Channelworld September 2014 Issue 6

FOCAL POINT: They say green IT is dying. But it can still be revived. All it needs is a little effort. PAGE 33

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

Dharmesh Anjaria (L) and Parag Dalal, executive directors, Dynacons Systems & Solutions, are betting on new-age storage solutions like SDS.

Inside SEPTEMBER 2014 VOL. 8, ISSUE 6

News Analysis After the first six months as CEO, here’s a report card of how Nadella’s been faring at Microsoft. PAGE 16

Staying On Top of

SDS The days of proprietary storage have long gone. Converged storage systems are now revolutionizing the way the enterprise storage industry functions. >>>PAGE 24

The Grill: Fred Kohout, EMC, explains how its new Business Partner Program will take its channel strategy ahead. PAGE 21 On Record: Ravi Gupta, Intel, feels ISVs will help take Intel’s multi-channel strategy effectively to the enterprise. PAGE 18

Feature Given the large data trove, people worry about what businesses are doing with all that information all the time.

However, businesses aren’t doing as much as they could be—yet. PAGE 31

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n EDITOR’S NOTE

Vijay Ramachandran Consolidate or Evaporate!

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”

— Marcel Proust

T

HERE WAS a time, not so long ago, when an Indi-

an IT hardware industry really existed. When everything from hard drives to modems to network cards to motherboards were actually manufactured in the country. When some of the largest names in global IT used to source hardware products from India.

Whether it was an Ncore rolling out (at it’s time) the lightest notebook in the world or an Okhla company capturing a 5 percent marketshare of network cards in Europe, there was something to be proud about our ingenuity with computing hardware.

Contrast this with the amount of ‘Indian hardware’ that today actually rolls out of factories in mainland China or Taiwan or Thailand or Malaysia, and you’ll get a feel for why I’m feeling a tad nostalgic.

Add to that the miniscule size of the assembled PC market, and the concurrent rise of both gaming consoles and mobile devices and its no secret that the path to increasing computing penetration in the country lies via the factories in Shenzhen. Outside of bespoke PC assemblers focused on the high-end graphics vertical, there’s little else white box left.

4

Of course, there’s no denying that the huge differential in import duty between finished products and their components is what helped keep hardware manufacturers going. A difference, which could be as high as 60-plus percent for some products. Over time that difference shrunk, and once it was no longer all that profitable for hardware manufacturers to continue, they stopped.

But there were some like Tandon’s hard drive plant in SEEPZ, Mumbai that only focused on the export market. Ditto for Ncore. While its modems

n Given limited

differentiators and slender margins, consolidation is the likely future of the solution provider space.

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

were intended for sale in India, the Yantra, its light notebook priced at $3,000 was targeted at the US and Japanese markets.

And, to be fair, Ncore, continued to tilt at windmills.

Every few years, they’ve released new and interesting products. Whether it was the Linux-based Simputer handheld computer in 2001 or the SATHI tactical handheld for the Indian Army in 2004 or the Rs 10,000 Mobilis mobile desktop in 2005, you can’t fault them for trying to make a difference.

In fact, they even spun off picoPeta Simputers to push the handheld computer. And there were many success stories early on. The Karnataka Government used them as part of its land records program; Mahindra & Mahindra deployed them to check engine diagnostics of its Scorpio SUV; heck, the Bangalore traffic cops even used them to track repeat offenders.

And, then there was

silence. The Simputer simply didn’t reach the extent of its true potential.

I suspect what got in the way of Simputer is also the same issue that the Indian software industry faced in its defining days—great ideas, interesting products, inadequate marketing muscle and slender R&D budgets.

That last bit in a large way could also describe today’s solution provider space. There’s no denying technical prowess, but unique differentiators are few, and margins often inadequate to power either marketing or expansion.

I see many contemplate mergers or even look for financing an acquisition, but the financial math seldom adds up.

I wonder at times whether this space could benefit from a degree of consolidation. Perhaps more than mergers, outright sales might allow those that remain to press forward with greater ease.

Today Indian hardware engineering shows up behind the scenes, primarily in chip design. While the work is cutting edge, it somehow doesn’t have the same ring as before.

Ncore too, some years ago, switched names from Ncore Technology to Encore Software. I rest my case.  Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of ChannelWorld. Contact him at vijay_ramachandran@ idgindia.com

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Inside INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n SEPTEMBER 2014

■ NEWS DIGEST

■ NEWS ANALYSIS

13 Oracle’s New Cloud Program |

16 Nadella’s Six-month Report Card | After the first six months as

Oracle launches ‘Customer 2 Cloud’

program to simplify migration to cloud applications so as to support business transformation.

14 IBM Focuses on Identity Management | IBM combines its

acquisitions to build a set of identity management software and services.

The company is investing $1 billion in enterprise security-related research.

14 HP’s Managed VPC Service for Light Enterprise Workload | HP

has announced HP Helion Managed

Microsoft’s CEO, some of Nadella’s moves have been met with applause, and others with raspberries.

■ OPINION

04 Editorial: Indian hardware

engineering has moved behind the scenes, says Vijay Ramachandran.

36 PlainSpeak: Yogesh Gupta

draws attention to the technology paradox, where unstable business environments are barring technologies from transforming into real projects.

■ THE GRILL

21 Fred Kohout, Vice President,

Global Channel Marketing, EMC, explains how the company’s new Business Partner Program will take its channel strategy to the next level.

■ COVER STORY

24 Software-defined

Revolution

Virtual Private Cloud Lean, a managed infrastructure-as-a-service solution that enables higher-quality service delivery and workload performance.

When it comes to enterprise storage, convergence is in and silos are out. The days of huge, proprietary storage ‘islands’ are waning. Scattered proprietary storage systems require too much time and effort to maintain.

Converged storage systems and management software promise vast gains in efficiency.

15 Slow Growth for Storage Market | The Indian storage market

saw a double-digit Q-o-Q de-growth and stands at its lowest ever, says IDC. Cover Photograph by: SHAILESH Cover Design by UNNIKRISHNAN A.V

24

■ ON RECORD 18 Ravi Gupta, Vertical Head, Public

21

Sector and Enterprise Solutions Group, Intel, feels ISVs will help take Intel’s multi-channel strategy effectively to the enterprise.

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS CUSTOM GROUP INTERVIEW FORTINET HP

HP’s comprehensive set of solutions gives us an edge over other partners with respect to acquiring more customers.

The company has continuously tweaked its channel strategy, thereby ensuring channelfriendliness over the years.

HIGH PERFORMANCE,

sales and post-sales issues and other best practices related to SIs’ business processes.

Anand Karapurkar, Director, Infobahn Technical Solutions, talks about his organization’s successful journey with HP and why the storage giant’s solutions are highly revered in the channel space.

How does HP StoreVirtual VSA and HP StoreOnce VSA under the SDS portfolio help cut costs by running storage services on virtualized servers?

It is a very exciting opportunity for partners in India to explore HP’s set of SDS solutions as they are one of the first in the industry. The technology separates the software part of storage from the hardware. HP StoreVirtual VSA utilizes the free spaces on the various virtual servers assigned, and in turn, creates a larger pool of storage for end-customers’ use.

Therefore, by adding software, you get extra storage space in your existing infrastructure, and this is a major cost-saver for customers.

HAPPY PARTNERS

By Aritra Sarkhel How long has Infobahn been associated with HP and what led to choosing HP’s storage solutions?

We have been associated with HP for more than 14 years. To be precise, we were a co-partner of Compaq long before HP’s acquisition of the company, and following the successful merger, we became HP’s channel partner. Our relationship with HP has been very successful so far.

We—as a systems integrator—not only implement a plethora of HP’s solutions­for end-customers across the country, but also utilize HP’s storage solutions ourselves. HP’s comprehensive set of solutions gives us an edge over other partners with respect to acquiring more customers in the market. Moreover, to effectively cater to the high levels of storage consumption among end-customers, HP’s storage strategy enables simpler management of resources and immense cost reduction. Also,

the one thing that has been impressive about HP is the fact that it gives rebates on most of the solutions that it sells to the channel partner community. The company has continuously tweaked its channel strategy, thereby ensuring channel-friendliness over the years. Therefore, partnering with HP has been fruitful for us on the whole.

How has HP helped you enhance the competencies required to drive converged solutions in the market?

HP is absolutely clear about the path to implementation in terms of ideation and management of the storage infrastructure, and its supremely farsighted and skilled team conducts pertinent training and certification programs to the channel partner community.

More importantly, these are not one-off programs but detailed workshops that happen throughout the year and encompass sales, pre-

What are the various advantages of using HP’s SDS solutions?

We have seen cost reduction for customers leveraging the hardware that they already own. Besides, there is no question of lockin to a particular vendor because there is a hypervisor involved. It helps you increase your storage on the fly.

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

FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN

Inside

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n SEPTEMBER 2014

■ FAST TRACK

30 Priyadarshi Nanu Pany, CEO, CSM

■ FOCAL POINT

33 Bringing Back Green IT GREEN IT: Remember when companies

competed for green awards and set up e-waste committees? Although today, the

Technologies, explains how the domains of

overall concept of green IT has gotten a little brown around the edges, there are people who still care about it. Here’s how the dying frenzy about corporate sustainability and green IT can still be revived. e-governance and mining regulation systems helped the company grow steadily.

