windows. But, it’s a highperforming and globally distributed cloud platform, so it’s certainly worth considering now, he says.

If a customer is in a position to use GCE, Tavor says it’s generally a good idea to spread workloads across multiple cloud providers.

Even with service-level agreements (SLA) which guarantee a certain level of uptime, these IaaS cloud services can still go down.

AWS recommends that customers spread their workloads across multiple availability zones within its cloud; for customers looking for extra protection they

One way to check is to look at what AWS services are being used and see if those are available in Google’s cloud.

GCE, on the other hand, has per-minute billing, compared to AWS’s ondemand hourly billing. So, if customers want shortlived compute jobs to run, GCE can generally be a better choice. If a customer is looking to run something in the cloud for a long time, then AWS pricing can be more advantageous.

Google’s GCE pricing can be found here while Amazon’s EC2 pricing is here.

As a comparison, AWS’s standard m3 instance is $0.113 per hour, while Google’s standard instances is $0.104, both come with 3.75GB of memory.

“For many apps, it’s good enough,” Tavor says about

can spread workloads across multiple regions in AWS’s cloud. Still even more protection would be to spread workloads across multiple providers. GCE has advanced to a point where it is a destination for users to consider using as a backup or primary service, Wagner says.

Google and AWS aren’t the only games in town either.

Microsoft and Rackspace have compelling IaaS offerings as well, Tavor says.

Rackspace excels in OpenStack workloads, while Microsoft in Windows applications. IBM, he says, will be interesting to watch as the company has announced plans to significantly ramp up its cloud footprint in 2014. 

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n PLAINSPEAK

YOGESH GUPTA

Hello Frenemy Two or more companies (read frenemies) can collaborate to win the big deal. The next door competitor— from eons ago—is likely to become your additional revenue contributor.

Yogesh Gupta is associate editor at ChannelWorld. He is a computer engineer from Mumbai University. You can contact him at yogesh_ gupta@idgindia.com 44

F

RENEMY. BE prepared to hear this jargon or its syn-

onyms like coopetition. The new business model will be prevalent in the technology world beyond the dictionary dialectal of frenemy (a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry). Why you may ask? The tough times and rough competition swamped by economic uncertainty simply means less projects, lesser margins, and a murkier blood bath. Does one forfeit the large IT project of a holistic solution provider because of its limited competence in specific technologies? And it can be a heartache in case of a long standing customer. Technology companies need to re-evaluate the traditional ‘go solo’ tactic. Two or more companies (read frenemies) can collaborate to win the big deal. The next door competitor—from eons ago—is likely to become your additional revenue contributor.

This strategy shift will only accelerate as IT environment turns more heterogeneous with more enterprises proactively adopting cloud, mobility and big data.

Once fierce competitors, Microsoft and Novell, continue to work on a pact signed back in 2006. Oracle continues to work with once-a-big-rival Salesforce on the cloud front. Open source companies Red Hat also have an alliance with Microsoft for specific solutions. And these ‘few of the many’ frenemies have good acceptance as they suffice the IT demands of modern enterprises.

The silo approach at the customer end is diminishing at a rapid pace as the departments work on tighter integration and unified platform of systems, processes and applications. Converged infrastructure is making its presence felt. The mandate for ‘best of breed’ solutions by CIOs and no single vendor promising that best ‘throat to choke’ proposition, the vendor companies collaborate with each other. VCE,

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD M ARCH 2014

FlexPod, VSPEX, Open Stack, and other consortia, to name a few, have a fair play in the enterprise IT world. Newer ‘love-hate’ equations amongst vendors will evolve and probably survive too.

With vendors confident of their joint GTM, enterprise channel partners can too collaborate with competition for IT projects. It is virtually impossible for a mid-size partner company to invest hordes of money in T&C of each and every enterprise technology across multitude of vendors- he partners with. The nirvana path of ‘Master of all technologies’ is a challenging one to attain for most solution providers today. It is therefore an astute decision to leverage the technical strength and domain expertise of each other.

A single entity does have its noteworthy advantages in a deal—full control of the customer, upsell/cross-sell opportunities, and all the revenues. But at times trust your peer and collaborate on a profit sharing basis, if needed.

Frenemy model is bound to mature as the initial apprehensions and rough bumps cease over time. But the journey can be enriching for both sides. You do not lose the customer, record decent margins, and importantly initiate a new business partnership—that will stand the test of time.

Go ahead. Get the foot in the door— together! 

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