April 2016 E-Magazine Issue

Avaya may support Telengana

VOLUME XVII

ISSUE 08

APRIL 2016

Oracle strengthens its expansion plan in India

PRICE Rs. 50

www.varindia.com

April 2016

1

6

March 2016

www.varindia.com

IBM ties up with Reliance Communications

Fortinet enters into strategic alliance with NATO

Enterprise Mobility – The Biggest Trendsetter for 2016 40pg

VOLUME XVII

ISSUE 08

ApRil 2016

PRICE Rs. 50

SUBSCRIPTION COPY NOT FOR SALE

Channel is our Mantra of Success

43pg

HPE announces beta launch of its Machine Learning API

D

elivered as a service on Microsoft Azure, HPE Haven OnDemand provides more than 60 APIs and services that deliver deep learning analytics on a wide range of data, including text, audio, image, social, web and video.

Kamal Dutta, MD – Software, Asia Growth Countries, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said, “HPE Haven OnDemand democratizes big data by bringing the power of machine learning, traditionally reserved for highend, highly-trained data scientists, to the mainstream developer community. Now, anyone can leverage our easy-to-use cloudbased service to harness the rich variety of data available today to build applications that produce new insights, differentiate businesses, delight customers and deliver a competitive advantage.”

Is e-commerce predatory pricing coming to an end?

I

n the FDI policy, while the Department of Industrial Promotion and Policy (DIPP) has allowed 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in the B2B e-commerce model, it has not permitted any FDI in Business to Consumer (B2C) e-commerce model.

However the new regulation will simply mean that e-commerce companies that have been long enjoying the status of a marketplace model while still working under the quasi-inventory-led model will need to stop. In a strikingly, antifree market approach, the new guidelines state that online retailers can’t “directly or indirectly” influence the price of goods and services. While this phrasing may sound a little peculiar, it’s been laid out as such in order to deal with the innumerable ways that online retailers fund discounts in the current industry.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

3

Accelerating next

Accelerating advantage.

When your all-flash solution has no limits, it’s almost unfair.

Give yourself the advantage of all-flash storage for less than $1.50 USD per GB usable.* All-Flash HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage gives you 10X greater speed,** with built-in data protection and continuous application availability. So you’re ready to take your business further, faster.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage powered by Intel® Xeon® processors. Intel Inside®.

Powerful Solution Outside.

Contact details Balaji Sethu balaji.sethu@redington.co.in 09025164555

*As of June 2015, 3.84TB cMLC SSDs, when used in conjunction with 3PAR compaction technologies, bring the cost of All-Flash HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage to less than $1.50 USD per gigabyte of usable storage capacity based on a 4:1 compaction ratio. **Based on comparison of the relative performance and footprint of the All-Flash HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Storage array against an HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage array of the same size and capacity configured with only HDDs. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. © Copyright 2015 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP.

4

April 2016

www.varindia.com

www.varindia.com

April 2016

5

HELLO INDIA

Are you ready to be a part of $1-trillion opportunity?

I

would like to start with complimenting the sincere efforts of the Government of India for introducing various liberal and reformist measures in the Indian economy. Streamlining and modifying technology issues have resulted in rapid growth of the Indian telecom sector and strong consumer demand. The private sector has played an important role in the growth of this sector. Resultantly, India has now become the second-largest telecommunication market and has the third-highest number of internet users in the world.

With 4G services about to hit the market, the growth in this sector is enormous with regular increase in the subscriber base. With policy liberalization, there is now easy market access for global telecom equipment vendors. This has ensured availability of telecom services to consumers at affordable prices. The Make-inIndia campaign appears to have had a positive impact on the manufacturing of mobile handsets in the country, thereby generating more jobs. India will overtake US as the second-largest smartphone market globally by 2017. The Indian digital ecosystem will be a $1-trillion economy in the next five years, with $400 billion contribution from smartphones and electronics manufacturing, $350 billion from IT & ITeS-enabled services and $250 billion from communication services.

The question is if there is positive growth in the telecom sector, then why there are still call drops. Who is responsible for this? A telecom company says, it is due to the lack of airwaves and their inability to erect more towers amid concerns over radiation. The telecom department and the telecom regulator said the situation would improve if the operators spent more money and optimized their networks. Anyway, the subscribers are suffering and getting frustrated at times when there is disconnection during the call. However, we have to pay the raised invoice by the operators.

There is no doubt that the Aadhaar card has strengthened the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile framework for developing social security platforms. After a successful rollout of direct benefits transfer (DBT) for LPG, the Government feels encouraged to introduce DBT on a pilot basis for fertilizers in a few districts across the country. Going forward, the Government has to fix plumbing and reduce leakages from the expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of India. It is true that IT consumption and buying pattern have changed drastically. Hence, a good business strategy without a marketing strategy (combination of marketing mix) to support it won't be very successful.

