CRN India (Vol.1, No.4) July, 2018

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THE POWER OF AI FOR DATA CENTRES

Vol 1. No. 4. July, 2018 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas

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Editor Srikanth RP* Assistant Editor Nivedan Prakash Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Sandhya Michu Mumbai Abhishek Raval, Mohit Rathod Bengaluru Rachana Jha DESIGN National Design Editor Bivash Barua

Srikanth RP, Editor srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Chief Designer Prasad Tate Senior Graphic Designer Rekha Bisht DIGITALTEAM Head of Internet Viraj Mehta Web Developer Dhaval Das Layout Vinayak Mestry Photo Editor Sandeep Patil MARKETING National Head Harit Mohanty Regional Heads Ravi Nair - West Prabhas Jha - North Durgaprasad Talithaya - South Debnarayan Dutta - East Marketing Team Ajanta Sengupta Navneet Negi Aparna Tawde Circulation Mohan Varadkar Scheduling Santosh Lokare PRODUCTION General Manager B R Tipnis Manager Bhadresh Valia

ata centres contain many components (cooling, workloads, servers, storage, networking), and experts believe that AI can help firms unlock huge efficiencies through the ability to constantly learn from past patterns. Google showed the potential of AI in the data centre when it used the Google DeepMind system to significantly improve the power efficiency of its data centre. In a span of just 18 months, the system helped Google reduce a 40 per cent reduction in energy used for cooling and 15 per cent reduction in overall energy. Considering that energy costs account for a majority of a data centre’s overall cost, Google’s example showed that enterprises can significantly reduce their energy related costs using AI. Similarly, Siemens, for example, has joined hands with a company called Vigilent, to jointly provide customers with an AI-based thermal optimisation solution that addresses data centre cooling challenges. Using a combination of IoT and machine learning, the firm's solution collects data from thousands of sensors, which is

later analysed to determine what changes are required to maintain desired temperatures with the least amount of cooling spend using advanced algorithms.

Besides the giants, there are many exciting startups that have built interesting products using AI. Startup, LitBit, for example, has built what it calls 'Dac', the world's first AI powered data centre operator.

Specific to the data centre, the product can detect loose electrical terminations before they cause problems; can help prevent server or network hardware failures, by preemptively detecting the sound of failing power supplies and can even understand precise normal and abnormal operating conditions of equipment based on their precise sound / vibrations patterns.

While these are still early days, the potential is huge, and the supporting ecosystem is ready. With the combination of cloud (for storing and analysing huge amount of data) and IoT (for capturing huge number of data across multiple points in the data center), the potential for automating a large number of critical functions , and proactively preventing data center outages is huge.

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Computer Reseller News® Regd with RNI No. MAHENG/2018/75607.

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Content

14 | Special Focus

32 | Channel Chief

Software-defined data centre emerges as the next big business opportunity for partners

Forcepoint identifies ‘human-centric’ security as a major thrust area

Partners feel the SDDC wave is slowly catching up, which is presently dominated by big service providers or directly managed

by OEMs. However, partners feel that building capabilities and best practices is a prerequisite before tapping into this opportunity

CIO Corner

CXO Speak

22 | The journey of IndusInd Bank on the software defined road Mridul Sharma, EVP & Head Technology, IndusInd Bank

24 | IoT is a novel technology that is susceptible to more than 70,000 known CVEs Keith Martin, Head of Asia Pacific & Corporate Business, F-Secure

26 | Digital: an important contributor for one of the industry’s lowest expense ratio for ICICI Prudential Life V V Balaji, Chief – IT & Operations, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance 6 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in

28 | ‘We have had upwards of 50% year-on-year growth in security services’ Avinash Prasad, Vice President, Managed Security Services, Tata Communications

Ajay Dubey, Senior Channel Manager, Forcepoint

30 | Array Networks to invest $20-50 mn in India Michael Zhao, CEO & President – Array Networks Inc

Channel Chief 34 | ‘We are building our channel for enterprise security’ Parvinder Walia, Director of Sales and Marketing – Asia Pacific and Japan, ESET

Channel Association 36 | IAMCP adds North and East chapter

Cover Story

DELL EMC ACCELERATES PARTNER BUSINESS GROWTH Along with broader offerings and increased incentives, Dell EMC has introduced new programmes to recognise partners and fast-track channel growth ■

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oday, technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality, and Big Data among others are reshaping and transforming every industry. As most of the organisations across the globe expect digital transformation to help evolve business model, the investments in these emerging technologies have gradually become a top strategic priority. Business leaders demand technologies that deliver positive outcomes, such as increased performance and reach, improved productivity, and reduced cost of doing business. It is even imperative for channel partners to understand the significant role that digital transformation plays in enterprise innovation and business disruption.

It is very clear that these changing market dynamics bring a plethora of opportunities for technology vendors, and Dell EMC, as a global tech giant and one of the fastest growing companies of Dell Technologies, sees a huge opportunity in emerging technologies like IoT and other advanced technologies. The company believes that cutting-edge business solutions will be essential to the infrastructure of the digital future, supplying the channel and its

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Nivedan Prakash

customers with the technology they need to make advancements in every corner of the business world and society at large. Moreover, implementing these technologies effectively requires strong technical skills, deep knowledge of the customer’s business and integration capability.

Elucidating further on this approach, Joyce Mullen, President, Global Channel, OEM & IoT Solutions, Dell EMC, says, “We are encouraging partners to dive in with emerging technologies and providing tools and resources, like our new IoT solutions competency, to help them learn quickly.

Many of our partners have built businesses around these capabilities, which means digital disruption is a huge opportunity for our partner community.”

In the current scenario, most of the vendors place partners at the forefront while helping customers embrace digital transformation. At its core, the Dell Technologies business addresses this need and uniquely enables partners with the products, services, financing and programmes to make them successful.

As customers continue to embrace Dell Technologies as their essential infrastructure partner, the contribution

of the entire channel ecosystem has been significant in this journey. This is evident by the fact that Dell Technologies’ global channel is an US$ 43 billion business, wherein the partner community is responsible for over half of Dell Technologies’ revenue and this business is growing fast.

“Our partners have stepped up to build solutions across the Dell Technologies portfolio and are pushing us to improve all the time. The short answer is that we could not have gotten to this point without the skills, commitment and hard work of our partners worldwide,” asserts Mullen.

The global strategy Dell Technologies is investing in new programs, incentives and solutions designed to fast-track its channel partners’ delivery of digital, IT, security and workforce transformations for their customers. In fact, the company’s broader offerings and increased incentives will accelerate business growth of partners worldwide. For instance, the new Dell Technologies Advantage framework for partners will make it easier for channel partners to work across the Dell Technologies family of businesses with engagement, tools and incentives.

While each business will continue to

Dell EMC

have its own independent programme, the new framework’s value-added capabilities and certifications enhance the ability to more easily and efficiently deliver positive business outcomes from across the Dell Technologies portfolio.

Similarly, the Dell EMC Partner Program provides a competitive and lucrative incentive infrastructure, all geared toward driving partner profitability. The basic tenets of this program are to be ‘Simple’, ‘Predictable’, and ‘Profitable’.

Mullen explains, “When you talk about broad offerings, there’s nobody else in the industry with our portfolio’s breadth, from edge to core, to cloud.

This presents a massive opportunity for partners, and we encourage them to sell profitably across the full portfolio.

Partners are selling more lines of businesses than ever before, and we want to see that continue to grow. We saw great success in FY19 Q1 across all major product categories, and we are counting on channel partners to drive additional share gains going forward.”

There are several key ways in which Dell EMC is helping partners accelerate their profitable crossportfolio growth, including: ◗ Improved enablement tools: Knowing that the partners’ time is incredibly valuable, the company is improving tools and streamlining processes so partners can spend less time on processes like deal registration and quoting, and more time helping customers, closing deals and generating profits. ◗ Incentives: Providing incentives to partners who drive growth in key areas like the US$ 14 billion mid-range market. Currently, it is offering incentives around Tech Refreshes, Competitive Swaps and #GetModern proposals to encourage key selling behaviours. ◗ MyRewards: It is an opt-in, pointsbased reward programme for Dell EMC’s solution providers. The new programme is built with significant input from the partners and offers bigger and better promotions that are easier to claim.

Joyce Mullen President,Global Channel,OEM & IoT Solutions, Dell EMC

Talking about the significance of the partner program for Dell EMC India, Anil Sethi, Vice President – Channels, Dell EMC India, points out, “Channel partners, system integrators and distributors have played a critical role in empowering Dell EMC’s customers on their path towards digital transformation. The Dell EMC Partner Program has been instrumental in ensuring profitability and scale for all our partners in India and across the globe. We believe that the partner program will further catalyse our go-tomarket strategy and business growth.

We are committed to become the industry’s most trusted advisor to our customers.”

Even the new Dell EMC Ready Stack Program offers a simplified way to build validated infrastructure stacks based on Dell EMC’s best-of-breed technologies. This program is a channel-only sales initiative aimed at simplifying and expediting how partners group, sell and assemble converged infrastructure stacks based on Dell EMC and VMware data centre technologies. It’s a reference architecture that can be built from any combination of Dell EMC server,

storage and networking. Partners get the ‘do-it-yourself’ benefits, without the risks or complicated deployments.

Mullen highlights, “This program accelerates partner profitability in the new segment of our converged go-tomarket, while also enabling customers to improve their business agility and competitive advantage. This gives our partners confidence that they can offer a program that has true, integrated support from a single vendor, with simple, validated implementation, saving them time and providing a quicker path to revenue.”

These new rewards programme, rebates, and sales enablement tools will accelerate and expand partners’ revenue opportunities. “The opportunities to make money while selling across the Dell Technologies portfolio is nothing short of extraordinary. Investing in our partners is a no-brainer; it drives partner loyalty, sales velocity, and it allows them to reinvest their earnings and continue to grow with us. Seventy per cent of partners earned more rebates and incentives in FY18 than FY17. We want to see this number continue to rise,” comments Mullen.

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Cover Story

badging, which gives partners bragging rights, and are going to reward partners for doing more business around these companies.

Titanium Black partners represent the uppermost echelon of companies working closely with Dell Technologies. This year, Swisscom and Itochu have achieved Titanium Black status, joining Atea, Bechtle, CDW, Computacenter, FusionStorm, Insight, SHI and WWT,” she adds.

