ISSUE 204 // december 2013 WWW.RESELLERME.COM
Partner Profitability How can vendors ensure partners grow their margins?
PUBLICATION LICENSED BY IMPZ
MFP: A lucrative channel opportunity
Gearing up for mobile broadband
CONTENTS
ISSUE 204 // december 2013
Highlights 6
cover feature
News We help you catch up on all the major news and announcements in the regional channel community.
Partner watch 22 Being partner-centric
Ahsan Ali from TechAccess discusses the importance of having a strong partner programme and the company’s expansion plans.
24 Charting a course for success
Reseller ME meets up with Ajay Singh Chauhan, Group CEO, Spectrum Group to understand the changes in the channel ecosystem.
feature 36 A class of its own
Reseller ME analyses the advantages of using colour multifunction printers and the opportunities it presents for the channel.
vendor focus 42 Look up to LTE
Reseller ME analyses what vendors can do to increase their partners’ margins and help them grow profitably.
What kinds of opportunities does the fourth generation wireless technology offer the channel?
Interview 46 Catalyst for cybersecurity
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Rules for partner profitability
Hot products Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro
Officejet Pro X from HP
Reseller ME speaks to Paul Wright Professional Services Manager, MEA&I, AccessData on how security solutions have become integral to businesses.
48 Innovate to stay ahead
Reseller ME catches up with Havier Haddad, Channel and Alliances Director for Turkey, Emerging Africa and the Middle East, EMC to understand innovations designed for channel community.
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3
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editorial Publisher Dominic De Sousa Group COO Nadeem Hood Editorial Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1513
A fine balance
Assistant Editor Janees Reghelini Contributing Editor Tom Paye Online Editor James Dartnell Advertising Commercial Director Rajashree R Kumar raj.ram@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1511 Key Account Manager Merle Carrasco merle.carrasco@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1510 Sales Manager Nasir Bazaz nasir.bazaz@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1512 Circulation Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh.nair@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1645 Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james.tharian@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1643 Designer Analou Balbero analou.balbero@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1504 Digital www.resellerme.com DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya
Jeevan Thankappan Group Editor Talk to us: E-mail: jeevan.thankappan@ cpimediagroup.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/ ResellerME Twitter: @ResellerME
If you ask any channel company in the region as to what is going to their top priority for the next year, chances are that they would say profitable growth. How to retain profitability is vexing question that is facing the whole spectrum of channel, be it distributors, resellers or retailers. Why is this such an issue? During the economic downturn when competition got fierce for a shrinking market pie, the focus on profitability was lost. It was all about getting the deals done quickly and price being the only differentiator. Besides, the rising cost of operations in terms of rents, staff compensation, infrastructure has also made a further dent in the bottom line. The fact that product margins are on a downwards spiral has taken the wind out of the sails of many. Can vendors, who are typically driven by quarterly budgets, do more to ensure the long-term profitability of their partners? Increasing profitability of the channel has to be driven primarily by vendors and their product suites. In fact, now with bottom line being the area of focus, many partners have started to re-evaluate their portfolio and determine what kind of relationships can help them achieve their goals. A recent Forrester report suggests that the tech vendors are vulnerable more than ever to channel partners’ shifting investments and loyalty. The research firm points out that most channel partners hinge their loyalty on two factors – “the length of time they have had a relationship with a vendor, and the profitability that vendor relationship represents in their bottom line.” What is most worrying is that a significant number of channel partners don’t consider their primary vendors to be their more profitable. This has led to most channel players to start shifting their focus from tier one vendors to smaller ones that can help them to shore up their sagging fortunes. Vendors, besides backend rebates and other incentives schemes, will have to go the extra mile to ensure their partners make decent margins and stay local. Channel partner, on their part, will have to look at cashing in on untapped areas like services and annuity business to find a perfect balance between top line growth and net profitability.
Photographer and Social Media Co-ordinator Jay Colina webmaster@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by
Registered at IMPZ PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 4 375 1500 Fax: +971 4 447 2409 Printed by Printwell Printing Press © Copyright 2013 CPI All rights reserved While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.
december 2013
Reseller Middle East
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highlights
News
Acer MEA appoints new VP and implements structure
David Drummond, Country Manager, Acer MEA for Southern Africa
Acer has announced that David Drummond, Country Manager for Southern Africa will now also take up the position of Vice President, Middle East & Africa, effective immediately. Identifying Middle East and African region as a strategic market, the company is confident that Drummond, with his 20 plus years of experience, in-depth leadership and wealth of customer relationships will lead Acer to become the preferred brand in that region. By building and developing the sales organisation and business development capabilities in the region, he is also expected to lead the company to achieve business success in a competitive market. Along with this, the company also highlighted that a business restructuring was
formulated and completed immediately by the management team. With the restructure, Acer is now looking to introduce more competitive products with existing PC, tablet and smartphone business and to stabilise their market share within the region. “Continuing on the success of the region is a challenge that both myself and my team are very much looking forward to,” said Drummond. “Implementing Acer’s business strategies to achieve business objectives, customer satisfaction and the new business opportunities remain a priority and we will continue to drive a profitable and sustainable business, whilst continuing to focus on the strategic initiatives and processes within the Acer infrastructure as the brand continues to drive the business forward.”
Lenovo honours FDC for outstanding performance
At the annual Lenovo Business Partner Event, held recently, FDC International was recognised for its expertise and outstanding performance in consumer distribution, Tablet distribution and as a distributing partner.
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Being the only organisation to have won two awards at the event for UAE, FDC attributes the success to its strengths such as having a strong distribution network and having built a market for the brand. Alan
Pourmirza, Infrastructure Manager, FDC International further says, “Apart from this, as a partner we have also been focused on retail and has made sure that we sell a mix product portfolio, which has enabled us to reach this stage. We are delighted with these awards.” In the past year, FDC has been able to achieve important success stories such as enhancement of distribution rights in new areas for Acer and Lenovo in Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and GCC Power retailers. According to Pourmirza, achieving legal entity for Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq is also one of its major highlights. “To add to this, we have also been able to enhance the enterprise division and implement SAP & EDI ERP system,” he says. The company believes that the way forward is by being tuned into the market demands and developments and providing quality services that satisfies its customers. Pourmirza says, “We will maintain the momentum in the Tablet business and add more customers and products to our portfolio. Also we will keep studying the market to be flexible with any diversion that might be required.”
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Powered by Intel® © Copyright 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
highlights
News
Exclusive Networks Group acquires Secureway
Fari Boustantchi, CEO, Secureway Exclusive Networks Group has acquired Dubai-based Secureway Network Distributors. The acquisition creates
the largest pan-EMEA value added distributor of disruptive security, unified communications and infrastructure technologies, and presents huge opportunities for vendor and reseller partners alike, says a press release from Exclusive Networks Group. “Secureway is a successful, wellrun company and a good strategic fit for us, enabling access to a profitable and fast-growing group of new markets that extend our reach and stand us apart as the choice of VAD partner for vendors targeting rapid expansion across EMEA,” said Olivier Breittmayer, CEO of Exclusive Networks Group. “Secureway’s legacy of growth, market position and thought leadership echoes our existing culture and shares many similarities with businesses we have acquired in the past.” Secureway currently employs a team of 60 at offices in Dubai and Riyadh,
and is experiencing impressive growth. “We have built a solid business value model across Middle East and this is the right time to start a new chapter in that success,” said Fari Boustantchi, CEO of Secureway, who will continue his current responsibilities in the position of Regional CEO for Exclusive Networks Group’s Middle East region. “We are certain the acquisition will add significant value to resellers across the region as well as to existing and prospective vendor partners.” Exclusive Networks Group has recently announced new investment to support future acquisitions, with Secureway emerging as the first of these. The company maintains its stated aim to make three acquisitions per year, and to reach revenues of €1bn by 2017. Following the acquisition of Secureway, the Group’s annual revenue target for 2013 has been revised to €400m.
Dell Software appoints StarLink as distributor in the Middle East
Avinash Advani, Director Business Stratergy, StarLink Middle East StarLink, the IT securityspecialised Value-AddedDistributor (VAD) has been appointed as Dell Software’s
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distributor in the Middle East for a broad range of legacyQuest Software products, which are now a part of Dell
december 2013
Software Group (DSG). As per the distribution agreement, StarLink, an existing distributor for DSG’s Privileged Password Manager, will now also be responsible for the distribution of a broad range of other Dell Software Solutions, including products from DSG’s Windows Server Management, Performance Monitoring, Identity and Access Management and User Workspace Management business units across the Middle East. Dominique Honnay, Director Emerging Markets, Dell Software Group says, “We believe in StarLink’s exceptional capabilities to deliver and market Dell Software’s enterprise solutions across the region, and accelerate strategic growth with resellers and clients
by offering them powerful yet simple-to-use business solutions to solve the most common and most challenging IT problems.” “As an exclusive partner for Dell Software, StarLink has heavily invested in the relevant resources and technical excellence to support its channel partners and therein end customers, by providing complete end-to-end services around the solution areas. With this enhanced business relationship with Dell, we aim to offer customers with an industryleading, differentiated, and easy to manage combination of systems management, security, business intelligence and application software from the Dell Software portfolio”, says Avinash Advani, Director – Business Strategy, StarLink.
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highlights
News
Red Hat and partners deliver certified OpenStack Solutions
Mike Werner, Senior Director, Global Ecosystems, Red Hat An open source solutions provider, Red Hat has announced the world’s largest ecosystem for commercial OpenStack deployments is the company’s Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network ecosystem.
The company also announced a new set of offerings as part of the programme. According to the company, through the growing Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Certification, it is working towards bringing customers the same value and benefits they have found through existing ecosystems. The Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network connects both business and technical resources to third-party technology companies who are aligning with the company’s OpenStack product offerings. The list of certified and supported OpenStack commercial solutions has expanded to include hundreds of software, plug-ins, and hardware systems, since the launch of the programme earlier this year. The partners building these solutions work closely with the company to offer customers an enterprise-ready and commercial-grade OpenStack infrastructure, with complementary technologies integrated across compute,
networking and storage, says the company. Mike Werner, Senior Director, Global Ecosystems, Red Hat says, “At launch, our goal was to build a strong, broad-reaching OpenStack ecosystem to bring enterprise customers choice and confidence as they move to an OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure. Industry support for Red Hat’s OpenStack vision has exceeded our expectations, and we’re proud to now offer the world’s largest OpenStack ecosystem in support of commercial deployments.” The Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network has witnessed a 30 percent growth in partner participation and 900 plus certified solutions have been included in the company’s marketplace since June 2013. This has helped customers to effortlessly find technologies and solutions that are certified with the company’s Enterprise Linux Open Stack Platform, or with other products in the company’s open hybrid cloud portfolio.
