ITPV Magazine - April 2018 digital edition

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Lenovo recommends Windows 10 Pro.

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Content 8

COVER STORY

ITPV PROMOTION 16-17,22,31 n Canon imagePROGRAF iPF671E Large

Format Printer that is easy to use while increasing productivity with fast print speeds and ink tank efficiencies

n iBall Guard launches Night Vision Color CCTV Cameras and Smart Cloud DVRs!

Tapping into Smart Finance

n Clarion unveils 4 New Models Portable and Trolley Type Speakers

n Tie – up, store launch and Product

IN CONVERSATION

Employ Key Finance Professionals, not just Accountants

“We are thriving in SI space due to efficient project management”

launches sum up Acer’s April month’s Activity

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n Zebronics launches 6 in 1

external power charger ‘Esteem’

ANALYSIS 24-25 Harshavardhan Kathaley, Director, Director, Partner Sales, India & Saarc, Juniper “IoT will bring explosion of opportunities for channel partners”

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Rohit Midha, Director, Commercial Named Accounts, Lenovo India 427

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n Essential Technologies for a Smart City n Emerging Gaming Technologies

BRAND CONNECT 25

Ranjan Chopra, Managing Director, Team Computers “We are in a Smart Recovery Mode after Chapter 11”

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Vivek Singh, Director, Sales, Enterprise and Global, Avaya India

Intel: Streamlining Data Traffic Flow and Storage

CHANNEL NEWS 27-32 n HP Debuts Virtual Reality Solutions and Services for Businesses in India

n McAfee and IBM Security Extend

Partnership with Key Areas of Product Integrations n Epson India announces elevation of Samba Moorthy to head India operations n Expecting Growth in External Storage Spend for CY2018: Banking, Government to drive spend: IDC India n Keysight Technologies India gets the Top Test & Measurement Company Award for the year 2016-17 n Nexteer Expands Strategic Software Investment n Expecting Growth in External Storage Spend for CY2018: Banking, Government to drive spend: IDC India

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COVER STORY

Tapping into Smart Finance At a time when the IT industry is transforming and the economic scenario is not so exciting, the IT channel must leverage several financing options to fund their business as well as their customer’s business

By Amit Singh 827

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COVER STORY technology industry is going through, the domestic market has gone through the dual jolt of demonetization and Goods and Services Tax (GST).

While during the past two decades IT channels grew along with the industry, most partners are now struggling to keep their top lines and bottom lines growing.

In addition, inflationary trends have impacted the IT industry, and the cost of operations has almost doubled over the 5-7 years.

However, leaving behind the adverse impact of demonetization and GST, industrial production is improving since November 2017. GST and demonetization impact is slowly fading away. As per World Bank’s latest Biannual South Asia Economic Focus report the Indian economy has recovered from the adverse impacts of demonetization and GST and is projected to grow by 7.3 percent in 2018 and 7.5 percent in 2019.

In this scenario, channels of all sizes and strengths are looking for newer ways to fund their growth. In an industry where a larger chunk of players is first time entrepreneurs, growth is a

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or almost half a decade, IT experts and the Indian IT channel have been advocating the need for cultivating a business that sells and delivers technology services on a recurring revenue basis.

The reason is the predictability which repeat revenue brings to the business.

The past 2-3 years have been tough on IT channels.

Apart from the rapid transformation which the

Jayessh Mehta Managing Director, Future Businesstech

The average margins should be a few times of the cost of finance. Regrettably, that’s not the case in most systems integration transactions and projects. That’s why most of us are dependent on vendor and distribution credit.

Ajit Mital

Managing Director, Acme Digitek

huge challenge because of the lack of capital.

Changing market dynamics Over the last few decades, partners have built robust businesses on top of distributor and vendor credit. In a market that was growing fast and where margins were healthy, this business model worked well. “However, that is not

We prefer to walk away from transactions because the margins do not cover even a finance cost opportunity of 2 percent a month when customers push payments to 60 days and above.

the case anymore,” points out Jayessh Mehta, Managing Director, Future Businesstech.

“Today, we prefer to walk away from transactions because the margins do not cover even a finance cost opportunity of 2 percent a month when customers push payments to 60 days and above.”

While the dynamics of the IT industry are now changing towards solution selling, payment term with the customers has become a major challenge. “Most of the sales pitches are now driven by application-led solutions to enhance the business operations and to drive the RoI. While solution selling tends to increase the margins in many of the cases, it has also resulted in customers negotiating for extended payment terms of 90 days to up to 4-5 months,” retorts Prarthana Gupta, Managing Director, Cache Technologies.

The extended payment term leads partners to either block their working capital or resort to funding from external sources. “We prefer not to use external funding and tend to move out of the deals which are beyond our financial APRIL 2018 9

COVER STORY

Harshavardhan Kathaley Director, Partner Sales, India & Saarc, Juniper limits. Most of the time, we are able to negotiate a deal with payment terms in tandem with credit period offered by distributors and vendors,” says Ajit Mital, Managing Director, Acme Digitek.

Harshavardhan Kathaley, Director, Partner Sales, India & Saarc, Juniper, recommends negotiating better payment terms with the customers.

“Try to get 80 percent of the payment on delivery of the product itself rather than linking entire deal payment to installation and implementation. This way partners can maintain a good flow of money.”

In the majority of the cases partners rely on credit period from distributors and vendors, which is normally in the range of 30 days to 45 days. In few cases, the credit period is extended to up to 90 days based on the merits of the transaction and credibility of partner and the customer. “Relationship and payment credibility with the distributors pays well in 27 10

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Partners must negotiate 80 percent of the payment on delivery of the product itself rather than linking entire deal payment to installation and implementation.

This way partners can maintain a good flow of money. this case. In fact, this is the best way to save our margins.

We opt for external funding in cases where credit period and payment terms don’t match and margins are handsome enough to accommodate additional burden from interest rates on loan,” informs Mehta of Future Businesstech.

Rohit Midha Director, Commercial Named Accounts, Lenovo India

Cost of finance The cost of finance and the complications associated with it have discouraged a number of partners from expanding.

“There are very few risk-takers in our industry,” comments Gupta of Cache. “Many are wary of taking loans, and want to work within the limits of the credit extended by suppliers.”

Others point out some unpleasant realities. “The margins in the business should correlate with the cost of finance. I believe that for healthy growth the average margins should be a few times of the cost of finance.

Regrettably, that’s not the case in most systems integration transactions and projects.

This is the reason most of us are dependent on vendor and distribution credit,” remarks Mital of Acme.

Many in the industry point out that there is a significant difference in the cost of finance depending on the players – it skews unfavorably for the smaller channel partners.

“While most established players enjoy bank interest rates which vary from 8-16

In the past, channels have been wary of exploring funding options. Today that is not the case. It is time IT channels start learning from the automobile and consumer durable industries which thrive on smart financing options.

percent, smaller players are offered loans at 18-36 percent. Since the margins are not so great the equations are unfavorable for smaller partners,” explains Gupta of Cache.

Others insist that it is a matter of educating channel partners about smarter options.

In fact, Rohit Midha, Director, Commercial Named Accounts, Lenovo India, is a big advocate of learning from other industries. He says it is time IT channels start learning from the automobile and consumer durable industries which thrive on smart financing options.

“In the past channels have been wary of exploring funding options because they never had to. Today that is not the case. I believe every vendor has been asking channels to consider all financing options to fund their business as well as their customers’ businesses.”

Vendor finance Almost all major vendors including HP, IBM, Cisco, Dell EMC have their financing arms operating in the country.

These arms are keen to work with channels to fund quality customer business.

This is where industry pundits have been telling IT channels to follow automobile industry. Though a majority of auto customers are consumers, almost the whole automobile industry sells its products with finance options.

While almost all vendors have been operating for a long time with their financing arms, a sense of aggression has crept in only a few years back. While earlier these companies were strict about funding only those orders where 70 percent of the bill of materials were their own brands, in many deals the vendors have relaxed the norms.

“In some cases, we have seen vendors like Cisco funding customers where Cisco component has been as low as

COVER STORY As with loan for a high-end car, where the loans are restructured to show that interest rates are lower through rebates issued by the automobile company, financing arms of vendors are able to present Kartik Shahani attractive financing Director and Leader Security, options.

India and South Asia, IBM 35 percent,” shares Rajiv Kumar, Managing Director, Proactive Data Systems.

The loans are offered to the customer; for a partner, the money is usually credited within a week of successfully completing the project.

Financing arms of the vendors are able to offer better rates as compared to banks because their risk coverage on a loan for their product line is lesser than that of a traditional NBFC. Most of the vendors have policies on used equipment and leasing arms which can find a customer for used equipment.

This helps the leasing arms to offer loans at 8-10 percent.

“In addition, as with loan for a high-end car, where the loans can be restructured to show that interest rates are lower than the actual through rebates issued by the automobile company to the financing company, vendors are able to present attractive financing options,” elaborates Kartik Shahani, Director and Leader Security, India and South Asia, IBM. However, there are challenges from customers’ willingness to take a loan.

“Vendor finance is the most

lucrative option for channels as the loan is taken by the customer at quite low interest rates. However, only 15-20 percent customers are inclined towards taking a loan. Most of them want to make payments after 60-90 days credit period,” informs Gupta of Cache.

On the flip side, the financing arms of the vendors are usually risk-averse and seek to finance smaller partners only with collaterals like bank guarantees, adds Kathaley of Juniper.

Channel finance Channel funding, also called bill discounting, is a quite popular option and is of two types: purchase bill discounting and sales bill discounting.

Purchase bill discounting is a finance option usually recommended by distributors.

It essentially allows partners to raise finance against the invoice or bill of IT products purchased from a distributor or supplier.

Sales bill discounting (also called factoring) allows companies to raise funds based on credentials of their customers. Financial assistance up to the value of the invoice of the goods supplied to a

customer is provided by the lending financial entity; the market reputation of the customer is of prime importance for availing this loan.

