Reseller Middle East August 2014

ISSUE 212 | august 2014

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CONTENTS

ISSUE 212 // August 2014

cover feature Highlights 6

News We help you catch up on all the major news and announcements in the regional channel community.

Opinion 24 Sighting new opportunities

Glynn Jones from Polycom explores how the channel partners can take advantage of the opportunities in hosted telephony.

28

Paving the way

Brocade’s Fayez Eweid says SDN is a growth opportunity for the Middle East IT channel organisations.

Interview 34 Redefining perspectives

Nael AL-DOUJAILI from IBRemarketing on the business of recycling and reusing IT products.

Feature

36

A fine line

Arun Chawla, CEO, Trigon, takes Reseller Middle East through the company’s growth stages and discusses how partners can expand business without hurting their bottom line.

Review

40 Champions of value-addition

Reseller Middle East speaks to experts to understand what it takes to be a true value-added distributor.

46 Defending tactics

Reseller ME finds out how security channel players can be a step ahead in the highly dynamic marketplace.

Partner watch

60

52 Connecting the dots Tarun Nandi from Blue Bell Computers, observes employee turnover and credit issues are interconnected.

hot products

Vendor focus

64

56 Serving the partner Lexmark’s Naji Kazak explains how the channel partners can leverage opportunities in MPS.

68

HTC showcases Dot View Case

58 Stacking success Herve Renault from VMware on the company’s journey towards being a true cloud-provider.

Dell Venue 7 tablet

62

Epson introduces A3 ink tank system printers

Lenovo launches dualmode FLEX 2 laptop www.resellerme.com

August 2014 Reseller Middle East

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Editorial Chairman Dominic De Sousa CEO Nadeem Hood COO

Georgina O’Hara Publishing Director Rajashree Rammohan raj.ram@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9131

Get certified, get ahead

Editorial Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9133 Assistant Editor Janees Reghelini Contributing Editor Anna Bricker Online Editor James Dartnell Advertising Sales Managers Merle Carrasco merle.carrasco@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9161 Nasir Bazaz nasir.bazaz@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9134 Circulation Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh.nair@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9142 Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james.tharian@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9136 Designer Analou Balbero analou.balbero@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9132 Digital www.resellerme.com DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Jefferson de Joya Photographer and Social Media Co-ordinator Jay Colina

Jeevan Thankappan Group Editor Talk to us: E-mail: jeevan.thankappan@ cpimediagroup.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/ ResellerME Twitter: @ResellerME

It’s become almost a cliché to say that training and certification play an important role in the channel eco-system. We have dedicated reams of newsprint and many headlines detailing how important it is for the channel to get certified to achieve a competitive positioning in the market. Does the channel take it seriously? I think in the Middle East, given a choice between experience and certification, most companies are still swayed by experience. Yet, we can’t stress enough how important certification has become to stay in business. Most of the technology companies these days are whittling down the number of their partners, giving preference to those with the right skills portfolio. These vendors are building out comprehensive training programmes that guide partners on both technical and sales fronts. Right from training on the functional aspects of technology, all the way through to how to position the solution, create compelling pitches and structuring demonstrations, vendors are working with partners at the grassroots level to build out a stronger channel eco-system. It’s become increasingly common now to see channel managers spend a lot more time with partners, chalking out business strategies and supporting them in the market from a sales perspective.

Though vendors are doing their bit, the channel often doesn’t take accreditation very seriously. There are many reasons for it. For starters, achieving any certification worth its salt is never easy and it’s not easy on your wallet either. Another reason why the channel is hesitant to pay to play is because certain certifications are nothing more than just branding and marketing exercises. However, there are certifications aplenty that genuinely mean something. In an industry still dominated by box-moving resellers, proper training and certification is the one of the best value-additions money can buy.

In fact, it has become important than ever for the channel to get certified to differentiate skills, given the focus on solutions selling to vertical sectors. It is some sort of assurance that you will get the job done and not over-commit just to close a deal. In other words, the raison d’etre for proper training and certification is rather simple – you can’t offer any value around a product or service if you know nothing about it. It can’t get any more simple than this!

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 2014 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.

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August 2014 Reseller Middle East

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highlights

Prologix to host East Africa wireless connectivity seminars

INGRAM MICRO SCOOPS MICROSOFT WPC AWARDS

Ali Baghdadi, Ingram Micro Technology Solutions

Microsoft has awarded Ingram Micro the Original Equipment Manufacturer Distributor of the Year Award and the Distribution Revenue Growth Award for fiscal year 2014 at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C. The awards are for the North America region and the Middle East and Africa region respectively.

The Distribution Growth Award was presented to Aptec, an Ingram Micro company for highest revenue growth in the Middle East and Africa region. Peter Davidson, Microsoft’s senior director of Worldwide Distribution presented the award to Ali Baghdadi, Senior Vice President and President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Ingram Micro Technology Solutions.

“It’s a great honour to be recognised by Microsoft for the work and dedication of the Aptec team,” said Baghdadi. “Aptec’s outstanding performance in driving growth in their core business to include cloud as well as their focus on delivering growth and value for our SMBs, shows dedication and collaboration. I’m proud to represent such a great team and receive this award on their behalf.”

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August 2014 Reseller Middle East

Prologix Distribution will host a planned series of roadshows in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, which will cover wireless connectivity, telecoms, test & measurement and video surveillance solutions.

The Bootcamp Seminars will be held in Dar-es-Salaam, Kampala and Nairobi on August 18th, 20th and 22nd respectively.

Brands including Cambium Networks, Trango Systems, Sangoma Technologies, Peplink, LevelOne and IDEAL Industries will participate in the roadshow.

Prologix is currently working with several ISPs and telecom firms in the continent on several projects involving long distance, point-to-point and point-tomultipoint wireless and RF & Microwave.

The company’s offices in Nairobi and Lagos currently undertake the Africa operations.

Aditya Sahaya, Director, Business Development, Prologix Distribution said, “According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) research, in the year 2013, the total number of internet users in Africa was 16 for every 100 people; whereas the same statistics across Europe was 75 for every 100 and 61 for every 100 in the US. The internet penetration rate is only 12% of the total population in Tanzania and 13 percent in Uganda. Kenya scores better at 28% and is characterised by those ISPs which have transformed themselves into second-tier telcos by rolling out national and metropolitan

Aditya Sahaya,Prologix Distribution fiber backbones and wireless broadband access networks, offering converged voice, data and video/entertainment services. However, expensive infrastructure and competitive markets are the challenges faced perennially.

“The need of the hour in African landscape is a converged solution with all components tested and tried for compatibility, and which can provide the ISPs, Mobile Networks Operators (MNOs), government entities like law enforcement and defence, system integrators and value added resellers all the mechanisms to setup and operate a successful broadband network or mobile connectivity,” he said.

Some of the challenges that many VADs face are retention of technical resources for pre and postsales support, constantly updating the technical expertise and offering endto-end solutions.”

- Rauf Chougle, Group General Manager, SNB IT Distribution

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Don’t discover it’s counterfeit toner after it’s too late Original HP Toner works first time every time,1 unlike cheap toners which fail over half of the people who try it.2 NonHP toner can compromise your printer’s performance to give you streaked, blotchy or faded prints. Only original HP Toner cartridges deliver unmatched quality for the most professional-looking prints 100% of the time.1

1 A QualityLogic 2010 study commissioned by HP comparing original HP LaserJet Monochrome print cartridges with nine brands of non-HP toner cartridges available in Europe, Middle East and Africa for the HP LaserJet P1505 and P4015 printers, HP 36A and 64A. For details, see www.qualitylogic.com/EMEAmonotonertest.pdf. 2 From a 2012 EMEA Lyra Research study, commissioned by HP. Results based on a total of 1050 HP Color LaserJet users who have used both original HP and non-HP toner cartridges, of whom 552 experienced problems with non-HP cartridges.

© 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

highlights

Tech Mahindra expands KSA footprint

GB Kumar, VP and Geo Head, MENA, Tech Mahindra

Tech Mahindra has announced that it has signed a joint venture (JV) agreement with Midad Holding, the Al Fozan subsidiary.

The JV will be called Tech Mahindra Arabia. Tech Mahindra will have 51 percent ownership while Midad will own a 49 percent stake. Headquartered in Al Khobar, Tech Mahindra Arabia will also have presence across other major cities in Saudi and will be functional following regulatory approvals.

GB Kumar, Vice President and Geo Head, Middle East and North Africa, Tech Mahindra Limited, said, “Saudi Arabia is the region’s largest economy.

Tech Mahindra Arabia will pave the way for exponential growth by solving the business and technical challenges of customers from Telecom, Public Sector, Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals, Utilities, Manufacturing and BFSI segments. Our differentiating strengths in Networking, Mobility, analytics, cloud and security will be of key importance in bringing value to Saudi customers”.

Mohammed Al Baadi, Managing Director & CEO, Midad Holding, said, “Part of Midad Holding’s model is to partner with global leaders providing game changing solutions that add value and address the challenges facing Saudi Customers. The purpose of the joint venture is to leverage Tech Mahindra’s global expertise in Information technology while maximising local content.”

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August 2014 Reseller Middle East

Infoblox signs up StarLink for ME & Turkey Infoblox, an automated network control vendor has appointed regional value-added distributor StarLink as its distributor. The distributor will sell, install and support the vendor’s products and solutions through its channel partners to customers in the Middle East and Turkey.

“Our patented grid technology helps businesses automate complex network control functions to reduce costs and increase security and uptime. With demand increasing, security attacks becoming more sophisticated, and complex new protocols like IPv6, organisations must be prepared. Cementing our distribution force with StarLink enables us to expand our revenue further in the regions they cover, gain more market share and increase our channel breadth,” said Dr. Cherif Sleiman, General Manager, Middle East & Turkey, Infoblox.

“Access Control is one of our fundamental solutions, so enabling our channel to offer complete network

Cherif Sleiman, GM, Middle East & Turkey, Infoblox

visibility to their customers with Infoblox’s best-of-breed DDI technology is a great milestone. Other core pillars of our story are Advanced Threat Protection Vulnerability Management, and with the rapid rise in DNS-based attacks lately, our Partners can now help enterprise and government customers in the region combat pervasive threats and protect their networks against DNS vulnerabilities,” said Avinash Advani, VP, Business Strategy, StarLink.

Cementing our distribution force with StarLink enables us to expand our revenue further in the regions they cover, gain more market share and increase our channel breadth.” stats The Middle East and Africa are expected to have a

60%

growth in mobile subscriptions by 2019.

Source: Ericsson’s 2014 Mobility report

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Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2014 15 – 16 September | Raffles Hotel | Dubai, UAE

Smart Risk: balancing Security and opportunity The launch Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit will for the first time bring the Gartner analyst and security and risk management community together in one location in the GCC to bring the latest research, insights and forward-thinking perspectives found nowhere else.

The Summit features multiple track programs, 11 analysts, and more than 25 sessions and roundtables, and will provide the ability to collaborate and network with peers and gain immediate take-aways you can apply back to the office.

Hot topicS to be coveRed: Cybersecurity Risk and Compliance Internet of Things Mobile and Cloud Security Single Sign-on and Identity Governance Operational Technology Risks Security Metrics and Analytics

For more information visit: gartner.com/me/security

highlights

Spectrami moves to new HQ

Anand Choudha, Managing Director, Spectrami As part of its developmental and growth plans, the regional VAD Spectrami has moved to a new headquarter spanning across 4500 square feet. Located at Mazaya Business Avenue in Jumeirah

Lake Towers, the new office can seat a workforce of 45 employees.

Currently a team of approximately 20 employees will be stationed at the new facility, and the company expects to grow its headcount to about 45 soon. The new office will cover UAE, KSA and South Africa, with dedicated resources allotted to each of these markets, the company said.

Anand Choudha, Managing Director, Spectrami, said, “We are very excited about shifting our headquarters into a bigger and better office. This is in line with our commitment to our entire channel community in this region. Among other facilities, the new office houses an improved Customer Experience Center (CEC), which will showcase all the products and solutions

we offer through our partnerships with leading technology vendors.”

According to the company, apart from the CEC, the office is also equipped with a world-class training lab, which can offer all kinds of training and certification programmes to its customers and channel partners. The number of meeting rooms has also been increased from 1 to 3 in the new facility. “The new base will provide the staff and location to take on even more local operations and better serve our existing clients and channel partners.