20 Ashish Agarwal, CEO, Astek Networking & Solutions, explains how taking a patient and innovative approach helped the company deliver

■ FEATURE

31 Data Overload The large trove of data that’s out there includes offline data, user account data, data from online activity, and the data type that predicts users’ behavior. It’s no surprise, then,

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Publisher, President & CEO Louis D’Mello n EDITORIAL

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

Senior Copy Editor Vinay Kumaar Video Editor Kshitish B.S. Lead Designers Suresh Nair, Vikas Kapoor Senior Designer Unnikrishnan A.V. Trainee Journalists Bhavika Bhuwalka, Ishan Bhattacharya, Madhav Mohan, Mayukh Mukherjee, Sejuti Das, Vaishnavi J. Desai n SALES

& MARKETING

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

Vice President HR & Operations Rupesh Sreedharan Financial Controller Sivaramakrishnan T.P. CIO Pavan Mehra Senior Manager Operations: Ajay Adhikari, Pooja Chhabra Senior Manager Accounts Sasi Kumar V. Senior Manager Operations T.K. Karunakaran Manager Operations Dinesh P. Executive Assistant to the CEO Tharuna Paul Manager Credit Control Prachi Gupta Assistant Manager Accounts Poornima

a SAP solution, making it the best in the business in Agra.

that people worry about what businesses are doing with all that data. However, businesses aren’t doing as much as they could be.

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Cyberoam Technologies Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

HP Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Dell India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 & 12

IBM India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC

Epson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Redignton India Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC & 9

Grass Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Ricoh India Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BC

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

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News

WHAT’S WITHIN

PAGE 14: IBM Builds a Set of Identity Management Services PAGE 14: HP Announces Its Managed Virtual Private Cloud PAGE 15: Indian Storage Market Hits Its Lowest, Says IDC PAGE 16: A Report of Nadella’s First Six Months in Microsoft

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

CLOUD

Oracle’s New Cloud Program

O

RACLE HAS

launched its “Customer 2 Cloud” program to simplify migration to cloud applications. This initiative is aimed at enabling organizations to embrace the cloud and use it to support business transformation.

According to the company statement, speed, simplicity and flexibility are the key benefits that attract customers to the new program.

The program gives Oracle customers the financial flexibility to determine their best path to the cloud by

enabling redirection of existing Oracle Applications investments toward Oracle Cloud solutions that strategically makes sense.

The company claimed that Customer 2 Cloud is designed to help organizations convert on-premise applications to the Oracle Cloud by providing rapid startup services and packaged cloud integrations.

With packaged integrations between the most popular on-premise and cloud applications, Oracle customers also have the flexibility to shift to a hybrid model

where on-premise and cloud applications work together for greater efficiency.

“Organizational leaders know that cloud applications play an important role in lowering the cost of IT ownership, accelerating the pace of innovation, and improving their users’ experiences. But the journey to cloud comes with financial and IT hurdles,” said Niraj Kaushik, vice presidentapplications, Oracle India.

Kaushik added that the program would remove these barriers and help customers take advantage of its best-in-class cloud applications, as it addresses common financial and technical challenges organizations face in transitioning from on-premise software environments to the newer software-as-a-service model.

The program will be open to all existing Oracle customers of HCM and CRM solutions from Oracle’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Oracle E-Business Suite product lines.

This program helps customers get their hands on the latest innovation in Oracle HCM cloud and Oracle CX by removing common adoption barriers. It is cost effective and allow customers release up resources to focus on other pressing issues, the company reported.

SEPTEMBER 2014

—Team ChannelWorld INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

13

FINANCIAL RESULTS

Symantec’s Q1 Revenues Rise by 2 Percent Symantec has reported a rise in its revenues for the first quarter of 2015.

The revenues for Q1/2015 were pegged at $1,735 million (about Rs 10,000 crore), a 2 percent rise from last year. The company said the rising demand for cyber security products has been fueling business momentum.

“We are making steady progress against the five priorities outlined in the last quarter—optimizing businesses for margin, improving efficiencies, attracting top talent, returning significant cash to shareholders, and focusing investments for growth in our enterprise business,” said Michael A. Brown, interim president and CEO, Symantec.

The net income under GAAP for the company improved by 50 percent to $236 million (about Rs 1,416 crore) from last year.

-Team ChannelWorld

-

SECURITY

IBM Focuses on Identity Management

I

BM HAS purchased

Enterprise security is one Lighthouse Security of the core areas of IT Group and plans to that IBM is concentrating combine it with anon to generate new busiother acquisition to build a ness. It has invested more set of identity management than $1 billion (about Rs software and services.

6,000 crore) annually in Lighthouse Security enterprise security-related Group offers cloud-based research, employing 6,000 identity management security researchers and services for developers in 25 the enterprise. security faciliRecently, IBM ties worldwide.

IBM’s annual investpurchased CrosThe research and ment in enterprise sIdeas, a develacquisitions are security-related oper of software paying off: IBM research. that controls the said it had 20 applications and percent growth cloud services an employee security-related revenue in has access to. the first half of 2014.

IBM said it will combine Lighthouse’s chief prodthe Lighthouse and Crosuct, Lighthouse Gateway, sIdeas technologies to build offers identity and access a full suite of security softmanagement capabilities ware and services designed as a cloud service, using to protect and manage custhe IBM Tivoli systems tomers’ identities. management platform as Identity management the base. technology is designed to The Lighthouse service assure digital content and is designed to offer all the computer services are only major capabilities typically accessed by those who have found in an access managethe permission to do so. ment software package

$1 Bn

meant to be installed internally, including the ability to provision accounts for new users, to be able to drop an account when an employee leaves, and single sign-on so employees only have to log in once to use multiple applications.

By offering identity management as a service, Lighthouse can manage employees who access organizational resources from outside the firewall, or employees who use non-organizational issued computers and devices, a common scenario among organizations that embrace the bring-your-own-device.

Lighthouse also offers federation services, allowing an organization to share parts of its identity management database with other organizations, and a self-service console for users to register themselves.

Lighthouse Security Group was a subsidiary of Lighthouse Computer Service, an enterprise SI that has been a longtime business partner of IBM. The Lighthouse acquisition will bring IBM the ability to offer identity management as a service.

—Joab Jackson

MANAGED INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES

HP’s Managed VPC Service for Light Enterprise Workload HP has announced its HP Helion Managed Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Lean, a managed infrastructure-as-a-service solution. According to the company statement, it enables higher-quality service delivery and workload performance at a significantly lower cost.

The company said HP’s new offering supports lighter 14

workloads for mid-sized and enterprise-level businesses, such as application development and workplace collaboration solutions, while also enabling quick onboarding time and the ability to add features on demand.

Marshal Correia, vice president and general manager, enterprise services, HP

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

New Cloud Solution: Addition of on-demand features is enabled.

India, said, “The new HP Helion Managed VPC Lean now delivers a lower-priced alternative designed to enable clients to further optimize cloud

Short Takes  Microsoft Ventures,

in collaboration with iSPIRIT Foundation, has announced its first set of initiatives under the Think Next program. These are aimed at resolving key issues responsible for the lack of meaningful exits in India’s software product industry, which is a major cause for concern among India’s product startups.  Lifesize, a division of

Logitech, is taking its video conferencing experience to the next level by introducing a unified communication service.

Lifesize Cloud, providing a connected experience to anyone using smartphones, tablets, laptops, and conference rooms, is a combination of software, hardware, service and UX.  Jitendra

Gupta has been appointed as the sales head for networking at Avaya India and SAARC. The company said the appointment was a part of its initiative to hire strategic talent and strengthen leadership.

workloads while still providing superior, enterprise-class service and performance.”

HP Helion Managed VPC Lean also allows organizations to reap enterprise benefits, such as a regionalized cloud for data sovereignty, low latency, compliance, high availability, and security for a lower upfront investment.

It also enables HP management services, SAP HANA management service and database-as-a-service.

-Team ChannelWorld

STORAGE

Slow Growth for Storage Market

T

HE INDIAN storage

market saw a double-digit Q-o-Q degrowth and stands at $56.8 million (about Rs 342 crore), the lowest the market has reached ever since Q2/2012, says research firm IDC. The decline in TB sales in Q1/2014 was an exception to the TB growth trend dominating the Indian market for the last six quarters due to a combination of various reasons.

The declining trend was attributed to uncertainty around the political scenario and the market deferring its investments by a quarter. The economy too remained sluggish.

According to IDC, though positive sentiments seemed to have emerged in the wee hours of the closing quarter, the market will have to wait for Q2 to ride that growth wave which is also marred by growing inflation, dollar depreciation, and cautious approach.

Dileep Nadimpalli, senior market analyst, storage, said, “Business favoring policies are expected from government. The impact of the positive sentiments is already visible and growth is expected in the next few years. In addition, the SMB market in India is expected to grow faster than previous years.”

The market is expected to revive in the coming quarters as a stable government is now in place to drive some of these sentiments and in turn investments.

Finance, manufacturing, and communication and media, the key verticals for the last few quarters have remained sluggish. In addition, IDC reported, enterprises across the board did not spend and held back their investments on refresh/upgrade due to the general election, resulting in cautious spending.

Gaurav Sharma, research manager, enterprise, IDC India, said, “A stable government, dipping dollar spends/GB cost, adoption and expansion of the third platform, and acceptance of technologies like flash will drive the growth. Additionally, customized solutions for SMBs and associated

Around

TheWorld Gemalto Acquires SafeNet for $890 Mn

Gemalto has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SafeNet, a provider of data protection and software monetization solutions, for $890 million (about Rs 5,340 crore).