EMC recognises Condo Protego at Gulf Partner Summit 2013 EMC has awarded Condo Protego with ‘Best Enterprise Storage Division Partner’ of the Year for the Gulf and Pakistan territory at the EMC Gulf Partner Summit 2013. “The EMC Gulf Partner Summit 2013 gave us the perfect opportunity to recognise the significant efforts of our channel resellers and honour channel excellence. We are pleased to recognise Condo Protego’s accomplishments with an EMC 2013 ‘Best Enterprise Storage Division Partner of the Year’ award for its consistent excellence and dedication to
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design-led consultation and project implementation,” says Havier Haddad, Channel and Alliances Director Turkey, Emerging Africa & Middle East at EMC Corporation. “As EMC continues its deep commitment to the channel, we look forward to further advancing our relationship with Condo Protego as we work together to ensure it has the power to lead the transformation for not only its team, but also its customers.” The EMC Gulf Partner Summit recognised the highachievement EMC Velocity resellers who have demonstrated
december 2013
Andrew Calthorpe, Chief Executive Officer at Condo Protego a commitment to excellence by exceeding their business and financial goals, expanding across new and existing markets in the Gulf, and consistently providing superior customer support. “Condo Protego has a strong relationship with EMC,
and we are proud to help businesses and organisations across the region realise game-changing changes using their products,” said Andrew Calthorpe, Chief Executive Officer at Condo Protego.
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highlights
News
Westcon Middle East to distribute Palo Alto Networks
Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director, Westcon Middle East Westcon Middle East has signed a new distribution agreement with Palo Alto Networks. The agreement will cover Palo Alto Networks’ portfolio of security solutions through a network of channel partners in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain markets. In addition, Westcon has pledged to invest in on-the-ground pre-sales, technical and maintenance resources to effectively support both new and existing Palo Alto Networks customers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. “We are delighted to have partnered with a recognized market leader in the Next Generation Firewall market,” said Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director of Westcon Middle East. “We believe Palo Alto Networks adds considerable value to our existing portfolio of leading security solutions. Our partnership sees us further cement our position as the market-leading security solutions distributor in the Middle East and Africa with the ability to deliver outstanding support to our customers and channel partners.” “The Middle East region represents a substantial growth opportunity for Palo Alto Networks,” said Ercan Aydin, Director of Emerging Markets, Palo Alto Networks. “We are pleased to work with Westcon Middle East to win in these markets.”
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Riverbed enhances partner programme Riverbed Technology’s improved partner programme will simplify processes, training and competency certification, which will help partners capitalise on new market opportunities. Through the new programme, the company reinforces its commitment to the channel with increased investment and focus on its partners’ go-to-market efforts. The new programme will now offer better partner benefits, for example partners who have invested in certifications and training will now receive increased benefits, with enhanced features to reward high performance and growth. The programme also aims at simplifying business processes and streamlining training and certification. The company is also moving to a new competency model from the traditional revenue-attainment pyramid model. The four competencies as part of the 2014 program are WAN Optimisation, Storage Delivery, Application Delivery and Performance Management. Partners must be certified on the products that are part of a specific competency in order to
receive programme benefits relating to those products. The new programme also simplifies partner levels by reducing the earlier four partner levels down to three—Elite, Premier and Authorised partners. “This is an exciting time for Riverbed and our partners,” said David Peranich, president, Worldwide Field Operations at Riverbed Technology. “We are investing in key areas to simplify the programme, improve partner opportunities and differentiate and reward partners based on their competency and investment in Riverbed products and solutions. We are making these enhancements to accelerate growth, expand into new markets and better serve our customers.” “Riverbed has put tremendous thought into this new programme framework and structure,” said John Coleman, director of NetComm, Product and Partner Management at CDW. “We are looking forward to continued participation and success as our two companies collaborate to support our joint customers.”
Entrust expands presence in the Middle East
Mark Reeves, Senior Vice President, International Sales, Entrust With the opening of a new office in Dubai Internet City, UAE, Entrust has expanded its presence in the Middle East. Further to its expansion plans, Hani Zeini was appointed to lead technical enablement for Entrust channel partners in the region, and will be based out of the Dubai office. With more than10 years of experience as a senior information security consultant, Zeini joins the company from Ejada, one of the largest enterprise resellers in the region.
“With the tremendous growth in UAE, establishing a local presence is a major priority to support Entrust’s current and future customers,” said Mark Reeves, Senior Vice President, International Sales, Entrust. “We already have a significant presence in the region and are committed to supporting our partners, including the Emirates ID Authority and Samba Bank, as well as numerous other governments, financial institutions and enterprises in the region.” According to the company, Entrust solutions and services have been widely adopted in the Middle East, including five of the top six financial institutions in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Entrust’s Arabic soft token is deployed in two of the largest financial institutions within the GCC, with more than 6 million total users in the region. “As the Middle East continues to become a technology hub, Entrust and our software authentication platform will advance to continually meet evolving security needs,” said Jeremy Boorer, Entrust Territory Manager for the Middle East. “Adding a physical presence with our expanded and tailored security solutions allows us to be increasingly aligned with the direction of the regional economy.”
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highlights
News
Huawei collaborates with Enterprise Systems
For the distribution of its enterprise solutions in the UAE, Huawei, a global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, has announced a strategic partnership with technology reseller, Enterprise Systems. With enterprise market being a core element of Huawei’s overall strategic development, Enterprise Systems will distribute the company’s portfolio of vertical solutions focusing on the hospitality and public sectors,
to customers across the country, as its Value Added Partner (VAP). The solutions cover IP network infrastructure, unified communications and collaboration, and innovations in cloud computing and data centre management. “As we continue our focus on developing innovative and competitive ICT products and solutions that provide a better way for enterprise customers to enhance efficiency, productivity and flexibility, we recognise that building a strong network of channel partners
is crucial to ensuring long-term business success in the Middle East, which is a strategic market for Huawei Enterprise,” says ZhaoShuGang, Channel Director at Huawei Enterprise Middle East. Gang further says, Enterprise Systems has a distinguished track record of success in the UAE and brings a keen understanding of local market dynamics. “We look forward to working closely with the team at Enterprise Systems to grow our business in the UAE and help our customers address their business challenges and needs with our products and solutions,” he adds. Pouya Parsafar, Managing Director, Enterprise Systems, says, “Enterprise Systems has demonstrated its commitment to this partnership by assigning a dedicated team to Huawei and investing in their demo equipment. The range of Huawei’s products and solutions will enable us to provide a unique technology proposition to our customers. We are upbeat about this partnership and hope that it marks the start of a long-term and productive relationship.”
Nokia Solutions and Networks mobilises Technology Vision 2020 Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) begins Technology Vision 2020 — Big Data telco platform prototype analyses one million live messages a second, bringing together the best of IT and telco technologies. Through this, the company aims to execute a hands-on innovation approach to enable mobile broadband networks to profitably deliver one gigabyte of personalised data per user per day by 2020. The company further says recent advances such as Big Data follow the Technology Vision 2020 blueprint for future mobile networks to help operators deal with extreme traffic growth, simplify network operations and
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provide the ultimate personal gigabyte experience. The company says it is committed to meet challenges such as improving profitability and personalised experiences simultaneously, by implementing the six pillars of its Technology Vision 2020 that have been defined in cooperation with operators globally. These are enable 1000 times more capacity, reduce latency to milliseconds, teach networks to be selfaware, personalise network experience, reinvent telco for the cloud and flatten total energy consumption. Hossein Moiin, Executive Vice President, Technology
december 2013
and Innovation, and member of the Executive Board, NSN, says, “Until now, end users have learned how to use mobile broadband networks to enrich their lives. In the future, end users will teach networks and devices how to evolve and adapt to 2020 lifestyles. Technology Vision 2020 is a guide that equips mobile broadband networks to adapt to those lifestyles. We are working closely with customers, partners, top universities and research institutes to make Technology Vision 2020 a reality.” Igor Leprince, Senior Vice President, MEA at NSN says, “Mobile broadband use
Igor Leprince, Senior Vice President, MEA at NSN in the region has been growing dramatically and subscribers will reach a stage wherein using 1GB of personalised data per day per user will be a normal phenomenon in few years’ time. With our Technology Vision 2020, we are helping operators in the region to prepare themselves to be able to deliver 1GB of data per day per user – and profitably.
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highlights
News
HID Global enhances Fargo DTC Printer Line
HID Global, a secure identity solutions provider, has announced a update to its Fargo Direct-to-Card (DTC) printer line that significantly expands the secure issuance capabilities for small, medium and large private and government organisations producing ID, access control, payment and loyalty cards. The enhanced Fargo DTC printers now feature an embedded multi-technology iCLASS SE Encoder to simplify card technology migration and personalise large ID card batches, all from within the printer. The DTC portfolio also includes expanded inline personalisation features that offer faster speeds and increased flexibility with the optional wireless accessory module that allows users to issue cards at any time, says the company. The enhancement also includes an optional WiFi. Craig Sandness, Vice President, Product Marketing, Secure Issuance, HID Global says, “With these new DTC enhancements, our printers are now 50 percent faster, dramatically saving issuance time for our customers while reinforcing our dedication to continually increasing the value of their Genuine HID investments.” According to the company, enhancements to HID Global’s proven DTC line are designed to further streamline and improve card and ID issuance while making it easier to enroll, personalise and issue higher volumes of cards with faster throughput and a variety of new security, encoding and mobile issuance options.
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Zotac International signs Gulf Shadows as distributor in MENA
Global manufacturer of graphics card, Zotac International, and Gulf Shadows Computer Systems signed a distribution agreement for the MENA region, according to which, the distributor will promote and distribute Zotac International’s range of graphic cards through its channel network across the region excluding UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain markets. Carsten Berger, senior director, Zotac International says, “Over the last five years, Zotac has been successful in creating brand awareness for our products, increasing our market share and reach in the Middle East region, which is a very important market for us. We are now looking to strengthen our business further by signing on an established distributor, who could open doors for us in
countries where we do not have a strong presence. Gulf Shadows, with its vast market knowledge and experience, solid channel network, technical capabilities and extensive reach, was the perfect partner for us.“ For Zotac, this appointment is an important strategic move in achieving its objectives of boosting its presence in the region. Eng. Feras Kayali, Chief Operations Officer, Gulf Shadows Computer Systems says, “We are happy to sign on Zotac, which is one of the most reputed VGA brands globally. Our focus is on delivering only the best products and hence Zotac is a perfect match for our business. Its high quality graphics cards complement our existing product portfolio and add tremendous value to our channel.”
VMware appoints Redington Value as VAD for MENA Redington Value has signed a new distribution agreement with VMware to cover the whole Middle East and North Africa region. Begun in October this year, the partnership caters for the entire VMware product portfolio. The objective of the partnership is to accelerate the adoption of VMware’s solutions among all local customer segments, with a priority focus on technology relating to the Software-Defined Data Center, the hybrid cloud and end-user computing. Redington Value is the value-added distribution division of Redington Gulf, a company that provides integrated, end-to-end supply chain services
for IT and telecommunications brands in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and the CIS countries. “The Middle East region has been an area of tremendous growth for VMware and the appointment of Redington Value will add valuable support to the partner channel and to customers in the area,” said Sam Tayan, Regional Director, MENA, VMware. “Redington Gulf has one of the widest networks within the region and we believe this new partnership will address growing local demand for technology that can help deliver competitive advantage for businesses.”
