SME Channels April 2019

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PLUS

HPE and Nutanix Sign Global Agreement to Deliver Hybrid Cloud as a Service /06 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 02 | PAGES 44 | APRIL 2019 | RS. 20/-

STORAGE /24 FEATURE STORY: THE UNDERRATED ASPECT OF COMPUTING

CHANNEL BIZ  /28 DELL EMC: DELL TECHNOLOGIES: THE BIGGEST GROWTH ENABLER FOR CHANNEL

SECURITY/36 FORTINET: REDUCING SECURITY COMPLEXITY FOR SMB CUSTOMERS

CLOUD COMPUTING: ISN’T PANACEA TO PARTNERS’ GROWTH ! Cloud computing to define a new era in technology and information sector. p....20

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Fortinet Advances to #2 in Firewall, UTM and VPN Revenue /17 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business SME CHAT

/27 REVE ANTIVIRUS:STAYING AHEAD OF THE COMPETITION IS TOUGH BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE

SME CHAT

/34 AXIS COMMUNICATIONS: AXIS’ DEDICATED FOCUS ON R&D HAS HELPED THEM BECOME A LEADER IN THE IP SECURITY MARKET GLOBALLY

SECURITY/40 BARRACUDA NETWORKS: FOR THE CHANNEL PARTNERS, CLOUD IS COMING VERY QUICKLY

MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL

SECURITY OFFERS GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO ENHANCE BOTTOM LINE SANJAY MOHAPATRA

sanjay@smechannels.com

The shocking hacking of Wipro employees’ email accounts has opened the eyes of the market that if the 4th largest IT company of India can be hacked then every company can bear the brunt of the hackers. To remind, Wipro is not only an Indian IT major but also one of the large IT services companies on the earth, which offers IT services to most of the large Indian and global companies including the names like Vodafone, Telenor, HSBC, Citi, Domino’s (some location), Lloyd’s, IAF, Airtel, CITI Bank, NIC, MetLife, DIAL, BHEL, Walmart, Best Buy, T-Mobile, HP, Nokia, Philips, etc. So, hacking of this nature puts every company associated with Wipro on a vulnerable point. The learning is that if Wipro can be targeted then every organization can be. Only difference is an ethical company like Wipro could dare to put it in public domain and bring everything under control before the menace spreads into major accounts which was the intention of the hackers though. In 2018 alone India had seen 15,700 website hacks. Sophos survey had reported that 76 per cent businesses were hit by cyberattacks in 2018, while globally 68 per cent organizations had faced attacks. India was third in cyber-attacks in 2018 after Mexico and France. And the trail of the attack goes to money. So, where the money lies, attack follows it. Another fact is that no IT staff including the leadership like CIO or CISO, can make any sense of what is happening until the attack happens. They are always taken by surprise. Every one knows that the attacks are never sudden. It takes months for the hackers to penetrate into the system and they remain in the system for a considerable amount of time in search of the vulnerability. The challenge for the industry is that there is no prediction mechanism to predict impediments. Predicting, minimizing and averting attacks is a process, which needs processess and procedures. Apart from security solutions, the companies would now invest in VAPT. Companies would now invest on AI & ML based solutions aggressively. Authentication and data governance would be another area where the enterprises would like to increase their investment. Today, most of the security vendors are offering solutions with AI & ML, which can avert the zero day attacks. So in a nutshell, security offers a great market opportunity to the partners to change their bottomline. After the incident like Wipro attack, other companies must have started counting their days and it expands the opportunity to work closely with them.

WD Black SN750 NVME SSD WD’S 2ND-GENERATION, highperformance WD Black® SN750 NVMe SSD with up to 2TB capacity on a single-sided M.2 form factor promises to offer custom-built gaming rigs, comes with an integrated heat sink that helps maintain speed and temperature. This enhanced drive enables gamers and hardware enthusiasts to snag a tangible, next-level competitive boost during intense PC gameplay. In collaboration with EKWB, the WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD offers an option for a sleek EKWB-designed heat sink for capacities ranging from 500GB to 2TB. The heat sink dissipates heat from the drive during intense operation, allowing the SSD to run for longer periods of sustained read and write performance, compared with non-heat sink versions.

SPECIFICATION: SN750 NVMESSD FEATURES A VERTICALLY INTEGRATED SSD PLATFORM DESIGNED TO MAXIMIZE NVME SSD PERFORMANCE FOR GAMING AND HARDWARE ENTHUSIASTS FINAL WORDING: Delivering exceptional sequential read and write performance, the new drive reduces the time required for users to access their programs and files, load games. OVERALL RATING

SME CHANNELS APRIL 2019

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contents

Trusted Advisor of Channel Business

VOLUME 10 ISSUE 02

2019

APR ER COV RY STO

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Sub Editor: Sailza Kumari / Pooja Jain Designer: Ajay Arya Assistant Designer: Deepak Kumar Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Marketing Manager: Nidhi Sail, Priyanka Circulation and Printing: Rajkumar Hansa SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-41055458 / 8587835685 sanjeev@smechannels.com Bangalore #28/1, 3rd Floor, Sri Lakshmi Krupa, Near Shamanna Park, Model House Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore - 560004 Ph. No. +91 88618 21044 Mumbai Tahmeed Ansari 2, Ground Floor, Park Paradise, Kay-Bees CHS. Ltd.,Opp. Green Park, Oshiwara, Andheri (west), Mumbai - 400 053. Ph. +91 22 26338546, Fax +91 22 26395581 Mobile: +91 9967 232424 E-mail: Info@smechannels.com Kolkata S Subhendu BC-286, Laxmi Apartment, Kestopur Kolkata-700101 Phone: 9674804389 EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New

Cloud Computing: Isn’t it Panacea to Partners’ Growth! /20 Cloud computing to define a new era in technology and information sector. India steps up its stand on the field so its citizens can access the full potential of the beauty of cloud even in the rural areas.

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HPE and Nutanix Sign Global Agreement to Deliver Hybrid Cloud as a Service

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Nutanix (NTNX) announced a global partnership to deliver an integrated hybrid cloud as a Service (aaS) solution to the market. This offering will leverage Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software including its built-in, free AHV hypervisor, delivered through HPE GreenLake to provide customers with a fully HPE-managed hybrid cloud that dramatically lowers total cost of ownership and accelerates time to value. Additionally, as part of the agreement, Nutanix will enable its channel

partners to directly sell HPE servers combined with Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software so that customers can purchase an integrated appliance. Businesses today are under constant pressure to innovate and accelerate digital transformation. However, current legacy approaches to hybrid IT present many challenges, including complex systems that require large IT operations staff, increasing software licensing and operating costs, and concerns over vendor lock-in. As a result, businesses are losing flexibility in a world that demands choice and agility. According to an HPE commissioned Forrester report on the total economic impact of HPE GreenLake, customers benefit from a 30 percent Capex savings due to the eliminated need for overprovisioning, and a 90 percent reduction in support and professional services costs. Focus on innovation and acceleration of time to value – by shifting to an IT aaS model, HPE provides 40 percent increased productivity by reducing the support load on IT operations staff and shortens the time to deploy IT projects by 65 percent. “HPE created the modern on-premises, as a service consumption market with HPE GreenLake. Hundreds of global customers now leverage HPE GreenLake to get the benefits of a cloud experience combined with the security, governance, and application performance of an on-premises environment, while paying for the service based on actual consumption,” said Antonio Neri, President and CEO, HPE.

Fortinet Advances to #2 in Firewall, UTM and VPN Revenue As per IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker, for the 4Q18 Fortinet continues to be in the leadership position in the security industry by consistently shipping the most security appliances than any other vendor and accelerating double-digit revenue growth. The 4Q18 IDC tracker outlines that Fortinet realized 17.7% revenue growth in the

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total security appliance market year-over-year, out-pacing the industry average of 16.7%, and advancing from the third to second spot in revenue for the combined Firewall, UTM and VPN markets. Fortinet also saw fourth quarter 2018 appliance shipments increase by 22.4% year-over-year, earning 23.5% unit market share for the total security appliance

market in the quarter. The results demonstrate Fortinet’s ability to provide the most innovative, highest-performing security fabric to secure and simplify IT infrastructure. Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC at Fortinet, said:“Organizations are adopting a holistic approach to security, that is broad, integrated, and automated. As more

enterprise customers consolidate towards a single vendor, Fortinet’s Security Fabric arms customers with a comprehensive solution that spans the entire attack surface from the core network to multi-clouds, and the edge, delivering the performance and threat intelligence required to ultimately protect against today’s evolving threat landscape.



SNIPPETS

Mumbai Cloud Server Honeypot hit with more than 678,000 attempts Sophos’ study of 10 cloud honeypots placed worldwide for 30 days reveals the need for visibility and security to protect what businesses put into hybrid and all-cloud platforms Key Report Findings: • 678,013 login attempts made on Mumbai cloud server Honeypot, second to Ohio, US, Honeypot that recorded more than 950,000 login attempts. • Cloud server Honeypots across 10 global locations attacked within 40 minutes, on average. • Cloud servers were subjected to 13 attempted attacks per minute, per Honeypot, on average. • 123456 was the most used password by cybercriminals for login attempts globally. Sophos announced the findings

of its report, ‘Exposed: Cyberattacks on Cloud Honeypots,’ which reveals that cybercriminals attacked one of the cloud server Honeypots within 0:55:11 minutes of going live in Mumbai. The Honeypots were set-up in 10 most popular Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in the world, including California, Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Mumbai, Ohio, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Sydney over a 30-day period. In the study, more than 5 million attacks were attempted on the global network of Honeypots in the 30-day period, demonstrating how cybercriminals are automatically scanning for weak open cloud buckets.

Sophos Introduces Sophos Central, for its Entire Next-Gen Cybersecurity Sophos, a global leader in network and endpoint security, announced that the next-gen Sophos XG Firewall which is now available through Sophos Central, bringing Sophos’ complete portfolio of cybersecurity solutions into a single, cloud-based management platform. Sophos partners and customers are now able to manage their next-gen endpoint and network protection from a single pane of glass. This advanced approach shares security incident alerts directly between Sophos network and endpoint protection products. The XG Firewall will automatically communicate with Sophos’ endpoint products to proactively protect against threats, interrupt the attack chain by isolating machines, and take steps to remediate the attack. Sophos Central effectively creates a system of security that can leverage the artificial intelligence in Intercept X with EDR to respond faster and more effectively than individual products alone.

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Cloud Computing to shape the next wave of growth – NASSCOM Cloud computing in India is currently estimated to be $2.5 billion in 2018, dominated by IaaS & SaaS. India’s cloud market is expected to grow at a rate of 30% (CAGR), and is estimated to touch over $7 Billion in 2022, i.e., 3-times the current market. Cloud spending in India is second highest in the World at 40.2% (CAGR) over 2016-18, second only to China. Today, cloud is a compelling proposition for the Indian SMEs, enterprises and government. In light of this the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) unveiled its report titled ‘Cloud – Next Wave of Growth in India’. The report was done in collaboration with Google Cloud and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP, highlights the present and the future state of the Indian cloud market, identifies the major technology trends, issues and concerns with respect to the industry. It also focuses on the adoption levels of cloud computing across industry verticals, the IaaS and SaaS ecosystem and, analyses the cloud policy framework & its impact on the overall cloud industry.

MY POINT

“I’M EXCITED ABOUT AUGMENTED REALITY BECAUSE UNLIKE VIRTUAL REALITY, WHICH CLOSES THE WORLD OUT, AR ALLOWS INDIVIDUALS TO BE PRESENT IN THE WORLD BUT HOPEFULLY ALLOWS AN IMPROVEMENT ON WHAT’S HAPPENING PRESENTLY.” TIM COOK, CEO, APPLE

Avaya Envisions The Future Of Life-Saving Healthcare Technologies at EENA Conference 2019 Avaya Holdings Corporation appealed to emergency services organizations and device manufacturers to share in its vision for the future of life-saving emergency healthcare technologies at the EENA Conference, which took place in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from April 10-12. That vision involved, among other innovations, the creation of next-generation emergency response technologies, such as connected Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). By fitting the devices with sensors and having them directly connected to Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), these technologies could become dramatically more effective when it comes to saving lives.“When it comes to AEDs, currently all we have is apps that point you towards the closest defibrillator wherever you are. What’s more, the people who are most likely to use these devices –normal citizens who happen to be in the area where an emergency takes place – aren’t trained in how to use them,” said Markus Bornheim, Practice Lead – Public Safety and Emergency Services, Avaya International.