Nearly 400 million digital data records have been lost or stolen already in 2014, prompting a rise in global awareness regarding protection of data. With this acquisition, Gemalto and SafeNet combine the technologies to secure a complete infrastructure.

-Team ChannelWorld SEPTEMBER 2014

technologies like compression and de-duplication are also expected to play their part in raising investments in the coming quarters.”

The figures state that EMC continued to lead with a share of 33 percent, whereas NetApp displaced IBM this quarter with a 16 percent market share, followed by HP and IBM with a share of 12 percent and 11 percent respectively.

Dell’s First Progress Report on ‘2020 Legacy of Good’

Dell has announced its key corporate responsibility achievements along with the release of its FY14 Corporate Responsibility Report.

The report provides the first progress update on the goals outlined in the ‘2020 Legacy of Good’ plan, which was released last fall.

Dell has reduced the energy intensity of its product portfolio by 23.2 percent and of its server portfolio by 50 percent over the last two years.

The company’s 2020 goal is to reduce the energy intensity of its entire portfolio by 80 percent.

-Team ChannelWorld INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

15

IBM saw a significant decline this quarter and dropped two positions from second to fourth spot. Dell registered an impressive growth mainly due to its change in strategy and investments in channels.

Overall, the top four vendors maintained their dominant position. Storage market is forecasted to surge ahead, says IDC. —Team ChannelWorld

Riverbed Rolls Out Net Management Software

Riverbed has tacked three new software modules onto its SteelCentral network management product-NetAuditor, NetPlanner and NetCollector modules.

The first is designed to improve configuration management, the second to provide planning and design capabilities for hybrid networks, and the last to assist the other two, by managing real-time data.

-Jon Gold

n NEWS ANALYSIS

Nadella’s Six-month

Report Card

Microsoft turns 40 next year and Nadella is only its third CEO. Has he done enough so far? Is he leading Microsoft wisely? Is there enough substance behind his talk? Will he succeed?

While it’s too early to make that judgment, some industry experts, customers, and partners say they generally like what they’ve seen so far, but that he’s got a long road ahead of him.

A GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION

After the first six months as Microsoft CEO, some of Satya Nadella’s moves have been met with applause and others with raspberries.

By Juan Carlos Perez 16

S

AY WHAT you will

about Satya Nadella’s first six months as Microsoft’s CEO, but no one can deny that the man jumped in with both feet from day one and has led the company with decisiveness.

He got a standing ovation weeks into his tenure when the company finally launched Office for the iPad. More recently, many viewed him as corporate villain after he approved a 14 percent staff reduction, the largest in Microsoft’s history, and explained it with what some felt was too much corporate jargon.

Throughout, Nadella has laid out his vision for Microsoft’s success: pursuing

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

a “mobile first, cloud first” approach to product development intended to yield applications, servers, OSes, tablets, smartphones and cloud computing services that boost productivity for people at home and work.

Along the way, he hasn’t been shy about altering his predecessor’s path. He retired Steve Ballmer’s “devices and services” company description, emphasizing “platform and productivity” instead, and he is seen as much more open and flexible to having Microsoft software run on non-Windows platforms.

He has given Windows free to makers of certain devices and partnered with CRM rival Salesforce.com.

“The big thing with Nadella is that it feels like Microsoft is being run by a technologist again,” said Mike Hogan, the Microsoft general manager at En Pointe Technologies, a Microsoft partner for more than 20 years.

In a report published in May marking Nadella’s first 100 days at the helm, a team of Forrester Research analysts concluded that “he’s not a caretaker of ‘business as usual’ but rather a change agent who has put Microsoft on a bolder path.”

“Give away the Windows runtime to drive adoption?

Check. Release a native Office app for Apple’s iPad? Check. Support Git and other popular continuous delivery tools on Azure?

Check. These and other Nadella actions ensure that Microsoft’s fortunes will improve,” they wrote.

While the vision is pretty clear, the question is whether the execution will be on target, according to Gartner analyst Merv Adrian. “Microsoft now needs to drive its vision into everyday familiarity; people need to know what this will mean to them,” he said.

EMBRACING A CROSSPLATFORM APPROACH Nadella has been credited

with leaving no doubt that under his command, the “Windows first” philosophy of protecting the OS franchise at all costs to other products is no longer in place.

Nadella’s first major launch as CEO was the native Office apps for Apple’s iPad, a move that Ballmer seemed reluctant to make, possibly out of fear it would hurt Windows and to a lesser extent the fledgling Surface tablets.

Coming less than two months after Nadella’s appointment, it’s obvious the project had been in progress under Ballmer, but many observers assumed that the new CEO made the endeavor a top priority, and they also praised him for whole-heartedly endorsing a cross-platform approach for Microsoft desktop, server and cloud software.

“What motivates us is to make sure that we build the great experiences that span the digital life and work of our customers, both individually and as organizations. And that’s what you can count on us doing, both with Windows as well as other platforms,” Nadella said at an event in San Francisco in late March.

FLYING HIGH WITH CLOUD PRODUCTS Microsoft tied the Office apps for iPad to a subscription for Office 365, which is one of the products Nadella is most excited about. In his view, it exemplifies the future of the company, and Azure, Microsoft’s set of cloud computing offerings.

He’s also gung-ho about Dynamics CRM Online, the cloud version of the company’s CRM software, but that didn’t stop him from brokering an eyebrow-

On Layoffs, the Nokia Deal and Hardware Strategy

W

HILE it seems like Nadella’s been nailing most of the things, a couple of his decisions haven’t gone down very well.

Forrester’ gives Nadella low marks for the way he articulated the need for the layoffs in the memo he sent to employees. “It was full of management-speak instead of empathy and humanity. He missed a key opportunity to connect and build trust and support with employees,” Johnson from Forrester said.

The IFRC’s Happ is also unimpressed with the process of downsizing and flattening the organization, which he said is understandable, but which he found was executed rather arbitrarily. “Some very good people were let go, and with them an exit of important knowledge.

It takes longer to be surgical, but ultimately better for the patient,” Happ said.

However, Gartner’s Adrian says the restructuring isn’t just about shrinking the staff.

“There has already been significant investment in new positions and people to fill them,” Adrian said, adding that the company also appears to be trying to streamline and emphasize a flatter management structure. raising partnership with CRM rival Salesforce.com in May. The deal, which calls for Salesforce.com’s CRM software to be integrated with Microsoft’s Windows OS, Azure cloud computing platform and Office suite, was needed to respond to the demands of the companies’ mutual customers, Nadella said.

He added that Microsoft will pursue similar “coopetition” partnerships intended to make life easier for Microsoft customers.

Certainly one of the biggest challenges Nadella is dealing with is the integration of the Nokia devices and services business, for which Microsoft paid more than $7 billion (about Rs 42,000 crore) last year.

Most of the layoffs announced in July came from the Nokia staff that came over with the acquisition, which closed in late April, leading some observers to question whether Nadella is significantly less than enthused about the deal than Ballmer, who brokered it.

In late July, during the fourth-quarter earnings report conference call, Nadella gave further indications that he’s not as gung-ho about Microsoftmade hardware devices as his predecessor was.

“Our approach to firstparty hardware going forward is clear: At times we’ll develop new categories like we did with Surface. And we will responsibly make the market for Windows Phone,” he had said then.

“However, we’re not in hardware for hardware’s sake, and the first-party device portfolio will be aligned to our strategic direction as a productivity and platform company.”

Under Nadella, Microsoft has also been right smack in the middle of the consumer and enterprise cloud storage arms race, aggressively pushing its OneDrive and OneDrive for Business services against those from Google, Box, Dropbox and other rivals.

FINANCIALS Under Nadella, Microsoft’s earnings reports so far have been viewed as solid.

Nadella was appointed CEO about a month into the third quarter, which ended

An early victim of that more skeptical vision of Microsoft’s mission as a hardware maker was a longrumored smaller Surface tablet, reportedly called Mini, whose development was axed.

Industry analyst Jack Gold from J. Gold Associates interprets the layoffs as a sign that, unlike Ballmer, Nadella doesn’t want to remake Microsoft in the Apple model and compete against it directly.

“Nadella rightfully understands that it shouldn’t go there,” Gold said via email.

“Nadella’s focus on productivity is the right approach to Microsoft’s future in my opinion, including the focus on how to make the OS better, and services in the cloud.”

In fact, Gold believes that in the next 18 months, Nadella will exit the phone business, as well as scale back or exit the Surface business.

However, Nadella has said he is enthusiastic about the Surface Pro 3 computer, which Microsoft positions as a dual-use tablet and laptop, and about other Microsoft hardware products, like the Xbox gaming console and the large Perceptive Pixel displays.

-Juan Carlos Perez with revenue coming in at $20.40 billion (about Rs 122 lakh crore), down from $20.49 billion (about Rs 123 lakh crore) a year earlier.

Net income was $5.7 billion (about Rs 34 lakh crore), down from $6.1 billion (about Rs 36 lakh crore).

However, Microsoft’s results matched the revenue consensus forecast of analysts and exceeded their earnings-per-share estimate. It is now upon Nadella to deliver on everybody’s ever-increasing hopes. 

SEPTEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

17

ON RECORD n

Ravi Gupta, Vertical Head, Public Sector and Enterprise Solutions Group, Intel, feels ISVs will help take Intel’s multichannel strategy effectively to the enterprise.