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highlights
News
ESET names new GM for Middle East
Pradeesh Nair, General Manager, ESET Middle East
The security solutions vendor ESET has appointed Pradeesh VS as its new General Manager for the Middle East. A veteran with over 9 years of experience in the Middle East IT industry, Pradeesh will be tasked with growing ESET’s share of the enterprise security solutions space and leading the company’s regional expansion- both through new recruitments, and addition and enhancement of its channel community. Pradeesh replaces Aji Joseph who in the interim assumed the role of consultant to ESET thereby ensuring a smooth and timely transition. “Aji’s support and personal commitment to the ESET family has ensured that we have remained on track with our ambitious business strategies in the region,” said Neo Neophytou, Managing Director, ESET Middle East. “Having worked as a Sales Manager at ESET for almost 5 years, Pradeesh is perfectly suited to the responsibilities of this vital role. He is
extremely dynamic and with his extensive understanding of our business, he will drive new channel relationships and identify new and exciting areas wherein ESET’s market leading solutions can be deployed.” ESET is on the verge of a major expansion in the Middle East which will involve recruitment of new staff members and the opening of a new regional headquarters in Dubai. Pradeesh will leverage his strengths in the areas of business development, sales and marketing, channel management and product management to effectively manage this growth. The close relationships with leading channel organizations that he has forged during his tenure in the region will help with the extension of agreements with existing ESET channel partners as well as the identification of new partners who will help drive the company’s growth in both the business and home user segments.
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opinion
Condo Protego
Looking ahead Condo Protego CEO Andrew Calthorpe puts the spotlight on some of the key trends likely to make a mark in 2014. Time flies when business is booming, and it is hard to believe that 2014 is already upon us. The past year has been a whirlwind of positive activity across the industry and, from personal experience and through extensive peer interaction, good times appear to lie ahead for VARs prepared to get stuck into what is undoubtedly the most complex yet opportunity-rich IT landscape yet. Big Data, small surprise Big Data will stand out like a predictable sore thumb in 2014. With IDC predicting that the global Big Data market is set to continue its 40-percentper-year growth, there will be plenty of action for all those able to lend a constructive, helping hand. Storage will figure heavily, with business research specialists Aberdeen Group suggesting that many companies will have to double the volume of their data storage every 2.5 years just to keep up. Across the board, there will surely be a shift from merely coping with the deluge to thriving with it, and moulding it to drive business performance and innovation. The clouds keep gathering Equally predictable perhaps is the lingering and intensifying momentum of cloud computing. According to IDC, the UAE’s cloud market is primed for annual
Andrew Calthrope, CEO, Condo Protego
compound growth of 43.7 percent until 2016. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out in the next year. Whether it is public, private or hybrid applications, adoption will need to be carefully planned and implemented. Cloud computing can be powerfully augmented with existing infrastructure and embraced as appropriate. It
“Awareness needs to be raised that some of the most challenging and rewarding IT work on the planet is taking place in this region. And the best is still yet to come.” 20
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shouldn’t be seen as a drastic, scary change. Done correctly, it should be a gradual and seamless evolution to greater efficiency, flexibility and costsavings. Disaster recovery goes small In 2013, we saw increasing numbers of Middle Eastern SMEs start to take on serious disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) solutions. Expect 2014 to continue this trend in a much bigger way. It is up to VARs like Condo Protego to highlight the importance of a clearly defined strategy here. The first step is to understand what you are dealing with, what are you trying to protect against, and how your business will cope in the event of a disaster. Only then you can start to focus on the IT side. A DR/BC plan should always be implemented as soon as possible. The more data builds up, the more expensive it becomes. By establishing a reference architecture early on, businesses can plan and scale in the most efficient manner possible. Systems integrators to collaborate For systems integrators, collaboration will become the name of the game in the coming years. Clients are no longer happy with generalists and are increasingly looking for specialist input. Across the industry, this will require a step-change away from working in silos to establishing precise, tightly configured systems integration teams to suit specific projects. Mind the (skill) gap Of all the challenges facing the IT industry, VARs included, skill shortage is likely to prove one of the most awkward. The industry also needs to be better at retaining talent—both for longterm project execution and knowledge transfer. Awareness needs to be raised that some of the most challenging and rewarding IT work on the planet is taking place in this region. And the best is still yet to come. So with that, all that’s left is to wish you every success in 2014. Happy New Year!
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Partner watch
TechAccess
Being partner-centric TechAccess, the value-added IT distributor in the Middle East, Levant and North Africa region, believes a strong partner programme can enhance business relationships. Reseller ME speaks to Ahsan Ali, Senior Vice President (Business Planning, Operations and Marketing), TechAccess, to find out more about the company’s plans for expansion. by adding services and solutions to our channel, in order to bring sustainable levels of growth, not only to our business but to our vendors and partners as well.
What has been the company’s focus in the last couple of months? Currently, our focus is to align our strategy with the IT solution stack in order to place it as our USP in the market. We want to highlight
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the integrated hardware and software solution stack and storage solutions to our channel. We also plan on extending our channel base and focus on systems integrators to capture SME business. Our focus is to achieve success as the best VAD in the region
Ahsan Ali, Senior Vice President (Business Planning, Operations and Marketing), TechAccess
What are your channel expansion plans? We are working closely with our current channel base and plan to make it stronger by understanding their operational difficulties. And then, align our vendor’s products and solutions to meet their business requirements. We try to understand their focus areas and position them with our solution centre, technical support and services teams to help them develop competencies in selling solutions. Another aspect we look at is training and making sure our partners have the right certifications to enable them to sell solutions. In this manner, we aim at strengthening our existing channel but eventually expanding it, as the challenge that most VADs are facing is of ‘product knowledge’. We train our existing and new partners and enable them before they start selling our vendor products in the market; through enablement we train our partners regarding the details of all the products we sell with our own trainers as well as with the help of our vendors (Oracle, NetApp, Symantec and Hitachi Data Systems). We utilise our state-of-the-art technology centre, which is well equipped with demo units of the vendor products that we represent, so that our resellers can study the product in detail and promote it with confidence in the market.
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What is the Partner Loyalty Programme? The TechAccess Partner Loyalty Programme is a step forward in strengthening relationships with our partners and rewards them for growing their business with us. It also focuses on generating excitement among new partners to do business with us. This is basically a tool through which TechAccess recognises the value of its partners and appreciate their loyalty. The TechAccess Partner Loyalty Programme is a key differentiator in the market. We are the first value-added IT Distributor to have launched such a premium
And in other markets, the revival of the economy is taking place. Are you looking at newer regions? We do good business from Pakistan and Afghanistan. We are looking at the SAGE region, these markets are growing well, i.e. Sri Lanka, Bangadesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Our vendors are interested in doing more business there. Currently, we have an office out of Pakistan. How are you able to complement your clients and partners? As you are aware that we operate in a B2B environment for which we need
“Our key focus is to develop our partners and analyse as to how we can retain margin, add focus into growth markets like KSA, develop our existing installed channel base and increase our product offerings and become the hub of value-added services.� programme. The design of the TechAccess Partner Loyalty Programme is unique in the local IT industry in the sense that it offers leisure as well as business rewards to our partners who grow and build business with TechAccess. Usually partner programmes only focus on technical certification, whereas the TechAccess Partner Loyalty Programme provides its partners with an opportunity to choose how they wish to be rewarded. This is an annual programme in which partners will be rewarded on the basis of their sales contribution to TechAccess in a fiscal year. Are there any trends that you are seeing in this region from last year? We saw education, healthcare and certain new sectors opening up in KSA.
to work hand in hand with our vendors and partners. Our vendors expect us to gain market share for their products and solutions and we work with our partners to deliver this to their clients. Keeping this business cycle in mind, we tend to work closely with our partners in order to understand their operational difficulties and then align ourselves to meet their business requirements. We try to understand their focus areas and position them with our solution centre, technical support and services team with a view to help them develop competencies in selling solutions. Another aspect we look at is training and making sure our partners have the right certifications to enable them to sell solutions. How has business been in 2013? 2013 has been a good year for
TechAccess so far; we managed to sail smoothly through the first half but for the remaining year we plan to increase focus on highlighting the upcoming new technologies but also to expand our footprint in the region. Our key focus is to develop our partners and analyse as to how we can retain margin, add focus into growth markets like KSA, develop our existing installed channel base and increase our product offerings and become the hub of value-added services. We plan to push our USP, the integrated hardware and software stack, in the market this year along with storage solutions. HDS storage products are gaining rapid momentum in the market, hence we will be highlighting its world-class products to our channel base in the UAE and establish its market in KSA. Do you have any plans to expand? TechAccess is focusing on expanding its business further in the Middle East by broadening the industry coverage in the UAE, especially in the education and government sector. We will be enhancing our industry breadth in Qatar and Kuwait, with oil & gas, telecoms and banking as focal points. We will be establishing an HDS storage and Oracle software market in KSA and cash in growth opportunities rising in the government, education and telecom industries. We are also setting up a state-of-the-art technology centre and training facility in KSA, which will further assist in capturing market share for software and storage solutions. How do you plan to function ahead? The industry is currently booming with a number of VADs. The challenge we face is to maintain our position as a key quality service provider and continue to protect our margin. We will only be able to do that if we understand the true meaning of value addition and depict the same to our partners. //
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PARTNER WATCH
Comguard
Ajay Singh Chauhan, Group CEO, Spectrum Group
Charting a course for success The decade-old, value added distributor, Comguard, which is a part of the Spectrum Group, has seen around 10 to 30 percent growth in the last year. It aims to extend its channel reach and have continued initiatives for educating partners on products, which it believes is key for being successful. With an extensive customer base across 23 countries in the region, the company has recently shifted to a bigger office in Dubai, which is owned by the company, further establishing its credibility and strength in the channel. Reseller ME catches up with Ajay Singh Chauhan, Group CEO, Spectrum Group to get the lowdown on the company’s perspective in the changing landscape of the channel. 24
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PARTNER WATCH
Comguard
What kind of opportunities do you see in the region? This is definitely a key market for us. We are seeing large government projects being signed off now. We see the region being more stable than last year. Globally too, we see more stability. What have been the key highlights for Comguard in the past year? Structurally, we have not done anything different in the last couple of months. Though we have added some more product lines, the strategy still remains the same. We are focusing on geographical expansion, we have added more number of people in territories. What is your market differentiator? The differentiator is the number of technical teams we have as compared to the ratio of our sales people is definitely the highest in the industry. We would probably be at a ratio of 1:1 and I’m certain this is not the ratio with any other organisation. This means resellers who do not have expertise will feel more comfortable with us. We have a set of people helping old resellers who might have got the capabilities but may not be aware how to go about it. At least they can be educated about newer products and what can make money for them. Knowing that product knowledge is critical to go forward, we have invested in it, since day one. What is the biggest challenge you are
“Cloud being the way forward, we do see it evolving further. But it is too early to say how it will shape up, at the moment. And we are yet to see how the distribution of cloud-based products will happen. However, the future is definitely there.” facing in the region? Retaining current staff is a big challenge for us. Although we explain the role of the work environment and company policies, it is still quite difficult. Increasing the compensation alone doesn’t solve the problem because to what extent can we go? If we do change the compensation then it has an impact throughout the company. Instead, what we try to do is expose them to the different technologies that we work with. And this way try to make them feel more content towards work. We hope this helps in retaining them.
a commodity then there is a margin pressure as there would be multiple distributors. Initially we try to sign exclusivity for some period, which allows us to get some kind of lead.