In both cases, the credential of the partner is also very important. Most of the paperwork around purchase bill discounting is standard, and it is not different from any other loan. Apart from regular papers for risk approval for the bank, originals of the purchase bill and a letter of recommendation from the distributor are mandatory. The usual loan period is between 30 and 180 days. Purchase bill discounting interest rates are often 2-3 percent above normal banking interest rates. “We prefer it against the bank loan as purchase bill discounting is easier to secure and offers flexibility in loan payments.

Interest rates also vary as per our credibility and relationship with the distributor or the vendor,” says Mehta of Future Businesstech.

Further, there is intense competition among banks and NBFCs to do channel financing, and many sub-distributors say their average annual interest payment is now as low as 11-12 percent. Some of the partners even use purchase bill discounting to make an immediate payment and avail cash discounts, which are often above 2 percent pre-negotiated with the vendor and distributor, and which could be lower than the interest paid out during 30 or 60 days of financing.

“Many partners use a bill discounting loan of 40-50 percent of the bill value as a short-term fund made available for a period of 30 days. This provides them with an extra month to manage the cash flow and collections. This is an excellent way to manage cash flow in case of delay in payments,” explains Gupta of Cache.

Factoring involves an interest rate which is about 12-14 percent for an

established partner addressing a well-known business entity.

Factoring is one of the best models whereby you readily convert credit payables to immediate cash.

In fact, few of the partners readily use bill discounting from vendors to maintain optimum cash flow. “We indeed utilize bill discounting in almost all transactions with Cisco as we are billed directly in Singapore where interest rates

Many partners use bill discounting loan of 40-50 percent of the bill value as a shortterm fund for 30 days. This provides them an extra month to manage the cash flow and collections.

Prarthana Gupta

Managing Director, Cache Technologies APRIL 2018 11

COVER STORY

Seven Tips to Impress Bankers

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anks offer both term loans and overdraft facilities, which businesses can use to increase their working capital.

Here are certain best practices which partners can employ to get best results through regular banking channels: • M any small businesses do not show profits or show less profit to pay lower income tax. If you need to impress bankers as well as potential investors, accurate balance sheets, and proper income tax returns help.

• A healthy average quarterly balance helps businesses with proven track records to obtain unsecured loans or overdraft facilities without collateral. Typically, banks are willing to take a risk of up to three times the average quarterly balance for unsecured loans or overdraft sanctions. There are partners who have managed to get 5-6 times their quarterly balance as overdraft facilities.

• S imilarly, fixed assets such as real estate can be judiciously used to get an overdraft facility which is 1.5-3 times the market value of the collateral. Real estate rates are always going up, so remember to negotiate on the credit approvals and quantum of sanctions every year.

• Bankers and NBFCs are impressed with purchase orders, contracts, authorized partnership agreements and other documents which help prove your credibility. While these documents alone can’t fetch you a loan, they will boost your chances of getting a loan at perhaps lower than the market interest rate.

• Take extra care to maintain a healthy bank statement for at least 6 months prior to a loan request. Avoid cheque dishonors at any cost.

• Get the company approved by different credit rating agencies. Consumer ratings

by CIBIL of directors and promoters also help in impressing bankers.

• F inally, remember that banking is a relationship business that works both ways; hence, form a strong relationship with the senior staff of the bank.

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are quite low at just 2-3 percent. This allows us to maintain liquidity inside the organization,” informs Kumar of Proactive.

The company has recently bagged a project worth Rs 5 crore from a large PSU where the payments are made on a monthly basis over a period of 5 years.

Project finance While sales and purchase bill discounting are excellent options for short-term funding, for long-term projects where the gestation periods and payment cycles are longer than four months, it is important to look at

A tripartite agreement with payment to an escrow account allows the deal to be treated differently and ensures that our credit lines are not choked. We have executed several high profile orders over the past few years using this model.

Rajiv Kumar

Managing Director, Proactive Data Systems

alternative funding models.

In addition, many of these projects often run into multi-million dollars where both partners and distributors face credit issues from the vendors.

“One of the reasons why vendors and even customers prefer national system integrators like Wipro or TCS to execute large orders despite better value being offered by some of the smaller SIs is their ability to finance the orders,” explains Mital of Acme Digitek.

To work around this many valueadded distributors have come up with a model whereby the customer, partner, distributor and in some cases the vendor agree on a multi-party agreement and form an escrow account where the customer remits payments against different bills submitted as per the contract. The bank then makes remittances as per the contract with fixed percentages to the partner, distributor, and vendor.

“This is one of the safest models where the OEM is assured of payment while partners and distributors do not have the risk of funding the payment.

Most large banks have templatized contracts, and if the customer can be convinced, an escrow account and a contract can be made within a couple of business days,” shares Kumar of Proactive.

He adds that for partners, this is a great option. “A tripartite agreement with payment to an escrow account allows the deal to be treated differently and ensures that our credit lines are not choked. We have executed several high profile orders over the past few years using this model.”

Proactive has formed a commercial estimation team which looks into the best funding option and incorporates the financing costs in the project costing at the beginning itself.

While banks and NBFCs offer project finance, many partners have availed them for internal projects and not for funding projects executed for the customers. This is because the margins in many cases do not allow a partner to fund the project using standard long-term financing models. “Project financing is a long-term commitment and if the partner is not having enough funding resource at a lower interest rate, it is just not advisable to opt for any regular finance model. Rarely are the margins for a partner in excess of single digits, and that would not

COVER STORY

How Credit Rating, MSME Registration Help?

There are a number of credit rating agencies in India, and being rated by one or more of them can help business to grow. Some of the popular credit rating agencies are CRISIL, SMERA, and ONICRA. Says Prarthana Gupta, CEO, Cache Technologies, which has a B+ credit rating, “The rating helped us to negotiate better with our bankers for an overdraft and other business loans, and also helped us to get better credit from our foreign suppliers.”

Typically, a rating helps partners to get better interest rates – which could be

Neel Shah

“That’s because a CRISIL rating proves that the partner and its promoters have engaged transparently to open its books and documents which an organization with short-term vision will not.”

Another useful move is to get registered with the Ministry of Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME). Informs Sudhir Arora, Director, Computer Gallery, Indore, “It typically costs between Rs 3000 and Rs 5000 if you ask your CA or an agent to get you registered. If you are doing it all by yourself, you pay less than Rs 500.”

The benefits of MSME registration are several. “If you are addressing the

Many customers give importance to CRISIL rating because it proves that the partner has engaged transparently to open its books, which an organization with shortterm vision will not.

Director, Insight Business Machines

0.5-1.5 percent lower than the prevailing interest rates – from financial institutions.

The annual cost of getting a credit rating varies from less than Rs 50,000 to Rs 110,000 based on the size of the company. Most credit rating agencies also offer discounts on their fees, and partners can always negotiate it.

“Many customers give importance to CRISIL rating,” asserts Neel Shah, Director, Insight Business Machines.

government sector, in many cases your Earnest Money Deposit amount is waived. The cost of tender documents, which in most cases is above Rs 5000, is also waived,” says Shah of Insight.

Apart from these benefits, the Small Industry Development Bank of India (SIDBI) offers very attractive unsecured loans for companies engaged in manufacturing or services at interest rates as low as 11.5 to 15 percent.

Project financing is a long-term commitment and if the partner is not having enough funding resource at a lower interest rate, it is just not advisable to opt for any regular finance model.

Krishna Choudhary Director, Rashi Peripherals

cover the interest value of more than 7-8 months,” explains Krishna Choudhary, Director, Rashi Peripherals.

According to experts, project finance through banks and NBFCs may make sense if you are executing a large service contract where margins are in excess of 40 percent since these loans are structured for 3-5 years.

Road ahead The road ahead for the channels is not going to be easy unless they are able to significantly grow both the working capital and the investments in their company.

The market dynamics towards digital transformation and solutions-selling has made it imperative for channels to be smart enough in financial management.

As the community progresses, it is crucial that each partner starts exploring smarter financing options too.

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Employ Key Finance Professionals, not just Accountants Harshavardhan Kathaley, Director, Partner Sales, India & Saarc, Juniper, got into a candid and brief interaction with Amit Singh to offer suggestions and best practices around effective financial management for channel partners  What are the factors affecting the financial stability of the IT channel partner organizations in India?

On the macro side, the challenges revolve around longer payment cycles for turnkey projects for government transactions, and increasingly so among corporate organizations.

On the micro side, channel partner organizations may sometimes have inadequate working capital investment. Also, many of these channel partners have technical skill-sets but have not been able to employ good finance professionals who can understand and effectively manage their financial requirements.

 What are the best practices you suggest for effective financial management for channel partners?

Harshavardhan Kathaley Director, Partner Sales, India & Saarc, Juniper

Many of the channel partners have technical skill-sets but have not been able to employ good finance professionals who can understand and effectively manage their financial requirements.

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Some of the best practices that can be employed are: • E mploy key finance professionals and not just accountants which many small/mid-size partner organizations end up doing.

• P erform a budgetary planning exercise at the beginning of the year to understand the working capital gap.

• W ork on various options like capital infusion, short-term loans, bank financing, etc. to plug these working capital gaps.

• S eek LC (letter of credit) limits from banks that will help fund the deals requiring longer payment terms.

• N egotiate better terms with the customers – try to get 80 percent on the delivery of the product itself rather than linking entire deal payment to installation and implementation.

• S eek channel-financing options available with the distributors.

 How does vendor financing score over other financing options?

Since the financing arm of the vendors is aware of the transaction in question as well as the channel partner, it can take faster decisions.

Moreover, it can offer better interest rates and in many cases subsidized by the business arm of the vendor.

On the flip side, these financing arms of vendors are usually risk-averse and seek to finance smaller partners only with collaterals like bank guarantees.

“Customer Experience is the Key to Differentiate from Competition” Rohit Midha, Director, Commercial Named Accounts, Lenovo India, got into a quick interaction with Amit Singh to share his plans on differentiating from the competition and to strengthen Lenovo’s leadership in India market

Rohit Midha, Director,

Commercial Named Accounts, Lenovo India

Enterprises still consider PC as a necessity. Hence, we are highly focused on improving the customer’s post sales experience by simplifying the way they can connect with us.  Commoditization is creating challenges in differentiating from the competition at the hardware level. How does Lenovo intend to differentiate itself from the competition in the PC space?

