October Issue 2020

PLUS

Orange Business Services becomes a Microsoft Azure Networking MSP /06 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business VOLUME 11 | ISSUE 07 | PAGES 32 | OCTOBER 2020 | RS. 20/-

SECURITY / 16

71% Indian Organisations say security has taken back seat with remote working despite increasing threats

SME CHAT / 24

Dell Technologies again No. 1 in X86 server

CASE STUDY / 28

La Maison Royale Chooses Matrix Telecom Solutions for Multi-Site Connectivity

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

AGAIN NO. 1 IN X86 SERVER P/24 IS YOUR BUSINESS’S IT ENVIRONMENT READY FOR THE CHALLENGES CONFRONTING THE NEW NORMAL? P:14

71% INDIAN ORGANISATIONS SAY SECURITY HAS TAKEN BACK SEAT WITH REMOTE WORKING DESPITE INCREASING THREATS P:16

MAJORITY OF INDIAN COMPANIES REPORTED OVER 25% JUMP IN CYBER THREATS WHILE WORKING FROM HOME: CISCO P:17

OUR EXPANDED PORTFOLIO OF SERVICES IS DESIGNED TO CREATE BUSINESS VALUE FOR CUSTOMERS P:18

REDEFINING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION P:20

ISODA

BROUGHT IN NEW MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE FOR 2020 P/22

1

Powering a work-from-anywhere world.

At LogMeIn, we’re proud to help our partners support tens of millions of people in businesses around the world as they connect and collaborate, support employees and customers, and secure their workforces – from anywhere.

Learn more about the LogMeIn Partner Network and our portfolio of remote work products at LogMeInInc.com/Partners

PLUS

ESET and Ingram Micro announce strategic partnership in India Pg: 06 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business

SME CHAT / 24

SECURITY / 16

71% Indian Organisations say security has taken back seat with remote working despite increasing threats

Dell Technologies again No. 1 in X86 server

CASE STUDY / 28

La Maison Royale Chooses Matrix Telecom Solutions for Multi-Site Connectivity

MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL

YEAR 2021 WILL SEE MORE INVESTMENT IN DIGITAL SANJAY MOHAPATRA

sanjay@smechannels.com

Dear Friends Life is not going to be as usual hence forward. We are going back and forth during this pandemic.

There is no sign of abatement of the covid-19. Globally many countries are preparing for lockdown again despite opening their businesses to the public. In India though the cases have topped the world tally and growing every coming day, but we have opened up all our establishments. This is very precarious situation. Economy have gone down but in documents companies are posting profit. Even there was report where US economy was shown as bounced back in record number.

In this situation, taking decision is very difficult. However, from the customers’ point of view most of the customers have increased their investment in digital transformation ever since the pandemic has started. And it is expected that in 2021 the investment would grow.

However, over all IT investment globally is going to go down this year compared to 2019 but definitely go up in 2021. Year 2020 is certainly a bad year from the growth point of view but 2021 is around the corner so the partners need to watch out for the new physical year. When the investment for 2020 is going to be $3.6 trillion but for 2021 the outlook is definitely healthier as it is pegged to touch $3.8 trillion in 2021.

The biggest growth is going to happen in Enterprise Software followed by Data Centre Systems. The other thing is that the partners need to be aggressive in their customer care and support. Today people appreciate being called by the suppliers than the customers calling them. This is the time that one should stand by the customers. This is the time that people need to be very honest in their dealings with others.

Right marketing approach is now far more important than other times. As there is very less cold calls and meeting of the customers, the organizations need to work on right digital platform to shout out in order to reach out the customers. As a media organization, we have been working bring in thought leaders from the partners and the CIOs to understand the market dynamics and the way how things are moving ahead and what is in the future. I am sure there is huge challenge ahead for everyone but we need to strongly stand by each other and complement with each other for a better tomorrow.

DGS-1520 Layer 3 Stackable Smart Managed Switch D-Link’s DGS-1520 Series is the successor to the DGS-1510 series and the first of D-Link’s smart managed switches to support 10G Base-T ports for uplinks/stacking. This series includes a range of 28 and 52 port switches with a choice of SFP, 2.5GBASE-T PoE, 10GBASE-T and combo 10GbE/SFP+ uplink ports. High bandwidth uplinks eliminate network bottlenecks and provide low-latency connections to core networks and servers, while multiGigabit PoE ports eliminate potential network bottleneck when connecting to high-bandwidth 802.11ac/ax access points. With zero-touch provisioning, multi-site network deployments are effortless, and there is no need for onsite IT personnel. These switches are designed to provide maximum uptime as well as high security, multiple management options and flexible stacking configurations with a powerful 80-Gigabit stacking bandwidth using fiber, copper, or hybrid mode.

FEATURES: EFFORTLESS DEPLOYMENT WITH ZERO TOUCH PROVISIONING. FINAL WORDING: PERFECT FOR SMB ACCESS & AGGREGATION LAYERS AS IT OFFERS POWER OVER ETHERNET AND FIBER OPTIONS WITH VARIOUS PORT COMBINATIONS.

SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

3

contents

Trusted Advisor of Channel Business

VOLUME 11 ISSUE 07

2020

OCT

Y TR US K D N I L TA

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Sub Editor: Nidhi Shail, Pooja Jain Designer: Shadab Khan Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Marketing Manager: Vaishali Shukla 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 Delhi110016, Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@ smechannels.com Bangalore

Future-Proofing Customer Experience (CX) for a DigitalFirst ‘New Normal’

#28/1, 3rd Floor, Sri Lakshmi Krupa, Near Shamanna Park, Model House Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore - 560004 Ph. No. +91 88618 21044 E-Mail info@ accentinfomedia.com

/15

DESIGNED BY

SECURITY BARRACUDA / 16

“71% Indian Organisations say security has taken back seat with remote working despite increasing threats” Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra

SME CHAT

Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya

DELL / 24

“Dell Technologies again No. 1 in X86 server”

Park, Hauz Khas

more inside

CASE STUDY MATRIX / 28

“La Maison Royale Chooses Matrix Telecom Solutions for Multi-Site Connectivity”

New Delhi-110016

Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458 Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi

Editorial~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 03 Snippets~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 06 Products~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 29

110020, India.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publisher.

Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues) All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.

4

SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | CONSULTING | SERVICES

for more log on to smechannels.com

ESET and Ingram Micro announce strategic partnership in India ESET has partnered with Ingram Micro, the world’s largest technology distributor, to offer its security solutions for businesses on the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace in India.

To better support SMBs in the current business climate, ESET is providing a monthly subscription option to customers.

The partnership with Ingram Micro reaffirms ESET’s commitment to supporting digital development of SMBs and enterprises in India by fulfilling the fast-growing need for cybersecurity solutions. Together, Ingram Micro and ESET will also provide marketing support and cybersecurity training opportunities to resellers.

“Cybersecurity is now a major priority as the Digital India

initiative has rapidly driven businesses to increasingly rely on technology. In tandem, threats by cybercriminals have also grown more sophisticated, thus cyber resilience has become crucial to supporting this development.

Through this partnership, resellers in Ingram Micro’s distribution network will have access to our latest security solutions, which will enable them to secure their customers from ever-evolving threats,” said Parvinder Walia, President of Asia Pacific & Japan, ESET. “We are excited to be working with Ingram Micro which has a strong reputation in the distribution of tech solutions. Their extensive channel ecosystem will assist us in broadening our brand presence and product availability across India.”

Orange Business Services becomes a Microsoft Azure Networking MSP As part of their digital transformation strategies, enterprises are looking to new networking models to meet the demands of multi-cloud and deliver on security, performance and user experience. At the same time, they are looking to ease the inherent complexities that come with managing end-to-end cloud solutions.

As a partner in the Microsoft Azure Networking MSP program, Orange can now help enterprises

6

SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

meet these challenges with a full set of cloud and hybrid networking services from Azure’s extensive portfolio. At the same time, Orange offers the innate capabilities to manage all cloud connectivity, from the local partner site through to the cloud network.

“As a network-native digital services company we are positioned as a full-stack player, providing an end-to-end journey to the cloud via

our network to cloud offers. Our partnership with Microsoft enables us to now go a step further enriching our value proposition within the Azure ecosystem, allowing us to provide our customers with products and services to advance their cloud strategies for even better, more resilient business outcomes,” said Paul Joyce, Executive Vice President of Global Solutions, Orange Business Services.

SNIPPETS

Qlik Expands Strategic Partnership with Google Cloud Qlik extends its partnership with Google Cloud with a new joint offering focused on enabling customers to increase the value of their SAP data with Google BigQuery. Optimized to support SAP data on Google Cloud and Google BigQuery, and reinforced with Qlik’s new ‘SAP on Google Cloud Expertise’ designation, Google Cloud customers now have an integrated solution they can confidently deploy with Qlik Data Integration to help drive more use and value from all their data.

The newly launched solution from Qlik for Google Cloud enables customers to accelerate and simplify the delivery of SAP data for real-time analytics on BigQuery. The integrated solution provides customers an automated, real-time data pipeline through Qlik Data Integration to ingest and automate the delivery of analytics-ready SAP data into BigQuery – whether it’s from legacy SAP environments, SAP HANA or SAP application servers.

CMS Info Systems Now uses IceWarp for its Email Collaboration CMS Info Systems has switched to IceWarp for its Emailing Solution services.

IceWarp’s enterprise solution now combines and integrates CMS’ all virtual office processes.

Before migrating to IceWarp, the key challenge for CMS was emailing solutions with features across the business processes – specifically on Email Security, documents sharing, communicating with team members on an instant chat window and rest. The company needed to integrate various business processes and optimize their internal practices without inflicting any major impact on business activities.

Moreover, all this needed to be centralized for company operations of the whole business within one system/platform.

IceWarp’s praiseworthy solution successfully delivered & deployed the system that streamlined CMS’ business & backend processes. In close communication with CMS executives, IceWarp experts defined and described the procedures for setting the templates and workflows. Additionally, with the help of IceWarp, CMS employees have got newer opportunities to make more informed and quicker decisions.

Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 4% in 2021 Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.8 trillion in 2021, an increase of 4% from 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. IT spending in 2020 is expected to total $3.6 trillion, down 5.4% from 2019.

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT

JK Technosoft appoints Sanjeev Motwani as EVP, Global Head of Solutions.

Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

OutSystems appoints Subrato Bandhu as Regional Vice President in India.

Zeta appoints Abhishek Sen as Chief Operating Officer.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Appoints Amer Warsi as Channel Leader for India .

Source: Gartner (October 2020)

SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

7

SNIPPETS

Lenovo announces end to end solutions for SMBs Lenovo unveiled a host of services and solutions enabling Indian SMBs for their current IT needs in the post pandemic time. Lenovo also introduced their latest product offering for SMBs – ThinkBook Plus, world’s first dual screen notebook with an E-Ink display.

Ashish Sikka, Director – SMB, Lenovo India said, “The SMB industry in India is an extremely agile and dynamic marketplace. The IT requirements for them are ever evolving and especially in the current pandemic, there is a greater need for an IT partner to meet their end to end needs. With remote working, there is no constant place of work making device management, security, maintenance etc a key priority. Not just that, with the workforce comprising more GenZ and millennials – the requirements from devices are demanding higher productivity tasked with multitasking and good looks.”