By Shantheri Mallaya 18

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

Intel has been talking quite aggressively about multichannels for a while now.

What has been the company’s journey like, going the multichannel way?

GUPTA: For the last three years, enterprises have been experimenting with different usage models.

This practice has not been propagated by traditional methods of marketing, but by employees, channels, and the retail segment, depending on specific enterprise applications.

It need not be a CIOto-CIO talk or be product specific all the time; it can be multi-dimensional, gauging a specific application or the usage patterns of customers. Also, we

must be cognizant of the source of information of these influencers. Today, the biggest information disseminators to these customers are SIs, OEMs, independent software vendors (ISVs), social media, online retail, and offline retail—these help build customer aspiration.

Given these, we are now innovating to make our products more interesting through OEM messaging, retail mechanisms, ISVs, and our traditional partners such as Microsoft and Red Hat. Our digital marketing approach began five years ago, when we started making inroads to a more unorthodox means of branding and marketing.

RAVI GUPTA | ON RECORD n We now stand on the cusp of a changing customer landscape. So, reaching, capturing and engaging with the audience has taken a new dimension.

What strategic investments is your company making to take this multi-channel approach further ahead?

GUPTA: While we can’t categorically comment on the amounts as such, the modalities vary from audience to audience and also depend on the demographics. For instance, if I have to ensure connectivity to a rural audience, I will invest in something orthodox and more tangible.

If we look at our partner ecosystem, the nature of investments circle around joint go-to-market strategies with ISVs. Every programmer has an x86

background, which means our ISV ecosystem runs into thousands.

How does an ISV, that has partnered with Intel, stands to gain in both, the long and short term?

GUPTA: We are exclusively engaged with ISVs with whom our intellectual property (IP) is shared.

Our engagement with the second category of ISVs—that are independent of OEMs—has also been fruitful. When an ISV is building an app that is optimized across its partners, it enhances customer satisfaction. Of course, user experience doesn’t come from writing an app alone, but through the underlying IP, the hardware, the operating system, and the ability to make all of it work optimally.

These types of engagements are also subject to confidentiality, where an ISV first proposes a future roadmap, and gets his app future-proofed.

What are your customers telling you about the trends in the capex-opex models? And how does this tie back to the multi-channel approach?

GUPTA: We are in an era where opex is overruling capex. Customers are largely looking at opex to even out the total cost of acquisition and ownership.

Software, as a percentage component of the total IT spend, has taken over the cost of hardware. ISV apps are driven the enterprise and the consumers. So we will continue to support our ecosystem for driving change in usage and customer influence patterns.

Has the rise of the mobile, remote workforce, and the cloud, made an impact on the way information and data are being viewed and analyzed?

GUPTA: Absolutely. There are huge amounts of structured and unstructured data that have changed the way we look at information. With the advent of cloud, information can be accessed at both, the frontend and the back-end.

Whether at a device-level or the enterprise-level, cloud is a reality. And macroscopically, faster response time has also led to enhanced user experience.

Besides compute, a large part of our portfolio is about communication.

The value we bring in goes through a cyclical phase of 18 months, so that we can arm our customers with the latest and the best. 

n FAST TRACK

Snapshot

Astek Networking & Solutions

Founded: 1996 Headquarters: Agra Key Executives: Bhuvnesh Sharma, Project Coordinator; Tabish Khan and Mukesh Singh, Account ManagerAfter Sales Revenue 2013/2014: Rs 2 crore Revenue 2012/2013: Rs 1.44 crore Employees: 10 Principals: IBM, Dell, Cisco, Ruckus, WatchGuard, netCORE, QNAP, Quick Heal, AMP, Legrand Key Business Activities: Consulting, Designing, Integration, Support

An innovative approach helps us stay successful, says Ashish Agarwal, CEO, Astek Networking & Solutions.

H

AVING TRANSITIONED

from selling IT hardware to Internet solutions, Astek Networking & Solutions has come a long way since its inception in 1996, in the tier-II city of Agra.

The solution provider invested in a special integrated server center for SAP in the last fiscal. “We are the only one in Agra to have added a SAP solution to our basket, and we expect two or three more integration projects this year,” says Ashish Agarwal, chief executive officer, Astek Networking & Solutions. The company expects at least a 25 percent growth this fiscal.

The company, as Agarwal puts it, started “focusing on selling solutions around Internet connectivity, Internet security, e-mails, servers, and networking in 1999, after the 20

emergence of Internet in India.” Due to long timelines and short lifespan of solutions, it initially faced challenges. But Agarwal, with his entrepreneurial vision and a strong technical team, built customer trust and started getting orders over the years.

TECHNOLOGY SPLIT 20%

Enterprise Applications

30%

Services

15%

7%

Networking

Storage

13%

Servers SOURCE: Astek Networking & Solutions

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

15%

Security

Photograph by SHAILESH

Website: www.asteknetsol.com Today, Astek is a big name in Agra. It has recently extended its portfolio to include consultation, creating solutions, and providing integration and support. “We believe in an innovative approach and add new solutions to help our customers run businesses efficiently,” says Agarwal.

According to him, for the last three years, the market has been leaning toward mobility, analytics, and security. “We are working closely with our customer requirements—like prevention of data leakage, system security, mobility, and analytics—by being patient, training our employees and trying to offer solutions that are instantaneous and reap long-term benefits,” says Agarwal.

But why is patience a virtue for a technology service provider? “Being a solution provider in a B-class city is more difficult than in tier-I cities in terms of convincing customers about the right solutions. Customers often avoid experimenting with anything new as they want to be 100 percent sure about profitability. This leads to extended sales cycles, and has, in turn, instilled the trait of patience in our team,” says Agarwal.

Astek stays updated with the market trends by travelling and building a network within the industry. “I believe in being well-informed at all times. If we are behind the technology curve, we cannot excel in the IT business,” says Agarwal.  — Sejuti Das

Dossier Name: Fred Kohout Designation: Vice President, Global Channel Marketing Company: EMC Current Role: A 30-year-old veteran in communications and marketing, Kohout joined EMC in 2011. In this capacity, he is responsible for developing partner go-to-market strategies, fostering partner recruitment, time to revenue, and profitability, through the Velocity Solution Provider Program.

Ph o t o g r a p h by S H A I L E S H

Career Graph: Prior to EMC, Kohout served as the CMO at two emerging market companies, Tagsys RFID and UC4 Software, developing their brand, GTM, and product strategies. He also spent 18 years at Sun Microsystems in executive roles in corporate, product, sales, and field marketing departments.

n THE GRILL

Fred Kohout,

vice president, global partner marketing, EMC, spells out the company’s new partner strategy.

EMC’s Business Partner Program looks a little like ‘old wine in new bottle’ compared to the popular Velocity Program.

This program, announced in May this year, is built for the next decade. It’s been 12 years since the Velocity Program, which has been refined and enhanced. This time though, we started on a blank sheet of paper.

With massive changes in the consumption and the delivery of IT, partners have aggressively participated in the program’s design through partner advisory boards and councils in each geo. They needed solutions orientation, more services, and profitable engagement. They now earn from dollar one on all EMC products, services,

and software. We have addressed all partners’ concerns and hence this program is fundamentally dissimilar to the existing one.

The program touches EMC’s federation allies, includingVMware, Pivotal, RSA and VCE. There are capabilities built into this program which links it with other programs. VMware will continue with its partner program, but we will link both programs. If partners participate in different programs, we will rationalize the costs and complexity of their investments across multiple programs.

Through joint solutions with VMware, RSA, Pivotal and VCE, we enable partners to be more effective, and drive richer financial rewards for them-whether in terms of depth of profitability based on solution-selling, or breadth of participation in different GTMs. Which partners finally fit into the program? Will focused partners get a priority? There is a broad perception that a new partner program means an exclusionary one. It’s an open program and not a pure vendor-push agenda. Different partners are focused on product

SEPTEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

21

n THE GRILL | FRED KOHOUT

We have addressed all partners’ concerns and hence this program is fundamentally dissimilar to the existing one. orientation and value-add solutions or services, and EMC will enable the larger ecosystem of resellers, VARs, SIs, cloud service providers and others.

It is not about who doesn’t get in and who is left out, but how best they fit into the program. Channels have six months to evaluate, before the program goes live on January 2015.

EMC is expanding beyond its storage image. What does that mean for storage channels? We are a strong storage player with XtremIO, VNX, VIPR; enough

BECAUSE

Better information EQUALS

opportunities exist in that space. The conversation with partners, however, revolves more around the cloud, especially the hybrid cloud, which encompasses storage infrastructure as a component. Big data and security is gaining prominence too. EMC’s positon is reflective as we drive a broader conversation with clients. The program is architected to help partners lead this industry transformation--not participate--but lead the way.

Will EMC then push partner marketing budgets towards cloud computing, and SDx, rather than traditional hardware solutions? The program is well-aligned to EMC’s strategy and associated marketing campaigns around the cloud, big data and trust. We don’t follow the approach of breaking down budget allocations to different components like storage or software. We work with country representatives for a discussion of the marketing team with the partner community according to the opportunities in that particular geography.  —Yogesh Gupta

“ We encourage partners to chalk out a long-term strategy, each time an organization needs a new security widget.

- Andrew Littleproud, President, McAfee

Better business Read the latest interviews from the biggest names of leading IT organisations on their company direction, technology roadmap and channel strategies.