“TVS-E is today recognized for the strong services support" How is the service market growing in the country?

There are two segments today – Warranty Services and Out-of-Warranty Services. Postsales-Service is greatly felt in product categories like Consumer Electronics, Mobile Phones and the IT product lines like PCs and laptops. All brands are clearly focused on services today as the key differentiator, because most of their products are brought from outside are have common features.

If you look at the mobile phones market today there are approx..300 Million phones sold in a year; out of which 20 million phones need to be repaired, whereas brands offer warranty services for twelve months. These brands tie up with companies like TVS-e to offer services to their consumers. There are three different service delivery models – the delivery format can be (a) onsite where our engineers will go to the consumer to repair the device, (b) walk-in centre where a consumer walks in with his defective product and (c) repair factory at a central place where the products will be brought-in, repaired and then sent back to the respective brand. The fourth model which is emerging now is the Remote Tech Support and this is considered to be more effective when there are no parts

6

April 2016

www.varindia.com

to be replaced and the problem can be solved remotely.

Customers now are becoming conscious about the well-being of their products and even after the warranty period they will land in an exclusive branded repair centre instead of visiting a local service dealer. Trust is the single biggest factor when it comes to choosing a service outlet for repair. I estimate the warranty services market to be around Rs.2,000–Rs.2,500 crores while the Post-warranty services (repairs) market is expected to be around Rs. 5000 Crores

What is TVS-E’s service presence in the country?

TVS-E has 70+ exclusive branded service centres in India today and is present across all the delivery models. We are the chosen partner for leading brands like Dell, Lenovo, hTC, Samsung, Xioami, NCR, Diebold, Micromax and Lava in managing their warranty services to customers . The people, process, parts are managed by us and we deliver a unique seamless experience to the customers. Brands trust us for providing high quality service to their customers.

How is TVS-E positioned in the market

K E Ranganathan MD, TVS Electronics Ltd

with its range ofproducts?

Besides services, TVS-E is also very strong in the product segment. We now have the dot-matrix printers, Point-of-Sale products (POS) like scanners, thermal printers and label printers. We are seeing a huge opportunity for POS products in the retail segment where just half a million shops claim to have some category of POS products deployed whereas the estimates show over 10 million retail shops in India. With the likelihood of GST coming into force very soon, the demand for POS products for the retail segment will scale up sharply. Beyond the retail sector, POS products find numerable applications in other sectors like Manufacturing, Hotel, Hospitals, Logistics, Transport etc. We keep launching several exciting POS products and offer the same with ‘total solutions’ including installation, commissioning, warranty services and post warranty services. n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

7

Channel Chief

Redington transforming from a VAD to a Solution Distributor In an interview with P. S. Neogi, Joint Chief Operating Officer, Redington, he discusses on various growth areas for the distribution company that he thinks are viable enough for doing business and about the transformation it is going through to suit the demands in the market Redington did not want to be just a distributor and value-added distributor (VAD) and wanted to upgrade its status from being a VAD to a solution distributor and focus on other key growth areas like consultancy and implementation of projects. “We are a solution distributor for Juniper, Polycom, EMC – and this is going to continue.

We just want to add another feather to our cap by expanding our role in the market,” opines P. S. Neogi, Joint Chief Operating Officer, Redington.

Except for its consumer group, all the groups focus on selling solutions. “Whichever vendor wants us to sell solutions, we will be looking to investing in those offerings. But we do not directly bill with customers as that has been our policy always. We are instead here to help partners get potential leads and convert them into business. We will be solution partners to our partners and help them approach the end-customer,” explains Neogi.

There are many SMBs and commercial partners who do not have the skill set, talent or the capacity to invest. Redington steps in with the necessary assistance to help those partners bag orders and upgrade themselves with the required skill set. “We will charge the partners something nominal for the skill training and assistance offered and partners, in turn, will charge it from the customers. So they do not have to go to the vendor,” he states.

Redington is positioned as the brand behind the brands. We have seen much struggle to sell a Rs 25,000 laptop, but people will buy Rs 25,000 smartphones without even thinking twice.

He further continues, “That is the kind of thrust or change in direction that we are trying to drive in Redington in the last one and a half years. It takes time because hitting the talent (partners) and retaining them is not easy as they happen to command a very high premium in the market. But then this is an ongoing process.”

With regard to the Smart City project, Redington wants to be a game-changer. According to Neogi, IT infrastructure will form a very small part of the Smart City project. The backbone will be IT undoubtedly, but the actual IT spend will only be a fraction of the whole project.

Looking ahead...

