Reseller Middle East

PUBLICATION LICENSED BY IMPZ

ISSUE 174 // JUNE 2011 // WWW.RESELLERME.COM

REBATES, PROMOTION

S

WHAT WORKS? Bernard Biolchini, Leveraging Fusion partner programme, VP Sales & GM, AMD Hesham Tantawi, Partnering with customers, VP Asbis

Vasant Menghani, High return for partners, CEO Touchmate Sachin Gehani, Rebates work well, Director, Accent Office Supplies

DCC 2011

PRP Suites

Retailers from the region voted their most favourite vendors and selected eleven winners. Turn to page 32 for more details.

Construction projects across the Gulf need a special breed of project management applications. Read about latest entrant on page 29.

PROFILE

I TQ A N P R E PA R I N G TO C R O SS B O R D E R S

REVIEW Packard Bell

APTEC DISTRIBUTION FZ LLC Call Aptec at Tel: (+9714) 3697111 Extn:154/155/356/493/496 Fax: (+9714) 369 7110 Visit : www.apteconline.com Email:dell-sales@aptecme.com

Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

CONTENTS

ISSUE 174 // JUNE 2011

IN FOCUS

COVER FEATURE

24

Rebates, promotions, loyalty, discounts What works?

Packard Bell The vendor is launching a new range of trendy laptops this summer to regain its market share

26

BenQ The vendor brought in legendary gamers to custom design its new portfolio of gaming monitors

29

Epin The region’s projects are attracting a new breed of project management suites

32

50

By any theory of channel marketing these are established instruments of “reward power”.

However with shorter life cycles and new devices being launched every week, both vendors and channel players require other measures to make “rewards” deliver their power.

REBATES, PROMOTION

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DCC 2011 “DCC is the ultimate networking event for senior executives from the retail channel” Interview with Farouk Hemraj, CEO of event organizer Distree

PROFILE

44

MICROSOFT

34

Connecting the consumer A channel is being created to enhance excitement across its retail and consumer product portfolio

LENOVO

37

High-end SME and retail, key areas

18

With growth and product movements in these segments, Lenovo has made them a priority for this year

ITQAN

TOSHIBA

38

Preparing its second wave

Enhanced VAR and retail programs

Growing competition and increasing regional demand for its services are making it bullish to cross over

With sluggish corporate sales the vendor is enhancing it VAR programme and regional super retail strategy

INTEGRAL MEMORY

41

Local base, regional focus Starting up a component testing and packing line and entering the Indian market are targets for its UAE operations

TWINMOS

42

Bullish on memory products Steady demand for memory related products has the company exporting most of its production into regional and far-away markets

REGULARS 04 06 10 16 21

Editorial Tie-ups Announcements Cloud

62

Products and technology Fujitsu´s S700, S900 thin client series

Movements

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EDITORIAL Publisher Dominic De Sousa COO Nadeem Hood

Avatars of 2011

Commercial Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9126 Sales Director Raz Islam raz@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9129 Editorial

The last quarter of 2011 is going to be fierce.

Arun Shankar Senior Editor arun@cpidubai.com

Dave Reeder dave@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9106

The retail community at Distree 2011 voted Microsoft as gaming vendor of the year, Kaspersky as software vendor and Apple as mobile and digital lifestyle vendor of the year.

Senior Editor Arun Shankar arun@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9142

With super retailers already seeing two smart phones in consumer hands the burning question is what “avatar”, will our familiar brands take up by year end.

Group Sales Manager Rajashree R Kumar raj@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9131

Advertising

Will their product and app launches in the remaining six months, reaching frenzy in the final quarter of the year be “cool” enough to get the third device into the consumer hands?

Advertising Executive Merle Carrasco merle@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9134

Corporate sales overall continue to be sluggish. The TCO approach is no longer a buzz word, it’s now lowest bid. Qatar is yet to release its master blueprint and big-ticket funds are not yet flowing into the multitude of players waiting on the sidelines.

Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9147

Bahrain is trying to get a semblance of order in place to bring back its financial backbone. And leading regional channel players already expect growth to be flat this year around, with the UAE base doing a shade better.

Can anyone blame the brands for trying an “avatar”?

The channel community has challenges on its hands. All reports indicate that SME’s are still buying and will continue to buy at brisk pace for rest of the year. All leading vendors now want their channel partners to move in and focus on this opportunity—-of course capture and expand are built into the final rewards.

But the SME story has never been about relationships and sops. It’s always been price point. So channel players have their work cut out.

On another note, walk into any construction control room and you will find project management charts gathering dust on the wall. “Done once, forgotten after” is the motto of the present breed of such apps. Now PRP, a new project management workflow suite, especially for Gulf projects is “in” to make the difference. Read on in the magazine.

On a final note, a new face at the helm of the magazine, a successful annual conference and glittering awards are a good way to kick off the last half of the year!

Circulation

Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 91112 Designer Analou Balbero analou@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9104 Digital www.rwme.net DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Jerus King Bation Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya Louie Alma online@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by

1013 Centre Road, New Castle County, Wilmington, Delaware, USA Head Office PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 4 440 9100 Fax: +971 4 447 2409

If you’d like to receive your own copy of RME every month, log on and request a subscription: www.resellerme.com

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Printed by Printwell Printing Press LLC © Copyright 2011 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.

IN THE BEGINNING Tie-ups

CommVault, NetApp enter OEM agreement To help customers improve the speed, efficiency, and simplicity of their backup and recovery operations, CommVault announced that it has entered into a global OEM agreement with NetApp under which NetApp will integrate elements of CommVault’s industry leading Simpana 9 software with NetApp SnapShot and replication technology, under the NetApp SnapProtect brand.

NetApp SnapProtect software, based on an OEM version of Simpana software and close integration with NetApp SnapVault and SnapMirror transforms how companies can efficiently protect, manage and access enterprise data across all tiers of storage.

Under this expanded relationship between NetApp and CommVault, NetApp will offer its NetApp SnapProtect branded software, a unique packaging of the Simpana snapshot copies, replication and tape management software, licensed on a per controller basis.

SnapProtect software is designed specifically for customers that want to combine efficient, high-speed NetApp Snapshot technology and replication with tape in a single backup solution that accelerates and simplifies data protection.

According to Lauren Whitehouse, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, “more than one-third (38%) of ESG research respondents identified improving the backup and recovery of virtual machines as a key area of focus. As more organisations deploy virtualisation in production environments and expand the reach of the technology, the inadequacies of non-optimised backup and recovery solutions will continue to be exposed.”

“As organisations move to cloud and virtualised environments, a level of complexity is introduced that is making it challenging for IT professionals to meet backup and recovery service levels. Enterprises need a backup strategy that enables them to reliably meet shorter backup windows and recovery point objectives,” Dave Russell, Research Vice President, Gartner.

With today’s OEM agreement, NetApp joins a growing list of top-tier storage vendors that have partnered with CommVault, including Dell, Hitachi Data Systems, Bull and Fujitsu.

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Scope to distribute SpliceCom´s products

Fadi AbuEkab, CEO, Scope ME Scope Middle East, a regional distributor and technology solutions provider, has been signed on by UK based IP communications vendor SpliceCom. Scope will be responsible for promoting and growing the regional market-share for SpliceCom's products which includes 'Pure IP' nextgeneration communication systems.

The regional business opportunity for both partners lies in medium and large companies phasing out their traditional PBX and PABX systems and moving towards unified communications and IP telephony technology.

Scope will distribute the full range of SpliceCom's products including Maximiser telephony platforms, Proactive Communication Station Business Phones, Vision Business Management Application Suite and Vision Call Center.

Maximiser, launched in 2003, is a business telephone system, designed and developed for companies requiring between four and 100,000 or more IP or analogue extensions. Vision Business Management Application Suite is a Web-based application that offers a 'business dashboard' for companies of all sizes, delivering real-time information and historical reports to those that need it, irrespective of where they might be.

Vision Call Center, delivers a seamless solution with SpliceCom's Maximiser unified communications platform and combines advanced call routing with reporting and management to optimise inbound call centre operation. SpliceCom's product line also includes PCS business telephones, one of the slimmest desktop IP phones and a keyless IP Phone.

“We are very pleased to have been signed on as distributors for SpliceCom. The company has a world-class portfolio of products and solutions, including the award winning Maximiser product that can scale up to hundreds of thousands IP or analogue extensions”, explains Fadi AbuEkab, Chief Executive Officer of SCOPE. SpliceCom is the only British company to design, develop and manufacture 'Pure IP' next-generation communication systems.

Scope ME has regional tie-ups with vendors like Blue Coat, Legrand, Kaspersky and and Adenin Technologies.

wi-tribe to provide cloud security for Symantec wi-tribe, a wireless broadband provider and part of the Qatar based Qtel Group, has signed an MoU with Symantec Corporation. The MoU will cover providing safety software for consumers and businesses. The agreement will initially focus on offering Symantec’s Norton Anti-Virus product to its user base in the

Philippines, Pakistan and Jordan, and will soon be extended to include products such as cloud backup and parental control throughout the group.

Under the terms of the agreement, wi-tribe will partner with Symantec to offer products that help secure and reduce the risk of information loss for consumers and

HP signs MoU with Jordan’s Ministry of ICT

The signing of MoU between the Jordanian Ministry of ICT and HP Jordan The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology has signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with HP Jordan. The MoU involves developing common programmes and sharing of expertise and practices around integrated technologies for the government organisations, supporting professional IT education and assisting in fostering innovation.

The MoU was signed by Eng. Atef Al Tal, Minister of Information and Communications Technology and Eyad Shihabi, Managing Director and Enterprise Business Lead, HP Middle East.

As part of the MoU, HP will share its expertise with the Ministry as it relates to becoming an Instant-On Enterprise, an organisation that embeds technology into everything it does in order to better address the growing needs of organisations and citizens.

businesses. wi-tribe users will be able to download software direct from the witribe site that will enable them to protect precious data such as photos, music and important documents stored on their hard disk.

Commenting on the deal Sohail Qadri, CEO of wi-tribe, said: “In an age where cybercrime is rife and fear of data loss is on the increase, the inclusion of tools like

“We are glad to deepen the relationship with HP further on the heels of the remarkable success of their operations in Jordan,” said Eng. Atef Al Tal, Minister of ICT.” “We are honoured to have been chosen

by Jordan’s Ministry of ICT as a strategic partner for technology innovations,” said Eyad Shihabi, Managing Director and Enterprise Business Lead, HP Middle East.

“This is the second MoU we have signed with the government since opening our fully owned subsidiary here last year after the successful implementation of the first agreement.”

HP launched its fully-owned subsidiary in Jordan in January 2010. As part of an agreement signed with the Government of Jordan, HP has created a regional Competency Centre that has hired university graduates over a period of one year.

anti-virus and cloud backup are becoming necessities rather than luxuries. This deal enables wi-tribe to protect our customers and offer them peace of mind when using the Web for surfing or communication.”

Wi-tribe is a focused consumer broadband company, owned by the Qtel Group. Headquartered in Qatar, Witribe operates WiMAX networks in the Philippines, Jordan and Pakistan.

Polycom, HP alliance around unified communication HP and Polycom, a global leader in unified communications, announced they have entered into an agreement under which Polycom will acquire the assets of HP’s visual collaboration business, including the Halo products and managed services business.

In conjunction with this acquisition, HP and Polycom have agreed to establish a strategic relationship in which Polycom will serve as an exclusive partner to HP for telepresence and certain video UC solutions, including both resale and internal HP deployments. The two companies have also agreed to make available Polycom’s video applications for HP’s WebOS platform.

The alliance extends Polycom’s leadership in the unified communications and collaboration market with HP’s installed base of visual collaboration products and technology.

Azeti, Emitac tie-up, opens office in Dubai Azeti Networks, a manufacturer of highperformance monitoring solutions for IT infrastructures and operational technologies, has strengthened its presence in the Middle East with the recent opening of a new office in Dubai.

Having only just recently signed a partnership agreement with leading distributor Emitac, the Dubai office is a further step towards building Azeti’s presence in the Middle East region. Target market segments include hospitality, telecom, retail, healthcare and banking sectors.

Produced in Germany, Azeti’s solutions supports a wide range of IT monitoring with operational technology and environmental monitoring that help businesses protect critical technical infrastructures.

"The new branch office underlines the importance of the vibrant Middle East region to Azeti and our commitment to serving this fast growing market as well as supporting our partners", said José Bustamante, Vice President MEA at Azeti.

“We have seen significant interest in the Middle East for enterprise monitoring solutions. Unlike traditional network monitoring systems that mainly focus on IP-based processes, our range of products provides all-round monitoring service”.

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IN THE BEGINNING Tie-ups

Infor appoints MIC for enterprise solution roll outs Infor, a provider of business application software has appointed MIC (Middle East Investment Company) as a new channel partner for the region. The reseller agreement with MIC covers a number of Infor solutions including Infor ERP LN and Infor Enterprise Asset Management. Infor now uses twenty sales and implementation partners for its Middle East operations.

“Our channel strategy is not about the quantity of partners. Instead we want to work with a smaller number of quality, growthoriented partners who understand the value Infor solutions can bring to their client base”, says Paul Hammond, regional vice president and general manager, Middle East, Infor.

Infor ERP LN has over 30 modules and is meant for complex manufacturing, distribution and service industries. This includes engineering-based industries, such as automotive, industrial equipment and machinery, electronics, aerospace and defence. The solution was recently deployed at Metito Overseas in the UAE, which provides water, wastewater treatment and desalination systems.

MIC, a privately held boutique investment company, operates across 13 countries and has recently acquired eight regional technology vendors in the last 18 months. One of MIC’s key channel partners is its subsidiary United Computer Company, Saudi Arabia whose customer relationships extend across manufacturing, retail, education, financial services, energy, oil and gas.

“There is a significant opportunity to leverage upon the existing Baan customer base particularly in KSA which has been established over many years. We also believe mid-size and large manufacturing communities are becoming more aware of the benefits of acquiring and integrating Infor solutions”, said Abdulaziz Sheikh, CEO UCC Saudi Arabia.

MIC will work with other established Infor channel partners in the Middle East to co-operate in the sale of Infor’s supply chain management solutions. Another reason for signing up with MIC is its long standing expertise in Baan ERP across the region.