The new office is part of our existing growth strategy, which has the potential of creating more jobs in the UAE in the coming months, in addition to increasing our company’s turnover in the process,” said Choudha.

emt incorporates TekVia for South America

Cecilia Zuvic, Managing Partner, TekVia emt Holdings, the group holding company for emt Distribution has announced its entry to the Latin American market through the incorporation TekVia. The incorporation of TekVia to manage and grow the Latin American region is the latest stage in emt Distribution’s global strategy to provide its resellers, distributors and vendors with local pre and post-sales support.

Mohammad Mobasseri, CEO, emt Distribution MEA and group Board Member of emt Holdings, said, “The new company, TekVia is incorporated in the USA and will be based in Argentina. Organisations in the Americas and around the world are

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August 2014 Reseller Middle East

routinely compromised by attackers that seek to steal their financial assets and intellectual property. emt Distribution is committed to helping organisations across the Americas address their security gap by equipping them with the tools, intelligence and expertise required to find and stop attackers that bypass their preventive computer security measures.”

Latin America’s IT security market is currently valued at $4.46 billion. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.6 percent, and be worth $11.91 billion by the end of 2019. “Latin American IT security market infrastructure development is on the rise. However, along with this development comes emerging IT security related threats,” explained Cecilia Zuvic, Managing Partner, TekVia. “After the challenges created due to the lack of resources and the inability to implement technological solutions is overcome, this market has great potential for growth.”

TekVia will cover all countries in Latin America including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, and Uruguay. The

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company will help vendors such as Secunia and Altaro, among other brands that emt Distribution represents across the globe, to increase their presence and sales in the region, by introducing them to new resellers and distributors and guide them with their channel efforts.

After the challenges created due to the lack of resources and the inability to implement technological solutions is overcome, this market has great potential for growth.”

highlights

MATCO scoops EMC partner award

Maham Al Khaleej Trading Co. (MATCO) has announced it has received the 2013 EMC Partner Services Quality Award from EMC Corporation for achieving outstanding service and customer satisfaction as measured by the EMC Partner Services Quality (PSQ) programme.

The EMC PSQ programme is a project-specific survey programme designed for partners with service partner designations to solicit customer feedback regarding the quality of the partner’s service engagements.

“This is a great honour and achievement for MATCO and its employees,” said Dr. Nabeel Al-Fayoumi, Managing Director, MATCO. “We are all proud to have received such a highly distinguished award. We have taken it as a firm commitment upon ourselves to maintain the highest levels of service quality & standards. I seize this opportunity to thank our extremely valuable customers for believing in us and making this award possible. I’d also like to express our deep appreciation to EMC in fortifying the solid relationship we have.”

“We are delighted to see an increasing number of service partners from around the world continue to drive and deliver outstanding levels of service to their customers,” said Rich Steeves, Director, EMC Global Service Partner Programs. “As an EMC Partner Services Quality Award winner, MATCO demonstrates leadership in service delivery quality and customer satisfaction.”

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August 2014 Reseller Middle East

GCT named THECUS regional branch HQ Digital media storage firm THECUS Technology has confirmed that Genius Computer Technology (GCT), its distributor in the Middle East, Africa and CIS countries, will be its official regional branch office across the countries it represents.

This means that GCT will manage and develop all the distribution channels across the region as well as be the first point of contact for partners in the regions for technical support.

GCT will also be responsible for generating marketing opportunities for its authorised THECUS partners. This new partnership follows the signing of its distribution agreement in January this year.

THECUS, founded in 2004, focuses on hardware and software integration and development, and the core protocols of digital media storage.

In order to develop optimal storage solutions for such a range of users (from B2B to B2C), THECUS has assembled a development team with experience in storage hardware and software development.

GCT is an IT peripherals, networking, mobile and PC accessories distributor and solution providers.

Headquartered in Jebel Ali, UAE, with branches in KSA, Syria and Lebanon, the

Milad Jabbour, GCT and Florence Shih, Thecus

company represents accessories brands including include Genius, GX Gaming, Divoom, and Lafeada, networking brand Edimax and recently THECUS. “We have a very strong working relationship with our vendors and this appointment is a reflection of the partnership we have with THECUS,” said Milad Jabbour, Chairman, GCT. “We are very pleased that they have entrusted us with looking after the best interests of the brands and its products in the region.”

GCT has already begun working with some partners across the MEA and CIS regions to ensure that THECUS products reach all segments of the market, from consumer to Enterprise and SMB level storage solutions.

stats Middle East and Africa SDN market is estimated to grow from

$6.6 $116.3 million in 2014 to

million by 2019, at a CAGR of 77.3% from 2014 to 2019.

Source: Micro Market Monitor

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highlights

Teradata opens Riyadh office Teradata has announced the establishment of Teradata Saudi Arabia LLC to strengthen its commitment to current and prospective customers and channel partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The announcement of the Riyadh office was made at a half-day opening celebration that brought business and technical professionals together with senior representatives from Teradata to learn about the company’s strategic direction and plans for operations in the Kingdom.

From its new base in Saudi Arabia, Teradata will extend its portfolio of analytics, data warehousing and marketing applications solutions.

“Driven by ambitious government plans to boost economic diversity and social development across the nation, as well as exciting transformation in the business environment, Saudi

Arabia represents a market of huge opportunities,” said Eric Joulié, Vice President, South Europe and Middle East and Africa, Teradata Corporation.

“By establishing Teradata Saudi Arabia LLC, Teradata aims to help public and private sector enterprises better manage and analyse these vast amounts of data derived from the internet, social networks and mobile devices to create efficient data-driven businessesthat power performance, efficiency and customer retention strategies.”

Teradata’s announcement comes as industry analysts continue to report exponential growth in Big data and Analytics spending in the Kingdom.

According to a recent report from IDC, spending on business analytics software in Saudi Arabia is expected to reach $62.7 million in 2014, up from $51.0 million in 2013. The report also states that key industries including

energy, manufacturing, banking and finance, telecommunications, and retail will further drive investment in supply chain management (SCM), risk management, inventory control, and customer relationship analytics, while the public sector will see investments in analytics dedicated to mobile devices, as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend and mobile broadband penetration across the Kingdom continues to grow further.

Fortinet appoints Maya Zakhour as ME Channel Director

Maya Zakhour, Channel Director, Fortinet Fortinet has announced the appointment of Maya Zakhour as its Middle East Channel Director. Zakhour will assume responsibility of the regional channel organisation and will be tasked with implementing and executing channel strategy across the Middle East region.

Based out of Dubai, she will report to Alain

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August 2014 Reseller Middle East

Penel, Fortinet’s Regional Vice President for the Middle East.

Zakhour’s appointment support Fortinet’s plans for significant business growth across the GCC and Levant regions including Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Lebanon and Jordan. This is driven through the strengthening of its channel network with a better engagement towards the existing partners, adding new partners and growth of its internal channel management team. Recently, the company has appointed a dedicated channel manager for Saudi Arabia in addition to some other channel managers in the Middle East region.

“We see potential for business growth across the region, so we want to get even closer to our channels and ensure that they fully understand the positioning of our solutions. Furthermore, we want to involve our partner community in the decision-making process, right from day

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zero. This will be one of my key focus areas this year,” explained Zakhour.

Zakhour has over 12 years of channel management experience in the Middle East, working in organisations like Dimension Data, Microsoft Gulf and Coperon Technologies. She brings a wealth of vendor and partner centric experience to Fortinet including a thorough understanding of the regional channel’s opportunities and challenges.

“We are delighted to welcome Zakhour as a valuable member of the Fortinet team,” said Alain Penel, Regional Vice President, Middle East, Fortinet. “We are confident that she will help bring together our partner community and meet her priorities of implementing early partner engagement and proper alignment to maximize revenue results. We also extend all our support in her efforts to leverage our partners as a strategic asset to position Fortinet as a leader, in the long term.”

P.O.Box: 17543, Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 4 870 3333 www.fdcinternational.com

Fax: +971 4 870 3330

highlights

Huawei extends channel partner training programme

Burhan appointed as Cyberoam Kuwait partner

Ravinder Janotra, Cyberoam Middle East Cyberoam has appointed Burhan Technology as their platinum partner for Kuwait.

Consulting, systems integration and outsourcing solutions firm Burhan hopes to reach out to organisations offering Cyberoam’s next-generation solutions like NGFW, the company said.

Cyberoam offers a range of network security appliances such as UTMs and firewalls, as well as centralised management appliances and reporting solutions.

Ravinder Janotra, Regional, Sales Manager, Cyberoam Middle East, said, “The organisations from Kuwait are highly aware about the growing need of network security and they seem to promise adequate market share. With Cyberoam’s certified customer service performance and a solution that seamlessly amalgamates business needs with security needs, our partnership with Burhan aims to precisely deliver these to the market and help us collectively emerge as the preferred security solution in the region.”

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August 2014 Reseller Middle East

In partnership with Stage 2 Learning Solutions, Huawei has announced the extension of its Authorized Learning Partner (HALP) programme, which offers training on its entire range of its products and solutions for channel partners and students.

The company’s decision to offer an extended education programme follows years of initial training for students that wanted to develop their knowledge and understanding of Huawei’s ICT networking technology.

As a result of the extension, Huawei’s HALP programme will extend to certifying partners across the breadth of its technologies including unified communications and video, cloud, data centers, virtualised storage and networking technology.

“The extension of our training programme gives our partners and students a solid understanding of our full range of solutions and also help them to understand how the technology can help deliver business results to their organisations,” said Eric Dai, Training and Services Director, Huawei, Enterprise Business, Middle East.

“Getting certified will allow for students to be formerly recognised in their proficiency and understanding of our full technology portfolio, giving them professional qualifications that can help to support their career. We have developed an e-training programme so that students can learn via an extensive variety of e-books, research reports and papers so that students can freely access and learn outside of the classroom.”

Stage 2 Learning Solutions will develop

the training into seven main areas of study, ranging from product knowledge to network design and how to oversee ICT project implementations. There are three levels of certification, depending on partner and student’s levels of expertise: HCNA (Associate level), HCNP (Professional level) and HCIE (Expert level).

“It is encouraging that a large organisation like Huawei is extending its training programmes to the Middle East, offering more budding ICT professionals the opportunity to improve their technology skills, making them more valuable and employable individuals,” said Alwaleed Aldryaan, Al Khaleej Groups and Stage 2 Learning Solutions. “At stage 2 we believe that education is the key to economic development and prosperity in the region and we are proud to be part of such a successful growing training programme. Networking, IP and data communication are going to play a key role in the future development of the region and our alliance with Huawei is directly helping the ICT leaders of tomorrow.”

Although people have already adopted broadband connectivity solutions, they are now demanding faster speeds.

Storage is another focus that comes hand-in-hand with data centres. We have seen a huge growth in storage in Saudi Arabia.”

- Asim Saud AlJammaz, Vice President, Al-Jammaz Distribution.

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highlights

Fluke appoints Prologix Distribution as VAD Prologix Distribution has been chosen by Fluke Networks to distribute its entire product portfolio.

A group company of Danaher, network test and monitoring solutions firm Fluke’s products include the DSX CableAnalyzer for media testing, OptiView Network Analyser for monitoring and analysis, AirMagnet for wireless network assurance, and TruView for network & application analysis.

“This partnership enhances our product portfolio and increases the scope of opportunities immensely”, said Aditya Sahaya, Director, Business Development, Prologix Distribution. “Fluke Networks’ products are known worldwide for the unparalleled ability during installation, certification, testing, monitoring and analysis of copper, fiber and wireless networks. We are confident of making tremendous justice to this partnership through our strong local base and extended channel networks in the region.”

Fluke has announced the launch of the Versiv product family which includes the DSX5000 CableAnalyzer for copper certification and the CertiFiber Pro OLTS for fiber certification.

The Versiv family also includes the OptiFiber Pro OTDR and the OneTouch AT Network Assistant.

Ziad Sawtari, Territory Sales Manager at Fluke Networks’ said, “Since we partnered with Prologix Distribution earlier last year on Fluke Networks systems portfolio, they have significantly contributed to Fluke Networks’ revenue growth in the Middle East region, hence it was a no-brainer to include the rest of Fluke Networks product set, in order to replicate the same success.”

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CommVault enhances partner programme

Ralph Nimergood, CommVault CommVault has announced a series of enhancements to its PartnerAdvantage partner programme Service Provider (SP) Edition.

Available to cloud, managed services, and hosting providers who meet the programme requirements, PartnerAdvantage SP Edition spans software solutions powered by CommVault for backup and recovery and disaster recovery, as well as more advanced software solutions for services for archive, endpoint protection, and eDiscovery.