SNIPPETS

Matrix showcased Telecom and Security Solutions at Matrix Insight 2019

Vertiv Announces Dynamic Online Mode of High Power Density UPS Family

Matrix conducted Matrix Insight on 12th April 2019 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM at Grand by GRT Hotels in Chennai. Matrix showcased an enterprise-grade IP Video Surveillance solution designed, engineered and built specifically for growing multi-location organizations. The entire solution focuses on automating processes, easy integration with Access Control and enhancing efficiency of organizations. They also showcased a new range of Audio compatible and compact Professional Series IP Cameras powered by SONY STARVIS series sensors with EXMOR technology. This gives the cameras an edge over others in terms of exceptional low light performance, consistent image quality during varying light conditions (True WDR), better bandwidth optimization and many other features. Furthermore, they showcased their new Extreme series of Network Video Recorder (NVRX) at the event. This NVR is equipped with 4K decoding capacity and Cascading (up to 20 NVRs), Camera-wise Recording Retention and Database Level Integration. Moreover, these latest NVRs are also backed with intelligent software that helps detect threats and send instant notifications.

Vertiv announced a new feature for the Liebert EXL S1 line of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, adding Dynamic Online mode, which allows operating efficiencyof up to 99 percent. In addition, Vertiv introduced 500 and 600 kVA 400V module ratings for the Liebert EXL S1. The UPS family is available now in India in seven capacity ratings from 300 kVA to 1200 kVA, 400V. This meets the needs of cloud, co-location and enterprise data centers that cannot sacrifice any level of availability for incremental gains in efficiency. With efficiency up to 99 percent, the Liebert EXL S1 operating in Dynamic Online mode offers substantial energy savings over legacy UPS systems which average 94 percent efficiency, and even improves on modern UPS systems that approach 97 percent efficiency.

WORLDWIDE PUBLIC CLOUD REVENUE TO GROW 17.5 PERCENT IN 2019 THE WORLDWIDE PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES MARKET IS PROJECTED TO GROW 17.5 PERCENT IN 2019 TO TOTAL $214.3 BILLION, UP FROM $182.4 BILLION IN 2018, ACCORDING TO GARTNER INC.

TABLE 1. WORLDWIDE PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICE REVENUE FORECAST (BILLIONS OF U.S. DOLLARS)

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

CLOUD BUSINESS PROCESS SERVICES (BPAAS)

45.8

49.3

53.1

57.0

61.1

CLOUD APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES (PAAS)

15.6

19.0

23.0

27.3

31.8

CLOUD APPLICATION SERVICES (SAAS)

80.0

94.8

110.5

126.7

143.7

CLOUD MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY SERVICES

10.5

12.2

14.1

16.0

17.9

CLOUD SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES 30.5 (IAAS)

38.9

49.1

61.9

76.6

TOTAL MARKET

214.3

249.8

289.1

331.2

182.4

BPAAS = BUSINESS PROCESS AS A SERVICE; IAAS = INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE; PAAS = PLATFORM AS A SERVICE; SAAS = SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE NOTE: TOTALS MAY NOT ADD UP DUE TO ROUNDING. Source: Gartner (APRIL 2019)

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EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT Veeam appoints Belinda Jurisic as Channel Director for Asia Pacific and Japan.

*astTECS Announces Appointment of Mr Binish V J as Director, Sales and Member, Board of Director. Tally Solutions appoints Jayati Singh to lead Global Marketing for the company.

K7 Computing Appoints K Purushothaman as the new Chief Executive Officer.



SNIPPETS

VMware Innovates with a New Way to ‘Connect’ With Partners VMware Inc, a leading innovator in enterprise software, announced a fundamental transformation of its partner program landscape, re-imagining the way the company does business with and for its partners to deliver simplicity, choice and innovation. At the company’s Partner Leadership Summit, VMware unveiled VMware Partner Connect, a new, dramatically simplified and flexible program that will go live early next year. The program will enable partners to do business with VMware in a way that aligns to their business models. VMware Partner Connect will empower partners with flexibility to meet customers’ needs, making VMware technologies and services opportunities more accessible. Partners will have an enhanced experience that recognizes and rewards them based on the value they bring to customers, creating a clearer path to profitability.

India’s Public Cloud Services Spending Forecast to Value at $6.3 Billion by 2022, IDC Reports India’s spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is forecasted to reach $2.9 billion in 2019, an increase of 34.5% over 2018, according to the latest update of the IDC Worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending Guide. Although annual spending growth is expected to be moderate during forecast period 2017-22, the market is expected to hit a five-year Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 33.9% in public cloud services spending. “Enterprises in India are realizing the true cloud potential and are including emerging technologies like AI, IoT, Analytics and Blockchain in their portfolio, this anticipated journey towards the value added services are all driven out of the cloud,” Ashutosh Bisht, Senior Research Manager, Customer Insights and Analysis group, IDC said. “Enterprises are adapting to the multi-cloud management capability, the challenge lies in managing and moving workloads seamlessly across multiple cloud platforms” Bisht added.

NetSuite Helps Organizations Grow Beyond Expectations To help organizations across industries gain the visibility, control and agility required to accelerate growth, Oracle NetSuite announced a series of new innovations within the NetSuite solution, including new industry cloud solutions. “Our mission has always been to deliver a unified cloud suite that supports organizations in any industry, at any stage of growth,” said Evan Goldberg, EVP of Oracle NetSuite. “With new innovations spanning commerce and finance to HR and supply chain as well as new industry cloud solutions, we are delivering exponential value for our customers by helping them unlock new possibilities and achieve unprecedented growth.” The latest updates to NetSuite include new analytics, commerce, financial, HR, marketing, project management and supply chain capabilities. The new capabilities help organizations reduce IT complexity, streamline business processes, simplify global trade, improve decision making, and enhance the customer and employee experience.

New Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Version 3 Now Available The new version of Veeam’s fastest growing product will further cement the company’s dominance in the Microsoft Office 365 backupmarket, providing businesses with 30x faster backup, improved security, and enhanced customer visibility and analytics. Veeam Software, the leader in Backup solutions that enable Intelligent Data Management, announced the new Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v3, offering organizations even faster backup, improved security, enhanced visibility and analytics. As enterprises are responsible for protecting their Office 365 data, Veeam’s solution delivers secure backup for Office 365 Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams, enabling quick recovery of individual items and efficient eDiscovery of backup data for Office 365 or hybrid environments.

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NetApp Accelerates Access to Critical Business Data with Ultrafast Performance NetApp announced its Memory Accelerated Data (MAX Data) 1.3 supporting the Intel Optane DC persistent memory. The combination of MAX Data and Intel Optane DC persistent memory enables organizations to stay competitive by doing more with their data so they can do more for their customers. Companies are challenged with using unprecedented volumes of data to achieve real business impact. Taking advantage of data is often easier said than done. New applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, real-time analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT), all of which are memory hungry and fueled by massive datasets, compound this challenge. By using a promising new memory tier, NetApp helps customers put their data to work without having to rearchitect their critical applications. MAX Data gives customers the tools to unlock the value of enormous datasets and extend a Data Fabric strategy all the way into their servers with applications and data that are critical to their business.



SNIPPETS

IAMCP conducts Workshop on Security in Mumbai The International Association for Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP), the world’s largest Independent Microsoft Partner Association with operations in over 40 countries, conducted a workshop in Mumbai for its members on “ Building Your Digital Security Practice”. The Workshop was conducted by Mr. Suresh Ramani, CEO, TechGyan, a worldwide award winning Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. TechGyan has built a Digital Security Practice over past one year primarily around Microsoft Technologies. Speaking at the Workshop, Mr. Suresh Ramani spoke on how partners can leverage various Microsoft Technologies to provide a Comprehensive Security Solution covering Identity Protection, Data Protection, and Device Protection. He then spoke on the new service which TechGyan is offering to its customers, labeled as “Security As A Service”. The key benefit of this service is that at a predictable, fixed cost per user per month, the customer gets the licenses plus deployment plus ongoing security monitoring and support. He also urged Partners that considering the Market Potential of Digital Security, they should make an effort to build their Security Practice.

RP tech India Becomes Distributor of Super Micro Computer

Ericsson Showcases the Future of Mobile Networks in India Ericsson showcased innovative new technologies – from concept ‘radios access network’ products called Radio Stripes, to new AI and ML based solutions ready to be introduced in the networks– at its flagship technology showcase, ‘Barcelona Unboxed’, held in Gurgaon. Ericsson Radio Stripes come with a nearly invisible form factor but enable truly ubiquitous high capacity radio everywhere. Ericsson Radio stripe is a visionary mobile network design that is super-distributed and has the potential to deliver better quality and robust radio performance while enabling easy and flexible deployment of mobile networks. The Company also showcased a host of other demonstrations and use cases across 5G and IoT, including Ericsson Spectrum Sharing, Intelligent Managed Services and Communication on Smart Devices. Ericsson ‘Made for India’ radio solutions including Massive MIMO and indoor solutions comprising of small cells and micro cells were also showcased at the event.

In a bid to strengthen its enterprise solutions portfolio, RP tech India, country’s only value-added distributor has announced a distribution partnership with Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI). Under this tie-up, the company will offer Supermicro’s wide range of Enterprise Server Storage & Networking solutions catering to the SMB, IDC/CDC, High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) verticals through SI partners. Supermicro is a global leader in high performance, high-efficiency server technology and innovation. The Company provides end-to-end green computing solutions to the Data Center, Cloud Computing, Enterprise IT, Big Data, HPC, and Embedded markets. Commenting on the partnership, Mr. Kapal Pansari, Director at RP tech India said, “We are very excited to join hands with Supermicro Computer. This partnership will enable us to strengthen our presence in the highly competitive Server business in the country.”

CITRIX Delivers Next-Generation Networking Solutions on Google Cloud Platform Citrix Systems Inc, announced that it will make Citrix SD-WAN and Citrix ADC available on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The move will enable companies to extend their networks to the cloud and deliver applications in an agile and scalable way that gives users access to the tools they need and prefer to use and perform at their best anywhere, anytime from any device. The news came during Google Cloud Next ’19 which took place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. “Application performance and delivery is all about experience and choice,” said Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer, Citrix. “In making our networking solutions available on GCP, Citrix is providing companies with even greater cloud choice and a simple, efficient way to deploy the ever-increasing list of SaaS, cloud, virtual, web and microservicesbased apps their employees need to be engaged and productive.”

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Coinhive Stops Digging, but Cryptomining Still Dominates Check Point Research, the Threat Intelligence arm of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, a leading provider of cyber security solutions globally, has published its latest Global Threat Index for March 2019. The index reveals that while cryptomining services such as Coinhive have closed down, cryptominers are still the most prevalent malware aimed at organizations globally. As announced last month, both Coinhive and Authedmine stopped their mining services on March 8th. For the first time since December 2017, Coinhive dropped from the top position but, despite having only operated for eight days in March, it was still the 6th most prevalent malware to affect organizations during the month. At its peak, Coinhive impacted 23% of organizations worldwide.



SNIPPETS

F-Secure Nets Two AV-TEST Best Protection Awards In One Go F-Secure has won its sixth and seventh AV-TEST Institute’s Best Protection Award. The accolades re-affirm that businesses and consumers can continue to place their trust in F-Secure. F-Secure Protection Service for Business (PSB) and F-Secure SAFE passed AV-TEST’s rigorous scrutiny to gain the awards. “F-Secure SAFE and PSB Computer Protection products provided the highest level of security services throughout 2018, which AV-Test recognized with its Best Protection 2018 Award,” says AV-TEST CTO Maik Morgenstern. AV-TEST examines Windows platform solutions monthly and gives the Best Protection Award to the solutions that consistently perform the best throughout the year. AV-TEST experts evaluate how well security products protect against real threats, instead of being theoretically evaluated in simulated test conditions. The German company’s meticulously-designed tests involve using many of the weapons that are at cybercriminals’ disposal.

Mcafee MVISION Cloud Integrates with Google Cloud Platform McAfee, the device-to-cloud cybersecurity company, announced its support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Cloud Security Command Center (Cloud SCC). McAfee MVISION Cloud now integrates with GCP Cloud SCC to help security professionals gain visibility and control over their cloud resources and detect and respond to threats. Cloud SCC users can gain enriched information from the extensive configuration audit capabilities of McAfee MVISION Cloud to locate hidden risks and enforce configuration best practices. Generally available, Cloud SCC is a comprehensive security management and data risk platform for GCP, designed to help security teams prevent, detect and respond to threats from a single-pane-of-glass. It provides visibility in what assets are running in Google Cloud as well as risky misconfigurations, so enterprises can reduce their exposure to threats.

Global Device Shipments Will Be Flat in 2019 Worldwide shipments of devices — PCs, tablets and mobile phones — are on pace to reach 2.21 billion units in 2019, exhibiting flat growth year over year, according to Gartner, Inc. The PC market is expected to continue its downward trend, while the mobile phone market is set to return to growth in 2020. “For the eighth consecutive year, the PC market is at a standstill,” said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director at Gartner. “PC shipments will total 258 million units in 2019, a 0.6 percent decline from 2018.” Traditional PCs are set to decline 3 percent in 2019 to total 189 million units. Consumers are increasingly retiring their PCs but not replacing them, with shipments down by another 2.5 million units in 2019. For businesses, the Windows 10 migration continues into the next phase. “By moving the Windows 10 migration to 2020, organizations increase the risk of remaining on an unsupported operating system. Windows 7 support is scheduled to end in January 2020,” said Mr. Atwal. Gartner analysts predict that Windows 10 will represent 75 percent of the professional PC market by 2021.