He further added, “At Lenovo, we offer end to end IT management for SMBs freeing IT staff to focus on strategic efforts and get time on their side. Today we are excited to share some of these services and solutions and introduce the perfect device solution for the new workforce – ThinkBook Plus. In Q1 FY2021, we became #1 in the SMB segment with 32% market share, and we are on a strong path of transitioning from a PC supplier to an end to end services and solutions provider.”

Druva Delivers SaaS-Based Data Protection for Kubernetes Druva announced beta support for Kubernetes workloads which delivers complete application protection that is accessible by all teams, including the central IT team and DevOps. Offered through Druva Cloud Platform, users can quickly recover, migrate, or clone Kubernetes workloads, alongside existing data center, and cloud workloads from a unified interface. Combining the simplicity and savings of a cloud-native architecture, companies can now unify data protection for emerging applications, traditional workloads, and hybrid environments.

Kubernetes, the dominant container orchestrator with more than 89 percent market share according to a recent report from Sysdig, allows users to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications with a highly modular open-source architecture. However, users still lack an easy-to-manage enterprise data protection solution to secure the entire application, including dependencies on external storage and databases. Teams also need to protect their Kubernetes workloads against threats including user error, site outages, and ransomware attacks. Now, instead of adopting yet another point backup tool specifically for Kubernetes, businesses can protect Kubernetes applications and their underlying infrastructure within Druva alongside their existing workloads.

IRIS Computers supplies 8,000 HP Computers to Kendriya Vidyalaya IRIS Computers has gradually coming out of the acute economic depression in view of the National Lockdown imposed to save the Human Lives following the rapid spread of the dreaded Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19).

The Company’s sales plunged from Rs 100 Crores to just Rs 11 Crores and from that level the company has regained and started improving upon its performance. The most significant part is that the company has not retrenched even a single employee from the company during this period.

Iris continues significantly in empowering Digitalization of India, the education sector has been one of its strong forte, Iris has done whooping businesses over 100 crores in near past.

The company has successfully bagged a Rs 50 Crores bid to supply 8,000 Desktop Computers to Kendriya Vidyalaya Schools across the nation including the far-flung areas in the North Eastern Region and remote areas of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Dell Technologies recognized by Frost & Sullivan in Hybrid Cloud Dell Technologies has been named the 2020 Company of the Year by Frost & Sullivan for its performance as an exemplary Indian Hybrid Cloud Technology Provider. In 2019, the company recorded exceptional year-on-year (YoY) growth in hybrid cloud product revenues. Dell Technologies leads its competitors, cornering one-fifth of total share in the hybrid cloud product industry. By leveraging VMware’s hardware, platform, and capabilities, Dell Technologies has been leading the hybrid cloud product market in India for 2 years.

Combining its expertise with VMware’s cloud capabilities, Dell Technologies has developed a robust portfolio of cloud solutions. The holistic portfolio enables businesses to enjoy an enhanced cloud experience complemented by an efficient operating model that provides simple management of workloads and applications across private clouds, public clouds, and edge locations.

8

SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

Hitachi Vantara Unifies Cloud Management Hitachi Vantara introduced new enhancements and capabilities to its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) portfolio with updates to Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) HC and Hitachi UCP RS. The latest updates provide added benefits to customers including faster provisioning with new Hitachi UCP Advisor, certified support for SAP HANA workloads, new Intel Cascade Lake Xenon Refresh processors that increase performance, and enhanced lifecycle management capabilities that deliver non-disruptive upgrades.

“There is no doubt that COVID-19 will leave everlasting impacts on how people around the world do business and live their day-to-day lives.

For IT, this means supporting larger mobile and remote workforces with federated collaboration, an elevated focus on infrastructure resiliency and cybersecurity, and accelerated digital transformation initiatives,” said Bobby Soni, president, Digital Infrastructure, Hitachi Vantara. “Hitachi Vantara is rapidly evolving our strategy to support CIOs and their teams, and our hyperconverged infrastructure solutions help them simplify digital infrastructure management as they grapple with today’s new realities.”

SNIPPETS

UPL Chooses Qlik to Drive Business Strategy UPL is leveraging Qlik’s data analytics platform to empower and inform business users across its organization.

“Data is very important to us at UPL. Given the scope of our operations, our business users – from the junior-most employee to mid-level managers to senior leaders – were previously working extremely hard to make sense of the data in front of them,” said Bhushan Narsinghani, Head of Analytics, UPL. “Historically, our analytics operations used to take up a lot of time. We realized that, even after putting in so much effort, the insights generated were limited in scope and didn’t have the kind of accuracy, consistency and agility that we expected. This changed, first with the implementation of QlikView and then with Qlik Sense.”

“Our business users had varied skill levels and were surprised by the ease-of-use and intuitive nature of Qlik Sense. Here was a powerful BI tool that presented ready-made insights in an interactive visual format right in front of us,” said Sudhanshu Gupta, Global Head – Business Excellence, UPL.

Forcepoint Dynamic User Protection Delivers Industry’s First Cloud-Native User Activity

VMware and NVIDIA to Enable NextGen Hybrid Cloud Architecture and Bring AI to Every Enterprise VMworld 2020, VMware and NVIDIA announced a broad partnership to deliver both an end-to-end enterprise platform for AI and a new architecture for data center, cloud and edge that uses NVIDIA® DPUs (data processing units) to support existing and next-generation applications.

Through this collaboration, the rich set of AI software available on the NVIDIA NGC hub will be integrated into VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Tanzu. This will help accelerate AI adoption, enabling enterprises to extend existing infrastructure for AI, manage all applications with a single set of operations, and deploy AI-ready infrastructure where the data resides, across the data center, cloud and edge.

Additionally, as part of Project Monterey separately announced today, the companies will partner to deliver an architecture for the hybrid cloud based on SmartNIC technology, including NVIDIA’s programmable NVIDIA BlueField-2.

Forcepoint today announced the introduction of Dynamic User Protection that redefines modern user activity monitoring (UAM) and insider threat protection with the industry’s first cloud-native solution to deliver out-of-the-box functionality with no policy configuration. Through this capability, security teams are now empowered with real-time visibility into true risk behaviors of compromised and malicious users within hybrid cloud environments.

All security begins with visibility and the massive shift to remote work created blind spots into user activities with critical data and intellectual property in unmanaged home environments. Attackers have actively exploited this vulnerability with a 400% increase in cyberattacks in 2020, according to the FBI. Coupled with the reality that 95% of cybersecurity breaches are the result of compromised user credentials and human error, it is a competitive imperative today that businesses gain needed visibility to mitigate a data breach in real-time.

LTI Recognized as a Great Place to Work in the USA Larsen & Toubro Infotech (BSE code: 540005, NSE: LTI), a global technology consulting and digital solutions company has been recognized as a Great Place to Work-Certified™ Company in the USA. This Certification is a significant achievement that validates employee feedback gathered with Great Place to Work’s rigorous, data-driven methodology. This recognition confirms that 7 out of 10 employees have a consistently positive experience at LTI, USA. Areas of strength for LTI in the USA were its high scores on fairness, safety, and the management team. LTI strives to provide a culture that fosters innovation and prioritizes employee happiness and well-being.

Sanjay Jalona, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, LTI said, “At LTI, we place employees at the heart of our existence and encourage them to keep learning with a beginner’s mind. Being Great Place to Work-Certified™ inspires us to further foster a culture of inclusion, equality, meritocracy and collaboration that allows every LTIte to perform at their very best”.

India Server Market Revenue Declines YoY by 22.3% to Reach $272.0 million in Q2 2020 The overall server market in India witnessed a year-over-year (YoY) decline of 22.3% in terms of vendor revenue to reach $272.0 million in Q2 2020 (April-June) versus $350.2 million in Q2 2019, according to the latest IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker , Q2 2020 (September 2020 release).

The x86 server market accounts for 85.6% of overall server market in terms of revenue. The contribution to x86 server market continues to come from the professional services, telecommunications, followed by manufacturing and banking verticals. For the telecommunications vertical, spending was observed from several on-going projects and network expansion projects. For the banking sector, spending from nationalized and private banks were focused on digital transformation, business continuity, and providing robust banking platforms to the customers.

SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

9

SNIPPETS

Tenable Unveils New Lumin Capabilities Across Dynamic Environments Tenable announced new Tenable Lumin innovations that empower customers to align business objectives with cybersecurity initiatives. The latest enhancements to the Cyber Exposure Management Platform enable organizations to predict which vulnerabilities pose the greatest business risk and act with confidence to effectively reduce risk across their modern, distributed environments.

As the performance of our global economy increasingly depends on the uptime and security of digital infrastructure, cyber risk has become inherent to business risk. But the modern attack surface has expanded with new assets — from cloud to IoT to operational technology — and CISOs struggle to understand their true level of exposure and address risk based on business priorities.

NEC Technologies India is Now NEC Corporation India NEC Technologies India today announced its rebranding to NEC Corporation India (NEC), effective from September 21, 2020. The shift reflects the company’s strong commitment to the country and India’s growing importance to the NEC Group’s global business.

NEC has plans to expand the portfolio and depth of its solutions and services offered both in the Indian market and globally. Supported by a strong and talented workforce of 6,000 employees in India, the company now serves as a global delivery hub for offshore support & product development, pursuing further growth in the domestic market.

Commenting on the occasion, Aalok Kumar, President & CEO, NEC Corporation India, said, “2020 marks an important year in the execution of our future business strategy to drive global growth trajectory for the NEC Group. We are promoting an ‘India Go Big’ initiative by leveraging our solution development and delivery capability from India to aid global business growth.

FireEye Introduces Mandiant Advantage FireEye announced Mandiant Advantage: Threat Intelligence – the first SaaS-based offering by Mandiant Solutions to combine its Threat Intelligence with data from the frontlines of its industry-leading cyber incident response engagements, delivered through an easy-to-use management platform.

“For years, Mandiant Threat Intelligence has led the industry with the highest quality reporting that comprehensively details the threat environment, enabling organizations to prioritize threats and manage cyber security risk,” said Sandra Joyce, Executive Vice President of Mandiant Threat Intelligence at FireEye. “We are now making emerging intelligence accessible to all defenders as it is discovered, regardless of the technology they have deployed. Now customers of all sizes have unprecedented access to the depth and breadth of threat intelligence Mandiant offers, appropriate to their budget and unique needs.”

Mandiant Threat Intelligence provides organizations with information on active threats as they emerge and is the first generally available SaaS offering on the new Mandiant Advantage platform.

Mandiant Solutions plans to introduce a family of Mandiant Advantage SaaS offerings to augment and automate global security teams with controls-agnostic, actionable breach, adversary, operational and machine intelligence data from the company’s global deployment of product telemetry and the Mandiant front lines.

Veeam Acquires Kasten to Accelerate Protection of Kubernetes-Native Workloads Veeam Software has acquired Kasten, the market leader for Kubernetes Backup and Disaster Recovery, in a cash and stock transaction valued at $150M. According to 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, nearly three-quarters of organizations are currently using or planning to use Kubernetes within the next two years.[i] Veeam believes this shift creates a massive opportunity for the future of data protection and the acquisition reinforces its commitment to support customers’ business transformation to future-ready architectures. With this new acquisition, Veeam will integrate Kasten into its market-leading Cloud Data Management platform for modern data protection and radically simplify data management for enterprises.