The APJ story

Tian Beng Ng Senior Vice President & General Manager,Channels, Asia Pacific & Japan,Dell EMC

By now it is clear that the Dell EMC Partner Program allows partners to be lucratively rewarded when transacting Dell and Dell EMC products, solutions and services. Moreover, the Dell Technologies Advantage Partner Framework will also complement the core of the Dell EMC Partner Program and will help partners tap into the power of the Dell Technologies’ family of brands – including Dell, Dell EMC, VMware, SecureWorks, Pivotal, RSA and Virtustream.

“These companies will still have

their own programs, but we are going to make it easier to do business across the family and we are going to back that up with industry recognised credentials. The benefits of this collaborative effort will be exciting for partners. For example, partners who are Titanium Black accredited in the Dell EMC Partner Program, will also hold their Titanium Black status in other programs. We will align competencies and credentials so partners only have to take relevant trainings one time. We are introducing

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THE OPPORTUNITYFOR PROFITABILITYIS ACORNERSTONE OFTHE DELLEMC PARTNER PROGRAM AWARDING ELIGIBLE PARTNERS WITH LUCRATIVE REBATES.BASE REBATES ARE PAID BACKTO DOLLAR ONE AND GROWTH REBATES REWARD PARTNERS WHO SUCCESSFULLYGROWTHEIR RESPECTIVE DELLEMC LINES OFBUSINESS OVER TIME.THERE IS ASCOPE FOR PARTNERS WHO ATTACH SERVICES TO EXPAND INTO NEWLINES OFBUSINESS TO EARN ADDITIONALREBATES ON TOP OFTHE BASE AND GROWTH REBATES. RAUNAQ SINGH, CEO & DIRECTOR,TARGUS TECHNOLOGIES

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In the Asia Pacific and Japan region, Dell EMC has observed that India’s rate of adoption in emerging technologies is increasing rapidly, with the entire region playing a significant role in driving much of the digital adoption. There is a real push for businesses to accelerate their digital transformation plans with emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality, and cloud computing, in order to remain competitive.

Through one of its recent research, ‘Realising 2030: A Divided Vision of the Future’, the company has also found out that a majority of businesses in the region are working towards transforming their businesses with technology at its core. More than 8 in 10 APJ leaders aim to meet five-year targets in crucial areas, such as using AI to pre-empt customer demands; delivering hyper-connected customer experiences through VR; using R&D to drive their entire organisation forward; completing their transition to a software-defined business and delivering their product offering as a service. Business leaders are divided in their planning and application of technologies, yet agree that they will need to transform digitally.

Sensing this, Dell EMC is well ahead in preparing its India partners as well as those from other markets in this region, so that they can solve their customers’ complex digital challenges through these emerging technologies.

Tian Beng Ng, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Channels, Asia Pacific and Japan, Dell EMC, opines, “It is the right time for new-age channel

Dell EMC

partner companies to invest in technologies that will help businesses transform themselves digitally. The transformation needs to happen in businesses across the three key pillars – IT, workforce and security. The growth in the focus on IT infrastructure will require channel partners to also act as service providers, thereby requiring them to become a holistic solutions provider. At Dell EMC, we want our partners to grow the top line and the bottom line; we want them to sell more of the portfolio. If an erstwhile

DELL EMC ANNOUNCES REFINEMENTS TO PARTNER PROGRAMME IN RESPONSE TO PARTNER FEEDBACK ◗ Driving consistency and simplicity: The 2018 Partner Programme will continue with three tiers, Gold Platinum, Titanium, and an elite Titanium Black status, with annual tier eligibility, and two paths to profit with simplified training ◗ Increased profitability with refined rebates and a simpler rebate structure. For example, flexible pay options to all partner types including OEMs, distributors and global alliances ◗ Training requirements that are simplified and unified, with the rollout of eight Solutions Competencies in 2018, starting with software defined infrastructure, hybrid cloud, and connected workforce competencies in Q1

◗ Changes to the Marketing Development Fund (MDF), simplifying the ability to track future activities or planning requests, and decreasing MDF administration ◗ A focus on industry verticals that offer the largest opportunity for partner growth: Healthcare and life sciences, energy (oil and gas, utilities), video surveillance, and SLED (State and Local Government, Education).

In the next year, Dell EMC sees significant opportunity in helping partners build solutions in some trending areas including IoT, AR/IR and machine learning

Anil Sethi , Vice President – Channels, Dell EMC India

partner was selling PCs or servers without our services, we gave them the option to start attaching our services.”

In terms of broadening the partners’ capabilities and helping them grow faster, the company is constantly working towards a comprehensive strategy aimed at delivering results for its partners and customers. While Dell EMC is laser-focused on driving profitable growth, it is also focused on storage and data protection this year.

The partner programme now sees several enhancements along with support for channel that can help them deliver higher growth rates.

“We have a team called ‘Emerging Channels’ that looks to bring new partners into the fold while we build and sustain the relationships we have with existing partners in the program.

We want partners to work with us over the long term and we want to equip them with the skills, capabilities and relationships to stay competitive in the market. This is where a comprehensive training and certification program for channel partners steps in. Our training modules are not just for external stakeholders, but also for internal teams. We also have specialised

resources that help our customers configure faster and reduce go-tomarket time. Additionally, our Smart Pricing concept helps customers save more time with less processes to raise quotes. We have specialised teams in all the core areas, be it storage, compute and networking,” explains Beng.

In terms of the India market, currently, close to 65 per cent of the business comes from the channel and rest is direct. Dell EMC has over 4,000 registered partners in India and over 40 strategic partners. Channel partners are an important part of the Dell EMC strategy, currently responsible for about 45 per cent of the company’s revenues in India.

“Globally, we have announced an investment of US$ 150 million for building our channel programs. India is one of the most important geographies for us and we will be investing in developing our partners here and help them increase their profitability,” adds Sethi.

Building competencies Dell EMC understands the opportunities for partners around services and emerging technologies,

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Cover Story

including IoT. To that end, the company will begin introducing new Solutions Competency offerings in 2018. Building on the initial competencies introduced last year, Dell EMC’s channel partners will now have access to four new Solutions Competencies in the second half of the year.

Available now is the new IoT Solution Competency. Others to be added throughout the year will include high performance computing, data analytics, business applications, and security. In addition to the new Solutions Competencies, Dell EMC will also expand services deployment competencies, which enable partners to grow faster and increase revenue. In the last year, the partners who have leveraged these deployment competencies have seen a two-fold increase in their average deal size.

“The Dell EMC partner program is structured in such a way that by completing competencies, partners can benefit from increased sales due to greater expertise with Dell EMC products and solutions. Additionally, as partners complete more competencies, they will have the opportunity to progress to higher program tiers and receive greater rewards along the way,” says Beng.

As far as the domestic market is concerned, training and building capabilities of partners will be the core focus of Dell EMC India. For reducing the go-to-market time for customers, it has specialised resources that can help partners to configure faster.

“We have specialised teams in all the core areas, be it storage, compute, network followed by the Smart Pricing concept. We also have an Insight Engine that does a great job. Through our MDF, partners are now involved in the demand generation exercise.

Instead of passing leads to them, we provide them with funds and want them to provide returns on investment here. It’s all about execution now, after having put in place the strategy along with our channel partners,” comments Sethi.

Measuring partners’ success Partners’ success is very critical to

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Dell EMC

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DELLEMC'S NEWPARTNER PROGRAM IS VERYATTRACTIVE AND INCENTIVIZES PARTNERS ALONG WITH SALES AND PRESALES TEAM TOO HANDSOMELY SPECIALLYPOSITIONING IN NEWER ACCOUNTS OR NEWER PRODUCTS IN EXISTING ACCOUNTS. VARIOUS TRAINING’S ARE INITIATED WITHOUTANYADDITIONAL CHARGES AND ONE CAN GET BROWNIE POINTS FOR INCREASE IN TECH COMPETENCYBYVIRTUE OFADDED INCENTIVES. DEEPAKJADHAV, DIRECTOR,VDA INFOSOLUTIONS

Dell Technologies. The company measures that success in a number of ways – revenue, incentives, partner feedback, and more. By all accounts, last year, the company’s partners were incredibly successful. In FY’18, it saw 12 per cent revenue growth year-onyear, 70 per cent of partners earned more Dell EMC incentives year-on-year, and their partner net promoter scores were something to be very proud of.

Perhaps the most important way the company measures its partners’ success is by listening to what they have to say. Additionally, the company hosts regular Partner Advisory Boards, conducts surveys and always welcomes feedback in any form.

Mullen points out, “We have a comprehensive award and recognition program to acknowledge the great work done by our partners. We handed out ‘Partner of the Year’ awards at Global Partner Summit last month and recognised many of our top partners in our annual President’s Circle contest.

One of my favourite awards is the

‘Partner Services Quality Award’. What I like about this reward is that it is based on our valued customers’ input and recognises partners for their outstanding delivery performance.”

The way forward The company’s goal is to become the industry’s best channel provider, in the eyes of its partners. As it witnessed a phenomenal first year with its partner community under the unified partner programme, it aims to continue improving every single day.

“We have an US$ 3 trillion market opportunity ahead of us. It’s an amazing opportunity for us to grow together. We expect partners to continue grow and bring in new customers. Partners have amazing relationships with their customers – those relationships and deep customer knowledge help us broaden our footprint into other constituents we might not otherwise reach. It’s a winwin for the customer, partner and for Dell Technologies,” asserts Mullen.

Meanwhile, Beng is of the opinion that in this digital disruption era, enterprises are struggling with skills gap and a lack of employee buy-in and business leaders are unsure whether digital transformation will free-up time or bring about more job satisfaction.

This ambiguity makes it hard for leaders to plan for the future. “This is where I see more and more partners looked upon to not just sell products, but to support in establishing what that vision for the future would be. The channel is moving towards more solutions-oriented selling and really helping customers transform their entire businesses,” informs Beng.

Even Sethi is of the view that with cloud getting matured as a technology and becoming a stable revenue stream for customers, the traditional way of buying IT infra will change and the channel partners need to shift gears by adding incremental value to the customers. “As we refine the program to make sure we and our partners capitalize on the opportunity in emerging technologies, we look forward to have strong and productive relationships,” he concludes.