By becoming a CommVault partner, service providers gain access into the Simpana software platform. Cloud solutions powered by CommVault provide functionality for automated management, monitoring, automated job orchestration, and process automation tools.

stats Digital business incompetence will cause

25%

of businesses to lose market position by 2017.

Source: Gartner

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“We are proud to offer an innovative approach designed to drive a true partnership model with our service provider partners,” said Ralph Nimergood, Vice President, Worldwide Partners and Programs, CommVault.

“Our cloud business strategy is anchored on our global network of service provider partners who offer managed services for customers seeking IT-as-a-Service consumption models. CommVault’s investments and engagement with our service provider partners, coupled with our Simpana cloud-ready software enables providers to accelerate their time-to-market, expand revenue opportunities and boost profitability of cloud and managed services powered by CommVault.”

The programme benefits of PartnerAdvantage SP Edition include exclusive access to CommVault software licenses and pricing that are aligned with the requirements of ITaaS consumption models, and programme level discounts and rebates, which are available to service providers based on their consistent business performance and growth with CommVault Simpana-based software solutions.

Also on offer are technical assessments, and marketing support and funding for content development and advertising.

highlights

Westcon Group recognised as best employer in MEA Westcon ME Group has been announced as one of the ‘10 Best Employer Organisations’ in the Middle East & Africa region for 2014 by Aon Hewitt alongside peer companies such as DHL, Procter and Gamble, Marriott International and others.

Aon Hewitt, the global talent, retirement and health solutions business of Aon plc, announced the best employer organisations for the year based on the Aon Hewitt’s Best Employers Middle East survey. The survey took into account factors such as employee engagement scores and the company’s efforts to make employees feel valued and empowered.

According to the Best Employers study, the winning organisations have been engaging the intellectual and emotional commitment of their employees through best-in-class people management practices, which has been translated to having high levels of employee engagement, a compelling employer

brand, effective leadership and a high performance culture, bringing a dedicated and productive workforce.

“It’s a matter of great pride not only for the company but for each and every employee of Westcon ME Group to be associated with an organisation that has been acknowledged as one of the best employers in the region,” said Jacky Dias, Human Resources Director, Westcon ME Group. “We remain continuously committed to delivering our promises as an organisation to our employees’ which revolve around empowering people, maintaining ethics and respect, creating a winning culture and having fun. We have been working tirelessly over the years towards increasing employee engagement by rewarding and retaining talent, investing in talent development, focusing on diversity, and maintaining a focus on training and coaching.”

“It gives us immense pleasure to know that Aon Hewitt has recognised our

efforts towards increasing the employee engagement,” Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director, Westcon ME Group, said. “This motivates us as a company to further strengthen this position.”

He added, “As a company, our culture is built around dialogue and engagement. We will continue to innovate and invest in initiatives to further develop the engagement of our employees with the organisation.”

ESET and Gateworx sign Egypt deal

Mohamed Haroon , MD, Gateworx ESET has signed a partnership agreement with the information security and business applications distributor Gateworx to distribute its security solutions portfolio in Egypt. This includes ESET’s endpoint, mobile, authentication, file system and gateway security products for businesses and its mobile and computer antivirus products for home users.

In recent years, Egypt has begun taking steps towards establishing legislation for ICT intellectual property

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rights as well as cybersecurity and e-terrorism laws. “Egypt is key to the expansion of our footprint in North Africa,” said Pradeesh VS, General Manager, ESET Middle East. “With malicious cyber activity rising in the country, organisations and users are understanding the need to protect their IT systems. We have the solutions to meet these challenges and demands but in order to make a strong impact on the market, we also felt the need for a partner with technical expertise and a well-established and enabled distribution network.”

The distributor will recruit, train and support new qualified resellers and systems integrators and will extend the support of its qualified sales and technical personnel to managing and enabling these partners.According to Gateworx’ MD, Mohamed Haroon, “leveraging the skill sets and capabilities of existing partners” will also be key to the success of the partnership.

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With malicious cyber activity rising in the country, organisations and users are understanding the need to protect their IT systems.”

- Pradeesh VS, General Manager, ESET Middle East

highlights

FDC organises ZTE channel event

DIYAR SIGNS EMC KUWAIT PARTNERSHIP

Diyar has announced its role as an EMC Signature Partner for Kuwait. The announcement comes as government investments and growing private consumption continues to drive growth in Kuwait’s IT market.

According to Business Monitor International, software sales in the country increased by 5.5 percent, while hardware sales increased by a margin of 1.4 percent in 2013, as compared to 2012.

Diyar will offer EMC storage, backup, Big Dataand cloud solutions including EMC VNX, Isilon, VMAX, VPLEX, Data Domain, Avamar, Networker, Centera, RecoverPoint and VSPEX. Khaleel Ibrahim Hussain, Vice President, Diyar, said, “Working together with EMC will allow us to meet our objectives and deliver bestin-class EMC products and solutions to meet the breadth and depth of customer IT challenges while helping them create new growth opportunities through increased efficiency, agility and performance. They are an ideal partner. It also cements our position as the foremost reseller in Kuwait and reflects our continuing ambitions to deliver added customer value and grow the business.”

Diyar will be able to realise the associated benefits of the EMC Business Partner Program, such as access to marketing development funds, field execution, performancebased rebates and education.

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FDC ProValue recently launched a channel event for ZTE, a global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, with the aim of introducing its product and brand to the UAE channel. With an audience of more than 80 partners, the distributor along with the vendor discussed the FDC and ZTE team company’s strength and breadth of products. The event also discussed Relevance is key and today our partner how the channel partners could benefit from family is witnessing the trends in the way ZTE and its expectations from the channel. business of IT is changing and the event The channel partners also had an was a definite add on to our focus towards opportunity to get familiar with the gearing our industry towards end customers’ company’s products that were on display requirements in immediate future. This is our and also experienced a live demonstration responsibility as a value-added distributor.” of video conferencing.

“We humbly thank our partners for ZTE has quite a few plans for the entrusting ProValue and our vendor team channel in the second half of this year. First with the task of addressing these changes priority for the company is to cooperate with and newer requirements. In the event, we partners to develop the channel business were happy to notice that the movers and in the MEA region such as KSA, UAE, Qatar, shakers of the industry are understanding Oman and Algeria. The company will also the challenges and taking decisions on newer provide regular training for partners and technologies offered by end-to-end solution encourage them to undergo the certification providers vendors like ZTE,” said Praveen. training in China. Events such as Gitex will “It was a successful partner event, which continue to be important platforms for the helped ZTE to build a stronger connection company to market and brand the products. with our partners under FDC team’s efforts.

ZTE plans to bring technologies such The aim was to communicate clearly our as routing, switching, CPE, wireless, video partner strategy and policy to all our partners conferencing. The company said the channel through the event. We are committed to partners will benefit through the channel protecting our partners’ benefits. I am programme, through which the vendor confident that we will achieve greater success will support them with projects, marketing in the near future,” said Andy Zhang, General activities, pricing and availability. Partners Manager, ZTE MEA, Channel. will also have a better scope to make more margins by building support infrastructure for their customers for which the company will provide training. Additionally, an advanced training is also provided free of cost The UAE’s retail sales are from ZTE University at China Headquarters forecast to grow from provided the right candidate is represented and who has capability to understand and an estimated pass the exams, said the company.

Ram Praveen P T, Business Unit bn Manager, FDC ProValue Division, said, in 2011 to “ProValue is delighted by the fact that our partners are welcoming new trends and technologies in Middle East. Through bn our events including ZTE’s partner launch by 2015. one, partners observed that ProValue keeps bringing greater value, products Source: Edge Resourcing and solutions for the upcoming times.

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$31.01 $41.22

opinion

polycom

Sighting new opportunities

and widespread adoption of hosted telephony by the reseller community. It may take a change of business plan or approach, but can deliver a predictable annuity based revenue into the resellers business.

I think the only barrier to hosted telephony is the speed at which the channel can adapt. Selling hosted services like this requires a completely new business model. Many of our partners have already successfully developed this or are in the process of doing so. pay for upgrades, much like There’s a limit as to how quickly a consumer mobile phone any organisation can execute contract. In this way, customers this kind of change, but the can add additional ‘seats’ or channel seems to be exploiting redistribute staff with minimal this growing opportunity. disruption, and simply pay for Hosted telephony is additional users. growing, and it’s growing Hosted telephony is a fast. In a lot of organisations maturing market. It’s been gaining it’s seen as the way forward, traction for many years and is just like cloud applications. now growing at a rate greater For a lot of customers cloudthan 20 percent per annum. based IT is the solution that But it’s a market that creates best serves their specific competition amongst resellers, needs. For example, for a CPE PBX vendors and service lot of start-ups or SMBs, providers. Resellers can sell as hosted telephony as a stand-alone they want a solution that will grow with them. Hosted product, or on a wider hostedtelephony removes the cloud basis. Many customers need for them to have an choose to go with provider who on-premise cabinet whilst has a more inclusive UC solution.

Personally, I don’t believe they their office space is limited, but allows them to scale up are any real barriers to wholesale their package as the need develops. However, hosted telephony isn’t designed “Selling for or targeted purely hosted services like at SMBs. Some this requires a completely of our Polycom new business model. Many customers have in of our partners have already excess of 25,000 successfully developed this or are seats on a hosted in the process of doing so. There’s model. For other a limit as to how quickly any organisations, organisation can execute this kind of change, but the channel their investment seems to be exploiting this in Microsoft Lync growing opportunity.” means that enterprise telephony is better suited to their needs.

Glynn Jones, VP, Advanced Technology Group EMEA, Polycom, explores how the channel partners can take advantage of the opportunities in hosted telephony.

The telephony market is comparatively fragmented in terms of hosted voice for businesses.

It ranges from large scale service providers to smaller Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs). Some of these are working only in the voice space, but many others are building hosted telephony into a more complete UC solution.

Hosted telephony gives resellers a choice in how they

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want to deliver it, as many are working with service providers to white label their services, although some are choosing to develop and take their solutions to market themselves.

Hosted telephony offers a range of attractive benefits and options for customers.

The ability to pay on a usage model around a calendarbased contract appeals to lots of customers. In some cases, the devices are provided free of charge with the option to

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opinion

Alcatel-lucent

Tweet for B2B customer service Manish Punjabi, Channel Marketing Manager, MEA, AlcatelLucent Enterprise, suggests how Twitter could be a useful tool for the channel to deliver services promptly.

The face of customer service delivery is changing as service channels increase beyond the usual suspects – a toll free number, a generic email id, an unattended fax number or the understaffed service centre. Calling the toll free number is often an exercise in patience and futility because one either gets an automated digital attendant or gets disconnected after several futile attempts to reach an actual human. The generic email box is overflowing and no one ever seems to reply.

Depending on the country and time of the day, visiting the service centre can be a nightmare as well.

Based on these preconceived notions of customer service, I was extremely reticent to contact IKEA UAE to change our mattress which after less than four years of use had become lumpy in certain areas. I decided to take the bull by the horns and Google IKEA’s UAE customer service number. From all the results that came up, what intrigued me the most was the third search result – @IKEAUAE, IKEA UAE’s official Twitter handle.

I contacted IKEA through its Twitter handle and boy, I was not only surprised by the speed of

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responses but also the prompt follow-up calls and immediate actions. While customer service and response might be in IKEA’s DNA, however, the handover from the Twitter team to an actual person in the customer service department who serviced my need, impressed me the most.

According to a recent study

by McKinsey & Company, the young, wealthy and digitally connected users make the greatest use of social media for customer service. Unsurprisingly, corporates who posted a response to a customer query were 2.7 times more likely to receive recommendations as opposed to those that offered none. Now more than ever,

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customers turn to their peers on their social media networks when looking for recommendations. In fact, upon sharing my experience, an acquaintance narrated how she chose to have her accounts with RAK Bank, based on how responsive and helpful the bank was on Twitter.

While this was my first experience of using Twitter as a customer service channel, we need to consider the Business to Consumer (B2C) angle as the context of purchase is small and relationship is potentially a one-off. However, my thoughts now turn to the potential use of Twitter as a service channel in the Business-to-Business (B2B) scenario. In an enterprise

context, the purchase and relationship perspective is several times larger than that in a B2C context and considering the public nature of Tweets, suppliers understandably tread with trepidation. But is it a platform that vendors or our channel partners can safely exclude from the communication channel?

The regional B2B technology space is flooded with suppliers offering near commodity products and the sole differentiator is service.

In the commonly employed two-tier model of distributors and numerous indirect resellers, customers are spoilt for choice and switch resellers based on the promises of highly attentive and prompt service. However, B2B service is a highly personalised approach determined by service level agreements (SLAs) and available manpower.