How do you remain profitable in this space? It is difficult as it is getting very competitive. Margins are slim, so we need to have more turnover. But more turnover on a particular product line may not be the solution. Maybe then, we need to probably sign more products. These are the only ways of achieving growth. We do introduce new products and before it becomes a commodity, we are able to get good margins but once it becomes
What kind of partner initiatives do you have? We have vendor based initiatives. We are working on a partner programme, where our objective is to roll out a Comguard partner programme. This will validate satisfaction levels of our partners, both on vendors and channel side. We also want to get a loyalty programme in place. Through this new initiative, we are trying to do something unique in the market that should help us in the long run
“Our people help old resellers who might have got the capabilities but may not be aware how to go about it. At least they can be educated on what can make money for them. Knowing that product knowledge is critical to go forward, we have invested in it, since day one.” 26
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C
What are your channel expansion plans? I want to achieve the depth in the current channel itself. This means everyone should know all about our products, which is not easy. We are also looking at identifying the profile of partners we require. This is a dedicated activity that is not driven by sales but only as a role.
How do you see the space evolving in the next few years? Cloud being the way forward, we do see it evolving further. But it is too early to say how it will shape up, at the moment. And we are yet to see how the distribution of cloud-based products will happen. However, the future is definitely there. Even in the US, there is no active distribution of cloud based products through distributors. It is being done directly. //
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Partner profitability
december 2013
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Rules for partner profitability Reseller ME looks into what enterprise vendors can do to help their partners increase their margins and therefore achieve higher profits. It is one thing to walk away from an unprofitable partner and quite another to realise the importance of enabling your partners to be profitable. After all, a profitable partner means that enterprise vendors too are making money. Why, then, if it is so simple, do we ignore this crucial aspect of the channel business? Agreeing that vendors have a role to play in partners’ profitability, Scott Hagenus, Director of Channel
at GFI Software, says, “Vendors should be mindful of their partners’ needs and help them navigate the daily business decision processes. Many smaller partners struggle with the resources and knowledge it takes to grow a business costeffectively.” This also helps build a tangible, loyal partner following, according to Hagenus. The first rule to consider for partner profitability is the criteria for partner selection. More often
“We are supporting our partners to achieve their targets in every way we can. Supporting actions are comprised of rebate schemes, marketing initiatives, promotions, product training, pre-sales consultancy and lead generation. These mechanisms are put in place to ensure our partners are successful. At the same time, we make sure that D-Link products are not being sold below the suggested retail price, to keep the sales revenues profitable through consistent margins.” Sakkeer Hussain K, Sales and Marketing Manager, D-Link MEA
than not, vendors are mesmerised by the numbers game and simply want to stretch their partner list, without thinking if the partner coming on board is bringing enough commitment, value and expertise to the table. And more than that, sometimes little thought is given to whether the partner matches the company’s objectives. Taj El Khayat, General Manager, Middle East & North Africa, Riverbed Technology, says that, apart from ensuring that the partner is one of the top systems integrators or a specialised partner in a technology that the company can leverage, it is important to ensure partners are compatible with your business. “One of the criteria we look at is if the portfolio of the partner integrates and complements our business,” Khayat explains. Riverbed even makes it a point to interview customers before it selects a partner because a satisfied customer would speak volumes of the partner’s quality. The basis for selection will differ from company to company. While many will look at parameters such as local market experience, financial strengths, channel coverage and geographical presence, others such as SanDisk would consider the ability to sell fast-moving consumer
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Partner profitability
goods such as flash storage important. “Our criteria is to find partners who have the bandwidth to support independent retailers across multiple channels and localities. We look for partners who have the right attitude towards efficient account servicing, fast deliveries and stock holding,” says Tareq Husseini, Regional Sales Director, Mediterranean Middle East and Africa, SanDisk. Vendors must identify why the partnership is being made in the first place and rope in those partners with the specific skills and expertise. This way, for both parties—the partner and vendor—understanding the objective of the collaboration can work better towards a profitable ecosystem. John Banks, Director, Software Group, GBM, says the onus is on partners, too. “Partners need to be clear which industry they want to operate in. However, some of them want to be in any category but that doesn’t work here. Customers are knowledgeable and partners must take that into consideration,” he explains.
Can vendors still do more? Vendors can definitely go the extra mile to boost their partners’ profitability: Invest in talent management By offering partners a trained and skilled workforce to enable their operations better can help increase their profitability. Look at structured business planning Many vendors work with partners based on opportunities present in the immediate future rather than through structured business planning, with clear objectives for the next year or two. This will enable a consistent and sustainable growth. Ensure product and solution innovation It is important to make sure there is constant innovation
in terms of the products and services offered for continued profitability of all stakeholders involved. Offer training, support and services With emerging technologies transforming the face of traditional business, it is important for vendors to offer support and services to their partners to understand the evolving business environment. Regular training sessions will also further enable partners. Build long-term relationships A relationship built on mutual trust and correct market assessment is crucial for partners’ profitability. Being transparent in internal processes is also key in growing the business. Vendors must work
Our partner programme enables our partners to differentiate their business through three main factors: market recognition and branding, validation and credibility, and annual audits to ensure that our high-end partners meet strict standards. The Cisco Channel Partner Programme provides many ways to differentiate our partner’s business and drive their growth and profitability.” Meghan McCarthy, Regional Sales Manager for Partner Organization and Commercial Segment, Cisco UAE
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towards an environment where partners can discuss strategies openly and understand the end consumers’ demands. Assist partners differentiate themselves If vendors help their partners develop solutions and products that make them stand out from the regular offerings in the market, it can lead to the partners’ business growing and create more demand. Educate partners By providing partners with the latest market trends and educating about the impact of these trends can lead to them providing better solutions, which in turn helps in their profitability. Being able to adapt to changing demands can help partners.
Having partner programmes that are consistently evaluated and updated is another rule to ensure partner profitability. To support its expansive partner network, QlikTech’s Qonnect partner programme provides its partners with the tools to help them grow a sustainable and profitable business intelligence practice based on delivering rapid time-to-value for customers, says Brooke Cunningham, Senior Director, Global Partner Market, QlikTech. “Partners are enabled to develop new opportunities with Qonnect sales, marketing, support and learning resources. With a focus on self-sufficiency and flexibility, partners become the
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Partner profitability
Develop engaging and encouraging partner programmes
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For partner profitability, an enterprise vendor must:
Measure partner profitability
Enable services to boost bottom line
Select partners with right criteria
QlikView experts and have several opportunities to earn higher margins based on performance rewards such as the Bonus Margin Program and Elite level performance rewards, which are highly profitable with up
to 51 percent margin available for partners,” Cunningham explains. While learning and training programmes need to be integrated into the system, rebates programmes can also do wonders
“Partners need to be clear which industry they want to operate in. However, some of them want to be in any category but that doesn’t work here. Customers are knowledgeable and partners must take that into consideration.” John Banks, Director, Software Group, GBM
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in encouraging partners to perform better. “We have target-based rebate programmes to ensure the partners are paid on performance in these countries. So we see this as an additional reason for our partners to grow the business,” explains Vineeth Sebastian, Regionals Sales Director, MEA, at MMD and AOC. Ultimately, it comes down to business strategies but for Joe Schramm, Director, Strategic Alliances, Core Security, aligning incentives with 2014 strategic goals around go-to-market is something the company is considering seriously. He adds, “Items such as increasing spend within our existing customerbase (cross-selling new products and
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Partner profitability
increasing scope of existing products) as well as incentives for customer acquisition in targeted industries are both areas where we want to provide some additional incentives for our partners.” These incentives could be a combination of fixed-fee incentives, additional margin or rebates. And the final rule is to measure a partner’s performance and growth. Although, this may seem intrusive and unnecessary, it is a key point to factor in, as it helps to drive growth and value. Vendors will be surprised to know that sometimes large partners are not, in fact, the most profitable—it could very well be the smaller ones. And understanding this could make all the difference to overall growth. But it’s important to bear in mind that continuing with an unprofitable partner, after trying to understand and resolve issues, is not logical and vendors shouldn’t hesitate to let go of them. Profitability can be measured in quantitative or qualitative ways. Vendors need to decide what the best way is, considering business goals and the relationship that they share with partners. “Each investment made has to be analysed and maximising the return on those investments improves profitability of both the vendor and the partner. Paying attention to these investments and other elements in
Services –the way ahead Most of the industry experts agree that one of the best ways for partners to boost their bottom line is by offering value added services. But for this to be successful, a partner has to be enabled to provide these services in the same standard as a vendor. Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director, Middle East at A10 Networks says he has consciously not invested internally in professional services resource because, “this is where partners can deliver a highly focussed and customer centric solution set to our customers.” He further explains, “If the vendor has a competitive offering for services then this makes it particularly difficult for partners to develop in this area. So at A10, we concentrate on creating higher levels of certification for partners and ensuring we are always available to support them should they need vendor support during any service engagement.” Mushtaq Khot, Business Unit Head, VBG, Metra Group agrees wholeheartedly; times are changing and so is the IT landscape on a larger canvas. “With cloud computing and Big Data in perspective it is our responsibility as a value-added distributor to educate and encourage channel partners to capitalise on additional revenue opportunities for commencing business by developing services capabilities and selling professional and support services as part of the customer offering.” The company has planned investments to support mid-size and new partners with the services part of business to help them deepen reach within existing accounts by offering them a better and effective services portfolio.
terms of measurable metrics makes it possible to measure profitability,” says Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, Middle East, Africa & South Asia, WD. For Citrix, profitability is measured by the revenue generated from the
“It is our responsibility as a VAD to educate and encourage channel partners to capitalise on additional revenue opportunities for commencing business by developing services capabilities” Mushtaq Khot, Business Unit Head, VBG, Metra Group
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entire project. “That could include Citrix and its services, but it also includes other complementary solutions like servers, storage, and networking infrastructure to put in place to support the Citrix environment,” says Noman Abdul Qadir, Director of Channel, Citrix Middle East and Africa. By selecting partners appropriately, keeping them updated and encouraged through partner programmes that revolve around rebates or learning, and by measuring their profitability regularly, vendors and distributors can help them to drive sustainable and rewarding growth, which in turn will impact the vendor’s business positively. //
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MFPs
a class of its own All-in-one colour printers have been gaining popularity in the last few years. Reseller ME analyses why and how it impacts the channel.