Airtel Selects Ericsson For VoLTE Expansion Ericsson has been selected by Bharti Airtel to expand its VoLTE (voice over LTE) services in India. This agreement will result in deployment of the Ericsson Cloud VoLTE solution, an industrialized solution to deliver VoLTE services onto a customer data center. The solution enables high-definition voice (HD voice) and provides modern communication services experiences across many types of devices, over LTE, Wi-Fi, and future 5G access. Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel, says, “We remain committed to building a state-of-the-art future-ready network as part of our network transformation program - Project Leap - and deliver bestin-class digital experience to our smartphone customers. This partnership with Ericsson will allow us to rapidly increase VoLTE capacity to serve our growing traffic, and make our network prepared to easily introduce new communication services today and in 5G.”

16 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2019

DIGEST INTEL OPTANE TECHNOLOGY AND INTEL QLC NAND TECHNOLOGY COME TOGETHER Intel revealed details about Intel Optane memory H10 with solid-state storage – an innovative device that combines the superior responsiveness of Intel Optane technology with the storage capacity of Intel Quad Level Cell (QLC) 3D NAND technology in a single space-saver M.2 form factor. “Intel Optane memory H10 with solid-state storage features the unique combination of Intel Optane technology and Intel QLC 3D NAND – exemplifying our disruptive approach to memory and storage that unleashes the full power of Intel-connected platforms in a way no else can provide,” said Rob Crooke, Intel Senior Vice President andGeneral Manager of the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group.

ARRAY NETWORKS MOVES TO SECOND POSITION Array Networks has secured second position in the application delivery controller (ADC) market in India for Q42018. Compared to Q42017, Array’s market share in ADC category has grown to 22.6% from 17.4% as per IDC’s Quarterly Ethernet Switch tracker, Q42018. The significant growth predominantly comes from its latest wins and closing deals in the government and large enterprise sector. “We are very happy to see this stupendous growth in the market paving ways for Array Networks’ efforts in the Indian Market. The credit goes to our Array India team, which has been able to not only understand the customer requirements across various verticals but also deliver the implementations on time,” said Shibu Paul, Vice President - International Sales at Array Networks.

FORTINET EXPANDS ITS SECURITY FABRIC Fortinet releases the latest version of its flagship operating system, FortiOS 6.2, at its global customer and partner conference—Accelerate 19. This FortiOS 6.2 release continues the evolution of the Fortinet Security Fabric with over 300 new innovations that span Fortinet’s products and solutions portfolio, enabling organizations to achieve a security-driven network required for the edge and multi-cloud environments created by digital transformation.

DIGISOL SHOWCASES NEW POE ENTERPRISE CABLING SERIES AT BICSI 2019, MUMBAI DIGISOL Systems Ltd, participated in BICSI India Conference held at The Westin, Mumbai. The company showcased the new Enterprise Cabling Series. The series comprises of CAT 6A Keystones and Industrial Field Plugs that are PoE+ compatible. These newly launched offerings are Made In India. Understanding the growing market demands for POE+ compatible IT networking solutions, DIGISOL introduced these products that offers better performance, reduces resistance in the network and improves noise cancellation.


SNIPPETS

Equifax Accelerates Digital Lending Process Equifax Analytics Pvt Ltd, announced that it is joining forces with AccountScore, an analytics-based business in London with presence in India. Together, the companies will develop products that will provide a 360-degree view about customers by considering their assets and liabilities. The alliance will also work on developing analytics attributes of the customers’ based on their transactional behavior using the data available with AccountScore and the analytics expertise of both the firms to design and develop it. “India is a very exciting market for AccountScore with a unique opportunity that needs innovative solutions. The partnership in India with Equifax further deepens our strong relationship that we have on the back of our existing Open Banking partnership in UK,” said Joseph Hungin, Head of International at AccountScore.

Data-Driven Service Management Gets AI-ML Boost at InterraIT Deepening its engagement with artificial intelligence and machine learning, InterraIT buttressed its position as a leader in the IT service industry with the announcement of a partnership with Bayestree Intelligence, an enterprise product company that specializes in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology. The partnership will help InterraIT incorporate ML- and AI-based solutions to offer its global customers next-generation digital technology experiences and efficiency. Bayestree’s unique product, Sainapse, is a patented product that specifically targets service management across IT, product and business functions. An intuitive AI platform that learns from even a limited amount of data, Sainapse can cut resolution time by more than 80 percent in three months and reduce operating cost by 50 percent in nine months. Plus it approximates plug-and-play functionality and can be deployed on premise or cloud, eliminating payroll overheads on data scientists. Crucially, the platform does away with the use third-party interfaces and associated concerns about data sharing. “Machine learning and cognitive technology is pervasive in the business landscape,” says Asoke K. Laha, Founder and CEO, InterraIT. “The partnership with Bayestree equips us to help customers address a range of issues including efficiency and economy.”

Annual SonicWall Cyber Threat Report- Rise in Worldwide Targeted Attacks SonicWall announced the release of the 2019 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report that delivers an in-depth look at threat intelligence obtained from its more than 1million sensors from around the world. Analyzed by the SonicWall Capture Labs, threat data collected over the course of 2018 indicates an escalation in the volume of cyberattacks and new, targeted threat tactics used by cyber criminals. “Cyber perpetrators are not letting up in their relentless pursuit to illegally obtain data, valuable information and intellectual property,” said Bill Conner, President and CEO, SonicWall. “We must be unyielding in this cyber arms race. Sharing vital threat information with our customers and partners provides them a tactical advantage. But it’s also important to arm those at the forefront of this battle with this intelligence, promote global awareness of the threat landscape and continue to facilitate important dialogue around today’s most prevalent cyber threats.” In the wake of vulnerabilities like Spoiler, PortSmash, Foreshadow, Meltdown and Spectre that can lead to side-channel attacks, SonicWall threat researchers have deemed processor vulnerabilities a growing security concern for both software and hardware technologies.

LG India Turns Empty Box into Tools for Education LG India, known for ‘innovation for a better life’ on Global Recycling Day, March introduced an Innovative Reusable Tool for Education. The idea is to enable LG buyers to support elementary education in India with the innovative LG BOXSLATE programme. LG BOXSLATE is a unique slate made out of empty LG packaging cartons. Through this initiative, LG India is encouraging its buyers to donate the empty LG cartons after the product installation. The cartons are then collected from the customers, printed and cut into multiples slates recreating a simple elementary education tool. The idea came out from the observation that elementary education in many schools in rural India is still through chalks and slates. While many children still write on floors, there are those who do not even have enough sustainable tools to write. LG BOX SLATE has been designed to reduce this glaring social inequality and to enable such children with basic tools to write.

HyperX Announces Entity Gaming as its E-Sports Team in India HyperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology, announced that it is becoming the official sponsor of Entity Gaming in India. This is the brand’s First eSports team sponsorship in India, exclusively with the HyperX Peripherals, SSDs and Memory products. In-line with the numerous high impact platforms that HyperX has helped to develop, this sponsorship complements the brand’s intent to support talent in the Indian gaming community. Entity Gaming is one of India’s most successful professional eSports team with a dedicated squad for competing in CS:GO. “HyperX is entering into our line of sponsors monetarily too! It is a first for us and we believe that we are setting a standard for the industry with regards to how sponsorships are done. We welcome this sea change in the scene and are excited to see how this pans out for the Indian esport ecosystem. India’s esport circuit requires the right infrastructure and funding to make the nation world-ready. This is a step in the right direction.” said Varun Bhavnani, Director & Chief Gaming Officer, Entity Gaming.

SME CHANNELS 17 APRIL 2019


SNIPPETS

Alibaba Cloud Outlines Strategic Upgrade after a Decade of Success Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing and data intelligence arm of Alibaba Group, unveiled at its Beijing Summit the new strategy to develop the company into a more technologically inclusive platform. Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud and Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Group, for the first time elaborated publicly on the strategic upgrade of the business, evolving to serve as a key component of the Alibaba Business Operating System, and empowering customers and ecosystem partners to win in the digital era. Cloud computing is becoming the main business focus of Alibaba Group and over the past decade Alibaba Cloud has been the technology and public cloud platform underpinning the entire Alibaba economy from e-commerce and payment, to logistics and supply chain management. The scalability, reliability, and security of Alibaba Cloud are paramount to the business and the platform has successfully sustained real-world tests on a daily basis, most notably during the Alibaba 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, businesses of all sizes have leveraged these proven successes to grow and innovate in China and overseas.

Coca-Cola Secured its Manufacturing Units with Matrix Biometric Device Coca-Cola has established its manufacturing units in Kudus and Pirangut, Maharashtra, India and was looking for biometric solutions to secure their premises. Coca-Cola required individual servers at both locations. Their prime requirement was to restrict unauthorized user entry into secured area. Moreover, they required user punch i.e. events for both the locations separately. However, shortage of power supply ports at both the locations was a major problem. Providing separate power for door lock, biometric device and exit switch was a concern. In order to resolve the challenge that shortage of power supply port presented, Matrix offered its premium range of biometric device which itself offers power to door lock and exit switch. COSEC biometric devices have the capability to supply power to door locks and exit switch/reader from the devices itself. Results: • Restrict Unauthorized Users to Secure Premises • Reduction in Cumbersome HR Tasks • Accurate Maintenance of User Data

Dil Se Thank You! RAH Infotech in association with Radware & Rapid7 hosted an exclusive partner event for Hitachi Micro Clinic on the 1st of March 2019 at Crown Plaza, New Delhi. The theme ‘Dil Se Thank You’ was a gentle gesture to highlight the work done together as well as a way forward for a successful year 2019. “I have mentioned this earlier too, RAH Infotech is an extended arm of Radware. We value our relationship and appreciate all the hard work that Team RAH deploys to bring in projects and execute them efficiently. This event with Hitachi is a true representation of their commitment towards us and our partner ecosystem. It was indeed an honour to be present here and I would also like to thank team Hitachi for attending this event with such enthusiasm. We look forward to a wonderful year ahead in partnership with RAH and Hitachi” said Mr Nikhil Taneja - MD Radware India, SAARC & Middle East.

DigitalOcean Hosted The 5th Edition Of Its Flagship ‘Tide’ Conference The signature cloud conference aimed at bringing together eminent technology experts and VCs to enable the developer & startup community to learn how they could build successful businesses on cloud. DigitalOcean, the cloud for developing modern apps, hosted the 5th edition of its flagship event TIDE, in association with NASSCOM 10,000 startups. The keynote, presented by Hemant Mohapatra, Partner, Lightspeed Ventures, on ‘The Makings of a Product Nation: The Evolution of the Indian Startup Ecosystem’ spoke about how the landscape of startups in India is evolving and how cloud adoption by the top organizations has enabled a faster evolution in the market. He also showcased the growing developer community in India and India being number two in Developer engagement on Stack Overflow and number three in GitHub contributions. The conference had panelists speaking about a diverse and interesting set of topics ranging from ‘Building and Scaling a SaaS platform: The OpsRamp journey’, ‘Technology Decisions to Build your Modern Applications’, ‘Growth vs Unit Economics: What Investors want from you’ and also a panel for startups from DigitalOcean’s Hatch program to share learnings from their startup journey.

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Compuage and Arcserve Conducted Focused Data Protection Event in Bengaluru Compuage and Arcserve recently conducted an event named Data Protection by Arcserve in Febuary, 2019 in Bengaluru. Varied audience consisting sales and pre sales heads from IT infrastructure, networking and storage industry including business continuity operations team attended the same. The objective of the event was to create awareness for the need of data protection and how Arcserve can be leveraged for the same. The session was conducted by Mr. Aditya Rao – CSM for South and Sri Lanka, Mr Mohd. Maqsood – CSM for South and Sri Lanka from Arc Serve, and Mr. Dheeraj Potdukhe from Compuage. The session highlighted critical topics related to data protection, storage, archival and recovery which is very critical in today’s times. The meet was informative as well as interactive. Over 50 unique channel partners attended the event and appreciated the efforts of the team.


SECURITY

WIPRO HIT BY AN ADVANCED PHISHING ATTACK, INITIATES INVESTIGATION The advanced phishing attack on Wipro proves why the email is still so vulnerable. While the enterprise employs new technology to keep its data secure, hackers continue to find, attack and exploit the weak spots.

NEELESH KRIPALANI, SENIOR VP AND HEAD, CLOVER INFOTECH

“THE APPROACH TOWARDS CYBER SECURITY THREATS NEEDS TO BE PROACTIVE RATHER THAN REACTIVE.”