Neogi wishes to serve its partners better. “We will also be able to give technical support to the partners and are ready to go the extra mile on demand basis. But at the same time we will also have to be the certified or authorized partners for our vendors otherwise customers are not going to ask us,” laughs Neogi.

In its IT products category, Redington runs the following four groups – • Consumer Business Group that deals with consumer laptop, PC, PC accessories • Commercial & Enterprise Group where it deals with commercial PC, laptop, workstation, servers, Thin Client, storage, networking products, power products • Software & Security Group where all kinds of software like licensing software, enterprise software, security products & software are dealt with • Cloud Solutions Group started last year and through this Redington started foraying into the cloud space. Today, it 2016 www.varindia.com 8 is aApril Cloud solution provider to Microsoft (CSP) that started sometime in October or November.

P. S. Neogi Joint Chief Operating Officer, Redington Neogi also points out that the incremental change in technology is going to be very low now. The industry has come to a stage where very high technology products are in demand. The differentiation among different brands is slowly fading away today. “Though we have been present in this market for so many years, we still do not know how customer preferences or demand level are going to change.

It is the mindset of the people. Today, I will have to struggle to sell a Rs.25,000 laptop, but people will buy Rs.25,000 smartphones without even thinking twice. However, one thing is sure that India is going to play a big role in the Rs.10,000–Rs.30,000 price bracket smartphone segment. Most of the 90% of the buying is going to take place in this segment,” he points out.

When asked about the current e-commerce segment in the country, Neogi states that with the new policy having announced, it needs to be seen whether the e-commerce segment would be a viable business or not. “Now that they are not allowed to support the discounting for its sellers, we would like to see whether these same sellers are still interested in selling on these e-commerce sites or not,” he says.

Nevertheless, the market is going to be a big potential for Redington this year. “With all big projects coming up and interest rates coming down, we are hopeful of seeing a significant opportunity. Redington is targeting a strong double-digit growth and we will continue to grow both in the IT and non-IT segments, put together,” sums up Neogi.n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

9

CONTENTS Website: www.varindia.com

Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Assistant Editor: Samrita Baruah Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Sr. Correspondent: Aparna Mullick Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar Jha Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi - 110030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@varindia.com Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: S. Kamala kar Correspondent: L. G. Swami D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru- 560066 Tel: 080-49530399 Mobile:08904205750/9916134482 E-mail: kamlakar@varindia.com, swami@varindia.com Mumbai: Bureau office Regional Manager (West): Anil Kumar Sr. Correspondent: Mamta S. Anurag Residency, 203 - “B” Wing, Plot No-5, Sector-9, Kamothe, Navi Mumbai-410 209 Tel: 022-65561292, Mobile: 08108017479 E-mail: anil@varindia.com, mamta@varindia.com Chennai: Bureau office Branch Manager: Parthiban K A2, R.C.Residency, Cholambedu Road, Thiruvenkada nagar, Ambathur, Chennai - 600 053 Mobile: 098400 55626 E-mail: parthiban@varindia.com Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: Sunil Kumar B 383 HAL Colony, Balanagar HYDERBAD, Telengana - 500042 Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08100298033 E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: Kiran Kumar New Korola, Near Alampur, Land Mark Asian International School, Howrah - 711302 Mobile: 08100298033, E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Printed and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of M/s. Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. Shed No. 203 - 204, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi - 110030, Editor - S Mohini Ratna.

For Subscription queries contact: info@varindia.com Subscription: Rs. 500(12 issues)Rs. 1000 (24 issues)

All payments favouring: KALINGA DIGITAL MEDIA PVT LTD

© All rights are reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (1999-2014) * All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi only.

10

April 2016

www.varindia.com

www.varindia.com

April 2016

11

www.varindia.com

April 2016

13

ROUND ABOUT

Biographies Vs Novels I

recently read Sam Pitroda’s autobiography, Dreaming Big: My Journey to Connect India. Sam’s name is synonymous with the telecom revolution in the country. While going through his autobiography, I realized that his contributions are grossly understated in the Indian context. Sam’s contributions, if I may be allowed to interpret, is across the spectrum of technology and to limit that canvas to telecom is a gross disservice to this man who courted controversies, often politically motivated and still kept his spirits high to work for the country in the 1980s.

Sam, as he admits in the book, is the son of a blacksmith born and brought up in measly conditions and had education at most trying circumstances, whereas Rajiv Gandhi was a manor born, who could have everything at his command, being a part of the illustrious and well known family. Their journey together to give India a technical face was more on an account of their shared vision. I reckon that it was a sheer luck that Sam broke the ground to become the most sought out advisor of Rajiv Gandhi.