Multi-function printers (MFP) have been around since the early 1990s. In fact, today it will be hard to buy just a printer. Invariably it will have other functions; the MFP mainly includes scanning, copying, faxing and of course printing. Through certain MFPs, users can even email. One of the advantages of the MFP is the space-saving factor. Instead of making space for different equipment, companies just need to allocate space for one machine. Over the last few years, colour MFPs have developed with better features and evolved to become integral machines in an office environment and even for home use. Naji Kazak, Regional Channel Sales Manager, Lexmark International Middle East, explains, “Colour can improve internal efficiency as well. The biggest challenge facing corporate users is managing and using the piles of information that cross their desks. Using colour in internal communications raises the efficiency of workers by letting them quickly analyse complex data and by helping them to reduce errors. In addition, colour allows smaller firms to look more professional.” In the mid-segment, colour MFPs are increasingly replacing mono printers because of various reasons. “They now have the ability to print, scan, copy and fax in colour—and this is important because most business-related communications are becoming increasingly colour-centric in a world spoilt for choice,” says Latik Gupta, Head-Enterprise, Jumbo Electronics. “Businesses wishing to stay competitive understand that external and in some cases even
internal communication has to be presented in a visually appealing manner. Colour MFPs also allow for lower cost of ownership as well as reduced footprint since you get multiple devices in one, making them the most cost-efficient and compact option for large companies, SMEs and SOHO set ups,” he further explains. But what does this mean for the channel? According to a report by IDC, a market intelligence provider, the colour laser MFP market has had the greatest year-on-year growth,
needs naturally evolve. “This is also an opportunity to strengthen client relationships through a consultative approach which recommends ROI and keeping up with business demands, rather than just pushing new products to clients.” According to Kazak from Lexmark, both IT and purchasing departments are seeing colour MFPs as necessary equipment. “The purchase of colour devices is driven primarily by a customer’s operational business units. Our research has indicated colour doesn’t need to be
“Our research has indicated colour doesn’t need to be a cost or resource drain, it can even result in savings when compared to the cost of outsourcing” Naji Kazak, Regional Channel Sales Manager, Lexmark
increasing 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. And the report further indicates that laser MFPs have witnessed an overall positive growth of 2 percent with markets such as the Middle East recording a double-digit growth of 13.2 percent. “This presents a clear opportunity for the channel, which can capitalise on this trend as the Middle East is a market that is poised for growth in the adoption of color MFPs,” says Manoj Ghai, Acting HOD, IT Sales Group, at Samsung Gulf Electronics. Gupta points out that it also presents opportunities to upsell to existing clients as their business
a cost or resource drain, it can even result in savings when compared to the cost of outsourcing,” he says. Cost reduction is a compelling reason to opt for a colour MFP. Kazak says that hidden costs such as shipping, storage, handling, retrieval and high printing volumes for lower cost-per-page are some additional expenses that organisations don’t take into account when outsourcing printing. “Typically 30 percent of preprinted documents are wasted and these costs multiply if the document becomes outdated in case of legal or financial reasons,” he adds. For these reasons, businesses, irrespective of size, are discovering
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MFPs
that investing in colour MFPs presents huge saving potentials. And according to a survey done by Lexmark, colour printing can help companies take a more efficient approach to printing and lower costs as employees take a far more considered approach when using colour printing and are more conscious of the costs involved. But besides cost savings, innovations in MFPs are also making it an appealing choice for many businesses, such as server-less mobile printing solutions. “These innovations are becoming popular with organisations of all sizes. With our channel partners around the region, we aim to inform and educate the region with the benefits of our products and lead the way in innovation and design,” says Hendrik Verbrugghe, Marketing Director, Canon Middle East “From convenient personalisation and authentication as standard, to efficient end-to-end document workflows, MFPs address the document processing challenges and help companies work efficiently and smartly,” he further adds. Beneficial for all businesses, sectors such as retail, manufacturing, design and education are heavily investing in MFPs. And not surprisingly, one of the highest operational budgets within enterprises comes from IT, says Ghai. “And specifically from the maintenance of hardware equipment such as printers. Printing solutions that deliver high quality and enhanced functionality are in high demand, particulary within industries that have an extensive use for colour printing, which nowadays we believe is every business,” he adds. The road ahead seems promising
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Technology in MFPs
Kees Verton, Printing Category Manager, PPS Middle East, HP HP is introducing a lot of innovation in MFPs and we are trying to appeal to a different category. As customers increasingly become more digitised with documents, MFPs have become a vital part of businesses. More than the copying function, it is widely used for scanning and printing. The evolvement of MFP’s
but what will govern the evolution of colour MFPs in the future are the technologies it can support, the functions it can integrate and the possibility of it contributing to a greener environment. Ravinder Kumar, General Manager, Business Solutions Division, Sharp Middle East, says, “Colour MFPs are
made us already include the MS SharePoint connection. All HP Flow MFP’s include the SharePoint connection, through which customers can easily share documents. These all-in-one printers have become internet networking devices as they also integrate technologies such as cloud and Big Data. Partners must take advantage of this opportunity and meet the customers’ demands. At HP, we have developed MFPs with Near Field Communication (NFC) as users are mobile today and have requirements to print from mobile devices. With the NFC technology, it becomes easy because, with NFC integrated into a smartphone or tablet, users can simply tap the device to the printer and the connection is instantly established. It is clear that print volumes are increasing rather than reducing. Users nowadays print more for a temporary purpose, and scanning is rapidly becoming important. This is why we focus on flow MFPs at HP because the scanning function is more important than copying.
getting more and more advanced to meet the emerging needs of today’s busy and increasingly mobile workforce. As businesses continue to recognise the power of colour MFPs, manufacturers will enhance the utility of those devices to meet market demands with new technologies and software solutions.”
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Lexmark International Middle East
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MFPs
Kazak says that the company allows its customers to access its technology via the cloud, to help them save on costs—a capability it has been providing to large customers as part of its managed print services for many years. “The opportunity to be able to print a document, store it in the cloud and retrieve it from almost anywhere is a SaaS capability that Lexmark can give customers that is almost exactly the same as printing inside the office. This allows the increasing number of staff using tablets and smartphones on-the-go to capture and print information more easily than before,” explains Kazak. And this leads to the issue of security. With emerging technologies such as the cloud, manufacturers and software developers need to see how it can be done over secure networks. Lexmark believes security is another way forward, and this is built into the company’s cloud-based offering. “Anything customers print or retrieve that has been printed is sent over a secured cycle layer or SSL. Customers also have multiple ways of identifying themselves (username, password or badge),” further explains Kazak. According to Ahmed Qasem, Channel Sales Manager, Epson
More than copying, customers look at the scanning function as more important.
Middle East, there will be lot more development in inkjet technology to enhance the advantage of power consumption. “Everybody is looking at green, our inkjet products are all green because it can achieve 85 percent power saving,” he adds. Gupta from Jumbo Electronics agrees going green is another
“The opportunity to be able to print a document, store it in the cloud and retrieve it from almost anywhere is a SaaS capability that Lexmark can give customers that is almost exactly the same as printing inside the office. This allows the increasing number of staff using tablets and smartphones on-the-go to capture and print information easily.” 40
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opportunity with MFPs, while also improving the bottom line simultaneously. “Reputable MFP brands include the added benefit of functionality enhancements and managed print services, which allow users and administrators to review and hence reduce unnecessary or redundant jobs, monitor consumption and costs, manage rights and access, and much more,” he adds. Eventually, if they are to capitalise on the growing MFP market, resellers will need to understand their customer’s demands so that they can easily identify sales opportunities. “After all, when a business is in desperate need of an upgrade, they will turn to resellers and dealers to provide them with the best recommendation for their business,” concludes Ghai from Samsung Gulf Electronics. //
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Alcatel-Lucent
Look up to LTE At Alcatel-Lucent’s annual Technology Symposium, much was made of a coming tide of LTE deployments. But can the fourthgeneration wireless technology provide channel partners with decent opportunities for growth? There’s no doubting that long-term evolution (LTE) mobile broadband is growing at phenomenal rates across the globe. In markets such as Korea, around 45 percent of mobile subscribers are subscribed to LTE packages. And in the US, the country’s biggest carrier, Verizon, has about 30 percent of its customers subscribed to LTE services. In the Middle East, however, it’s a different story. According to a report from Informa Telecoms and Media earlier this year, there were just 50,000 LTE subscribers across the entire MENA region. This is despite operators such as Etisalat, du, STC and Mobily all investing millions into developing nextgeneration LTE networks. It would seem that a channel interested in the LTE side of the telecoms
market, then, isn’t going to see much success. This is surprising, though, because what’s seen in the Middle Eastern telecoms market flies directly in the face of one of the key themes at this year’s Technology Symposium, an annual conference held by Alcatel-Lucent in New Jersey, United States. At the conference, one of the key messages that Alcatel-Lucent’s executives were at pains to get across was that early adopters of LTE were almost certain to gain market share. Operators that invested in the technology early, it was said, would reel in customers simply because of the higher levels of customer experience that LTE affords. “The rankings of the operators now have been formed over the past two years and it’s down to the deployment
“We think it’s being proven time and again that the first mover can take share and reap the benefits of making an investment. We’ve seen some examples of fast followers who compete that way.” Dave Geary, President of Wireless, Alcatel-Lucent
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of LTE,” said Glenn Booth, Vice President and General Manager, LTE Business Unit, Alcatel-Lucent, when describing the state of the US carrier market. “Operators have a very brief window of opportunity to meaningfully take a lead. Verizon will get many billions more dollars over a five-year period for being the first to market [in the US], compared to number two. And number two will get about 25 percent more revenue than number three.” Apply this logic to the Middle East, and what Booth said seemed to make sense. Yes, LTE subscription numbers are low across the Middle East (though it must be admitted that they’re probably much higher now since Informa’s report was released in May), but customers are beginning to shift towards operators that offer what they perceive to be better wireless broadband services. In the UAE, Etisalat was the first to commercially deploy LTE, which it launched towards the end of 2011. Since then, it has regained some of the market share it lost when competitor du launched in 2007. According to du’s third-quarter earnings report this year, its market share was 46.4 percent as of October 31, down from 47.2 percent a year earlier. There’s no telling whether the shift is a result of LTE adoption, but according to Dave Geary, President of Wireless, Alcatel-
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Vendor focus
Alcatel-Lucent
Lucent, LTE has in other markets been a catalyst for success. “I think the projection is about 130 million LTE subscribers by the end of this year, but it got to 100 million in a little over two years. WCA, by comparison, was seven, and GSM was eight. And it’s going to skyrocket once China gets into business next year. The adoption rates, and usage, have surpassed the operators’ expectations by a lot,” he told Reseller ME at the symposium. Should the regional channel be gearing up for this new influx of LTE subscribers in the coming years, then? Well, certainly partners should not be worried about the disappointing number of people who have subscribed to LTE over the last year, according to AlcatelLucent. The early-adopter operators have tackled LTE in different ways, while others have been waiting to learn from the frontrunners’ experience. What’s more, in countries such as Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, the operators were simply waiting to maximise the potential of their 3G WCDMA services before making the move to LTE. Now that almost a dozen operators in the Middle East offer LTE services, though, things are changing. Operators, the channel and end-customers will soon begin to see the advantages of LTE as the