W

ipro has recently been the target of an advanced phishing attack. It was reported that Wipro was aware that its email systems have been breached by hackers to target its customer systems and the company was in the process of building a new private email network for the employees. The attack came, when the company was trying to recover from the breach. “We came to know of a potentially abnormal activity within our network, about a week back, in respect of few of our employee accounts, who were subjected to an advanced phishing campaign.” Wipro posted a statement on its official Twitter Account. The data breach was first reported by a cybersecurity blog, KrebsOnSecurity. According to this platform, Wipro was “dealing with a multi-month intrusion from an assumed state-sponsored attacker and that Wipro’s systems were seen being

DR AJAY DATA, CEO, DATA XGEN TECHNOLOGIES

RAJIV SINGH, SENIOR V.P. & GLOBAL HEAD OF ENTERPRISE SECURITY & RISK MANAGEMENT, TECH MAHINDRA

“IT IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE TO EDUCATE EMPLOYEES FOR PHISHING ATTACKS, EXPERIENCE MOCK ATTACKS, DEVELOP A SECURITY POLICY THAT KEEPS SENSITIVE DATA ENCRYPTED.”

“THEY ARE THE MOST SENSITIVE AND IMPORTANT RECORD OF OUR PERSONAL DATA WHICH CAN BE EASILY COMPROMISED, AS A RESULT OF E-MAIL ID BREACHES.”

used as jumping-off points for digital fishing expeditions targeting at least a dozen Wipro customer systems.” Commenting on the immediate steps taken to tackle the attack, Wipro stated, “We have used our industry-leading cyber security practices and partner ecosystems for these steps. We are collaborating with our partner ecosystem to collect and monitor advanced threat intelligence for enhancing security posture. We continue to monitor our enterprise and infrastructure at a heightened level of alertness.” As soon as the attack was identified, Wipro took prompt action and set off a forensic investigation into the matter. It also took quick remedial actions by identifying the affected users and taking the

necessary steps to containing and mitigating the potential impact of the breach. “We have also retained a well-respected, independent forensic firm to assist us in the investigation. We continue to monitor our enterprise and infrastructure at a heightened level of alertness,” Wipro added. The Wipro incident surely raises questions on how secure is the enterprise market? Though, security has always been a major concern of the business, it has taken a new dimension in the age of interconnectivity. An attack of this scale, then not just has the potential to compromise the information of the company or the employees, but also of their clients and customers. There is an unavoidable ripple effect at work here.

SME CHANNELS 19 APRIL 2019


SPECIAL STORY

CLOUD COMPUTING: ISN’T IT PANACEA TO PARTNERS’ GROWTH!

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SPECIAL STORY

Cloud computing is set to define a new era in technology and information sector. India steps up its stand on the field so its citizens can access the full potential of the beauty of cloud even in the rural areas. It already has a humungous consumer base and it is set to place India among the top nations when it comes to digital transactions. BY SAILZA KUMARI

sailza@accentinfomedia.com

A

s per IDC, India’s spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is forecasted to reach $2.9 billion in 2019 which will see an increase of 34.5% since last year. “Enterprises in India are realizing the true cloud potential and are including innovative technologies like AI, IoT, Analytics and Blockchain in their portfolio, this anticipated journey towards the valueadded services are all driven by cloud,” says Ashutosh Bisht, Senior Research Manager, Customer Insights and Analysis Group, IDC. Talking about the Indian context, cloud computing is set to transform the manner in which business is conducted and how it evolves in the digital chain. Especially, small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) spread all over the country. This sector is responsible for about 40% of the workforce and is expected to grow at a rate of 8% per year. In 2018, the USA imposed a tariff on $250 billion worth of Chinese products. In retaliation, China slapped tariff on $110 billion worth of US goods. This just might be good news for India, as with this war, it does leave a vacant seat at the top table on international business. So far, India has always enjoyed a second place to China, but now that this trade war is hampering Chinese economy, India’s time has finally come to step up. But India can only do this, if it maintains its quest for technology empowerment and focus on its digital transformation. So, Cloud computing could be one of the right choices to step up modernization of infrastructure and optimize resources. We need industrial IOT, AI and Blockchain, etc. implementation on a massive scale to match the scale of the developed economies and it costs a lot to have these technologies in place. Adoption of Cloud computing is therefore the only way to accommodate the real productive tools and technologies for the organizations. Now the story becomes a little complex in terms of adopting cloud because there are many clouds in different forms and manifestations. There is public cloud, there is private cloud and hybrid cloud. So which cloud to go for? Are the customers ready for this? Pramod Sharda, CEO, IceWarp India & Middle East, maintains, “Cloud computing is a part of digital transformation where the landscape is immense and there is no one-solution-fits-all strategy that is also a rapidly growing part which the decision makers cannot ignore. Accelerated growth of the cloud is associated with a growing number of workloads that are shifted to the cloud as well as enhancement of the total IT budget that is earmarked for cloud computing. The factors that are driving the growth are the flexibility of costs, ondemand availability, enhanced mobility, optimization of resources and manageability.” On the other hand, Sundar Balasubramanian, Senior Director-Commercial Sales & Partners, VMware is very selective in his choice of words. According to him despite the growing awareness of cloud computing, it is still uncharted territory for many organizations in India, who need help identifying and implementing a cloud strategy that is right for their business. Some enterprises may be using a cloud platform for the very first time which makes it difficult for them to manage business applications on cloud platforms. Sridhar S, Vice President-Cloud Business, Enterprise Distribution, HCL Infosystems Ltd, said, “The companies have chartered their next phase of growth with technology as their core differentiator and cloud forms an integral part of this technology. The adoption of Cloud First strategy by both technology providers and customers is a key reason for the

SME CHANNELS 21 APRIL 2019


SPECIAL STORY

“WE ARE WITNESSING BUSINESS AND MISSIONCRITICAL WORKLOADS MOVING TO CLOUD. ” R VENKATESH, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, REDINGTON INDIA LIMITED.

growth in the market.” How can the adoption to cloud start? “Themost important first step is to open a cloud-first model. This can be accomplished by offering proper training and streamlining services. There are several challenges associated with traditional on-premises data centres such as it is expensive, needs maintenance, etc. Reliability can be an issue as not all companies can access major providers leading to delivering inconsistent performances. Lack of bundled solutions from one cloud service provider can be a problem for smaller enterprises and integrating solutions could be a way to counter this issue,” said, Sundar Balasubramanian. Cogwheel in the route to market mechanism is the partner ecosystem and India’s IT market is purely partner led. Partners are really frustrated with the low margin, and their growth is stemmed due to low margin on product sales. They can now take the plunge into cloud journey and exploit the opportunity aggressively. But where should the partners invest in terms of resources and certification? Because the picture is a little sketchy. Of course, most of the distributors including Ingram Micro, Redington, Compuage Infocom, HCL Infosystems, etc., these days are ready with cloud offerings. As per Sridhar of HCL, this mechanism is really geared up. He says, “The role of System Integrators and Distributors is changing wherein the customer expects system integration partners to understand deeply their business and help them re-conceptualize their business models. HCL Infosystems leverages its System Integration expertise and provides a consulting approach to provide a complete business aligned IT solution to its customers by leveraging the Cloud. The customers can rely on us for complete designing and advisory to delivery of the best in class products and solutions including Cloud.” Similarly, Red Hat has strategic partnerships

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which ensure their customer’s success. Their certified cloud and service provider program is designed to help their partners to better meet customer needs and they ensure this by partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, CTRLs Cloud, NetMagic Cloud, ESDS cloud, Sify Cloud and many more. Red Hat’s open source technologies bring a consistent foundation to any cloud deployment: public, private, hybrid, or multi. Red Hat Enterprise Linux works with every workload in any environment, their container platform packages and seamlessly moves apps from cloud-to-cloud, and other supporting tools that help enterprises of all sizes manage and automate it all. Red Hat cloud offering gives them the control, scalability, agility to meet their business requirement - no matter where they are in their cloud journey. “Our vision is to build partnerships that deliver digital transformation the open source way.Today, there is tremendous opportunity for partners who can identify the hybrid cloud opportunity and build service delivery capability. With the right service capabilities partners can generate higher profits as well as retain and grow their customer base. Partners skilled in the concepts of kubernetes, containerization, automation and mobility would be able to implement their expertise and foresight in making more informed transitions and fulfill the role of system integrators while providing services to their consumers”, said Neeraj Bhatia, Director-Channel and Partner Alliances, Red Hat India and South Asia. In 2018, VMware launched the VMware Master Services Competencies to drive business to partners leveraging the virtualization leader’s technological innovations to deliver on going services for their key partner organizations. Commenting on the IDC Report, Sundar said, “Cloud and cloud strategy are the top concerns for CIOs today. In India, public cloud is yet to

“CLOUD COMPUTING IS A PART OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WHERE THE LANDSCAPE IS IMMENSE AND THERE IS NO ONE-SOLUTIONFITS-ALL STRATEGY.” PRAMOD SHARDA, CEO, ICEWARP INDIA & MIDDLE EAST

resonate fully with most companies following the 80:20 rule i.e. 80% private cloud and 20% public cloud.But multi cloud adoption is on the rise today. And, as more devices get connected, computing will be increasingly done at the “edge” – at, or near, the source of the data. I believe this trend will prompt companies to process and analyse data using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in a hybrid cloud operating model – one which embraces and employs characteristics of both the public and on-premises (private) cloud infrastructure.” “Though initial cloud adoption was more towards back up, storage, spiky workloads, and non-critical business applications, but the current trends, where business models are data driven, the advent of new technologies like big data, AI, containers, ML, IoT, blockchain have augmented cloud adoption. We are witnessing business and mission-critical workloads moving to cloud. Enhanced security features and data residency options are even enabling enterprises, regulated and public sector towards a “Cloud First” approach,” R Venkatesh, Executive Vice President, Redington India Limited. Redington ventured into cloud business 3 years


SPECIAL STORY

“RED HAT’S OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGIES BRING A CONSISTENT FOUNDATION TO ANY CLOUD DEPLOYMENT: PUBLIC, PRIVATE, HYBRID, OR MULTI.” NEERAJ BHATIA, DIRECTOR-CHANNEL AND PARTNER ALLIANCES, RED HAT INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA.

ago by investing, learning and transforming to a cloud solution provider. We are committed for success in cloud through the 2-tier engagement model. Redington has invested in 3 competences to help partners & customers to explore and adopt cloud. Venkatesh added, “First, we started developing a unified digital cloud platform. We began to aggregate world class cloud services and offer them through this digital platform that enabled partners to auto provision, consume, view consumption reports, subscription management and monthly billing of these services. We have invested in team of advanced presales, cloud solution architects and cloud consults who devised cloud adoption framework, to make cloud as focal point in solving customer’s business problems through cloud assessments, migration, security on cloud and cloud optimization solutions. As a unique offering, we built team of cloud engineers to implement, migrate and manage the workloads that moved to cloud. our managed services offering include 24x7 support services, cloud monitoring, cloud management, reactive & proactive support series. These end to end solutions are

offered as “Redington Managed Cloud Solutions” to customers through channel partners.” To cater to the cloud market, IceWarp offers SaaS model to start with. However, they also have a cloud offering which is being used by various enterprises across the world. In India alone, they have 800+ customers using the solution. Since every business needs email, the opportunity for this is huge. Their Email Enterprise is a complete communication and collaboration platform based on a cloud mode which includes audio & video calls, Team Chat, Web meeting, storage, and documents. It is an all-in-one solution that fits across all industry segments and verticals. They also offer Hybrid Email which means it can co-exist with any other email platform in the market on the same domain. So, like the CIOs, the partners need to see certain things in choosing the cloud solution. They must see whether they should provide only public cloud or public and private cloud. Because all the customers would not look at public cloud only. Secondly, partners must look at the cost aspect of the solution provider – whether the cost structure of certain cloud computing platform is competi-

“IN INDIA, PUBLIC CLOUD IS YET TO RESONATE FULLY WITH MOST COMPANIES FOLLOWING THE 80:20 RULE I.E. 80% PRIVATE CLOUD AND 20% PUBLIC CLOUD.” SUNDAR BALASUBRAMANIAN, SENIOR DIRECTOR-COMMERCIAL SALES & PARTNERS, VMWARE

“THE COMPANIES HAVE CHARTERED THEIR NEXT PHASE OF GROWTH WITH TECHNOLOGY AS THEIR CORE DIFFERENTIATOR AND CLOUD FORMS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THIS TECHNOLOGY.” SRIDHAR S, VICE PRESIDENT-CLOUD BUSINESS, ENTERPRISE DISTRIBUTION, HCL INFOSYSTEMS LTD

tive or better. Thirdly, they must look at the reliability and reputation of the service provider. Fourthly, the partners should evaluate the downtime of the service provider, which is the critical factor of evaluation of the customers, should evaluate the process of securing passwords. The partners should look at the Data Privacy strategy and tools being used by the service provider.And the final aspect to to take care of is the vendor lock in whether the service provider is flexible enough. Finally… There is no doubt that cloud computing is here to stay. It is a new technological development and it will undoubtedly have a great impact all over the world. But the major question that arises about cloud is its privacy issue. Clients have a right to be sceptical about their data. This is why majority of the users are worried about who can access their data, as they should be. India needs regulations and rules for cloud computing, because without them, everyone would just be fumbling in the dark. Once the required laws are in place, it will be safe to say that cloud computing is the future we need.