We are structured to be more customer-centric in order to understand the customer’s requirements better.

In addition, we are leveraging the ThinkPad legacy of

25 years and have been innovating constantly on the back of customer feedback.

In fact, with the recent ThinkPad 2018 launch, we have not only expanded our Thin and Light range but also addressed the customer requirements around security.

Above all, we consider the preand post-sales customer experience as the most important aspect.

While we understand that PC is a commodity, in the enterprise world this is considered as a necessity.

Hence, we are highly focused on improving the customer’s post sales experience by simplifying the way they can connect with us to highlight any problem.

In fact, we have not only innovated on the products but also on the routes through which customers can reach us. It’s not only IVR but also WhatsApp, Twitter, and our own application, Lencare, which enables remote diagnosis of the problem without the physical visit of the engineer. These are features which create great customer experience.

In addition, we have premier services for customers where response time is critical. These services are backed by highly efficient processes, technology and commitment to meet and surpass our customer’s expectations.

In my opinion, it is all about customer experience in order to differentiate from the competition.

 How do your customer experience initiatives reflect in your business and market share in India? How do you plan to further strengthen your leadership?

Our focus on customer experience has delivered a lot for Lenovo on the market front. In the commercial space, we have market share of 34 percent in the Q4 2017 as per IDC. In fact, Lenovo has maintained its leadership position in the commercial space over the last two quarters.

Moreover, we have grown at about 58 percent YoY in terms of volumes during 2016-2017.

We partnered with various state governments including Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Goa in their educational initiatives, which enabled us to retain our number 1 position.

In addition, we have structured our business around three focused verticals: very large enterprises, government and education. We have separate teams for each of the verticals, which ensure our winning market share. We will continue with this strategy. Further, we will strengthen our market position with the launch of our 2018 ThinkPad products, which specifically cater to the security requirements of the enterprises.

In addition, we will continuously improvise on our pre- and post-sales services.

 What are your top priorities over the next 12-18 months?

Our top-most priority is customercentricity and customer satisfaction.

In fact, customer satisfaction has lots of sub-elements to it: the way we interact with the customer, how many customers we interact with, pre-sales experience, product experience, post-sales experience and innovations to meet the changing requirements of the customer. In fact, the heart of everything we plan to do is around customer satisfaction.

 What are your plans around PC as a Service (PCaaS) in India?

PCaaS is a new initiative which will be an alternative for companies to consider as it helps in prioritizing investments to balance user demands against cost and technology maturity.

In fact, PCaaS will help companies minimize the impact of technology obsolescence and reduce the management of PCs internally.

We are planning to soon introduce PCaaS for our customers in India in the next 2-3 months.

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itpv PROMOTION

Canon imagePROGRAF iPF671E Large Format Printer that is easy to use while increasing productivity with fast print speeds and ink tank efficiencies event that a nozzle clog occurs, the iPF671E automatically compensates for this blockage by taking advantage of another available nozzle, due to the over 15,000 nozzles in the print head. Offering the ability to load larger rolls of diameters up to 5.9-inches compared to that typically offered by the competition, the imagePROGRAF iPF671E is able to help printers get more value out of their operation.

Engineered for speed and advanced image production, this printer boasts Canon’s print

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here is a new 5-color, 610 mm ( 24-inch ) large format Canon printer on the market called the iPF671E. This printer is an economical model that supports a variety of applications such as technical documents, drawings, presentations, posters and enlargements. In addition to the reliability, durability, and ease of use that Canon imagePROGRAF line of products are known for , this particular model is ideal for those looking for an extremely affordable printer as well. An added bonus to purchasing a 671E is its small footprint.

This small printer can fit on a desktop or the optional stand can be purchased to fit into a shared network environment for multiple users to print to.

Designed to compete in the low-cost, low-volume 24 inch market, Canon’s imagePROGRAF iPF671E offers speeds approximately 20 percent faster than that of the competition.* The imagePROGRAF iPF671E printer comes equipped with a total of 540 ml of ink differentiating it from competitors that offer less than 100 ml of ink to start with for similar devices. With 27 16

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an increased amount of ink, Canon has helped provide the tools necessary for those businesses entering the largeformat market to get their operation up and running. The new iPF671E employs a 5-color dye and pigment ink system with C, M, Y, BK, and MBK. The imagePROGRAF iPF670E offers a competitive advantage of utilizing two types of black ink: MBK for a dense black tone on plain paper and BK for glossy media to enable high image quality for poster printing.

Additionally, these new devices offer large 90 ml ink tanks for all colors, more than double that of the competition. The increased capacity of these color tanks will allow printers to stay on track and replace their tanks less frequently.

The imagePROGRAF iPF671E provides users with the high standards of reliability and efficiency that customers can expect from Canon devices.

The printer’s hot-swap ink tanks and non-firing nozzle detection and compensation features allow users to swap ink tanks in the middle of a print job without having to worry about ruining the print. In the

fine lines that are accurate to ±0.10% and as thin as 0.02mm.

Available free for download for the imagePROGRAF iPF671E is the following software, not offered by competing devices: Accounting Manager –Keeps track of your ink & media costs.

PosterArtist Lite – Bring your graphic design needs in house to create posters with ease.

Print Plug-in for Microsoft Office – Allows users to integrate directly with core Microsoft applications for streamlined workflow.

Below are some of the highlights of the iPF671E: • L ow acquisition cost • 5 40 ml of ink shipped standard with the printer • A black ink for photo printing and a matte black ink for line drawings • H igher Printhead life than competitive devices • C onsistently accurate Hi quality 2400 x 1200 dpi output with fine lines that are accurate to ±0.10% and as thin as 0.02mm.

• D rag and drop hot folder capability via Canon’s-Direct Print and Share software for simple to use large format printing • P osterArtist Lite includes everything you need to create professional-posters, signs, and banners in just 4 easy steps • A ccounting Manager keeps track of printing costs head technology that lays down ink with exceptional speed and accuracy. The Canon print head incorporates a nozzle orifice shape to help minimize mist spray, producing clean lines and text. The high-precision, highdensity print head, with a total of 15,360 nozzles, lays down 4 picoliter-size ink droplets that produce sharp detail and excellent image quality. The result is consistently accurate 2400 x 1200 dpi output with

Direct Print & Share – Through this feature, the end user can drag and drop files to hot folders to easily print large format files For more information on Canon’s large format devices and solutions, please visit www.canon.co.in *When printing a CAD drawing in Fast mode on A1-sized plain paper, the imagePROGRAF iPF671E completes a print in approximately 56 seconds, compared to 70 seconds for competing device.

itpv PROMOTION Tie – up with the Delhi Daredevils Team as their Technology partner for IPL, 2018 Infinity War” Captain America Edition

Tie – up, store launch and Product launches sum up Acer’s April month’s Activity

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cer, one of the largest PC and technology brands in the world, announced its association with Delhi Daredevils (DD) as its Technology Partner for the 11th season of Indian Premier League (IPL). Acer has collaborated with DD as their official technology partner. With one of the best Indian cricketers and decorated batsman Gautam Gambhir leading the team, Acer will play a key role in helping DD stay on top of the game with our ground-breaking technology and products.

Commencing the most awaited season of the IPL, DD players’ helmet and caps will prominently sport the Acer logo on the back. In addition, there will be numerous promotional activities with Delhi Daredevils across India to generate maximum excitement for our fans and customers.

Acer launches their 9th Exclusive store in Delhi

ACER, announced further expansion of its retail presence in Delhi with the inauguration of their 9th exclusive Acer Store at Nehru Place, New Delhi.

Acer stores provide a onestop shopping experience where consumers can experience and purchase all the latest laptops, monitors and accessories. sThe exclusive store launch is a part of the company’s constant

efforts to provide its customers with an interactive and informative buying experience by investing in the gamut of training sales personnel, instore merchandising, ranging of new high end models, sales enablement and attractive offers for its products.

Acer Launches New Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Special Edition Notebooks in Collaboration with Marvel

Acer also announced three new Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” special edition notebooks in collaboration with Marvel, including the Aspire 6 – Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Captain America Edition, Nitro 5 - Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Thanos Edition, and Swift 3 - Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Iron Man Edition.

The notebooks will be available in the Indian market starting from 20 April 2018.

Acer has been aggressively focusing on various aspects, which help them make a direct connect with their customer and what better way than launch an “Avengers Special Series”.

Acer Aspire 6 - Marvel Studios’ “Avengers:

Within a premium aluminum cover featuring with Captain America’s iconic pentagram, the Aspire 6 – Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Captain America

Edition is powered by an 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-8250U processor and NVIDIA® GeForce® MX150 graphics.

The special edition Aspire 6 comes with 8 GB of DDR4 memory (user-upgradeable to 20GB) and 1 TB of SATA HDD storage, and also packs a HD camera with HDR while Dolby® Audio™ Premium provides a great entertainment experience.

Speedy network connectivity is provided with 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac wireless technology and Gigabit Ethernet.

Acer Nitro 5 - Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Thanos Edition The new Nitro 5 – Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Thanos Edition’s is part of Acer’s Nitro product line for casual gaming. The notebook’s top cover features

a Thanos portrait decorated by IMR (In-Mold Roller) finishing technology, which complements its bold matte black chassis, outlines and hairline-brushed finish. The special edition of Nitro 5 is powered by NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 graphics with 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, an 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i57300HQ processor and 8 GB of DDR4 memory (user-upgradable to 32GB) .

Acer Swift 3 - Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Iron Man Edition Measuring in at 17.95 mm in height and weighing 1.6 kg, the Swift 3 - Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” Iron Man Edition’s svelte and lightweight design features a sturdy aluminium top cover decorated with Iron Man’s glowing Arc Reactor. It features

an 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-8250U processor, Intel® UHD Graphics 620, and offers up to 10 hours of battery life to help users power through a full day of work and beyond.

In addition to its battery life, Swift 3 sports a collection of other indispensable features for achieving maximum productivity, including a vivid 14-inch Full HD IPS anti-glare display, a fast 256 GB SSD, 8 GB of memory and 802.11ac 2x2 MU-MIMO wireless technology for fast and reliable internet connectivity.