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market matures, according to Booth. “It’s putting your investment into an asset that’s got headroom and is forward-looking. You’re able to build out a large amount of capacity off OPEX, and add capacity through software. Also, customers care. It’s noticeable,” he said. While some regional operators have already built up formidable LTE networks, others have only begun taking baby steps. Alcatel-Lucent can already count Etisalat and Mobily as customers, though it is also targeting what it calls “fast followers”—the operators interested in adopting LTE in order to keep up with the early adopters. “We think it’s being proven time and again that the first mover can take share and reap the benefits of making an investment. We’ve seen some examples of fast followers who compete that way. We think it’s the way to go,” said Geary. To do this, Alcatel-Lucent is advising its customers to build out LTE networks in an overlay fashion—meaning that the networks are built separately from existing 2G and 3G networks. This might sound like needless investment in new kit, but the vendor believes that the longevity of the new kit will provide a much larger return on investment than attempting to built an LTE network over an existing 2G or 3G one. If operators begin to heed Alcatel-
Lucent’s advise, it will be up to a wellinformed channel to supply a lot of this technology. Indeed, in regions such as the Middle East, the channel will play a pivotal role in the roll-out and enhancement of these new LTE networks. Alcatel-Lucent needs its predictions to come true, too. The financially stressed company this year unveiled a plan to shed $1 billion in assets and to become profitable by 2015. The plan, named “Shift”, will see the vendor morph from a general supplier of telecom equipment into what it calls an “industrial specialist”. Its ambitions in LTE and, further down the line, 5G markets play a large role in the success of this plan. With LTE becoming more ubiquitous across the region, however, it would be fair to assume that Alcatel-Lucent may very well be counting more Middle East operators as customers as time goes on. Certainly, the company is making strong inroads around the rest of world—at the Technology Symposium, the vendor announced a number of big customer wins, including Sprint in the US, Telefonica in Spain, and China Mobile, all of which were looking to deploy LTE networks using Alcatel-Lucent technology. If such enthusiasm can be replicated here, it spells good news for the vendor and its partners. //
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INTERVIEW
Paul Wright
Catalyst for cybersecurity Cybersecurity, now a buzzword in the region, has become one of the key issues for organisations in the last few years. They are better aware of the potential threats and dangers within their online space. A few years ago, technology officers may have not invested much in this area but with increasing awareness and education, this is changing, says Paul Wright, Professional Services Manager, MEA&I, AccessData. 46
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50% discount for 1st 5 clients
INTERVIEW
Paul Wright
How has the attitude towards cybersecurity evolved over the last few years? Today, everyone is paying close attention to cybersecurity and want to implement solutions around it. It is moving forward in leaps and bounds in the Middle East and the Africa. Our products are also focused towards that. Organisations used to question the need to invest in cyber security as they didn’t see any returns in this area. But what they are beginning to understand is that when companies continue to be in business in a safe online environment, the returns will be there. We see investing in cybersecurity as the way forward for organisations. What kind of opportunities do you see in this region? For AccessData as a company, the opportunities in this region lay with larger organisations with regards to cybersecurity. This is because when organisations grow into larger entities, that evolution involves creating gaps or electronic voids. This enable offenders out there to take advantage of those gaps. I see us mainly being placed with the larger organisations due to these reasons. And we are working towards reducing the electronic gap as much as possible
“In this region, we plan to expand by increasing our staff and introducing new products in the market. Education, education and education is one of my particular themes. But it needs to be continuous because offenders are also business inclined and want to make money, so as soon as we change our tactics, so will they.” What are your objectives for 2014? In this region, we plan to expand by increasing our staff and introducing new products in the market. Education, education and education is one of my particular themes. But it needs to be continuous because offenders are also business inclined and want to make money, so as soon as we change our tactics, so will they. We will always be playing catch up. It is a matter of how far we are playing catching up. What are the challenges in this market? The biggest challenge in this space is that cyber criminals are forever changing and combine that with the fact that technology moves forward quickly. Although, it is also exciting in a positive and a negative way. Will you be announcing any new
“In terms of partnership, we are looking at a layered approach because there is no one-stop solution for cybersecurity. We have others that we are talking to and because we have been successful with HewlettPackard and integrated with its solutions, we are looking to integrate with others.” 48
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partnerships in the near future? Our biggest partnership has been announced recently, with HewlettPackard. In terms of partnership, we are looking at a layered approach because there is no one-stop solution for cybersecurity. We got others that we are talking to and because we have been successful with Hewlett-Packard and integration with its solutions, we are looking to integrate with others. In terms of expansion, which are the other regions you are looking at? Also will you be launching any new products? The biggest expansion is going to be the Middle East and Africa, followed by Asia Pacific. Our footprint in Europe and America is already very large. And the American teams are moving down south towards South America. If you think about AccessData, the word ‘insight’ comes to mind for our products. So watch this space for ‘insight’. What is your message for the channel? Work in partnerships and close those electronic voids. Think of your cyber security and ensure that you have an incident response forensic capability either in house or outsourced. //
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If you have any questions or concern please call us on +9715 50 600 7996 or email us on customersupport@secureway.ae
Havier Haddad
INTERVIEW
New game, new rules EMC recently held the EMC Gulf Partner Summit, where its top channel partners were awarded for their performance. The event presented an opportunity for not only networking and knowledge-sharing but also to discuss the highlights of the company in the last year and the plans for strategic growth. Havier Haddad, Channel and Alliances Director for Turkey, Emerging Africa and the Middle East, EMC, discusses innovations designed for the channel community. Havier Haddad, Channel and Alliances Director Turkey, Emerging Africa & Middle East, EMC
What led to organising the Gulf Partner Summit? We decided to have a partner connect programme in each of our big areas to have a large gathering of our key executive channel partners because of mainly three reasons. The first was to celebrate the achievements of 2013 and award our top performing partners. These awards were given depending on the performance of the partners in different focus areas in the last three quarters. The second was to create a platform to have quality networking time and share our plans and opportunities that we will implement in 2014. We want to plan with our channel partners and align our strategy and forces together. And the third was to create an opportunity for partners to share feedback and recommendations, which would help for our internal planning for next year as well. What is EMC’s channel strategy? The channel strategy for EMC is to help partners and build an optimised model where we can have better coverage and leverage from partners. We, along with our partners, are growing fast and have the highest market share, perhaps globally as well, however we plan to grow faster and have better coverage and offer better solutions, focus on areas where we didn’t before, and finally guide partners on how to cross and upsell in our existing customer base. What kinds of innovations are designed for the channel community?
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INTERVIEW
Havier Haddad
It is all about profitability. Starting from the Margin Builder programme, in protecting partners’ efforts and investment and offering enhanced support to qualified partners through additional incentives and rebates. And most importantly, giving partners the opportunity to go beyond selling to actually providing a host of services to implement and support the solutions they are selling. Next, it is about helping partners reduce cost and increase their valueadd and differentiations to end users by selling proven and reference architecture solutions. We help them with greater lead generation and funding and provide partners with all the needed support to be successful. Finally, it is about providing partners the flexibility and the support to build different business models that will drive margin growth. EMC has declared this year to be the year of the channel. Keeping this in mind, what new things has the company incorporated? This year, we launched new, channelfocused products that address all market segments including small to medium businesses. EMC is introducing new solutions for our partners leveraging the EMC Alliances to increase the addressable opportunity and help drive accelerated growth and profit. EMC is providing business partners the right support and tools to be efficient and successful. Together with our partners, we aim to expand our market share and reach. Now with the new product offerings and solutions, the pile is getting bigger and it is our job to help partners gain the largest share of this pile. I’m confident that partners will agree; EMC is becoming more partnerfriendly, partner-rich and now also boasts of more channel resources. This is not only from a resource and technology perspective but even from a go-to-market point of view.
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“We are currently working on retooling our partner programmes for 2015, where the names of our partner programmes will change to include the EMC Business Partner name, with the goal of aligning and leveraging all of these programmes.” Could you elaborate on the EMC Business Partner Programme, which will be effective from next year? As we announced at Global Partner Summit, as of 1 January, 2014, EMC will start referring to all partners, no matter which programme they’re with, as ‘EMC Business Partners’, and withdraw the name ‘Velocity.’ Partners may begin using the new EMC Business Partner name and logo at the beginning of next year. Although the name of the programme has changed, we do not plan to make major changes to our partner programmes for 2014 given that we launched a major update to the Velocity Solution Provider programme in January this year. The idea behind the rebrand was to introduce a programme that is simple, predictable and profitable, uniting all our partners under one umbrella to offer them the support they need regardless of the EMC solution portfolio they may carry with them. We are currently working on retooling our partner programmes for 2015, where the names of our partner programmes will change to include the EMC Business Partner name, with the goal of aligning and leveraging all of these programmes. We do expect some minor changes to be announced early next year especially around the training and enablement programmes to focus more on solutions, rather than products. What kind of opportunities do you see for the channel in the coming year? As traditional storage infrastructures give way to virtualisation and cloud computing architectures, resellers find themselves
exposed to new opportunities to create value-added solution bundles combining people, processes and technologies. Resellers can now leverage higher margins from combining their technology portfolio with a host of pre- and post-sales services from consultation to installation. More experienced resellers have the opportunity to leverage new niches in the market to service specific industry sectors and verticals while smaller partners can also seek huge opportunities in serving the mid-market enterprise segment. This is by creating well positioned portfolios of value-added services to help customers achieve their long-term business vision, providing in-depth counsel, advice and technical expertise throughout their growth lifecycle. What is the way ahead? 2014 will continue to be the year of channel transformation as resellers and vendors will need to change their business models in order to remain viable in the face of ever-increasing competition. This transformation will be driven not just by increasing competition but also by the underlying change in the percentage of total IT workloads that will stay on premise versus off premise, which will ultimately influence the consumption model and what the channel must sell. The most successful partners will be those that are flexible and can adapt to the prevailing market condition. These partners will leverage the significant benefits that come from bringing value-added solutions, which combine technology, people and services to support a customer’s business transformation journey. //
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Interview
B. Ramkumar
In the virtual realm Redington Value has been recently signed up by VMware to distribute its whole portfolio in MENA region, with a special focus on software-defined data centres. We speak to B. Ramkumar, VP of Redington Gulf’s Value Division, about the deal and further plans for 2014. platform we have in the portfolio and they claim 83 percent market share worldwide on x86. The whole world is moving from physical to virtual environments. To give you a historical perspective, in the age of mainframes we have had a few million applications and clients, which ballooned up to 100odd million with client-server model. Now, we are talking about billions of applications and devices. And from an enterprise standpoint, everything is moving into the cloud. So the industry is going through a fundamental transition and having VMware in the portfolio helps us to understand this trend and enables us to take our partners through this journey. The whole concept of the solution itself is changing with the advent of virtualisation and we feel that our timing couldn’t have been any better.