SME CHANNELS 23 APRIL 2019


FEATURE

STORAGE: THE UNDERRATED

ASPECT OF COMPUTING Because businesses use data to derive information for their day-to-day operations, likewise storage is a repository that enables them to store and retrieve this digital data.

BY SAILZA KUMARI

sailza@accentinfomedia.com

I

n today’s world information is increasingly important. Twenty-first century inhabitants are dependents on information, living in an on-command, on-demand world which means that we have a need for information whenever and wherever it is required. On a daily basis we access the internet for searches, to check social media, receive and send emails, share photos and videos, and whole other spectrum of applications. Since we have at our disposal a growing number of content-generating devices, more and more information are being created

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by individuals rather than by organizations. And this information, which is being created by individuals gains value when it is shared with others. Usually the information is located on devices like mobile phones, laptops, ipads. To circulate this information it has to be uploaded via a network to other data centres. While the behemoth task of creating information is done by individuals, it is important to note that it is stored and managed by a small number of niche organizations. The volume of the information, its dependency and its value added importance in the business

world continues to grow at an interesting rate. It is no secret that businesses these days depend on fast and reliable access to information which in turn in very critical to its success. Some of the famous examples of this include airline reservations, ATMs, e-commerce, telephone billing systems, inventory management, product designs, e-mail archives, credit cards, web portals, global capital markets and many more. Because of the increasingly critical status of the impact that information has on businesses there is an inherent need to manage and protect the data


FEATURE

SRIKANTH DORANADULA, SENIOR DIRECTOR AND HEADSYSTEMS, ORACLE.

“WITH THE CONTINUED DIGITAL PUSH BY THE GOVERNMENT AS WELL AS THE PRIVATE SECTOR, SEVERAL ANALYSTS AND INDUSTRY EXPERTS OPINE THAT THE DEMAND FOR COMPUTE AND STORAGE WILL FURTHER GO UP.”

which is very important. Because of the humungous volume of data in storage system business, there are strategies to classify data according to its value and rules have been created for the treatment of the same. Apart from providing financial and regulatory benefits, they also provide manageability benefits to the organizations. Because of the ever changing scenario, data centres now view information storage as one of their core elements along with operating systems, networks, databases and applications. The technology for storage continues to evolve with advancements in technical aspects which increase the ease of avail-

ability, security, scalability, performance, integrity, and manageability. As per IDC’s APAC quarterly reports on enterprise storage, India’s external storage market witnessed a growth of 23.1% YoY (by vendor revenue) and stood at $81.8 million in Q3 2018. A study by Frost & Sullivan states that the APAC region is among the fastest growing markets for enterprise data storage in the world. With emergence of disruptive technologies like cloud, AI/ ML, Autonomous database, blockchain, IoT, the market opportunities for storage in India continues to mature. There have been demands

for storage coming from various sectors such as banking, manufacturing, and many more. Indian organisations are focusing on using intelligent data to drive their business in the digital economy. However, enterprises need to ensure they safeguard data and put it to the best possible system to store that data and bring competitive advantages. “We have consistently seen growth for the storage market in India. Our storage strategy ensures that Oracle software runs faster and more efficiently on Oracle storage. With the continued digital push by the Government as well as the private sector, several analysts and industry experts opine that the demand for compute and storage will further go up. Hybrid IT environments are definitely on the rise, and we’re increasingly seeing businesses in regulated industries opting for a cloud-like model but within their own premises. For instance, Oracle Cloud at Customer is a unique solution that provides businesses with all the virtues of a public cloud environment - agility, simplicity, performance, elastic scaling, and subscription pricing - in their datacenter. From

SME CHANNELS 25 APRIL 2019


FEATURE

MANISH GUPTA, SENIOR DIRECTOR & GENERAL MANAGER - DATA CENTER COMPUTE ORGANIZATION, DELL TECHNOLOGIES, INDIA.

KAUSHAL VELURI, DIRECTOR-CHANNELS & ALLIANCES, NETAPP INDIA & SAARC

“ONE OF THE “WITH DELL EMC‘S BIGGEST HOLISTIC SERVER CHALLENGES WILL PORTFOLIO, BE GATHERING INNOVATIONS AND AND INTEGRATING SOLUTIONS-CENTRIC DATA FROM APPROACH, WE DIFFERENT SOURCES. BELIEVE THAT ORGANISATIONS WE ARE BEST LOOKING TO POSITIONED TO ADOPT AI MIGHT BECOME THE ALSO STRUGGLE RIGHT DIGITAL TO OVERCOME PARTNERS FOR OUR OPERATIONAL ISSUES CUSTOMERS, HELPING AND IDENTIFY THE THEM DELIVER THEIR RIGHT TECHNOLOGY BEST BUSINESS OR SERVICE POTENTIAL.” PARTNERS.”

THE TOP NEW TECHNOLOGY TRENDS IN STORAGE THAT IS GOING TO DISRUPT THE INDUSTRY IN 2019: l Cloud will bolster AI development – With 55% of organisations in Asia Pacific already implementing AI this year, they are expected to deploy cloud-based AI software and service tools in 2019. It will ensure that AI applications deliver high performance and scalability, both on and off premises, and support multiple data access protocols and varied new data formats. l Edge devices will get smarter – Indian IOT market is expected to reach 2 billion connections and unlock $11.1 billion of revenue by 2022, according to an Assocham-EY Report. To take advantage of the resulting data deluge, IoT devices and applications will therefore increasingly come with built-in services such as data analysis and data reduction and this will enable the organizations to make better, faster and smarter decisions. l Building hybrid & multi-cloud will be a choice – Hybrid, multi-cloud will be the default IT infrastructure for most of the larger organisations. They will be able to easily move workloads across environments by using technologies like containers and data fabric. On the other hand, some smaller organisations will choose the simplicity and consistency of a single cloud provider.

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a product portfolio, we offer one of the broadest solution suite in the industry. With Oracle Servers, we offer organizations a path to future-proof their business with a modern, secure, cloud-ready infrastructure that enable you to deploy your mission-critical applications,” says Srikanth Doranadula, Senior Director and Head-Systems, Oracle. “Deployment of new-age workloads such as AI, ML, cloud, analytics etc., have fueled India’s digital transformation journey, leading to an emergence of a data-driven ecosystem. To ride this wave of data explosion and stay ahead of the competitive curve, businesses are now investing heavily to modernize their IT infrastructure. This has accelerated the demand for servers across industries, as they form the bedrock of the modern data center, which would enable companies to become more agile, intelligent, competitive and adaptive”, says Manish Gupta, Senior Director & General Manager - Data Center Compute Organization, Dell Technologies, India. “The server industry in 2019 will owe its growth to a gamut of factors such as growth of edge computing, rising security concerns, increased digital first approach by customers etc. With Dell EMC‘s holistic server portfolio, innovations and solutions-centric approach, we believe that we are best positioned to become the right digital partners for our customers, helping them deliver their best business potential.” Data centers store and manage massive amounts of critical data. The data center infrastructure includes computers, storage systems, network devices, dedicated power backups, and environmental controls. The big organizations usually maintain more than one data center to distribute data processing workloads and provide backups in the event something goes wrong. The storage requirements of a data center are met by a combination of various storage architectures. When it comes to new challenges and opportunities for storage in the Indian market, Kaushal Veluri, Director-Channels & Alliances, NetApp India & SAARC says, “We are seeing the increased adoption of AI in Asia-Pacific. However, as per a Forrester study on AI, the adoption is going to be little challenging and will hinder organisational abilities to take advantage of the many benefits AI technology promises to offer. One of the biggest challenges will be gathering and integrating data from different sources. Organisations looking to adopt AI might also struggle to overcome operational issues and identify the right technology or service partners. The best way to deal with these challenges is for the CIOs to choose partners who offer expertise in data management as well as in building precise and effective models, so they can get started towards making the most of everything AI has to offer.”


SME CHAT

SANJIT CHATTERJEE

CEO, REVE ANTIVIRUS

STAYING AHEAD OF THE COMPETITION IS TOUGH BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE As cloud ramps up the competition for next level technology, antivirus becomes the next big thing to have in your cache. SME Channels asked Sanjit Chatterjee, CEO, Reve Antivirus, for his views regarding the same.

Please brief us about the inception of Reve Antivirus and its growth. REVE Antivirus was launched in the year 2016 as an IT Security brand by REVE Systems India Pvt. Ltd. The company made its first beta launch of the product in October 2016 and commercially the products were available from Q1 of 2017. Initially, REVE Antivirus product suite comprised of Antivirus, Internet Security and Total Security. REVE Antivirus entered the mobile security segment in mid of 2017 launching its first product Mobile Security for Android. Maturing in the SOHO segment, REVE entered the enterprise market with its launch of REVE Endpoint Security Solution in March 2018. The Year 2018 was a period of several product launches, and as an IT Security brand, REVE brought Antivirus for Mac and for Linux under its belt covering all operating systems. What is your market strategy? We adopt a well-balanced market strategy, where our partners, distributors and core sales team play an important role. Our in-house sales team handles some segments of the market directly, whereas a large customer base is catered by our partners. We often conduct partner meets, where progress regarding the business is discussed along with the areas where improvements are required. How do you stay ahead of the competition? Staying ahead of the competition is tough but not impossible if you adopt the right approach. With

dozens of players offering similar product, we bet on quality and customer satisfaction to gain an edge over our competitors. In today’s market, many companies work on price reduction module or bring low cost security product to gain market advantage. But, we continuously work on making our product better to provide best-in-class security to our customers.

“WE WILL BRING A COMPLETE CLOUD VERSION OF OUR ENTERPRISE SOLUTION BY Q4 OF 2019. CURRENTLY, WE HAVE A HYBRID MODEL OF ON PREMISE AND CLOUD.”

What is your strategy for channel partners? Channel partners are crucial for our business operations across India and across the globe. In India, we have our partners in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 Cities, who are responsible for distributing our entire range of IT Security Suite, comprising retail & enterprise products. We always support our channel partners with required sales collaterals, trainings and workshops. In order to keep them motivated, we bring new schemes and provide incentives from time-to-time.

market. Talking about market size, India is the second largest in internet usage, which makes the IT Security market quite big. We believe there is a tremendous scope in this market.

What is the challenge in the Indian market? What is the present market size and its growth trajectory for this year? The IT security market in India is maturing but there are still several challenges in terms of awareness. Most antivirus users are not aware regarding their exact requirements and hence end up choosing a wrong product. Also, people often gets confused by attractive advertisements from antivirus companies, which floats low cost sub-standard products. To address this issue, there should be strong norms from the Government as well, so that only approved products are available in the

What role does cloud play in determining the growth of anti-virus? Cloud technology in antivirus software is implemented to use advanced machine learning algorithms to detect and quarantine threats. It is not exactly for the growth of antivirus but to provide better security to users and deal with Zero Day attacks. Cloud acceptance is growing in the region, so is the demand. Regarding REVE Antivirus, we will bring a complete cloud version of our enterprise solution by Q4 of 2019. Currently, we have a hybrid model of on premise and cloud.

SME CHANNELS 27 APRIL 2019


CHANNEL BIZ

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CHANNEL BIZ

DELL TECHNOLOGIES: THE BIGGEST GROWTH ENABLER

FOR CHANNEL Last year Dell’s global Channel business raked in $50 billion and it is been growing at a rate of 18% year on year. SME Channels sat down to discuss Dell’s market plans with leaders including Joyce Mullen, President, Global Channel, OEM & IoT, Dell Technologies, Tian Beng, Senior Vice President & General Manager- Channels, Asia Pacific Japan, Dell Technologies and Anil Sethi, Vice President & General Manager, India Channels, DellTechnologies.

I

ndia is not only one of the largest consumer markets on the earth but also one of the fastest growing markets for IT. There is growth everywhere. Starting from manufacturing to retail to telecom to government to services - everywhere there is a growth. It means opportunity for IT is great too. The good part of the market is that it is partner led. And it is from the beginning but now the challenge is that due to the growth in cloud and new age technologies including AI & ML, IOT, Blockchain, etc., the channel partners are finding it difficult to grow. Although they need to embrace these technologies but due to the bandwidth crunch and paucity of investment, they are not able to do so. Here is where they are seeking the support of their principals. On the other side, the vendors those who take care of these interests of the partners are most likely to

SME CHANNELS 29 APRIL 2019


CHANNEL BIZ

JOYCE MULLEN PRESIDENT, GLOBAL CHANNEL OEM & IOT, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

“INDIA HAS ADVANTAGES IN MANY WAYS. IT’S PROBABLY THE BIGGEST CHANNEL MARKETS IN THE WORLD AND AT THE SAME TIME IT IS ONE OF THE FASTESTGROWING MARKETS.”