There are many such autobiographies and biographies that have evinced my keen reading. They included that of President Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Abdul Kalam and the list goes on. I find it is more stimulating and absorbing than a thriller since you know very well such fictionalized things create an ambience of make believe and the characters are germinated by the author according to his imagination and more accurately by his predilections and conjurors. Whereas biographies take you to the real world and you will not get trespassed into an imaginary world. Here the feelings are real and human and the author will not concoct things. If one does so, he or she is insensitive and the work gets easily discounted.

Coming back to Sam’s autobiography, there are many things that take you to the contemporary Indian context. When he explains about the state of telecom sector in India in the 80’s, when the industry was a state monopoly, the present generation who plays with gizmos of different hues and configurations would think whether such age existed in India. Once a central telecom minister famously said in reply to a question raised in Parliament by members who were dissatisfied with the working of the telecom network plagued by line disruptions and non - responsiveness of the telecom operators that they could surrender their connections if they found telephones were not useful. Could the new generation believe that the waiting period for a new connection ranged from one year to five years or even more? To top it, for almost half of the year, the telephone lines remained dead.

Sam’s determined effort to transform the Indian telephone network attracted ridicule, cynicism and disdain. Many thought, as he explains in the book, he was an agent of the multinationals and out to make quick bucks by investing his time in revamping Indian telephone system. Otherwise, what is the interest for a man, who claims to be raking millions of dollars in the US through his patents and discoveries to come to India to work for very little pay.

There was media barrage against him doubting his integrity. But the protective shield thrown by Rajiv Gandhi insulated him from the machination of his detractors. In the process, he created many edifices that are changing the landscape of India, such as C-DOT, C-DAC, Technology Missions and the like.

When things had started looking up and taking concrete shape, many adverse things had driven the good efforts he had done out of context. Following the Bofors scandal, Rajiv Gandhi had to demit the office. Before the next elections, when Rajiv Gandhi was widely expected to make a comeback, he was assassinated. Notwithstanding his close proximity with Rajiv Gandhi, Sam preferred not to demit his office, despite him being rebuked by the then minister of telecommunications, who leveled corruption charges against him and washed the dirty linen in public. Sam says that the target of attack was not himself but his benefactor Rajiv Gandhi and thought any attempt to resign would send wrong signal of the allegations leveled

14

April 2016

www.varindia.com

were true. He continued to stomach the abuses and humiliations and continued with his works When the Congress party came to power under the leadership of Mr. Narasimha Rao, he had his role cut out as the chairman of the technology commissions. But the spate of health issues that followed shook him physically but did not dwindle his spirit to survive and continue with his development works. Once he recuperated and attained a degree of financial stability, he started refocusing on India and that determination continues despite the change of governments.

Once you read through his memoirs, one can easily latch on to the different phases of development that India had undergone in the post - independence times. He explains how India could make the head start in the software development and how the legendary GE chairman Jack Welsh was compelled to place a US$ 10 million order for Indian software, perhaps, the first order of that magnitude and a trailblazer to the things that would follow in the later years. He explains how the Technology Mission on Education was conceived and how that is incrementally reshaping the education sector in India. The digital advantage of India is not a stand- alone achievement but a grand design to give the country a new development matrix inclusive growth. Democracy, he is convinced, can grow only in a dispensation which ensures development of all and not a few.

What the nation is thinking now, such as innovation, technology, knowledge driven economy, inclusive growth, digital divide and what have you, I get the impression, that the Sam and his benefactors talked about, discussed and debated way back in the 80’s, when liberalization was a taboo and privatization was almost close to blasphemy. That is the foresight of the people whom he is talking about. The pertinent question now is despite that lofty thinking and high values that we had seized up long back, why we are still struggling to make development a central theme of our governance?

Is it too much of politicization, too much of talk with little action on the ground, adversarial political propaganda, not walking the talk or simple inertia? I do not have an answer for that except a sweeping generalization that it could be a combination of all.

I still have to convince the readers why I like such biographies over novels. My simple answer is that the former has realism, real character, events, real happenings and everything that is to do with real life but a novel to me appears to depict a reel life. I prefer the former over the latter. That may not be the case with you. n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

15

HOT BYTES

Citrix brings updated partner Rashi explores programme and incentive portfolio new medium has updated of Marketing its partner Citrix

programme and incentive portfolio.

Specifically, Citrix is introducing a new suggested upfront discount for partneridentified and qualified opportunities, clarifying existing incentives to focus rewards on objective activities, and expanding its marketing development funds to fuel partner growth.

Kimberly Martin, VP, Worldwide Partner Sales and Strategy, Citrix, said, “We are focussed on helping our partners bring

our solutions to the midmarket and making Citrix the most profitable vendor on which our partners can build a business. The changes we are announcing represent a second wave of improvements in 2016 and are designed to promote growth, drive profit and give our partners greater predictability, especially for those partners that invest in their relationship with us and look to target the mid-market.”