APRIL 2018 17

in CONVERSATION

“We are thriving in SI space due to efficient project management” Listing out achievements and the reasons behind the growth in analytics, cloud and MPS businesses, Ranjan Chopra, Managing Director, Team Computers, spoke to Amit Singh on his plans to garner maximum growth from analytics, mobile app development, and data security over the next 12-18 months  Please take us through the achievement highlights of Team Computers in the last 12-18 months?

Over the last 12 months, we have done extremely well in sectors including BFSI, PSU, automobile, and insurance. With our vertical focused approach, we have performed tremendously in BI and analytics with revenues of over Rs 80 crore, registering a 50 percent growth. Our cloud business has grown to Rs 70 crore while we doubled our business from Google.

In addition, we have seen 200 percent growth in our managed print services business with revenue of over Rs 100 crore. Further, we have registered decent growth in our systems integration business (including mobility) with revenues of Rs 600 crore. Besides, we started new business unit for developing vertical and horizontal mobile applications for our customers, which has seen a good growth.

Overall, our business has grown by 30 percent to Rs 850 crore in FY2016-17. We currently have a run-rate of Rs 80 crore per month, which will enable us to touch the Rs 1000 crore revenue in the current fiscal. In fact, we would have easily crossed Rs 1000 crore figure had there not been slow-down in business during June-August due to GST implementation.

 What have been your sales, marketing, and customer acquisition strategies over the last 2 years, which enabled you to grow?

Ranjan Chopra, Managing Director, Team Computers We have engaged an automobile veteran with over 25 years of domain knowledge to lead our analytics business division. This strategy has enabled us to understand customer needs quickly and grow much faster against the competition.

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Going into the reasons for our growth, we would credit our ability to spot the trends and market opportunities early. For instance, we were early to spot opportunity with Google cloud. While the cloud market is led by Microsoft and making Microsoft customers switch to Google will take some time, there are a lot of customers struggling with Linux or Lotus notes and don’t want to opt for expensive solutions from Microsoft. We are offering them an option to switch to Google cloud, which has proved to be a large opportunity for us.

In addition, we entered the MPS business as it has limited competition and not everybody understands this business. We created a focused sales and delivery team for MPS, which enabled us to grow this business. In our BI and analytics business, we have brought in an automobile veteran with over 25 years of domain knowledge to lead our analytics business division. This strategy has enabled us to understand our customer needs quickly and grow much faster against the competition. In fact,

in CONVERSATION our analytics business from automobile and insurance has grown pretty fast.

Moreover, we have robust pre- and post-delivery mechanism. Post-delivery includes change management and adoption, which is quite crucial for successful completion of the project. For instance, most of the people use only 10 percent of the features available in any given software/ application. Hence, we have created a team to help people utilize at least 80-90 percent of the features. This creates a wow factor among the customers.

When a customer gets an excellent experience, then our business grows faster.

Further, we have a robust strategy for customer mapping and marketing through various channels including emails, Linkedin, Facebook, WhatsApp etc. We also organize 2-4 customer events every month in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chennai and various locations across the country. This has enabled us to acquire customers in new geographies. In addition, we have been very active in PSU space which enabled us to win few large projects.

 What are your top priorities for the next 12-18 months?

Over the next 12-18 months, we want to go deep into the existing markets we operate in.

Our focus will be to develop the market, customers, people, and processes. Moreover, we are focused to improve our warehousing and supply chain processes in order to double our revenues over the next 4-5 years.

With the GST coming into play last year, we are simplifying our warehousing while reducing the number of warehouses from 20 earlier to about 3-4 over the next few months. In addition, we are improving our processes to make a robust supply chain where orders can be executed with minimal time lapse and no requirement for warehouses at all. This will enable us to

cut costs and execute projects efficiently.

On the technology front, we look at predictive analytics as the future. Hence, we are building solutions using tools from vendors like Alteryx, Qlik Technologies, and Tableau Software to help our customers do predictive analytics.

Mobile apps development is another major focus area where we are building new applications including horizontal apps like attendance system.

In fact, we have deployed our attendance app, Teamworks, in our organization, which enables employees to work remotely

another major focus area. We are tying up with data security vendors and ethical hackers to strengthen our portfolio and offerings. We believe that by just having data and network security can’t guarantee 100 percent protection; hence we need to do penetration testing through smart hackers to cross-check the efficiency of the security infrastructure. This way, we are ensuring end-to-end security for our customers. Moreover, we are setting up security operations center (SOC) and network operations center (NOC) to remotely manage and secure our customers’ data centers.

Most of the people use only 10 percent of the features available in any software/application. Hence, we created a team to help people utilize at least 80-90 percent of the features. This creates a wow factor among the customers. with features like geo-location, ticketing, automated conveyance and online approvals. We have deployed this app for 3 our customers recently.

The mobile apps development complements our mobility division where we provide mobiles and tablets to our customers like Uber and Ola. Now, we have plans to offer our software applications and hardware combined as a solution-as-a-service. This will enable us bill on per user/device on a monthly basis and have a predictive and long-term revenue visibility. The monthly charges may range from Rs 500 to Rs 1200 per user/device depending upon the software and service level agreement.

Further, data security is

 While public cloud is gaining popularity among small and medium businesses, large enterprises are still adopting a private or hybrid approach. What are the trends you observe among your customers?

While public cloud is gaining large acceptance among small and large enterprises, the trend is towards hybrid cloud with a combination of public and private clouds. Customers are willing to keep the non-critical workloads including backup and DR on the public cloud; hence storage is predominantly going on the public cloud. However, they keep the critical workloads like ERP and CRM in-house.

Further, public cloud space

is offering added benefits like AI and machine learning, which requires intense capital investments in case of private cloud. For instance, Google cloud offers a quite strong machine learning and AI capabilities; hence quite a few customers are now opting for public cloud to leverage on AI and machine learning capabilities.

 Systems integration for many partners is a shrinking business with lowering margins. How is Team Computers addressing this concern?

Gross margins in systems integration business remain between 10-15 percent for the last many years. Our return on sales is roughly 5-7 percent; however, the return on capital is quite good. With on-time and efficient project delivery, we are able to get the return on capital of about 40-50 percent. Hence, project management is a crucial element to improve margins.

Team Computers has been able to thrive in the systems integration due to our efficient project management capabilities.

The idea is to plan and execute the project in a way that we are able to collect payments within 40-45 days to leverage on the credit time period. In addition, our wide presence with over 1500 employees, 25 offices, and 250+ support locations throughout the country enable us to execute multi-city projects in a timely manner.

 Please talk about your business interests beyond IT.

Beyond IT, we are focused on hospitality business, where we have Qla restaurant and Zorba for events. These businesses are contributing Rs 10 crore each annually.

In addition, we are building a resort named Tatva Hills in Uttarakhand, where customers can not only stay but also buy villas. We don’t consider it as a realty business but as a great experience that we wish to offer to our customers.

APRIL 2018 19

in CONVERSATION

“We are in a Smart Recovery Mode after Chapter 11” Vivek Singh, Director, Sales, Enterprise and Global, Avaya India, spoke to Amit Singh over the organizational changes during and after the company emerged from the bankruptcy period. According to him, Avaya is now a start-up focused on growth and execution with its renewed focus on partners and customers to the new business model focused on channels.

The new business focus on our partners is allowing us to build effective channel relationship programs. We are working with thousands of authorized partners globally and are developing them through comprehensive training programs. In addition, we are supporting partners through professional services and implementation tools.

These initiatives have indeed provided us a significant edge over the last 12 months.

 What should partners know about Avaya’s financial condition today and how the company might position itself going forward?

Vivek Singh, Director, Sales, Enterprise and Global, Avaya India  How has spending a year in Chapter 11 bankruptcy impacted Avaya and its partner organization?

What have been the major changes in Avaya?

Honestly speaking, we didn’t see any significant impact on our business during the Chapter 11 bankruptcy period.

In fact, during the last three years, we have grown our business by over 30-35 percent.

Although, a few large decisions were deferred (which are now coming back), we

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didn’t see any loss in focus or momentum from our ecosystem partners as we kept them updated on the developments.

Constant communication was our strong point as we remained close to our channel partners and customers, and that’s the reason they believed in Avaya.

I must say that while coming out of the Chapter 11 period, our focus on channels has evolved and our GTM is in line with changing industry requirements. And, Chapter 11 has given us a time to

work very proactively with our customers and to identify the right roadmap for digital transformation. In fact, we are in a smart recovery mode and the partners are all enthusiastic.

From the channel standpoint, we have adopted faster to the changes happening in the market, as we evolved our channels in-tune with the technological advancements.

While we started our transformation journey from being an aggregator and built up our own intellectual property, now we are adapting

After emerging from Chapter 11, we have an additional $300 million in cash because of the reduced interest payments and pension obligations. This will definitely allow us to double our current R&D spending and induce additional investments in our ecosystem of partners. This will also allow us to bring new solutions faster to the market.

As an organization, we are actually like a start-up focused on growth and execution. Our focus is completely customer and partner-centric.

For partners, we are building new channel relationship programs, while expanding the availability of solutions incorporating new trends like AI, IoT, Blockchain, and analytics. In addition, we are developing our partners to build and integrate next-generation technology solutions to enhance their

in CONVERSATION customers’ digital experience.

In fact, these new technologies integrate well with Avaya’s Oceana.

Further, we are adopting a federated business application development model. Currently, we are working with 8-10 application development partners for developing solutions on our platform.

At the same time, traditional partners are hiring software developers to create their unique differentiation. Hence, the partners who were selling stand-alone products are now transforming into application development partners.

Moreover, I am seeing Avaya’s acceptance increasing tremendously among the customers as we give them the flexibility to integrate any application across the existing infrastructure. Even in case of the heterogeneous environment, we are making our solutions coexist with that environment.

 Avaya has always been one of the leading business endpoint vendors in the world. For this new Avaya, what are the main focal points?