Special Focus

Data Centre

SOFTWARE-DEFINED DATA CENTRE EMERGES AS THE NEXT BIG BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTNERS Partners feel the SDDC wave is slowly catching up, which is presently dominated by big service providers or directly managed by OEMs. However, partners feel that building capabilities and best practices is a prerequisite before tapping into this opportunity â–

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oftware-defined data centre (SDDC) is the most talked about term among enterprises today. With factors like mobility, cloud and digitalled organisations, SDDC is going to

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Sandhya Michu

decide the future of data centres.

This evolution of IT infrastructure and architecture represents a complete paradigm shift from today’s standard operating procedures for architecture and provisioning IT

services. Segments like telecommunications, retail, large financial services, healthcare organisations, utilities, and communications have a huge focus on SDDC.

Special Focus

WHEN CONSIDERING NEW INNOVATIONS AROUND IOT SENSOR INTEGRATION, PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING, OR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, OUR CUSTOMERS ARE EXCITED BYTHE POSSIBILITIES OFTHE SDDC.

AT COMPAREX ,WE HELP ORGANISATIONS TRANSITION FROM A TRADITIONAL DATA CENTRE TO SDDC WITH RIGHT LICENSING,DEPLOYMENT, AUTOMATION,AND ONGOING MANAGEMENT

Gunjana Shah,

Navin Kapur,

Chief Marketing Officer, Insight Business Machine

Executive Vice President, Asia, Comparex

Virtualisation paving way to SDDC For solution providers, it is absolutely necessary to understand its impact, potential risks and expected benefits before they embark on their journey of implementing SDDC. Gradually, partners are exploring the hidden opportunities behind the SDDC environment and developing new practices around software-defined networks (SDN), software-defined storage (SDS) and SDDC. Partners who have long served the enterprise storage market should be well positioned to capitalise on the software-defined model by leveraging the technical expertise, resources and customer relationship.

Analysts predict the SDDC market will grow from US$ 21.78 billion in 2015 to US$ 77.18 billion in 2020, with an estimated CAGR of 29 per cent.

That’s a remarkable growth and can be appealing to the hardware-based partners.

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“The software-defined environment is most definitely the coming wave. With cloud services touted to be a major play riding on data centres in India, the channel's role has crossed over from being a sales enabler to becoming IT transformation agent. With digital transformation disrupting the way customers have traditionally purchased, provisioned and managed networking, storage, the data centre is undergoing a major change.

Thereby, as a service provider, we are evolving to meet the needs of the customer,” informs Prarthana Gupta, CEO, Cache Technologies.

“As customers are concerned about RoI with the technology refresh, we push for SDDC because they minimise the number of moving parts in an IT environment. In the past, managing private clouds meant provisioning the network, compute resources, storage, security, across numerous vendors and API frameworks. SDDC provides

a pre-integrated model for those resources, and it enables reliable automation, orchestration and management under one, common stack. This model is more suitable for large enterprises,” she adds.

“Given our history of helping customers with enterprise-grade virtualisation, many of our customers are now looking at software-defined data centre architectures as the next step for their innovation initiatives.

When considering new innovations around IoT sensor integration, process re-engineering, or business intelligence, our customers are excited by the possibilities of the software-defined data centre, and we’re getting our business practices tuned to help them to reduce the workloads for their businesses," shares Gunjana Shah, Chief Marketing Officer, Insight Business Machine.

He also highlighted that in a large setup where a customer has 5,00010,000 data points, it makes more sense to take software-driven approach. Whereas, mid-sized customers are looking for more hyperconverged or hyper-flex solution which is a combination of hardware and software. Insight Business Machine has seen close to 20-30 of its mid-sized customers looking for ‘miniature’ version of SDDC in the form of hyper-converged.

Typically large organisations like National Stock Exchange, which are largely serviced by big players like Dimension Data, are softwaredefined. Sankarson Banerjee, Chief Technology Officer, Projects, for National Stock Exchange of India, where he manages transformational projects for one of the world’s largest stock exchanges, says, “At NSE, today most of our data centres are softwaredefined. In a hardware-based data centre, it invariably means overprovisioning, which creates idle capacity and wasted resources in case of a greater need tomorrow. At NSE, all infrastructure is virtualised and delivered as a service, with the control entirely automated by software. To fully realise the potential

Data Centre

BIGGER OPPORTUNITIES LIE IN THE PHARMA SECTOR FOR US: K V JAGANNATH K V Jagannath, MD & CEO, Choice Solutions explains the key trends in data centre space, the company’s key offerings, and the focus on building capabilities around emerging technologies

What are your key offerings around data centre, and what's the growth you witness from the data centre business?

We work extensively in the data centre space – starting right from understanding the customer, we are into designing and managing the data centre, project management; we provide end-to-end customer solutions, providing customers a choice of models offered by us. There are a few customers who would like us to design the form; some customers have their own vendors and they feel they are more comfortable in designing, so we would design and hand over things.

Same way some customers would want us to build; in this case, someone would have created a solution and we would only build it.

Now we are more focused on consulting than building and operating. These are our key offerings around data centres.

What are the top trends in the data centre segment; what are the key drivers of growth?

According to me, cloud has disrupted the entire data centre

business. Today most of the data centre players are building up SMEs. We all have gone ahead in third party data centre and set it up. We used to have data centre in the office, but we shut it down as it is cheaper to give it to third party as someone is needed to manage it and all, and the cost of outsourcing was cheaper than doing it yourself. In large enterprises, the role of small players like us has reduced. Eearlier we used to build a lot of integrated data centres, but today they are built by large players, as financial capabilities of these data centres can be between ` 50-100 crore.Thus for a small player, opportunities have reduced in terms of data centre business unless it’s the government business. Many of the private sector organisations have moved to third party data centres.

Due to this, most of the third party apps hosted on data centre would grow a lot in the coming years.

Presently, when it comes to data centres, more content is not on-site, but it is off-site. Secondly, data centres are coming into play in many different government organisations, where data cannot be shared outside. For instance, the kind of data centre built by the Government of India for Aadhaar is amazing. In terms of data centres, today the bigger opportunity are in the pharma sector for companies like us; and wherever the company has its own IP and it doesn't want the data centre to move away.

What are the opportunities for your firm in emerging areas within the data centre space?

In the last two years, we have been approaching the market in a very different way. We have to find the thing for us, and we are trying to

do that in terms of managing data centres. We have created our own Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

Traditionally if you look at it, it has been extraordinarily strong and powers the most. We are creating our own IoT solutions which would empower customers to manage it more efficiently and more effectively, at a less cost. Instead of going into the server, or the security space, all these space – which are becoming a niche areas now – we started to contribute to the data centre now in designing and managing the operations.

How have you evolved your team's techical skills to adapt to a software-defined environment?

If the top management defines all the things and starts working with them, then the people would follow you. Also my other partners who used to work in the US, have started to participate in Indian operations.

They have a global exposure and they are contributing a lot in making the structures while working with the teams.

Please provide specific examples where softwaredefined data centre (SDDC) has made a big impact on the services deployed?

There are many who are doing well in the manufacturing and financial services. There are huge opportunities to follow in the healthcare sector. In terms of what is beyond SDDC, a lot of softwares and applications are getting developed in and around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, thereby enabling the data centre to be trained to make decisions on its own.

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Special Focus

of the software-defined data centre, all infrastructure disciplines must, therefore, be virtualised, and put under automated control. This creates a separate, more strategic motivation for software-defined storage. Clearly, the hardware driven data centre in the large setup is well on its way to becoming an IT relic.”

Similarly, for Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), when it comes to IT infrastructure of the data centre, the overall architecture is hosted in a dedicated area in four data centres – two bigger and two smaller data centres. All the system and software and data is securely based on industry standards and government guidelines. The overall architecture of the data centre is designed for no data loss. In a typical arrangement, there will be one data centre and a disaster recovery (DR) centre at a different place. Sharing his views, Nitin Mishra, EVP (Technical), GSTN, says, “The software-defined everything is rapidly becoming the new normal.

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) facilitates moving to SDDC architecture as gradually or as quickly as a company is willing to pursue the transition.”

With the growing data and faster turnout of the services, the data centre market is poised to grow.

Areas like DRaaS, storage and backup as a service, cloud, analytics and software-defined everything are on a high tide and partners can play an active role.

In the view of Navin Kapur – Executive Vice President, Asia at Comparex, the growing need for hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), BYOD, software-defined networking, multi-tenancy in data centre and flash storage, are largely the factors which are forcing enterprises to redefine their data centre. “At Comparex we help organisations transition from a traditional data centre to SDCC with right licensing, deployment, automation and ongoing management,” says Kapur.

Gupta asserts, “It is very pertinent for partners to maintain openness to

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AS CUSTOMERS ARE CONCERNED ABOUT ROI WITH THE TECHNOLOGY REFRESH,WE PUSH FOR SDDC BECAUSE THEY MINIMISE THE NUMBER OF MOVING PARTS IN AN IT ENVIRONMENT Prarthana Gupta CEO, Cache Technologies

emerging technologies. Flexibility is important in the software space. This is due to the rapid evolution of software technology; consider for example, how quickly cloud-based applications and the Internet of Things (IoT) are changing the requirements within the data centre.

Flexibility is also important to your customers’ environments. IT organisations are typically quite heterogeneous, and you need the ability to work with diverse applications and systems from numerous software vendors.”

Jay Sengupta, AVP – Sales, Infrastructure Solutions, PC Solutions shares that software-defined data centre, though as of today sounds pretty futuristic, a lot of CIOs of PC Solutions' enterprise customers have started discussion around the same.

While this sounds futuristic, this evolution of IT infrastructure and architecture represents a complete paradigm shift from today’s standard operating procedures for architecting and provisioning IT services. He says,

“Some trends are revolutionary and others evolutionary in nature.

Organisations have accepted it, are getting aligned with it and are trying to make changes to reap its benefits.

There has been a key point that the concept itself doesn’t address unless specifically asked for. SDDC doesn’t lay down any base structure for application awareness and its security detail – that someone building a SDDC can build on. Whilst there is a whole lot available on how will the infrastructure become nonbothered about entity, SDDC layer’s application level visibility still remains a mystery. It’s true that we might have software defined infrastructure with us as of today, but it’s important to get our applications ready for the same. PC Solutions, being partner of all the leading IT infrastructure OEMs, is better placed in order to take this concept to our customers. We internally have formed a core team of sales and pre-sales people certified on different technologies to take this solution to the customer.”