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ComGuard launches ethical hacker training in Saudi

Hesham Abdel Mohsen, Regional Marketing Manager, Global Knowledge ComGuard, an IT security distributor and sole distributor of EC Council in the Middle East and North Africa region recently delivered the first EC Council’s, Ethical Hacker training in Saudi Arabia. This was in association with Global Knowledge, KSA, which was also part of the global launch.

Global Knowledge-KSA is one of the 35 EC-Council training partners in the world and the sole authorised training centre for EC-

Council in Saudi Arabia to participate in the global launch of Ethical Hacker.

“We are delighted to be chosen and recognised by EC-Council for our role in helping them to deliver certified Ethical Hacking v7 training into the technology marketplace”, said Hesham Abdel Mohsen, Regional Marketing Manager, MEA and Emerging Market, Global Knowledge.

ComGuard provided all the necessary support and kits for the successful delivery of the first EC Council certified Ethical Hacker training programme in Saudi Arabia. It also enabled Global Knowledge-KSA to launch in Saudi Arabia simultaneously with the global launch CEH v7 by EC-Council.

The certified Ethical Hacker programme certifies individuals in the specific network security discipline of Ethical Hacking from a vendor-neutral perspective. The certified Ethical Hacker certification will improve the application knowledge of security officers, auditors, security professionals, site administrators, and others concerned about the integrity of the network infrastructure.

Redington to support Fujitsu´s storage and servers Fujitsu Technology Solutions, a global IT infrastructure provider, and Redington Value, the value added distribution division of Redington Gulf, have signed a partnership agreement for the distribution of Fujitsu´s Primergy servers and Eternus storage solutions in the Middle East.

“This agreement is just another step to fuel our consistent growth throughout the Middle East, with products such as our PRIMERGY line of x86 servers, where we have witnessed growth above average rates”, says Farid Al-Sabbagh, Managing Director, Middle East, Fujitsu Technology Solutions. Fujitsu, offers a complete

portfolio of IT products, solutions and services. The ETERNUS storage systems provide business-critical online storage for enterprises of all sizes.

Redington Gulf’s value division was set up to support the company’s horizontal expansion with focus on networking products and solutions. Within 4 years the business now includes networking, software, security, infrastructure, server and storage products and solutions. It offers products and services from 14 vendor including Avaya, Cisco, Checkpoint, Juniper, Molex, Nortel, RedHat, SonicWall and Trend Micro.

TM

Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai, UAE ● Tel: (+971) 4 8863300 ● Fax: (+971) 4 8863311 ● UAE Sales Center: (+971) 4 3555520 ● P.O. Box: 262221 ● Email: info@gse.ae ● Website: www.gse.ae

IN THE BEGINNING Announcements

SoftAtHome opens office in Dubai to support regional carriers SoftAtHome, a software provider of home operating platforms that help carrier service providers deliver convergent applications has announced it is opening a new office in Dubai.

The office will support current deployment of its technology with Etisalat and address the needs of other operators in the region.

SoftAtHome provides a software platform that enables operators and third party developers create convergent applications for the digital home. It combines services such as voice, video, content sharing, security, broadband access, connectivity and deploys them across different devices in the home. This includes TV set top boxes, home gateways and connected TVs. SoftAtHome is a software company backed

by Orange, Etisalat and Sagemcom to deliver convergence through an operating platform for the digital home environment. It fosters a new ecosystem made up of service providers, third party application developers, integrators and hardware vendors to accelerate the advent of the digital home. The company is headquartered in France with development and sales teams in France and Belgium.

In 2010, Etisalat has selected SoftAtHome to deploy their multiplay offering across the UAE, including IPTV, video on demand, personal video fecording, internet TV, OTT services, digital content sharing, application store and broadband access. The solution will be deployed across the UAE first, followed by other countries in the Middle East and where Etisalat as a presence.

In order to consolidate its strategic choice, Etisalat has also taken a stake in SoftAtHome to become shareholder of the company.

SoftAtHome selected Dubai as a strategic place to address the needs of other operators in the region as Dubai provides a complete infrastructure and easy access to countries in the Middle East.

Michel Degland, CEO of SoftAtHome said, “We are very pleased to open our subsidiary in Dubai and to deploy our solutions across the UAE. It represents a key milestone in the development of our company and in our commitment to be successful in the Gulf region”.

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Sharp to expand office automation solutions

Sharp’s business solution, General Manager, Tomoo Shimizu Sharp Middle East has announced expansion of its business solutions division (BSD). It is expanding its key focus markets around the region for its BSD solutions, with a greater breadth of coverage in the Middle East and Africa.

Sharp Middle East’s BSD General Manager, Tomoo Shimizu, said, “The

division is at the core of Sharp Middle East’s operations. By growing our BSD team and increasing the number of key markets it operates in, we will work towards reaching our targets outlined for this year, especially in multi function printers and professional displays”.

The core areas for the BSD in 2011 include professional displays, managed print services and document management. The focus is also on getting customers in the region to make the switch from black and white to colour machines. The BSD team has expanded from six to 19 people, with a further six to be recruited.

Sharp Middle East serves more than 60 countries. These key markets include the GCC, countries in North Africa such as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and the large African markets of South Africa and Kenya.

Sharp’s primary business activities include audio-visual and communication equipment, health and environment equipment, information equipment, and crystalline and thin-film solar cells.

Melody Group to operate from Fujairah’s Creative City Fujairah Media Group, a Fujairah-based broadcasting organisation founded as a joint venture between the Fujairah Cultural Authority and Arab International Media Services, has announced that it has granted the license to Melody Group facilitating the latter to commence operations in its Creative City media free zone.

Across 2010-2011, Creative City has issued around 1,400 permits varying from media and consultancy to informatics and technology.

Following the granting of license, the regionally and internationally celebrated

Melody Group’s “Melody Arabia”, “Melody Movies”, “Melody Drama” and “Melody Hits” TV channels can utilise the administrative services and other facilities of Creative City.

Creative City is especially designed to accommodate all media-related needs within a comprehensive environment encompassing all kinds of media, related technologies and training organisations, as well as support from freelance journalists.

In one year (2010-2011) Creative City has so far issued around 1,400 permits varying from media and consultancy to informatics and technology.

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IN THE BEGINNING Announcements

Canon showcases new scanner, printer at Fes meet

Canon Middle East gathered key corporate customers in Fes, Morocco to launch its Runner Advance C2020 office printer and Formula P150, a portable scanner. Attendees were introduced to Canon’s latest solutions aimed at helping offices achieve tangible cost savings and productivity.

“The launch of this range underlines our commitment to Morocco’s office and SME market, whilst providing our customers with flexible colour and colour capable solutions.

With Moroccan businesses now making a strong transition to colour solutions, we have a product to match specific business need,” said Somesh Adukia, Sales Manager, Canon Middle East.

The Runner Advance C2020 is equipped with solutions to suit small and medium-sized workgroups in office environments. Running at 20 pages per minute, it provides a range of options and functionality for networked security, worker productivity, cost efficiency and environmental benefits.

Attendees of the event were also shown Canon’s ultra portable document scanner.

“As one of the smallest duplex A4 scanners available, it is suitable for executives who are on the road between client sites, such as architects, marketing professionals or designers, so they can transfer documents back to the office,” commented Adukia.

UK based certification company sets up in Bahrain QMF Global Consultants WLL, an independent certification and consultancy body has successfully acquired a commercial registration to deliver its services to businesses in Bahrain as well as neighbouring GCC countries.

Following this, QMF has set up an office in Bahrain to provide services to organisations across the region. QMF’s primary products are certification, auditing, consultancy and development services, in the field of international quality standards. Its customer target base is SME and NGOs. The department for UK Trade and

Investment, welcomed the services provided

by QMF Global Consultants WLL. UK’s ambassador to Bahrain Jamie Bowden said: “UK products and services are well known for their quality and consultancy services of companies like QMF have supported many UK companies to achieve that high quality.”

Vivian Jamal, Director of Business Development at the Bahrain Economic Development Board, stated: “Within the Gulf Co-operation Council, Bahrain is becoming established as a service centre for the region and we are pleased that QMF have chosen to set up in Bahrain.”

BenQ hosts annual partner meet in Thailand

BenQ, a digital lifestyle provider, recently held its annual projector regional distributors meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, where it shared its vision to become number one projector brand in the world.

Key channel partners from the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions participated in the three-day event which provided an opportunity for BenQ’s senior management to share insights into the trends and strategies that are shaping its businesses as well as showcase new product offerings.

In the Middle East, for the first quarter of 2011 BenQ projectors sales increased by 60%, in terms of both revenue generated and units sold, in comparison to the same period in 2010. According to the latest research report released by Futuresource Consulting, at the end of the first quarter of 2011, BenQ is the number one projector brand in Saudi Arabia with a 21% market share. In the UAE, BenQ’s market share is over 16%, and it is the number three brand in the market. With about 15% total market share, BenQ is also the number two projector brand in the Middle East and Africa region.

Adrian Chang, President of BenQ Asia Pacific said, “We are currently the number two projector brand in the world and aim to take the top spot in the near future with our enhanced line-up of projectors.”

In the second half of 2011 BenQ will be offering a range of new models catering to every audio visual segment.

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IN THE BEGINNING Announcements

Nvidia to acquire baseband vendor Icera Nvidia has agreed to acquire Icera, a leading producer of baseband processors for 3G and 4G cellular phones and tablets.

Icera has more than 550 patents granted or pending worldwide, and its high speed wireless-modem products have been approved by more than 50 carriers across the globe.

The acquisition, for $367 million in cash, has been approved by both companies´ boards of directors and is expected to be completed, subject to customary closing conditions, in approximately 30 days.

By offering the two main processors used in smartphones--the application processor and baseband processor, the combined company will help OEM customers improve their time to market and deliver requirements of next-generation mobile computing. Nvidia will also have approximately doubled its revenue opportunity within each product segment.

The market for baseband processors is one of the fastest growing segments of the technology industry, worth an estimated $15billion a year. Icera will be able to leverage Nvidia´s momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets to capitalise on this growth.

Icera is a pioneer in next-generation, multi-protocol wireless baseband processors with RF components. Its technology scales from 2G to 4G networks, using a custom-built, ultra-low-power processor. The company´s third-generation Livanto line of chipsets delivers the industry´s fastest data rates, has short user wait times, reduces battery drain and supports multiple standards on the same hardware. Its forthcoming Espresso450 and Espresso500 line of platforms is meant for 2G, 3G and 4G networks, low-power optimisation for voice and high-speed data, and industry´s smallest form factor.

NVIDIA awakened the world to the power of computer graphics when it invented the GPU in 1999. Its expertise in programmable GPUs has led to breakthroughs in parallel processing which make supercomputing inexpensive and widely accessible.

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Jumbo´s service centre completes one year

Jumbo operates the largest consumer service centre in the region. Can it replicate its retail success in the IT Enterprise market space?

The Jumbo service centre, the largest of its type in the region covering 70,000 sq feet, completed one year of its operation in the month of April 2011. The service centre based in Jebel Ali, Dubai services 19 global brands and has more than doubled the volume of services and repairs for consumer and professional electronics products.

“For over 30 years now, the most important goal for us has been to build a relationship with our customers both before and after a sale,” says Deepak Khetrapal, CEO, Jumbo Electronics.

Supporting the service centre is its hotline 800 JUMBO, which receives over 10,000 phone calls a month. The 800 JUMBO call-centre is located inside the Jebel Ali service centre and calls from the hotline are handled by trained Arabic and English language speaking experts.

Of the 19 brands serviced at the centre, Jumbo is the exclusive service provider for Sony consumer electronics in the UAE. Other features of the centre include a dedicated service section for Sony broadcast equipment

and a Sony dark room for DSL camera repairs, the only one of its kind in the Middle East region.

In the retail area, other than Sony, Jumbo also manages other brands including Apple, HP, Blackberry, Acer, Nokia, Casio, Dyson, Gorenje, Brother, Compaq, Dell, Ricoh, Epson, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, Nokia, PackardBell, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, Toshiba, and VAIO amongst others. Jumbo is also the parent company of affordable electronics major Supra.

Jumbo currently has over 35 stores across UAE and Oman and is now focused on expanding its retail presence in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Along with its regional expansion plans, Jumbo also plans to continue growing business in non retails areas such as IT solutions. The Jumbo Enterprise Solutions division caters to various market verticals including hospitality, retail, education, healthcare and finance sectors. The services offered by Enterprise Service Division include design, building, network consulting and innovative IT hardware and software solutions.

IN THE BEGINNING Cloud

Cloud security suite from McAfee McAfee announced its Cloud Security Platform, to help organisations safely take advantage of cloud computing. The new platform achieves this by securing all content and data traffic--including e-mail, Web and identity traffic between an organisation and the cloud.

“Once you move data or applications to the cloud, you essentially lose most, if not all of your security visibility, which most organisations find unacceptable,” said Marc Olesen, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Content and Cloud Security at McAfee.

The McAfee Cloud Security Platform offers the following modules: - Web Security provides bi-directional protection for both incoming and outgoing Web traffic through proactive reputation- and intent-based protection.

- Web traffic generated by smart phones and tablets can be directed through the McAfee Web Gateway using standard device management.

- The Intel Expressway Cloud Access 360, helps enable an enterprise or cloud provider to provide access control for cloud applications using enterprise identities.

- McAfee E-mail Security delivers e-mail protection, integrating comprehensive inbound threat protection with outbound data loss prevention.

- The Intel Expressway Service Gateway off loads application level API security, data transformation, REST to SOAP mediation, and identity token exchange, to a high speed gateway at the network edge or in the cloud.

Another key aspect of ensuring Cloud security is making sure organisations identify data that should or should not be moved to the Cloud.

With McAfee´s Data Loss Prevention solution, organisations can understand where its data resides, classify that data in terms of importance or sensitivity, build policies to protect that data, and then enforce those policies while data travels within or outside the organisation to the Cloud.

Centralised management and reporting is also provided through integration with the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator platform. The security modules can be deployed as an on-premises appliance, software-as-a-service solution or a hybrid combination of both. Regardless of the deployment form factor, the solutions can be centrally managed through the ePolicy Orchestrator platform or the McAfee SaaS Control Console.

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Cyquent launches cloud based retail solution Cyquent Technology Consultants have launched their cloud based retail application called BIRetail. The product which is also a business intelligence tool covers retail functions including sales, inventory, suppliers and customers as well as reportingÇ analysisÇ dashboards, alerting and monitoring. It is an easy-touse intuitive solution designed from the “ground up” for retailers. It is a complete “BI in a box” solution and delivers all components that make up a BI solution including data warehouse, ETL, OLAP, reports, dashboards, KPIs and others.