We are focusing more on solutions. While India is an extremely important market for Avaya, we have the benefit of having a local R&D team in India. We are augmenting our partner ecosystem in areas like cloud and AI. For instance, we have integrated AI capabilities in our solution to deliver a mobile virtual CX for a customer in Dubai. We have also announced the first CX solution on Blockchain.

Further, we have embedded workflow automation into our UC platform through Breeze, which offers (end-customers/ partners) a developed toolkit in which they can embed the workflow automation.

 How do you see the competitive landscape of the business endpoints market evolving? What’s the Avaya’s

value proposition against the competition?

We understand that it’s a transitional phase. It’s not completely on mobile and people still buy end-points; hence there must be flexibility for people to use end-point whenever they require.

Our focus is on real-time collaboration with embedded video as an end-to-end solution.

The biggest advantage with Avaya is that our end-points can co-exist with any video solution. That’s a flexibility which customers demand. We have engaged with new partners in the end-point domain and are expanding opportunities for partners to receive more benefits.

We are helping partner ecosystem with implementation tools that are re-designed and re-developed as per new requirements. So far, our journey has been impressive: we are augmenting our partners, enhancing our partner programs and taking them to newer areas with vertical industry solutions, IoT, AI, analytics. We are helping our partner build capabilities in these new areas and integrate them into Avaya Open System technology stack. And here, we are not only working with value-added resellers but also with managed service providers, cloud partners, ISVs, development platform partners, and technology alliance partners.

We have an additional $300 million in cash because of the reduced interest payments and pension obligations.

This will allow us to double our R&D spending, invest in partner ecosystem, and bring new solutions faster to the market.  What is your channel strategy over the next 12-18 months?

We have launched Avaya Edge program in FY2017-18 and have recently built on it with enhanced differentiation.

We have simplified the structure of Avaya Edge program with Emerald, Sapphire, and Diamond levels. With the digital transformation and growth in the cloud we are focusing on cloud specialists as partners, and distributors as cloud wholesalers. Further, we are engaging our existing partners, including enterprise VARs, SI, and solution providers, capable of rendering services across the cross-section of industries as Avaya delivery partners.

On our part, we are providing a bridge for partners’ transition to the cloud. We are making them specialize as application delivery partners, cloud specialist partners, and cloud integrators. They all work with our VARs; hence we are providing a framework to take them to the next level.

In addition, we have launched new rebate programs depending on the complexity of the integration. New incentive programs are launched for midmarket and SMB segments. So we have kept our framework ready for our partners to grow.

While our revenues are growing 15-20 percent YoY, we expect growth of over 30 percent over the next 12-18

months riding on our renewed focus on the market and channels.

In fact, India is among the top-10 markets for Avaya.

Over the last two years, we have added over 1000 net new accounts including Bharti Airtel, Xiaomi, PayPal, and various customers from BFSI, BPOs, internet service providers, and e-commerce, with a total of 3000 customers. We are also engaged in Smart City projects.

Further, we implemented the Dial-100 project including integrated emergency services across the entire UP. Overall, we are the leaders in two market spaces: contact center and unified communications.

 How important is it for partners to break out of being traditional partners and become cloud-savvy providers?

We see the cloud as one the leading business proposition for Avaya partners and actually make a significant contribution to the Avaya business. Some of our partners are in a faster transition mode and are offering not only capex-based solutions but also managed services on opex model. Most of the customers are appreciating this.

Further, many of the traditional partners are moving to become cloud partners.

In fact, the customer moving to the cloud will not happen overnight; it will be a mixed approach of on-premise and on-cloud. Hence, traditional partners have a large scope as we augment partners with professional services and implementation tools.

Further, Avaya’s expansion of the Edge program structure to add a new set of partners as well as motivating existing partners to get into the cloud domain is a remarkable step forward. In fact, few of the partners are creating their own COE labs to showcase Avaya Breeze and Oceana technologies to their customers.

APRIL 2018 21

itpv PROMOTION

iBall Guard launches Night Vision Color CCTV Cameras and Smart Cloud DVRs! •W ith Starlight technology - Enables to view visuals clearly in colour, even at night and under dark conditions •E quipped with Sony Starvis Image Sensor for a brighter picture quality

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he demand for CCTV solutions is increasing with increased crime rates and need for protection against such crimes. Most crimes happen during night. Unfortunately, CCTV solutions available presently do not provide good clarity in dark conditions and at night. iBall, a brand known for its innovative and latest technology products, realizes the need for better clarity during night when maximum crimes take place. iBall Guard, the growing brand in security products, have launched a series of CCTV cameras (Dome and Bullet) under its ‘Night Vision Series’ earlier. The cameras under ‘Night Vision Series’

shall keep crime at vigilance not only during day but also provide the best clarity in dark conditions and at night.

After the successful series, iBall now launches 2.0MP HD Starlight Colour Night Vision Camera, in which you can view the visuals in color under dark conditions, more clearly with precision.

It comes equipped with Starlight Technology, which is engineered especially for challenging ultra-low light conditions. It offers best-in-class light sensitivity, using a set of optical features to balance light throughout the scene. This in turn, captures colour details clearly, resulting in clear images in dark environment.

Easy to configure, the iBall Guard Colour Night vision security camera also comes with 1080p High resolution and a high aperture lens of 4mm, capturing every detail vividly and brightly. Using the 1/2.8” Sony Starvis 27 22

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BSI Image Sensor, the vision is crystal clear. It features a wall-mountable and compactly designed structure. It can also be affixed at the juncture of two walls and the ceiling, effortlessly.

Be it heavy rains or extreme cold or heat, Colour Night Vision camera operates effortlessly smooth even during the extreme weather conditions as well because of its IP66 rated Weather-proof Housing. It comes with a Real-Time Video Transmission, allowing the user, an omnipotent visibility. Under the distance range of 500 m, the user can see what the camera captures just by connecting a coaxial cable.

Along with the Night Vision series, iBall Guard also brings HD Smart Hybrid Cloud DVR, loaded with smart functions and remote accessibility.

Not just it can save the recorded data in the Google Drive and Dropbox, but also can acknowledge the area intrusion and line crossing, 24x7.

Enabling you to manage the data fast and efficiently from a remote access, the special iBall Cloud Feature enables you to remotely manage your data at your fingertips. Amidst all, the unique feature of Motion detection will trigger an alarm immediately to notify you of the trespasser. And also, it comes with automatic updates that keeps the Hybrid Cloud DVR up-to-date with latest features. It is the India’s first with exclusive smart features in its price segment. “iBall Night Vison series is getting very good feedback from customers.

Now, we are delivering on the next phase of security systems with Night Vision Colour and Smart Cloud DVRs” said CEO and Director of iBall, Mr. Sandeep Parasrampuria.

These products are available with the leading retail stores across panIndia.

Clarion unveils 4 New Models Portable and Trolley Type Speakers JM-DC-15580|JM-DC-12044 | JM-DC-8003|JM-DC-11000

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larion expanding not only its product range but comfort of entertainment wherever you move.

The Clarion sound Revolution Technology gives the optimal sound. These models Speakers cones are geometrically designed to control the finest sound. The speakers are able to reproduce the finest details from the audio sources which now can be enjoyed distortion less and crystal clear sound with all sources. All its give 3 Hours Backup time to enjoy your music even away from your home. Clarion Durable design Integrated multimedia speaker system stands out with powerful sound with LED emitting feature with built-in amplifier to give full audio spectrum performances for your favourite entertainment from digital playbacks. The Clarion DC Trolley Speaker System Specially designed woofer cabinet for bass and resolution comes with powerful sound with LED emitting feature and it has Powerful range of Microphone system.

We are committed to bringing the best in class Electronics & IT solutions to our customers. Clarion expertise shall further add to the assurance our customers find in our Brand by having fresh and elegant outlook of the products.

Clarion has the widest portfolio in Electronics and IT which is being expanded time to time in India market.

• 2.1|4.1|5.1Computer Multimedia Speakers System.

• Mini Tower Computer Multimedia Speakers System.

• BASS BLUSTER Series.

• 2.0 Floorstanding Bluetooth Tower Speakers.

• Party All Night DJ Speakers.

• Move Out Portable DC | Trolley Speakers.

• Take away Portable Speakers.

• Clarion All wide Range LED TV. • Cinema Screen 55” 140CMS LED TV. • Woofer Sound LED TV. • Gamer Series Casings|Keyboard|Mouse|Power Supply.

APRIL 2018 23

ANALYSIS

Essential Technologies for a Smart City

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mart cities in India are no more a thing of the future; they are being built all across the nation as you read this. The fact holds true not just for our country but worldwide.

Projected to be a $400 billion market by 2020 covering 600 cities worldwide, these cities are expected to generate 60% of the world’s GDP by 2025. So what are the technologies behind the ‘smart city’? Let’s take a look.

Smart Energy: Residential and commercial units in a smart city are more efficient, using less energy, and the energy used is analyzed and data collected.

Smart grids, smart streetlights (energy-saving LEDs), smart meters, solar power systems, electric vehicles are some of the facets of smart energy for a smart city.

Smart Transportation: Multi-modal transportation, smart traffic lights and smart 27 24

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parking are some of the features that support a smartcity. People spend less time looking for parking spots and circling city blocks by making parking smarter. Similarly, smart traffic lights have cameras that monitor traffic flow so that it’s reflected in the traffic signals.

After all, A smart city greatly reduces vehicle traffic and allows people and goods to be moved easily through various means.

Smart Data: In order to make the massive amount of data collected by a smart city useful, it must be analyzed quickly. In order to publish city data online, open data portals are one option that some cities have chosen so that anyone can access it and use predictive analytics to assess future patterns.

Smart Infrastructure: A smart infrastructure ensures

a city can move forward with other technologies. It also means that the data collected to is used to make meaningful changes in future city plans.

With a smart city’s ability to analyze large amounts of data, cities will be able to plan better and it will allow for better planning and proactive maintenance for future demand.

Smart Mobility: The technology and the data which travels across the technology collectively defines mobility here. If we are to realize the promise of smart cities, it is essential to have the ability to seamlessly move in and out of many different municipal and private systems. Data also needs to be unconstrained as it moves between systems and the technology needs to be interoperable and perform to expectations regardless of who made it or when it was made.