Read more at

www.channelworld.in/interviews

“ We are looking for disruptive partners who want to be a part of a big change in the industry.

- Adam Judd, VP, Asia Pacific, Brocade

that a lot “ The common mistake folks make is

of vendor marketing that they think the channel can do ‘marketing’ for them.

- Julie Parrish, SVP&CMO, NetApp

n COVER STORY

Software-defined

REVOLUTION Scattered proprietary storage systems require too much time and effort to maintain. Converged storage systems and management software promise vast gains in efficiency.

By Bob Violino

W

HEN IT comes to enterprise storage, convergence is in and silos

are out. The days of huge, proprietary storage “islands” are wan­ ing. Today, new methods of bringing high performance, high scalability, and high availability to commodity hardware, as well as new ways of consolidating heterogeneous storage systems, are raising the prospect of truly centralized storage management for organizations.

Converged storage is an architecture that melds storage and computing hardware into a single entity. This combination stands in stark contrast to the traditional enterprise storage model, in which computation happens on servers and storage is consigned to the SAN or NAS. That older model is cre­ ating a bottleneck for many companies, as data sets grow dramatically larger and the time needed to access critical business data grows ever shorter.

The aim of storage convergence is to obliterate the physical, logical, and management barriers that have hindered data storage and retrieval in the past. The promise of this strategy is that it can speed delivery times, en­ hance the performance of applications, and reduce the costs of power and cooling in the datacenter.

Storage convergence comes at a time of tremendous data growth, driven by the embrace of big data and it’s imperative to save everything. At the same time, datacenter architects are realizing that flexible, scalable in­ frastructures require separating control logic from the familiar systems on which the datacenter is based.

n COVER STORY

Photograph by SHAILESH

Storage’s More Strategic Than Technical

DHARMESH ANJARIA (L) & PARAG DALAL, Executive Directors, Dynacons Systems & Solutions

Dynacons Systems & Solutions has realized that CIOs view buying storage as a strategic decision, not a technology one, and SDS is the core of that strategy.

It’s surprising that for a company like Dynacons Systems & Solutions—which is an end-to-end IT infrastructure solution provider— more than 15 percent of its revenues come from its storage business.

“Our increasing customer base and growing customer demands have lead to an overall growth—in our storage business—of over 25 percent Y-O-Y in the last three to five years,” says Parag Dalal, executive director, Dynacons Systems & Solutions.

That’s partly because of the fact that

SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE That separation is the basic concept behind SDS (software-defined storage), which helps enable storage conver­ gence. SDS decouples storage hard­ ware from the software that manages the storage infrastructure, so a single, intelligent software control center can 26

the company has been enterprising in spotting new trends and capitalizing on the business opportunities in the enterprise technology space. One of these trends is software-defined storage (SDS).

And this is a reflection of what’s happening in the storage market. En­ terprise storage centered on SAN and NAS are being shadowed by trends of converged storage and SDS. “The IT infrastructure of an organization demands better manageability and reduced datacenter complexity. SDS improves an organization’s efficiency and agility in delivering storage when and where required,” says Dharmesh Anjaria, executive director, Dynacons Systems & Solutions. handle multiple storage systems. In many cases, admins no longer need to configure storage systems manually, one by one.

As a result, pooled storage infra­ structure resources in an SDS envi­ ronment can be automatically and ef­ ficiently allocated to sync up with the

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

The new storage solutions Dynacons is focusing on are flex systems-based storage, and software-controlled or man aged storage. “Also, customers are interested in flash storage. We see the growth for this technology but the cost of flash storage is quite high,” says Anjaria.

Dynacons has a roadmap to steadi­ ly invest in certification and building skillsets to take the converged storage solutions business to the next level.

“We are developing solutions to mar­ ket SDS in a more effective manner.

Also, few projects on SDS are under way,” says Dalal.

With a dedicated team for its stor­ age portfolio--including sales, presales and technical manpower—the company is forging ahead with its storage offerings. “We first under­ stand the customer need for storage and suggest an optimum solution which is highly scalable for future data growth. Our customers have confidence and trust in our team,” says Anjaria.

Dynacons was also quick to real­ ize that today buying storage is a strategic decision for CIOs—not an ad-hoc one. “Earlier different BUs stacked up storage as per their needs but now we pitch a long-term storage capacity plan for an entire organiza­ tion. That’s a huge change in the buy­ ing pattern at our customers’ end,” says Dalal.

Dynacons has always aimed to be the first to suggest the best solution (be it storage, server, networking) in order to stay ahead in the solution provider space. “One has to be on the top of the game and the fast changing technology pushes us in that direc­ tion,” says Dalal.

—Yogesh Gupta changing demands of an organization.

In decoupling storage hardware from the software that manages storage, SDS allows companies to deploy het­ erogeneous storage hardware without being concerned about issues such as interoperability, whether specific storage resources are being used op­

timally, or the manual oversight of storage resources.

The software that enables an SDS environment provides policy management for capabilities such as data de-duplication, replication, thin provisioning snapshots, and backup.

Among the key benefits of SDS compared with traditional storage are cost efficiencies, increased flexibility with hardware implementations, and automated management.

SDS is sometimes confused with storage virtualization. Whereas vir­ tualization involves separating capac­ ity from specific storage hardware resources, SDS involves separating the storage capabilities and services from the storage hardware.

NEW APPROACH, NEW SYSTEMS A number of vendors are offering what they refer to as software-defined storage products. Because these companies tend to have different definitions of SDS, the functions, capabilities and features of these products vary. However, a common theme is the use of distributed clusters of commodity machines and software that automates everything from data replication to load balancing to disaster recovery.

Nexenta, for example, offers Nexen­ taStor, an SDS platform that provides unified file and block storage services, runs on industry standard hardware, scales from tens of terabytes to pet­ abyte configurations, and includes data management functionality.

Among its key features are dynamic disk pools and RAID-Z1, RAID-Z2, RAID-Z3, periodic asynchronous rep­ lication, and thin provisioning.

Optional solutions include Nexenta MetroHA, a high-availability cluster configuration of NexentaStor that provides storage redundancy, high availability and disaster recovery over metro-wide distances. Nexenta Me­ troHA configurations contain at least two complete copies of specified file systems or data volumes separated by geographical distance. Copies can be synchronously updated for full redun­ dancy and fail-over.

HP offers StoreVirtual VSA Soft­ ware, a virtual storage appliance that provides array functionality of HP

Taking Storage Forward Kolkata’s Parth Technocomm believes that helping customers migrate to advanced storage systems is the way to go.

Kolkata-based Parth Technocomm is in a transi­ tion phase. The company’s CEO Tejas Mehta, has ob­ served that in the last couple of years, the overall storage solution selling scenario has changed quite dramatically.

“With the influx of hybrid cloud, VDI, and the continu­ ous need for data analysis, coupled with the emergence of multi-layered applica­ tions, most of the customers are either migrating or plan­ ning to migrate and upgrade their storage infrastructure,” he says.

Mehta believes that the larger debate is no lon­ ger about a hardware or software-centric approach but more of a solution-centric approach. The point to drive home is that the IT infrastruc­ ture needs both hardware and software components for it to function in a con­ sistent and unified manner.

There is tremendous potential to tap in the storage market. Modern mission-critical applications require very high IOPS and, hence, by migrat­ ing to flash-based storage from the tra­ ditional SAS and SATA, one can deliver three to four times the performance and save on costs. Also, features such as multi-level storage, snapshot and deduplication were not available earlier with traditional systems. But these are becoming an integral part of the con­ verged storage buying patterns.

Parth has geared up for this stor­ age wave and has put in place best practices to help its clients successfully migrate and unified storage solutions.

“In terms of business practices, we are focusing on better solution design and training for our team. We are working towards addressing a larger customer base that is looking for storage migra­ tion solutions,” says Mehta.

With alliances with Cisco, HP,

TEJAS MEHTA, CEO, Parth Technocomm

EMC, Dell, Juniper, VMware, Citrix, Cyberoam, Fortinet, Sonicwall, among others, Parth has a portfolio range that makes it single point of contact. “We are among a few organizations who have the capability, resources and sub­ ject area expertise to effectively imple­ ment a combination of solutions, and creating an end-to-end experience for our customers,” says Mehta.

Parth’s engineers are certified to de­ liver the most complex technical assis­ tance, with a pre-sales team capable of designing project-based solutions. “We leveraged this exposure to ensure suc­ cess in FY13-14. Our focus on training, solutioning and our POC methodology helped us create value,” says Mehta.

However, the company feels that geography matters when it comes to migrating to advanced storage tech­ nologies. For example, the eastern India has been slower to adopt new storage technologies. But that’s chang­ ing. “The awareness to migrate has spread among customers in this region as well, and we are hoping to see and implement some good projects in the near future,” says Mehta.

SEPTEMBER 2014

—By Shantheri Mallaya

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

27

n COVER STORY StoreVirtual 4000 Storage on top of VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V environments without ex­ ternal array hardware.

By virtualizing up to 50 terabytes of disk capacity on a server running VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hy­ per-V, StoreVirtual VSA eliminates the need for external shared storage required to implement advanced hypervisor features, HP says.

Like HP StoreVirtual 4000 Storage, StoreVirtual VSA uses scale-out, dis­ tributed clustering to provide a pool of storage with enterprise storage features. Organizations can run mul­ tiple StoreVirtual VSAs on multiple servers to create a clustered pool of storage. Adding more StoreVirtual VSAs to the cluster increases the storage pool.