“It´s retail ready and it´s easy to start since it is available on the cloud”, says

Intelligent features • Operational intelligence: automated data collection and translation, resource planning, supplier analysis, inventory optimisation • Customer intelligence: marketing automation, marketing optimisation, market basket analysis • Inventory intelligence: inventory planning, assortment, size, space, price, promotion, markdown optimisation

Praveen Thawani, Director, Cyquent Technology Consultants.

Juniper announces cloud based education platform Juniper Networks announced Junosphere Classroom, a new cloudbased service designed to enable educational institutions, partners and customers to cost-effectively educate students and professionals on networking fundamentals. Junosphere Classroom is based on Junosphere, a new cloud environment that enables the creation and modeling of virtual networks and elements running the industry-leading Junos operating system.

Providing the practical application and hands-on experience required to effectively learn networking requires a physical lab and a significant amount of equipment, which is costly in terms of initial capital expense and ongoing operational expenses.

Junosphere Classroom overcomes drawbacks of traditional approaches by allowing customers to create and operate virtual Junos-based networks, decoupling the educational process

from the requirement for physical hardware and infrastructure.

“Junosphere Classroom brings the power of Junos to the cloud, enabling our customers to learn and experiment in ways never before possible”, said Manoj Leelanivas, executive vice president, Junos Application Software Group, Juniper Networks.

Juniper Networks hosts Junosphere Classroom resources in data centres, designed using Juniper´s networking and security technologies, which are accessible to students via a secure Internet connection. This “any-time, any-where” access to the Junosphere environment can extend individual study time, and is also ideal for providing remote learning and home-based education.

The three universities currently using Junosphere Classroom training applications include Georgia Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Queen Mary, University of London.

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IN THE BEGINNING Cloud

EMC announces Cloud-tiering storage solution

VMware releases Cloud application interface

EMC introduced the EMC Cloud Tiering Appliance, enabling storage administrators to effectively manage their file-based unstructured data. The Cloud Tiering Appliance delivers a cost-effective solution for implementing a tiered storage strategy that aligns the value of an enterprise´s information with the most appropriate tier.

Additionally, Cloud Tiering Appliance integration with EMC VNX unified storage extends the simplicity, efficiency and power of VNX storage to clouds. The Cloud Tiering Appliance enables EMC VNX to automatically tier data to the cloud based on IT established policies while providing automated tiering within a storage system.

The tiering strategy allows data to be tiered directly to public, private, or hybrid clouds; within a VNX unified storage system with EMC´s Automated Storage Tiering Suite; and between storage systems.

“IT managers are still exploring how to exploit the various cost and efficiency benefits of the cloud. The potential beauty of the cloud in its purest sense is its flexible, cost-efficient and on-demand nature,” said Mark Peters, Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group.

The solution enables customers to reduce capital expenses by lowering cost of ownership through automatic movement of inactive data to lower cost tiers of storage or the cloud. It also provides transparency to the storage administrator and end users with automated, administrator-defined policies that run on a defined schedule. It improves performance by allowing organisations to shorten backup windows. It does this through complementing an organisation´s backup strategy, removing inactive files from backup process and freeing up space on primary storage used better to optimise primary storage performance.

VMware announced its user-centric management service for accessing cloud applications called VMware Horizon App Manager. The interface represents the first component of the company´s “Project Horizon” vision first previewed at VMworld 2010. Future releases of VMware Horizon will broker user access to a variety of application types, virtual Windows desktops and data resources, while delivering security and control required by businesses.

“The mobile and cloud era dictates anywhere, any device access to applications within and outside the firewall, and introduces fundamental new challenges to the traditional enterprise security and management model,” said Brian Byun, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Applications, VMware.

More than ever, enterprises are dealing with two fundamental client computing pain points ñ providing secure access to an increasingly mobile workforce; and managing the burgeoning diversity of data, applications and devices needed to run their business.

These challenges result from the transformative nature of cloud computing and the post-PC era.

At its core, VMware Horizon App Manager includes an identity as a service hub that securely extends a user´s existing identity in

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systems such as Microsoft Active Directory or other directory options, into third-party public cloud applications like Box.net, BroadVision, Google, Salesforce.com, WebEx, Workday and others. This dramatically simplifies the management of multiple access credentials, a necessity brought about by the growing number of cloud applications now found in a typical enterprise.

The benefits include easy, single sign-on access to their cloud applications through a “storefront like” application portal; control entitlement and access to cloud applications through a centralised application catalog; and extension of existing on-premise identity infrastructure.

The growing VMware End-User Computing portfolio seeks to free end users and IT organisations from more than two decades of complex, device-centric computing and deliver a more user-centric, consumer cloud experience for the enterprise. This approach to personal computing enables organisations to leverage public cloud resources while extending existing security models and providing access to applications and data from any device, where and when a user needs it. Current pricing in the US and Asia pacific region is $30.00 per user/per year.

Blue Coat makes cloud accessible to WAN Web security and WAN solutions vendor, Blue Coat Systems released its CloudCaching Engine for its MACH5 WAN Optimisation appliances and Virtual Appliances. The CloudCaching Engine, which uses an asymmetric acceleration technology, now allows traditional WAN optimisation solutions to access the public cloud. In a public cloud SaaS environment, the infrastructure is not owned or managed by the customer, so it is not possible to co-locate a WAN optimisation solution in such an environment. Blue Coat solves this problem by using its CloudCaching Engine to extend WAN optimisation for acceleration of cloud-based applications, including those using video, Web-based interfaces and IPv6 content.

“Already a majority of companies (52.3%) use SaaS, and the average number of such applications per company is climbing sharply, from fewer than two last year to more than five this year,” said John Burke, principal research analyst, Nemertes Research.

The Engine enables businesses to more readily adopt cloud infrastructure to achieve operational savings.

The CloudCaching Engine leverages new developments from Blue Coat´s pioneering content caching specifically designed to accelerate and optimise new Web applications, large video files and dynamic Web 2.0 content.

As an example of accelerated transactions that take place, the

Blue Coat ProxySG 9000 MACH5 series appliance

CloudCaching Engine helps deliver an average of 40x acceleration for Microsoft SharePoint BPOS, without requiring appliances or virtual appliances on Microsoft cloud infrastructure. For cloud delivered video applications, Blue Coat can deliver an increase in over 500x bandwidth capacity for on demand video, without dedicated devices on cloud provider´s infrastructure.

With the ability to cache native on-demand Adobe Flash video using the RTMP protocol, users can get a high quality video experience without consuming WAN or Internet gateway bandwidth beyond that required to serve the first viewer. The Flash caching capability was developed in collaboration with Adobe.

Blue Coat WAN optimisation solutions can also locally cache on-demand Webdelivered HTML5 and Microsoft Silverlight video content and perform stream-splitting on live video. This allows a single stream of video to serve hundreds of viewers in a single location.

“WAN optimisation is an important and proven technology for data centre consolidation, but companies need a new generation of WAN optimisation to address the proliferation of video, Web content and cloud-based services that are fundamentally changing how businesses use and access applications,” said Nigel Hawthorn, VP EMEA Marketing at Blue Coat.

Pricing for Blue Coat MACH5 appliances for WAN optimisation start at US$ 2,995.

IBM´s global CIO study confirms Cloud take-off A new IBM study of more than 3,000 global CIOs shows that 60% of organisations are ready to embrace cloud computing over the next five years as a means of growing their businesses and achieving competitive advantage. The figure nearly doubles the number of CIOs who said they would utilise cloud in IBM’s 2009 CIO study.

As demand for ever-growing amounts of information continues to increase, companies are seeking simple and direct access to data and applications that cloud computing delivers in a cost-efficient, always-available manner. The use of cloud, which began in supporting deployments mainly inside companies, has now also grown common between organisations and their partners and customers.

In IBM’s 2009 CIO study, only a third of CIOs said they planned to pursue cloud to gain a competitive advantage. This year´s study shows a dramatic increase in the focus on cloud, particularly in media and entertainment, which rose to 73%, automotive (70%) and telecommunications (69%).

From a country standpoint, seven out of ten CIOs in the US, Japan and South Korea, and 68% in China, now identify cloud as a top priority. This is dramatically up from 2009, when CIO interest in cloud hovered at about a third in each of these countries.

The study also found that more than four out of five CIOs (83%) see business intelligence and analytics as top priorities for their businesses as they seek ways to act upon the growing amounts of data that are now at their disposal.

CIOs are also increasingly turning their attention to mobile computing to keep pace with the fast-changing marketplace.

As the proliferation of mobile devices with enhanced functionality and mobile applications continues to grow, mobile computing and mobility solutions are now seen by nearly three-quarters of CIOs as a game-changer for their business--up from 68% in 2009.

JUNE 2011

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IN THE BEGINNING Movements

Corporate appointments Samer Sayed has been appointed as Iomega´s B2B Regional Sales Manager, Middle East and Africa. Samer Sayed brings more than 15 years' experience to Iomega, most recently at EMC where he was the Regional Business Development Manager.

Prior to joining EMC, he worked at Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Toshiba Gulf FZE and at PSG division, Hewlett-Packard.

Brian Gammage has joined VMware in a global role as chief market technologist, based out of UK. He joins VMware from Gartner, where he was a research fellow and regarded as an influential global analyst in the desktop virtualisation market.

Overall he has more than 25 years IT sector experience, having also worked at HP, Olivetti Systems and Acorn Computers.

James Caffrey has joined Xerox Emirates as its Chief Financial Officer, reporting to the General Manager.

James is an Irish national with a Bachelors Degree in Economics and Politics as well as a Masters Degree in Economic Science from the University College in Dublin. Prior to joining Xerox Emirates, James worked for Glencore International AG as well as Ernest and Young.

At Ernest and Young, James was appointed to the delivery team on the Xerox internal

audit account where he served as manager for two years. James has worked extensively throughout the Middle East and Africa.

Christopher Saul has joined HewlettPackard Personal Systems Group Middle East as Business Development Manager for Client Virtualisation. He will work with tier – one partners such as Microsoft, Citrix and VMware to provide thin client, VDI and server based computing solutions. Christopher brings with him over 12 years of experience in promoting, architecting and selling thin client, server based computing and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solutions, Christopher joins HP from Sun Microsystems-Oracle.

Ron Miiller, formerly vice president of sales for the Americas and an 11-year CommVault veteran, has been promoted to the newly created role of senior vice president of worldwide sales. In this role, Miiller will ensure that the global sales organisation leverages best practices andestablishes greater consistency in sales and go-tomarket processes across CommVault´s US, EMEA, APJ and China operations, as well as its OEM sales organisation.

David West has been promoted to senior vice president of marketing and business development and will continue to drive worldwide marketing, business development and strategic alliances. He will focus on consistency of messaging

across the global marketing organisations and management of outside resources.

Peter Kobs, who recently joined CommVault from McAfee, has been promoted to vice president of sales for the Americas. Formerly CommVault´s area vice president for the US Central region, Kobs will step into the lead Americas sales role.

Alistair Clark joins CommVault in the newly created role of vice president, worldwide sales operations. He will be responsible for initiatives to streamline and increase the effectiveness of CommVault´s sales force processes.

Clinton O´Leary has joined Citrix Systems MEA as Senior Partner Account Manager.

O´Leary joins Citrix from Intralinks to focus on the company´s reseller relationship and channel enablement. In his previous roles O´Leary has worked in the Middle East with Microsoft and Emirates Computers and in South Africa with Dell and Dimension Data.

Christine Carey has joined Citrix Systems MEA as Enterprise Sales Manager, UAE Private Sector. Carey leaves her role as regional manager for Middle East at Wyse Technology with more than 20 years in IT sales. Carey has a track record of channel and sales development.

JUNE 2011

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in focus Packard Bell

Laptops with a style The vendor is launching a new range of trendy laptops this summer to regain its market share

Aggressive retail thrust in second half 2011, Packard Bell´s GM, Shashank Sharma

Packard Bell, owned by the Acer group, announced its range of EasyNote laptops with a strong emotional sales appeal in mid May. Using eco-friendly earthy colours and touch materials, the appeal of the products is described as “stylish and trendy” and is expected to do well across the affluent GCC consumer segment. The product range is segmented into entry level, mainstream and high end.

The common factor across all the models is the focus on social media, entertainment,

video chat, picture albums, data storage and backup and other related accessories and applications.

“The new Packard Bell range is a “100% consumer brand”, comments Shashank Sharma, Country Manager, Packard Bell Middle East. The product range including netbooks, desktops and stand alone monitors is expected to be available across retail outlets by July 2011. The brand has been selling across GCC since 2009 and was previously distributed by Redington, which also distributes the Acer product range. However the new Packard Bell range will be exclusively marketed and distributed in UAE to the retail segment by FDC International.

Parallel to the development of the new range of products, the feeling within Packard Bell was to have an exclusive distributor to focus on the retail segment.

With the volume market share falling from 4% in 2009 to the current level of 1% this has become more urgent. The aim is to bring this back to 4% using FDC as the distributor and the new “emotive” appeal of the products.

“If you are not managing your inventory very well in the retail channel, some of the things you work out on the desk don´t work out in the field”, explains Sharma.

He intends to support FDC full time to get

“The new Packard Bell range is a 100% consumer brand”

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the volume sales to their previous levels.

However as a group, “we continue to have excellent relationship with Redington”, he asserts.

Sharma´s list of marketing support activities for FDC include print flyers in leading newspapers; working with super retailers to include the Packard Bell brand in their own communications; availability of promoters and point of sale materials at super retail outlets. These marketing support activities were not available last year. The other side of activities include “collect, repair, return”, maintenance support through a toll free number during the first year of the warranty and option of additional two-year warranty.

FDC will be responsible for direct import of the products into their warehouse and outward movement to the super retail outlets. FDC also supplies Acer to the retail segment but Packard Bell and Acer products will be managed by two separate FDC teams. Other than Acer, FDC also supplies high visibility and fast moving brands Lenovo, Kaspersky, Sony, Western Digital and Seagate amongst others, to the retail segment. “We are very powerful in the super retail segment because we have a lot of products that we sell there”, comments Alan Pourmirza, Infrastructure Manager, FDC. From distributor point of view, which needs to equitably manage all its retail facing brands, “selling IT products is like selling ice”, an analogy referring to the extremely short-term pull of today´s consumer focused IT products. With continuous onslaught of new products almost every month, “time is also the biggest enemy”. Both inventory at the warehouse and inventory on the retail shelves have to be closely managed.