What does it mean to have VMware in the portfolio? This is a VAD 2.0 for us and it’s a very important opportunity for us. Though we have been distributing Red Hat virtualisation solutions, it is a niche opportunity. VMware is the first solid virtualisation
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B. Ramkumar, VP of Value Division, Redington Gulf
Are you going to ramp up your own internal skills to support partners through this journey? We are already doing that. In Africa, for example, we are going with VMware, Cisco and EMC for our converged infrastructure platform. In the Middle East, we are doing it with HP and VMware. We have upgraded our offices in Dubai, Saudi, Kenya and Nigeria, and have invested in dedicated solutions centres and training facilities. We are trying to get to a level of being the authorised training provider for many of our vendors. Currently, we are the training provider for some of the security vendors such as Dell SonicWall, Trend Micro and Barracuda.
What are your plans for 2014? We touched an inflection point six months back and I believe our opportunity to grow is significantly higher purely because of our portfolio. We have 27 brands in our portfolio and we design our go-to-market specifically to country and market. We have broken down our markets into south Gulf, north Gulf and Saudi. Again in Africa, we have got East, West and we are now developing southern Africa. Recently, we have gone in-country in Angola, for example. So when it comes to each of these countries and markets, we have a properly defined go-to-market. We look at what our vendor partners want to do in these markets, then set up a go-tomarket strategy independently and drive it. We don’t work on a one-size-fits-all approach as some of these markets are big enough to be standalone and you’ve got to have a clear understanding of what you want to do to address these opportunities. Lately, many major broadliners are getting into the value business. What is your take on this? We were the first ones to make an investment, putting cart before the horse. You need to keep in mind that it is a long journey; it’s not something you can build overnight. Partners also take a lot of time to warm up to the idea of value-added products and it’s moving away the game of price, availability and reach. There is no concept of inventory in value-added distribution and it’s all about what you do in the past time. It takes at least five years to really start delivering value and we had this foresight way back in 2007 when we set up the VAD unit within Redington Gulf. Any plans to offer cloud services? We are still exploring the options. We were the first distributor in this market to tie up with Amazon to resell their web services. We are trying to understand how cloud works in a twotier scenario and find out the sweet spot for distributors like us. //
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Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro If you’re in the market for a high-performing, lowpriced Ultrabook, this has to be the one to go for. Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga 13 Ultrabook-hybrid has been due a refresh for some time now, especially given the proliferation of higher-powered and lower-weighted competitors. Thankfully, the company recently came out with the IdeaPad Yoga Pro 2, an effortlessly slick convertible Ultrabook-tablet that’s been manufactured to perfection. On the face of it, it looks like one of the smartest buys of the moment. For one thing, you get a totally refreshed and beautiful-looking design. You get a satinfinished lid and bottom side that comes, in our test version, in bright orange (or “Clementine Orange”, as Lenovo calls it). Open up the device and you get a hefty-feeling backlit keyboard surrounded by a rubbery material that provides great traction. On the side, you get an inconspicuous power button on the right, plus a couple of other controls, a USB 3.0 port and a micro-HDMI out. On the left side, there’s a power socket, a USB 2.0 port and a microSD card port.
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A service-centric design for datacentre infrastructure
Ahmed Youssef, Business Development Manager: Network Infrastructure, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise MEA
F
or as long as data networks have been supporting organisations, IT has been driving the decision-making in the business. But over the past few years, there’s been a fundamental shift, with the demands of users and consumers fuelling a change from an infrastructure-centric to a service-centric model. This is due to the rise of mobility and the increasing adoption of bring your own device (BYOD) policies. According to Ahmed Youssef, Business Development manager for Network Infrastructure, ME and Africa at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, this has significantly changed the approach to network development. He says this new paradigm where the users effectively call the shots means mere power and speed are no longer enough.
“Throwing additional bandwidth at the problem will not make it go away. What is now required is intelligence in the network. Today, networks need to be designed in a way that makes them capable of effectively handling mobility. People want freedom of movement and of the device, but this creates security headaches for IT. So your datacentre needs to be context-aware – it must be able to answer the ‘who, what, why, where and when’ conundrum,” he says.
enterprise.alcatel-lucent.com
“Because there are multiple factors to take into account, including device, point of access, what applications are running, etc., the network today needs to be intelligent. Alcatel-Lucent focusses on crafting the appropriate design to enable this. We create context awareness via what we refer to as the application-fluent network, which takes into account factors such as the user, the device and the application, thereby providing a more appropriate user experience.”
Streamlined and self-healing Youssef says Alcatel-Lucent has developed a network that is more streamlined and is selfhealing. This means it’s far less susceptible to failure and its reliability means administrators need not be as hands-on as they have to be with older technologies. “Our goal is to be able to handle the convergence of connecting everything via one network, which is why our networks are streamlined and efficient. For example, instead of utilising multiple layers of physical switches, we’re collapsing this down to single layer. This reduces complexity and capital expenditure. “Furthermore, Alcatel-Lucent has always had a reputation for being green, so our switches are extremely energy-efficient. And since a single layer of switches requires far less rack space, we’re also playing our part in reducing the energy consumption and the heating and cooling costs of the datacentre.”
automated, self-healing network that reduces the need for management and administration. This, in turn, means that manpower traditionally used for this can be redeployed within the business, improving its efficiency. Asked about the future of the datacentre, Youssef says that for the foreseeable future, the foundation of a successful operation will be built on switch performance, design of the network and its intelligence. “The other crucial factor is to ensure the design is based on open standards; going the proprietary route will likely lead to vendor lock-in. I believe this revolution in datacentre design is all about supporting new demands and tackling new challenges. To do so effectively, the customer must be flexible enough to change with market demands. “By ensuring your platform is interoperable, you’re able to shift as the market shifts, without having to rip and replace your entire infrastructure. The key to staying ahead of the pack is to be able to adapt and change swiftly as new technologies or ideas come along. To successfully pull this off, you need an infrastructure that’s intelligent, self-healing and flexible,” he concludes.
However, the biggest value proposition the company’s next generation networks offer, he believes, is in the total cost of ownership. This is achieved by reducing both capex – through the reduction in the number of switch layers – and opex. This is done not only by reducing the costs of heating and cooling, but also by having a fully
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In fact, from just about any angle, the Yoga 2’s design and build seems head and shoulders above its predecessor. Indeed, we’d say that it’s one of the most attractive devices to come from any manufacturer in recent years—people are inexplicably drawn to the Yoga 2 Pro. What’s also a big improvement is the lightened weight—at 1.38 kilograms, it’s considerably lighter than the Yoga 13. The biggest improvement of all, however, comes with the Yoga 2 Pro’s stunning, 13.3-inch display. Not only does the screen support 10-point touch, but it also delivers a frankly beautiful resolution of 3,200 x 1,800, which puts it squarely in Retina MacBook Pro territory. Considering that this Ultrabook costs a little over half the price of a reasonably specced Retina MacBook (in base form, anyway), the display is big selling point in itself. The specs aren’t bad for the price, either. Every model in the range comes with Intel’s new fourth-generation Haswell processor. Depending on which model you go for, you can have anything from a 1.7 GHz i3 to a 1.8 GHz i7 processor. Memory can be expanded up to 8GB, and you can have up to 512GB of SSD storage. Even for the base version, though, with the i3 processor and 128GB of storage, you get a lot of PC considering it starts at just $1,000. When it comes to using the Yoga 2 Pro, however, there are a few issues, particularly in laptop mode (we’ll get to the tablet mode later on). For one thing, the trackpad, on our review unit at least, seems to be coated with a similarly sticky material to the casing around the keyboard. This makes it cumbersome and rough to use—you really have to work hard to get the mouse pointer to where you want it to be. Meanwhile, you get features such as the double-finger scrolling that Apple perfected with its MacBook line, as well as pinch-tozoom and a number of other actions. However, because the trackpad isn’t particularly smooth, it’s difficult to get these actions right on the first try. Sure, you could get around the problem by using the touchscreen, but too many productivity apps simply aren’t optimised for touch just yet. Even with Microsoft Word, it’s much easier to simply drag the cursor to where you want it, rather than fiddle with the screen until you’re at the right paragraph.
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As stated before, the screen is stunning to behold—it delivers sharp, bright colours and is way ahead of pretty much anything the competition can throw at you. Meanwhile, the keyboard has slightly heavier keys than you’d expect from an Ultrabook, but you get used to that after about half a day’s use. What’s more, the backlight behind the keyboard is clear and crisp, making this laptop a joy to use under low lighting. Naturally, you get a front-facing webcam built into the top of the screen. It’s an HD unit capable of recording in 720p. While this isn’t the best of what’s seen on the market, the camera itself really is rather good. It adapts well to changes in light and provides clear images when you’re making video calls. In terms of the power, whichever spec you go for, this is a speedy little PC. No doubt the top-end i7 version will be reserved for power users wanting to enjoy a little gaming on top of the work stuff. But for most office users, the base i3 version is more than enough for general tasks. Apps open quickly and run smoothly, and it doesn’t really matter what you’ve got open. You have to work quite hard to slow the Yoga 2 Pro down, to be honest. You really get the impression that this laptop has been built to seriously high standards—as a laptop, the Yoga 2 Pro really does rival Apple when it comes to build quality.
The Yoga 2 Pro isn’t just a laptop, though; the screen can be pushed all the way back so that it’s resting against the base of the device, turning it into a large tablet. Unfortunately, the device doesn’t really make much of a case for itself as a tablet. With the screen folded all the way back, the bottom of the device is now covered in keyboard keys, meaning your fingers keep pressing them as you hold it. Yes, the keys are automatically switched off once the screen is folded past a certain point, but it still feels weird and uncomfortable. What’s more, the touchscreen isn’t particularly responsive, though we concede that the device could end up being used a lot in tablet form in meeting rooms to show off charts and presentations. Perhaps there’s a learning curve to this device that we haven’t managed to conquer yet. We’re giving the Yoga 2 Pro the benefit of the doubt here, because all in all, it’s a fantastic device at a great price. Even without its touchscreen capabilities, this would be a perfectly sound Ultrabook at a reasonably decent price. And the tablet capabilities turn it into a bargain, particularly with that fantastic build quality. If you’re in the market for a highperforming, low-priced Ultrabook, this has to be the one to go for. //
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Officejet Pro X from HP
Livescribe 3 smartpen now available Tejuri.com, an online mall, launches the Livescribe 3 smartpen. Through this device, customers can make handwritten notes useful on a tablet or smartphone. The smartpen is designed with the look and feel of a quality ballpoint pen combined with the intelligence of a mobile device, says the company. The Livescribe 3 smartpen allows users to write on Livescribe dot paper, by twisting a ring on the black and chrome smartpen and have it instantly appear on iPhone, iPad or iPod touch devices with Bluetooth Smart wireless technology. It uses the built-in microphones on a tablet or smartphone to create interactive ‘pencasts’ that synchronise recorded audio with written notes. It also converts handwriting to text to create tasks, reminders, contacts and calendar events. Photos and text memos can also be added to the notes and it can be shared as PDF files over mail, messages, Evernote, Dropbox and other apps. Livescribe 3 is compatible with iOS devices that are Bluetooth Smart Ready, including the iPhone 4S or later, thirdgeneration or later iPad, iPad Mini, and the fifth-generation iPod touch or newer. The free Livescribe+ mobile app is available from the App Store for devices with iOS 7.