Furthermore, there is rarely a public recognition for good service delivery and this is where Twitter can score big wins for resellers confident of service commitments. Or in simpler terms, put the reseller’s money where its mouth is of providing the best available service.

Some would argue that the existing channels i.e. mobile phone, desk phone, fax, email, IM, etc. are more than sufficient to reach suppliers. I would however, argue that the aforementioned tools don’t bet the suppliers public reputation of providing service as we expect it to be fulfilled – ASAP. The growing use of Twitter, apart from merely a learning and inspirational aid, as a customer service tool highlights how our service expectation and delivery are evolving. And more importantly, given the undeniable popularity of the medium, is it something businesses can ignore?

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opinion

brocade

Paving the way Fayez Eweidat, Regional Sales Manager, MENA, Brocade, says SDN is a tremendous growth opportunity for the Middle East IT channel organisations.

The future of the data centre is increasingly virtualised and the model is going to evolve towards more automation and more software-enabled solutions. The emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) as part of this change is a potentially disruptive trend for enterprise networking; but it is one that opens up significant opportunities in this sector, for now, in developing the infrastructure required, and even for tomorrow as SDN deployments become wide-scale.

SDN has broad implications across the data, control, and management planes of the network. Early adopters of SDN are currently investigating a wide range of applications and use cases that include network virtualisation, large-scale data centre infrastructure management, traffic engineering, and Wide Area Network (WAN) flow management. By providing a framework for utilising networks more effectively, efficiently and by simplifying the processes inherent in such networks, SDN can provide

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a wealth of benefits both technical and operational.

In the Middle East, SDN is still something of a buzz word with organisations seeking to learn more from initial SDN roll-outs to understand how the approach could be adopted at the enterprise level.

The challenge facing resellers and solution providers in the region is in educating customers about SDN, and explaining the need to review the readiness of their current networks to support SDN deployment. Despite the hype, SDN is not a replacement of the physical infrastructure, it still requires a level of physical infrastructure and as with all forms of virtualisation is sensitive to time-lag, latency and downtime. Therefore, if the customer’s physical infrastructure is still a three-tier, legacy affair, with redundancy and resilience issues, any investment is SDN may reap little real reward.

Short-term strategies, long term gains for IT channel As with any technology rising in popularity, SDN has attracted a number of announcements from big industry players. What

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the channel needs to do is to understand the reality of the situation and relate it to the actual requirements of their customers. For the Middle East, the next two years offer a window of trial - pilot and proof of concept (POC). This is the period when partners must identify ‘high value-high reward’ areas of the customer’s businesses where SDN may solve actual business problems or drive new business opportunities.

Given the timeframe, channel organisations can make great headway in preparing for the inevitable shift towards SDN and similar and related solutions. Nurturing and developing the right skill sets during these formulative years will allow the partner to rapidly gain market share in this emerging field and guarantee its position as a ‘trusted advisor’ and solutions provider.

SDN offers immediate and future growth opportunities for those who begin to prepare now. SDN is about better utilisation and increasing the agility of the underlying infrastructure, not about replacing it. It will be easier to sell because partners get to layer the virtualised functions

that the customer needs at the time on top of perrequisite physical layer. Those specialising in the data centre business and cloud services with proven expertise in this area will be in demand. By helping customers prepare and build a path towards a more effective infrastructure that can support SDN and other evolutions in data centre design and management, channel can be a trusted, central part of the customers’ journey as they evolve their data centre requirements.

Organisations hoping to position themselves technically and operationally to address trends such as mobility, BYOD and virtualisation while establishing the right data centre environment for the ongoing network traffic explosion, will seek out and invest in new technologies such as SDN. Recognising the signs and accepting the inevitability of the situation, channel organisations would be wise to begin treading down the SDN path if they hope to become the forerunners in this technology in the future, who can support customers through the entirety of this transition.

opinion

Global Distribution

Riding the growth wave Mario Veljovic, Vice President, Solutions MENA, Global Distribution, discusses the opportunities in flash storage.

If we are honest, as technology channel players – distributors and resellers alike – we are just like surfers. We are out in the ocean of technological opportunity, dreaming to ride the big waves. In the same spirit, we are constantly observing the market and looking out for the ‘next big thing’ or something that disrupts the technology marketplace.

Such disruption can come from within the channel landscape. Competitors are exiting, merging or defocusing, and ultimately freeing up space in a market which we can grab.

This comes as a relief in a time where the technology markets are still growing, “I see that but not exploding as revolution has they used to.

But a disruption just started with flash can come from a storage entering the major technology enterprise storage market transformation, too. That can be and is looking to replace the introduction of conventional hard disc a new technology, drives (HDDs) in the such as virtualisation a few years back. Or, long term.” even better, if a core segment of the business is shaken by a revolution.

I see that revolution has It’s like a dream come true, just started with flash storage as the business environments entering the enterprise storage are all set for this to be the next market and looking to replace big thing. conventional hard disc drives The enterprise storage (HDDs) in the long term. market is a multi-billion

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dollar one, but with a few giants still dominant. Digital content production by users, devices and enterprises seems unstoppable and will continue to grow exponentially in the years to come. From 2005 to 2020, the digital universe will grow by a factor of 300 from 130 Exabytes to 40,000 Exabytes.

It comes as no surprise that HDDs became an easy target for the revolutionists. Ever since I started my career in the mid-90s, HDD is most definitely

the only key component that has seen the least of technical innovation and improvement in performance. While network performance has improved by a factor of 400 in the last decade, HDDs just improved by a factor of 1.2. Other components such as CPUs improved by a factor of 30, and PCIs Bus speed showed a factor of 48 improvement.

One could argue that HDD is reliable – considering its long term service – but it’s proven that HDD crashes are leading the cause of data loss, being responsible for 72 percent of lost data.

The storage industry will keep booming – but with less disc and more flash.

Venture capitalists are eagerly looking for investment opportunities into flash financing the revolution, and the industry is already enjoying unprecedented hyper-growth, some companies in excess of 700 per cent year-on-year. IDC analysts have forecast that by next year, the all-flash storage array market will reach $1.2 billion in revenue, with an anticipated 58.5 per cent CAGR over the forecast period. Not bad for an industry that was more-or-less non-existent five years ago.

Previously unheard names are already dominating the storage industry headlines.

I hope you agree with me – the big wave is there. Let’s stand up and ride it.

interview

Ramkumar B

Narrowing the focus Ramkumar B, President, Value Division, Redington Gulf, discusses the company’s plans for cloud and other focus areas for driving the business.

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What does Redington Value plan to do on the partner engagement and services front?

We have a couple of things in mind and are working towards that. Some of the first things we want to do is revamp our portal, launch an integrated marketing platform, develop some apps on which partners can connect with us and receive all the information they require. This could also be an online medium of engagement with our partners. Partner engagement is a prime focus. The next point of focus is on services. More specifically, services delivered through the partners and we are not looking at a direct model. We want to have the ability within our system but we are going to make this available for our partners. Today it is difficult for partners to develop the resources required to do a project on, for example, converged infrastructure or identity or access management.

Identifying that it is not possible for partners to make investments of this scale, we have made it possible for our partners to white-label these services from us. This way the partner is able to win the opportunity in the mid-market or SMB level and grow their business.

Could you elaborate on how consulting and training are a part of your business objectives?

After partner engagement and services, consulting is the next important piece for us. It is a movement from value-added distribution (VAD) to solutions

distribution. By this, what we mean is that we can give point solutions to our partners, which they can then go ahead and position to their customers. In many cases, for example, VDI, converged infrastructure, nextgeneration firewall, web-filtering solutions, it is not just about the technology but the solution as a whole. We will train the sales people on how to position these solutions and then they are able to go and deliver it as a comprehensive solution.

Our fourth point of focus is on training. We are the authorised training partners for vendors such as Palo Alto and two or three other security vendors are in the pipeline.

Today most of the VADs, with the exception of a few, are training on behalf of the vendors, they don’t have their own training programmes. From our perspective, this is going to be a key differentiator where we will provide world class training to our partners. We are currently in the process of talking to some of the training firms. We have not decided if we will bring a training platform or if we will build it on our own.

Through these four focus areas, we believe we can make significant headway and offer a better proposition to the channel, which can then become a better bottom line driver to the VAD model.

What are the company’s expansion plans to North and French-speaking Africa?

At the moment, we have an office in Morocco and have recently opened Redington Senegal for the volume business. The current

Through these four focus areas, we believe we can make significant headways thereby offering a better proposition to the channel which can then become a better bottom line driver to the VAD model.” infrastructure will make a difference in the value business as well. We are working aggressively in North Africa with vendors such as Avaya, Red Hat and HP Enterprise Security. French-speaking Africa is another area where we are going to onboard some of these brands. In the next quarter, we will announce certain big acquisitions which will accelerate our presence in these regions.

In the last fiscal, we ventured into Portuguesespeaking area and we have Portuguese speaking nationals working with us. We have incountry people in Angola and a footprint in Mozambique in terms of people. We have back office people located here who can speak the language. In the same way, we want to develop French-speaking Africa as we see a high demand coming from our vendors to enter these segments.

Is Redington Value planning to get on the cloud bandwagon?

While immense interest exists in this area from our end, we are yet to announce clearly what

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our play is going to be as far as cloud is concerned. We hope to define this in the current fiscal. We know for sure that we will be reselling cloud services.

From a cloud point of view, Microsoft had a RFP and chose Redington as their Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) distributor. We have also tied up with Amazon web services to resell their infrastructure as a service and we are working with a couple of other vendors to start reselling their services.

From a cloud perspective, the first layer we want to build is our consulting area. We want to provide clarity to the channel on a number of things, such as what is a private and public cloud, what are the steps needed to be undertaken by a reseller to address the market.

What is a hybrid cloud and where is the market evolving?

Consulting is an area where we are investing in heavily and we will definitely do cloud reselling.

However, beyond that, whether we are going to set up our own marketplace or if we are going to have cloud on our own – these are the areas where there is a lot of internal churn going on.

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interview

Nael AL-DOUJAILI

Redefining perspectives Nael AL-DOUJAILI, Managing Director MEA, IB-Remarketing, Global IT Support & Maintenance Services, on the business of recycling and reusing IT products.

Could you elaborate on your business focus in the Middle East?

We are an IT company specialising in maintenance and support for high-end equipment such as servers, storage and networking. We mainly work on large data centres to bring customers economy of scale, based on volume. We focus on lifecycle extension, green maintenance and smart recycling.

Lifecycle extension: We support our clients’ end-of-life equipment, which is no longer supported by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). We extend the amount of time IT equipment can function for, ensuring cost effectiveness and a better, greener IT approach.

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Green maintenance: We implemented an ecofriendly approach to recycle obsolete IT equipment. This process involves collecting and dismantling our client’s equipment, testing and reusing it. Through this system, we can propose the main competitive second hand offers on the current Middle East market, with the same quality as new equipment.

Smart recycling: Our company implements an effective and efficient green approach. We operate according to the rules set out by the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE).

We offer a complete range of recycling services and provide a certified data erasure and recycling certificate. Our

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strength is to allow other businesses to focus on their goals while we take care of their electronic waste disposal issues.

What kind of opportunities do you see in the recycled IT business in the Middle East market?

We foresee a huge expansion implemented by the international blue chip companies that have settled here. The Middle East is clearly one of our top targeted markets. There is nothing concrete being done here yet.

We also expect the Government to create legislations to support Green IT.

Can you elaborate on why would clients want to choose refurbished IT products over new, other than it being cost-effective?

Thanks to our stock, we can ensure a quicker delivery and warranty exchange time than a manufacturer. Also through refurbished products, companies can save on the costs for training staff to use

the new equipment as well as the migration costs. Finally, using IT equipment till the very end of its life reduces the carbon footprint of a company.

What has been the response of the market?

Are customers in the region aware of the benefits of recycled IT products?

It has been almost a decade since IBR began supporting companies in the MEA region with recycling, upgrade, support, relocation while providing cost reduction.

Customer feedbacks have been quite positive. We have seen a double-digit growth for the last 5 years consecutively.

The daily requests are increasing as we see that regional customers are aware of the benefits and are curious to see how it can be applied to them. We are confident that the investments we are making on our new warehouses and technical team are going to help us keep the same line of direction.

We mainly work on large data centres to bring customers economy of scale, based on volume. We focus on lifecycle extension, green maintenance and smart recycling.”

There are two truths that we are fighting for ‘second hand is not garbage’ and ‘new is not always needed’.”

How do you plan to reach out to the market?