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be successful. And Dell Technologies is one such principal which is on the track to become the choice of the partners. The company is not only listening to the partners but also investing in product innovation in order to make the products partner ready for today’s workloads. Joyce Mullen, President, Global Channel, OEM & IoT, Dell Technologies, said,“For the last three years, we have spent over US$12.5 billion on our R&D. So, we are very continuing to innovate. And not only do we have a very robust R&D budget, we also have a DELL Technology Ventures team, which is keeping an eye on the market and understanding the technologies of today and tomorrow.” “We just had a fantastic conversation about where the technology is going, how it will change over the next five years. And it’s exciting and at the same time a little scary and complicated. All it means is that there is tremendous opportunity for the partners. If you think about the kind of complexity of the servers, and how they are changed to support AI - for example, or the need to manage data in a very different way. The second thing that we have is a highly aggressive market strategy that we are going to continue to invest in. So, we have the world’s biggest direct sales force. And we have an incredible channel community. And lastly, we have a strategic initiative, which is helping our partners to transact and engage across the Dell Technology family of businesses,” she added. VMWare is an awesome standalone company and Secure Works, is a solid security company. Pivotal is a leader in application and modernization whereas, Dell EMC is pretty good at hardware supply chain. The company is looking at the opportunities which are in the radar and figuring out how to make those things work better together. For Dell the silos are all strong. But if the matter is how the company can make those silos meld a little bit more so that it can leverage each other’s strength in a much more efficient way. And there is a lot of growth opportunity. Joyce maintained, “It’s a $3 trillion market and we are at $92 billion, so this has a lot of upside.” Now, when cloud is moving up the installation chart and partners are being threatened with the impact, how does Dell Technologies handle the situation? Joyce confirms that Dell is seeing incredible growth in Cloud. The company also seeing equal growth in On-prem installations. She added, “We have been talking a lot about this

in Dell Technologies World. We are talking about Multi Cloud and Hybrid Cloud environment. We think these are all going to stay. All these are different manifestations of Cloud - all different combinations of Clouds and we do think that there’s going to be some new types of Clouds maybe storage only Clouds, where the compute is in public Clouds for burst capacity and some compute is on-prem and you just access this data centrally. So, I think what is interesting is it doesn’t matter now, because we heard IBM say it’s going to go multi cloud. We also heard AWS say it is a kind of multi cloud, Google is saying the same thing, and everybody is saying that. So, I think we are now converged on a point, of course I’m sure there is some variation in how much of each will enjoy but everybody is saying that the path forward is going to be a combination of these.” Tian Beng, Senior Vice President & General Manager- Channels, Asia Pacific Japan, Dell Technologies, added, “I think in the past maybe people thought that it will be mutually exclusive, but we were one of the first in the industry to keep saying that it will not be mutually exclusive, it will be a Hybrid Cloud. And we have been advocating Hybrid now for quite a few years. And it is great to see now that it is happening in quite a big way. Hybrid Cloud would obviously continue to grow but you know the on-premise will grow rapidly.” “In fact, one of the trends that we have been seeing is that a lot of our customers who previously moved to the Public Cloud are moving their workloads back to on-premise and there are too many reasons. One: the cost was very high of keeping it in the Public Cloud. And there are security concerns, which is a big thing now. Hence some workloads which tend to be the more predictable are being brought back to on-premise. And the workloads which can’t be predicted have advantages of keeping it in public clouds,” opines Tian. Dell Technologies from the beginning works on dual route to market model - direct and partner. It might be a concern for the partners. But Anil Sethi, Vice President & General Manager, India Channels, Dell Technologies, puts this matter to rest as well. He said, “It has always been very clear at Dell that both the businesses are equally important. We are very clear that we want both businesses to grow. We ensure that we have very well segmented accounts and RTMs are clearly defined.The storage accounts will always be the


CHANNEL BIZ

TIAN BENG SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT & GENERAL MANAGER- CHANNELS, ASIA PACIFIC JAPAN, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

ANIL SETHI VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, INDIA CHANNELS, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

“WE WERE ONE OF THE FIRSTS IN THE INDUSTRY TO KEEP SAYING THAT IT WILL NOT BE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, IT WILL BE A HYBRID CLOUD. AND WE HAVE BEEN ADVOCATING HYBRID FOR QUITE A FEW YEARS NOW.”

“SHADOW CHANNEL DEFINITELY WILL COME UP AND PLAY A ROLE ESPECIALLY IN DIGITAL MARKETS, BUT IS IT GOING TO BE THE MAINSTREAM BUSINESS? THE ANSWER IS NO.”

partners. We will never go direct in this segment. Partners continue to engage with us and in a profitable way and that’s why we see today we are ranked at the top. We are super clear in the way we deal with registration process.” If Dell Technologies is doing all right, then what is the challenge for the company? Joyce explains, “The opportunity on a global level for us is to figure out how to optimize the mix instead of the silos of Dell Technologies solutions. I am not sure we will solve that in two months or four months

but I think we will make a lot of progress and our partners will see that through this initiative which allows them to transact and engage across the Dell Technologies companies. Even in longer term I think it is really remerging technologies.” Tian added, “Lot of our customers want to look across the whole Dell Technology family including Dell, VMware, Pivotal and how can we provide an easy way to really transact and take advantage of all these different solutions. Last year our global Channel business was US$ 50

billion and then growing at 18% year by year. Just imagine 50 billion growing at 18 is a huge number actually.” The other question is the market is going through a transformation process, and is Dell Technologies helping its partners to internally transform to address the changing market. Is Dell Technologies equipped with necessary training and certification to the partners to cope with the growth? Perhaps yes. Joyce says, “We have a fairly robust certification process where we are training on solution competencies and capabilities. Some of them are around the new and emerging technologies. We also train people on how to position our solutions and relevant pitches so that they can all talk about Dell Technologies advantage.” There is huge growth in the Shadow Channel which has evolved for last 5-6 years and is challenging the traditional Channel on its growth. Anil explained: “Shadow Channel definitely would come up and play a role especially in Digital markets, but is it going to be the mainstream business? The answer is no. They are going to enter all the big projects but alongside the traditional IT partners. Yes, their growth in the next couple of years is going to be very important. But most of it is going to get fulfilled through the traditional partners because while they have the financial capability, they don’t have a delivery capability or execution capability. So, they would take up project management role and getting the pieces together. For most of the IT principals, growth in India is not proportionate giving the potential. Most of the vendors are not able to solve the riddle of SME market. Here too, Dell Technologies is doing quite good. Anil maintained, “SME market is not an issue for us as that is one of the biggest focus areas. We call it geo-expansion phase and we have a much defined strategy. We have given the onus to the partners address and fulfil but we certainly are working with them.” Finally… If there are Cloud requirements and if customers want to go, they will certainly go. Dell Technologies is never saying against it. But the company is of opinion that there is still large headroom for the traditional partners as traditional entrepreneurs would still prefer on premise. And partners need to leverage the combined portfolio of Dell Technologies.

SME CHANNELS 31 APRIL 2019


WHITE PAPER

CYBERATTACKS ON CLOUD HONEYPOTS BY: MATT BODDY, SOPHOS

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ontrary to popular belief, every device is worth hacking when the process is automated. It doesn’t matter who or where you are, if you own a company big or small, or have technology in the home – every device can be monetized by an enterprising criminal. Brute force login attempts are likely ocurring on any online device. Yet the speed and scale of the problem can boggle the mind. Criminals are relentless and often competitive with one another to find, take over, and monetize your smart devices. The research you’ll find here, using honeypot devices across the internet, is a first step in attempting to quantify the issue. In cybersecurity terms, a honeypot is an open, vulnerable device, configured to deliberately lure a cybercriminal to attack. When the criminal starts to interact with the device, they are in fact triggering alarms to alert a business or individual to their presence and track their activity. There are many types of honeypots, but in this paper we focus on two main distinctions: high and low interaction. A low-interaction honeypot is a honeypot that, once found by the hacker, will not be of much use to them. In our case, the attacker is presented with a login prompt they have no way of getting past. This logs and stores any attempts to log in, providing information on the attacker’s IP address of origin (which can be attributed to a location), and the username and password used in the login attempt. A high-interaction honeypot permits the attacker to go further in order to gather additional information about their intentions. In the context of this paper where high interaction honeypots are referenced, we allowed the attacker to log in to the honeypot with a designated set of usernames and passwords, and stored any command the attacker attempted to use. The honeypots in this test simulate the Secure Shell (SSH) service and, therefore, measure SSH login attempts. SSH is a remote access service used not only by servers, but is also enabled in domestic environments in devices as diverse

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as CCTV cameras or NAS devices. On these systems, legitimate users may connect via SSH to remotely configure the device or to access files. For an attacker, once they get past the login prompt onto an IoT device, they not only gain the same access as the owner, but often gain even more control than was ever intended. We initially set up honeypots in ten of the most popular AWS data centers in the world and made sure that the honeypots are not affiliated with Sophos or any other company other than, perhaps, the hosting provider. To a hacker, they appear as just a number, a bit of extra processing power that could be theirs, a camera they could control or a directory of files they could access and share. The research clearly demonstrates that devices that have not received due attention to configuration (including changing any default passwords installed at the factory on many devices) may permit a cybercriminal to access those devices. However, we can learn how attackers work from this research, and what we can do to prevent many of them from succeeding. THE FINDINGS Finding 1: The short time it takes to get pwned

When the honeypots first went online, it took attackers no time at all to discover the SSH service and for login attempts to start. In one instance, our device was attacked in less than one minute from deployment. However, in others it took nearly two hours before login attempts began. But once the login attempts start, the attacks are relentless and continuous. Finding 2: It is a feeding frenzy

Once the honeypots were well established, each device saw an average of 13 login attempts per minute, or about 757 per hour. Finding 3: The Chinese connection

95.4% of the traffic we tracked appeared to originate in China. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the attackers conducting these brute-force attempts are also located in China, because attacks may be routed through other machines under the attackers’ control.

Finding 4: The global distribution of login attempts

The London honeypot alone suffered just over 314,000 login attempts over the course of the 30 days in which we ran these honeypots, with the honeypot hosted in Ireland suffering more than 600,000 login attempts. Other notable figures include over 950,000 attempts in Ohio. Does this mean that hosting services in London is safer than hosting services in Ohio? In short, no. Honeypots based in every region received hundreds of thousands of login attempts over this 30 day period. These attempts varied in complexity from default usernames and passwords down to complex passwords with what security practitioners would consider sufficiently complex combinations of numbers, letters, and special characters. No one country is safer than any other. Wherever you are in the world, following good security practices is paramount. DEFAULTS ARE THE FAULT Looking at what drives this number of brute force login attempts, we found the dominant problem was ongoing exposure as a result of not changing default usernames and passwords. For example, ‘root’ exists as a default username for most *NIX devices. Consequently, it is unsurprising that it is consistently at the top of the list of most seen username login attempts. However, the sheer scale is remarkable: ‘root’ accounts for 5,211,644 of the 5,447,956 logins (just under 96%). Because the ‘root’ account provides administrative access to devices, it’s likely that, after their botnet reaches a significant size, the cybercriminal will use this privileged access to perform large


WHITE PAPER

forced to choose their own password during initial setup, we often observe little care is taken in choosing a secure password leading to easy attempts by criminals to brute force guess working combinations.

scale DDOS attacks to organizations and institutes as seen before in botnets like Mirai. There are other correlations we can make between login attempts and specific technologies. For example, the username ‘pi’ was represented in the top 20 attempted usernames because it is the default username for Raspberry Pi-based computers running the Raspbian operating system. The fact that the username exists here shows that, through misconfiguration or negligence, these devices appear on the internet as exposed and vulnerable. If a device is online, anyone can attempt logging in, so the only line of defense is the password. This is where we see opportunist cybercriminals are aiming for commonly used and poorly chosen passwords for the root account. In much smaller numbers we also notice login attempts targeting specific brands or models of device. These login attempts are focusing on devices still configured with well-known default accounts and passwords. For example, for Raspberry Pis running Raspbian, a distribution of Linux designed for the Raspberry Pi, the default password “raspberry” appears 1,808 times, taking it into the top 20 attempted passwords. This dastardly duo of default login details and obvious links to hardware names gives hackers an easy ride. We have collated a list of the most recognizable default usernames and passwords that were used by attackers and, to illustrate the issue,we have suggested IoT device brands which use those defaults. Going beyond the default password, there is a further issue with commonly chosen passwords. When analyzing a handful of the most seen password attempts, clear, simple keyboard patterns are being exploited by cybercriminals. Two canonical examples of this would be the passwords “1qaz2wsx” and “1q2w3e4r”. Looking at a keyboard, it is easy to see how all of these keys are located right next to each other. Many devices ship with default passwords. Whether they are easy to guess or not, this is always a mistake. Any device with a default password quickly becomes widely known in the underground community and is no better than a “well known secret”. Even when users are