There is another concern on the super retail front. With limited space on the shop front and a huge number of ICT brands and products jostling for visibility, the most critical parameter for Packard Bell´s brand in the months of July onwards will be the “return per square foot “, for super retailers. No super retailer can afford to

“We are very powerful in the super retail segment because we have a lot of products that we sell there”

Watching inventory levels, FDC's Infrastructure Manager, Alan Pourmirza

have a product that doesn´t move sitting on prime shelf space. “If a product comes and doesn´t move, we have to quickly decide what to do”, says Ashish Panjabi, CEO of

Jacky´s group.

And that could mean going back to the drawing board and relooking at the customer experience, the type of messages in the communication, the amount of investment in the media campaigns and type of store-front promotion.

Will Packard Bell´s new product range move to the corporate segment? Sharma clarifies, “That is not the brand objective; as soon as you go to the office environment the equation changes”. The channel partners, service levels, infrastructure and communication, all need to change.

For Packard Bell, investing in the summer

consumer wave to take it forward, it would be like a new organisational setup in parallel.

Behind the scenes, inside the consolidated group, the Packard Bell and Acer teams remain integrated. For the product design, strategy and OEM procurement team which contracts with Intel, Microsoft, board, chipset and monitor manufacturers, the two brands are unified in terms of their combined volumes, product segmentation and market reach. The financial results of the two brands are also consolidated. But at the front end, the two brands face the market separately.

When Packard Bell merged with Acer in 2008, there were immediate synergies.

Acer´s strength in laptops helped Packard Bell to surge ahead in the same segment.

Now when Packard Bell is racing to hit the consumer market head-on, it remains to be the same whether the favour will be returned to Acer in the times ahead.

Packard Bell´s Easy Note product map

JUNE 2011

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in focus BenQ

Monitor made hands-on The vendor brought in legendary gamers to custom design its new portfolio of gaming monitors.

Mohammed Javeed, Business Manager, BenQ Middle East and Africa

For BenQ´s business manager Mohammed Javeed, the late night Counter-Strike tournament involving legendary players, Emil “HeatoN” Christensen and Abdisamad “SpawN” Mohamed, at Que Club Dubai on 21 May represents the culmination of the effort by the parent company to roll out the most advanced gaming monitor.

While carrying the corporate tag line, “provider of networked digital lifestyle devices”, the current promotional focus of the company is the professional monitor segment.

This is the segment that caters to aspiring gamers and entertainment users, and the segment that Javed points out is the fastest growing in the developed economies. Even in the Gulf, the gaming market is expected to play a vital role in BenQ´s regional growth. “In the Middle East and Africa region, we see a huge potential for technology that takes the gaming experience to a new level”, clarifies Manish Bakshi, General Manager of the region.

BenQ´s efforts to accelerate growth and uptake of this product segment led them to approach European game vendor, Zowie Gear

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to help them develop the ultimate gaming monitor. The Counter-Strike duo team of “HeatoN” and “SpawN” worked with BenQ´s prototype development team in Taiwan and helped develop the near-perfect gaming monitor. The rest can now go down in history.

“HeatoN” and “SpawN” can look back at their early years when they spent close to half their waking life playing Counter-Strike, culminating in the final roll out of BenQ´s XL 2410T, advanced gaming monitor.

The development of this advanced gaming monitor could also have been done by BenQ´s research and development department, “but it was their experience that was translated into a product”, asserts Javed.

Other than the professional monitor segment for the gaming and lifestyle community, BenQ segments the remaining market opportunity into three other product segments, The lowest end is the essential monitor segment, which is directed at home and small office users and is a price conscious segment. The other two segments are the corporate and high-end monitor segments, the latter being used for medical, engineering,

industrial and graphic applications. While the corporate market is dominated by laptops, docking stations with large screen monitors also proliferate in parallel and are reason for the vendor´s optimism in this market segment.

In total, the regional market is segmented into four product opportunities.

For sales and distribution across the UAE, BenQ is using Trigon LLC, which also distributes other leading consumer brands Viewsonic, LG, Samsung and Creative. Business development for the essential monitor series is done by Trigon´s reseller partners. For the other three segments namely professional, corporate and high end monitors, vendor BenQ takes a more proactive role. For the professional monitor segment it takes the lead in organising gaming road shows similar to the one at Que Club.

However engagements with power retailers for supply of products and price-volume negotiation, is left to Trigon, which is better suited in this role than BenQ. For the corporate and high-end monitor products, BenQ´s role is in lead generation and marketing. However once relationships have been initiated the sales follow up is handed over to Trigion. The distributor uses its fifteen-odd channel partners to finalise relationships with corporate and high-end customers. With early success in the gaming and lifestyle product segments, it remains to be seen what BenQ´s next move will be in other product segments.

BenQ has used legendary Counter-Strike players “HeatoN” and “SpawN” to leapfrog into the gaming product market. Can it replicate this success in other market segments?

Most advanced gaming monitor: how it was done Way back in 1999, Emil Christensen played the famous desktop game, Counter Strike for eight hours a day. As gaming technology improved, so did his intention to keep winning and he turned professional. He played for 15 hours at a stretch, every day for seven years.

Along with his workplace colleague Abdisamad Mohamed, they are now Counter Strikes legendary players, “HeatoN” and “SpawN”. When BenQ approached Zowie, their Swedish gaming accessory employer to help develop the best gaming monitor that technology can provide, “HeatoN and SpawN” were ideal choices to participate in its product development. The list of parameters to be incorporated in BenQ´s monitor rolled out pretty fast, when the duo and their friends sat down to mull it over. “It was spot-on”, recalls Christensen. After BenQ´s factory rolled out the prototype, the duo travelled to Taiwan to test the model. At site they went through more iteration, during which they struggled with

bugs and balancing colour palettes. But their efforts have now paid off for both vendor and gaming community. For Christensen who all along preferred playing on his ancient CRT monitor and seldom played on a LED monitor, BenQ´s latest gaming monitor is now his best.

Specifications: The shooting game mode of the 24.60 inch LED monitor from BenQ was hands-on developed by “HeatoN” and “SpawN”.

A smart scaling, hot key button allows gamers to switch between four viewing modes enhancing close ups or wide angle views. The backlit LED screen has a refresh rate of 120 Hz or 120 times every second using hyper speed video processing technology. Further each pixel has glow duration of 2 milli seconds, implying there is no residual glow when the refresh signal comes back. This makes for ultra-sharp movements across the screen. The monitor allows two independent video feeds to display at the same time and is Nvidia 3D vision ready.

The XL 2410T is priced at $490 across the UAE.

WHEN BLACK IS NOT BLACK! One of the key effort by the gaming duo was to ensure the enemy is visible in the shadows.

In other words the enemy colour was calibrated as black while the shadows in which he lurks as near-black. As the enemy lunges out of the corner, “HeatoN” and “SpawN” made sure the rest of the gaming community can spot him.

Counter-Strike legendary players “SpawN” and “HeatoN” facing BenQ´s LED XL 2410T monitor which they helped develop.

JUNE 2011

Reseller Middle East

27

in focus PRP

Epin enters GCC The region´s projects are attracting a new breed of project suites

Eliminating the manual factor in projects, QPM´s, IT Manager, Christopher McDaneil

Qatar´s skyline is being rebuilt.

Many localities of yesterday are now a five storey heap of rubble.

The new airport shimmers in the distant haze, hanging in its final stages. Many other billion dollar projects are still on the drawing board.

The recent availability of a project management application suite is expected to help manage timelines and costs in a more effective manner. Speaking at the May session of the CIO Summit Mena in Doha, QPMs IT Manager, Christopher McDaniel, spelt it out for consortium CIOs across the region. A project resource planning application (PRP) can cut down cost by 5-7% and manage risk between 10-25% better than the current

options.

For a multi-billion dollar roll out project, spanning a couple of years, involving multiple contractors with additional unknowns of new green technology or materials, an integrated project suite, that eliminates the “guess work” element is the logical way forward.

Most project management systems are dominantly a manual process. Careful planning and scheduling is done in the beginning. Once the project is underway it is difficult, time consuming and cumbersome to keep updating the project with changes. If the same parameter needs to be updated in multiple projects and an overall cost variation to be generated, it can be days before the result emerges. And when it comes, it is usually a best guess, “something that may or may not actually be there”.

PRP represents an integrated approach to managing project management.

The suite does not just provide an updated schedule of time lines and milestones, but allows top management to see their profit and loss in real time, across a single project or multiple projects without the ‘guess work’ element. Real-time dashboards are available at multiple levels of management for quick assessment.

“Most people don´t do risk management

"Most people don't do risk management in a project. But when they do risk management they do in the beginning, and never really look at the plan again."

in a project. But when they do risk management they do it in the beginning, and never really look at the plan again.

They seldom examine if the risk actually occurred or update it manually across different projects”, says McDaniel speaking from his years of experience.

Today everybody understands the value of ERP. But twenty years ago it was hard to convince users that is the right way forward. “PRP today is where ERP was two decades ago”, says McDaniel.

To extend the comparison, a PRP system integrates scheduling, change, cost, risk and document functions. And a typical ERP system integrates manufacturing, supply chain, finance, customer relationship and human resources.

The real mindset change is about moving away from Microsoft Projects way of managing projects which is 95% manual and 5% inbuilt, towards the PRP way--which is as many generations ahead of older suites as “sticks and stones to make fire”.

One such PRP application that is now available in the GCC is from UK based Epin.

The application by the same name is being used by McDaniel´s employer QPM in Doha as well as globally by Nissan and Toyota to manage their retail refurbishments.

Epin has made early gains in the region.

It is being rolled out in the real estate division of Al Futtaim Group, Abu Dhabi´s Urban Planning Council, Commercial Bank of Qatar, and Gredco in Bahrain.

A key driver for adoption in GCC according to Robin Shipston, Epins MENA Director, “are problems that failed document management and collaboration have caused”. Not being able to identify and communicate the core problem appears to be a reason for breakdown in workflow. Problems of translating technical matters and work nuances into a second language, appears another important factor.

PRP systems like Epin eliminate the manual factor across complex projects, since they use standard workflow templates

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Reseller Middle East

29

in focus PRP

and have modules across all faces of project management.

At present Epin is in the process of setting up offices across the GCC and does not have any channel partners, system integrators or consultants in the region.

The sales engagements are done at C-level since PRP is a high end strategic and commercial tool. The solution is available as a hosted application or as system resident.

The integration of Epin into an organisations IT environment is usually quite smooth. “We get support from IT departments within organisations because our systems have a light touch on their activities and don't put a strain on tight resources”, says Shipson.

This can be a make or break factor for implementation of an enterprise application. If the implementation process is complicated and requires considerable change management, the probability of early success and predictable return on investment reduces. IT departments are usually under pressure to make back office

systems sitting on ERP support customer facing projects. “A lot of time and money can be wasted trying to make square pegs fit round holes”, says Shipson.

Implementation of a PRP like Epin usually takes about 30 days. Half of the time is to get the base line in place and the rest for setting up configurations and training. A typical team will include a project manager who is also the super user with security access to all levels. Others include schedulers and document management handlers. Schedulers and handlers can be interchanged between projects. The project manager remains on board till the project is closed. As the demand for PRP applications increases in the region, Epin will need to scale its go-to-market strategy accordingly.

Components of prp suite

QPM´s customer portfolio Barwa Financial district includes office towers, five-star business hotel, restaurants, conference centre and retail shopping area.

Barwa commercial avenue includes eight kilometres of retail avenue, with 600 retail spaces and 850 residential units and offices, food courts, groceries stores, pharmacies.

(QPM is wholly owned subsidiary of Doha based Barwa and Qatari Diar estate developers)

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in focus DCC

ME Retail Academy Awards 2011 Retailers vote on eleven vendor categories Distree Events, the organisers of Digital Consumer Channel, Middle East and Africa, handed out vendor awards at the fourth ‘Middle East Retail Academy 2011 Awards’.

A live electronic voting session determined the winners in 11 product categories. In addition, awards were handed out for specialist and volume distributor categories.

Retailers evaluated vendors on a number of criteria including partner engagement, channel strategy, pricing, stock management, product evolution, margin potential, channel management and partner programme.

“The fact that there are so many different winners underlines the variety that still exists in the market,” said Farouk Hemraj, CEO of Distree Events, the organisers of the awards.

“DCC MEA and MERA celebrate this diversity, bringing retailers, distributors and vendors together for a business-focused three-day event each year.”

The nominations for each category were determined using data extracted from Monthly Monitor Report--a service that provides regular snapshot of views, opinions and the business climate in the region. DCC MEA 2011 was partnered by Belkin and Intel as its Platinum sponsors. Dell, Grand Stores, Kaspersky and Lenovo supported as Gold sponsors while Cisco, Pro Technology, Asbis, ITE Distribution and NAVTEQ were Silver sponsors.

Redington and Eros picked up the volume and specialist distributor awards respectively.

Dell awarded desktop, notebook, netbook of the year

Kaspersky awarded vendor of the year

HP awarded printing vendor of the year

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Microsoft awarded gaming vendor of the year

Software vendor of the year WINNER: Kaspersky Also nominated: Adobe, Microsoft, Sage, Symantec TV vendor of the year WINNER: Samsung Also nominated: LG, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba Mobile communications vendor of the year WINNER: Apple Also nominated: BlackBerry, HTC, Nokia, Samsung

“DCC is the ultimate networking event for senior executives from the retail channel” Interview with Farouk Hemraj, CEO of event organiser Distree

A record number of 2,000 one-on-one meetings was the highlight of Digital Consumer Channel 2011 event at Fujairah, UAE. consumer engagement.

As a sign of economic recovery, we saw a record turnout of visitors touching 500 on the second day of the event. This also meant a record number of one-on-one meetings recorded at the event from a little more than 1,000 meetings booked before the event to a final recorded number of close to 2,000.