10 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

DIGEST INFOBIP LAUNCHES ‘MOMENTS’– HELPING BRANDS ADD A HUMAN TOUCH TO CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS GLOBAL CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM INFOBIP HAS LAUNCHED AN OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT HUB – MOMENTS. MOMENTS EMPOWERS BRANDS TO SEGMENT THEIR CUSTOMERS BY DEMOGRAPHICS AND BEHAVIOR ALONGSIDE OTHER METRICS, THEREBY DRIVING CONTEXTUAL MESSAGING AND RICH EXPERIENCES ACROSS MAJOR MARKETING CHANNELS. AS MORE PEOPLE JOIN THE DIGITAL BANDWAGON IN THE NEW NORMAL, ‘MOMENTS’ LEVERAGES INFOBIP’S MOBILE-FIRST TELECOMMUNICATIONS SOLUTIONS TO ENSURE ALL CUSTOMERS HAVE RICH AND CONSISTENT EXPERIENCES ACROSS ALL MARKETING CHANNELS. IT DELIVERS THE RIGHT SET OF MESSAGES TO THE RIGHT CUSTOMER AT THE MOST OPTIMAL TIMES. MOMENTS DOES SO ACROSS THE CHANNELS THAT A BRAND’S CUSTOMERS GENERALLY PREFER. SOME OF THEM INCLUDE SOCIAL MESSAGING APPS (SUCH AS WHATSAPP, VIBER, FACEBOOK MESSENGER, LINE, ETC), SMS, EMAIL, VOICE, MOBILE APPLICATIONS, WEBSITES, AND ALSO THE EMERGING CHANNELS SUCH AS RCS. MOMENTS EMPOWERS MARKETERS AND BUSINESSES TO DRIVE HIGHLY EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGNS THAT RESONATE WITH THEIR CUSTOMERS ON A PERSONAL LEVEL. IT PROVIDES A 360O VIEW OF EVERY CUSTOMER WHICH CAN BE USED TO AUTOMATE ‘MULTI-STEP COMMUNICATIONS FLOWS’ AND ‘BEHAVIORTRIGGERED MESSAGES’ ACROSS DIFFERENT CHANNELS.

FORTINET NAMED A LEADER IN THE 2020 GARTNER MAGIC QUADRANT FOR WAN EDGE INFRASTRUCTURE FORTINET HAS BEEN POSITIONED IN THE LEADERS QUADRANT OF THE GARTNER SEPTEMBER 2020 MAGIC QUADRANT FOR WAN EDGE INFRASTRUCTURE, PLACING HIGHER IN ABILITY TO EXECUTE AND FURTHER IN COMPLETENESS OF VISION THAN ITS POSITION THE PREVIOUS YEAR. FORTINET DELIVERS THE INDUSTRY’S MOST FLEXIBLE SD-WAN SOLUTION FORTINET CONTINUES TO DRIVE INNOVATION OF FORTINET SECURE SD-WAN TO DELIVER AN ORGANICALLY DEVELOPED SOLUTION THAT CONSOLIDATES ADVANCED ROUTING, SELF-HEALING SD-WAN CAPABILITIES, AND INTUITIVE ORCHESTRATION WITH THE INDUSTRY’S MOST FLEXIBLE SECURITY OPTIONS VIA INTEGRATED NEXT-GENERATION FIREWALL OR SASE-BASED CLOUD-DELIVERED SECURITY. FORTINET’S DEDICATION TO SD-WAN INNOVATION HAS ALSO RESULTED IN THE INDUSTRY’S MOST EXTENSIVE AND SECURE SD-WAN SOLUTION, ABLE TO BE DEPLOYED ACROSS THE HOME, BRANCH, CAMPUS AND MULTI-CLOUD. FORTINET SECURE SD-WAN HELPS CUSTOMERS REALIZE SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS.

SNIPPETS

Radware Partners with Airtel to Provide Cloud Security services Radware and Bharti Airtel announced a partnership under which Radware’s Cloud DDoS Protection, Cloud WAF, and Bot Manager cloud security services will be offered to enterprise customers by Airtel.

As part of the agreement, traffic from Airtel’s customers will be secured via a new India-based scrubbing service center, which is hosted by Airtel’s Nxtra Data.

“India has been strategic region for Radware for last 15 years. By setting up Scrubbing Center in India, Radware now brings Cloud-as-a-Service leading technology to our customers & partners “ said Nikhil Karan Taneja, VP & MD – India, Saarc, ME & GSI at Radware. “By launching a scrubbing center in India, our customer’s traffic will be processed within the country for DDoS, WAF & BOT Manager when consuming it as a Service from Cloud with no impact to performance and in-line with the upcoming Data Residency law.

Altair Acquires M-Base Engineering + Software GmbH Altair acquired M-Base Engineering + Software GmbH, a leading international supplier of material database and material information systems, with a focus on plastics. The acquisition of M-Base will allow Altair to offer the most comprehensive, high-fidelity plastics database available on the market, which will directly connect with Altair’s powerful solvers.

One of the most important decisions in product development is the selection of materials for production. Altair has been investing significantly in the area of material modeling for several years.

The acquisition of M-Base is an important additional step to deliver comprehensive material information and infrastructure to predict and optimize product performance through simulation. M-Base’s offering covers the complete lifecycle of material data, from testing and test evaluation to computer-aided engineering (CAE) interfaces, with a focus on plastics.

M-Base brings to Altair first-rate plastics material data supplied directly by material producers, deep knowledge in material database technology, and plastics material data preparation from raw data to data consumable by designers and engineers.

Commvault Announces Metallic Cloud Storage Service Commvault announced the availability of Metallic Cloud Storage Service, a fully integrated cloud storage target for Commvault Backup and Recovery software and HyperScale™ X appliance. Metallic Cloud Storage Service brings together brings together technology from Commvault and Microsoft Azure for security and scale, with single pane of glass management through the Commvault Command Center.

“The need to leverage the cloud is only accelerating, and having simple, direct access to cloud storage as a primary or secondary backup target allows us to facilitate our customers’ journeys to the cloud while also providing a critical step in ransomware readiness with an air-gapped cloud copy,” said Manoj Nair, General Manager Commvault. “The introduction of Metallic Cloud Storage Service built on Microsoft Azure, within Commvault Complete software and HyperScale X can transform the way companies adopt cloud storage with significant ease, while reducing risks, controlling costs, and providing data management and protection in-and-out of the cloud, all through one interface.”

Quick Heal Technologies announces salary increments from October 2020 Quick Heal Technologies is also moving for an annual increment in October 2020. Quick Heal Technologies has also digitally onboarded over 150 new employees during lockdown, across R&D, Security Labs, Sales and other enabling functions.

As Quick Heal Technologies is diversifying its enterprise product portfolio under the ‘Seqrite’ umbrella, the company will continue hiring and training fresh minds, creating a considerable talent pool of highly skilled professionals. Additionally, the company has tied-up with various educational institutions and created various long-term and short-term courses on cybersecurity through its education division, Quick Heal Academy. With these initiatives, Quick Heal aims to focus on talent readiness for the jobs of tomorrow, where it will be indispensable for organizations to hire employees who are well equipped with skills and knowledge to fight cybercrimes.

GajShield Infotech launches new technical certification program for the Pre Sales and Support Team A leading provider of firewalls and security mechanisms, GajShield Infotech has launched a new certification program for pre-sales and support engineers, students, team members and individuals interested in building a career in cybersecurity on the 12th October 2020. Another feather in the cap of GajShield Online Academy for Learning Security (GOALS), the GajShield Security Essential Certification (G-SEC) Program is its latest offering. Established with a simple objective of providing a fundamental technical understanding of firewalls, their working and firewall security systems, this program is an ideal launching pad for those learning and understanding cybersecurity. Furthermore, this is an excellent platform for the in-house channel network technical team to gain knowledge on GajShield firewall systems.

Sonit Jain, CEO, GajShield Infotech, who has over 26 years of experience in the sector, said, “GOALS was initially established with a singular vision of providing an easy-to-use self-learning platform where business partners could familiarize themselves with the array of products and solutions GajShield has to offer. However, over time, it has developed into a multidimensional e-learning platform that is not restricted to employees or partners.

SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

11

SNIPPETS

Wipro awarded by Fortum Wipro won an Application Management (AMS) and Ser-vices Integration & Management (SIAM) contract from Fortum, one of the leading clean-energy companies headquartered in Espoo, Finland.

As a part of the five-year agreement, Wipro will manage Fortum’s application portfolio across hundreds of applications for more than 11,500 users across 18 countries and provide 24/7 support for business-critical applications. Wipro will leverage its Artificial Intelligence and automation plat-form, Wipro HOLMES® to enable process automation for enhanced end-user experience. In ad-dition, Wipro’s Service Integration & Management (SIAM) transformation solution will help Fortum consolidate and govern its multi-supplier eco-system.

Tuomas Salosaari, VP, Operation Services, Business Technology, Fortum said, “Wipro was chosen as a partner because of their experience and capability in providing a flexible and efficient solution for us. We believe this will be a true win-win relationship.”

SIS Group Now Equipped with IceWarp’s Email Communication Solution The SIS Group, renowned for its security services both in India and Australia with diverse solutions across the security spectrum has tied up with IceWarp for its email collaboration solution.

With more than 2,40,000 employees, and a huge database of customers; its backend processes and operations are both complex and huge. For a Security services management company like SIS Group, it becomes a challenge to protect its sensitive information for its operations. The association with IceWarp would aid the organization to function more efficiently and effectively without security concerns.

Speaking on the deployment, Pramod Sharda - CEO, IceWarp India & Middle East quoted, “We are delighted to expand our engagement with SIS. The cumulative growth of our clientele acts as a constant reminder of us moving closer to our vision. A secure solution for every communication process is the need of the hour.

We at IceWarp offer our customers ease of use, security, and efficiency through our complete solution for all their office work in a single window, without the requirement of a third-party application”.

Palo Alto Networks Announces Prisma Cloud 2.0 Palo Alto Networks announced Prisma Cloud 2.0 which includes four new cloud security modules, enhancing its standing as the industry’s only comprehensive Cloud Native Security Platform (CNSP).

A CNSP is designed to secure multi- and hybrid-cloud environments and cloud native applications integrating security across the full DevOps lifecycle.

This announcement integrates Aporeto and builds on the November 2019 introduction of Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud.

Previously, Prisma Cloud was the only provider offering both Cloud Security Posture Management and Cloud Workload Protection on a single platform, with a single pane of glass, as a SaaS solution.

With today’s addition of Cloud Network Security and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management, Prisma Cloud now has industry-leading offerings in each of the four CNSP areas, making Prisma Cloud 2.0 the only true Cloud Native Security Platform.

Tenable Selected as First Vulnerability Management Partner for Splunk Mission Control Tenable has been selected as the first vulnerability management partner to integrate with Splunk’s new cloud-native, unified security operations platform, Mission Control. Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts will soon be able to gain real-time, data-driven visibility and insight from Tenable.io®, for vulnerability management in the cloud, across their entire digital infrastructure all within a unified SOC workflow.