WHAT HAPPENS ONCE THEY’RE IN? The purpose of this research was to establish the frequency, consistency, and complexity of the average attack on the average person. As a result, the majority of the research focused on lowinteraction honeypots to measure the number of login attempts. However, the high-interaction honeypot was included to better understand what the average device may well be directed to do once compromised. The research suggests that if you’re unfortunate enough to have a weak username and password and your device ends up online, you will be involved in attacks aimed at large organizations. From the high-interaction honeypot, we pulled this typical course of action: 1. Login attempt of username:root password:admin succeeded 2. TCP connection request to Yandex over HTTPS 3. TCP connection request to large retail chain’s open API over HTTPS 4. TCP forward request to large retail chain’s open API over HTTPS The above process repeats thousands of times, making it appear automated. However, we can still analyze the steps in the attack. 1. Check that the honeypot has a valid internet connection by connecting to a well-known address. This is via a secure connection request to Yandex. Yandex is a popular search engine in eastern Europe and Russia. 2. The attack then checks if connectivity to the target service is available – in this case, a connection request to a remote IP address belonging to a large retail chain’s open API . 3. There then follows an attempt to exploit large retail chain’s IP address using the SSH honeypot server as a proxy. By being compromised, the honeypot has now become an amplification device for the cybercriminal to launch further attacks on other infrastructure. CONCLUSIONS AND COUNSEL In light of the above observations, we have some initial recommendations to keep devices secure and break these botnet chains. Most of the login attempts preyed on default usernames and/or passwords. Changing these is a critical initial step to improving the security profile of a business, and it must be applied rigorously to all new

devices. The recommendation is simple – change all passwords from the default and avoid obvious patterns. There is also a specific weakness around universal plug and play (UPnP). UPnP automatically sets up a port forwarding rule which allows connections between routers and devices. Although the research has not addressed this specifically, it could be the reason for so many login attempts targeting CCTV and other IoT devices. The simple advice is to turn off UPnP on routers. Ideally, everyone should use complex and unique passwords for each service. To make this simple, they should use a password manager. A password manager can introduce unique complex passwords for every website you use, and you only have to remember a single password for the password manager itself. And on SSH servers, use key based authentication, not just a password. Key-based authentication provides an alternative to password based authentication; if you don’t have the key, you’re not allowed in. Where available, administrators can deploy tools such as fail2ban on Linux servers to limit the number of login attempts someone can make before their IP address is banned from connecting again. If an attacker does manage to get onto your Linux device, then your last line of defense should be a malware scanner, such as Sophos Antivirus for Linux, which will catch known payloads that are dropped onto your device by the adversary. The aggressive speed and scale of attacks on new devices should send a strong signal to anyone working with technology, as well as deploying technology around the home. The only default setting that is acceptable is that of caution and best practice. It is not a case of if you will be targeted, but rather when, and how prepared you are for the attacks to come.

SME CHANNELS 33 APRIL 2019


SME CHAT

AXIS’ DEDICATED FOCUS ON R&D HAS HELPED THEM BECOME A LEADER IN THE IP SECURITY MARKET GLOBALLY At Axis, we believe in protecting the mid-size business with a complete, end-to-end security and surveillance solution, says Sudhindra Holla, Sales Director, India & SAARC, Axis Communications.

What is your Channel strategy for the country? Axis Communications is a premium player in the market and our customers and channel partners are well aware of it. While keeping that in mind, we continue to leverage it as part of our brand strategy. We continue to deliver the model of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that is to look beyond the price. We educate our channel partners on this model and help End Customers make better business decisions. We position Axis as a premium brand, as opposed to our competitors, because of the kind of quality we offer in all our products and its compatibility with other products as well that help design a complete solution which caters to end customer requirements. What is Axis doing for solutions approach for partners & customers? Axis, we believe in enhancing the customer experience even before an installation. We believe in experience-based approach over product driven to improve the customer journey. We try to influence customers through our effective proof of concept and share customer references to potential ones for better understanding of Axis Solutions. We believe in providing experience to our end customers and allow them to experience our products and solutions in our regional experience centre, Bangalore. We feel educating channel

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partners about the Axis tools such as Site designer, Product selector, Axis Design Tool, etc. enhances customer and also increases the productivity of a system integrator. We also host regular End Customer meets in different cities that create a platform for experience sharing between the potential and existing End Customers. “Word-of- mouth”, is also being used as part of our marketing strategy. Our channel partners are our loyal stakeholders who play a vital role in educating the customers about the benefits that we offer through our products. This acts as a sense of assurance among the potential customers. Another aspect is, when we get into a tender situation, we are often evaluated based on compliance checklist only and then the contract is awarded to the respective bidder. Our experience in the Network Video market plays a major role while preparing for tendering and we strongly recommend our potential customers for POC. This improves the customer journey as they witness everything before investing or buying the products. How would you describe your product strategy? security market is growing exponentially. Our long-term strategy is to continuously invest on innovative network products and offer intelligent security solutions. In 2016, we invested 17% of

our revenue in R&D alone. We quickly identify new trends and meet the market needs while maintaining the quality and service. For instance, we have launched range IP based audio systems for different applications. Our dedicated focus on R&D has helped us lead the IP security market globally. We are making advances in light sensitivity, colour reproduction and resolution in our network cameras. We are investing on thermal network technology and Zipstream technologies. We have 100+ camera offering through our ecosystem technology partners for larger enterprises. Furthermore, we offer end to end solutions for Small and Medium enterprises. Does Axis have any customized solution for medium-to-large enterprises? At Axis, we believe in protecting the mid-size business with a complete, end-to-end security and surveillance solution. We offer cameras, software and other products that create a security solution designed for the active operator. Our solutions are easy to use and install and they’re designed to work perfectly for schools, retail, manufacturing sites and other mid-size installations. Our products are highly reliable and flexible to install and build their own systems with our Box ready solutions. Our Camera Station S10 recorder and S20


SME CHAT

SUDHINDRA HOLLA, SALES DIRECTOR INDIA & SAARC AXIS COMMUNICATIONS.

“WE BELIEVE IN ENHANCING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE EVEN BEFORE AN INSTALLATION. WE BELIEVE IN EXPERIENCE-BASED APPROACH OVER PRODUCT DRIVEN TO IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY.”

Appliance is an out-of-the-box ready video management solution with pre-installed AXIS Camera Station software. AXIS Camera Station is intuitive and easy to use, meaning anyone can operate it to find and export high definition evidence. Combined with Axis network cameras it gives you everything you need to confidently monitor your premises. So it’s ready to use straight out of the box .

How would you describe Axis’ go to market strategy for Tier II & III towns? Some of our go-to-market strategies for securing enterprises are as follows:

• Firstly, we are continuously trying to Integrate IP Audio with current Video installations. To keep up with the current IoT trends, we feel that the Integration of products will cater to a wider market range, in order to add more functionality and clarity to some unforeseen incidents that might occur. • In terms of Cyber security, we try to educate and create awareness about the necessity of data protection and keep the systems updated regularly, as part of our messaging to avoid data loss. We continuously educate our channel partners and try to mitigate the risks. • With our Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) concept, we give a holistic picture of the entire

investment upfront from procuring to deploying and maintenance cost for the next 5-7 years. Usually, the end customers do not foresee the hidden costs while purchasing and installing. They only understand it once they start using it. This is the problem we are trying to solve here. With TCO, we try to educate and give customers the freedom to compare their proposals from different OEMs and this helps to make informed decisions. • We also try to create awareness, as part of our marketing strategies, that city surveillance is going beyond the analog camera by integrating audios and sensors to it, and how we integrate it in an open way with command and control can make all these different parts work together.

SME CHANNELS 35 APRIL 2019


SECURITY

REDUCING SECURITY COMPLEXITY FOR SMB CUSTOMERS Partners who can assist customers in selecting and integrating tools and streamlining security processes can play a critical role in their ability to succeed in today’s markets.

A

t many organizations, discussions around deploying and managing new IT and cybersecurity solutions are often met with confusion. Many companies, especially in the SMB space, do not have dedicated IT and cybersecurity teams. This means technical resources are strained when it comes to selecting, deploying, implementing, and securing infrastructure. To effectively compete in today’s digital marketplace, organizations of all sizes are turning to technology to automate manual tasks, extend reach, analyze data, and perform other business enablement tasks. While these solutions, including cloud platforms and SaaS applications, provide organizations with the resources and efficiencies they need to expand their business beyond what they normally could sustain with their current resources, they also drastically increase complexity—not only network complexity, such as the challenges of maintaining visibility and compliance while managing disparate solutions, but also operational complexity for IT teams needing to manage an increasingly distributed and continuously evolving set of networked environments. As organizations seek ways to reduce this operational complexity, partners who can assist in selecting and integrating tools and streamlining security processes can play a critical role in their ability to succeed in today’s markets. This is place where partners can provide value in

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simplifying and securing the networks of their customers, while growing their own business. REDUCING SECURITY COMPLEXITY FOR SMB CUSTOMERS There are several ways that partners can reduce the strain and complexity that SMB customers are struggling with through a combination of essential service offerings. Offer Technical and Threat Assessments: For organizations that do not have devoted IT and security teams, the process of evaluating the components of their distributed network, determining where security risks exist, prioritizing those risks, and then selecting and deploying the appropriate tools to mitigate those risks is daunting. Without a proper understanding of where their network is weakest, it is likely that these SMB organizations will end up deploying a patchwork of isolated point solutions. While deploying security tools across each potential entryway has the right intention, the lack of integration can actually reduce visibility and leave gaps in security. Partners can assist by offering cyber threat assessments that eliminate this daunting responsibility from SMB teams. Cyber threat assessments monitor network activity to determine where vulnerabilities exist, as well as which applications are running within the network and what resources they utilize. It also notes bandwidth, session, and performance requirements at peak hours. With this informa-

tion in hand, partners are able to provide their customers with a tailored plan for selecting essential security tools and processes that won’t disrupt performance and then deploying them precisely where the network and data are most vulnerable and valuable. Simplify Onboarding: Even once a threat assessment has been conducted, and your customers know which solutions are needed and where they need to be placed, there is still the act of deploying them. Partners can assist their customers with this by developing clear deployment and onboarding plans that educate the necessary stakeholders on how the tools work, what issues need to be considered during deployment, and then ensure minimal disruption to daily network operations. Streamlined onboarding ensures the success of the program by maximizing its efficiency and effectiveness, and in turn, offers partners the opportunity to expand business opportunities down the road. Enable Centralized Management: Even large organizations that have devoted IT and security teams still have difficulty monitoring the network to keep track of which devices are connected, who has access to data, where that data is stored, and what resources applications and workflows need to access—in addition to responding to security events. For SMBs, managing all of this with limited IT resources is nearly impossible. This is why it is especially important that partners equip SMB teams with security tools


SECURITY

RAJESH MAURYA, REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT INDIA & SAARC, FORTINET

“TO EFFECTIVELY COMPETE IN TODAY’S DIGITAL MARKETPLACE, ORGANIZATIONS OF ALL SIZES ARE TURNING TO TECHNOLOGY TO AUTOMATE MANUAL TASKS, EXTEND REACH, ANALYZE DATA, AND PERFORM OTHER BUSINESS ENABLEMENT TASKS.”

that provide and plug into a centralized management solution that offer single-pane-of-glass visibility. This enables streamlined visibility that reduces complexity, allows teams to monitor data movement and identify anomalous activity, simplifies solution optimization, and centralizes the management of firewalls and other security tools from a single location. Leverage Security Expertise: Many SMB clients do not have the resources necessary to track security trends, understand solution reports,

update control rules, etc. Partners can reduce complexity and enhance security for their customers in this realm by combining their security expertise with critical reporting. Reports from partners provide essential assistance with informing security strategy. For example, offer an in-depth analysis of the NOC and SOC to determine the scope of risk in the attack surface and then identify where immediate response is required. Additionally, partners can offer technical advice making them an invaluable training resource for clients.

Network security is becoming increasingly complex, especially as networks expand to include new cloud resources, and many organizations simply do not have the resources necessary to effectively deploy and manage the tools they need to protect their modern, distributed networks. Leveraging threat assessments, expertise, streamlined onboarding, and centralization, partners can reduce the complexity of this process for their SMB customers, enhancing the security of their customers while growing their own business.