Gaming vendor of the year WINNER: Microsoft Also nominated: EA, Logitech, Nintendo, Sony Home networking vendor of the year WINNER: Linksys by Cisco Also nominated: Belkin, D-Link, Edimax, Netgear Storage vendor of the year WINNER: Seagate Also nominated: Imation, Iomega, Sandisk, WD Printing vendor of the year WINNER: HP Also nominated: Brother, Canon, Epson, Samsung Imaging vendor of the year WINNER: Nikon Also nominated: Canon, Kodak, Samsung, Sony Accessories vendor of the year WINNER: Promate Also nominated: Belkin, Genius, Logitech, Microsoft Digital Lifestyle vendor of the year WINNER: Apple Also nominated: Canon, Merlin, Samsung, Sony Desktop, notebook, netbook vendor of the year WINNER: Dell Also nominated: Acer, HP, Samsung, Sony

Farouk Hemraj, CEO Distree Events What is the primary objective of a Digital Consumer Channel (DCC) event?

Hemraj: DCC is the ultimate networking event for senior executives from the retail channel in the Middle East and Africa region focusing on consumer electronics, digital devices and ICT products. It is a platform where high-level retailers from around the region are brought into productive contact with vendors.

DCC is also about providing an opportunity to network among peers, learn about market data that will help retailers and vendors better understand the region and make informed decisions for their businesses.

How was this year’s DCC event different from the previous?

Hemraj: This year saw the launch of Gamestream11. Backed by Red Distribution, Microsoft and Sony, Gamestream11 used the DCC platform to inform the region’s retail channel about the latest developments in gaming technology. As well as share go-to-market strategies and help them with

What was the most significant feedback from participants?

Hemraj: We always receive positive feedback from our participants. Based on their feedback from previous years, we have added new industry segments this year as well as added educational sessions like workshops and panel discussions.

How does DCC vary from those in other parts of the world?

Hemraj: The main concept is the same in all the events but the audience is different catering to the channel needs of the market.

The Middle East is the only place for Digital Consumer Channel. Our main event is in Monaco with DISTREE XXL that focuses on the distributors for the EMEA region. In Russia, we have a technology week that not only has a retail segment but a separate segment for VAR’s.

Are there are any planned changes to next year’s DCC? Hemraj: We can only make these changes once we have had an opportunity to evaluate feedback from this year’s event. This could be the introduction of new segments, new vendors and speakers, additional workshops and market data.

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in focus Microsoft

Connecting the consumer A channel is being created to enhance excitement accross its retail and consumer product portfolio

Working on the Microsoft consumer experience, Ghassan El Hout, sales manager for entertainment and devices An exciting moment at DCC 2011, was the announcement of Microsoft´s Consumer Channel Group (CCG), still under formation but in all probability ready to operate from July 2011. Amongst its immediate objectives: to create more touch points with consumers, better communication of what can be done with Microsoft devices and to elevate the experience to a “cool” level.

Looking further into the details, the formation of the CCG is not expected to change the product distribution structure for the retail or super retail segments. But it´s expected to work aggressively towards integrating Microsoft´s portfolio of disparate products into a more unified whole with improved consumer experience and appeal.

The four product segments included as part of the CCG are: gaming consoles including Xbox and Kinect; experience accessories like keyboard, mice, headsets, Webcam; finished packaged products like Office and Windows; and Windows Phone.

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"The idea is not to increase any category over the other. It´s all about how we create excitement around our Windows platform", says Ghassan El Hout, Sales Manager for entertainment and devices, Microsoft Gulf.

On the engagement side, the CCG is expected to improve cooperation with OEM partners, telecom companies, power retailers and work with them towards creating “excitement”. "We are partnering with all OEMS and we stand at an equal distance from them.

But we want the consumers to be picking the right choice", says El Hout.

Microsoft´s immediate revamp of its approach to the consumer segment can also be explained by what is happening in the retail segment. Ask any retail major and the conclusion is the same. The whole consumer IT landscape is changing-smart phones have exploded and today you find a second smart phone in the hands of the consumer. With high product refresh rates from many brands, consumers are finding it hard not to walk into retail outlets and experience the product. Add to that the strong need to be connected across social media sites with the number of new applications to support this and the pull becomes very strong.

“If you ask a consumer why they have bought a tablet, most of them don´t have a very strong answer”, says Jacky´s CEO, Ashish

Panjabi. “A lot of the footfalls in the retail outlets are about self-justification”. Consumers know the product has a utility but often find it difficult to justify to themselves why they should buy it. The need to be convinced varies from consumer to consumer.

Today almost all consumer devices are accessing applications and information through the public cloud in some way--whether it is a tablet, slate, windows phone, iPhone or iPad and so on. The CCG intends to convince this community of users that, “the Windows platform is a cool platform, it´s beneficial to use it, and it complements the total device ownership which they already have”.

“It´s also to change the way people purchase a PC-from a DOS based machine at a rock bottom price deal towards a solution and need fulfiller”, reflects El Hout.

On the product distribution side, Microsoft Gulf is using ITE and Logicom for its Windows and Office applications. For its gaming range it is using distributors Al Futtaim Electronics and Pluto Games. The channel community includes around 90 retailers and 400 retail partners across five GCC countries: UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

Update on Windows Phone More than 17,000 applications have been developed for this device since Windows Phone was announced. At a recent briefing the vendor announced the availability of Mango, a smartphone developer tool to help build better internet connectivity applications. This is expected to allow easier switching between applications and connections on a smartphone.

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in focus Lenovo

High-end SME and retail, key areas With growth and product movement in these segments, Lenovo has made them a priority for this year

Focussing on the high end SME, Lenovo´s Djillali Lahiani At DCC 2011, a key note presentation by Howard Davies, from the channel market research company Context, showed declining quarter-on-quarter notebook volume sales from the corporate segment.

By contrast there was climbing demand from the small and medium enterprise (SME) segment.

One of the key drivers for SME growth is the demand for technology that spans both business and personal needs and provides access from a range of devices. “SME decision makers and employees are reaping the benefits of social networking tools in their personal lives and are asking how they can derive same kind of benefits in their businesses. They want to make information easier to find, share and connect with people they need”, says Lenovo´s Middle East and

Africa, head Jack Lee. So how does the SME segment fit into Lenovo´s regional market segmentation?

Lenovo segments the market opportunity into three: corporate, small and medium enterprise and home segment. For the corporate segment the distributors are categorised under the CAB business and include IBM stalwarts like GBM, EBM as well as C4 and Jumbo Enterprise. In the CAB business, Lenovo is fully engaged in the development of relationships with potential customers.

For the CAB business, the sales cycles are long and there are deals to be closed.

Hence it works closely with its partners for this customer segment. Lenovo customers include Etihad, Etisalat, Du, Abu Dhabi University and others. The company has 14% market share in this segment, second after HP, followed by Dell.

However Lenovo´s current focus is the SME. In the region, more than 90% of the businesses are classified as SME. Lenovo again classifies the overall SME market into low, medium and high end. It´s the high-end SME segment that has got Lenovo excited and where it sees the fastest return.

“The focus is to grow fast and build good relationships and loyalty with this segment of SME”, says Djillali Lahiani, Development Manager, Lenovo Middle East.

So high is the channel priority that a partner focussing on the high-end SME segment for Lenovo channel, is actually a corporate channel partner for HP.

To reach the home customer through super retail outlets, Lenovo uses either a fulfilment or value added partner. In the UAE, Lenovo is using FDC International as a value added partner. It also has a special programme for super retail partners such as Carrefour, Sharaf DG and Jumbo, where it owns the relationship end to end. For any promotion in this retail segment it is a joint effort between Lenovo, FDC and the retailer.

“We like to be involved in the management of the relationship.

We can add value and we can help by presenting an end to end solution for all parties”, says Lahiani.

Lenovo is also optimistic on capitalising in the upsurge of social networking devices through its partner devices like Windows Phone and its own Ideapad series of notebooks. “Microsoft is taking the small office-home office segment very seriously”, comments Lahiani.

“For super retail promotions especially during festival times, replenishment is more challenging”

Continue on page 39

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in focus Toshiba

Enhanced VAR and retail programmes With sluggish corporate sales the vendor is enhancing its VAR programme and regional super retail strategy

Retail and VAR programme revamp, Toshiba´s Santosh Varghese

The upheavals of the region have affected business sentiment and buying to a certain extent. Couple that with the lingering recession of 2010 and you come up with a sluggish corporate buying pattern now visible in the second quarter of 2011. ”Our Middle East markets are on fire right now.

So for the markets it´s like flat growth”, says Hesham Tantawi, Vice President, Asbis Enterprises.

Even for Toshiba with a wide range of products, the corporate buying pattern for its notebooks has changed. Toshiba operates in three price bands and typically has not been a price conscious brand. The first price band

is the entry level, which is a price conscious band and prone to discounts and price wars.

The price band starts at $500 upwards. The second price band is the mid range and ends at the $1,500 price point. This is the volume segment and accounts for close to 40% of Toshiba´s regional business.

The last is the high-end segment, which is above the $1,500 price point and which Santosh Varghese, Regional General Manager, Toshiba Middle East admits is not doing so well. “I think something has completely changed in this segment”. For a segment that seldom looked at the pricing and focussed more on the total cost of ownership, it´s moved towards lowest price behaviour.

In order to boost corporate sales at the highend segment, Toshiba is focussing on value added channel players on the lookout for last minute deals and pricing. The role of a Toshiba VAR manager would be to maintain relationships with these players so they approached Toshiba and not a competitor at the time of final negotiations. Incentives for both SME and enterprise facing VAR´s have been announced as part of the recent initiative.

Along with the enhanced VAR programme, Toshiba also has a rebate incentive scheme called the “profit for performance”. This is a rebate programme

For a segment that seldom looked at the pricing and focussed more on the total cost of ownership, it´s moved towards lowest price behaviour

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Toshiba´s notebook range

- Satellite Pro, affordable prices - Tecra, professional on-the-go - Portege, for style-conscious

which recognises the commitment of retailers and dealers and rewards performers who achieve volume and product mix targets. For promoters, merchandisers, and other shop floor sales staff, Toshiba has a “sell and win” point system which can be converted into “kind or cash rewards”.

Along with its corporate focus, Toshiba is also revamping its regional super retail strategy. It has brought in more direct and indirect players to manage volumes in this consumer facing channel segment. In UAE and Bahrain it continues to use Al Futtaim Electronics as an indirect channel partner to manage super retailers.

In Saudi Arabia it has direct relationship with Jarir Book stores with its 24 outlets across the country, as well as Extra with its 17 outlets across the country. It uses separate distributor partners for the corporate market and reseller channel segments. Since Saudi Arabia accounts for half of its regional sales and is a captive market, the company has

VAR Programme Reseller (SMB+SOHO) Support during sales Run-rate pricing Rebate programme Product training every quarter Demand generation Periodic channel news Access to Toshiba manager

Reseller (Large enterprise) Support during sales Run-rate pricing Lower pricing for volume deals Rebate programme Product training every quarter Demand generation Periodic channel news Demo systems at discount Advertising support Participation in seminars Supported service fee charges Access to Toshiba manager

created a special channel structure and a local warehouse to manage the growing volumes.

Across Qatar it also uses Jarir Bookstores as a direct channel partner and is beginning to engage with Carrefour. Across Oman it uses Al Bhawan IT division for corporate sales and Al Bhawan Electronics for its retail sales.

For both Qatar and Oman, it uses separate distributor partners for the corporate market and reseller channel segments.

With super retailers themselves enhancing their regional focus and increasing the number of outlets, Toshiba has created its strategic retail partner programme. “Since they are present in all the countries, it makes sense to talk to one central point”, explains Varghese. Under this programme the sales strategy will be negotiated and finalised centrally but implemented locally.

For super retail promotions across the region, the targets are jointly managed by Toshiba, the distributor and the super retail partner. Since its strategic retail programme is transparent to the distributor, Varghese rules out any conflict of interest. And wherever the distributor and the super retailer are the same, as in Saudi Arabia, the model is optimally suited.

In order to set targets with its channel partners, Toshiba uses a market sizing approach. Data from IDC and GfK is used to lock the current and projected base size of a market segment. The target share from the overall market as well as the target share per price band is worked out from the base size. Lastly the company reviews its channel players operating per market and per price band.

As per figures from GfK Retail and Technology tracking, Toshiba had a market share of 23% of the notebook volumes shipped from July to December 2010. And for mobile computers it had a share of 18% of the volume shipped for the full year of 2010.

Overall Toshiba´s retail volumes grew by 9% in 2010 over the previous year.

On the logistics side, all imports by regional and local channel partners are first shipped to Dubai as the central hub. From here they are forwarded to the regional channel players warehouses. Shipping orders are placed on the basis of three month forecast and inventory is managed at 30-45 order stock. With a robust product and brand, regional growth appears to be next highlight in this year´s calendar.

end SME segment, increasing the number of diamond partners for Lenovo is another priority. Lenovo has created the Core Channel programme to acquire specific resellers, roll out specific promotions and offer special incentives for achievement.

For the UAE, Lenovo maintains a distribution centre for rapid and urgent deployment of stocks. While channel partners import regular or run-rate stocks from Shanghai, the UAE office also maintains stocks under its control. This is used to close urgent deals where availability of stock may be used in the final negotiation. It is also used during promotions and events or for fast moving products when stock replenishments are required within 1-2 working days. The Dubai based distribution centre can also supply urgent stocks to Lebanon, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

However for all stock ordering, there is

only one procurement system. Under normal circumstances distributors receive goods within 21-40 days, which is the usual lead time.

In other cases the vendor may use either the Dubai distribution centre for partial fulfilment, or may airlift stocks from Shanghai itself based on the requirement and availability.

“For super retail promotions especially during festival times, replenishment is more challenging”, says Lahiani. A super retail establishment like Carrefour will only buy-in when it sees the value of the complete offer and controls the deal end to end. Since stock replenishments are accepted only twice a week, holding stock at the partner is a critical factor in going ahead with Lenovo´s promotional offer. With the vendor talking responsibility for all key relationships across SME´s and super retailers, the next six months will indicate whether these efforts are paying off or not.

From page 37

High-end SME and retail, key areas While the market opportunity is segmented into three categories, the channel partners are also segmented based on volume sales. From the highest to lowest by volume are, diamond, platinum and gold partners. The diamond partners are usually the super retailers and sell more than 300 units per quarter. These partners are managed directly by Lenovo. The platinum partners usually sell between 100-300 units per quarter and are jointly managed

by Lenovo and the distributor. “The gold partners who are the lowest in the rung only because of the volume and not because of importance”, stresses Lahiani, sell less than 100 units per quarter.