EARLY ADOPTERS Companies that have deployed soft­ ware-defined storage products are al­ ready claiming to see various business and technology benefits.

About two years ago, Budd Van Lines, a provider of moving and stor­ age services, began using NexentaStor to replace an existing SAN in a heavily virtualized IT environment.

“At first we were going to use it just as a file server for big file shares and to let people restore their own files,” says Doug Soltesz, vice president and CTO. “But we became so enamored with the system that we gave it all of our VMs, and it ran great.” Budd later expanded its roll­out of the SDS product.

The company is using the system in large part to support the expanding data storage needs of its video security

SDS: Slow, But Steady Gaurav Sharma, Research Manager, Enterprise Computing, IDC India, talks about how the technology industry is gradually moving towards the software defined world.

Are converged storage systems the end of proprietary protocols?

Proprietary protocols will not vanish into thin air all of a sudden, but a more open and accepted set of protocols, that will make the infrastructure ecosystem more interoperable and suited to new-age (third platform) requirements, will come in. As the market begins to look at decoupling hard­ ware from software, support of hybrid vendor solutions, multiple data formats, and standard APIs, it is surely giving a green signal to universal protocol standards.

Is the adoption of SDS really the way forward? Is it happening for real or is it still in the hype cycle? Software-defined storage is gaining a lot of attention in the market with the third platform becoming a reality and driving future investments. It is in its evolutionary phase and I have no doubt that going forward, the singlestorage infrastructure story will see the light of the day. Most of the components of servers and storage are same, and hence, once we have a common software controlling them, boundaries will be eliminated in no time, paving way for the converged storage infrastructure.

Which verticals you foresee being the largest adopers of converged storage, taking to SDS in a big way? Converged storage will have the greatest impact on companies with large volumes of data, generated from an inter-connected set of applications, that is, the same data created and used by multiple applications.

The industries that can benefit from this storage wave are manufacturing, BFSI, professional services, media and entertainment, and utilities. The biggest factor that will drive the success of SDS adoption in these verticals, is the rate at which the companies will be willing to evolve their infrastructure architecture— especially storage.

—As told to Mayukh Mukherjee

28

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

system. Among the main benefits of the storage technology are cost effi­ ciencies and increased hardware flex­ ibility, Soltesz says.

Managed hosting provider Opus Interactive, another company that is relying on server virtualization in its datacenter, began using HP’s SDS of­ fering at the end of 2012, replacing a hardware-based HP storage system.

SDS is easier to implement, costs less than hardware-based storage, and fits well with the company’s VM­ ware virtualization strategy because it runs on VMware, says Opus CTO Brady Wilson.

Another advantage of the technol­ ogy is that it provides less complicated storage, so Opus does not need to have dedicated in-house storage experts.

“It gives us the ability to do hardware the way we want to do hardware, and makes financial sense for us,” Wilson says. As a service provider, Opus is constantly looking for ways to keep costs down so it can pass those savings onto customers, he adds.

A GROWING MARKET Ashish Nadkarni, an analyst at IDC, sees no end in sight for software-de­ fined storage. “In recent times, general purpose computing platforms have become powerful as well as versatile, and suppliers have realized that these platforms work very well in handling storage workloads,” he says.

This eliminates the need for spe­ cialized storage hardware, and all storage functions can be offered via the software layer, “which runs on this commodity general-purpose computing platform,” Nadkarni says.

“In most cases, such platforms have internal storage that is then used for persistent storage.”

Converged storage and softwaredefined storage are interrelated “in the sense that software-defined compute (which we know as server virtualiza­ tion) software-defined networking and software-defined storage can leverage the same hardware abstraction layer via a general-purpose operating sys­ tem,” Nadkarni says.

The move toward converged storage is underway in multiple markets, says Henry Baltazar, an analyst at Forrester Research. “In the high end, the fastest

SDS: A Passing Fad or a Lasting Revolution?

SDS is scalable across commodity servers or thirdparty arrays. It can virtualize all underlying storage into pools and open APIs so that anyone can build the controllers needed to access the storage hardware.”

According to research and market reports, the software-defined datacenter market will grow globally at a CAGR of 97 percent over the next four years. SDS is the need of the hour and not merely hype.”

ABHIJIT POTNIS, Director-Technology Solutions, India and SAARC, EMC

SANTHOSH D’ SOUZA, DirectorSystems Engineer, NetApp Marketing & Services

We don’t think SDS is overhyped. While it is yet to reach a higher level of awareness, it will enable organizations to meet technological demands fuelled by the growth of social, mobile, analytics and cloud.”

We believe that storage hardware must become more intelligent. It should be initiated or automated by events or policies that are defined by the application or server software.”

NEERAJ MATIYANI, Director, Storage Solutions, Dell India

YOGESH SAWANT, Director,

Partner Sales & Field Alliances Organization, Hitachi Data Systems

We are very optimistic about the adoption of what we call ‘applications-engineered storage.’ It is a complete hw/sw stack, offering optimal enterprise efficiency, without increasing headcount for the management.”

SDS—named ‘elastic storage’ by IBM—offers unprecedented performance, infinite scale, and reduces costs up to 90 percent, including reduction in energy costs. SDS will be a game changer.”

AKHIL KAMAT, Brand Leader, Storage, IBM India/South Asia

AMIT MALHOTRA, Head-Systems Business, Oracle India

flash [storage] is flash that is closest to a server’s CPU,” Baltazar says. “For this reason, we would expect to see converged server/storage hardware to run applications.”

In the big data space, platforms such as Hadoop already have converged architectures blending storage and servers, Baltazar says. “No one wants to move hundreds [of terabytes] of data to an application when it would be far easier to run an app closer to the data that needs to be processed,” he says.

At the mainstream midrange space, organizations want tight integration between storage and server manage­ ment. Vendors such as Simplivity and Nutanix are bringing converged sys­ tems to the market, Baltazar says.

The compelling advantages that these software strategies can po­ tentially offer for organizations will continue to fuel growth in the market, experts say. “Provisioning has been a major area of [end-user] dissatisfaction over the years,” Baltazar says. “With software-defined storage, organiza­ tions can automate their provisioning and accelerate their clients’ access to storage resources. I do not equate software-only storage with softwaredefined storage. But I do believe SDS will eventually allow customers to transition to software-based storage running on commodity hardware.”

Storage appliances are still the pre­ ferred product for enterprises, “and any box you purchase today will be in your organization for at least the next three years,” Baltazar says. “A realistic SDS strategy would allow [companies] to blend legacy storage appliances with future software stor­ age products and services.”

As for the future of converged and software-defined storage, “we should see expanded adoption of both of these technologies,” Baltazar says.

With these newer storage strate­ gies, organizations “can decouple hardware and software purchases,” Nadkarni says. “This allows them to seek lower acquisition costs by acquiring hardware from server storage vendors at lower costs than what the vendors sell it for. It also decouples hardware and software upgrades and allows organizations to stretch their asset investments.” 

n FAST TRACK

Snapshot

CSM Technologies

Founded: 1998 Headquarters: Bhubaneswar Key Executives: Lagna Panda, Chief Resource Manager; Pradyut Dash, Program Manager; Shubhangam Sinha, Delivery Manager Revenue 2013-14: Rs 12.58 Crore Revenue 2012-13: Rs 11.15 Crore Employees: 320 Principals: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, HP, Motorola, IBM Key Business Activities: Application Management, Mobility Products and Services, Enterprise Accounts Management, Cloud Computing

Our approach is backed by innovation and simplicity, says Priyadarshi Nanu Pany, CEO, CSM Technologies.

E

XPLORING NEW geog-

raphies, spreading IT awareness, and building a market, where there is none, have been the core strengths of Cybertech Software & Multimedia (CSM) Technologies.

“Many governments in different states are still living in the Stone Age in terms of IT adoption. Once we educate them, they become our clients,” says Priyadarshi Nanu Pany, president and CEO, CSM Technologies.

The Bhubaneswar-based company primarily focuses on e-Governance projects and tries to capture the unexplored markets of India and Africa. An e-Governance project, e-Shishu, executed by CSM for the Orissa government, also won it the Prime Minister’s award for excellence in public administration.

30

Initially, it was difficult for CSM to compete against the established players and thus, it focused on the relatively easier tier-II markets. “We saw an opportunity in e-Governance projects, something the tier-I players don’t readily undertake,” says Nanu.

TECHNOLOGY SPLIT 8%

7%

Annual Maintenance

Infrastructure Management

20%

Managed Services

8%

Onsite Support

37%

Software Development and Training SOURCE: CSM Technologies

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

1%

19%

Project Management

Project Consultancy

P h o t o g r a p h b y D I LU

Website: www.csmpl.com Another turning point for the company was its entry into the domain of mining regulation systems in 2011.

“CSM is one of the best in the business as far as mining regulation systems is considered,” says Nanu.

CSM has repeatedly entered under-developed IT markets, spread awareness about the need for IT, and then built a client base over it.

“The strategy of penetrating difficult geographies, both in terms of accessibility and actually executing projects, has been helping the company to grow steadily,” says Nanu.

However, one of the company’s major challenges is retaining people.

The geographies in which the company operates are not very developed. The sales cycles are very long and it takes almost a year to close a deal, all of which discourage people to stick around, Nanu says.