An eye for services business Software-defined data centres enable software-defined managed services. As customers want easy ways to model, deploy, and monitor applications in the cloud, with fewer numbers of the workforce on top of that using analytics to help identify cost-saving opportunities and define best practices, most companies in India are slowly but steadily moving their on-premise workloads to the data centre; riding on this trend, the need for technology experts will be in demand.

Shah feels that cloud migration, integration, security, compliance and automation are eminent challenges mainly caused due to an oversight by organisations moving to the cloud.

Hence channel partners can create opportunities out of these challenges and increase their wallet share by advising and aligning IT with business objectives.

PC Solutions recently helped Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in

Data Centre

LOCAL DATA CENTRE PROVIDERS BET FOR A BIG OPPORTUNITY

T

he recent notification by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ordering banks and financial institutions to store all data domestically instead of outsourcing the job to a third-party data centre, may have put payment companies in a quandary.

However, on the positive side is this has brought cheer to local data centre players. With data needing to reside within the country, data centre providers see an opportunity to increase their capacities and expand. Since everything must reside within the country, data centre providers will have to re-assess their current business models and create more delivery centres in India for data centre applications or operation services.

Sharing his perspective on the recent guidelines, KN Murali, Head – Solutions, Dimension Data India, a leading data centre service provider, says, “The regulation implies that all the application workloads and the underlying data must reside within the data centre premise. This basically translates into the fact that data centres will have to increase their capacity to offer workload deliveries within the country. Last, but not the least, the backup and disaster recovery segment is another huge area of opportunity for data centre providers.

Data security is a major focus of the government’s Digital India initiative, which aims to secure access to electronic services and internet connectivity across India.

The dramatic increase in data being generated by financial institutions has had a significant impact on the infrastructure that is required to support such proliferation. This, combined with the fact that most banks have started embarking on a transformative digital journey, has increased substantially the urgency to transform their technology infrastructure. This means banks now need to transform their infrastructure,

setting up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Delhi. Explaining the factor driving the SDDC and how his company is meeting the need of customers, Devendra Taneja, Founder and CEO, PC Solutions, states, “For an SMB player, it is crucial to get a place where he can drive down or walk across and see what he wants to

operations and even the way they construct commercial constructs in order to exploit the opportunity that the digital journey they are taking and the data being generated in the process presents them.

“As an ICT company, we are helping banks to transform their infrastructure into one that supports a hybrid IT environment that brings together both private and public clouds. We are helping banks to redesign their networks and data centres into one that is more agile, flexible and scalable,” says Murali.

Equally important, this transformation needs to be underpinned by a security transformation. Security needs to be embedded in every single layer of the IT infrastructure to ensure a seamless security operation that provides real-time response capabilities to mitigate any threat instantaneously, he points out.

Dimension Data recently helped to automate the network of a bank in India, thereby enabling the bank to roll out new projects across thousands of their branches in less than five hours. The same thing took a week before the automation. Another data centre company is looking to expand its reach in coming times. Nitin Mishra, Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer of Netmagic (an NTT Communications company) says, “We have been working towards increasing our data centre footprint in the last couple of years. Two new data centres will come up in Bengaluru and Mumbai.”

The Bengaluru centre will come upon a 250,000 square feet space and the one in Mumbai on a 300,000 square feet area. "With our multi-cloud orchestration portal, we can deploy and manage multiple cloud platforms. Apart from this, we also have a strong security stance, stronger than what a customer can afford in his own environment – something that is of paramount importance for the BFSI sector," he added.

implement, because his investment is limited. If he has more facilitation and more of his doubts are set to rest in peace, the implementation decision would happen faster. Similarly, newage companies are mostly run by young IT-savvy entrepreneurs who do their own research before implementing new technologies.

However, such CoEs offer them the infrastructure to try out new technologies in their own simulated environment and get their own doubts cleared before implementing these technologies.”

Mastering the delivery model Conversely, by deploying SDDC on

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in I 19

Special Focus

HCI appliances, customers have the flexibility to buy storage, network and compute resources based solely on the current needs. The extra capacity required today can be added quickly and easily if and when actually there's a need in the future, allowing for payas-you-grow spending. Hence, it is critical for a partner and his pre-sales team to offer multiple delivery models suiting his business needs at the time of understanding the IT need of the customer.

“The multi-tenant delivery platform will be worked as a value addition and can also eliminate the need for complex integration scenarios, since all applications can run in the same environment,” Gupta explains.

Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services sees several benefits by taking the software-defined approach. Suresh A Shan, Head – Innovation & Future Technology Business Information & Technology Solutions (BITS), informs, “We don’t have to spend significant money on hardware, facilities, utilities and other aspects of operations. With traditional computing, we can spend millions before it gets any value from investment in the data centre. With SDDC, our subsidiary companies had reduced the size of their own data centres – or eliminated our extra data centre footprint altogether. The consolidation of information and infrastructure has a major reduction of the number of servers, the software cost, and the number of staff had significantly reduced IT costs without impacting our internal IT capabilities.”

With a hardware-driven data centre, the operational costs (OpEx) can be sky-high; it has been found that a software-defined data centre can give organisations a streamlined and automated data centre that can lower costs by as much as 56 per cent.

“Powerful management and orchestration softwares automate many common admin tasks, freeing up IT professionals for more important work. Automation, combined with end-to-end visibility,

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ATNSE,TODAYMOSTOFOUR DATACENTRES ARE SOFTWARE-DEFINED.IN A HARDWARE-BASED DATA CENTRE,ITINVARIABLY MEANS OVER-PROVISIONING, WHICH CREATES IDLE CAPACITYAND WASTED RESOURCES IN CASE OFA GREATER NEED TOMORROW. Sankarson Banerjee, Chief Technology Officer, Projects, National Stock Exchange

allows enterprises to maintain optimal data centre operations, keeping systems running smoothly while responding rapidly to the changing IT needs. Compared to our early days of services, with software approach, we have reduced our workforce at customers' sites by 20 per cent, which means that we can service more customers at the same time. The only drawback is that hiring and retaining of these IT professionals mean more investment for partners,” opines Shah.

Adding to it, Kapur says, “We see a huge opportunity in SDDC and DevOps business, both from sales and services point of view. Moreover, it has helped us in deep study of interdepartment, co-working with different OEMs. Functions application flow and budget is necessary for a

successful transition of the customer.

For example, one of our BFSI customers, which implemented SDDC has registered 27 per cent optimised IT budget and 31 per cent increase in productivity.”

There are several challenges in mainstream adoption of SDDC that the industry needs to overcome.

Unlike startups, large data organisations like NSE and Mahindra believe that SDDC stack needs a mechanism to identify legacy infrastructure, physical infrastructure and intuitively create a controlled environment to integrate them.

Usually, an enterprise data centre has different infrastructure maturity standards which makes it more difficult. Moreover, there is a possibility of vendor lock-in due to converged infrastructure and products from OEM vendors. SDDC needs an all-inclusive management and monitoring tool as well as building management systems, a tightly-coupled automation and orchestration solution.

“In a software-defined environment, IT becomes simplified through open standards, as well as responsive to shifting requirements and adaptive through policy-based automation. Such an environment is developed by automating infrastructure across server compute, storage, and networking resources,” says Mishra of GSTN.

Management and security: a new bet There still remains one of the most important aspects of operating a data centre – management. The traditional data centre used SNMP-based managed objects. Those systems are still in use, but data centre management is evolving too, along with device management and the FCAPS network management model, analytics, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies.

Super-convergence makes it easier to see everything in a single pane. CIOs need to keep up with advances in IT management as well as other areas of the data centre.

Data Centre

INSPIRA'S DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS ALLOW CUSTOMERS TO SECURE, MONITOR, ORCHESTRATE, AND CONNECT NETWORK

T

oday’s data centres are highly virtualised and span multiple geographies and clouds. You need the ability to apply consistent policies and operations across your network and manage your resources as a single, cohesive infrastructure.

You need to orchestrate the policies for your workloads wherever they’re running and control your network end-toend.

Manoj Kanodia, CEO, Inspira Enterprise India, shares, “Our data centre solutions allow you to secure, monitor, orchestrate, and connect your network. They use a common management system and a single open orchestration platform, helping you manage the complexity of operating in multiple, heterogeneous environments. Our multi-cloud migration framework gives you a methodsdriven approach using multi-cloud ready solutions that let you map your own path.”

The company's solutions help to make data centre network simple to run, secure, automated, and multicloud ready in the following ways: Simple: Inspira's Professional Services team provides

For partners, understanding of security should be more strategic, making it an integral part of their data centre transformation strategy and roadmap. “Choosing a solution that can safeguard hybrid cloud workloads, while preserving the benefits of the underlying SDDC infrastructure is critical. This way partners can sustain or improve their customer's security posture in the hybrid cloud without negating the virtues of operational efficiency, agility and performance, which prompted the decision to invest in SDDC in the first place,” narrates Shah.

For many organisations, the path to SDDC is not clear. There is a

additional expertise to simplify data centre operations.

Secure: The company takes an embedded security approach that leverages the entire network and ecosystem to protect the most critical assets.

Inspira offers extensive security and micro-segmentation solutions through physical and virtual security devices and consistent policy enforcement.

You can define and manage policies from a central location to efficiently contain and alleviate threats.

Automated: A common automation framework helps you accelerate service deployment. Inspira’s shared framework solutions provide the capabilities and tools you need to automate networking and security policy and operations over the entire life cycle.

Multicloud-ready: The solutions are open and engineered with standards-based technologies, such as IPCLOS, EVPN-VXLAN, for heterogeneous environments.

You can control and manage your workloads on-premises and in the cloud, whether they run on virtual machines, containers, or bare metal servers. And your entire infrastructure is intent-driven from the ground up.

tremendous number of choices and competing, emerging technologies.

Hence, for a partner, while developing a strategy for evolving to SDDC, it is important to understand his own environments and develop a plan that meets the needs. In addition to technological issues, there will also be cultural challenges in addressing silos that have been built up in data centres.

On a hindsight, Kapur believes, there are benefits like higher efficiency and lower costs, application provisioning in minutes. The right availability and security for every application and any workload delivered anywhere can be possible with the SDDC

environment.

Lastly, in data centre, the lines between hardware and software have been blurred; these are closely interlinked choices that customers make when moving to a data centre.

If you have a line of business in any of the enterprise platforms like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft products or technology areas like networking, storage, partners can play a pivotal role in working with the end customer as they make choices of data centre solutions and services.