Similar to the priority focus on the high-

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in focus Integral Memory

Local base, regional focus Starting up a component testing and packing line and entering the Indian market are targets for its UAE operations The UK based component manufacturer is looking at setting up a testing and packaging plant in Dubai. At present Integral manufactures its products in Taiwan and ships them to UK. At the plant in New London each of its products is then quality tested and shrink wrapped and sealed for forwarding to 55 other countries.

The problem is you need volumes to do that and we are trying to build volumes”, says Integral Memory´s Sanjiv Kotecha, speaking at DCC 2011. If the trading volumes across the UAE and the region go up, the products will be bulk shipped from Taiwan to Dubai, loosely packed in trays. At Dubai the products will be quality tested, repacked and made available for re-export. Since Dubai is better placed for re-export than London, with cheaper labour costs, “that will be the ultimate aim”, says Kotecha.

The Dubai plant investment is expected to be around $0.2million. Similar to the UK setup, Kotecha expects to use the spare capacity of the proposed Dubai plant to pick up local orders for component testing and

The encrypted USB from Integral has a hardware set password that cannot be deleted. Incorrect entry more than six times triggers erasing of the stored data.

Boosting UAE volumes, Integral´s Sanjiv Kotecha packaging. “We are always being asked to do other peoples stuff”, referring to the testing and packaging contracts, managed by the 50 employee team in New London.

Other than the Gulf, Kotecha has his eye set on India as the next target destination.

“That is a fantastically growing market”, close to Dubai and can also be serviced from Dubai.

Integral currently has offices in Spain, France, Portugal and Netherlands as well as UK and UAE. The current product range includes memory cards, mobile memory, USB flash drives, encrypted USB drives, card readers and adapters and DRAM memory chips.

Integral expects its new solid state drives (SSD), encrypted flash drives, USB 3.0 flash drives and micro SD to drive growth

in the region. The SSD are made from flash layer technology using an additional linear dimension. They have no moving parts, consume less power and generate less heat. At present however they are about 3-4 times more expensive than conventional storage devices. “For people who understand technology and the early adopters this product has an immediate market”, says Kotecha. As the price drops this product segment is expected to compete and overtake sales of conventional external and internal storage devices. “The Ipad is all SSD”, Kotecha points out.

The other differentiated product from Integral is the encrypted USB. With corporate data loss, a serious legal issue in UK, the research and development team in the country came up with a password protected USB. “Research shows that most users lose their flash within the first year of usage”. The encrypted USB from Integral has a hardware set password that cannot be deleted.

Incorrect entry more than six times triggers erasing of the stored data.

About the other products, micros SD are now used in tablets, smart phones, cameras and other consumer devices. With the exploding consumer market for smart-phones and tablets in the region, the company is bullish on its 32GB product in this segment.

The faster USB 3.0 is expected to be available from middle of 2011.

In the UAE, Integral uses Touchmate as its distributor. Holding stocks for flash memory is usually the trickiest amongst channel partners due to volatile pricing and life cycle. But since Integral only manufactures this product segment, it is ready to take the risk and hold the stock for its partners. “We are used to it” says Kotecha, “and we can handle the risk of holding the inventory”. It also has considerable experience working on promotions with European super retailers like Tesco and Asda including two-for-one and bundled offers. If Kotecha gets the UAE volumes to shoot up, India and the rest of the region are logical next steps.

“We are used to it and we can handle the risk of holding the inventory”

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in focus Twinmos

Bullish on memory products Steady demand for memory related products has the company exporting most of its production into regional and far-away markets For Dubai based Twinmos the core business of the company is memory related products. It has contract manufacturing plants in Taiwan and research and development for new products is done out of Dubai. Its product range includes flash memory cards and drives, memory modules, solid state drives, portable drives, hi-speed hubs, micro SD chips, USB 3.0 add-in cards, USB 3.0 and 2.0 cables.

Historically it started as a manufacturer of memory chips for system integrators. Even now this remains an important part of its business.

System integrators who assemble desktops, servers and workstations based on bulk orders require memory chips. They also need memory chips to upgrade older systems or for after

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sales and repair which is a smaller part of the business. These are supplied by Twinmos.

Even large OEMs source memory chips from Twinmos. Original memory chips for established notebook brands are more expensive than the chips supplied by Twinmos. Memory upgrades prior to the final sale is a common requirement for resellers of established brands. Hence there is a demand for memory upgrades from Twinmos even for established brands.”We have a solution for all branded PCs”, says Mohd Mazharul Islam, Managing Director of Twinmos.

In the UAE, Twinmos acts as its own distributor. The Dubai operations is the hub for exports into Africa, rest of the gulf, Persian Gulf, Levant, Eastern Europe, CIS and south Asia. In

Exports major part of UAE sales, Mohd Mazharul Islam, Managing Director, Twinmos.

other countries Twinmos uses a distributor to manage its sales and business development.

Distributors in other countries are expected to send in regular three-month sales forecasts. Orders cycles start from the third week of the month and goods are shipped by the end of the month.

All goods are air shipped from the plant in Taiwan to Dubai and from Dubai to other countries. An inventory of 30 days stock is maintained in Dubai. Form its plant in Taiwan it receives goods in two types of packing.

For its channel community it receives goods in bulk packing and for its retail business it receives goods in smaller packs for retail store shelves.

“There is back and forth information on inventory”, says Mazharul, since its objective is to maintain just in time stocks at its Dubai warehouse hub.

Approximately 50% of the goods imported into Dubai are re-exported by Twinmos to other countries. Out of the remaining 50% sold into the local market through its reseller community, Mazharul estimates another 30% moves out of the country. That brings the net re-exported out of Dubai to 80%. Any reduction to the 5% local duty surcharge would greatly benefit the local reseller community in their re-exports since it would drop the price point.

With converging form factors across the flash drive and solid state drives, Mazharul’s medium term outlook is to focus on the micro SD as the driver of Twinmos’ growth.

profile Itqan

Preparing its second wave Growing competition and increasing regional demand for its services are making it bullish to cross over When Feras Al-Jabi, General Manager of Itqan received the Feigenbaum Leadership Excellence Award in early 2011, recognising him as an accomplished leader, it was also recognition of how Itqan has repositioned itself to meet the demands of its customers.

The Abu Dhabi based systems integration company has been in operation since 1984. However it is only over the last ten years that it has started offering enterprise applications and solutions along with its traditional offering of hardware and infrastructure.

Being at the helm of the company since 1998, Al-Jabi has structured the company to foster close engagement with its public sector customers who have been with Itqan since its origin. Rather than migrate away to the multitude of other market opportunities in the UAE and GCC, Al-Jabi has chosen to offer newer and more varied technology solutions to this portfolio of long term customers. The approach has been to offer new solutions to existing clients rather than existing solutions to new clients.

Explaining this Al-Jabi says, “Maintaining long term relationships with them, is more healthier and profitable than to keep moving outside the markets we have developed”.

Itqan defines its primary customers as the government sector covering four areas of defence, education, healthcare and citizen centric departments. The last area includes service intensive departments with continuously scalable requirements and accountability built around the customer´s customer.

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“Our structure has been simple and clear for years. Our strategy is our core market, core offering and partnership” The oil and gas market segment was where Itqan historically started its business.

Today this remains more of a supporting market after the government, rather than its primary market. While the telecom segment is an opportunity, ITqaan has not developed any specific solution or internal practice for this vertical. For this segment it offers its standard practice engagements.

Inbuilt in Itqan´s previous five year strategic planning is the continuing and primary focus towards the public sector. This is one of the reasons for Itqan´s long term stability in the region. Business expansion and growth of the sector, pro-technology governance, migration, integration and deployment of new technologies have contributed to return Itqan´s time and cost investment towards this segment.

Al-Jabi describes the return on investment from this sector as, “fair, enough and plenty”. And buzz words describing its strategic approach to this market as “focussed, responsive and nimble”.

Another possible reason for Itqan´s long term stability is the careful selection

of technology platforms. Starting off with only a hardware infrastructure service, the company now has four mature practices that it can offer its public sector customers.

The most recent solutions are built around Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM platform and Microsoft Sharepoint Portal. It also offers SAP and Oracle enterprise applications and implementation. However the return on investment focus is around Microsoft technologies and less on SAP and Oracle.

Itqan selects the technologies based on business needs rather than the “latest and greatest solution” available.

Facing the market is the current umbrella of practices including hardware infrastructure, enterprise applications, business intelligence and scalable service support. “At any particular time, we come across lots of businesses which require at least two portfolio of offerings to be delivered at once”, says Al-Jabi. Most customer requirements are covered by these four practices.

Considering the high profile and critical nature of its public sector customers, the challenge for Itqan has been to manage their growing requirements using its established practices. Till recently, it has neither found

the need to venture into a vast portfolio of technology offerings for each practice nor stretch itself out by developing business across adjacent geographical regions.

“Our structure has been simple and clear for years. Our strategy is our core market, core offering and partnership.

We have planned our capacity in terms of these solutions without sacrificing quality of service, nor the reach”, says Al-Jabi.

But the rapid regional economic growth has also brought its share of foreign competitors with a different basket of strengths and solutions. One such bloc of competitors that continue to penetrate the local market is Indian system integrators. An important difference between Itqan and this bloc of players lies in the nature and origin of their growth.

Itqan originated as a hardware services company, and has gained expertise in application and software development over time. The Indian bloc have originated from the realm of software development and have built up application integration skills on multiple hardware platforms over time. Both appear to have the same goal but have progressed through different streams of work.

Another key differentiator is the vast factory of software developers available to any India based systems integrator. Perceiving this differentiator as a weakness Itqan has tied up with the India office of Capgemini to outsource software development on a need basis.

Most of Itqan´s projects are now a hybrid of onsite and offshore services, also called mixed delivery, between the two partners.

Specifically Itqan has left the SAP and Oracle development resources to its Indian partner as well as other complex projects. However, “CAP gemini is not involved in each and every transaction of Itqan”, clarifies Al-Jabi.

While the Indian system integrator bloc has relied extensively on the SEI certification model for software quality assurance, Itqan has used ISO standards to control internal quality till date. Historically ISO standards at Itqan are not a recent initiative and quality assurance is part of its internal day-to-

Comparison of business model Home grown system integrator

Indian system integrators

Origin from datacentre, hardware

Origin from software development

Country focussed

Regional and global focus

Long term contractual engagement

Varied pattern of contractual enagagement

Usually focussed on public sector or semigovernment

Usually focussed across multiple vertical segments

Limited technology offerings based on customer requirement

Needs to carry broad pallet of technologies and skills

Limited investment in technical manpower

Usually vast investment in technical manpower

Will scale using alliances and acquisition

Will scale with equity resources and organically

Source: ResellerME

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profile Itqan

Recent recognition 2000 Gulf Excellence Forum Award

2004, 2006 Microsoft Winning Customer Award

2005 - 2006 Sheikh Khalifa Appreciation certificate

2006 The Best ICT Company: Arab Technology Awards

2007 The Best System Integrator: Arab Technology Awards

2008 Certified ISO 20000

2008 Microsoft Dynamics, President´s Club Winner

2009 Recognised at Microsoft Dynamics Worldwide Partner Conference

2011 Certified ISO 27001

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Itqan´s four business practices Knowledge Management As the company repositioned itself in the local market from an infrastructure service provider to a solutions provider in the late nineties, this was one of the first practices to kick off. In the initial stages this included document management, imaging and archiving solutions. With the launch of Microsoft´s Share Point portal in 2002, the practice expanded to a full portfolio adding workflow, business process management and Web based portals. Increasing competency in this practice has led to the development of a product known as Ediwan, a trademark of Itqan, which is a middle ware connecting to back office legacy applications and single sign-on at the front end.

Recent customer: Abu Dhabi Educational Council (portal), Western Region Development Council (portal), Twofour54 (content management)

Application Implementation This covers the deployment of ERP packaged solutions built around Oracle suite, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics and other solutions for healthcare and human resources. The domain expertise for the ERP applications is in the market segment of government and oil and gas. Ekawader is a human resources and payroll application especially built for the regional market that sits on top of Microsoft Dynamics. For this enterprise portfolio of applications there is less effort on customisation and more emphasis on the

day operations and work culture. Itqan´s ISO standards are also meant to gain the confidence of prospective customers. It has a trio of ISO certifications with the most recent being in May 2011. Considering its relationship with Capgemini, phasing in the SEI model is also part of the quality initiative target.

How do Indian system integrators view

key features of the enterprise applications allowing easy upgradability.

Recent customers: Farah Leisure Parks, Gulf Allied Digital Media (partner with Sumtotal Systems), Sharjah Museums Department (eKawader), Securities and Commodities Authority (ERP)

Information Infrastructure When the company started its business in 1984, this was its main forte and continues to this day to be its primary revenue earner. All components that sit below the application layer covering the operating system, networking, storage, virtualisation, connectivity falls in this practice. As an active hardware player, Itqan has relationships with Dell, HP, Cisco, Huawei, EMC and Oracle-Sun. Years of competency in this area allow Itqan to roll out an integrated solution rather than multiple boxes at the time of implementation.

Recent customers: Maritime Industrial Services (unified platform based on Microsoft technologies), Mafraq Hospital (unified communication implementation), Ministry of Health (Al-Nabed datacentre)

Outsourcing This covers additional resources deployed around customer infrastructure to help them manage their support functions including the help desk. The focus of the managed services is looking after the customer´s customer, rather than an inward focussed approach.

Recent customers: Panasonic (technical support)

local players such as Itqan? They are rated high because of their deep and long term contractual engagements with the public sector. Any Indian system integrator wanting to enter this sector would probably be more successful through a joint bid with a local player. However for now Indian system integrators don´t view their local

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counterparts as a threat. MahindraSatyam´s, regional Vice President Manojeet Choudhury clarifies on the non competing nature of local and Indian system integrators. “The kind of projects they are doing, we are not there. And the kind of projects we are doing, they are not there”. The market is large enough for both types of players and everyone appears to have a distinct space to operate for now.

However those dynamics may change over the next five years. Internally Itqan has announced it wants to be the leading systems integrators player across the GCC in less than five years. It has pulled out its “regional player, acquisition game plan” shelved

since 2008 when the global meltdown took place. As part of that plan it had earmarked acquisition of two regional players allowing it to advance outside UAE. Now it has decided to go down that route once again.

Within UAE it has already stretched itself to Al Ain and the western side of Abu Dhabi, entrenching itself within oil and gas and defence establishments. Now with foreign player competition building up in UAE, it is going to be a race on who sets up fastest across GCC. “We have tremendous pressure from certain customers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar to come over”, says Al-Jabi. Add to that vendor pressure from Itqan´s partners, who anticipate the UAE success story

being replicated in other countries and it is not difficult to understand Al-Jabi´s bullish outlook to cross over.