But, despite that, Nanu is confident of the company’s success. “We adopted a radical thought process and innovated on existing set of practices to make CSM a brand name,” he says.

Currently, CSM Technologies is opening two new wings—one to exclusively handle its products line, and another to collect developmental or impact funds. “With these, we are expecting investments up to $10 million (about Rs 60 crore) which will further the company’s growth model,” says Nanu.  — Mayukh Mukherjee

n FEATURE | SECURITY

T

HE TROVE of data

that’s out there largely includes traditional offline data gathered by credit bureaus and data aggregators, user account data collected by businesses, data from online activity including searches, social media profiles and tweets, mobile app activity, and Web browsing habits.

Add to this relatively new data types that use data about people to predict their future behavior. This would include the data from fitness devices and other “Internet of things,” emerging retail store tracking systems, and location data from your smartphone.

It’s no surprise, then, that people worry about what businesses are doing with all that information.

More often than not, however, the answer is that businesses aren’t doing as much as they could be. Enterprises face regulatory and technical hurdles that make combining the data they have difficult; some data types and uses of consumer data are highly regulated; and companies usually don’t like to share core customer data externally for competitive reasons.

When they do, that data is usually boiled down to basic demographic and interest categories and then aggregated for marketing purposes. If the data is being shared with third parties for the purpose of online advertising, personally identifiable information is usually removed.

TOO MANY SILOS Most businesses can’t even integrate all of the data silos they have cost effectively, much less run sophisticated analytics across all of it or accommodate new data sources, such as the unstructured data streams derived from social media.

businesses interact with consumers will need to change if they are to head off the consumer privacy and trust headaches that have confronted traditional data aggregators and the online behavioral advertising industry.

“Transparency overall will need to increase as these environments become more complex and intertwined,” says Leigh Feldman, chief privacy officer at American Express. The financial and travel services company now has privacy professionals aligned with each business unit. “Privacy will be a competitive differentiator for companies over the next five years,” he says.

DATA

Overload What are companies doing with your personal data? Not as much as you might think—at least not yet.

By Robert L. Mitchell In the online advertising world, the behavioral advertising industry has developed a high level of sophistication and expertise, but most of corporate world—including the manufacturing and consumer products sectors— remains in the early stages of data integration, says Jim Adler, vice president and

chief privacy officer at Metanautix, a firm that specializes in data integration within and across companies. “They’re still trying to understand what they have” and the data flows for all of it, he says.

As those repositories of consumer data continue to slowly, steadily converge, however, the ways in which

REGULATORY MINEFIELD Traditional types of data such as healthcare information and banking records, and some of its uses—like identity verification, insurance underwriting, employment, or assessing creditworthiness—are regulated. But the increasing use of personal data for marketing purposes, gathered offline and online, has fewer regulatory controls. That’s a big data bucket. Inappropriate use of that marketing data— like for hiring decisions—can get a company into hot water with regulators.

Businesses face a jigsaw puzzle of laws that govern certain types of data assets as well as how information maybe used for some types of decisions, says Tony Hadley, senior vice president of government affairs and public policy at Experian. “The overarching regulation of marketing data comes from a mosaic of smaller state and federal laws,” he says, as well as from the standards governing ethical practices put forward by the Direct Marketing Association and other professional groups.

SEPTEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

31

n FEATURE | SECURITY One problem, says Metanautix’s Adler, is that when companies use marketing data about consumers for purposes other than marketing they can get into trouble.

For example, a business that uses information from Facebook or Twitter to make a negative hiring decision— and does not disclose to the applicant that the information was used in that decision—can run afoul of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which governs how data may be used for employment purposes.

“You cannot use marketing data for credit or employment eligibility. There’s a firm firewall between those two uses. If you break it the FTC will come after you,” says Hadley. “And if someone is taking consumer data and mining it in such a way as to be abusive to customers, that’s something the FTC could clean up under its deceptive trade practices.”

USING DATA THE WRONG WAY Businesses need to consider how private the data is to the individual and how perilous to the consumer the outcome might be if the data is divulged in unexpected ways, Adler says. He cites retailer Target’s case of unwittingly sending a mailer targeted at expectant mothers to a pregnant teenager before her father knew about her.

Target used analytics to determine that there was a high probability that the woman was pregnant, and had assigned her to that category.

“They knew which customers were pregnant based on what they were buying,” Adler says. But the retailer failed to think through the implications of sending targeted marketing materials that clearly implied that the customer was pregnant—a sensitive subject that the customer might not be ready for others to know.

It also feels a bit creepy, says Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum. Marketing is about having a relationship with the customer, he says.

“Where it breaks down is when marketers don’t understand the boundaries of those relationships. Here was this very personal experience and the user had no clue that this analysis was happening.”

Marketers need to bring people along rather than let them uncover what may seem like unpleasant facts, he adds. For example, a few years ago Orbitz users were shocked to discover that visitors using a Mac were shown pricier vacations and accommodations than those using a Windows PC. “People were surprised and outraged,” he says, but Orbitz might have avoided the problem had it been more transparent about how the recommendations were made—and why—at the time the user viewed them.

Offline/Online Convergence: It’s Complicated

J

ust a few decades ago businesses knew very little about their customers beyond name, address and what they bought—if they used a credit card. Data aggregators like Acxiom and Experian provided personalized demographic data to marketers—that you are 42 years old, own a truck, like to golf, are married and so on—to help companies better target advertising and marketing to customers and prospects. That offline data was—and still is— culled from public records.

Businesses buy these buckets of consumer demographic data to match up with their own customer records for direct marketing and upselling, and they can buy a prospect list of people assigned to an

32

interest group that presumably will be more likely to buy a given product.

The evolution of online data has led to different practices for gathering data, but with the same objective, says Mike Zaneis, executive vice president and general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry trade association. “Consumers don’t care if you send them relevant ads, but they don’t want you to know their browsing history,” he says. So advertisers use cookies to track online activity of website visitors, and that activity is linked to a cookie ID tied to a specific browser on a specific device.

The offline and digital worlds have been converging

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

for some time, but have very different rules as to how consumer data may be used. “The offline world is all personally identifiable data. The online world is either anonymous or identifiable,” says Barrett Glasgow. Advertising networks track online activity and build interest profiles that link to cookie IDs rather than PII—as required by the code of conduct put forth by the Network Advertising Initiative, an industry trade association.

Combining data from offline and online resources to deliver targeted advertising requires cookie syncing, to ensure that a third-party network does not receive any PII, says Barrett Glasgow.

— Robert L. Mitchell

Similarly, misunderstandings over variable pricing practices online by Staples drew fire, in part because customers were left in the dark as to what the retailer was doing and why. Online businesses don’t selectively raise prices when and where they can get away with it, says Jennifer Barrett Glasgow, chief global privacy officer for data aggregator Acxiom.

And the criteria used for making pricing determinations matter to regulators as well as consumers, says Adler. For example, variable pricing by location might also appear to single out a minority community. “When do price distinctions become price discrimination?” Businesses need to think through that before they roll out technologies in brick-and-mortar stores as well as online.

Once customers have been identified, he says, it will be possible to use digital signatures to present differential pricing based on whether, for example, a customer’s web surfing history shows that they’ve been comparison shopping online.

DATA SECURITY American Express has been a model for transparency, and Amazon.com has been upfront about how it tracks customers to make suggestions about what users might like to buy, Polonetsky says, but many online businesses are far less forthcoming.

“Everyone pays lip service to transparency, but with some [companies] you have to do a lot of detective work to understand what they are really up to.” The future, he says, will belong to the businesses that understands this.

The industry has to figure out how to segment markets accurately and still maintain political correctness. 

Focal Point EVERYTHING ABOUT GREEN IT

BRINGING BACK

GREEN IT

How the dying frenzy about corporate sustainability and green IT can still be revived. By Mary Brandel

R

EMEMBER WHEN

“green computing” was all the rage? Companies competed for green awards, virtualized their datacenters, set up e-waste committees, launched double-sided printing initiatives, and activated power management features on PCs.

Meanwhile, equipment manufacturers strove for Energy Star compliance, hawked their efficiency statistics, and followed guidelines by the EPA, Green Electronics Council and IEEE to be deemed as environment friendly.

Even the consultancies got involved, with the likes of Gartner, Cognizant

Technology Solutions, and Forrester Research, encouraging CIOs and IT organizations to become involved in and even lead their companies’ sustainability programs.

While companies seek IT efficiencies, the chestthumping has died down, and the overall concept of green IT has gotten a little brown around the edges.

“It’s forgotten, but not gone,” says Chris Mines, an analyst at Forrester.

The reasons for the decline in interest, Mines says, are multi-faceted.

One is economic. “Everyone cares about energy efficiency when oil is $150 (about Rs 9,000) a barrel, and no one cares when it’s $50 (about Rs 3,000) a barrel,” he says. Another is political. A few years ago, he says, both Republicans and Democrats supported cap and trade, but today, the political climate has become more negative about efforts to limit carbon emissions. “Even though the evidence of climate change is attracting even more alarm and attention than five or six years ago, the political mechanisms are frozen in terms of putting regulations in place that would force further action on the part of corporations,” Mines says.

As a result, measuring and reporting on carbon emissions has become a “nice-to-have” as opposed to a “must-have.” Even in countries like Australia where regulations have been passed, Mines says, the laws have been watered down or not enforced.