This is definitely a learning curve and they can play a part in virtual alliance team that helps partners leverage the sales and tech capabilities.

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CIO Corner

THE JOURNEY OF INDUSIND BANK ON THE SOFTWARE DEFINED ROAD IndusInd Bank has made its infrastructure software-defined, enabling it to launch any service which can be delivered with unlimited demand spikes and still provide smooth customer experience

By Abhishek Raval

A

s a bank operating in a highly competitive sector, IndusInd Bank leverages technology to the optimum, and makes efforts to ensure that its IT infrastructure is highly flexible to meet dynamic market demands. In line with this objective, the bank has made its infrastructure software defined, enabling it to launch any service, which can be delivered with unlimited demand spikes and still provide smooth customer experience.

The services are backed with unlimited capacities whereas hitherto, the infrastructure was limited with a certain headroom provided, but it was restricted. “In the software defined model, the capacities are unlimited, in the sense that, there are caps in terms of upper limit on what are the actual computing sources that are available on-premise, but it can be burst onto the cloud,” explains Mridul Sharma - EVP & Head Technology - IndusInd Bank.

The software-defined data centre has enabled IndusInd Bank to launch an aggregator app, which consolidates

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the frequently used apps by the retail customers. It provides the ease to operate from a single app for different use cases like food, travel, e-commerce, etc. The payment option has been integrated in the app itself. The thought process behind launching this app is to become useful to the customer in his daily requirements and how banking can be included in everyday activities.

Within the same banking aggregator app, multiple services can be accessed including a number of bill payment options. “Our key differentiator is that we provide offers available for specific services on the IndusInd aggregator app, which might not be available on the parent platform,” says Sharma. For example, the offers on Ola cabs available on the IndusInd aggregator app might not be available on the Ola app. The customer can compare the available offers on different platforms and pick the best one from a single app itself rather than separately visiting each app. This provides stickiness for the app in the customer's mind. “We

have recorded three lakh transactions in April 2018, and the m-o-m growth has been 15-20 per cent. The total number of active customers on the app is close to 90,000. The total Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) transacted on the app in April has surpassed 5.5 crore. Forty per cent of the customers are repeat transactors,” informs Sharma. API makes such apps possible.

It makes the web of integrations a reality without any complex technology architecture. API is also scalable and provides superior customer experience.

The RoI is measured by the total engagement numbers. The more customers and repeat customers on the platform, the more the app is moving towards justifying the investments made on it. The number of the mobile banking users has also grown exponentially. In the last three years, the number has jumped from 1 lakh to 10 lakh. This speaks for itself on the RoI front.

The journey The journey towards a software-

IndusInd Bank

defined data centre was taken about an year-and-a-half ago. It also slashes the time-to-market, by faster infrastructure provisioning times. It completely changes how the bank allocates resources; for example, if a certain concept has to be tested out and requires resources, the relevant team cannot be asked to wait for a month or two. By that time, the idea is gone. The software enabled infrastructure can allow provisioning in a few hours. “The journey began with doing a part PoC of 20 hosts out of the 100 virtual hosts, which are running in the physical environment.

They were fully made softwar-defined.

This included all the three major components, compute, software and storage,” says Sharma. Subsequently, the on-premise experience also becomes cloud like. Provisioning infrastructure can be done in a few clicks. A software-defined approach also makes the on-premise, cloud integration simpler.

“

THE JOURNEYBEGAN WITH DOING APARTPOC OF20 HOSTS OUTOF THE 100 VIRTUALHOSTS,WHICH ARE RUNNING IN THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT.THEYWERE FULLY MADE SOFTWARE-DEFINED. MRIDUL SHARMA, EVP & HEAD TECHNOLOGY, INDUSIND BANK

Software-defined benefits A software-defined data centre provides a unified visibility model and allows full usability of the available infrastructure. Sharma explains it well by giving an analogy when he says, “Software-defined shows the number of empty rooms in the hotel. The visibility

inside the infrastructure empowered by software defined lets the IT function know about the empty space available in the IT Infrastructure. There may be many empty rooms, while the new guests are coming in. Visibility can help us provide the best allocation.”

As a result, a year after going in for a software-defined data centre, the benefits are exponential. “Some transactions almost grew 100 per cent.

The general growth rate was around 30 per cent. This happened with zero investment in infrastructure. The same IT infrastructure gave us an additional 30 per cent more output. In the previous model, we would have planned more CAPEX, may be for the next three years.

It was a highly inefficient model,” informs Sharma. This model does not require the bank to plan for the next few years, but a headroom is set, which if breached, allows for only the expansion required, in terms of nodes. This is an efficient model, which makes the best use of the available resources.

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CXO Speak

IoT IS A NOVEL TECHNOLOGY THAT IS SUSCEPTIBLE TO MORE THAN 70,000 KNOWN CVES Keith Martin, Head of Asia Pacific and Corporate Business, F-Secure, in an interaction with CRN, talks about the changing scenarios of security in India and shares his outlook for the adoption of IoT

By Sandhya Michu How do you look at the cyber security scenario of India with the transforming technology edge?

India has worked incredibly hard on the cyber security front. The National Cyber Security Policy was incorporated as early as 2013. The policy is aimed at developing a secure and resilient cyberspace for Indian citizens and businesses. Additionally, it launched its own Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in 2004. Supporting the nation’s determination to dynamically address the burgeoning cyber security challenges, MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) launched Digital Swachhta Kendra, a botnet cleaning and malware analysis centre, in 2017 as botnet-based attacks increased on a global level. It had also instituted a federal CISO to spearhead and monitor cyber security policy, planning, and implementation.

Something that isn’t recognised on a macroscopic level is that India is also equipped with two-factor authentication for online payments. This decreases its exposure to fraudulent transactions. The country also constantly collaborates

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GLOBAL CYBER ATTACKERS CONSTANTLY KEEP CHANGING THEIR TTPS (TACTICS, TECHNIQUES, AND PROCEDURES) with industry partners, as well as international players, and is benefitted by this threat intelligence collaboration.

These initiatives and collaborations add to the nation’s defensiveness as it emerges as a promising digital market across the globe.

How IoT security would be a crucial factor? Does F-Secure work closely with the IoT companies and what kind of opportunities does it hold for cyber security players?

IoT has innumerable merits that considerably enhance our productivity in both the business landscape, as well as in day-to-day lives, but this efficiency comes at a price. IoT is a novel technology that is susceptible to more than 70,000 known CVEs (Common

Vulnerabilities and Exposures). Despite this astounding figure, the new and emerging technology is still believed to have more vulnerabilities that are, every now and then, discovered by industry players and will be discovered over a period of time. F-Secure itself discovered a vulnerability in Foscam’s IP camera last year. This makes India’s rapid adoption of the technology a bit perilous from the cyber security perspective.

Such deployments must always be backed with relevant cyber security counter measures.

With IoT technology manufacturers are racing to bring their products to the market, security features are unlikely to be a high priority. As such, this is one of the few areas of technology where regulation may greatly benefit the endusers and the wider security ecosystem.

Naturally, there are opportunities for cyber security companies to assist IoT device manufacturers in developing security strategies. F-Secure, for instance, has a cyber security assessment service for hardware and software companies wishing to test their products for vulnerabilities.

F-Secure

F- Secure is also working with router manufacturers and internet service providers catering to domestic customers. Home routers are the entry points to the internet connectivity of people’s homes. Though home routers may not be IoT devices as such, they are an essential component of connected homes; securing them, therefore, becomes critical. F-Secure sees a great opportunity in the home router security space going forward.

At the same time, we believe that endpoint protection for personal devices (such as Windows PCs, Macs, Android phones or tablets) is still important.

Compromised IoT devices might be used “as is” for malicious activities such as botnet attacks, but they can also be used for infecting other personal devices on the home network. This could then lead to, for example, exfiltration of sensitive personal files or theft of login credentials. Hence, endpoint protection (for the platforms that support it) is still very relevant and needed.

What are your views on the status of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its importance?

GDPR has been prepared by the European Parliament. This development, though taking place in the EU, also holds relevance for Indian companies that outsource their services to European nations. Such companies need to thoroughly analyse their business model vis-à-vis the enacted regulation and comply accordingly. Those that do not comply risk losing business from European companies.

How has been the response from the India market for F-Secure in comparison to the global market?

Although each of our markets around the globe is unique, we have seen a great degree of success in larger enterprises, as well as the government sectors, within India for several of our on premise solutions. We do see a bit more hesitation in this market regarding the cloud based product offerings than we have in other locations, but we feel as the India market continues to evolve, we will also see a similar level of adoption of our cloud solutions that we have seen in

solution. Also, as many business corporations begin practising the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach, access to core IT infrastructure of an organisation can be penetrated by compromising these low-security devices. Hence, end-point detection has become nearly imperative for modern businesses.

“

WE ARE WORKING ON VERY BROAD RANGE OF INDUSTRIES, FROM GENERAL CYBER SECURITY FOR COMPANIES TO SPECIALISED SECTORS

other areas.

What are the various industries F-Secure is working in for cyber security?

We are working on broad range of industries, from general cyber security for companies to specialised sectors, such as manufacturing industry, energy, banking, medical, aerospace, automotive and maritime cyber security.

How important is the end-point detection and response in the field of cyber security?

Businesses often make massive spends on protecting their IT infrastructure and data from external threats. However, the biggest and rarely detectible threat is that of a malicious insider. A malicious insider can have access to sensitive information, such as product development, R&D initiatives, and market strategy, which can have a detrimental outcome for the company.

The insider may have access to hardware systems and can create an additional layer of vulnerability. This presses the need for organisations to have a proactive end-point detection and response

Which are the major steps to be taken for mobile security?

India’s NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) ensures that all of its digital payments are safe and secure. As I have already spoken about two-factor authentication, it must be understood that such steps have established multiple layers of security for Indian customers.

However, as there are advantages, there are limitations as well. Indian smartphones are presently being extensively used for digital payments through e-wallets and banking applications. These smartphone-based applications are not equipped with hardware-level security. So, security issues on the mobile endpoint can put the integrity of user data at risk. Moreover, global cyber attackers constantly keep changing their TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) and a more proactive approach is required to protect the increasingly digitising nation.

How cyber security plays a vital role in developing India’s Smart Cities; is FSecure working with any Indian Smart City project?