SME CHANNELS 37 APRIL 2019


CASE STUDY

PAREKH INTEGRATED SERVICES ADOPTS MATRIX VIDEO MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FOR CENTRALIZED MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT COMPANY PROFILE: Parekh Integrated Services Pvt. Ltd (PISPL) is in the business of providing high-quality logistics services that give customers a competitive advantage in the Indian market. Established in 1981, PISPL is a one-stop shop logistics and supply chain service provider in India offering storage and distribution services, freight forwarding, transportation, information technology and cold chain management solutions along with other value added services to multiple industry verticals. CHALLENGES Parekh Integrated Services Pvt. Ltd (PISPL) has established their operation with more than 1,500 warehouses and distribution setups to cover all the major cities in India for their services. With this expansion, IT infrastructure equipment was procured, including IP video surveillance sys-

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tems of different reputed brands from different vendors. Over a period, it was becoming costly and difficult to manage different brands procured separately at different locations. Cost of operation has also gone up due to technical expertise required for each individual system. PISPL was looking for a centralized solution, which can work with different reputed brands as well as give them a common control of all the video surveillance systems to reduce the technical manpower cost for different systems. Due to low bandwidth at some of the remote locations, PISPL were not able to secure video evidence at a central location. It was required for any kind of post analysis or dispute resolution. PISPL were looking for an occupancy control system in each warehouse/storage area to manage and control the worker’s presence in sensitive areas. It was getting difficult to do it manually at each location with the increase in number of

employees over the last few years. SOLUTION OFFERED Matrix provided Video Management Software (VMS) as a centralized platform to monitor and manage all the cameras from a central location on a single platform. It worked as a common platform for all the surveillance cameras from different brands, which leads to reduction in operation cost. Matrix VMS supports all the camera models of major brands including ACTI, Samsung, SONY, Mobotix, Panasonic, Vivotek, etc., along with ONVIF protocol. Using Matrix VMS Solution, PISPL enabled the centralized schedule backup at an even lower bandwidth from all locations to the central location. This made it easy to go through the video evidence at a central location and resolve the issue in short time. Another issue of maintaining occu-


CASE STUDY

WHY MATRIX? l Matrix VMS Architecture Supports Centralized / Decentralized Monitoring and Management l Matrix VMS Interoperable with Most of The Reputed Brands l Possibility of Scheduled Backup at Central Location Even at Lower Bandwidth l People Counting Feature to Control Zone Occupancy BENEFITS: Centralized Control and Management l Ease of Use l Secure Evidence l Improve Productivity l

PRODUCTS SATATYA SAMAS GE PLATFORM - VMS PLATFROM WITH 50 CAMERA LICENSES SATATYA SAMAS CAM20 - 20 CAMERA ADDITIONAL LICENSES SATATYA SAMAS CROWD - 20 CAMERA ADDITIONAL LICENSES MANAGEMENT CAM5 pancy a certain limit in each zone was addressed by the Matrix VMS Crowd Management feature. All the entry/exit points were covered with a camera to count number of heads passing through the points. From central control room, using Matrix Smart Client, security can monitor the total occupancy of an area and instruct the team accordingly. Thus, it provides a common platform to connect multi-brand cameras, secure video evidence at central location and control zonal occupancy, which were the major challenges.

ABOUT MATRIX Established in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Telecom and Security solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. An innovative, technology driven and customer focused organization, Matrix is committed to keep pace with the revolutions in the telecom and security industries. With more than 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, VOIP Gateways and Terminals, GSM Gateways, Access Control, Time-Attendance and Video Surveillance solutions. These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to the international standards. Having global footprints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa through an extensive network of more than 500 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration of customers representing the entire spectrum of industries. Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.

SME CHANNELS 39 APRIL 2019


SME CHAT

MURALI URS

COUNTRY MANAGER – INDIA, BARRACUDA NETWORKS.

FOR THE CHANNEL PARTNERS, CLOUD IS COMING VERY QUICKLY Cloud computing is the new chapter in technology and Channel partners are gearing up for the massive challenge. SME Channels spoke to Murali Urs, Country Manager- India, Barracuda Networks, asking him to shed some light on the said topic. What are the resources that your company is deploying for this versatile market? How is the market responding? From the IT standpoint, the biggest thing that is happening in India is in the cloud. A lot of things are happening, there are many system integrators, service providers, and ISVs are latching on to the cloud using it as a good launch pad. There are numerous start ups that are latching onto the cloud too. And for Barracuda it gives a lot of opportunities. It gives Barracuda’s partners a lot of opportunities to go and open new doors in existing customers plus knock on new customers’ solution which Barracuda has to offer. The thing that is good for them is the platforms don’t give too much of an option for the system integrators, or the partners to sell anything extra. But in Barracuda you can upscale your existing platform solutions you are giving and also provide solutions for Barracuda products as well and in turn help in the consumption of the cloud. Because cloud vendors like third party players are paying more because the consumption of cloud itself increases which in turn helps their revenue. So it’s a win for everybody. Our partners will find a lot of options as we cater to O365, Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. The names you have mentioned are all public cloud players. Isn’t it a popular assumption that hybrid platforms are mainly provided by private players? So with vendors like Barracuda, customers can choose to either use one or both. Because our

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solution pans across physical infrastructure, virtual infrastructure, and cloud. And some of the offerings are even there in SAAS model. So customers can choose whichever model they like to deploy our solutions and the partners are free to work with us and cater to customers in whatever form they want. Is channel your only route to market? We sell only through channels. We work with customers to understand the problems, and arrive at the right solution. But eventually the transaction is always done through channels. We don’t sell directly. How does your channel ecosystem look like? As of now the channel is on a re-vamp mode, but we are running Premier, Preferred, Registered partner programmes based on different criteria’s. Any new entrant is normally a Registered partner. But they can work their way up in terms of certification, revenue and become the Premier partner. What is the traction on SD-WAN front? It’s very high, primarily because of the advent of cloud. The first challenges the cloud customers have is security because data moves out of the database centre. Because once you move them, move the applications into cloud you want to give accessibility to everybody wherever they are. That automatically opens a new door for adversaries to get into the network and that’s why security

becomes primary and availability becomes secondary. If I am sitting in a place like Agartala or Vadodara, and I have been asked to connect to Azure, I probably don’t have an MPLS link there. I still have to work which means I will have to get an internet link or a dial up connection and I should still be able to manage all of them. So with SD-WAN the beauty is no matter what router you’re using for connectivity, you can manage all of them from one place. As security is becoming very dominant in the market what is the challenge for CIOs now? From a security stand point, a CIOs’ challenge won’t be from one angle. They are responsible from the end point to the data center, and now with cloud, its outside data center as well. So the challenges will vary from vertical to vertical, plus it will also vary in terms of whether you need to look at cloud infrastructure because platform providers also bring in security. The biggest challenge you will have is the people, how do we get people to stick to the security requirements of an organization. Now with the advent of emails going outside the infrastructure which is O365, the security aspect of emails has gone up to almost 90%. Previously it used to be around 70% but now 90% of threats are coming through emails. So CIOs will have to look at multiple angles.

To access Full artical, Pls. log on to.... www.smechannels.com


REVIEW

PRODUCT

DIGISOL DG-GR4342L

DIGISOL Systems DG-GR4342L, a 300Mbps WiFi router designed for fulfilling FTTH ultrabroadband access and triple play service for home and SOHO users. It is based on the stable and mature GPON and Gigabit EPON technology, it is highly reliable and easy to maintain, with guaranteed QoS, and fully compliant to IEEE 802.3ah EPON standards.

D-LINK NEW UNMANAGED LONG RANGE POE / POE+ SWITCHES D-LINK (INDIA)’S new family of 6 port, 9 port and 18 port Unmanaged Long range PoE/PoE+ Switches. DES-F1006P-E, DES-F1009P-E and DES-F1018P-E are 100Mbps PoE switches that enable users to easily connect and supply power to PoE capable devices such as wireless access points, IP cameras and VOIP phones. All these switches are designed to cater transmission of data and power distance of up to 250meters. With DES-F1006P-E (6 port PoE), DES-F1009P-E (9 port PoE) and DESF1018P-E (18 port PoE) Long Range PoE/PoE+ switches, D-Link brings out reliable and affordable switching solution to address the growing demand of SMB, SOHO and Smart Home users. Customers can connect PoE compatible devices to these switches without using additional power supply. This allows

user to save on cabling, and allows one to install devices in location without immediate access to power outlets. KEY FEATURES: • • • •

Plug & Play Installation 250meters Transmission 6KV Lightening Protection Supports IEEE 802.3af (PoE) & 802.3at (PoE+) • Switch mode functionality • Uplink port

DIGISOL DG-GR4342L GPON router is ideal for Fiber-to-the-Home solution, it allows users to access high-speed internet connection via the GPON port and the devices to connect wirelessly at 300Mbps wireless 802.11n speeds. DG-GR4342L offers a perfect terminal solution as it converts the fiber optic signal into the electric signal at the user side and enables reliable Fiber Optic Ethernet services to business and residential users through fiber-based network infrastructure. Compliant with the ITU-T G.984 GPON standards, DG-GR4342L supports maximum data rates of up to 2.5Gbps downstream, 1.25Gbps upstream. Users can enjoy high-speed GPON services and bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications much easier and faster than ever before.

PRICE DES-F1006P-E – Rs. 4,484.00/- (MRP), DES-F1009P-E – Rs. 7,788.00/- (MRP), DES-F1018P-E – Rs. 33,040.00/- (MRP)

WARRANTY 3 Year

CONTACT

Price: Rs.6,999/-, Warranty: On Request Contact: www.digisol.com

www.in.dlink.com

SME CHANNELS 41 APRIL 2019


PRODUCT

NEW ARRIVALS

QUANTUM

TP-LINK

QUANTUM’S NEW F-SERIES NVME STORAGE PLATFORM

UNLIKE THE PREVIOUS DISC-SHAPED PRODUCTS, Deco M4 is an affordable column-shaped product that provides the AC1200 whole home mesh Wi-Fi. Deco M4 is comprised of a system of 3 units that can be customized to fit Wi-Fi coverage needs to up to 4000 square feet, the Deco M4 system can be easily scaled up to accommodate even larger spaces.Deco uses a system of units to achieve seamless whole-home Wi-Fi coverage to eliminate weak signal areas, with advanced Deco Mesh Technology, wifi enabled devices automatically switch to the fastest Deco as you move through your home, creating a truly seamless online experience. The dual-band AC1200 system is capable of throughput speeds of 300Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 867Mbps on the 5GHz band—and it supports MU-MIMO data streaming. Deco M4 utilizes Adaptive Path Selection (APS) to ensure the network is always operating at top speeds, quickly identifying and selecting the fastest path for devices to connect to the network.

QUANTUM’S NEW LINE OF NVME STORAGE ARRAYS IS DESIGNED FOR PERFORMANCE, availability and reliability. Using non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash drives for ultra-fast reads and writes, it supports massive parallel processing and is designed for studio editing, rendering, and other performance-intensive workloads utilizing large unstructured datasets. Incorporating the latest Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networking technology, the F-Series provides direct access between workstations and the NVMe storage devices, delivering predictable, fast network performance. By combining these hardware features with the new Quantum Cloud Storage Platform and the StorNext file system the F-Series delivers powerful end-to-end storage capabilities for post-production houses, broadcasters, and other rich media environments. The first product in the F-Series is the Quantum F2000, a highly available and performant storage server, purpose built for NVMe. The F2000 is a 2U, dual node server with two hot-swappable compute canisters and up to 24 dual-ported NVMe drives. Each compute canister can access all 24 NVMe drives, and includes processing power, memory, and connectivity specifically designed for the highest performance and availability.

Price: 3 pack at Rs.14,999/- and 2 pack at Rs.8999/- Warranty: On Request Contact: www.tp-link.com

Price: On demand Warranty: On Request, Contact: : www. quantum.com/

TP-LINK DECO M4 WHOLE HOME MESH WI-FI SYSTEM

VERTIV

VERTIV LIEBERT EXL S1I VERTIV LIEBERT EXL S1 LINE OF UNINTERRUPTIBLE POWER SUPPLY (UPS) SYSTEMS, adding Dynamic Online mode, which allows operating efficiency of up to 99 percent. In addition, Vertiv introduced 500 and 600 kVA 400V module ratings for the Liebert EXL S1. The UPS family is available now in India in seven capacity ratings from 300 kVA to 1200 kVA, 400V. The UPS is also available in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America in a variety of input and output voltages. Dynamic Online mode is available for Liebert EXL S1 globally. Vertiv introduced Dynamic Online mode to the Liebert EXL S1 to meet the needs of cloud, co-location and enterprise data centers that cannot sacrifice any level of availability for incremental gains in efficiency. With efficiency up to 99 percent, the Liebert EXL S1 operating in Dynamic Online mode offers substantial energy savings over legacy UPS systems which average 94 percent efficiency, and even improves on modern UPS systems that approach

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97 percent efficiency. Over five years, a 1000 kVA Liebert EXL S1 can save more than $230,000 over a same-capacity 94 percent efficient UPS system and more than $140,000 over a same-capacity 97 percent efficient UPS system. While in Dynamic Online mode, the Liebert EXL S1 inverter can instantaneously assume the load and maintain the output voltage well within the IEC 62040-3 Class 1 specification. n Pricing : on demand, Warranty : on Request, Contact: https://www.vertiv.com/



RNI NO: DEL ENG/ 2010/ 31962 Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4145/16-18 Licensed to Post without pre-payment U(SW)/19/2017-18

Date of Publication: 13 of Every Month Date of Posting: 15 & 16 of Every Month

Experience capabilities beyond SD-WAN with

ARUBA SD-BRANCH Aruba Software Defined Branch (SD-Branch) combines best-in-class wired and wireless branch infrastructure with remote management orchestration, analytics-driven security framework and state of the art SD-WAN capabilities Learn more at: www.arubanetworks.com/in-sd-branch For more details contact: +91 9606811117 | shipras@hpe.com Copyright Š 2019. Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. All right reserved.


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