Our target is to be one of the top 3 maintenance companies globally within the next 5 years.

We count on: Communicating on our cost effective and efficient strategy – choosing to postpone the end of life of your perfectly working equipment therefore preventing lengthy procedure and extra migration costs. Our sales team travels to more than 85 countries worldwide to serve this purpose.

Buying back more and more equipment: Educating our clients with the environmental benefits that come with the purchase of refurbished products. This involves letting them know that the carbon footprint of their equipment and the burden of e-waste is lessened with every refurbished product reused.

What are your challenges in this market? How do you plan to address them?

There are two truths that we are fighting for ‘second hand is not garbage’ and ‘new is not always needed’.

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Numbers are always a good way to prove to people that a system is working well. As of today, we support more than 110,000 systems worldwide thanks to recycling and that’s what we consider as a good start.

Globally, what is the attitude towards refurbished IT products?

By constantly educating clients, with more and more people speaking and writing about it, people have started to accept it increasingly. Minds are changing but we must still acknowledge the responsibility that we have for the future generation and how today’s actions can be tragic for our future. Obviously, the price is helping us with the ‘customer education’ process.

Anything else you would like to add?

Second hand products are often stereotyped but our company works very hard to ensure that our refurbished products are of the highest quality. On the top of that, we do make sure to send certified engineers with spare parts that have been tested to provide high quality services.

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cover feature

Trigon

The successful operation of the company hinges on brilliant and effective management, highly dynamic, talented and qualified professionals backed by a team of sales, marketing and product managers.�

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A fine line Arun Chawla, CEO, Trigon, takes Reseller Middle East through the company’s growth stages and discusses how partners can expand business without hurting their bottom line.

The Middle East channel space has undergone some tough market conditions. And although many have survived this, only few have thrived. Currently, one of the challenges the market faces is maintaining a balance between top-line and bottom line growth. While most players manage to achieve a top-line growth, not enough attention is given to a company’s bottom line.

A mere business idea more than 17 years ago, Trigon is one of the oldest distribution companies in the region with a focus on IT products and peripherals. Following the business motto, ‘bottom line basics’, the distributor boasts strategic alliances with large brands such as Samsung, LG, ViewSonic, Xerox, 3M, D-Link, Elo Touch and BenQ.

Recently, it has also added brands such as Dell, Acer, Netgear and Transcend to its portfolio. Having an existing mix of products catering to retail, corporate and reseller segments, the distributor is open to any new product, in both hardware and software, which complements its current product mix.

In 2013, Trigon continued its focus on the retail business and expanded the related product line. With a focused approach on the SME segment, the company also extended the product line in vertical segments such as healthcare and hospitality. Last year, the company hired dedicated manpower for its Abu Dhabi operations and expanded its service centres.

Spearheaded by its CEO, Arun Chawla, a veteran in this industry, the company has

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witnessed the evolution of the channel space in the Middle East region.

Firmly believing that the pillars of every business should revolve around maintaining a sound bottom line rather than focusing on mere selling, Chawla has led the company to grow over the years. “We are a company who believes in gross profit and bottom line basics,” he reiterates. “The successful operation of the company hinges on brilliant and effective management, highly dynamic, talented and qualified professionals backed by a team of sales, marketing and product managers.”

Chawla’s answer to employee retention, which is one of the biggest problems in the industry is quite simple.

“Keep employees satisfied,” he says. He adds that Trigon has been able to do this by

August 2014 Reseller Middle East

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Trigon

understanding each employee’s problem areas and finding a solution for it. In this manner, the company has been able to inculcate a stress-free and happy work environment, he says. It is also important that every employee understands the company’s goals and vision in order to create a strong and focused team.

The challenges that Trigon faces is not too different from other distributors - profitability and gross margins, credit limits, cash flow and accounts receivable and managing stocks.

But what makes Trigon stand out from other players in the region is the fact that its business model caters to all four segments of the marketchannel, retail, corporate and exports. “This diversity has allowed Trigon to grow its revenues and increase headcounts,” he explains. “Our mission is to provide quality products and reliable services based on the latest technology and to win long term loyalty of customers and employees through continued satisfaction.”

The business model, which includes developing product portfolios in these four segments, has fostered the company’s growth. Chawla adds that safe and secure business practices too have been another reason for their success and its channel partners are also

Resellers must focus, caution, and control more in the two ‘make it or break it areas’ - stock level and credits control.” encouraged to follow these lines of business.

Partner development Irrespective of whether it is the channel or the distribution business, the two most important things in both are gross profit margin and bottom line. There is a huge difference between turning an operating profit and making enough money to survive, Chawla says.

“In the channel space, most players are only concerned with growing their top-line.

Gross margins and good business sense have been the fundamental of any business, be it a distributor or a reseller.

Resellers must focus, caution, and control more in the two ‘make it or break it areas’ - stock level and credits control.”

Observing the current market trends and as a distributor, Trigon CEO says it is necessary to not over load the channel partners with excess inventories as it increases the pressure even further. “Good business is the only mantra”, he says.

The company also works closely with retailers around the

region. “Retail has always been one of our strong forte and our passion. Our understanding of the retail business has helped us to remain a focused retailoriented distributor in the region,” Chawla says.

Not depending on a single market or product, Trigon has a wide spread of network and this helps it to maintain a positive growth between countries, partners and products. “Our focus remains to continue to focus on reseller segment, retail and corporate SMS/SME – health care, education, hospitality and banking,” Chawla says.

Future plans Chawla believes solution business will drive the growth in the next few months.

With vendors placing strong emphasis in this area, Trigon plans to leverage the situation and focus more on value-added business. The company also plans to expand regionally within this year. “The feasibility study is being concluded to identify the areas for expansion.

With full-fledged sales offices in Bahrain, we are now looking

With full-fledged sales offices in Bahrain, we are now looking at Saudi Arabia as a potential market and considering our product mix, it makes business sense to tap the potential present.”

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www.resellerme.com

certification Trigon was one of the first ditributors to be awarded the ISO 9001:2008 certification in 2003

at Saudi Arabia as a potential market and considering our product mix, it makes business sense to tap the potential present,” he adds.

Saudi office will provide sales and after-sales support for all segments of the marketretail, corporate and channel and is aiming to be operational

by October 2014.

We will also see the distributor expanding its logistics and service centre and moving to a bigger warehouse, this year.

As part of its other strategic plans for the next couple of months, the distributor aims to focus on retail and B2B corporate business and support its partners to build quality business. “Most of our power retail partners have aggressive expansion and growth plans during 2014 and we will partner with these plans at all levels,” Chawla adds.

*

*

*

*

*

*

DESPEC MERA LTD, P.O.Box 61050, Dubai, UAE. | Tel : +9714 8811191 | Fax : +9714 8811190 Email : info@despec.com

*Distributions agreements for brands are country specific and are only eligible for authorized regions only

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VAD

Champions of value-addition

Value-added distribution has been a buzz word in the last few years with everyone aspiring to be one. However, what constitutes to be a VAD differs from payer to player. Reseller Middle East looks into what it takes to be a true VAD.

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If one tries to think of the origin of value-added distribution (VAD), it will be quite impossible to pinpoint an exact time in history, at the same time, many believe this model existed right from the beginning in various different forms.

Today the term VAD has been conferred with a number of definitions, each varying with different players.

Traditionally, distributors deliver the products and ensure its market availability, while the service centres are located in different areas.

However, with technology evolving over time, the kind of products and solutions being distributed today demands a service that goes beyond deployment. According to Jose Thomas, CEO, Bulwark Technologies, being a VAD depends on the products that one deals with. “A true VAD is a hybrid of distribution and systems integration,” he says. This is because, a value-added distributor needs to empower the channel partners by educating them

about new products, investing in marketing campaigns, providing training, pre-sales and post-sales support as well as providing a strong footing for the reseller in terms of accurate implementation of the solution and ensuring the satisfaction of the end customers. He adds, “They also need to ensure that the product is available across the region. Value-addition doesn’t end with sales. In fact, it has to extend very much into the after-sales phase as well.”

The difference between a VAD and a volume distributor is that the latter caters largely in volumes to cover the mainstream markets, with low margins and a higher degree of market access.

Although the definition of value could be subjective, Khalid Laban, CEO, Oxygen, says, the value-addition needs to be looked at from the vendor and market point of view and not from a distributor’s perspective. “However, vendors need to understand that only if better margins are given to the VAD, can he help to take the product and solutions to

A true VAD is a hybrid of distribution and systems integration.”

Jose Thomas, CEO, Bulwark Technologies

www.resellerme.com

the market in an effective way through value-addition,” says Laban. “If a vendor needs value to be added to his products and solutions, the VAD should do it for a higher margin, for example 15 percent and upwards, whereas if no value is required, the vendor should go to a traditional distributor where the margins are fairly lower, for example 5 percent,” he explains.

Jayadevan K, Director, Operations, ComGuard, says, “While volume distributors do not necessarily have a productfocused technically-adept workforce to complement their offerings, a VAD is one that delivers typically high-value technologies, invests time and resources on mastering products from a marketing and technical perspective, in offering services like lead generation, proactive sales, pre-sales and post-sales support and trainings, which in turn increase the worth of the products being distributed.”

Agreeing that it depends on the products, Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director, Westcon Group, adds, “It all depends on the positioning of the product and how commoditised it is. Or how much the vendors want to put in to take new technologies to the market. For us, being a true VAD means channel enablement, following a classic recruit, enable and grow model.

“If we have to be successful, the reseller has to be central in creating the demand and supply.”

Mohammad Mobasseri,

Augus 2014 Reseller Middle East

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CEO, EMT Distribution, points out that value-added distribution is more time consuming and have longer sales cycle. “Whereas volume distribution products are in high demand, therefore the pre-sales activity is lesser and also there is no proof-ofconcept, which is time and resource consuming in value distribution,” he says. “We have been working very hard to make sure we add certain services or value in addition to the standard terms or criteria, like working closely with partner on project in the implementation, designing and commissioning process.”

What we see is that most players agree that the role of a VAD is to go the extra mile.

A true VAD will not hesitate in investing in pre-sales engineers that can abet the channel partners in designing solutions that match customer expectations. A VAD’s agenda will also have providing training and certification to guarantee partners provide the required standard of the on-the-ground support.

According to Dharmendra Parmar, GM Marketing, FVC,

A VAD invests in pre-sales, post-sales, training and other marketing activities. it is important to advocate new technologies and offer adequate support for it. “We started in the unified and video communications business before it became mainstream.

We then evolved and were the first ones to introduce cloud computing when it was still in its infancy. Today, based on partner and customer feedback, we have evolved and expanded to include complementary solutions like security and bandwidth management. As needs

expanded, we added network management and overall infrastructure management solutions,” he explains. “As a VAD, we feel a strong need to see the future of the industry and map this to our partners’ market requirements to help them proactively close the value solution sale.”

Having invested in executive briefing centres that double up as ‘proof of concept’ demonstration centres for its partners and their customers, FVC believes this and regular

However, vendors need to understand that only if better margins are given to the VAD, can he help to take the product and solutions to the market in an effective way through value-addition.”

Khalid Laban, CEO, Oxygen

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workshops to educate partners and end users are some of the reasons why it considers to be a VAD. Supporting the partners is definitely a crucial role for a VAD, however, it also needs to ensure the vendor’s objectives are carried out.

Understanding this, StorIT offers comprehensive support services to its channel partners and works as an extended sales arm for its vendor partners.

“We not only share our vendors’ vision for the region but also provide them with a broad reseller channel network, which can introduce their technology to the market at the shortest time span and help them achieve their growth objectives.

Our superior domain expertise, in-depth market knowledge, over a decade long regional experience, and a team of highly qualified & certified technical and sales professionals aids our vendor partners in building a qualified channel partners who can

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VAD

successfully market, sell and support their products,” explains Manju Mathew, Marketing Manager, StorIT Distribution.

Most distributors are of the opinion that both a pure-play VAD and a volume distributor with a VAD division will be able to survive in the long term. Today with highly demanding technologies, value-added distribution has immense opportunities.

However, from a vendor’s perspective, Abdul Rehman Tariq Regional Channel Manager, MENA Brocade, says, “There should always be some aspect of volume business for a distributor to be able to sustain long-term operations. A pureplay VAD would have to be involved in multiple projects in order to sustain their business, whereas a volume distributor with an additional VAD division is able to manage even when such projects are not available.”

Mobasseri believes a pure-play VAD can successfully sustain long-term business as the margins are much higher here. “Profit margin is higher in value distribution and demand is increasing drastically on

For us, being a true VAD means channel enablement, following a classic recruit, enable and grow model. If we have to be successful, the reseller has to be central in creating the demand and supply.”

Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director, Westcon Group

the other side by focusing on value-added services, a VAD can secure business for longer time.

Cloud is one of the services that can help VAD to survive for a longer time.”

That being said, there are certain roadblocks that a VAD faces. Both Parmar and Mobasseri say, managing credit is one of the major issues. “Credit facilities is an issue since the size and scale of some of the projects can be quite substantial,” Parmar says.

And moreover, introducing new technologies to the market place is quite challenging in itself. “In addition to that, training resources to maintain continuous education and information sharing

with partners can also be challenging,” adds Parmar.

But Mathew from StorIT points out the rapidly changing industry landscape and the fast evolving technological developments may seem to throw new challenges, “but they can be a source of new opportunities if we can develop the agility to adapt.”

This brings us to the road ahead. Many experts have said that the valueadded distribution model will eventually move towards a solutions-selling model.

Jayadevan K from ComGuard, believes this is true. He explains, “It will eventually move towards solution selling with distributors focusing on niche, high-end

As a VAD, we feel a strong need to see the future of the industry and map this to our partners’ market requirements to help them proactively close the value solution sale.”

Dharmendra Parmar, GM Marketing, FVC

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solutions which provides an edge to their VAD portfolio.”

However Parmar says that the VAD space has always been about solutions selling and it needs to continue to evolve in this direction. He says, “In my opinion, the value proposition always comes with offering emerging or niche technologies that need to be evangelised and demonstrated to the customer. A true VAD needs to continuously create a market opportunity for these emerging technology with end users and work hand in hand with the channel in proactively closing the sale together.”

For the type of solutions that Bulwark Technologies deal with, it is true that a VAD needs to have most of the resources a solution provider has compared to a distributor, says Thomas.

“The customer relationship, local availability and comfort of the customers in dealing with the solution provider, all matters a lot in business.

Therefore, I do not think that VAD model will move to a direct solutions selling model, but I believe that resellers and vendors need VAD to bridge the gaps in the supply chain giving proper support.”

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security

Defending tactics Reseller ME finds out how security channel players can be a step ahead in the highly dynamic marketplace and maintain profitability.

One of the biggest problems of the 21st century is IT security. With the Internet of Things having emerged in the last few years and increasingly maturing by the year, the number of vulnerabilities that we are faced with is not only infinite but also constantly evolving.

For example, any organisation today, stands a risk to threats that range from

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susceptible wireless technology, unsecured mobile devices and networks, cybercrime, data breaches, threats from emerging trends such as cloud and even from social media and related applications. “It’s a competitive landscape and with the continuous advent of new technologies and

www.resellerme.com

It’s a competitive landscape and with the continuous advent of new technologies and emerging niche companies, it is imperative that vendors remain agile and offer the most they can to partners in an effort to remain competitive.”

Naji Kazak, Regional Channel Manager, Lexmark Middle East and Africa

emerging niche companies, it is imperative that vendors remain agile and offer the most they can to partners in an effort to remain competitive and also offer end-customers the best value,” says Naji Kazak, Regional Channel Manager, Lexmark Middle East and Africa.

But what’s key to note is that data security has taken over prime importance within the security space especially since organisations depend on it for growth and differentiation.

Ray Kafity, Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, FireEye, adds, “Today’s advanced attacks are focused on acquiring valuable and sensitive personal information, intellectual property, authentication credentials, insider information and each attack is often conducted across multiple threat vectors, web and email, and across multiple stages, with premeditated steps to get in, to signal back out of the compromised network, and to get valuables out.”

This complicated security risk environment didn’t develop overnight, in fact according to Maya Zakhour, Middle East Channel Director, Fortinet, too many of these concerns didn’t

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even exist a long time ago and it certainly has dramatically increased over time. But how can the channel partners survive, let alone maintain profitability in this highly dynamic space? Zakhour explains, “We encourage our channel partners to do more business and hence more profit by making sure all our partners are enabled by providing them with a free online training. We are encouraging our partners to be certified and hence being able to leverage a high level of services to the market. We are also pushing our partners for early engagement and deal registration which will ensure more profit for them. Not to forget the marketing fund that we are helping our partners with to make sure they grow their customer base and profitability.”

As complex as it may seem, the opportunities present for the channel is quite vast. In the Middle East region, IT security projects are increasing and the IT security market is growing at a healthy pace in line with global trends, which means huge opportunities for the channel players. Florian Malecki, International Product Marketing Director, Dell, Network Security,

AugusT 2014 Reseller Middle East

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says, “For this reason there are significant opportunities for organisations to leverage this trend and expand their businesses. Some resellers have opted to take the Managed Services Provider (MSP) route, offering IT security as a managed services to generate recurring revenue. Other have specialised in professional services which offer high margins. We believe that the market is already conducive to IT security and offer new channels for business growth, increased efficiencies, and improved convenience for users.”

“Channel partners need to come up with comprehensive and innovative topline solutions that address various pitfalls in the security landscape, rather than focus on a product or box-moving approach. This way they can ensure productivity is maintained,” adds Ahmed Hawari, Head of Sales, Channel, ComGuard Solving challenges Security, according to experts, is still one of the least crowded market places within the regional channel space, and early movers will definitely have the advantage to sell

Having up-to-date access to the latest emerging trends in securing the customer and having access to business decision-makers and not only IT decision-makers are some other challenges the partners are coping with.”

Fady Iskander, Regional Commercial and Channel Manager, Symantec

into a less competitive areas as compared to traditional systems integration within networking. Osama AlHaj-Eisa, Channel Director, Middle East & Turkey, Aruba Networks, says, “At present the only real challenge for the channel boils down to educating clients about the latest threats and vulnerabilities and impressing upon them the need to draw up and implement a holistic security policy. This should include approved devices, monitoring of uncontrolled wireless devices, authentication of wireless clients, encryption of wireless communication, access control policies, remote wireless access, client security standards and wireless guest access.” He

believes channel partners also need to go beyond the basics of a particular security technology and gain a firm understanding of the key features of the solution. Without it, the partner will not be capable of implementing the solution to the best of its potential. “Not only this, insufficient knowledge may lead to a sub-standard implementation that will ultimately affect not just the partner but also the vendor’s reputation,” he adds.

According to Kazak from Lexmark, the challenge for partners is about strategic planning. “They need to differentiate themselves by offering features such as security solutions, applications

We believe that the market is already conducive to IT security and offer new channels for business growth, increased efficiencies, and improved convenience for users.”

Florian Malecki, International Product Marketing Director, Dell, Network Security

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and services. This has to be presented as a strategic package and not as a one-off, a-la-carte option.” He adds, “Partners must empower themselves by gaining this knowledge proactively.”

Fady Iskander, Regional Commercial and Channel Manager, Symantec, points out that channel partners also have trouble getting hold of capable and updated technical resources.

“Having up-to-date access to the latest emerging trends in securing the customer and having access to business decision-makers and not only IT decision-makers are some other challenges the partners are coping with.”

However, Kazak adds that the stigma is still associated with security, where it is treated similar to travel insurance and it is something that can be done without. “While security concerns are paramount, few companies are reluctant to spend and be proactive about safeguarding their data and assets. As such, the channel needs to play a central role in educating customers about the importance of security measures. Our partners have the ability to deliver a clear message to potential

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security

Industry speak

clients that Lexmark offers a secure platform that combine advanced hardware and software security products.”

Future outlook Because it is a continuously evolving space, channel partners can look forward to a positive future and all that’s required is foresight and the ability to identify opportunities early on. Agreeing, Yassine Zaied, EVP Middle East and Emerging Markets, Nexthink, says, there is a tremendous opportunity for partners to deliver added value to their customers, “Especially in the region where we have some very large organisations subject to APT that could be potential targets for motivated hackers.

Organisations definitely need to invest into solutions that can provide real-time visibility and IT analytics of their entire infrastructure and endpoints.”

Zaied further suggests, “Partners can provide these solutions to enforce the level of security protection from the head office to the remotest branch location, to prevent and remove malware infections without adversely impacting employee productivity and existing business processes.”

It is clear that with IT Security becoming a high priority for all organisations, the growing need for security and protection against the evolving threats will always create an opportunity for the channel.

“Partners need to capitalise on this by ensuring they have the right vendor portfolio and tools available to deliver,” adds Christopher Green, Divisional Director, Westcon Security.

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How can partners go about specialisation in the security space?

Christopher Green, Divisional Director, Westcon Security “Specialisation is key to standing out from the competition, IT security has many technology areas that can be focused in on IPS, IDS. Forensic, Malware detection, ATP, NGFW, DLP AND SIEM. At Westcon we take our partners through our “Westcon Way” Sales Enablement Cycle where we ensure our partners have the right level expertise on our vendors and have the ability to sell solutions in their market.”

Nandini Sapru, Director Sales at EMT Distribution “Partners should specialise in understanding a technology, more than a product. Once an end user is convinced that he needs a particular technology for his network, the product becomes immaterial.

Understanding the evolving nature of networking and security is essential for this.”

Ahmed Hawari, Head of Sales, Channel, ComGuard “Channel partners need to come up with comprehensive and innovative topline solutions that address various pitfalls in the security landscape, rather than focus on a

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product or box moving approach. This way they can ensure productivity is maintained.”

Meghan McCarthy, Regional Sales Manager for Partner Organization and Commercial Segment, Cisco UAE “At Cisco we take full responsibility for training and certifying our partners. We believe that a partner should be properly trained and certified in all areas including security by the vendor to gain competitive advantage.

At Cisco, we offer networking certifications and specialisation programme that we’ve been offering for our partners for nearly two decades. Our Cisco Channel Partner Programme focuses on a partner’s ability to deliver intelligent networks and technology architectures built on integrated products, services, and software platforms.”

Sebastien Pavie, Regional Sales Director, MEA, SafeNet “The SafeNet Cipher Partner Program has different categories for different partner types – whether valueadded distributors and resellers, service providers, systems integrators, or technology alliance partners – and has its own rewards, benefits, and levels of certifications to best align to your business model, products, services, and business requirements.”

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partner watch

Blue bell computers

Connecting the dots Tarun Nandi, Director, Blue Bell Computers, says employee turnover and credit issues in the channel are interconnected.

The Middle East’s IT market is expected to continue its robust growth in the next few years, according to reports from IDC. With the region leapfrogging the transitional years in emerging market trends that was observed in mature marketplaces across the globe and with the economy strengthening post the crisis a few years ago, the channel partners have a wide field to strategise and grow.

The reports are looking positive, however there are certain roadblocks that are plaguing the industry. The first one is a matter of concern for all stakeholders in the channel ecosystem – employee turnover.

According to Tarun Nandi, Director, Blue Bell Computers, this is a major setback, even in distribution. He says, “A company should think long-term when entering the region. And if such a company invests in residential spaces early on, this could help out with the employee’s biggest cost head today – rents.”

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According to him, as the living costs are rising each day, the remunerations should too.

Understanding employees’ problems and trying to solve them can help in a big way.

Nandi says the number of employees don’t matter as much as their quality. “Keeping few people who are trustworthy and can do the job matters more than having a large workforce.”

Blue Bell Computers began operations at Dubai’s Khaleed Bin Al Waleed street around 20 years ago. Identifying a gap in the market for high-end products, Nandi started off with vendors such as HP, Canon, Epson, Toshiba, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.

And over the years, the reseller has consolidated and reduced the product line to around 10 from the initial 35, going for a more focused-approach. Nandi strongly believes in investing in people and never dealing on credit, which is another big issue in the regional channel space.

Over the recent years, there have been a number of cases of resellers exiting the market

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without clearing their dues, with one as recent as January this year. Nandi says, although the number of resellers running away has reduced greatly, what the market needs to understand is that earlier, it may have been five or six resellers running away with small amounts. But today just that one reseller fleeing the market can create a huge cash-flow issue. “When this amount goes from the market, this means the rest of us have to work harder to make up for it,” says Nandi.

The problem, he says, is intertwined. The people who handle and check the credit worthiness of a partner are not experienced enough and do not have adequate market knowledge. This is because of employee turnover where employees constantly move from reselling to distribution to vendors. “The experience they are coming with are from different fields. It takes time to understand the policies of an organisation.

An experienced person will not go through the loopholes. But

inexperienced person might, just to meet the targets,” Nandi says.

“Vendors and distributors have to identify who are the resellers who have been in the market for a long time and are experienced. The right people with the right experience have to be placed in the right segment.