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HP launches Officejet Pro X series, the world’s fastest multifunction desktop printer. The company says that with this product inkjet has been reinvented for business. Through this device, users can acquire the professional look of laser for up to 50 percent less cost per page, at faster speeds. The Officejet Pro has been designed for every business need and can make an impact on a small budget. Enabled to function with high speeds, these printers can save time and improve office efficiency with features such as mobile printing and remote management embedded into it. With the help of Web Jetadmin tool, users can manage HP and non-HP networked print devices together. The devices can easily print from a smartphone or a tablet through HP ePrint. It is easy to integrate workflow solutions with existing IT infrastructure. Equipped with HP Pigment ink, colours can last
decades without fading or smearing, says the company. What makes this an ideal choice for businesses is the fact that it is Energy Star qualified, as it uses 50 percent less energy compared to a colour laser printer.
EMC Announces XtremIO All-Flash Array
EMC XtremIO, the all-flash array from EMC, provides a consistent and predictable extreme performance to any application workload over any period of time, regardless of whether the array is idle or busy, empty or full, says the company. It features many flash innovations such as a scale-out multi-controller architecture
with linear scalability; deduplication that is always on, and always inline; data protection that is 6X more efficient and 4X faster than traditional RAID. Four key technologies such as Content-based Data Placement, Dual-Stage Metadata Engine, XtremIO Data Protection and Shared In-Memory Metadata; work in concert to maximise performance without compromising efficiency or durability. Customers are looking to all flash arrays to support workloads that need predictable and consistent low-latency across datasets that frequently change – such as VDI, virtual servers, massively consolidated databases and test/development environments. With XtremIO, these workloads not only achieve better performance, but also improved $/ IOPS and greater administrative simplicity.
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Sony introduces Xperia Z1
Claiming to be the world’s first waterproof and dust-resistant smartphone, Sony’s latest launch, Xperia Z1 is its flagship product for the latter half of this year. It is designed with durable tempered glass and an IP55/IP58 rating, which is what makes it waterproof and
dust resistant. It offers a 20.7MP ultra-high resolution camera and runs on Android 4.2 operating system. The 5” Triluminos display for mobile with X-reality for mobile enhances watching videos and images experience. The company has incorporated image sensor powered by Exmor RS for mobile, which is a similar quality and performance as its compact digital cameras. NFC enabled, users can ‘throw’ content from Bluetooth enabled smartphone to WiFi enabled TC through screen mirroring or DLNA. ‘Throw’ is a smart application integrated in the Xperia apps and via an MHL cable, one can even mirror the phone’s full user interface on a television set and also watch movies or play games while charging. And this could be even done wirelessly through Miracast Wireless Display technology. The smartphone is available in black, white and purple.
Asus unveils Transformer Book T100 The latest product from Asus features the new Intel Atom Bay Trail quad-core processor. The ultraportable laptop has a detachable 10.1-inch HD display that can be used as a standalone Windows 8.1 tablet. Users have the flexibility to switch between the two within seconds. It is apt for those customers who need to multitask and require a long lasting battery power of 11 hours. Sporting a slim and durable design, the Transformer Book is one of the lightest laptops in the 10-inch category, says the company. Just 10.5mm thin in tablet mode, its display has a crisp 1366x768 resolution and features IPS technology for wide 178-degree viewing angles with decent daylight visibility. According to the company the capacitive multi-touch gives fine fingertip control in tablet mode, while exclusive ASUS ‘Reading Mode’ technology adjusts the display automatically to make the screen easier to read for long periods.
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It also comes with the company’s Instant On technology where it wakes from standby in an instant and can last up to 14 days in standby mode. ASUS SonicMaster audio technology enhances the quality of sound and it also supports USB 3.0, 802.11a/b/g/n dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Transformer Book also comes with Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 with full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
TwinMOS launches smartphone
TwinMOS has launched an Androidbased touch screen smartphone device, Sky V501 with 3G and Voice Call capability. A manufacturer of upgraded memory modules, high end flash products, storage solution, tablet PC, smartphone and accessories, the company says the smartphone comes equipped with a 1.2GHz quad core processor and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system. Operating on it is much more convenient and the system is optimised for multicore processors depth. With 5” HD display and a resolution of 1280x720, the device is ideal for viewing videos and also has an 8MP camera. With 1GB RAM and 4GB ROM, it supports GSM, 3G network, Edge, WiFi, GPS, FM +BT. It supports dual mode dual sim card and has a GPU graphics processor. It uses a high-end automotive power supply design concept. The Sky V501 Smart Phone is now available in UAE.
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Plantronics introduces BackBeat GO 2
Plantronics, a wearable technology provider, introduced the BackBeat GO 2, the company’s next generation wireless stereo earbuds. It allows users to switch conveniently between listening to music, watching videos, and taking phone calls. Bluetooth enabled, the earbuds can connect to devices such as smartphones,
tablets and music players. It also features high quality audio with rich bass, crisp highs, and natural mid tones, providing premium acoustics in a compact, lightweight design, says the company. With the introduction of DeepSleep hibernation mode to preserve battery life, the company has also improved the overall power management with this new launch for extended listen and talk times. According to the company, BackBeat Go 2 also offers the option of a sleek, durable, and compact charging and storage case that increases listening and talking time by two full charges (approximately 10 hours). It is available in black and white models at all the leading retailers across the Middle East region.
Zotac launches new ZBOX trio Zotac International, a global manufacturer of graphics cards, mainboards and miniPCs, upgraded the ZBOX mini-PC lineup with 4th Generation Intel Core technology. The trio of new ZBOXes deliver improved CPU performance paired with supercharged integrated graphics for an enhanced experience for everyday computing tasks, says the company. It comes with the 4th Generation Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processor options with the entry-level ZBOX ID91 packing an Intel Core i3 4130T, mainstream ZBOX ID92 featuring an Intel Core i5 4570T and the flagship ZBOX IQ01 sporting a quad-core Intel Core i7 4770T. The entry-level ZBOX ID91 features Intel HD Graphics 4400 and delivers a classic ZBOX computing experience. Stepping up to the ZBOX ID92 and IQ01 upgrades the integrated graphics to
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Intel HD Graphics 4600 with triple display compatibility via dual DisplayPort and a single DVI-I outputs for enhanced productivity. According to the company, when the ZBOX ID92 or IQ01 is combined with the ZOTAC DisplayPort to Dual HDMI adapter, the ZBOXes can drive a single 4K display that requires four independent HDMI inputs via Intel Collage Display technology for stunning pixel-perfect details. The new line up supports 802.11ac wireless networking technology, dual Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 4.0 technologies.
EMS unveils ‘be’ smartphones EMS, the smartphone partner, has launched its new range of ‘be’ smartphones with five different models. The UAE-based brand’s ‘be’ smartphones will run on Android 4.2 operating system and will be available to consumers at competitive prices. Catering to distinct markets, the ‘be’ smartphone range comprises of 3 major categories such as, b. Elite (flagship), b. social (full featured) and b. united (best value for money). The flagship range, b. Elite offers highclass features with a premium design and finish, says the company. Included in the range, the b.Elite 2 sports a 5.0” qHD screen powered by a 1.3 GHz Quad core processor, and offers an 8.0MP + 2.0MP Dual Camera combo for an enhanced video calling experience. The full featured range, b. social includes b.social 3 and b.social 4. While the b. social 3 features include 1.2GHz Dual Core, 4.0” WVGA Screen along with 3.0 MP Camera and front camera, the b. social 4 boasts a Qualcomm 1.2 GHz Quad Core Snapdragon processor, a high resolution 4.0” IPS display and comes with a 5.0 MP camera and front camera. The b. united range offers the best value for money featuring top quality entry-level smartphones that includes b. united 2 & b. united 3. The b. united 2 offers value with 1.0 GHz Dual Core processor and an optimal sized 3.5” HVGA Screen. And the b. united 3 features a 1.2 GHz Dual Core processor and a high quality 3.75” IPS Display and comes in a slim design.
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Employee retention
Reseller Middle East’s assistant editor offers her thoughts on the Middle Eastern technology channel.
Channel surfing
column
Shaping the future This month’s feature on partner profitability seems to have struck a chord with the industry, what with the overwhelming responses we saw to it. Or I wonder if it struck a nerve? Partner profitability is definitely a key issue in the industry. And although everyone is saying that they know the trick to it, it is certainly not as easy as it seems. The feature talks about ways to help partners profit but I cannot stress how important it is to realise that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work here. Each organisation needs to see how it can adapt and adopt techniques that are most suitable for it. And while this is a challenge, another issue I want to highlight here is retaining talent. This is something the channel is grappling with. As Ajay Singh Chauhan, Group CEO, Spectrum Group, told us, it is difficult to develop a fool-proof system. Staff satisfaction is as important as customer satisfaction. This is, unfortunately, an issue in most industries. Companies overlook this little detail and the next thing you know, it affects business. What companies need to understand is that it need not always be a monetary hike—most of the time, it’s about the little things. How many companies conduct team building activities, or have regular, employee-oriented initiatives? How many managers know their employees’ aspirations for growth and are they
being trained to achieve that level? Consistent evaluation is also required to measure and reward outstanding performance internally. It is not so much the reward as it is recognising and appreciating the employee’s efforts. IT managers should invest in their staff (yes, budgets must be increased for this!) because it is really worth it. Employees are the pillars of every company and they are instrumental to its future. If you are finding it difficult to retain staff, I would say it is time for some internal reflection. What can also help you from losing your staff to competition is creating a sense of loyalty towards the organisation—make the employee feel like he owns it. All of this is text book knowledge, and it’s available to everyone, but sadly, not everyone follows things by the book. Identifying skills and nurturing them must be the channel’s top priority in the coming years. This could possibly kill two birds with one stone. Motivated staff will work hard to meet goals and in turn contribute to the company’s profitability, irrespective of them belonging to a systems integrator, distributor, vendor or reseller. In the end, it should create a healthy competitive ecosystem for the channel. It has indeed been a good year for the channel, with many strategic associations announced. The atmosphere has been positive, on the whole. The industry is definitely rolling ahead and not limping, which itself is an optimistic sign. The next year comes with high expectations and if measures are put in place to address issues such as partner profitability and retaining employees, the channel can be better focused. Here’s wishing you all a bright and prospective 2014.
Janees Reghelini, Assistant Editor, Reseller ME
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