Digital transformation has accelerated the rapid migration to the cloud. As organizations everywhere continue to embrace cloud-first technologies, new threats and security challenges have emerged for SOCs to overcome. Now more than ever, organizations require holistic visibility across their enterprise cloud environments to better measure, manage and reduce their cyber risk.

“When operating in such highly dynamic cloud environments, accuracy matters more than ever.

You need confidence in the results of your vulnerability management program so you can determine which security threats warrant immediate action,” said Renaud Deraison, chief technology officer and co-founder, Tenable. “Tenable’s latest integration with Splunk Mission Control empowers customers to confidently assess the state of their attack surface based on true business risk, all within a unified SOC workflow.”

12 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

CrowdStrike to Advance Threat Intelligence Offerings with IndustryLeading Situational Awareness CrowdStrike announced the new CrowdStrike Falcon X Recon module that will provide customers an increased level of situational awareness through the deep, broad collection of data from digital sources.

Falcon X Recon will help uncover potential malicious activity so security teams can better protect their brand, employees and sensitive data. CrowdStrike Falcon X Recon is designed to go beyond the dark web to include forums with restricted access on the deep web, breach data, source code repositories, paste sites, mobile greyware stores, unsecured cloud storage, public social media posts and messaging apps. In today’s evolving threat landscape, malicious actors may use one or more of these resources to more effectively target their victims and monetize their efforts. These sites are virtual watering holes, where adversaries congregate and underground digital economies thrive.

SNIPPETS

Yotta Infrastructure to Set up 20-Acre Datacenter Park in Greater Noida Yotta Infrastructure has received approvals from the Uttar Pradesh Government to set-up a 20-acre hyperscale datacenter park in the Greater Noida region. The park will consist of 6 interconnected datacenter buildings offering 30,000 racks capacity and 200 MW of power. It will be set up at an estimated cost of INR 6000-7000 Crore (appx USD 950 million). The construction for the first building will commence in December 2020.

Commenting on the development, Dr Niranjan Hiranandani, Co-founder and Managing Director of the Hiranandani Group, said, “We are thankful to the Uttar Pradesh Govt and Honorable Chief Minister Shri Yogi Adityanath for providing us all the required approvals in record time. Yotta’s vision to support the Digital India initiative just received a big boost with the inclusion of our Northern India campus that will enable us to address India’s growing need for data sovereignty.”

Darshan Hiranandani, Group CEO – Hiranandani Group said, “With our state-of-the-art campus, the NCR region will get its first hyperscale datacenter facility that was long due.

Proget, Mobile Device Management Solutions enters Indian Markets with BD Soft Prognet, enters Indian Markets with BD Soft one of the largest security software distributors in India. With this BD Soft, boasts a strong portfolio of IT Brands which includes – Bitdefender, Abby, Cososys, PDF Autosigner, Abby, Mail Vault, Digitware Backup, Zecurion and Safeons etc.

Proget EMM, secures and manages enterprise mobility for companies with thousands of Mobiles or Tablets.

It comes with extensive functions, application control, location and more.

The customized framework, suits the needs of varied businesses and can be operated either via on – premise or Cloud version to expand its functionality and retain data protection to the fullest. Focused on the protection and safety of Mobile devices, the brand is available in over 10 countries – Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Russia & CIS, Turkey, UK.

Synechron Acquires Citihub Digital Synechron Acquires Citihub Digital, a London and New York based technology consulting firm for the financial services industry. The acquisition expands Synechron’s existing capabilities and strength in areas across the Digital Enterprise, with Citihub Digital’s strong focus on application modernization, cloud enablement, cybersecurity and operating model transformation. The global demand for strategic business solutions that are built using modern technology architectures is driving transformation across the financial services and insurance industries. Citihub Digital’s competency stands aligned with Synechron’s brand promise of Accelerating Digital initiatives for banks, asset managers, and insurance companies around the world.

With this acquisition, Citihub Digital brings Synechron a team of senior-level consultants with an average of 15 to 25 years of experience and deep expertise across banking and capital markets. Synechron’s innovation work and Citihub’s stellar competencies will lead to continued growth for the combined firms specifically in key financial markets including North America, Europe and APAC.

Rethink Digital Transformation with OpenText Cloud Edition 20.4 OpenText announced the release of Cloud Edition (CE) 20.4. This release delivers innovations in the OpenText™ Cloud, that make it faster, easier, and more cost-effective for customers to adopt new capabilities, reinvent business processes and seize emerging opportunities.

OpenText CE 20.4 delivers updates, enhancements, and new features across OpenText products and services. These include new SaaS applications, new cloud services, customerdriven features, and a completely new developer cloud with documented APIs, connectors to leading business applications, and a developer community for customers and partners.

“Work models are in flux, endpoints are proliferating, consumer behavior is changing, global supply chains are being disrupted and security systems are under siege,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, OpenText CEO & CTO. “To help our customers navigate these challenges, we have released OpenText Cloud Editions 20.4, the most comprehensive and complete Information Management platform in the market.

HPE COVID-19 Test Labs and OPD Centers Facilitate Over 100 Thousand Patient Visits in India Hewlett Packard Enterprise ,COVID-19 Test Labs and Outpatient Department (OPD) Centers have collectively facilitated over 100 thousand patient visits across India. These facilities provide additional authorized COVID-19 testing facilities and isolation beds, thereby assisting the Government of India and state governments in their efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Launched in May 2020, the initiative now has 31 COVID-19 Test Labs and OPD Centers deployed across Assam, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal. Of the total COVID-19 Test Labs and OPD Centers, 16 were built using a combination of 40-feet and 20-feet refurbished negative air pressure containers, while the remaining were existing HPE eHealth Centers (eHCs), which were converted into COVID-19 OPD Centers using the requisite medical equipment and negative air pressure curtains to minimize the spread of infection.

The HPE COVID-19 Test Labs are designed to enable quick and clean testing of individuals who suspect they may have contracted COVID-19.

SME CHANNELS 13 OCTOBER 2020

INDUSTRY TALK

P

anicked responses to the infamous COVID-19 have triggered strange, India has suffered more than 180 days of lockdown, yet substantial adaptation in remote collaboration innovations became an essential in work places for India organizations. However, the transition might not be easy, according to a survey by Barracuda Networks, nearly 66% of Indian organizations have had at least one data breach or cybersecurity incident since shifting to remote working during the pandemic, while 70% are concerned about unknown threats that will cause business disruption in the next six months. Further, it was found that 53% of India organizations do not have an updated cybersecurity strategy and also lack solutions to address vulnerabilities that have been exposed due to the shift.

What will be an ideal remote working environment?

In hindsight, businesses have been heavily deploying tools such as Microsoft Team, Zoom, Slack, and other remote team collaboration tools for employees to leverage during this difficult time.

However, the more concurrent users working online simultaneously, the heavier the resources and loading these service providers have to allocate. Consequently, we have to ask ourselves again, does a good remote and team collaboration environment only constitutes of the applications mentioned above, or there should be more to it?

The answer should be more complex than a yes or no.

An ideal remote working environment is more than just utilizing collaboration tools provided online. The entire IT infrastructure, including networking and storage systems, needs serious reforms in order for businesses to ensure they have the capacity to host multiple users simultaneously, and to provide a stable and secure workflow for employees to operate remotely.

Traditionally, companies leverage traditional file server such as Windows file server to store and sync company data, unless employees access the file servers using VPN, this framework conventionally was designed only for delivering services within the company’s network. Thus, that is why so many companies utilizes the hybrid cloud infrastructure such as the most common combination of Windows server and public clouds drives. Of course, this common practice often is being viewed as overly complicated, not to mention the added data breach risk in terms of unstructured and duplicated data, and resource allocation when adapting third party team collaboration tools. Thus, having a sophisticated on-premise server with built-in remote access may definitely help with eliminating issues with

14 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

HEWITT LEE, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT HQ, DIRECTOR, SYNOLOGY INC

IS YOUR BUSINESS’S IT ENVIRONMENT READY FOR THE CHALLENGES CONFRONTING THE NEW NORMAL? remote team collaboration, unstructured data, and various security issues.

The cost benefit that businesses may concern With the recent rising demand in not just corporate remote collaboration mechanism but also stable and secure IT environment, a network attached storage (NAS) may just be the solution for businesses struggling with the problems mentioned above. Solution such as Synology NAS offers built-in collaboration tool that allows employees to edit files concurrently, and instant messaging app for team communication.

Additionally, such solution resonates the benefits of both Windows server and Google Drive, which allow files to be retrieved via mapped network drive, sync client, web portal or mobile app, all without the hassle of using VPN services.

Last but not least, what may come as a surprise is the cost benefit that businesses may experience.

The accumulative expenses contribute by the Windows server Client Access Licenses (CAL), public cloud storage license, and SaaS licenses could be massive, alternative deploying solutions like Synology Drive may save your company’s limited budget drastically when most features mentioned are completely license free.

With a solution that meets all of the criteria for working remotely, SMBs and enterprises may still operate normally even during a difficult time with so many employees work from home protocol without blowing up the budget out of proportion With COVID-19 stirring up so much uncertainty globally, the primary task a company should prioritize is to provide its employees a complete and consistent team collaboration infrastructure to not only ensures the continuation of the business, but also safeguards employees’ and their families’ wellbeing.

INDUSTRY TALK

W

hy is Customer Experience (CX) so important The way a customer feels about your brand will shape not only how loyal that customer is but also how often that customer refers your business to friends and family. Providing great CX increases customer loyalty and lifetime customer value, which directly impacts the bottom line.

One oft-used measure of CX is “net promoter score” (or NPS), which goes from 1 (not satisfied) to 5 (very satisfied). A customer reporting an NPS of 5 is a loyal, repeat buyer who has such a positive perception that she promotes your brand within her circle, the most credible, valuable promotion any company can get. The customer reporting an NPS of 3 may be “satisfied,” but will also likely switch when your competitor offers a small discount. A customer reporting an NPS of 1 will not return and will share their bad experiences with others, a sure-fire revenue killer.

The CX opportunity COVID-19 has accelerated CX trends that were already percolating for some time: the crisis has become a catalyst pushing more customers, employees and businesses to adopt (or accelerate the adoption of) digital ways of doing business.

Companies that started their digital transformation pre-COVID are outperforming rivals who are digital laggards. Why? Because people aren’t just working from home via digital tools, but also shopping and accessing service from home via digital tools. Moreover, the way customer service gets delivered has changed as call centers are now virtual, even as the demand for service has increased due to COVID-related economic uncertainty.

In a future where rapid change and business disruption become the “new normal,” self-service tools can distribute incoming workload/traffic away from your overworked service agents, who can focus on more complex interactions that they typically handle better. Self-service is thus a CX (and employee experience) win for all involved. Digital-first is the one and only scalable and future-proof CX strategy available at a time when brick-and-mortar retail and face-to-face interactions have become (and will likely remain) problematic for some time.

How to future-proof your CX Customers want service, but they increasingly want it via digital channels. For routine queries, today’s customer often prefers self-service tools that empower them to access service 24/7, through any channel and/or via any device.