Green IT as an agenda item never reached priority status for CIOs either, Mines says. In fact, most CIOs will expend any

amount of energy if it means meeting business expectations of uptime, response time, and speed of app development and deployment. “These are the metrics that matter for them, as they drive their incentives, bonuses, and job retention,” Mines says.

Even CompTIA retired its Green IT certification on December 31, 2013, explaining that since it was introduced in 2010, “green IT has become embedded in the way companies generally do business,” according to a press release issued by the group. Others beg to differ, including Graeme Philipson, editor of The Green IT Review, who said in a blog post that his own research and observations revealed that “most organizations are struggling with or ignoring” green IT. On the positive side, Mines says, a key selling point for hardware manufacturers continues to be improving their machines’ energy efficiency potential, albeit with less fanfare than five years ago. This is in part because suppliers recognize that efficiency benchmarks provide little in the way of competitive differentiation, he says.

“Users are not basing their purchasing agreements on whether Server X is more efficient than Server Y,” Mines says. “It’s well down the list of criteria, as are how it’s packaged and shipped, where the materials are sourced from, how much waste water is used in manufacturing—no one is eyeballing this carefully.”

All this said, for the IT professional who does still care about green IT, steps can be taken to move the needle on energy conservation and even spark the

SEPTEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

33

n FOCAL POINT | GREEN IT beginning of a corporate sustainability initiative.

KEEP AN EYE ON THE BRIGHT LIGHTS Google, Facebook, Apple— these industry bigwigs are involved with innovative energy sourcing efforts for their datacenters and making measurable progress in realizing efficiencies, Mines says. Google, for instance, has invested in 15 renewable energy companies, showing interest in both wind and solar systems, and has stated a goal of operating on 100 percent renewable energy.

Apple has pledged that its Cupertino, California campus will run on 100 percent renewable energy relying on natural ventilation for 75 percent of the year and with one of the largest global solar arrays for a corporate campus.

Meanwhile, Facebook is building a campus in Menlo Park, California, that will feature a tree-covered rooftop garden, blending in with the hillside and connected to the existing campus via an underground tunnel. “There have been huge steps in the progress of the industry being a responsible participant, if not a leader, in terms of recognizing and remedying their contribution to carbon pollution and resulting climate change,” Mines says.

TEAM WITH A PASSIONATE LEADER Companies that behave in environmentally responsible ways tend to be led by a CEO who is personally passionate about the environment, Mines says.

“When CEOs impose their belief system on the rest of the organization, a set of data starts to develop 34

Apple’s Environmental Report for 2014

A

pple’s latest Environmental Responsibility Report shows that it’s not easy being green, but it’s worthwhile anyway. Among the updates comes the news that 145 of the company’s U.S. retail stores are now powered exclusively by renewable energy, as well as all 21 of the company’s stores in Australia.

While that’s still less than half of the company’s more than 400 retail locations, Apple’s goal is to convert all of them to green energy, though it acknowledges the difficulty in doing so—as the company doesn’t generally own the buildings where its stores are located.

Those energy savings have an impact, though: The company’s bottom-line carbon footprint for energy usage declined 31 percent from fiscal 2011 to 2013, even as its overall consumption of power actually went up by 44 percent.

The extents to which Apple goes to think green are surprisingly deep: The company’s report notes that not only are half the vehicles in its corporate fleet hybrids, but even when Apple employees do travel, they’re provided with hybrid vehicle rentals where available. In order to obviate travel where possible, the company has, of course, installed video teleconferencing equipment.

That’s not the only place that Apple focuses on choosing green alternatives: In its U.S. offices, more than 98 percent of its office supplies use post-consumer recycled content; the janitorial supplies include 100-percent recycled paper; even the standard office chair is up to 95 percent recyclable.

—By Dan Moren

around employee retention, employee satisfaction and employee recruiting, in addition to a lower electricity bill and water bill,” Mines says. But the key is that results stem from belief than the other way around.

SCRUTINIZE YOUR SUPPLIERS Taken as a group, hardware buyers hold more power than regulators and legislators in encouraging suppliers to adhere to environment friendly practices and power-saving benchmarks, Mines says, so it pays to be vocal with suppliers that these attributes matter.

“Their materials, operations, design, manufacturing, packaging—any chance you have to beat up on suppliers is a worthy activity,” Mines says. “They’re

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

always looking to check off a couple more boxes on the purchasing criteria list.”

GET YOUR E-CYCLING ON IT professionals can also launch a grassroots effort to responsibly dispose of obsolete technology.

This can range from negotiating with suppliers to take back old IT equipment, such as routers, servers and disk drives, to educating employees on where they can recycle their cellphones.

HAVE LUNCH WITH THE CFO Corporate sustainability reporting has become mainstream, according to KPMG, with three-quarters of 4,100 companies producing such reports.

Now, however, there is increased interest in requiring companies to integrate their sustainability information with their financial results. That is the goal of the Global Reporting Initiative, the organization that created the most widely used framework for sustainability reporting.

So far, just 1.4 percent of the S&P 500 issue fully integrated financial and sustainability reports, according to the IRRC Institute, including American Electric Power, Clorox, Dow Chemical, Eaton, Ingersoll Rand, Pfizer and Southwest Airlines. However, Europe passed legislation this year requiring companies with more than 500 employees to include sustainability factors—including their environmental, social and economic impacts—in their annual financial reports.

As momentum builds toward integrated reporting, CFOs will likely become increasingly interested and integral in corporate sustainability efforts, Mines says. IT professionals who are aware of this trend can play an important role in providing the data and creating the processes to create such reports. Or at least they can be prepared for when the CFO might one day knock on their door. “Wouldn’t it be great,” Mines says, “to be able to pull out your green IT plan that’s been thought-through and is ready to put into play?”

Which all goes to show that while there are plenty of reasons for cynicism when it comes to green IT, there are just as many areas for passionate IT professionals to engage in to keep green IT alive.

E N I F E RED YOUR PARTNERSHIP

EMC INDIA PARTNER SUMMIT 2014 The EMC India Partner Summit 2014 is a unique platform where we redefine our partnership.

This 3-day residential program is aimed at sharing best practices and providing partners with the opportunity to interact with EMC leaders. We will also share our business roadmap for 2014-15 and felicitate the top partners who contributed to EMC India’s business growth.

September 11-14, 2014 | Taj Umaid Bhavan Palace | Jodhpur Entry by invitation only.

n PLAINSPEAK

YOGESH GUPTA

The Technology Paradox Everyone expected newer technologies to metamorphose into real projects in 2014.

But the reality, of unstable business environments and insatiable competitive scenarios, remains. What is the road ahead?

Yogesh Gupta is executive editor at ChannelWorld. He is a computer engineer from Mumbai University. You can contact him at yogesh_ gupta@idgindia.com 36

T

HE YEAR 2014 took off on a high note for the tech-

nology industry. Big data, cloud, and BYOD were on the minds of CIOs and technology vendors all along. The new kid on the block—SDx (softwaredefined anything and everything)—was the next shining star of the year. Everyone believed the fancy jargons would eventually metamorphose into real projects this time. Industry experts, too, were overly optimistic about the new-age trends during the fag end of 2013. However, the latest forecast report by analyst firm Forrester slashed the global IT spend for 2014 to 3.3 percent from 6.2 percent. Despite spending a mammoth sum of $2.2 trillion, a downgrade of nearly 50 percent is scary.

And it’s still the first half of the year!

Interestingly, the expected adoption of new technologies has not caught the fancy of Indian CIOs—yet. State of the CIO Mid-year Review 2014, a survey with 246 Indian CIOs conducted by CIO Magazine (sister publication of ChannelWorld) in July this year, reflects the true picture.

Big data is clearly an overhyped technology among 26 percent of Indian CIOs. BYOD—a vendor-favorite—is not far behind, with 16 percent of CIOs terming it as overhyped. SDx, which was on almost every CIOs’ roadmap at the start of 2014, seems to have faded out, with a staggering 85 percent of CIOs saying it was not on their priority list.

Still surprised? Reality bites.

Unstable business environments, unpredictable global markets, and insatiable competitive scenarios is a reality—with strong undercurrents. Vendor companies (and many of their partners) continue to be extremely gung-ho about the increased IT spend and customer success stories.

But in the real world, tables have turned, numbers have changed, and priorities have been reshuffled.

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD SEPTEMBER 2014

The stories now seem all but a fairy tale.

What’s causing the great disconnect?

Excessive marketing by vendors and the huge uptake prediction by analysts is evoking a less-than-expected reaction from CIOs. To justify their IT spend, CIOs are being extra cautious, leading to longer decision-making timeframes. The enterprise channel community—the link between technology vendors and CIOs—is also lost in translation.

However, not everything is going downhill. Private clouds and hybrid clouds are becoming a reality across India Inc. The survey indicates that 47 percent of CIOs are using or at least planning to use hybrid cloud in their organizations, as compared to 35 percent last year.

In 2013, almost 52 percent of Indian CIOs were using (or planning to use) the private cloud, whereas this year, the number has fallen down to 37 percent. This indicates that some technologies—with varied speeds—are moving from being overhyped to being mainstream.

Forrester has blamed a weak first half of the year for its low figures, but said the growth should pick up in the remainder of 2014. That’s some respite.

Meanwhile, my advice to enterprises would be to stay invested in skillsets, test the waters with pilots, and look for silver linings on the technology horizon.

And hope for hype to turn into reality. 