Smart Cities feature a range of digital devices and framework, including cloud systems, network cameras, and internetconnected sensors, that can be compromised by a cyber attacker. This directly increases the network boundary that needs to be protected and vulnerabilities eliminated on the hardware and software-level before we unveil our Smart Cities to the masses.

Without cyber security, a smart city cannot exist, as a smart city is essentially a control system, and that implies it must be under control of the intended users, not criminal organisation or a hostile nation state. We are not currently working with any Indian Smart City project, but that can change.

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CIO Corner

DIGITAL: AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTOR FOR ONE OF THE INDUSTRY’S LOWEST EXPENSE RATIO FOR ICICI PRUDENTIAL LIFE ICICI Prudential Life has taken a slew of digital initiatives in the areas of customer onboarding, robotic process automation and big data to make insurance an attractive proposition for customers, deliver superior customer service as well as to lower its expense ratio. EC’s Abhishek Raval speaks to V V Balaji, Chief – IT & Operations, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance

I

CICI Prudential Life has employed the digital platform effectively to lower its expense ratio, the portion of premium used to pay the cost of acquiring, underwriting and servicing insurance, reinsurance and other overheads.

So far the results have been very promising. For instance, the company has successfully leveraged technology to bring down customer complaints and improve their experience. As V V Balaji says, “Our customer grievance ratio was at 185 for every 10,000 new policies sold in FY15. It has since dropped to 95 for every 10,000 new policies sold in FY17.”

According to Balaji, the digital strategy has enabled ICICI Prudential Life to improve its efficiency across processes and product segments, and achieve one of the lowest expense ratios in the life insurance industry.

The digital approach is in line with MD and CEO Sandeep Bakhshi’s avowed intent — “We want to be a technology company selling insurance” — which is indicative of the company’s thrust on IT in all its business operations.

Technology is not just helping ICICI Prudential Life to become a leaner,

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IN THE CURRENT FINANCIAL YEAR, ICICI PRUDENTIAL LIFE’S FOCUS WILL BE ON EXPANDING THE USE OF APIS (APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE), ESPECIALLY IN INTERNAL OPERATIONS, CHATBOTS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE efficient and profitable enterprise; it is also enabling the company to simplify insurance as an protection and investment tool, clear misgivings about insurance, make it easier and convenient for customers to navigate through the labyrinth of products, and buy the right policies to fulfill their financial goals. Tech-savvy customers, especially the millennials and gen-next, are already using both online and digital platforms to buy insurance products at the click of a mouse.

Thus, technology has formed the core of business operations at ICICI Prudential Life, where employees across verticals understand technology as well as any CIO.

The first major technology initiative was to make the eKYC process simpler for customers and the company. “Our systems were connected with the Permanent Account Number (PAN) database so that we could check online whether it actually belonged to the person. The Aadhaar platform is used to pre-populate customer information in the application form. This has two benefits: customer authentication and 70 per cent auto-population of the application form. One must note that it is a tedious exercise for the customer to fill the form because of the multiple fields. eKYC has become critical as, historically, the KYC process has been the subject of many frauds both in India and globally,” explains Balaji.

The eNACH initiative by ICICI Prudential Life allows customers to give standing instructions for making direct debit payments for premiums or any other purpose. This is one more step towards paperless transactions.

The company is also using technology to make customer engagement easy for its sales force. The total number of staff working directly and indirectly with ICICI Prudential life is in thousands. These include agents, bank partners, brokers and proprietary

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance

sales force among others. They need to be kept up-to-speed on the various changes in the product specifications, introduced from time to time to ensure correct information exchange between the seller and buyer.

For example, a system has been put in place to provide real-time updated information to the sellers on their devices. This data is provided in as many as 12 languages. The mobile device also serves as a virtual sales office where the seller can send alerts and service the customer in many ways.

“We maintain complete transparency while discussing the policy with the customer. The backend rule engine, as per the threshold set, tells us whether medical checks are required and when the policy would be issued. The result: employee productivity, which was at ` 42.6 lakh per employee in FY15, increased 30 per cent to ` 55.5 lakh per employee in FY17,” says Balaji.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) More than 500 backend processes have been RPA-enabled, particularly in areas such as HR, services, new business, payouts, backend IT jobs, investment operations, etc. Different kinds of RPA are in use, one of which is rule engine based. RPA is also used to fetch data from one system, process it and use it in another system. It is also used to connect different systems to the policy administration system. RPA also facilitates reconciliation with regard to customer bank statements, debit and credit card payments, and other data.

ICICI Prudential Life has bought IBM’s chatbot platform for internal purposes. It will be recalibrated and launched for the benefit of customers.

Big data to keep fraudsters at bay Some 75-80 per cent of frauds are committed by people associated with the primary policy holder. The solution to this problem lies in identifying the culprit at the underwriting stage. The company is using data analytics tools to pick up the wrongdoers. Balaji explains, “If a doctor in some area wrongly diagnosed a person five years ago and

then he issues a death certificate for a fraudulent customer, the tool will instantly identify him as one and the same doctor, and a repeat offender.”

In addition to big data, other instruments such as eKYC, Aadhaar and databases also help to keep fraudulent customers out of the system, automatically improving the claims settlement ratio.

“Our claim settlement ratio was 93.8 per cent in FY15, which increased to 96.9 per cent in FY17. The average turnaround time to settle claims came down from 5.59 days in FY15 to 3.05 days in FY17,” reveals Balaji.

“

FOR AI,THE COMPANY IS BEYOND THE POC STAGE AND

BY NEXT QUARTER,THE INITIATIVE WILL BE LIVE.THE POC HAS BEEN DONE IN THE AREA OF UNDERWRITING, CLAIMS MANAGEMENTAND CUSTOMER QUERY MANAGEMENT.AI WILL PROVIDE A MORE GRANULAR UNDERSTANDING,WHICH CHATBOTS ARE NOT CAPABLE OF PROVIDING V.V.BALAJI, CHIEF – IT & OPERATIONS ICICI PRUDENTIAL LIFE INSURANCE

Blockchain Fifteen insurance companies have joined hands to form a Blockchain Proofof-Concept (PoC) to share data and prevent fraudulent claims across the insurance sector. Imposters usually operate through multiple insurers which often results in claims being paid to the fraudsters and casting suspicion on genuine policyholders. It is here that the PoC helps to expose the culprit and bring him to justice before he buys a policy for raising a fraudulent claim or files a wrong claim.

The Blockchain PoC is a big help particularly during customer onboarding; for instance, a company can use Blockchain to access a customer’s medical records and prevent him or her from repeat medical tests while applying for multiple policies.

The initiatives under the Blockchain concept, which initially took off on WhatsApp groups, are expected to go live by Q3 FY19.

In the current financial year, ICICI Prudential Life’s focus will be on expanding the use of APIs (application programming interface), especially in internal operations, chatbots and artificial intelligence.

“For AI, the company is beyond the PoC stage and by next quarter, the initiative will be live. The PoC has been done in the area of underwriting, claims management and customer query management. AI will provide a more granular understanding, which chatbots are not capable of providing,” V.V. Balaji concludes.

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in I 27

CXO Speak

‘WE HAVE HAD UPWARDS OF 50% YEAR-ON-YEAR GROWTH IN SECURITY SERVICES’ Seeing a huge uptick in demand, Tata Communications is sharply ramping up its managed security services portfolio by grooming more cyber security talent and expanding its Security Operations Centre (SOC) footprint in India, APAC, Middle East and Europe. Avinash Prasad, Vice President, Managed Security Services, Tata Communications, shares how his firm is looking to become a managed security services provider with global standing by 2020

By Rachana Jha How do you see the present digital transformation journey within enterprises?

Organisations are embarking on their own distinct journeys of digital transformation as advances in new technologies like 5G and AI change the face of business. There is a common misconception that security may hinder innovation and limit the rate at which organisations can transform. The reality is that failing to factor in security at the outset of a digital transformation journey increases risk from outside threats and greatly multiplies any downstream costs of ‘fixing security’.

Periods of digital transformation should be seen as an opportunity to strengthen security in parallel with transforming your business. For instance, the cloud today stands for Infrastructure agility and orchestration is an important service enabler for that – but, in my view, a holistic perspective on cloud orchestration means speed and agility combined with security and compliance, not devoid of security.

It’s clear that the landscape of digital

28 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in

SECURITY IS NO LONGER JUST WHAT ORGANISATIONS PUT IN PLACE AT THE OUTSET AND THEN KEEP ASIDE threats has seen considerable advancement in recent years but organisations continue to feel very challenged in this area and top management confidence is low around cyber security posture. This may be due to the fact that many organisations are still using outdated methods of protection that focus too heavily on blocking and prevention mechanisms.

What are your strategies to combat security threats?

Tata Communications is rapidly gaining customer attention and mindshare as a strong player that is strategically building service platforms to drive managed security services execution better in line with customer

needs. We roll-out value-added platforms that help customers with ease of managing diverse tools, better service assurance and visibility.

Our comprehensive managed security services portfolio looks at data and information across its lifecycle across environments and aims to protect the same. We deliver security for the cloud and from the cloud to global enterprises, helping them effectively manage business risk in today’s digital economy. Our proven cloud-based security approach ensures the intelligence, scalability and flexibility demanded by today’s businesses. Keeping in mind the everchanging security landscape, we have built robust capabilities in risk and compliance, cloud security, identity and access management, data security and privacy, threat management supported by analytics to predict cyberattacks and ensure network and infrastructure security. We bring all aspects of this offering as a service on 24×7 basis, to help our customers fight cyber threats.

We are helping our customers work

Tata Communications

through the changes they see and supporting them on a constant basis.

2020 is to become a managed security services provider with global standing.

In terms of cybersecurity, what were some of the major developments that happened in the past year?

Last year saw the continued trend of sophisticated and penetrative attacks leading to major consequences for large and respected businesses like Equifax and Uber. It highlighted the continuing gap between the threat scenarios and existing security capabilities in many enterprises. At the same time, it was not all doom and gloom as we saw more adoption of solutions and services by customers that go beyond the traditional view of security and look to proactively visualise advanced threats.

Looking forward in 2018, the trends we are seeing globally are similar to what we’re seeing in India. Security breaches will now increasingly be thought of as inevitable, rather than something that can be avoided. As a result, the focus is shifting from prevention to defence coupled with response and recovery. The widespread adoption of smart technology, smart city initiatives and the Internet of Things (IoT) have made safeguarding customer data even more important.