Oracle strengthens its expansion plan in India

O

racle has announced that its first incubation centre will be launched in India. The centre named as “Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator”, will open in Bangalore and will be inaugurated by Oracle’s President of Product Development Thomas Kurian. Several more centres are slated to be launched later in Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, Trivandrum and Vijayawada. Oracle’s SanketAtal, Group VP

of Development, will be leading the initiative.

Thomas Kurian said, “Through the Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator and the growing popularity of cloud as an alternate computing model, we want to be the catalyst for new business ideas. We are committed to furthering the government of India’s ‘Startup India’ initiative.

It matches our agenda of fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation by creating the right ecosystem for growth and development.”

NETSCOUT’s VSS Monitoring appoints RAH Infotech as National VAD

R

AH Infotech has announced its appointment as the National Value-Added Distributor (VAD) for

RAH Infotech, said, “NETSCOUT’s VSS Monitoring gives organizations a complete and centrally controllable

VSS Monitoring. RAH Infotech will be able to further strengthen its network security portfolio by adding the complete suite of solutions from VSS Monitoring.

Ashok Kumar, Chief Executive Officer,

view of their global network, enabling decision-makers in the operations centre and boardroom to protect the organization and its customers, improve efficiency, drive growth and reduce TCO.”

16

April 2016

www.varindia.com

R

ashi Peripherals has forayed into a new medium of marketing, this time going the digital way. As a distributor distributing SanDisk storage devices, Rashi has taken the task of creating a level of inquisition about SanDisk products among the end-customers and popularizing the many advantages of owning a SanDisk product.

Through the Digital medium Rashi would engage the end- users in a quiz educating them about the many advantages of owning a SanDisk storage product. A microsite has been created and would be promoted through social media and Google adverts. The activity will also provide an extra cover to the channel partners through driving a sense of interest among the end-user.

DIGISOL brings new offering for SOHO

D

IGISOL has come up with 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Desktop unmanaged switch DG-FS1016D-A. The new solution accelerates bandwidth needs of small Ethernet workgroups. Ideal for the SOHO environment, the switch uses store and forward packet-switching technology which offers reliable data transfer.

The DG-FS1016D-A Switch offers 16x10/100Mbps Ethernet ports which gives small workgroups a flexibility to integrate Ethernet and Fast Ethernet in a single network.

With its backplane capacity of 3.2 Gbps, data transfer is at an average of 200 Mbps per port at full duplex mode allowing every node to perform at their maximum performance.

Avaya may support Telengana

A

vaya met with Telangana IT Minister KalvakuntlaTaraka Rama Rao, where a number of initiatives were discussed to support the state’s plan to become India’s leading state for technology innovation. IT Minister Rama Rao presented to Avaya’s CEO Kevin Kennedy a grand plan to build and deliver connectivity to more than 8.5 million households with more than 32 million people living in rural areas and other parts across the Telangana state. IT Minister Rama Rao said, “Our self-certification system enables any investor to self-certify

quickly and easily, recent legislation that makes our bureaucrats accountable, the abundant, and strategically located land and our human resources that are being trained to offer investors skilled resources from Telangana are unique to India and the world.” Avaya global leadership met with KT Rama Rao, IT Minister, State of Telangana, to discuss ways of collaboration on digitization projects led by the state.

DSCI and Google bring “Internet Safety Program”

D

ata Security Council of India (DSCI), in partnership with Google, has launched “Internet Safety Program”.

Under the program, DSCI and Google will organize a series of workshops in various cities, to help inculcate safe and responsible behaviour in cyber space by sharing best practices and guidance with the audience.

Vinayak Godse, Senior Director, Data Security Council of India, said, “There has been

an accelerating increase in the adoption of IT in the MSME segment. It is currently estimated at as little as five per cent.

However, a massive segment is in the process of going online – either benefiting from the e-commerce wave, cloud services adoption, machine automation, and social commerce or by simply having an online presence of their business. Internet safety becomes imperative in all these situations and many more in the future.”

GIGABYTE’s Friendly Policies make it a favourite among Partners

G

I G A B Y T E has emerged as the channel partner favourite among IT hardware vendors within India.

According to GIGABYTE India’s

timely provision of marketing support.

The one thing that all partners of GIGABYTE would readily vouch for is the fact that the company offers the widest

longstanding partners, the company has struck the right chord with them in all channel-related matters – be it incentives, loyalty programmes, enhanced profitability, improved post-sales support or

variety of motherboards in the market that cater to different categories of end-users.

These motherboards are backed by the most innovative technologies and features in the industry.

Z170X-GAMING 7

GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd.