However the road ahead is challenging and one of the formidable challenges is to build a large team to manage expansion across GCC. “Technology skills cannot be built overnight. It takes time and investment and has to be a long term strategy”, says Choudhury. Itqan will probably need to follow the same model that its Indian peers have done over the last two decades, perhaps replacing India for Egypt. If Itqan´s Al-Jabi pulls this off the next award five years from now will definitely be bigger than 2011´s Feigenbaum recognition.

IDC channel definitions for EMEA Direct outbound: It is a sale made directly by the manufacturer to the end user through their sales force, agents, or representative. This channel addresses primarily large-size business customers or corporate accounts. Sales in which the vendor plays a significant role in developing the business, but does not directly deliver the product, are not considered direct outbound sales.

Direct inbound: It is a sale made directly by the manufacturer to the end user via telesales or call centre methods. These include vendor direct catalogues, and typical vendor-direct companies.

Internet direct: It is a sale that has been initiated and completed via the world wide Web. Payment must be received via electronic means. Sales made via the Web sites of dealers or retailers will not be included here, but accounted for within the dealer or retail channel itself.

Dealer/VAR/system integrators: They are firms that offer value with the PC sale beyond both price and availability.

Although most are local or regional, some are multinational in scope. Dealer/VAR/SI's tend to focus on sales to a smaller set of

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customers, which purchase a higher volume of PCs, generally ranging from small office to Fortune 500 accounts. Examples of Dealer/VAR/SI channel categories include corporate account resellers, computer specialty dealers, value-added resellers including application VARs and network integrators and systems integrators.

Sub-Channels Corporate dealers: They are large channel partners who have a national coverage and address primarily medium and large businesses. With a turnover of more than $10 million, out of which more than 50% will be made through large accounts, they will usually represent the largest dealers in a country or region. They resell all IT products (PCs, portables, entrylevel servers, mid range systems, networks, peripherals, software), and they usually reference all major PC vendors.

Traditional dealers: They are IT dedicated resellers, predominantly IT product resellers, who sell standard products. They would do more than 80% of their business on standard hardware/ PC sales. Those dealers who add value to the product through consulting or support

will be considered as VARs if this nonhardware activity generates more than 40% of their turn over. Traditional PC dealers/ resellers would address a large range of customers, from home users to mediumsized companies.

Value Added Resellers: They are channel partners that have a service or application oriented business and "valueadded" expertise. They sell all IT products but will do at least 40% outside hardware sales, that is software and services. The VAR channel includes many kinds of partners, according to their expertise and value-adding functions. Due to the recent market evolution, many former "dealers" have moved towards more "service oriented business models" and have developed "value adding" integration expertise, thus leading to an increasing number of VARs.

IDC includes the following categories in the VAR channel: Hardware Platform/ Network VARs; Solution VARs; Application VARs; Systems integrators/large systems houses; Retail; Vendor store; Telco Channel; Telecom Operators; Cable TV Operators; Telecom Specialist Stores

COVER FEATURE Rebates, promotion, loyalty, discounts

REBATES, PROMOTION

S

WHAT WORKS? 50 Reseller Middle East

JUNE 2011

BY arun shankar

B

y any theory of channel marketing these are established instruments of “reward power”. However with shorter life cycles and new devices being launched every week, both vendors and channel players require other measures to make “rewards” deliver their power.

Channel rewards are generated at all four levels of the distribution value chain.

Outwardly they may have the same form but as we move down the chain from vendors to distributors to resellers and retailers they reflect unfinished business at those levels or below them.

THE VENDOR VIEW At the vendor level, channel motivation programmes can get initiated due to a number of reasons. During the current volatile market environment, vendor activities are being adjusted to compensate for sluggish activity across the traditional corporate segment, contrasted by higher rates of growth from others.

At Toshiba for example, sluggish corporate sales has prompted it to recharge its corporate VAR programme. In terms of value additions these include access to a VAR manager, demand generation, regular product training, rebate schemes, and other sops around discounts and volume pricing.

Combined with these tactical measures Toshiba is also maintaining its rebate incentive scheme called the “profit for performance” for its channel community, and “sell and win” point system for its shop floor executives.

For Lenovo the focus is to capture market share in the top end of the SME market in the region. It has pulled in its best performing

corporate channel partners to start focussing on the high-end SME segment. It is also actively developing its diamond partner channel segment, a status accorded to partners who sell more than 300 units per quarter. It is doing this through the Core Channel programme with objectives of acquiring specific resellers into the Lenovo relationship.

In the case of AMD, its recent repositioning of OEM products has meant equivalent work on channel development.

The product segments now include APU, CPU, chipset and embedded, server, software

This program is still going strong since its launch in 2009. Our partners’ success is our own, which is why it was important to design a program that caters to local and regional partners and lets us equip them with the necessary tools”.

- Bernard Biolchini, VP Sales AMD, META

solutions. The new channel initiative has materialised in the form of the Fusion partner programme.

This is a global partner programme that combines incentive and resource programmes and is now available for partners reselling the complete portfolio of products. The change is towards more personalised resource availability using three levels of performance differentiation named as elite, premier and select. There are also six tiers of channel segmentation named as e-tailers, retailers, commercial solution providers, consumer solution providers and commercial volume resellers.

“This programme is still going strong since its launch in 2009”, says Bernard Biolchini, VP sales AMD, META regional office.

For security software major, Kaspersky, it monitors the number of licenses sold to an enterprise. When the number of licenses sold reaches 500, it steps in for direct engagement with the customer in parallel with channel partner. “We need to be as close as possible to the customer for this”, says Tarek Kuzbari, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab Middle East.

For memory manufacturer Twinmos, the possibility of dead stocks is operationally unlikely. “Whatever is going to be obsolete, we

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COVER FEATURE Rebates, promotion, loyalty, discounts

know it one year before”, says Mohd Mazharul Islam, Managing Director, Twinmos. However he acknowledges based on market conditions stocks can become slow moving leading to the possibility of dead stocks, because of the volatile nature of the product. Under these circumstances, Twinmos gives a rebate to its channel partners on the next stock of shipments to adjust for the lower giveaway prices used to clear the existing stock.

Retail focussed promotions can be driven by the brand, or by the distributor, or by the brand and distributor. Any of these combinations is possible and all are in active use. Leading IT brands like Lenovo, Toshiba, Kaspersky, Epson and Microsoft have made direct contact with super retailers, in parallel with their distributors a key priority in 2011.

With retail segments overflowing with

Almost every electronic device uses either an embedded flash or has a slot for an add-on flash card.

That makes our category attractive for distributors, resellers and retailers,” - Pascal de Boer, VP Retail Sales and Marketing, Sandisk EMEA

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customers to catch the latest connected devices and application devices on the shelves, this is a key for retail promotions.

For Toshiba, it has brought in Jarir Book Stores and Extra in Saudi Arabia as direct channel partners. Since Saudi Arabia accounts for more than half of its regional sales, this move demonstrates the importance of the segment and the region for the vendor. It has also created a strategic retail partner programme, where it negotiates the promotion activities at the retailer’s central decision making office.

For security software major, Kaspersky,

Increasing the brand awareness at retailers is critical to boost the sales of renewal.”

- Tarek Kuzbari, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab Middle East

the involvement with the super retailer is part of its direct touch model. Distributor, vendor and retail partner meet to discuss the annual engagement and possible value-add from the vendor and distributor. “Increasing the brand awareness at retailers is critical to boost the sales of renewal,” says Kaspersky’s Kuzbari. For the vendor there is a direct link with license renewals from the SME and small office-home office segment, and the visibility of the brand across the super-retail segment.

A product category like flash memory, where Sandisk operates is also growing rapidly. Almost every electronic device uses either an embedded flash or has a slot for an add-on flash card. “That makes our category attractive for distributors, resellers and retailers,” says Pascal de Boer, VP Retail Sales and Marketing, Sandisk EMEA. Since Sandisk products are used in fast selling electronic goods like cameras, smartphones, tablets, media players, there is considerable opportunity to offer the add-on Sandisk product along with the actual device as “bundle promotions” across retailers.

Other upcoming retail opportunities from

Sandisk across the region include embedded and encrypted content on its devices, like movies and songs that are user-accessible on payment. As well as custom label OEM products and merchandise for super retailers.

While this market segment is booming for de Boer, he emphasises, “We are not yet at a point where we are done with developing this category.”

For Microsoft, it has created the consumer channel group to revamp its consumer product portfolio and visibility in the retail segment.

The new approach is to create more touch points for the consumer, to raise excitement levels in the segment and to strengthen brand attributes to a “cool level”.

From a vendor perspective, Touchmate is keen to offer its channel partners higher margins above its competitors. “Along with our rebate scheme the margins to our channel partners is never less than 10%,” says Vasant Menghani, CEO Touchmate. The company always has aggressive promotion and rebate scheme running with its partners and claims that sales targets are tripled during such times and achieved as well.

COVER FEATURE Rebates, promotion, loyalty, discounts

THE CHANNEL VIEW From a channel partner point of view, “reward power” takes on a different meaning.

Distributor and resellers can have their own set of objectives and associated activities. If a certain product has been impacted due to a parallel activity run, or if there is a volume shortfall either at the distributor or reseller end, then a more focussed activity is usually planned.

The scale of this activity will depend on shortfall in volume and availability of marketing support. “Such limited time period offers are successful and resellers know that an investment today yields higher returns tomorrow,” says Sachin Gehani, Director Accent Office Supplies, a printing reseller.

“Incentives and rebates are an important of the channel strategy and build a strong relationship,” says Harprit Singh, Managing Director, VIP Computers. However there are two sides of such exchanges. On the one side are the additional volumes generated and

Along with our rebate scheme the margins to our channel partners is never less than 10%,” - Vasant Menghani, CEO Touchmate.

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the related exchanges of “Dollar and cents, how much do you get?” On the other side is the partnership effort that goes into the effort, the transfer of knowledge and the vendor know-how.

For a specialised component distributor like VIP Computers, the most important factor may not be the successful exchange of volume and rebate. It has also to do with the channel partners’ long term acceptance of the margins offered, the commitment to the product range, and the vision of growing the product in a certain region or operational space.

Distributors use many strategies to gain the loyalty of resellers, but at the end of the day, what matters most is the price point.”

- Sachin Gehani, Director Accent Office Supplies

“This tells us the long term sustainability of the relationship. Many customers come in for short term, one-two deals. These are not our best customers”, says Singh. Across the region VIP Computers has chosen to pre-select its partners and has a hundred on its list.

Rebates and marketing support are more likely to flow when a channel partner has worked their way towards a distributor’s top rungs, usually a loyalty club. FDC International, an extended chardware distributor managing storage drives, memory, mother and display boards, and laptops rates its customers on the basis of “magic-four” parameters. These include on-time payments within the credit period; trading with at least four FDC product categories; predictable sales cycles and showcasing of the product range.

Out of a total base of 650 partners, only fifty old partners are included in its “magicfour” club. FDC extends preferential channel support for them including longer term sales contracts.

However incentives are not the primary strategy that FDC wants to follow with its partners. Close to 100% of its goods are sold

at the time of arrival in its Dubai warehouse.

Anything that the partner wants should be forecast and included in its sales orders.

“Normally we don’t have anything to sell without a forecast,” explains Alan Pourmirza, FDC’s Infrastructure Manager.

Asbis Enterprises, leading distributor for Intel and AMD and operating across Europe, Russia, CIS, Africa and the Gulf also has a loyalty club based on sales performance of its partners. It is called “Fusion Club” and recognises top sales customers around a selected vendor. At present “Fusion Club” is being supported by AMD and hence the quarterly getaways are for regional partners who have topped AMD sales in the country or region.

The last three quarterly getaways have been to Slovakia, UAE and France. The main highlight is networking with key AMD and Asbis managers and team building in a relaxing environment.

Says Hesham Tantawi, VP for META region, explaining his vision of Asbis’ customers, “A partner is a customer who focuses with you to develop his market, and

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COVER FEATURE Rebates, promotion, loyalty, discounts

you help him to develop and achieve this, then its partnership.”

Managing customers doesn’t always need a loyalty programme on the scale of Asbis’.

Modest inventory control, credit extensions and channel protection by the distributors can also help retain customers. For Medmark one of Lexmark’s three distributors in the region, protecting its market share of 85% and its partner loyalty some of them extending back eight years, is the most important.

Medmark doesn’t keep back-to-back stocks for fast moving goods. It believes in making goods available for its partners. It receives two incoming shipments every week and holds an average inventory of 60 days.

Out of this only 35-40% of the stock is sold before arrival in the warehouse. Rest are kept as ex-stock. “At any moment the partners don’t need to buy a lot and block their capital,” says George Saliba, Sales Manager, Medmark.

Incentives and rebates are an important of the channel strategy and build a strong relationship,” - Harprit Singh, Managing Director, VIP Computers

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Medmark also extends preferential credit terms of 60 days to its partners and says that profit margins are much higher on Lexmark products in comparison to its competitors.

Existing channel partners are also protected when prospective customers make a bid to enter the network. “We don’t keep an open market and keep adding channel players”, says Saliba. It also runs an incentive loyalty programme for its partners.

While FDC and Asbis may set the turf for gaining partner loyalty, sometimes it may not be enough. Says Accent Office Supplies’

“A partner is a customer who focuses with you to develop his market, and you help him to develop and achieve this, then its partnership.”

- Hesham Tantawi, Vice President, Asbis META Gehani, “Distributors use many strategies to gain the loyalty of resellers, but at the end of the day, what matters most is the price point.”

Gehani has his share of favourite distributors based on operational matters like preferential stock allocation, priority documentation, priority delivery, higher rebate and other related reasons.

However, even if a reseller shies away from distributor loyalty they still remain committed to high volume vendors. Gehani’s favourite promotion scheme is anything to do with HP. “Given the volume of HP sales today, the rebates achieved by meeting targets turn out to be a huge number and these add considerably to the bottom line”. This is especially important since profit margins based on sales of HP products are marginal.

Similar programmes by Microsoft, Lexmark, Brother and Canon although generating less volume and reseller rebates are useful in retaining channel loyalty.