Smart IoT Devices: An IoT device is one of the key components that tie everything together in a smart city.

Information will increasingly be obtained either directly from purposefully deployed sensors or indirectly or from sensors deployed for another purpose but which gather and share useful information in a smart city. Complex city systems can be managed in real-time and, and with sufficient integration they can be used to minimize unintended consequences if this information is freely exchanged.

These technologies work together to build a smart city.

As more people move into urban areas and the world population grows, the need for smarter cities will increase to make the best use of available resources.

BRAND CONNECT

Emerging Gaming Technologies

Intel: Streamlining Data Traffic Flow and Storage

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T

echnology is creating unbelievable solutions that deliver an unusual, exceptional and interactive experience and constantly making our lifestyle better.

After entering into the mainstream world, game-specific technology has evolved a great deal and brought one surprise after another for gamers who desired more excitement in their play. Let’s take a look at some of the most exciting gaming technology trends of 2018 that can define the future of gaming.

Custom avatars of the human face

One of the amazing advances in gaming technology is facial recognition system. Players can create their own replica in the live video games and enjoy the feel of actually fighting the game battle in real time using 3D scan and human face recognition. Intel’s RealSense 3D camera is one such product helping mobile game developers design games that cleverly adapt to the human emotions by scanning 78 different points on their face.

Mobile gaming fever

The world of digital giving is moving from TV and computer to smartphones. By liberating the users from the living room trap, mobile games enable them to enjoy the similar experience even on the go. The trend for mobile gaming has successfully disengaged countless gamers from oneroom console experience to small-screen magic.

Voice-controlled gameplay

The use of voice recognition technology in today’s games has almost touched the level of maturity now. You can now go

controller-free while playing your favourite video games, thanks to revolutionary progress made in this area. Users can now control their game consoles and gameplay easily using voice recognition technology.

HD Graphic-Friendly Displays

Forget the old displays and enter the new world of high-resolution graphics.

Mobile game designers using technically sound, spectacular graphics need proper display quality to support and enhance the visuals. The cost of the 4K display has also come down enough to be adopted for watching your best-loved games. 4K display has also left behind 1080p, making your gaming beauty to all-new extremes.

Invasion of Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is poised to keep you wallowing in your own world while putting you on the border of dreamy experience. People who don’t find virtual stuff appealing have found the best reality companion in AR, considered as a VR sibling by many. It relieves the gamers from the boundaries of TV or computer screen with all new perspective and interpretations. The tricky AR technology can offer gamers the kind of experience where the differences between the real world and digital world fade away enough to enchant them.

Although the pace at which the disruption arises is still not precisely predictable, these are some of the gaming technology trends that are going to hit 2018 market. Changes and trends are happening and soon we will have users wanting more innovations to enrich their gaming realities.

he upward-spiralling growth of customer data traffic demands that today’s service providers run much of their traffic through virtual machines (VMs). The traditional data centre networks weren’t designed to handle the new traffic flow but this transition to virtualized data centres has changed the structure of the traffic and communication paradigms. Brocade, HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), and Intel developed industryleading NFV solutions for service providers and enterprises that want to build agility and automation into their networks using the globally-applicable European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) reference architecture as a starting point. The solution components, implemented as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) in Virtual Customer Premise Equipment (vCPE) and Virtual Cloud Equipment (vCE) environments include: Brocade 5600 vRouter: A software-based solution that enables the functionality from hardware-based routers to be deployed directly on hypervisors.

Brocade vRouters use the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK): Helps each forwarding plane to be allocated to multiple Intel® Xeon® processor or Intel® AtomTM processor cores.

It takes a completely flexible software-centric approach to packet processing, enabling extremely high processing performance on industry-standard high-volume servers.

The Brocade SDN Controller (BSC): A commercial distribution of the OpenDaylight Project’s SDN controller, which controls physical (VNFi) and virtual networking devices from all major vendors.

Brocade vADC (Application Delivery Controller): Designed to make applications faster, reliable, and secure, it works within cloud environments and easily integrates into an application stack.

Brocade VDX switches and Brocade VCS Fabric technology for the VNFi physical layer: It is the foundation for high-performance connectivity in Ethernet fabric, storage, IP network, and IP storage environments, enabling a low total cost of ownership (TCO) and fast return on investment (ROI).

HPE Helion Platform: Supports a variety of cloud apps while meeting the required servicelevel agreements for security, governance, and privacy Platform in the network management and orchestration (MANO) layer.

APRIL 2018 25

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channel news

Nexteer Expands Strategic Software Investment • P lans New Software Center in India,

Supplements Global Software Team in US, Poland & China

• N exteer Automotive, a global leader

in intuitive motion control, opens new Software Center in Bangalore

• I nvests 2 Million USD for overall activities

for the fiscal year 2019

• N exteer to hire 50 people to start with and

will go up to 200

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exteer Automotive expands its strategic software investment and global software team by announcing intention to open a Software Center in India. The Software Center will be the latest addition to the Company’s global software team that operates under one digital roof with locations in Saginaw, US; Tychy, Poland; and Suzhou, China. Nexteer Automotive presently has centres Pune and Gurgaon. In addition to this, Nexteer is also planning to set up a plant in Chennai for manufacturing of Electronic Power steering which is expected to be functional by 2018 Q3.

Nexteer’s Global Technical Center in Saginaw – in tandem with regional Technical Centers in Tychy and Suzhou will continue focusing on upstream software development and R&D innovation. Meanwhile, the new Software Center in India will focus on downstream software production and validation ensuring quality and compliance with regulations. The company has invested over 2 Million USD for overall activities for the fiscal year 2019. Nexteer is planning to hire around 50 people to start with for India Software Centre and will go up to 100 – 200.

“Nexteer’s software business model and our enhanced global team structure is based on delivering innovative software solutions with speed, flexibility and seamless vehicle integration for our global automotive OEM customers.

Nexteer’s software business model and our enhanced global team structure is based on delivering innovative software solutions with speed, flexibility and seamless vehicle integration for our global automotive OEM customers. The role of software in vehicles – and especially in safety-critical steering – is evolving quickly.

Geoff Krieger

Executive Director of Electronic Systems and Software, Nexteer Automotive

The role of software in vehicles – and especially in safety-critical steering – is evolving quickly. Consequently, automotive OEMs’ need for Nexteer’s smart software solutions to their complex challenges has grown exponentially,” said Geoff Krieger, Executive Director of Electronic Systems and Software, Nexteer Automotive.

NEXTEER CAPITALIZES, INVESTS IN GROWING SOFTWARE TREND

Nexteer views its software and electronics capabilities among its key differentiators and expects market demand for its software expertise to grow. Consequently, Nexteer is scouting locations in India for its Software Center and will continue investing in software capabilities over the next several years.

Industry analysts agree.

“Electronics and software are key differentiators in future growth areas… The ADAS and AD automotive component market will strongly grow providing an increasing revenue pool mainly for software focused suppliers… intelligent systems integrated with ADAS are expected to offer growth potential within respective domains (e.g., steering…),” LAZARD RolandBerger’s Global Automotive Supplier Study 2018.

Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s 2018 report, Five Trends Transforming the Automotive Industry, concurs – highlighting companies that invest in software applications will be “rewarded with strong growth.”

SOFTWARE’S ROLE IN NEXTEER’S

SAFETY-CRITICAL STEERING SYSTEMS

Nexteer’s software plays a safety-critical role – including cyber security – in its products such as Steer-by-Wire (SbW) and Electric Power Steering Systems (EPS) that are key gateway technologies for advanced safety functions and automated driving.

“It’s all about safety and performance. As vehicle technology evolves to include varying levels of advanced safety features and increasing levels of autonomous driving, our steering software ensures the safety net is ‘always on’ in our Steer-by-Wire and Advanced Electric Power Steering Systems. In addition to our hardware redundancies, our software is built for simultaneous, multi-path processing to strengthen this safety net,” said Krieger.

“Software also plays a key role in cyber security. We not only design hardware modules on the semi-conductor level for cyber-secure steering, we also design software structures with multiple layers that identify and authorize information and command flow between the steering system and other controllers. As vehicles adopt more advanced electronics to enable automated driving, internet connectivity and V2X communication, Nexteer’s cyber-secure steering technologies become even more critical.”

As Nexteer continues adding functionality and advanced safety features to its steering systems – the number of lines of code required is astounding: 14.3 Million lines of code required in Nexteer’s SbW; and 4.3 Million lines of code required in Nexteer’s EPS – compared to 400,000 lines of code required in the first space shuttle.

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channel news

HP Debuts Virtual Reality Solutions and Services for Businesses in India New VR portfolio, including the world’s first professional wearable VR PC, makes HP the partner of choice for immersive customer experiences

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P Inc. in India, announced a unified approach and commercial solutions for virtual reality (VR), positioning itself as the partner of choice for businesses looking to reduce concept to production cycle times, improve training procedures and deliver fully immersive customer experiences. As part of this strategy, the company is unveiling the world’s first professional wearable VR PC1 – the new HP Z VR Backpack. Crafted to bring the full potential of VR to-life, it is the world’s most secure and manageable wearable VR PC2 ever created.

Virtual reality is changing the way people learn, communicate and create,” said Vickram Bedi, Senior Director, Personal Systems, HP Inc. India. “Making the most of this technology requires a collaborative relationship between customers and partners. As a leader in technology, HP is uniting powerful commercial VR solutions to reinvent the future and create a unified portfolio of commercial VR devices, thereby aiming at delivering empowering VR experiences to our customers.”

The opportunities for commercial VR are limitless for businesses in product design, architecture, healthcare, first

responder training, automotive and entertainment. Emerging technologies like VR create breakthrough experiences for customers – from reinventing the buying experience in automotive showrooms to changing the way hospitals train their staff.

HP’s Winning Approach to VR

HP’s approach to virtual reality is founded upon its rich history of product innovation and deeply rooted customer relationships.

HP works as an extension of its customers’ businesses, which enables it to deliver the most immersive technologies that help businesses lead their industries.