Omnichannel engagement will be a key competitive advantage for companies going forward, and self-service tools like conversational chatbots

FUTURE-PROOFING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) FOR A DIGITAL-FIRST ‘NEW NORMAL’ The term “customer experience” doesn’t seem to have a standard definition, but it’s often used interchangeably with customer journey, brand perception and customer engagement. In its broadest meaning, customer experience is the subjective impression, a brand makes from the totality of interactions, resulting in how a customer thinks of a brand across every stage, channel and touchpoint of the customer journey. can fuel a scalable, digital-first and future-proof approach to CX. Blending self-service tools with human agents, empowering each to do what each does best, is a powerful driver of CX and high NPS scores. It’s not easy to do and will require investments of time and money, but getting your CX wrong will wreak havoc on your revenues. No customer will tolerate long wait times, burned-out, overworked service employees who don’t understand their needs, unresolved issues/questions that leave them frustrated and churning, too much automation and not enough human touch, and service that isn’t personalized or empathetic.

Blending self-service + human agents When customers consistently get their routine needs met, whether via self-service tools or by

human agents (or both), your CX is good. But to create a superior, scalable CX that keeps customers coming back and transforms them into brand ambassadors, you need to occasionally deliver personalized, memorable moments of “wow” (NPS 5-type service). This superior CX takes a careful blending of self-service and trained human agents where you leverage every complex, non-routine interaction as an opportunity to “wow” your customer. You do this by knowing your customer and what she expects at each step of the customer journey, then over-delivering on their expectations with stellar service.

SME CHANNELS 15 OCTOBER 2020

SECURITY

T

he market report was commissioned by Barracuda and conducted by independent research firm Censuswide in July 2020. 1,055 business decision makers in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and India were surveyed to gain insights into their current mindset about future of work trends resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While organizations are riding a wave of digital transformation to support the shift to remote working, many have been impacted by major security concerns that have emerged.

Despite this, security has taken a back seat in many organizations due to budget and resource constraints. Threat protection must get the attention it deserves to avoid causing reputational and financial damage at a time when most companies can least afford it,” said Murali Urs, Country Manager India, Barracuda Networks.

The report revealed that 62% of Indian organizations surveyed cut their cybersecurity budgets to save costs as they responded to the pandemic. In addition, 42% lacked IT resources or time to upgrade their IT infrastructure in the shift to a remote working model. This highlights the need for organizations to find ways to prioritize spending on critical controls, whether that involves consolidating vendors, investing in SaaSbased tools or assessing how automation could help free budget and resources for security.

This is critical given employees may often be more distracted when working remotely, coupled with a lack of protection on home devices and networks, making them more susceptible to cybersecurity attacks. 66% of organisations surveyed reported

16 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

71% INDIAN ORGANISATIONS SAY SECURITY HAS TAKEN BACK SEAT WITH REMOTE WORKING DESPITE INCREASING THREATS Barracuda, released key findings from a report titled “Brave the new normal: How companies in India are overcoming security challenges in a remote workplace”. The research revealed that 53% of organizations surveyed in India do not have an up-to-date security strategy or solutions, while 71% admitted that security has taken a back seat in the shift to this mode of working. at least one data breach or cyber security incident since shifting to remote working, with 67% reporting that employees had experienced an increase in email phishing attacks. 70% are concerned about unknown threats that will cause business disruption in the next 6 months.

According to the report, 61% of respondents said their employees are not properly trained in the cyber risks associated with remote working. In addition, 54% are not confident in the security of their web applications, which is another major target for malicious third parties seeking to access

corporate data.

The good news is that most Indian decision makers are aware of the problems relating to their remote working security posture and have a clear idea of how they can improve it. 85% believe that crossindustry collaboration is key to improving security standards. 92% said that they will need to upgrade their IT infrastructure to improve visibility and productivity. 87% plan to provide improved online cybersecurity training and awareness for remote working staff.

SECURITY

C

isco’s Future of Secure Remote Work Report revealed many Indian organizations were unprepared to make the accelerated transition to a remote workforce at the outset of COVID-19. About two-thirds (65%) of organizations adopted cybersecurity measures during COVID-19 to support remote working.

The study is based on a survey of over 3,000 IT decision-makers globally, including over 1,900 respondents across 13 Asia Pacific markets, including India. It highlights the cybersecurity challenges companies faced as they shifted the majority of their employees to a remote working arrangement in a really short period of time.

With users connecting from outside the corporate walls, secure access – defined as the ability to verify identity and establish trust no matter how, where, or when users log in, is the top cybersecurity challenge faced by the largest proportion of Indian organizations (68%) when supporting remote workers. Other concerns raised by organizations include data privacy (66%) and protection against malware (62%).

“With organisations forced to shift to a new way of working almost overnight, the newly distributed workforce became a focal point for malicious actors. As a result, the pandemic has amplified the criticality of cybersecurity and brought new complexities to the fore. Now, as remote work continues to garner traction, organisations are turning their attention to building a robust cybersecurity foundation, with cloud security emerging as the top investment for 31% of companies in reinventing their workplaces post COVID-19,”

MAJORITY OF INDIAN COMPANIES REPORTED OVER 25% JUMP IN CYBER THREATS WHILE WORKING FROM HOME: CISCO Organizations in India are seeing a significant increase in the cybersecurity challenges they face amid the shift to mass remote working, a new study by Cisco shows.

According to the study, 73% of organizations in the country have experienced a 25% or more jumps in either cyber threats or alerts since the start of COVID-19. said Vishak Raman, Director, Security Business, Cisco India & SAARC. Endpoints are a growing challenge for organizations to protect, as users connect from their home Wi-Fi or use their personal devices to connect to corporate applications. About two in three respondents stated that office laptops/desktops (66%) and personal devices (58%) posed a challenge to protect in a remote environment, followed by cloud applications at 42%.

An opportunity to transform for the future One trend that emerged in recent months is that a hybrid workplace – where employees move between working remotely and in the office – is the future. The findings of this study further underlined that. Over half (53%) of the organizations in India said they expect more than half of their workforce to continue working remotely post-pandemic. This compares to an average of just 28% of organizations with more than half of their workforce working remotely before the pandemic.

The good news is that as businesses prepare for this hybrid workplace, cybersecurity now tops corporate priorities, with 84% of organizations in India saying that cybersecurity is now a top prior-

ity for them. What is even better is that they are translating this into concrete action. The study highlights that 77% of organizations in the region plan to increase their future investment in cybersecurity due to COVID-19.

There are still challenges, though, that need to be addressed. While almost all (97%) organizations have made changes to their cybersecurity policies to support remote working, further simplicity and education are needed. According to the study, 60% of Indian organizations said that having too many tools/solutions to manage was a challenge faced in reinforcing cybersecurity protocols for remote working, followed by a lack of employee education and awareness (55%).

“Deploying multiple cybersecurity tools reinforces a fragmented and complex security environment that is prone to risks arising from human error. This calls for the implementation of a comprehensive and integrated security approach that can provide a seamless experience for users as well as IT teams. Further, greater focus must be laid on educating and building employee awareness as these endpoints will become the first line of defence for the organisation of the future,” Vishak added.

SME CHANNELS 17 OCTOBER 2020

SME CHAT

ANUJ VAID, EVP, CMS IT SERVICES

OUR EXPANDED PORTFOLIO OF SERVICES IS DESIGNED TO CREATE BUSINESS VALUE FOR CUSTOMERS Briefly tell us about CMS IT services and its growth over the years?

CMS IT Services is a leader in IT Managed Services and System Integration areas. This is a difficult business to run, and only tight operational controls combined with exceptional use of technologies can provide the necessary leverage and differentiation. These traits are exhibited through the transformation we deliver in our programs through the use of Automation and Digital. We have a span of services across Cloud, Digital, Cybersecurity, and the ability to provide each of these in a Services Model.

With a team of over 6500 across the country and with over 300 happy marquee customers, we are the best bet for companies across industry verticals (Banking, Insurance, Manufacturing, Services, Healthcare, Media & Telecom, etc) seeking best-in-class, personalized and differentiated IT Solutions. The value we provide to our customers has led to our services revenues multiplying almost 3 times in the last 5 years, with an almost 100% customer retention rate.

What are the services the com-

18 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

pany is offering?/ What are the services that CMS is providing?

The company has an expedient mix of traditional as well as new-age technological services. Fundamentally, our Services are aligned to two broad categories: • Transformed Run the Business Solutions by leveraging the latest technology elements – AI/ ML/NLP/Predictive Analytics/BOTs and more.

Run the Business spend is typically around 70% of overall spend in most organizations. ‘Run’ Projects are also fundamental to efficiency of organizations. With our approach, we drive significant cost savings and efficiency advantages for our customers.

• New Solutions & Services for Business Transformation in the Cloud, Digital, and Cybersecurity areas. Each of our solutions are differentiated, created to deliver specific goals with the least possible investment, designed for India and personalized for customers. For e.g. we have a Shared Delivery Centre for Robotic Process Automation Projects, allowing our customers to create efficiencies in their organizations with much lower investments. We also have a BOT library, for accelerated deployments.

What are the technologies driving the market in this present situation, though cloud is one what else?

The top business buzzwords today are Cost Savings, Efficiency, BCP, Resilience, Pandemic Planning, Risk Management. Some organizations are looking to re-craft themselves to focus on the ‘new normal’.

Top technology buzzwords are Cloud or Hybrid Clouds, Robotic Process Automation, Cybersecurity, AI / ML Solutions, Conversational BOTs, Predictive Analytics and IoT. CMS IT Services is in tune with customerneeds and leverages each of these new technology paradigms uniquely for each customer organization.

How CMS IT Services is positioned in the new dynamics where WFH/ WFA is the new normal?

Businesses are now functioning in an unfamiliar environment that demands functionalities to be carried out remotely. This unprecedented situation that was imposed abruptly has bought with it a new set of challenges that include cybersecurity

SME CHAT

4. Digital Services.

Name a few of customers and their challenges that CMS IT mitigated?

CMS IT has remote support centres based in Bangalore and Mumbai that we can leverage for delivering user-specific solutions to our clients.

CMS IT’s procure-to-pay RPA-led automation program improved compliance, processing time, user and employee satisfaction for a large client organization manufacturing defence and military equipment.

• A major Pharmaceutical firm was also able to efficiently manage its user requests with zero drops thanks to our help-desk automation services augmented by conversational AI. • Infrastructure Outsourcing Services to one of the top Automobile brands in India delivered significant overall productivity improvement and cost optimization in just 3-6 months of project initiation, almost completely in the COVID-19 pandemic disruption time zone.

• Improved SLA by 98.5% by streamlining support processes and enhancing application management for a Fortune 500 Financial Services company.

• Enhanced uptimes for one of our country’s top energy companies across a vast infrastructure & application landscape across 10’s of locations, including high-seas.

lapses, data storage and migration issues and helpdesk flooding. CMS IT has pioneered modernised services that have allowed our customers to work proficiently in the ‘new normal’. Our Contactless Business services utilizeconversational AI to heighten user-experience by automating serviceprocedures and increasing service-desk availability despite lack of on-site personnel.

A new approach to Enterprise Cybersecurity Service known as the Defensible Cybersecurity Framework was introduced by the company to detect and respond to cyber security breaches in real-time, now that such incidences are commonplace. Endpoint protection, Information Security and Data Centre Automation Services have also been restructured to suit the growing need for data protection and security at all points of access.