In addition, as technologies progress, the skills required to deal with cyber security needs are also changing. The challenge is to train cyber security professionals so that they can deal with threats as quickly as possible and also adapt their skills as needed.

At Tata Communications, our investment in cyber security is part of our commitment of helping our customers tackle the growing threat of cybercrime worldwide. We encourage our customers to build security within their IT estate and then logically extend it to other domains like OT and IoT – spanning marketing, HR, supply chain and customer services, and so on – from the ground up, using their network as the foundation, instead of retro-fitting piecemeal security products as new threats emerge.

How do you see AI becoming useful for the cyber security industry?

While some emerging technologies such as mobility and IoT are doubleedged swords in the cyber security space, the advent of AI has definitely helped security professionals discover patterns of attack before they become a full-blown breach. I believe AI holds tremendous potential to help boost defence against hackers. For example, while there is an increasing threat of AIenabled attacks, AI powered threat analytics could also help to speed up the process of identifying potential risks. AI is set to be so integral to cybersecurity in future that it is estimated that the global AI security market will reach US$18.2 billion by 2023, according to a recent report.

Similarly, while the expanding network of connected IoT devices opens up more potential security threats, the vast amount of data generated by IoT technology could actually help researchers spot security flaws.

What are your plans for the India market in 2018?

We are sharply ramping up our

“

AT PRESENT,WE HAVE ATEAM OF OVER 250 CYBER SECURITY EXPERTS – OUT OFWHICH 80 PER CENTARE IN INDIA.WE HAVE HAD UPWARDS OF 50 PER CENTYEAR-ON-YEAR GROWTH IN SECURITY SERVICES AND WE EXPECTTHATTO CONTINUE. OUR VISION FOR 2020 IS TO BECOME A MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES PROVIDER WITH GLOBAL STANDING

managed security services portfolio by grooming more cyber security talent across our service delivery and expanding our security operations centre (SOC) footprint in India, APAC, Middle East and Europe. This is in addition to making significant investments in enabling the platforms that support our offerings. We are establishing a global presence that provides customers advanced insights on cybersecurity threats.

At present, we have a team of over 250 cyber security experts – out of which 80 per cent are in India. We have had upwards of 50 per cent year-onyear growth in security services and we expect that to continue. Our vision for

In your opinion, what would be the top security trends of 2018?

As we settle into 2018, businesses need to remember that transformation is a journey, not a final destination – and the same goes for cybersecurity as it needs constant investment and focus.

While the focus with digital transformation projects is often on boosting flexibility and operational agility, lowering costs and creating more seamless customer experiences, the availability and security of data and applications is critical to any new, enhanced ways of working. Not only do security measures need to be built into technology from the start, awareness should be ingrained into company culture, while significant investment is also essential. Some broad cybersecurity trends that we’ll see in 2018 include: Shift from prevention to analytics, security ecosystems aided by the cloud will drive next-generation security, cyber security skills will continue to evolve, emergence of platforms to amplify the SOC engineer.

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in I 29

CXO Speak

ARRAY NETWORKS TO INVEST $20-50 MILLION IN INDIA Investments will be made for the development of the channel partner community in HCI, while setting up of development centre in India

By Abhishek Raval

A

rray Networks will invest US$ 20-50 million between 2018 and 2020, following the company’s 2020 plan for India. The money will be invested in channel partner acquisition, setting up of a development centre in India and other initiatives. The networking major is performing well in the BFSI and Smart Cities verticals in India. “Going forward, the focus will be on the development of Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) solution for the India market. An MoU has also been signed with Netmagic and the company is scouting for national level SIs for developing as-a-service category for HCI,” states Michael Zhao, CEO & President, Array Networks Inc. CIOs are looking for an agile, flexible infrastructure. Quick to respond to changing demands, a software defined approach, consumption based IT, edge computing can provide the answer. A complete reliance on public cloud is not recommended to do data processing in the wake of the combined emergence of Industry 4.0, robotic technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). Even though 5G technology is in the works in India, fibre is being extended to villages - to the last mile. Data computing will have to be done locally.

The legislature also talks tough about data residence, which makes local data processing even more important. Enter the burgeoning demand for more smart IT architectures

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THE LARGEST BANK IN INDIA RUNS THE APPLICATIONS ON ARRAY NETWORKS FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS. THESE ARE THE LARGEST APPLICATIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE USERS ACCESSING THEM and data centre, to enjoy the benefits of public cloud on private infrastructure.

The benefits include: software defined things, on-demand provisioning, subscription based IT services in the private cloud, etc. All these public cloud facilities can be put into the private setting with the same software the customer is familiar with.

Enter HCI Array Networks has devised hyper convergence for networking solution with super fast packet processing engines to reach the customer along with the required compute and storage capabilities. Zhao claims market leadership in the area of SSL processing. Array Networks offers a hyper converged device that has virtual machines with dedicated resources. Every application has its dedicated VM. “The system has been designed such that a total of 32 instances can run altogether without

any latency in any of the instances.

Secondly, there are no overheads in processing the packets in the packet processing engine which has been continuously improved for the last two decades. Thirdly, the SSL processing: every application is run on Https and not in Http, which provides the ideal performance at the hardware level.

These three characteristics form the stepping stones for providing flexibility, subscription model for consumption based computing, and guaranteed performance in the shared environment,” says Zhao.

Array Networks provides a dedicated hardware infrastructure to customers. On top of that, the company is also talking to the channel partner community to spin this off into as-aservice model. The idea is to provide a subscription based hardware, software on an as-a-service basis.

An MoU has been signed with Netmagic to help enterprises, to provide as-a-service consumption model to become more agile.

The company has a 32-member team in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. “We rely on partners to support our solutions, and we are also looking for new partners who can develop services which can run on our platform,” says Zhao. There are 60 partners in India for the current product and solution portfolio of the company. The plan is to extend and build more partnerships only in the area of HCI. “Talks are

Array Networks

“

THE LARGEST MANUFACTURING COMPANY IN INDIA IS DOING A POC WITH US FOR RUNNING THEIR WAN OPTIMISATION, LOAD BALANCING AND FIREWALLTO BE PROVIDED AS A SINGLE SOLUTION MICHAELZHAO, CEO & PRESIDENT – ARRAY NETWORKS INC

underway with Tier 1 partners, who have the necessary engineering capabilities for the HCI space. It’s important to note that network devices are P1 devices and are critical in nature.

It is the entry and exit point for all applications. The customers usually trust their local SIs for point products.

For HCI, Array Networks is working with Tier 2 SIs for smaller businesses in the states, but the company is looking for national brands for bigger implementations,” adds Shibu Paul, Regional Sales Director – APAC, Array Networks.

Going forward, HCI will drive the revenue growth for the company. In the area of point products, BFSI and the government verticals are going strong.

Array Networks currently has 70 per cent market share for the payment processing space in India. Smart Cities and other government related projects are also doing good.

The largest bank in India runs the applications on Array Networks for the last seven years. These are the largest applications with respect to the users accessing them. Ninety per cent of the co-operative banks are Array Networks’ customers. “We haven’t lost a single

order in the co-operative banking sector. 80-85 per cent of the declared Smart Cities are our customers,” says Paul.

PoCs in process A private enterprise in India has done a PoC and has bought the Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) solution running a firewall, Web Application Firewall (WAF), load balancer over a single device rather than having point solutions for them.

The company was running the point solutions from Array Networks and it had come for renewal.

“The largest manufacturing company in India is doing a PoC with us for running its WAN optimisation, load balancing and firewall to be provided as a single solution,” informs Paul.

These applications are provided by three different OEMs and SIs, in 50 different locations. Since every SI is not available in every location, Array Networks is solving this problem by putting all of the three applications on a single solution box, thus reducing the complexity of operations and management.

The company had originally asked

for the load balancing services. “We suggested them to do it for all the three applications. The vendors will remain the same, but the overall application management becomes easy,” explains Paul.

An RFP is already out for one of the PoCs done with an agricultural bank in India.

Partnership with Nutanix Nutanix is a dominant player in the HCI technology; however, Array Networks has partnered with Nutanix because of its expertise in storage and compute. “There are some flavours of networking too, but that is not its strength. We bring in the expertise in the networking and then drag in compute. Storage is not our strength,” says Zhao.

For security too, the HCI solution allows to integrate the firewall or any security solution into the core solution, be it firewalls, DDoS solutions from any vendors. They can be replicated at the branch level without any extra investment or vendor lockin. The solution is also flexible to any changes in the overall security design architecture.

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in I 31

Channel Chief

FORCEPOINT IDENTIFIES ‘HUMANCENTRIC’ SECURITY AS A MAJOR THRUST AREA Having several differentiators such as ‘Dynamic Data Protection’, Forcepoint is bullish on the approach of providing 'human-centric' security solutions to its customers. The company also aims to become the most formidable cyber security company by 2020. In an interaction with CRN, Ajay Dubey, Senior Channel Manager, Forcepoint, shares more details

By Mohit Rathod Please share some of the recent cyber security initiatives at Forcepoint?

One of the first things that Forcepoint, as a brand, did is that we focused on cyber security to solve some of the fundamental problems which the market was not able to solve. Every year, there have been numerous cases of data breaches and cyber attacks which tend to grow year-on-year. Thereby, customers are also spending more than the previous year. To break this pattern of expenditure and attacks, we came up with the concept of human-centric cyber security. We need to look at cyber security from a completely different angle; not confined to perimeter security, data protection, firwall etc. At the recent RSA Conference, our concept of human-centric cyber security was rated as one of the top 20 products.

At the RSA Conference, we launched Dynamic Data Protection, which is more of a converged solution that is user behaviour based. Whereas, most of the data protection solutions currently available are content-based. We are adding the user behaviour analytics on top of this, forming Dynamic Data Protection.

The necessity for such products is

32 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in

ONE OF THE PARTICULAR OFFERINGS IS THE NEXT GENERATION FIREWALL (NGFW), WHICH IS OFFERED AS MANAGED SERVICE AS WELL driven by the dynamic nature of the cyber landscape today. Many business critical application are moving to cloud.

A major concern for CISOs today is that data is lying everywhere and people are accessing it from anywhere. The existing solutions in the market solve some of the problems, but they are doing so in independent silos. CISOs express that once things go on cloud, they lose visibility and control. Humancentric security makes the invisible into visible, giving you the same control as in the case of on-premise. Cloud is a significant disruptor and our solutions are helping our customers to secure themselves in their cloud journey.