A reseller cannot grow by 500 percent, realistically only 5 or 10 percent is possible. If a reseller is overpromising, vendors and distributors should be able to identify that and raise the alarm bells,” he says.

Blue Bell only deals in cash and this is a known fact within the channel community. “If reseller doesn’t bother about his bottom line, how is he going to manage his overheads?” asks Nandi.

Elaborating on Blue Bell’s future plans, Nandi says he wants to focus on those products where there is a direct growth.

Nandi also plans to be a minidistributor, which he believes will increase his volume apart from his current business that also includes exports to Africa.

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partner watch

Dimension Data

A class apart Youssef Fawaz, Managing Director, Middle East, Dimension Data, discusses how the company’s managed cloud platform enables it to stand out from competition.

Cloud has proven to be a boon for businesses. With better levels of education and awareness, end users are overlooking the traditional means and moving IT operations to cloud. In such a scenario, is cloud a threat or an opportunity for systems integrators and other channel

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partners? “Definitely an opportunity,” says Youssef Fawaz, Managing Director, Middle East, Dimension Data.

Although cloud affects hardware products, it is also an opportunity to discover new business ideas. Channel partners must innovate to stay relevant in the system.

Systems integrator,

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Dimension Data has been able to foresee the opportunities and has developed its own Managed Cloud Platform (MCP).

One of the things customers must have in place is a robust infrastructure when moving to the cloud. Dimension Data offers cloud services through a completely managed cloud delivery platform. “We are relevant globally and we provide multiple types of cloud for the hosted cloud,” explains Fawaz. He says the company’s ten Managed Cloud Platform, enables them to compete with the bigger players globally.

Also what works really well is the model where the systems integrator customises for the local market and service providers. “We have partnered with one of the service providers in GCC on cloud, they resell it for us and we partner together. We also have a private cloud which is specifically for enterprises. They want to have the right mix with cloud, for example our cloud with their local cloud, so that they can use it as a DR. We have the mix which the clients require.”

Dimension Data believes it stands out from other vendors in one very big way. “We do a lot more than mere box placing.

Our job is to ensure that we have met all the SLA required so that business continuity is not affected.” The demand for more number of data centres is increasing and customers want to move on to the fast track. Cloud helps in cost saving, however added to that, it enables the ability to execute in a faster manner. “Customers choose us because we offer better agility and this enables them to be up and running in a shorter time,” explains Fawaz.

What is interesting to note is that the business model has become more utility-based and is paid for accordingly. For the systems integrator, IT-as-aservice has been the business focus. And this trend has transformed over time. Today more and more customers demand the solutions to be tailored-made. “You don’t invest 7 or 8 digit infrastructure, you pay as per your consumption.

Because we have the culture of managed service and service business, we are not a productdriven organisation. This is why once we have our own cloud and intellectual properties, we have made the model to match with what the client needs and what the future needs,” adds Fawaz. “The traditional IT business is not as it used to be. It is now becoming a commodity. Our focus is transforming the business in a way to focus on the client in different interactions.”

Fawaz believes as the technology becomes more mature and as customers realise the potential of cloud and hosted services, there will be more opportunities coming in.

With a large client portfolio in various verticals such as financial, government, hospitality and transportation, Dimension Data has a global reach through its services.

Fawaz says, “We are a servicedriven company. We are not just a box-mover, we are really focused on how the clients can achieve his business objectives.”

The company has recently expanded to Oman, as part of its footprints in the GCC. Its other offices include Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and works through preferred partners in other regions.

VENDOR FOCUS

LEXMARK

Serving the partner Naji Kazak, Regional Channel Manager, Lexmark Middle East and Africa, explains how the channel partners can best leverage the opportunities present in managed print services (MPS).

How do you think the channel can be empowered to increase the uptake of MPS? Managed Print Services (MPS) improves overall print efficiency, enhances employee productivity, customer service and process management.

The most successful results come when the MPS provider has a clear understanding of the organisation’s goals, a proven industry experience and a track record of success.

In order to bring all these benefits to the forefront, the key element to empowering partners is to educate, train, and help the partners understand the value of what MPS brings to their customers.

Lexmark MPS combines intelligent devices, software tools, services, custom solutions and innovative strategies to transform an organisation.

How are you enabling your partners and what are your MPS services?

IT resellers have been seeing more customers interested in buying print through a managed print services arrangement. Our

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MPS channel programme will make life simpler for SMB end users – they won’t have to worry about ordering more toner or finding a technician to service a printer, for instance. It will all be taken care of for them – managed by Lexmark behind the scenes.

Today, successful providers are not just offering simplistic programmes; instead they are delving into the true managedservice-based business models which include content and document management. This is why Lexmark has evolved its offering to combine hardware, software, solutions and services to be in a position to deliver ‘end-toend’ business process automation.

This proposition is at the heart of the next generation of MPS. As part of our MPS offering, we provide business process optimisation, Governance and change management, MPS fundamentals and help desk services.

Could you discuss your channel initiatives?

Lexmark has been at the forefront of MPS for over a dozen years. We bring a rich portfolio of award-winning

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multifunction devices, industry specific software and highly skilled experts. We have launched various types of MPS channel programmes that serve the different segment. We are continuously offering training seminars and augmenting the channel partner portfolio to offer the best to our end-customers.

What is the business focus?

Managed Print Services (MPS) continue to evolve in the marketplace and Lexmark remains a leader at the forefront of this change. For many years our mantra has been ‘Print Less, Save More’ as we have strived to unlock hidden savings in the enterprise for our customers. Over time, this has evolved from output consolidation to automated

fleet management and on to workflow enhancements.

However, businesses no longer see MPS as an addedvalue amenity, but instead, a valuable service that can help them unlock the potential for process improvement and increased focus on core business. This development has led to an increased interest in building next generation workplace environments where cost and productivity goals are maximised to meet the challenging economic pressures of the modern era. As such, there has been a move from just pure print optimisation, through to digital capture, including basic and advanced capture and more recently, to intelligent capture and workflow automation.

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VMWARE

Stacking success Herve Renault, Director, Channel, Alliances & General Business, SEMEA, VMware, on the company’s journey towards being a true cloud-provider and the role of the channel partners in this transformation.

Software-defined networking (SDN), a relatively new trend, has been a buzz word in the regional IT space for a while now. Organisations are only about understanding the full extent of advantages it has the potential to offer and is becoming more open towards it. A new market trend, as ambiguous as it may seem in the beginning, is an ocean of opportunities for the channel players.

Sr Herve Renault, Director, Channel, Alliances & General Business, SEMEA, VMware, says, over the last few years the company has been moving towards network and storage virtualisation, besides just dealing with servers.

He says, “Today server

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virtualisation is becoming a commodity. Two years ago we announced the concept of softwaredefined networking which has the capacity to not only categorise the server but also to network and storage.”

In the last six months, the company has been focusing on delivering the SDN promise by positioning the right products in place.

One of the biggest bottlenecks in implementing SDN is the network. Without a robust network in place it is challenging to deploy SDN solutions. But although it is a work in progress, Renault says, the technology is taking off rapidly. “We are seeing that large banks, insurance and telco companies that have a huge IT system identify with SDN the capacity to modernise and become agile enough to answer the business issues.”

For partners, Renault says, this is a big job as they are traditionally used to selling server virtualisation. And moving away from the comfort zone might require the initial push.

“We need to firstly educate, enable and incentivise our

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partners in this journey.

Because we are in the middle of a transformation. The transformation is already in advance stages and now we need to have our partners come on board with a good investment plan and we need to offer better incentive plans and new certificate programmes,” he explains.

The transformation to SDN, although begun in full swing, is far from being completed.

“Many of our partners are competent and selling end user computing products or selling our monitoring solutions.

The first step is to automate with virtualisation,” he says.

Especially when in most cases 70 percent of the old data centres are being used, there is a distinct need to monitor it.

VMware’s partners have been receptive and have progressed well in this ride, says Renault. “Through a focused approach, we are only concentrating on a couple of partners. We expect SDN to be mainstream by next year and it will open up much more broadly.” It is important to not only sell but implement it correctly, he adds further.

On a global level, the company is building a plan together with its partners and is investing in their training to

ensure they are ahead of the curve. One of the plans the company is undertaking through this focused approach is a programme called Value Velocity which is targeted at distributors, where they are enabled to train their partners. Renault adds, “What we are doing directly with our top partners, we help the distributors to do it with their partners through Value Velocity.”

Around 18 months ago or less, the channel network for VMware wasn’t very strong in the region, but this is changing fast, says Renault.

“We have plans to hire senior managers to look after our top partners. We want to be with our partners on a day-today basis and help in making more business.”

The company is also looking at extending its footprint across the region. As one of the first steps in this plan, starting this year, all the North Africa and French speaking regions will be now linked to the Middle East.

“We are hiring manpower who are ready to have a presence in these countries and we are also looking at dedicated marketing professionals for these regions. The approach to the channel, depending on the people, will be programmatic,” explains Renault.

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Dell

Dell Venue 7 tablet A decent option for those looking for a feature-rich tablet at an affordable price.

Dell’s Venue 7 tablet is the answer to today’s requirement to have employees connected from any place and at any time. Often a laptop could be a tad tiresome to carry around, especially when you are only steppin g out for a few hours, say for a meeting.

While a smartphone is an ideal option to check and respond to mails while on-the-go, it’s not always convenient for going through a PDF or an Excel document.

The Venue 7 tablet with a 7-inch HD display is quite comfortable and portable to handle while on the move and serves as an adequate screen for editing and viewing MS Office and PDF documents.

With a 1280x800 pixel resolution, music videos and skype conversations too were clear enough. But what Dell could have worked on further was the front camera quality. It supports a 3MP rear camera and a VGA resolution front camera which can record 720p video at 30fps. Considering the price, around AED 799 (for the 16GB version), Dell could have slightly upgraded the front camera capabilities. Having said that, it does seem worth the price in all other respects.

Powered with an Intel processor of 2GB RAM, the device was able to withstand multitasking – several word

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and excel documents were open simultaneously with videos streaming in the background. The 16 GB of built-in storage, expandable to 32GB with a MicroSD card, provides ample amount of space for storing photos, emails, music and videos. Note that the MicroSD card is not included with the device and needs to be purchased separately. If users want to save up on the cost and yet have similar functions of this device, Dell also offers the tablet in the 8GB version,

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which is available for around AED 499 in the market.

One of the shortcomings of the device provided to review was that it didn’t detect the WiFi signal as strongly as other devices connected to the same network; although it effortlessly paired up with the Bluetooth speakers. In terms of the operating system, it is pretty standard as is with any other Android platform.

The device comes with a power supply, USB cable and a Quick Start guide. Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, it could also be used as a whole computing device, however because of its small size, this may not be such a comfortable option.

All in all, the Del Venue 7 tablet is an optimal functional device that comes at an affordable price.

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hot products

Epson introduces A3 ink tank system printers

D-Link launches Wireless AC1900 Dual-Band Gigabit cloud router D-Link Middle East & Africa launched the DIR-880L Wireless AC1900 Wi-Fi DualBand Gigabit Cloud Router, which offers wireless speeds of up to 1.9 Gbps1 for fast home and small-to-medium business networks according to the company.

With its smart bandwidth management, advanced beamforming technology and remote access and management features, the router provides the combination of convenience and fast Internet experience.

The router’s advanced AC SmartBeam technology provides an increase in wireless speed and coverage by tracking the devices and connecting them to the broadband Internet connection. Gigabit Ethernet ports provide high-speed wired connections for up to four PCs or other devices. The advanced Quality of Service (QoS) efficiently and automatically distributes the Internet traffic across both wireless bands to guarantee the best performance. And since the DIR-880L Gigabit Cloud Router is mydlink-enabled, the user can manage his network over the Internet, and share media files through the free mydlink SharePort app.

The DIR-880L is available in all leading retail stores across the UAE. The retail price is $245.00.

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Epson has expanded its ink tank system (ITS) range with two new printers that are its first A3 models. The L1300 is a four-colour A3 ITS printer, designed to deliver ultra-low-cost and hassle-free printing to offices with a high print volume. The L1800 also benefits from an ultra-low-cost, and photographers, advertising agencies and other small offices can take advantage of its six-colour printing.

Its high-capacity ink tanks enable users to keep their printing costs low, increase productivity and reduce downtime, said the company. Each printer’s purpose-built ink tank is fully integrated into the printer so users can enjoy reliable colour printing without the mess or hassle often associated with non-genuine refills and third-party ink tank systems.