Another example is our Remote RPA Services (RRS) that seeks to drastically improve automa-

tion capabilities across multiple functional and operational areas.

What are the specialisation of CMS IT? Our expanded portfolio of services is designed to create business value for customers, whether it is Digital Services, RPA, Automation Solutions or Managed Services across the Infra, Apps and Cybersecurity spectrum. Outcome-driven IT Infrastructure Management has been the cornerstone of our service spectrum over the years.

Customers look at us to deliver: 1. Managed Services (Cloud, DC, Networks, Apps & Workplace) 2. System Integration (Hybrid/Hyperconverged Clouds set up, App Modernization, Cybersecurity Rollouts) 3. IT Automation

What are the future growth strategy for next 2 quarters?

The pandemic has set a precedent forhow businesses must learn and adapt to functioning in a tumultuous environment. We will continue to lay emphasis on the strong delivery of cutting-edge IT Infrastructure Solutions that are formulated to suit the unique requirements of our customers. But we will also be focussed on developing new solutions especially with regard to our Cloud capabilities, Cybersecurity and Automation services. There has been a pronounced variation in how we are received by the market, so we hope to introduce innovative service-offerings that will empower our clients to continue their BAU without disengaging their business continuity processes regardless of any major shifts in the business ecosystem they are functioning in. These offerings will also empower our customers to compete effectively in the ‘new normal’.

SME CHANNELS 19 OCTOBER 2020

INNOVATION

REDEFINING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION SANDEEP L. JOICE, TECHNICAL LEAD – INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION, JK TECHNOSOFT LTD

Digital transformation is the way towards utilizing digital innovations to transform and re-envision the business processes and customer experiences to meet changing business, technology, and market requirements. Digital transformation leads and empowers the end-to-end journey of enabling a paradigm shift towards a smarter organization. As we move from traditional processes to digital processes and smart applications for dealing with our business, we get the opportunity to reimagine how we do business and how we engage our clients with digital technology on our side.

Regardless of heavy investments in automation solutions, like, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), most crucial business processes are still following traditional data-driven manual tasks, for example, gathering, assessing, and inputting information. To do these repetitive, non-valueadding tasks, a large human workforce with certain cognitive capacities are required, which brings higher expenses, extended timelines, and

20 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

quality issues in operations.

Software Robots and Artificial Intelligence can handle these human cognitive capacities, this makes a chance to automate the tasks in more effective manners as before. RPA is the strength or the workhouse of the operations. It’s an initial step, to begin with, automation, utilizing software to limit or exclude the manual efforts, interacting and executing processes in a more proficiently and adequately manner than a human might have done. Monotonous activities such as making invoices, acknowledgement mail, sending reminders, etc. can be handled by bots (RPA) in sync with your current business frameworks. This enables employees to focus and accomplish more important work, and initiatives that can have more noteworthy impacts on the bottom line.

Talking about Intelligent Automation, that is a key player and a holistic solution for accelerating the digital transformation. Intelligent Automation is a perfect combination of Robotics Process Automation (RPA), Cognitive Process Automation (CPA), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) that leverages organizations to not only automate the human tasks but also help them in the decisionmaking process. Intelligence Automation is like the “Brain” of the system as it can imitate people, gain from them as they go, and, after some time, carry out certain responsibilities stunningly better than their human counterparts might.

According to Forbes Posits, Intelligent Automation increases execution capacity, minimizes the overhead needed to get services and products to market and optimizes efficiency by facilitating better-informed decision-making and a focus on

quality.

There are a ton of innovative offerings out there — often enough to make head spin — and all to convey esteem the business essentially can’t survive without. At the point when we’re assessing software innovation buys, we take a gander at both how the innovation will empower our groups to play out their work more speedily and how the investment in the technology will convey business esteem.

Let’s be honest, better workflows are extraordinary, as are staggeringly cheerful clients, however these things, joined with primary concern business savings — that is what we’re all searching for and the solution is offered by automation.

Research from McKinsey uncovers organizations over numerous businesses that have been trying different things with Intelligence Automation are seeing 20-35% yearly run-rate efficiencies because of automating 50-70% of errands. This has additionally brought about a decrease in straight-through process time of 50-60% and the ROI frequently in the triple-digit rates. Furthermore, Futurum research shows that organizations understand the worth automation can convey, and 75% of associations mean to put resources into RPA or IA among now and 2025 — with 44% wanting to put resources into the following a year, 18% intending to put resources into the following 12 to year and a half, and 13% in the following two to five years.

The main objective of Intelligent Automation is to expand the possibilities of business. The scope of its application in businesses will continue to grow and expand as new smart technologies enter the market. Automation is not a substitute for the human workforce, rather human and automation when comes together, complement each other, and compensate each other’s limitations and help the business keep thriving.

WORK FROM ANYWHERE

VISUAL ENGAGEMENT TOOLS DELIVER GREAT CX: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW In an increasingly remote world, a new commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting shows that visual engagement technology can solve top customer experience (CX) priorities.

These tools will allow agents to create a more personal and secure customer experience at any distance. But not just any tools will do.

What does a great CX look like?

Your customer experience (CX) can make or break your business. These days, your customers, and even your employees, are comparing their experiences with your company to the best experiences they’ve had with any other brand, regardless of industry. To deliver on these high expectations, Forrester’s survey for the study finds that CX professionals are prioritizing creating experiences that build trust and reduce customer effort.

Visual engagement technology boosts agent conversations.

To help deliver these experiences in agent-assisted interactions, companies are looking to visual engagement technology. Specifically, co-browsing that lets the agent see what the customer sees online as they offer guidance through various digital experiences, and camera-sharing that gives the agent a live video feed of the customer’s physical space to help solve issues with equipment or products.

Both of these technologies give agents a realtime lens into what the customer is experiencing, something popular engagement channels like phone and chat cannot do on their own. CX professionals are banking on visual engagement to augment these agent-assisted interactions.

But only the best will do.

Adopting the right visual engagement technology is critical for brands focused on increasing customer trust and decreasing customer effort as their top CX goals.

If your tools have these drawbacks, creating trusting and effortless experiences will be a difficult, if not impossible task.

LogMeIn can help.

Rescue offers two new visual engagement solutions to solve these pain points.

Both Rescue Live Guide co-browsing and Rescue Live Lens camera-sharing can be leveraged from any of your existing engagement channels, like phone and chat, allowing all customer-facing

teams to see the world through your customers’ eyes and guide them to faster resolutions on both digital properties and physical spaces.

Rescue’s Visual Engagement Tools: • Start instantly with zero downloads. Both solutions are browser-based with no downloads required. This eliminates customer effort right off the bat.

• Let agents annotate on screen to clearly guide customers with visual cues for effortless customer experience.

• Offer mobile SDK so you can keep the customer experience in your mobile app with seamless co-browsing and camera-sharing capabilities.

• Mask the customer’s private and personal data during co-browsing sessions. This is key to building customer trust, a top CX priority.

• Block agents from clicking action buttons like “Buy now” during co-browsing sessions, again to help build customer trust.

SME CHANNELS 21 OCTOBER 2020

PARTNER CORNER

ISODA BROUGHT IN NEW MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE FOR 2020 The much awaited 11th Annual General Meeting of ISODA was announced for 10 October 2020. We are all witnessing an unprecedented pandemic this year with a large disruption of routine. But the good work of a truly National Association has to go on.

The Infotech Software Dealers Association recently concluded their 11th AGM. This was a first for the association as they organized their First Virtual AGM on 10th October 2020. After the financials and the last years’ minutes were passed, the new Management Committee was elected. Rajeev Mamidanna, Co-founder of Technosprout Systems, who was the Vice Chairman in the last term, got promoted as Chairman of ISODA. Dnyanesh Kulkarni, Founder & Owner of Deltakraft Solutions, who was the Vice President in the last term, got promoted as President of ISODA. Elections took place for the following positions: 1. Vice Chairman 2. Vice President

22 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

3. Secretary 4. Treasurer Pradeep Daga, Founder & Owner of Suntronix, erstwhile Regional Secretary (South) was elected as the General Secretary. Alok Gupta, Founder & Owner of Softmart Solutions and erstwhile President of ISODA was elected to the Vice Chairman’s position. Jitesh Chauhan, Founder & Owner of Rubik Infotech, erstwhile Regional Secretary (Gujarat) was elected to the Vice President’s position. The position of Treasurer was retained by Ravi Jalan of Shaki Enterprises.

The New Management Committee is as follows: 1. Chairman– Rajeev Mamidanna, Technosprout

systems 2. Vice Chairman– Alok Gupta, Softmart Solutions 3. President– Dnyanesh Kulkarni, Deltakraft Solutions 4. Vice President– Jitesh Chauhan, Rubik Infotech 5. Secretary– Pradeep Daga, Suntronix 6. Treasurer– Ravi Jalan, Shakti Enterprises The Regional Secretaries for all the designated regions of ISODA will soon be announced after their elections are done over the next 1 month.

ISODA is glad to inform that we have crossed 200+ members and the number is growing day by day. We are actively looking at adding new chapters and getting more members on board. With the uncertainty of the current times and businesses struggling to grow, ISODA Management Committee intends to create a platform of growth for all its members by pushing a few initiatives for all. The top priorities for ISODA Management Committee this year will be: 1.Enable realistic collaboration within members to upsell, cross-sell and grow together in these uncertain times 2. Work as a professional organization and bring in more maturity to our internal communication and interactions with members 3. Improve communication with OEMs and Distributors 4. Focus on doubling the Member count and ensuring identification of new regions 5. Skills development initiatives for employees of ISODA members to enhance knowledge of relevant solutions 6. Digital Marketing to be taken to next level by Increasing visibility of ISODA socially 7. Ensure maximum touch with the OEM community by planning creative means of interactions online.

GUEST ARTICLE

IDENTIFICATION OF CATCHMENT AREAS VIA MOBILITY DATA

ASHWANI RAWAT, Co-Founder & Director, Transerve

WCatchment areas are essential for commercial entities such as retailers, wholesalers and other businesses since they draw most of their business from them. When you talk about the retail industry there has been a marked shift in recent years especially in how brick and mortar stores have been functioning, in fact, many of them have been facing closure. This disruption has been causing what can only be called a ‘retail apocalypse’ – and many businesses have arrived at a crucial point in their decision-making process regarding where a new store should open or which stores should be closed or kept open. When you think about these important considerations spatial data science can help in the identification of catchment areas via mobility data – which can help in tackling the challenges effectively.

Calculation of catchment areas is really essential for booming business sectors such as retail and real estate, as it helps businesses in better understanding its customers and then developing business strategies accordingly. Ranging from identifying circular trade areas through isochrones, to gravitational models to the usage of more advanced techniques that look at location-specific variables – calculating catchment areas generally depends upon the kind of information and data that is available.

Historically speaking, two approaches have been commonly used for the identification of catchment areas. The first being circular catchment area, which is used to define the attraction on the basis of a fixed radius around the store; and the second one being Isochrones area which is calculated on the basis of the maximum reach that the store has – that is through transportation such as walking, driving, cycling, etc. and the time range. Isochrones areas generally depend on cartographies and mapping of all the available streets and roads in given geography, which obviously helps in reaching a more accurate definition for the retail space in question.