Website:www.gigabyte.in; www.gigabyte.in; Toll-Free: 1800-22-0966; www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEindia Website: Toll-Free: 1800-22-0966; www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEindia

GUJARAT: 98642 30150; MUMBAI: 99677 18653; REST OF MAHARASHTRA: 99677 18653; GOA: 99677 18653; CHHATTISGARH 99677 18653; MADHYA PRADESH: 99100 86976; GUJARAT: 9864299583 30150; MUMBAI: 99677 18653; UTTARAKHAND: REST OF MAHARASHTRA: 99677 CHANDIGARH 18653; GOA:AND 99677 18653; CHHATTISGARH 99677 18653; MADHYA PRADESH: UTTAR PRADESH: 72672; NEW DELHI, HARYANA, 99100 86976; PUNJAB, JAMMU & KASHMIR: 99100 86976; RAJASTHAN: 99100 86976; 99100 86976; UTTAR PRADESH: 99583 72672; NEW DELHI, HARYANA, UTTARAKHAND: 99100 86976; PUNJAB, CHANDIGARH AND JAMMU & KASHMIR: BIHAR, JHARKHAND: 90075 45577; ORISSA: 99030 52251; NORTH EAST: 97076 42785; WEST BENGAL: 97485 02710; KARNATAKA: 94482 93439; ANDHRA PRADESH, 99100 86976;90405 RAJASTHAN: 99100 86976; JHARKHAND: 90075 45577; ORISSA: 99030 52251; NORTH EAST: 97076 42785; WEST BENGAL: 97485 02710; TELANGANA: 06080; TAMIL NADU: 74117BIHAR, 74666; KERALA: 98950 99231

KARNATAKA: 94482 93439; ANDHRA PRADESH, TELANGANA: 90405 06080; TAMIL NADU: 74117 74666; KERALA: 98950 99231

www.varindia.com

April 2016

17

VAR CORPORATE

Hyper convergence and Hyperscale driving growth in 2016 for Lenovo The acquisition of IBM’s x86 server business has resulted in Lenovo accomplishing a strong footing in the large enterprise space and also gaining strong customer confidence and considerable growth. The aim now before Lenovo is to become the #1 leader in the enterprise market In January 2014, Lenovo and IBM entered into a definitive agreement to acquire its x86 server business. The product range encompasses System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations.

Our Enterprise Business is now firmly in the growth phase despite a few initial teething concerns and integration challenges. The server business is core to Lenovo’s strategy and we are working towards our aim to become #1 in the enterprise market in the following five years.

Over the last year, we accomplished building a strong footing in the large enterprise space and achieve considerable growth. What is more important is that we have been able to build a strong customer confidence. We have specifically seen some great wins around SAP HANA, HPC etc. in verticals such as telecom and manufacturing, automotive, FMCG, retail etc.

IBM’s x86 business not only gave us access to the best technology and product roadmap, but we have also been able to realize several efficiencies around scale, both on the price

18

April 2016

www.varindia.com

and supply chain fronts. We expect to see a lot more synergy as the businesses get better integrated going forward.

Looking back at 2015…

One of the biggest challenges in the last one year has been the increase in enterprises demand from IT- both from a budget and performance point of view. ‘Doing more with less’ is driving the industry towards consolidation. With more powerful servers that have smaller footprints, there has been an emphasis on reducing server sprawl. One of the reasons for this is that as the demand for processing power goes up, CIOs have very limited bandwidth to physically grow their servers. Therefore, they expect existing servers to do more.

Siddhesh Naik Security has also emerged as a No. 1 concern for enterprises. Perhaps due to this, we have seen the hype around cloud tapering down, especially when it comes to public cloud. Many large enterprises are still taking baby steps on the cloud. Core applications and data are still in-house although there has been an emphasis on reducing server sprawl.

Instead, we have seen greater demand for Hybrid clouds, with single window between public and private cloud for a seamless user experience.

With core decision making becoming real-time, the other big trend of 2015 was the coming of age of business analytics in India.

For example, using an SAP HANA based solution, one of our FMCG clients now has the capability to actually plan its manufacturing right down to details like which soap of which colour needs to be manufactured at which location. This is a massive improvement over the earlier process where manufacturing plans were done in a week or fortnight. Now the entire manufacturing cycle is planned in real time, based on data from the previous evening.

There are several other great examples – a research institute that uses HPC to forecast weather – flash floods, rains etc. based on real time data or using cameras to capture number

Director, Enterprise Business Group Lenovo India

plates of cars jumping the signals, to name a few.

Lenovo’s vision for 2016 and focus areas…

As always, our strategy, will be a combination of ‘protect’ and ‘attack.’; meaning we will protect existing strengths such as our strong solution capabilities and high end products. We plan to invest in new products and alliances, on the ‘attack’ front.

Storage is one area to look out for since we only have entry-level offerings in storage as of now.