THE RETAIL VIEW From a retailer point of view the sheer number of brands, refresh rates of new

launches, limited shelf space and limited inventory capacity create significant challenges for the vendor, distributor and the retailer.

All brands and retailers follow the same annual calendar across the region. New product launches are timed with Gitex, shopping festivals, back to school, Ramadan and other special occasions. Some brands share their activity plans well in advance with the retailers. Others may arrive just a week earlier. “The brands that miss out are the ones that are slow, with wrong marketing push or sitting stocks,” says Ashish Panjabi, CEO Jacky’s group.

With multiple product segments like LCD and plasma TVs, mobile and smart phones, tablets, cameras, laptops, printers, gaming software, devices, consumables and others competing for shelf space—the most critical factor is how much space to give a particular brand in its product segment.

This is a tactical decision the retailer has to take along with the brand. The shelf space has an ROI– whether it is funded by a brand, distributor or retailer or co-funded. All parties are looking for a return on their investment.

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COVER FEATURE Rebates, promotion, loyalty, discounts

Some brands have a stronger presence than others, but if the product does not move some very urgent decisions need to be taken. “All of us are looking at what we are sacrificing in return for what we are getting,” says Panjabi.

If the product does well and stocks move the next challenge is to ensure sufficient inventory has been planned and is available.

“When you have bigger events like Gitex,

Asbis’ Fusion Club • Asbis’ customers who top AMD sales get to meet key vendor and distributor managers at offsite locations.

• Indepth sales and technology sessions, networking and team building are the objectives of these excursions.

• Asbis partners from UAE, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine have participated in three excursions so far.

58 Reseller Middle East

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planning needs to start months in advance,” says Panjabi. “And the planning has to be down to the T.” If the product comes in one week late it is of no use. At any other time of the year it can be substituted with another brand. But during Gitex if a fast moving product runs out of stock the damage is considerable.

During such events, both the distributor and

the retailer plan for sufficient inventory with backup stocks on both sides. Since a retailer can only hold that much stock on the shelves, they usually invest in off-site warehousing under their control.

During prime shopping periods, retailers also experience conflicting requests for stretched brand targets. Excessively selling a particular brand over another may help reach

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elements for their survival objectives.

COVER FEATURE Rebates, promotion, loyalty, discounts

and which works better for you”, says Panjabi.

With so many factors to juggle why are retailers moving up the brand complexity ladder? The reason remains the same as Gehani’s - the final bottom line.

With brands sold in UAE offering low operating margins, for a retailer like Jacky’s the rebate generated from the volumes of a special launch is what sustains the business.

“In the end you need to supplement it with whatever the brands can support you with” is Panjabi’s summary of survival in the business.

While the elements of channel “reward power” still play the same roles, today’s brand dynamics require all players to adapt these

We don’t keep an open market and keep adding channel players.”

- George Saliba, Sales Manager, Medmark its target but will also risk the retailer losing support from the compromised brand. At this stage the trade off needs to be evaluated. “It’s like a chess game, which piece to move up

Africa’s discount channel Select IT products are entering Africa after being re-tested as “Ok” Oversold and returned products are being consolidated by vendors across Europe and sent back to production or testing factories for re-

certification.

Large channel players who have access to hardware testing plants are part of the vendor “recertification” or “re-furbishment” programmes. These products include routers, switches, internal and external harddisk drives amongst others.

Worldwide about 35 vendors have already initiated these programmes, out of which 25 are from Europe. Channel players who are supporting the re-certification initiative point out that the testing of the products at the labs are as stringent as the original products. Their role is to consolidate unsold components from the market, move them to the labs for re-certification, repack and distribute to selected regions.

From a reliability point of view, the retested products are no different from their

first-run counterparts.

To boost the movement of these products vendors have also launched special incentive and rebate programmes.

However the singular most important factor in this programme is the discounted price offered by the distributor to its customers.

These products are priced 15% less than its counterparts. The final differential price to the end customer is not known.

Channel players are not shipping these products into the Gulf. They are being shipped out to most countries in Africa, which accepts these products at a lower price point.

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PRODUCTS & TECHNOLOGY Packard Bell

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Maestro 230 LED monitor This is an ultra slim monitor with an asymmetric and eye-catching design. It has a transparent frame with sleek black aluminium finish. The viewing frame area is in 16:9 proportion and supports a maximum of 1920x1080 pixel resolution. It has a 12 million to 1.0 contrast ratio and a 5ms fade out rate suitable for fast moving images. Its materials are recyclable based on ISO 1043/11469 standards; it is Energy Star 5.0 compliant, and has a 68% power saving on standby mode. It allows connectivity to a DVD player or gaming console using VGA or DVI port with HDCP protection or digital HDMI interface. The monitor ships with VGA, DVI and HDMI cables.

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oneTwo-S This is the latest version of Packard Bell´s All-in-one entertainment combination desktop. The size format has been squeezed down to 20 inches and features the Touch portal application for complete social networking and interactive sound and video multimedia usage. This includes TouchMemo, TouchFriends, TouchBrowser, TouchMusic, TouchPhoto, TouchVideo, TouchCam interfaces with uploads into YouTube and other online sharing portals. There is also a TV-tuner interface with digital TV type of True studio-audio of THX TruStudio PC. The home desktop uses either a 2nd Generation Intel Core processor or the latest AMD processors up to Phenom II X6. It has an option for NVIDIA or AMD Radeon HD discrete graphic cards, with full Microsoft DirectX 11 support to enhance the display to a full gaming experience as well as wireless keyboard and mouse. It has an in-built Autobackup suite for file backup and data duplication giving the home-user a trouble free usage style.

Liberty tablet This tablet has a 10-inch multi-touch screen, optimised for wide angle viewing and automatic light adjustment with 1280x800 pixel resolution. It uses Google Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” operating system, which is Google´s new OS version optimised for tablets. The operating system supports the latest version of Flash improved browsing experiences. The tablet has an in-built GPS for real time tracking using Google Maps. For gaming it has in-built sensors with NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor for high definition displays. The Dolby Mobile chipset fitted on board enhances the high quality stereo sound. It has 2 and 5 megapixel cameras in the front and back for quick grabs during social meetings. The battery has a 10-hour backup rating. For TV viewing it has an HDMI output socket. It can accept additional 32GB capacity hike through a micro SD.

ixtreme desktop Powered by 2nd generation Intel Core processor family with Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 Technology ensures you get a zippy multimedia and entertainment runthrough. For 3D visual effects, the ixtreme comes fitted with new generation NVIDIA GeForce GT400 series graphics card and a HDMI 1.4 port or new generation AMD Radeon HD 6000 series graphics card.

For sharing and editing photos on social media Web sites the system comes loaded with CyberLink MediaShow 5 software and full version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8. An auto-backup button on the top of the chassis allows convenient overnight backup routines to be triggered. There is also a device deck with ports for inserting, stacking and holding devices like USB, MP3, cameras, camcorders and connecting cables. For AMD loyalist, the system can also be shipped with the latest AMD processors.

EasyNote TX This laptop is designed to support quality entertainment for the user. For high display graphic performance it uses 2nd generation Intel Core processors and NVIDIA GeForce GT540M with 2 MB VRAM or NVIDIA GeForce GT520M with 1 MB VRAM. For high sound fidelity the laptop has Dolby Home Theatre with premium speakers and multimedia optical drive.

The HDMI output port allows viewing of high definition movies.

To enhance the social networking experience it has a 1.3 mega pixel high definition Web cam and high definition audio/video recording It is fitted with both USB 3.0 ports for rapid data transfer as well as conventional USB ports, blue tooth and wifi connectivity. Internal storage capacity is set at 750GB. The battery life provides 9 hours of usage and uses Optimus technology for optimisation. Anti-virus and MyBackup 2.0 are pre-installed on the system.

PRODUCTS & TECHNOLOGY New Arrivals

Kingston´s USB 3.0 flash

Fujitsu´s S700, S900 thin client series Similar ta traditional desktop PC, and offering the same enduser experience, thin clients are cheaper, easier to manage and more reliable, since they contain no moving parts. Fujitsu has brought in Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology for its FUTURthin client product segment. Offering both power and ethernet via a single cable for increased flexibility and connectivity, PoE technology requires very low power consumption, benefiting both the environment and companies´ bottom lines. Thin clients can also be connected to traditional electrical outlet if preferred.

Upto four displays can be connected to the FUTRS900 thanks to an additional graphics card, making it ideal for environments where operators need multiple screens. System performance is enhanced with twmemory slots for increased local performance, while both models feature integrated WLAN for improved connectivity. The thin clients are able to provide processing capabilities for performance-intensive 3D modelling. They are among the first to introduce support for DirectX11 graphics technology. UAE pricing starts at $354 for the S700 and $435 for the S900.

Enhanced capacity and speed card for video, photograhy Kingmax Waterproof SDXC Class 10 memory card has a 64GB storage capacity, with 65 MB/sec read speed and 40 MB/sec write speed. The memory card lineup includes SD 3.01 specifications, which add a new Ultra High Speed Bus I interface structure that will enable transfer speeds of up t104 MB/sec. When paired with a UHS-I device, Kingmax´s Waterproof SDXC UHS-I and SDHC UHS-I memory cards are designed for recording HD-resolution videos while simultaneously performing other recording functions at high speeds. The SDXC memory cards adopt the newest exFAT file system to store DVD image files, HD films and any virtual machine hard-drive files over 4GB, resolving the issue of the FAT32 format´s failure tsupport larger files. This also allows for more free space after fragmentation and with the better utilisation of free-space allocation. The Waterproof SDXC Class 10 supports built-in content protection for recordable media, together with error correction code and wear-leveling features, which enhances the reliability of the memory card. It alsincludes a write-protection switch, which keeps your data even safer, preventing accidental data loss whilst in operation.

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The DataTraveler product range uses a native USB 3.0 controller for better performance and power management. It has a read speed of 100MB/s and a write speed of up to70 MB/s.

When plugged into a USB 2.0 port, the read and write speeds reduce to around 30MB/s. The series is available in 16,32,64GB capacities. It is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and is backed by five-year warranty and support Other specifications Dimensions: 73.70mm x 22.20mm x 16.10mm; Operating Temperature: 0∞C to 60∞C; Storage temperature:-20∞C to 85∞C; durable casing with a solid lanyard loop

Enhanced USB from TwinMOS TwinMOS has launched its A2 premium series of USB devices. This product range has a maximum capacity of 32GB. The devices are in-built with USB 2.0 and have a standard plug and play feature. It has an anodised and sand blasted body in black, brown, blue and red colours.

Capacity: 2,4,8,16,32 GB; Interface: USB 2.0; Maximum data transfer rates: 2GB-4GB: Read 15MB/s, Write 5MB/s; 8GB-16GB: Read 20MB/s, Write 10MB/s; 32GB: Read 30MB/s, Write 15MB/s; Dimensions: 59mm X 17.7mm X 7.7mm; Weight: 10gm; Storage life: More than 10 Years; Warranty: As per product lifetime; Operating systems: Windows 2000, XP, Vista7, Mac OS 10.4 or later, Linux Kernel 2.4 or later, Drivers required for Windows 98SE

Presents

AWARDS2011 For more information please visit: www.resellerme.com/awards2011

Sunday, 12th June 2011 The Westin, Dubai, UAE For nomination enquiries please contact:

For sponsorship opportunities please contact: Richard Judd Tel: +971 55 772 1519 Email: richard@cpidubai.com

Rajashree R Kumar Tel: +971 50 173 9987 Email: raj@cpidubai.com

Arun Shankar Tel: +971 50 141 3662 Email: arun@cpidubai.com

Merle Carrasco Tel: +971 50 922 5866 Email: merle@cpidubai.com

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PRODUCTS & TECHNOLOGY New Arrivals

AMDs latest XFX graphics cards Nvidia´s GeForce GTX 560 GPU

The Fermi architecture-based product brings new performance and enhanced features such as NVIDIA PhysX, 3D Vision, SLI and Surround technologies to this summer´s PC games. With a starting price of $199, the GeForce GTX 560 now joins previously launched GTX 560 Ti GPU in delivering top-rung gaming experience for its price class.

HD 6990 Dual GPU with 3072 Stream Cores Each; 830 MHz GPU Core Clock; 5000 Mhz Memory Speed; 4 GB GDDR5 High Speed Memory; AMD HD3D Technology; PCI-E 2.1 Bus Support; Microsoft DirectX 11 Support; AMD Eyefinity Multi-Display Technology up t4 displays; AMD CrossFireX multi-GPU Support; 3rd Generation TeraScale Engine; Accelerated VideTranscoding, Encoding, and Upscaling; AMD PowerPlay Technology; Enhanced Unified VideDecoder (UVD 3); Enhanced Internet Browser Application Support; Enhanced Microsoft Office 2010 Support; HDMI 1.4a with support for stereoscopic 3D; Deep Color and xvyCC extended gamut

HD 6790 840 MHz GPU Core Clock; 4200 Mhz Memory Speed; 1 GB GDDR5 High Speed Memory; AMD HD3D Technology; PCI-E 2.1 Bus Support; Microsoft DirectX 11 Support; AMD Eyefinity Multi-Display Technology up to 4 displays; AMD CrossFireX multi-GPU Support; 3rd Generation TeraScale Engine; Accelerated VideTranscoding, Encoding, Upscaling; AMD PowerPlay Technology; Enhanced Unified VideDecoder (UVD 3); Enhanced Internet Browser Application Support; Enhanced Microsoft Office 2010 Support; HDMI 1.4a with support for stereoscopic 3D, Deep Color and xvyCC extended gamut

HD 6450 3rd Generation TeraScale Graphics Engine; 40nm Process Technology GDDR5 Memory; AMD Eyefinity Technology; AMD Advanced Parallel Processing Technology (APP); AMD CrossFireX Technology; AMD HD3D Technology; Accelerated VideTranscoding; AMD PowerPlay Technology; Built-in Mini-DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 Outputs; Microsoft Windows 7 Support; Microsoft DirectX 11 Support; OpenGL 3.2 Support; Enhanced Internet Browser Applications.

Nano Gaming RAM from Kingmax Kingmax has released Nano Gaming Ram, a 8GB dual-channel DDR3 2400MHz overclocking module with nano thermal dissipation technology and does not use a thermal heat sink. This makes the module lighter, more eco-friendly and cooling is increased by 10% during overclocking. It has also released the 64GB micro SD card with an adapter thus making it suitable for multiple devices and purposes and a good fit for entertainment on-the-go.

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