How critical has been the role of partners in building confidence among your customers?

All of our products and services are

delivered through the channel, unlike some of our competitors who offer direct services and put the partner ecosystem under threat. We strive to remain 100 per cent channel driven, which gives our channel a lot of stickiness with us. Our channel partners have grown significantly and they are able to leverage all of our product lines, cross-selling and upselling them into the existing customer base. This, being a subscription model, created a stream of recurring revenue for them.

With the emergence of as-a-service model, are there increasing opportunities for managed services providers?

Inreasingly, for system integrators (SIs), there will be substantial business from services and license resale; thereby opening doors for managed security service providers (MSSPs).

MSSPs for us, in some cases, will be the resellers who upgrade themselves as MSSPs, alongside the classical MSSPs who add security in their portfolios. One of the particular offerings is the Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), which is offered as managed service as well.

Forcepoint

There are markets where people are bundling services and products together are offering them to customers.

MSSPs are now becoming critical.

What's the support provided by Forcepoint to value-added resellers, in terms of building capabilities?

Typically, when channel partners sign up with us, they begin with absence of skills. However, they have security in their roadmap in terms of offerings. Customers also push SIs to provide security solutions, thereby giving them a market opportunity. For all such partners who have recently signed up with us, we offer both presales post-sales support – either directly or through outsourced model, wherein they can choose to work with our other existing partners.

Many security players have emerged in recent times. How differently is Forcepoint positioning itself among partners and in the market?

There are two major unique factors.

Firstly, ours is a subscription based business. For instance, when a partner sells to enterprises or governments, every year there is a revenue stream for the partner – these revenue streams are highly predictable. The second reason why our partners find our technology enticing is the stickiness that's created with the customer. Stickiness with customers is crucial for partners, because it allows them to sell other products and solutions as well.

Partners are able to provide value to the customers; for example, in the form of DLP, which is not an off-the-box solution. There is a fair amount of services, wherein customisation is involved – you have to continously work with customers. This is what builds stickiness and Forcepoint solutions provide that.

With the evolving threat landscape, company boards are now also part of the decision making, alongside CISOs. How has this changed your market approach?

Right from the lower levels of an organisation to the board, all are aware of cyber security and they are willing to

Could you elaborate on the enablement and accreditation programmes for your partner ecosystem?

We have four tiers of partners, depending on the market they operate in, and the business they generate.

Besides, we also have an exclusive MSSP partner. We also conduct exclusive marketing events and customer acquisition events with our top partners. Moreover, we also provide market development funds (MDFs) for top partners, depending upon the market. These funds are used to conduct joint activities such as skill development, client acquisition, awareness building, etc.

“

OUR THRUSTAREAS WILL REVOLVE AROUND HUMANCENTRIC SECURITY,WHEREIN DATA PROTECTION WILL BE A KEY FOCUS AREA

look at multiple solutions.

Today many organisations have bigger budget for security. The board is interested in knowing the security strategy. We are glad to see the board showing interest in understanding security policies, creating a security strategy and implementing it step-bystep. From a partner and VAR perspective, the budgets have increased.

We constantly help our customers to chart out a cyber security strategy. If they already have a strategy in place, we try to understand their business objectives, and map solutions accordingly. Today the discussions with customers are strategic in nature; it has moved from product based to cyber posture and strategy based. A cyber security VAR is now a trusted security consultant for the customer. The security posture is not static, it is dynamic in nature. Fine-tuning the security posture is where channel partners and VARs play a critical role.

What's the total strength of your partner ecosystem?

Across the four tiers, we have around 25 active partners in India. In addition, we have around 600 associate partners.

We have recently launched our MSSP programme, and we are actively looking at viable prospects. We are already in talks to some of the large service providers and some of our resellers. We are largely involved with the enterprise and mid-market customer base in India.

Are there any plans for channel expansion?

As we add more and more products and technologies, we will look at more VARs. We are glad to see that some of the large SIs in the country are willing to align with us. Some of which include Sify, Inspira, IBM and Frontier.

What is the company's roadmap and thrust areas for the near future?

Due to our leadership in India, we have grown well in the market. We have large targets for this year as well. Going forward, by 2020, we see ourself emerging as the formidable cyber security player. Our thrust areas will revolve around human-centric security, wherein data protection will be a key focus area. This will be followed by NGFW, which can compete with SDWAN solutions one-to-one. Another thing which is unique to our solution is ‘zero touch’ deployment, which saves a lot of time.

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in I 33

Channel Chief

‘WE ARE BUILDING OUR CHANNEL FOR ENTERPRISE SECURITY’ Slovakia based IT security company ESET, along with its exclusive distributor Sakri, is now gunning for enterprise security market with its new range of products and more focused approach for the India market. The company has appointed its first country manager for firming up the enterprise business. Parvinder Walia, Director of Sales and Marketing – Asia Pacific and Japan, ESET talks about the company's strategy for enterprise business and channel building

By Sandhya Michu What has been ESET's focus in APAC region; how has been the contribution of India business so far?

We are reaching about US$ 2 billion revenue, covering Japan, New Zealand

34 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in

and Australia. Japan is our core backbone where 60 per cent of the revenue comes from the country, consisting of home users and corporate markets. This is followed by Australia,

New Zealand, Greater China and rest of the markets like Thailand, Indonesia and India. In terms of our business model, we are working with exclusive distributors and local channel partners.

ESET

For example, we work exclusively with Canon IT Solution in Japan and Sakri IT Solutions in India. As far as our market positioning goes, we are among the top four players in Japan.

Year-on-year we are witnessing double digit growth in the APAC region.

Moreover, we have strengthened our direct presence in countries like Japan, Singapore and Australia. As part of our expansion plans, we are betting high on India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh as well as China. We want to have a robust channel business along with our distributors for our home and enterprise range of products.

Could you elaborate on your existing channel model in India?

In the past, we were present through our distributor ESS India, which we discontinued in 2016 and appointed Sakri as our distributor for retail and enterprise product range. With Sakri, our retail business has grown multifold; Sakri has established our business in retail and SMB. Moving forward, we are now focusing on introducing sophisticated enterprise security solutions and scouting for managed security partners. In the second half of 2018, we will be launching new advanced version of enterprise security.

We are in the process of building strong enterprise sales and channel roadmap with the support of Sakri.

What are your specific plans for the enterprise line of business?

Traditionally, we have been a strong security player in retail and SMB. We started building solutions for enterprises in the last three years.

ESET’s vision is to be among the top three vendors in the world in the next five years. The APAC market and Indian region will be key catalysts for this growth. Globally, our mission is to be among the top three security players in all the businesses. With our newly acquired companies like DESlock and few others, we have added capabilities like data leak prevention, backup solution and patch management solutions to offer complete solutions. DESlock+ encryption solutions are part of our

“

WE ARE NOW FOCUSING ON INTRODUCING SOPHISTICATED ENTERPRISE SECURITY SOLUTIONS AND SCOUTING FOR MANAGED SECURITY PARTNERS.IN THE SECOND HALF OF 2018,WE WILL BE LAUNCHING NEW ADVANCED VERSION OF ENTERPRISE SECURITY.WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF BUILDING STRONG ENTERPRISE SALES AND CHANNEL ROADMAP WITH THE SUPPORT OF SAKRI

ESET Technology Alliance; and we work with various security companies as part of our technological alliance.

Security is becoming sophisticated; single layer of security is not enough in a large enterprise. Therefore, we will bring multi-layered solutions for the enterprise.

What’s your focus on the partner ecosystem?

Besides products and solutions, we are establishing our network of system integrators (SIs) and channel partners.

We want both services and sales centric partners. Currently, we are in the process of creating a partner programme and building a new team under our newly appointed country manager, Ajay Kumar Joshi, who will be heading the India and SAARC market.

His top priority is to establish the enterprise channel and work closely with our distributors for new opportunities. Business wise, 65 per cent of our business comes from the consumer segment and 10 per cent is enterprise; whereas rest is SMB.

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Channel Association

IAMCP

IAMCP EXPANDS ITS REACH, ADDS NORTH AND EAST CHAPTER Munesh Jadoun, Board Member of IAMCP India and Founder of ZnetLive from Jaipur, is heading the newly formed chapter

By Sandhya Michu

T

he newly formed North and East chapter of IAMCP, Independent Microsoft Partner Association, recently organised a comprehensive training and interactive session on digital marketing themed, ‘Understanding Digital Marketing 360-degree view’. The session, held at Microsoft office in Gurugram, focused on how Microsoft partners can leverage the right marketing strategies to grow their business.

A modern marketing enthusiast and a digital transformational leader, Shilpa Dureja Puri heads Microsoft’s digital discipline and is architecting the digital experiential strategy.

With advanced technologies and smartphones playing a major role in shaping up today’s consumers’ buying preferences, organisations are relying heavily on digital marketing which

36 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2018 I crn.in

involves promoting their products and services via different digital mediums, including websites, social media, emails, search engines, mobile apps and more.

Munesh Jadoun, Board Member of IAMCP India and Founder of ZnetLive

from Jaipur, also a Microsoft partner, introduced the Microsoft partners to IAMCP India’s North and East chapter which was launched on April 11 this year. He also encouraged them to join IAMCP India as it will benefit them in their businesses and get more support and cooperation from Microsoft. Such informational programmes help Microsoft partners understand the trends in the industry and help them reap maximum benefits from their marketing efforts.

Speaking to CRN, Jadoun informs, “The North and East chapter will be focusing more on connecting and collaborating with the region’s partners. Currently, we have six members and we will add more in the coming months. Moreover, IAMCP members will also be participating in Microsoft's global channel event, Inspire in Las Vegas in July 2018.”

IAMCP already has well established West Region chapter and a sub-chapter in Pune. With two more regions added, it will be looking more for focused events which will help members in their business decision making.

The interactive training session covered most important aspects of digital marketing, including but not limited to: Benefits of digital marketing for driving sales; how digital marketing helps in generating more leads than traditional marketing; how can a business optimise website to drive traffic; how social media plays a crucial role in accentuating an organisation’s brand image; how targeted email marketing helps an organisation generate more leads; what metrics can be used for measuring marketing efforts’ success; and how digital marketing teams can justify the RoI with their efforts.

TM

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