HP technology not only provides commercial-grade reliability, but also established world-class partnerships that bring together the complete VR ecosystem with Intel, NVIDIA, Technicolor, HTC Vive and others.

The company is investing in immersive virtual and augmented reality technologies to give customers and partners superb tools for commercial VR use cases.

This effort solidifies HP’s long-term commitment to VR and helping customers use VR to reinvigorate their business. Thirteen immersion centers will open later this year in Palo Alto, Houston, Boise, Fort Collins, Stockholm, London, Paris, Barcelona, Boeblingen, Beijing, Sydney, Tokyo and Singapore, and have been designed so customers can have an immersive experience using HP VR technology and receive consulting and learn how to best deploy VR devices within their business to streamline workflows.

The Mobility to Transform – HP Z VR Backpack

Vickram Bedi

Senior Director, Personal Systems, HP Inc. India 27 28

APRIL 2018

The HP Z VR Backpack solution provides the freedom to move and maintain total immersion with high-octane visual performance and docking capabilities that

transform it into a manageable, powerful desktop PC experience.

The HP Z VR Backpack is a catalyst for more powerful VR experiences across many enterprises and businesses including the following use case examples: Businesses can use VR to deliver safe and effective simulated training in dangerous environments, in medical training or for heavy/large equipment operations. In all these environments costly mistakes can be avoided with effective VR training solutions using the HP Z VR Backpack.

In architectural building development, virtual walkthroughs at scale for client reviews can help quickly close the deal.

In product development where product concepts are reviewed, executive agreement and sign off for new product styling can be done in virtual product showrooms.

In commercial entertainment, new location-based entertainment centers featuring exhilarating virtual reality experiences can now be realized with the HP Z VR Backpack.

With the workstation-class HP Z VR Backpack, the full potential of VR is brought to-life. HP’s fully immersive and untethered VR Backpack is light with an ergonomic backpack design and hot swappable batteries to provide unrestricted freedom within an immersive experience. It has high-end processing power and the latest high-fidelity graphic solution to help prevent disruptive dropped frames so users can work in VR for as long as needed. The Intel® Core™ i7 vPro™ processor provides the power to process applications quickly and includes the vPro chipset. The HP Z VR Backpack is the first wearable VR PC in the market with the NVIDIA® Quadro® P5200 with a huge 16GB video memory3.

Finally, its docking solution lets digital creators quickly transition back and forth between high powered desktop for content

design and wearable VR PC to validate creations. The HTC Vive™ Business Edition HMD (sold separately) is part of the HP VR portfolio. HP Z VR Backpack is scheduled to be available in September.

The HP VR Product Portfolio

HP’s versatile, high-powered devices empower customers to create and consume VR content.

HP’s commercial grade products are designed for mission critical business applications that require high levels of security, manageability, reliabilty and ISV certified applications.

The HP ZBook 17 Mobile Workstation delivers ultimate power and performance and can be configured with the optimal horsepower and graphics solutions to bring VR content to-life in an ultra-smooth 90 FPS VR experience.

The HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Tower, a VR-certified PC, features high performance and expandability in a stylishly redesigned 26 percent smaller chassis for the modern workplace.

It is ideal for companies wanting to future-proof their technology and deliver state-of-the-art capabilities.

Availability

The HP Z VR Backpack is available now, starting at INR 325000/-+ The HP ZBook 17 Mobile Workstation is available now starting at INR 165000/-+ The HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Tower available from now starting at INR 72000+

channel news

McAfee and IBM Security Extend Partnership with Key Areas of Product Integrations McAfee now integrates with IBM Resilient to provide better protection through automation and intelligence sharing

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cAfee, the device-tocloud cybersecurity company, announced the integration of IBM Resilient’s Incident Response Platform (IRP) withData Exchange Layer (DXL), giving Resilient IRP users the ability to query McAfee Threat Intelligence Exchange (McAfee TIE) as a threat reputation service. The Resilient IRP now also natively connects to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (McAfee ePO)improving orchestration by speeding up response times and increasing the volume of threats that security teams can respond to with automation and

The integration of the Resilient IRP with DXL,McAfee TIE and McAfee ePO will enable better security intelligence, faster response times and empower security teams to handle threats using automated tasks.

D.J. Long

Vice President of Strategic Business Development, McAfee

intelligence sharing.

According to the most recent McAfee Labs Quarterly Threats Report, there were 63.4 million new malware samples discovered in Q4 2017 resulting in an increase of 32 percent quarter-overquarter. As the threat landscape continues to evolve and grow, it has becomemore difficult for organizations to keep their data protected. In fact, 35 percent of cybersecurity professionals claim that they cannot maintain an adequate staff of trained individuals. The continued growth of malware coupled with the advancement of new threats, demonstrates the need for responders to betteridentify and more quickly remediate threats in their security environments.

“The integration of the Resilient IRP with DXL,McAfee TIE and McAfee ePO will enable better security intelligence, faster response times and empower security teams to handle threats using automated tasks,” said D.J. Long, vice president of strategic business development, McAfee.

“Leveraging the deep portfolio of McAfee security solutions

Ted Julian

Vice President of Product Management and Co-founder, IBM Resilient together withResilient’s industry-leading orchestration capabilities, we can now deliver solutions that enable security teams to work faster and more efficiently.”

“McAfee’s integrationhelps customers both quickly identify incidents and decisively respond to them,” said Ted Julian, vice president of product management and co-founder, IBM Resilient. “As security threats become both more

As security threats become both more numerous and complex, it’s more critical than ever to orchestrate these systems putting the right information, in front of the right person, at the right time and empowering them to act on it. numerous and complex, it’s more critical than ever to orchestrate these systems putting the right information, in front of the right person, at the right time and empowering them to act on it.”

The integration of the Resilient IRP and DXL, McAfee TIE and McAfee ePO is now generally available and can be found on the IBM Security App Exchange.

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channel news

Expecting Growth in External Storage Spend for CY2018: Banking, Government to drive spend: IDC India

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s per IDC’s latest Asia/ Pacific Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker Q4 2017 release, India’s external storage market witnessed a decline of 4.7% Year on year (YoY. by vendor revenue) and stood at USD 74.1 million in Q4 2017.

Market witnessed a YoY decline due to lesser spend in banking and manufacturing verticals in Q4, 2017. However, these segments still are amongst the highest contributors to the external storage market along with professional services and telecommunications industries.

Increased adoption of 3rd platform technologies is pushing organizations to improve performance and optimize storage infrastructure to achieve its business objectives and respond to changing business needs faster with lower TCO. “Adoption of All Flash Arrays (AFA) is growing exponentially and

becoming mainstream in storage deployments across enterprises to address the demand for workload/ application acceleration with high IOPS and minimal latency.” says Dileep Nadimpalli, Associate Research Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure.

Market witnessed a continued shift towards All Flash Arrays (AFA). AFA segment saw a significant growth at 54.9% YoY in Q4 2017 contributing to 23.4% of the overall external storage market. AFAs are getting deployed across most verticals with banking, telecommunications and professional services contributing to most of these deployments in Q4 2017. Flash footprint also continues to increase in hybrid flash arrays(HFA), as end users are procuring a higher proportion of SSD’s vs HDD’s to achieve a better price to performance ratio.

High end storage segment witnessed a high double-digit

growth of 39.2% in Q4 2017 due to large deployments in telecommunications and banking industries. Consumption Models for Storage are impacting both midrange and entry level segments leading to a YoY decline in Q4 2017.

“Digital Transformation (DX) will drive customers to look for Storage requirements and innovative Storage technologies.

Adoption for HCI, Object Oriented Storage, Software Defined Storage grew in the India Market addressing the new-age storage requirements of customers.”, says Ranganath Sadasiva, Director, Enterprise Solutions, IDC India.

Dell Inc. continued to be the market leader with a 27.6% market share by vendor revenue, however witnessed a YoY decline in Q4 2017. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp saw a significant growth predominantly driven by deals from banking and

Digital Transformation (DX) will drive customers to look for Storage requirements and innovative Storage technologies. Adoption for HCI, Object Oriented Storage, Software Defined Storage grew in the India Market addressing the new-age storage requirements of customers.

Ranganath Sadasiva

Director, Enterprise Solutions, IDC India telecommunications industry.

IDC India Forecast

The external enterprise storage systems market is expected to grow at a single digit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for 2017 – 2022 timeperiod. This growth is expected to come from an increased spending into digital transformation initiatives across industries.

Banking and government verticals are expected to drive a majority of the growth in next one year

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itpv PROMOTION

channel news

Keysight Technologies India gets the Top Test & Measurement Company Award for the year 2016-17

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eysight Technologies India was awarded as the ‘Top Test & Measurement Company Award for the year 2016-17’ at the Annual CyberMedia ICT Awards hosted at DataQuest Digital Leadership Conclave.

The CyberMedia ICT Business Awards-dubbed as the “The Oscars of Indian ICT’ is all about celebrating the winners and achievers of the Indian ICT (Information & Communications Technology) industry. These awards are the manifestation of various surveys such as Customer Confidence Survey,Data Quest Top 20, Voice & Data Survey 100 done over the year to capture the pulse of Indian ICT industry. The conference was attended by the senior business leaders from India’s Top 500 enterprises and senior executives from the Indian ICT industry.

This award is a testament of our leadership in Test and Measurement industry in India. We not only have the highest market share but also have the widest market coverage including the new markets, because of our wide-range of cutting-edge electronic test & measurement products and solutions. Keysight India team is working closely with engineers, researchers and educators across the segments to accelerate innovation in countless manners, such as – establishing a 5G research lab, implementing next-gen automotivetest solutions, deploying end-to-end modular test solutions in aerospace and defense, enabling testing of PAM-4 for high speed digital, boosting design and manufacturing of mobile devices, setting up of leading-edge labs in academia to ensure that the budding engineers are industry-ready, and many more.

“This leadership award strengthens our resolve to unearth the emerging segments in India while we continue to add value to our customer’s business and help them achieve electronic breakthroughs”, said, Sudhir Tangri, Country General Manager & Head of Sales, India.