Although these methods have worked traditionally one also has to factor in now the consideration that people who are visiting these retail spaces, could actually at a point be living, working or spending time in other places as well, which is outside the target catchment area. Hence, customer profiling needs many more considerations apart from these, and mobility data has proved to be quite helpful in

doing so. Identification of human mobility with the help of GPS data tells you about footfall and origindestination matrix as well as the various points of interest.

Additionally, one has to also calculate catchment areas for locations which may not have historical consumer data. Why it is so important to have the said data is because it will help in modelling any potential cannibalisation that might happen amongst branches of a business.

Hence, in order to identify optimal locations for a commercial space, generally, the following methodology is considered: • Data Discovery that will help in the identification of relevant data to collate.

• Grid Selection and Cell Enrichment based on the data that has been collected in the discovery phase. Generally, this data concerns human mobility, commercial aspects, as well as socio-demographics.

• Calculation of Catchment Area for the subset selected. The subset is selected generally by the application of a filter for the identification of cells that have high commercial potential – as gauged by human mobility data collected.

• Optimisation of Algorithms that will help in the identification of the best locations. An approximation algorithm is generally developed using a greedy approach in linear programming on every step.

Mobility data that has been obtained from mobile devices, is a powerful tool and the catchment areas that are identified by the cleaning and aggregation of this data offers retailers and investors a much clearer picture regarding their target audience. Adding this data to location intelligence toolbox can help in modernising business decision making and help businesses in staying agile.

As witnessed by the collapse of the global economy due to the current pandemic, it has become even more imperative for retail and other sectors to use techniques and tools that will help them in making informed decisions that will allow them to get a competitive advantage. Mobility data when enriched with other data streams and helped by optimisation and other spatial techniques can aid in making a difference and tackling the challenges that the sectors are facing today as well as those that might arise in the future.

SME CHANNELS 23 OCTOBER 2020

SME CHAT

MANISH GUPTA, SENIOR DIRECTOR & GENERAL MANAGER, INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS GROUP, DELL TECHNOLOGIES INDIA

DELL TECHNOLOGIES AGAIN NO. 1 IN X86 SERVER 2020 has been remarkable for Dell Technologies’ server business. Highlight from which all segments you have witnessed maximum traction, and did you also witness interest from SMBs? I am happy to share that the year 2020 started fairly on a good note for us. As per IDC Q1 2020 India Server Industry report, we was ranked as No. 1 in the x86 server segment with 36% revenue share.

Number of units we shipped were more than what our next two competitors shipped. I believe that our leadership in this segment is a testimony to our holistic server portfolio that resonated well with our customers in India, including SMBs. Our wins from verticals like professional services, financial institutions, high-tech semiconductor manufacturing companies, and telecommunication vendors helped us secure the top spot.

How do you see market situation spanning over the period of time? Does the same imply for SMBs? The current situation has forced all enterprises, be it large or small, to innovate and adapt themselves. It has made them realize that technology advancement is the only catalyst that will help them sail through this present latitude. Few upcoming trends that we can witness are: Since, businesses cannot have physical con-

24 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

nect with their customers, they are trying to deploy new channels of engagement. But, this is only possible when they have entire backend and front-end digitally connected. Organizations have realized the benefits of a digital-first approach and therefore, we are seeing increase in digital adoption across segments Present situation has also forced majority of the workforce to operate from home. This big change has necessitated new architectures and infrastructure to be deployed by organizations so that employees get the same level of granular access to data when working from home. Hence, we are seeing workforce transformation at large Employees are now working from different places and due to this, the number of ports have opened up, making security a major concern than ever before. Organizations not only require to manage the extensive workloads across locations but also equally need to ensure that they’re securing all parts from where the data is coming without a security glitch. Thus, growing importance

Organizations are realizing that it is going to be a multi-cloud world in the long run. Some workloads will be suitable for public cloud, some workloads will be extremely critical, and thus, organization will be willing to store them on a private cloud i.e. on-prem. So, every organization will have a co-existence of multiple clouds.

Businesses would need to equip themselves with all the modern infrastructure, so that they could manage their applications and workloads across locations.

At a time when many of the companies are laying off their employees, where do you see current consumption going?

As per the IDC Q1 numbers, while the market has not grown and the overall demand in the industry for servers actually declined year on year, however, for us, we were able to garner a larger share of that particular market segment. Having said that, we firmly believe that in the longer term, we will see significant growth in the Indian server market.

for security.

Do you believe that on-prem deployment is increasing or its just sentimental change, looking at the multiple options that cloud solutions are offering?

What are the new products/technologies you plan to bring in the market and how would provide training to the channel partners?

We have been focused on bringing modern-age solutions to our customers in their journey of

SME CHAT

We have always been at the forefront in delivering the best technology innovations to our customers. Few notable highlights that helped us to achieve the market share are: End – to- end solutions – Today, we are the only organization in the industry that provides end-to -end solutions to our customers from the edge, to core, to cloud. Customers see us as being that one-stop-shop for all their IT solutions and requirements Differentiated strategy – All of the solutions that we are developing, are resonating well with our customers. Our ready solutions and innovations at the core are some of the offerings that are extremely differentiate from what anyone else is doing in the market Go-to market strategy – The trust that our partners and customers instill in us is a reflection of our successful market strategy. We are closely working with our channel partners and enabling them with working capital solution, so that they provide value proposition to our customers in current times.

digital transformation. On the technology front, we are looking towards bringing in solutions that make the work from home experience better, enhance the transformation journey, and significant investment in that area have been made by us. We are also building security at the core of the servers rather than just keeping it at the periphery as well as deploying automation tools and manageability at the core. Additionally, we have also brought solutions, which are easy and ready to deploy, known as ready solutions. At Dell Technologies, we are providing validated and engineered solutions to our customers beforehand, so

that customers can deploy them very quickly and easily and no iterations are required from their end For our channel partners, we have kept a close relationship with them. At a time when physical connection is a concern, we have been conducting regular webinars, training for them across tier 1, 2 & 3 cities, so that they understand the portfolio and deploy those solutions to the customers end..

What are the factors that led to the significant growth for Dell Technologies in the market?

What are some of the key trends that you can forecast in the upcoming months?

Accelerated digital transformation – To stay competitive, businesses will need to modernize and automate their systems to ensure that they are able to manage the workloads, both the traditional and new-age ones Workforce transformation – Organizations would have to provide their employees the same application and access to products/solutions that they were having in office Security Transformation – Businesses would need to have security at the core of IT infrastructure rather than the periphery. Approach to security should be proactive’.

What is your growth strategy going ahead?

Our strategy has significantly hinged on the fact that we have been one of the most innovative players in this segment. We are well-connected with our customers, we understand their needs, and assist them accordingly. We will also continue to invest in developing new and contemporary solutions and support our channel partners so that they can reach out to customers, providing them with right technology.

SME CHANNELS 25 OCTOBER 2020

GUEST ARTICLE

HOW TODAY’S MANUFACTURERS ARE MOVING AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGIES TO THE CLOUD

DIJAM PANIGRAHI, Co-founder and COO, Grid Raster

There are many industries where manufacturing continues to be the backbone of the economy, where companies that produce products and goods used by both businesses and consumers have found a way to push forward during the COVID-pandemic.

Even though manufacturing has continued throughout 2020, it is showing signs of a slight slowdown in a year highlighted by great economic challenges. According to a recent report in Reuters, The Institute for Supply Management (ISM)1 said its index of national factory activity fell to a reading of 55.4 in September, down slightly from 56 in August. Despite the slowdown, September marked the fourth straight month of growth and it compares to an August figure that was the highest level dating back to November 2018.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion in manufacturing, which accounts for 11.3% of the U.S. economy.

Technology Has Helped Manufacturers Push Forward in 2020 Technology has helped manufacturers maintain factory output despite the challenges posed by COVID-19. One technology in particularly is the suite of Immersive Mixed Reality (MR) technologies – which are best described as a fully immersive experience that brings virtual objects into the real world or one which blends the physical world with the digital one.

MR technologies, including Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are poised to grow considerably over the next few years. In fact, more manufacturers are leveraging this technology as the Augmented Reality market2 is expected to reach $70-$75 billion in revenue by 2023.

Not All AR/VR Platform Environments Are Created Equal Manufacturers should be cautious in how they design and deploy these technologies, because there is great difference in the platform they are built on and maximized for use.

Even though technologies like AR/VR have been in use for several years, many manufacturers have deployed virtual solutions that are built upon an on-

26 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

premise environment, where all the technology data is stored locally. This buildout was more common a few years ago and was considered the de facto platform for this type of technology.

On-premise AR/VR infrastructures limit the speed and scalability needed for today’s virtual designs, and it limits the ability to conduct knowledge sharing between organizations that can be critical when designing new products and understanding the best way for virtual buildouts.

Cloud-Based Automation Technologies Proving Pivotal Manufacturers are overcoming these limitations by leveraging cloud-based (or remote server based) AR/VR platforms powered by distributed cloud architecture and 3D vision-based AI. These cloud platforms provide the desired performance and scalability to drive innovation in the industry at speed and scale.

Enterprise-grade high-quality AR/VR platforms require both performance and scale. However, existing systems such as MS HoloLens and others are severely limited in both aspects. Most enterprises have a rich repository of existing complex 3D CAD/ CAM models created over the years. These 3D models may vary in their complexity (such as poly count, hierarchy, details, etc), making it difficult to run and excel within on-premise virtual platform environments, restricted by device limitations. This forces developers to decimate the contents (3D models/scenes) to fit to different mobile devices, spending months in the process and sacrificing on the overall quality of the experience.

As these virtual environments become richer and larger, the problem continues to compound.

This cycle is repeated for each of the different AR/ VR hardware platforms, making it difficult for any enterprise to move from experiments and pilots to full scale deployable solutions, thus stunting the speed of innovation and effectiveness.

GUEST ARTICLE

INDIA GEARS UP FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF WI-FI TECHNOLOGY

MARTHESH NAGENDRA, Country Manager - India, ME & SAARC, NETGEAR

With much of the country being on lockdown in the past few months due to the ongoing pandemic, by now you must be aware of the importance of Internet and Wi-Fi devices. Many of us didn’t realize the significance of having a strong Wi-Fi device in our home up till now, but today in the world we live in, it is clear that Internet and Internet devices play a significant role in our day to day life and have become somewhat of necessity during these times.

Before the pandemic, the country was focused and was talking about the emergence of the next big thing i.e. the 5G technology, many organization, and businesses started rolling out devices that were 5G enabled or supported the technology to make India ready for 5G but a more powerful communication started has also started gaining its name i.e. Wi-Fi 6.

Most of you would be also aware of the term Wi-Fi 6 by now, Wi-Fi 6 or 802.11ax is the latest version of the 802.11 communication standard. The latest version of this Wi-Fi standard empowers with faster Wi-Fi speeds with reliable connections, so one can enjoy buffer-free streaming, faster downloads, and add more smart home devices without slowing down the Internet experience. It also provides better coverage and, more importantly, has the power and capacity to handle dozens of devices in the typical congested smart home.