Both printers come with a 12-month (or 30,000-page) warranty and service support and are ENERGY STAR-qualified. The L1300 has a page yield of up to 7,100 pages in black and 5,700 pages in colour, while the L1800 can print up to 1,500 colour photos without needing a refill.

WD presents Thunderbolt-powered portable dual-drive

WD has introduced My Passport Pro, the first portable, Thunderbolt-powered dual-drive solution, providing creative professionals and enthusiasts highperformance and capacity in a truly mobile solution. For Mac systems, My Passport Pro has user-selectable RAID functionality to deliver needed performance for the most demanding applications in the field, without the need for power adapters or extra cables.

It is available in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities.

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Directly powered via the integrated Thunderbolt cable, the performance of My Passport Pro clocks in at speeds up to 233 MB/s, providing super-fast transfer, edit and backup capabilities. Another key feature of the dual-drive My Passport Pro is its user-selectable RAID function, which lets users choose data striping (RAID 0) for high performance or mirroring (RAID 1) for data redundancy, depending on the user’s needs.

Superior to both FireWire 800 and USB 3.0, the integrated Thunderbolt technology of My Passport Pro makes video manipulation quick and easy—with the ability to copy a 22 GB high-definition video file in half the time typically required by a USB 3.0 drive working in RAID 0 format.

Consisting of two 2.5-inch hard drives housed in a sleek aluminum enclosure, My Passport Pro is thoroughly shock-tested for extra durability to perform reliably when working on the go.

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Linksys launches wireless range extenders SanDisk presents USB 3.0 flash drive SanDisk has introduced the Extreme PRO USB 3.0 flash drive, featuring professional-grade performance at up to 60 times faster than standard USB 2.0 drives, and is equipped with 128GB of storage.

“The SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.0 drive offers world-class performance for technology aficionados who demand high-speed, durability and peace of mind that their files will be safe,” said Philippe Willams, Director of Product Marketing, SanDisk. “We are excited to be expanding our USB 3.0 solutions, and this is another example of our efforts to enable consumers with fast access to content and data.”

The high-performance product takes advantage of the next-generation specification by providing write speeds up to 240MB/s and read speeds up to 260MB/s. These speeds allow users to transfer a full-length movie in seconds, or 1,000 hi-res photos in less than 35 seconds, making the drive ideal for carrying video and photo collections.

The Extreme PRO USB 3.0 flash drive offers a durable aluminum metal casing. Also included is the company’s SecureAccess software that provides 128-bit AES file encryption and password protection to secure private files while leaving the rest of the drive visible for sharing.

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Linksys has announced its new lineup of Wi-Fi Range Extenders.

The new Range Extenders help maximise wireless coverage and help eliminate ‘dead spots’ in the Wi-Fi coverage throughout the home.

Consumers can choose between three versions – Linksys AC1200 MAX Wi-Fi Range Extender (RE6500), Linksys N600 PRO Wi-Fi Range Extender (RE4000W) and the Linksys N300 Wi-Fi Range Extender (RE3000W).

The RE6500 and RE4000W are dual band range extenders featuring Cross-Band technology which helps provide a stronger and more consistent signal throughout the home. All three range extenders are compatible with any wireless router and are designed to extend b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi signals, whether supplied by a broadband provider or

purchased by the consumer.

“There are a lot of devices in the home that need a good reliable signal to perform,” said Amanulla Khan, Director Sales, Belkin.

“Consumers are depending on their Wi-Fi signal for their smart phones to avoid burning through valuable minutes on their data plan, or for streaming to TV or tablets in all areas of the home. A stable and strong Wi-Fi signal is critical for connecting the devices in your home today and the devices users are sure to bring into their home in the coming years, a good range extender can help future proof their home as those devices are added as well as provide a rich media experience.”

HTC showcases Dot View Case HTC has enhanced its popular Dot View case, through an update to the Dot View app, available now to download on Google Play store. First launched with the HTC One M8, offering the ability to check the time and weather or receive notifications of incoming texts, emails and calls, the Dot View update includes wallpaper customisation, flexible settings and other features that make it even easier to browse your notifications without first revealing the screen.

With 18 default themes and the option to select a photo

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from gallery or camera, users can create their own Dot View wallpaper to reflect mood, personality and style. The ‘redial’ function is now activated with an upwards swipe, allowing swift connection to the three most recent calls, and left/right swipes navigate smoothly through email, text, voicemail and call notifications.

Settings can also be tailored to individual preference, allowing users to decide whether to display the last three calls or opt to ‘skip security’ completely for quick access.

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Toshiba introduces the Satellite P50t Toshiba Gulf has launched the Satellite P50t, the company’s first laptop model that features an Ultra HD 4K display with a 3840x2160 resolution. Powered by the powerful Intel H Series processor, running on Windows 8.1 and equipped with 16GB of memory, the Satellite P50t is ideal for professional users who value style and precise performance for both work and play, said the company.

The 15.6-inch laptop features a touchscreen display for a smooth and convenient navigation experience. The edge-to-edge glass further provides seamlessness. The tile keys on its frameless, backlit keyboard are sufficiently spaced apart, increasing typing accuracy and comfort. The Satellite P50t has a complete metal body that gives it maximum durability. The brushed finish creates a clean and ultra-modern look.

The Satellite P50t is equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, four USB 3.0 ports, and a media

bridge card slot. An Ethernet port allows for cabled LAN connection, and a HDMI port makes it easy to connect the laptop to a projector or a large screen TV during business presentations.

With USB Sleep and Music, the Satellite P50t, even when turned off, allows users to plug in their mobile and MP3 devices and use the laptop’s premium Harman Kardon speakers. Through this feature, users get to take advantage of the high-quality speakers.

Through the USB Sleep and Charge function, users may charge their mobile devices on the Satellite P50t even when the laptop is turned off.

Having up to 1TB of storage and a built-in Blu-ray player, the Satellite P50t allows users to keep and enjoy a huge collection of movies, video clips, pictures and songs. Dedicated graphics of up to 2GB supports the Ultra HD 4K display and the processor in delivering vibrant visuals and ultra-fast performance.

NEC Display Solutions expands medical diagnostics display line

NEC Display Solutions Europe has announced the addition of a large 30-inch, 6 megapixel display with the latest technology features to its range of medical diagnostic displays. The NEC MD302C6 high-

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resolution display is specifically designed for trained physicians to view colour and greyscale digital images, for diagnostics image reporting in radiography, as well as CT, MRI and other medical imaging techniques.

The 6-megapixel MD302C6 display boasts anti-reflection (AR) coating. This, together with a built-in front sensor for brightness stabilisation, calibration and DICOM conformance tests, ensures reliable image quality and optimum viewing conditions.

The MD302C6 comes with a built-in power supply, removing the need for a

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bulky AC adapter that is often a requirement with medical displays. The NEC MD302C6 is a medical device Class I, following the requirements of the EU directive 93/42/EEC. For full reassurance of easy maintenance, GammaCompMD QA software comes included with the display to enable easy calibration, maintenance and quality assurance, allowing hospitals to ensure its long-term accurate performance.

Furthermore, in line with NEC’s Green Vision, the MD302C6 display reduces the energy consumption of medical centres through the eco-friendly LED backlight system. This improves sustainability as well as keeping total cost of ownership (TCO) low.

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Sony presents Xperia C3

AccessData launches ResolutionOne Platform ResolutionOne Platform from AccessData is a Continuous, Automated Incident Resolution (CAIR) platform, delivering the workflows and capabilities necessary to detect, analyse, and resolve any data event—from security breaches to e-discovery and other Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) issues. It is a combined platform and works seamlessly across business units. It integrates network, endpoint and malware analysis, end-to-end e-discovery and remediation technologies into a single, scalable solution. This makes it possible for all security, legal and compliance teams to do their jobs using one platform, automating tasks and collaborating in real time to address virtually any security incident or legal matter.

With a common platform and unified central database, the ResolutionOne Platform helps reduce the inherent barriers that separate the legal, security and internal investigation teams of today.

ResolutionOne allows global teams to perform their investigations using the same interface, while delivering the proper workflow and key capabilities each team requires. This helps organisations reduce overhead and more importantly decreases the time to make informed decisions.

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Sony Mobile has introduced its latest dualSIM smartphone Xperia C3, which is being positioned as a selfie camera. With a 5.5inch HD IPS display optimised with BRAVI technology and a 5 MP wide-angle front camera and a soft flash, users can take photos day or night by simply double tapping the back cover or using Smile Shutter, which can then be shared with friends in three clicks.

Thanks to the front camera’s Superior Auto mode, pictures are automatically adjusted for suitable lighting conditions and the auto scene recognition function, which works together with HDR and LED flash, makes sure users can capture the best selfies and selfie videos in any light, said the company.

The Xperia C3 comes loaded with selfie camera apps. AR effect incorporates themes that let users add graphics and animations the selfies and selfie videos. Portrait Retouch is another innovative app that allows users to have a real-time makeover of up to two people from a combination of choices from 10 different beauty styles, 10 DECO frame options and magic beam for 6 eye reflection pattern changes.

The phone’s 8MP main camera, featuring an Exmor RS for mobile image sensor, captures pictures even in challenging lighting conditions. With SteadyShot all of your videos will come out smooth and distortion-free.

Xperia C3 comes loaded with camera apps such as Superior Auto, Portrait retouch v.2, AR effect and Timeshift-burst.

Powered by an efficient Snapdragon Quad-core 1.2 Ghz processor and with 1GB RAM and 8GB Flash memory, Xperia C3 enables ultra-fast performance with breathtaking graphics.

Xperia C3 comes in black, white and mint colour.

Lenovo launches dualmode FLEX 2 laptop Lenovo has introduced two new additions to its Flex family of dual-mode laptops with the new FLEX 2 laptops available in 14 and 15.6-inch models. Not only do the laptops give users 300° flexibility with two modes, Laptop and Stand, they have an enhanced visual experience offering full HD screen.

The display is brighter with a full HD 1920X1080 widescreen display on select models. Users can choose NVIDIA GeForce graphics on models with up to 4th generation Intel Core i7 processors for a rich entertainment experience, making images in games and videos display quickly and smoothly. Or they can opt for models with dynamic AMD Radeon R5 M230 discrete graphics and AMD APU processors all the way up to AMD A8 models with on-chip Radeon graphics.

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Equipped with Dolby Advanced Audio v2 technology, the FLEX 2 laptops make sound from movies, games and music come across its stereo speakers louder with greater clarity and consistent tone and less distortion.

For fast and efficient operations, the FLEX 2 laptops offer choices of the latest Intel and AMD processors, come with a range of three storage options - up to 1 TB of HD or hybrid SSHD storage or up to 256 GB SSD storage and long battery life.

The FLEX 2 is now available at all major retailers in the Emirates starting at AED2699.

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Reseller Middle East’s assistant editor offers her thoughts on the Middle Eastern technology channel.

Channel surfing

Column

Taking charge In today’s channel environment, we see vendors and distributors leading the market discussion. Though that is the general practice, but considering that at the end of the day it’s the resellers who are engaging with the end-users, I believe they should have a bigger say.

Channel partners should be open and communicate to the vendor or distributor about what is working or not working out for them and why. And vendors and distributors should take their opinions seriously while going about a market strategy. Besides facing the customer, most channel partners come with many years of regional experience. Quite simply, experience talks. Today, if you go down to the computer street in Bur Dubai, you will find enough players who have been in the channel space for around two decades or more.

Personally, I find it interesting to hear their experiences and observe the evolution of the channel space through their perspective. Imagine the wealth of information a new vendor could gain simply by taking time out and sitting down with an old-time reseller. It is also equally important for the vendors and distributors to get to know their partners Janees Reghelini, Assistant Editor, Reseller ME

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beyond the business realm. I read the other day that the CEO and Founder of Dell, Michael Dell, sends Christmas cards to partners and regularly calls them to see how they are doing. The good old ‘personal touch’ could be the missing piece of the puzzle here.

Resellers should definitely play a more active role in business strategy discussions and put their foot down when required. And I don’t believe there is a vendor or distributor out there who will disagree. After all whatever enhances the business can only be a good thing.

At Reseller ME, we are focusing on having a more active reseller participation in the magazine and I want to take this space to invite distributors to write to us about their top five reseller partners. And we can look at understanding their business better and highlighting their problem areas.

In the August issue, we have spoken to Tarun Nandi from Blue Bell Computers, a reseller with a wide range of experience in the channel. And I believe the points he has highlighted – employee turnover and credit issue – are something all channel players should pay closer attention to.

On a closing note, hope you all had an excellent Eid and is now prepared to face the post-summer eventful months ahead.