Two big, emerging trends that we are investing in are hyper-convergence and hyperscale. Our recent partnership with Nutanix is a step in this direction. As the market moves from server sprawl to a converged network; customers prefer the convenience of a single management console for several infrastructure layers, be it the compute layer, hypervisor, networking, fabric or storage.

By partnering with Nutanix, a marketleader in hyper-convergence, we will enable our customers to simplify IT Infrastructure by adding a software defined layer on top of their existing infrastructure to drive greater efficiency and agility to their data centers. The biggest advantage of hyper-convergence is that

allows businesses to grow their infrastructure in the form of building blocks, instead of the current paradigm of large upfront investments and provisioning for growth two years in advance.

Hyperscale will be the other big trend in 2016. Hyper scale refers to investments in 1000s of servers by companies.We also expect to see good traction on HPC and SAP HANA-based solutions in 2016. 2015 was a good growth year for us in India. We expect to see good overall market growth in 2016 driven by trends such as consolidation and virtualization, HPC and analytics.

Channels will continue to remain core to our business. Through this period of transition, our channel partners have been steadfast and we see them getting even stronger. We have launched a number of unique initiatives such as an incentive program for lead generation (Lenovo ka Sikandar) and health insurance coverage (Lenovo Cares) for partner team members. We will also invest in skills development for key partners, especially in areas such as HPC and SAP HANA.

I

The other big trend of 2015 was the coming of age of business analytics in India. For example, using an SAP HANA based solution, one of our FMCG clients now has the capability to actually plan its manufacturing right down to details like which soap of which colour needs to be manufactured at which location. This is a massive improvement over the earlier process where manufacturing plans were done in a week or fortnight. Now the entire manufacturing cycle is planned in real time, based on data from the previous evening.

Predictability and Commitment help Lenovo business to grow

n a chat with VARINDIA, Vasudevan Subramaniam, Managing Director, NewWave Computing reveals his journey with Lenovo, the factors which have helped both Lenovo and his business to grow, the Partner enablement programs and the expected growth that he is foreseeing

How long has been association with Lenovo?

predictable vendor. As a partner also if you do not have strong engagement vendors we will not be able to deliver predictable experience.

We have been able to deliver that due to our strong engagement and at the same time we have our approach towards food system of escalation. Third, our job is to deliver right value for our client, not about being cheap in price but to deliver right benefits. Creating that value for client is also a hallmark of new age value creation capability. Lastly, we are authorised service provider for Lenovo as well.

We are in a position to service, support our clients.

your

We have been with Lenovo ever since the days when the PC business of IBM was taken over by it. We have been an erstwhile partner of IBM and after the transition, we got associated with Lenovo.

How often Lenovo organise channel enablement product?

How has been the journey so far with Lenovo?

What is important and what we look for in a partnership is predictability and consistency.

In PC or end user computing business, how predictable or consistent a vendor can be from a strategy, channel or pricing perspective, all these have a very strong impact either on the partner or the customer. Fortunately, Lenovo has been a very predictable and consistent partner; not to forget that they are one of the pioneers in product innovation. They have launched so many products in these years and they happened to have been the leaders in almost every category. Product innovation has been always the highlight for what Lenovo stands for. And also its predictability on programs, pricing strategy, product supply and services what makes Lenovo stands apart in the competition.

We have grown with Lenovo tremendously.

The significant growth of our business have come from Lenovo business. It is because of the

product proliferation, secondly the strategy of attacking and go after new markets which was Lenovo’s five years of strategy and we are also convinced about the strategy. Internally also the company was also organised in a similar manner. Our goal was to maintain the existing customers at the same time go after new customers and acquire them.

What have been your core strength in helping Lenovo growing in the market?

Our core strength is around four key areas, one is understanding the client needs and fulfilling the requirements. We train our field force very well and most of our people are Lenovo certified. So because of that we are able to bring value and we help customers to choose the right Lenovo product. Secondly it’s to be predictable in your commitments. Lenovo is a

Lenovo has programs broadly around face to face training, weekly webinar and also have online certification program. The combination of these three Lenovo is currently delivering and there is always scope for improvement.

What kind of a business growth do you foresee?

While there is a large portfolio, the drive is to have granular focus account by account and then to see whether we are delivering value and converting the customers into revenue. So a lot of marketing effort which is require and we are planning that this year to increase growth.

We are also partner for Lenovo Enterprise products and all of these are apt to increase our revenue. Certainly, there is now doubt in our minds that we will grow but the question is can you grow faster than your current growth. n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

19

HOT BYTES

IBM ties up with Reliance Communications

I

BM has entered into strategic partnership with Reliance Communications to provide its customers with a complete portfolio of highly secure and scalable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings running on the IBM Cloud.