He added “I would like to thank every member of the India Sales Team for relentlessly pushing themselves and congratulate them for this coveted recognition.”

Zebronics launches 6 in 1 external power charger ‘Esteem’

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truly Multi-functional product which an all in one wireless audio support, speaker, an LED torch, FM radio, Micro SD, a Power Bank You’ve always thought what if one product can do many things, like a wireless speaker that could also charge your phone or the LED torch can help you listen to your favorite radio channels? Introducing a truly multi-functional device ‘Esteem’ your go to BT speaker, Radio, LED torch, Power charger device.

Zebronics India Pvt. Ltd., India’s leading brand of IT peripherals, Audio/Video, and surveillance products has launched a truly multi-functional product ‘Esteem’, a revolutionary product which is a 6 in 1 external power charger that has BT, Speaker, an LED torch,FM, Micro SD, a power bank and comes with a cycle mount.

With this 6 in 1 product, you can • C harge your phone • U se the LED Torch • L isten to the radio • L isten to your favorite songs • S tream music wirelessly • P lay music through SD card Esteem is a light and portable device that is designed like a torchlight extra easy light and with its ergonomic design, it’s easy to grip on to. This devices’ multi-functionality is boastful with it’s 6 in one product

which has wireless audio support, speaker, an LED torch, FM radio, Micro SD, a power bank.

Charge on the go with the power bank which comes with 2000mAh capacity or simply dive into some good music with wireless speakers which has an option to take calls also with built in mic. The device also supports SD Card and doubles up as an LED torch light.

This lightweight ergonomic device has three buttons. A button to switch on the Bluetooth/LED torch along with volume up/down/call controls. The device also comes with a bicycle mount and it can be used to mount it on the handlebar. On one end there is a bright LED torch and on the other end is a conically designed speaker. The LED Torch flap can be opened to charge or for SD Card insert.

Commenting on the launch of the multifunctional product ‘Esteem’, Mr. Pradeep Doshi, Director Zebronics India says, “When it comes to multifunctional products, it’s undoubtedly Zebronics Always ahead! Yet once again, strengthening our foothold in the wireless market comes our Esteem, smart portable 6 in 1 external charger. Focusing on ‘Multifunctionality’, with a contemporary touch. Designed for people who love to do more with their device.”

Available in black this device will be available in all leading retail stores across India.

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channel news

Epson India announces elevation of Samba Moorthy to head India operations

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pson India announced a rejig in its top management. Mr Toshiyuki Kasai, who has been the President for the last 6 years and is due to retire shortly, announced that he will be returning to Epson Japan in April 2018. His replacement as President of Epson India has been announced as Mr. Samba Moorthy, who till now was the Vice President, Sales & Marketing.

Samba Moorthy who joined Epson India in 1996 has grown through the ranks to head the company in India. With a vast body of experience in various capacities within Epson, Samba has been instrumental in setting up and building the Point of Sale (POS) and Projector businesses for Epson and for actually creating an industry where none existed earlier in India. He is widely credited with being the driving force behind Epson India’s sales growth and its ascendency to the No. 1 position in most of the categories it operates in including inkjet printers, projectors, billing printers, dot matrix printers and robots.

According to the outgoing President, Toshiyuki Kasai, “Epson India has been growing Head India Operations exponentially for the Epson India last many years, and has reached a turnover of approx. Rs. 1664 Cr in FY 2017. This was possible because of our fantastic products, a strong internal team, a robust channel, a wide service network and a deeply rooted culture of customer centricity. Epson India is now poised for the leap to the next level. Samba is an inspiring leader with a clear vision and is the ideal person to lead and take Epson India forward, with an eye on the 2025 goals set by the company.”

Samba Moorthy

Commenting on his appointment Samba Moorthy said, “It’s an honour to lead Epson India as we look to sustain and boost our growth momentum in the coming years. My focus will continue to be on generating value for our customers in everything we do, while building Epson into a valued and respected brand in India. These are exciting times at Epson India and I look forward to working closely with the team and our partners and business associates to take Epson India to the next level.“ 27 32

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Cloud4C Receives SAP APJ Partner Excellence Award 2018 for HANA Enterprise Cloud Award Presented at SAP Field Kick-Off Meeting 2018

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loud4C announced it is the recipient of an SAP® APJ Partner Excellence Award 2018 for HANA Enterprise Cloud.

Awards were presented by SAP (NYSE: SAP) to the top-performing SAP Partners in the APJ region that have made outstanding contributions to driving SAP customers’ digital transformation. Recipients of this year’s awards have been – in partnership with SAP – helping customers adopt innovation easily, gain results rapidly, grow sustainably and run more simply with SAP solutions.

Mr. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder and CEO, Cloud4C said, “We are delighted to receive the award, as it stands as a true testimony to the value delivered to the end customers through our collaborative effort with SAP”. He added, “I am thankful to SAP for bestowing this honor on us. We are committed to delivering innovative solutions to our global customers as we expand our footprint from 16 existing countries to 40 countries in the next eighteen months” Selected from SAP’s wideranging partner base, nominations for the SAP Partner Excellence Awards were based on internal SAP sales data. A steering committee composed of regional and global SAP representatives determined winning partners in each category according to numerous criteria such as sales achievement and performance.

Awards were presented in a variety of categories, including overall sales, innovation, technology, services and solution-specific areas.

“The SAP Partner Excellence Awards exemplify the shared purpose, commitment and success that allow our partners, together with

SAP, to deliver value to our customers on an ongoing basis,” said Rodolpho Cardenuto, President, Global Channels & General Business, SAP. “To that end, I am pleased and honored to recognize and congratulate Cloud4C as the recipient of the SAP APJ Partner Excellence Award 2018 for HANA Enterprise Cloud. We look forward to continuing to work closely together with Cloud4C to realize even greater success in 2018.”

The SAP and Cloud4C journey which began as a regional collaboration in India has evolved into a global partnership. Cloud4C has established a presence in 16 countries and 23 locations serving large global multinationals. Cloud4C – A global premium supplier of SAP HEC has established its SAP Community Cloud across Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific regions.

Today, Cloud4C is one of the largest Cloud Services player worldwide in managing SAP workloads in the cloud, especially for the Banking, Insurance and Government verticals.

Cloud4C received its award during the SAP Field Kick-Off Meeting in Sydney, an annual gathering of SAP executives, SAP field employees and partners. It is SAP’s largest yearly sales meeting, intended to gain and exchange information on SAP’s strategy, sales methodology, business growth opportunities and product innovations as well as drive success during the upcoming year.

Channel

Point Big Channel Deals Require Creative Financing Solutions

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hannel entrepreneurs are often great at coming up with creative solutions for customers facing a gnarly problem. What they’re sometimes not so good at is putting together the capital to get the deal underway.

Even after exhausting all of the normal channels the bank, the distributor and even vendors it can often be tough to come up with enough cash to make it happen.

That’s where a little creativity can get the ball rolling.

Innovative financing programs -- programs that go far beyond the standard Net 30-day terms, floor planning, third-party financing or assignment of proceeds can make a real difference for resellers, allowing them to grab larger deals or recover from financial straits.

Sometimes, distributors and vendors work together to provide creative financing options to value-added resellers (VARs) Vendors can also come up with creative financing options on their own.

Those resellers hoping to unlock some customer spending through finance might be wise to spend some time cultivating relationships with local accountants.

The role of the accountant is an important one for those customers making funding decisions and much more likely to be consulted than brokers or banks. Accountants and commercial finance brokers are increasingly becoming the default go-to for companies seeking advice on business finance, especially where funding is required quickly. To make sure that the accountants understood all of the potential credit opportunities, with the channel providing information about plenty of them but more efforts had to be made to ensure the message was getting across to the finance sector.

Invoice financing was the most common form of getting credit with bank overdrafts also a popular way of getting additional funds.

It’s imperative that these professionals are aware of the wider funding opportunities available to provide the best, most comprehensive advice to their clients and find the solution that fits.

KALPANA SINGHAL, Editor (E-mail: kalpana@techplusmedia.co.in)

EDITOR: KALPANA SINGHAL CONSULTING EDITOR: Kanika Goswami ASSISTANT EDITOR: Amit Singh SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Ekta Srivastava CORRESPONDENT: Rashmi Sharma MARKETING: VICE PRESIDENT: Anjali Sethi BDM HEAD: Sandhya Patade MANAGER AD-SALES: SUPRIYA SAHOO INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION: Poorva Shrivastava SALES: Pratap Jana | Awadh Kishore PRODUCTION HEAD: Aji Kumar WEBSITE: Sheetal Varshney/Ramesh Kr PROMOTION: Amit Pandey / Vimla Rani CIRCULATION: Pratap FINANCE: Inder Pal HEAD OFFICE: 370A, Sant Nagar, East of Kailash, New Delhi Tel: 41690720, 41625763, 41325819, 26237405 Email - kalpana@techplusmedia.co.in MARKETING OFFICE: 10 UF, West Wing, Raheja Tower, MG Road, Shanthala Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka-560001 Delhi: 9711841991 | Mumbai: 9711849468 Kolkata: 9331072026 | Guwahati: 9864084436 Bangalore: 9711841993 OWNED, PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY ANUJ SINGHAL Printed at Modest Graphics Pvt. Ltd., C 52-53, DDA Shed, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase - I, New Delhi-20, Place of Publication: 370A, 2nd Floor, Sant Nagar, East of Kailash, New Delhi-110065, Editor- Anuj Singhal ITPV does not claim any responsibility to return adequate postage. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the editor. Back Page AD will carry RNI Number & Imprint Line Note: While every possible care is taken prior to accepting advertising material, it is not possible to verify its contents. ITPV will not be held responsible for such contents, or for any loss or damages incurred as a result of transactions advertising/advertorial in this publication. We recommend that the readers make necessary inquiries and verification before remitting money or entering into any agreement with advertisers, or otherwise acting on advertisement in any manner whatsoever.

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APRIL 2018 OWNED, PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY ANUJ SINGHAL, Place of Publication: 370A, 2nd Floor, Sant Nagar, East of Kailash, New Delhi-110065, EDITOR: Anuj Singhal