The latest communication standard has started gaining an edge in the Wi-Fi market as many companies have started rolling out devices/hardware that are Wi-Fi 6 enabled including Cisco, Asus, NETGEAR, TP-Link, etc. Besides this, many Smartphone companies have also started taking lead in the race by bringing out devices that support Wi-Fi 6. Apple, launched iPhone 11 series that support the latest Wi-Fi standard i.e. Wi-Fi 6, besides this Samsung has also introduced a few of its mobile phones in the market that also supports the latest Wi-Fi standard. Even for Gaming – the new Play Station is supposedly enabled with wifi 6 too.

In short, companies have started gearing up for the next generation of Wi-Fi standard and have started rolling out Wi-Fi 6 enabled devices or devices that support Wi-Fi 6. The latest Wi-Fi standard is set to change the course of the overall Internet experience; it is faster and much more efficient, capable of powering a growing number of devices simultaneously.

The ongoing pandemic has started the new era of working from home culture and as the pandemic prevails much of the employees and organization will continue to allow their employees to work from home. Evidently, the current Wi-Fi devices available in the market are not able to support multiple devices at once leading to network congestion, slowdown of network in the devices in respective homes, ultimately leading to a hampered productivity of the employees. Wi-Fi 6 has the ability to handle multiple devices as it uses MU-MIMO technology, Multiple User Multiple In/Multiple Out. This means it uses multiple antennas to talk to multiple channels at once, allowing the router to not only talk to multiple devices at once but also allows those devices to respond at the same time.

Wireless and home Internet providers have started providing more speed in the last few months due to the increased demand as a number of increased users are working from home, but only increasing the Internet speed won’t solve the problem, the common issue one faces is the Wi-Fi connectivity not being at optimum levels in certain parts of their home, hence, the users need a decent Wi-Fi to overcome these networking challenges and the Wi-Fi 6 devices ensure that connectivity is transmitted to various parts of the house which has low connectivity or are just basically dead zones.

And in order to reap the benefits of the investment of Wi-Fi 6, one has to have a fast Internet connection corresponding with the speed at which the standard operates, as well as the wireless devices that are compliant with the new standard.

The world of Internet is changing day by day, many technologies are introduced or upgraded every day, Wi-Fi 6 is one of the newest technologies that were introduced to meet the demands of faster connections and reduce the anxiety that comes with trying to connect to the Internet while we are all cooped up at working from home. Since the organizations have embraced the idea of working from home and many organizations have introduced work from home policies. It is safe to say that the work from home culture is here to stay for long; hence, people should invest in the latest Wi-Fi technologies to boost their productivity in the long run.

SME CHANNELS 27 OCTOBER 2020

CASE STUDY

LA MAISON ROYALE CHOOSES MATRIX TELECOM SOLUTIONS FOR MULTI-SITE CONNECTIVITY Industry: Hospitality Customer Name: La Maison Royale Location: 2 locations (West Land and South C Mombasa Road) Devices: 1. Matrix User Terminals 2. Matrix SARVAM UCS – Unified Communication Server for Modern Enterprises

Company Profile La Maison Royale, Nairobi, is a 4-star superior boutique business hotel with a “French taste”, State-of-the-art facility and close to the entertainment in the Westland neighborhood, La Maison Royale is a unique experience.

La Maison Royale prides itself with friendly staff and the practical touches that make being away from home easier, whether a person books their rooms by the day, week or longer. Travelling for business, looking for temporary or corporate housing, needing short-term housing during relocation, or planning a weekend getaway? La Maison Royale has a solution that will fit everyone’s budget.

Challenges La Maison Royale has their prominent presence across several locations in Nairobi. Considering this, they required seamless connectivity within sites. A system for call accounting, budgeting and routing with hospitality features was their primary requirement. Furthermore, a comprehensive and scalable solution that does not need a transformation in the coming years was their main challenge. The hotel infrastructure required a centralized communication management of all business communication. Besides, they were looking for a multi-site connectivity with call accounting and call budgeting.

Solution Matrix addressed these challenges by proposing SARVAM UCS, which is a Unified Communication Server for Modern Enterprises that manages all business communications from one place.

SARVAM UCS is an enterprise-grade Unified Communications solution that offers La Maison Royale the much needed- Collaboration, Communication, Messaging and Mobility between multi-locational sites. Unifying all the communication networks and devices provides users with the flexibility of accessing the calls, messaging and voicemails from any of the devices irrespective of their location.

28 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

Results Unified Communication for workforce collaboration and better customer responsiveness Call Management and the ability to connect from anywhere, anytime and with anyone Simple administration and management due to web-based configuration Enhanced customer responsiveness to customer/ clients Scalability to expand their business footprints in the future Leverages existing infrastructure and connect on a common communication platform IP-solution at core and application upgradation paths that renews and extends investment.

Products and Solutions Offered SARVAM UCS SME- ETERNITY GENX SARVAM UCS SME is a server software which runs on ETERNITY GENX– The next-generation hardware platform. The next-generation

platform supports up to 99 VOIP (SIP) trunks, 40 GSM ports, 8 T1/E1 ISDN PRI ports, and 64 analog trunks with up to 999 UC users, 96 digital users and 240 analog users. Both AC and DC power supply options are available.

SPARSH SERIES OF IP EXTENSIONS SPARSH Series of IP Extensions are elegantly designed to offer reliable performance, quality of business communication and efficient call management. It provides High Quality Speakerphone, Programmable Feature and DSS Keys, Corporate Directory, Message Wait Lamp, Voice Mail and Intuitive User Interface.

For further information, please contact: 394-GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara-390010, India Toll Free -1800-258-7747 E-Mail: inquiry@matrixcomsec.com Website: https://www.matrixtelesol.com/

REVIEW

PRODUCT

ECS LIVA Q1 SERIES MINI PC

TENDA’S MW5G

BY MANAS RANJAN

info@smechannels.com

TENDA MW5G IS A 1200MBP, dualband distribution mesh Wi-Fi system designed for medium to large-sized households, bringing in exponential Wi-Fi coverage, as well as a faster and stable Internet connection to cover the household. A Pack of 3 MW5G provides up to 3,500 square feet and a pack of 6 provides 6,000 square feet Wi-Fi coverage range and is also ideal for more than 1-floor houses. Compliant with IEEE 802.11k/v/r seamless roaming protocols, MW5G supports automatic network optimization and automatic routing selection, allowing one to enjoy a more stable and flexible wireless network.

KEY FEATURES: • 3,500 square feet with Pack of 3 and 6,000 square feet WiFi range • Compliant with IEEE 802.11k/v/r seamless roaming protocols • Uses dual frequency of 2.4 and 5GHz simultaneously • 2 x 3 dBi built-in Omni-directional antennas and 2 external power amplifiers • MU-MIMO, SSID Broadcast and Beamforming Technology • 80 devices can be connected • Guest Network • Smart Tenda Wi-Fi App

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY: TENDA MW5G WHOLE HOME MESH WI-FI ROUTER SYSTEM IS AVAILABLE THROUGH AUTHORIZED PARTNERS AND OTHER RESELLER CHANNELS ACROSS INDIA. THE MESH ROUTER (PACK OF 3) IS AVAILABLE AT A MARKET OPERATING PRICE OF INR 12,999/-

ECS’s pocket-size yet multi-functional mini PC – LIVA Q1D/Q1L provides smart solutions for work/study from home device and home entertainment. In addition, LIVA Q1 series is ideal for digital signage, thin-client or Terminal applications in versatile use-cases, including indoor displays for public facilities such as schools or libraries, healthcare, hospitality, business and retail.

LIVA Q1D/Q1L is build-in an ultra-powerefficient Intel Pentium/ Celeron processors, equipped with 32/64 GB eMMC and a microSD slot to expand storage space. LIVA Q1 series support Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11ac enabling greater capacity for faster internet environments. It also features with Intel® HD Graphics 500/505 to have stronger support for 4K videos playback. LIVA Q1 series design to build in a cooling fan in the ultra-small PC to keep the system stay cool and more stabilize.

FEATURES: SIt comes with varies kinds of I/O including 2 USB 3.1 Gen1, 1 USB 2.0, 1 HDMI and Gigabit LAN.

FINAL WORDING: With all these features, this device is worth for your spend.

SME CHANNELS 29 OCTOBER 2020

PRODUCT PRODUCT

D-LINK

D-LINK’S DXS-1210 & DGS-1520

MATRIX

MATRIX– SATATYA NVR6404X Matrix Extreme series Network Video Recorders are designed to cater to the video surveillance requirements of organizations. These devices used for storing video surveillance footages that enable the user to record video surveillance at high resolution. Basically, it can connect 64 IP cameras and comes with 4 SATA ports with a storage capacity of 10 TB, each. Besides this, the device provides the user with a live view of multiple streams along with real-time notifications.

FEATURES: • Cascading – Link upto 20 NVRs • 12MP Camera Recording • High Compression • Adaptive Recording • 4K Decoding and HDMI 2.0 • Data Redundancy with RAID 0,1,5, and 10 • 512Mbps Throughput

n E-Mail: inquiry@matrixcomsec.com https://www.matrixvideosurveillance.com/

DXS-1210 Series 10 Gigabit Ethernet Smart Managed Switches With support for a combination of 10GBASE-T and SFP ports, the costeffective DXS-1210 Series services a range of network needs for any business. D-Link’s new additions to this series, models DXS-1210-28T and DXS-1210-28S, are 28-port switches equipped with four 10G/25G copper or fiber ports which allow for low latency, high efficiency, and flexibility for easier network integration. With Layer 3 features and expandable capacity, the DXS-1210-28T can serve as either an aggregation/access switch in large Enterprise environments or as the core of an SMB network.

DGS-1520 Layer 3 Stackable Smart Managed Switch D-Link’s DGS-1520 Series is the successor to the DGS-1510 series and the first of D-Link’s smart managed switches to support 10G Base-T ports for uplinks/stacking. This series includes a range of 28 and 52 port switches with a choice of SFP, 2.5GBASE-T PoE, 10GBASE-T and combo 10GbE/ SFP+ uplink ports. High bandwidth uplinks eliminate network bottlenecks and provide low-latency connections to core networks and servers, while multi-Gigabit PoE ports eliminate potential network bottleneck when connecting to high-bandwidth 802.11ac/ax access points. With zero-touch provisioning, multi-site network deployments are effortless, and there is no need for onsite IT personnel. n Price: On Demand

INBASE

INBASE CASES AND ACCESSORIES FOR IPHONE 12 Inbase has launched its extra-premium range of covers for iPhone 12.

Inbase Covers and Features: • Duplex Series: Made with high-quality material for long-lasting performance safeguards phone from water droplets and scratches with access to all the sensors, ports, and screen.

• Hybrid Series: Tough enough to withstand everyday scratches is equipped with premium layers designed with

30 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2020

shock-resistant, offers complete protection for your device.

• Carbon Shield: Exclusively crafted with textured carbon fiber accents offers a premium and high-end look. This case securely protects your gadget from all kinds of nicks, bumps, and minor falls.

• Defence Shield: The series offers impact durability for long-lasting performance. Raised lips protect the screen and camera bump.

n Pricing and Availability: IPhone 12 covers and accessories start at a price point of INR 999/For queries email at bd@inbasetech.in

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