“Indian enterprises are increasingly leveraging cloud for business transformation and require sophisticated new levels of support to expand their e-commerce

operations. Through our partnership with IBM, customers will instantly benefit from the added flexibility and global reach to be more competitive, especially as we look at new opportunities from the “Digital India” program,” said Braham Singh, SVP of Global Product Management, Reliance Communications (Enterprise) & Global Cloud Xchange.

Hitachi and Virtusa ink global partnership

H

itachi and Virtusa have inked a global strategic partnership. Both the companies will leverage their core competencies, industry IT solutions and thought leadership to provide joint services to their global clients and broader market. They will jointly provide value to clients by helping to increase operational and technology efficiency, implementing new functionalities and optimizing complex operational processes.

“I believe that Virtusa provides a great fit for Hitachi. It is a strong technology partner with deep domain knowledge and industry-

based solutions which complement and extend upon our own. By combining Hitachi's strong programme management, Japanese market understanding, diverse capabilities in technologies and knowledge in Financial Services and other industries, I believe that our combined potential will be significant and continue to drive tremendous value for our clients,” said Masayoshi Ogawa, President of Financial Information Systems Division, Information & Telecommunication Systems Company, Hitachi.

Fortinet enters into strategic alliance with NATO

W

ithin the framework of the NATO Industry Cyber Partnership (NICP), Fortinet has signed an industry partnership agreement with NATO

Communications and Information (NCI) Agency.

Michael Xie, Founder, President

20

April 2016

& CTO, Fortinet, said, “Organizations, both public or private, and everyday people are constantly under cyber attack. If more organizations proactively share actionable intelligence, together we can better combat advanced threats and counteract the latest risks to deliver security without compromise today and in the future."

www.varindia.com

CRPF to strengthen its IT Security Dell brings is a unique and patented “Back-to-School” TheReserve Central Police Multifactor authentication (CRPF) has chosen technology that works offer at just Re.1 Force AuthShield, a unique and at the protocol layer

Dell has announced the new “Back-to-School” season for 2016. This year, the Dell Back-toSchool campaign aims at showcasing the power of personal computing to both students and their parents through the concept of interactive learning.

Ritu Gupta, Director – Marketing, Consumer and Small Business, Dell India, said, “I think this initiative will drive away the fear of adoption of computers. Being able to buy a Dell computer at just Re.1, with the rest in interest-free EMIs, is a bold initiative we have taken, something that is more prevalent in consumer durable product promotions.”

Adobe Summit 2016 outlines its growth Vision

A

dobe has conducted its annual digital marketing conference in the U.S., Adobe Summit 2016. It focussed on the future of marketing and business transformation.

At the Summit, the company unveiled Adobe Cloud Platform enhancements, including advancements to its partner and developer program. A new Adobe Marketing Cloud Device Co-op is expected to link up to 1.2 billion devices. Brad Rencher, Executive Vice-President & General Manager, Digital Marketing Business, Adobe, stated, "Every company should be obsessed with the quality of the experiences they are delivering to their customers. Adobe is laser-focussed on enabling our customers to create consistent, personalized stand-out experiences for their customers."

patented Make in India solution developed by the Indian Information Security Group – Innefu Labs to protect CRPF from data stealing, identity theft and online security threats such as phishing, ransomeware and system hacking.

CRPF has requested 1,500 AuthShield Tokens in the first phase and is expected to deploy it in different parts of the country.

AuthShield Authentication security

and combines device mapping with multiple authentication form factors including Facial Biometrics. Working at the protocol layer offers AuthShield the advantages of integrating Multifactor Authentication with mails clients on smartphones and desktops, SAP, Transaction Authentication and Internet of Things (IoT).

These unique features were not available with any existing authentication solution.

Persistent announces Growth strategies

P

ersistent Systems has announced plans to organize its business around four key growth strategies.

Unique to Persistent, the company’s product development and technology DNA drive all four growth strategies.

The new structure along with new leadership responsibilities will be effective April 1, 2016.

The four growth

strategies and related business lines are – going Digital, IBM alliance, Services and its Accelerite product suite.

The company also plans to strengthen its corporate functions as part of Corporate Operations that will enable and accelerate the four growth strategies.

Atul Khadilkar will be the President for Corporate Operations.

SAP to strengthen entrepreneurship ecosystem in India

S

AP has announced an initiative to support start-ups in India and train teachers in collaboration with the IIT-Bombay. SAP will take part in two different programmes: the Entrepreneurship Development Initiative and the “Train 10,000 Teachers” Programme (T10KT) – a STEM education initiative.

In conjunction with the incubator centre at IIT-Bombay, SAP aims to strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem and foster

scalable high growth social enterprises. This collaboration will augment a knowledge and innovation-driven

culture across India, while further strengthening the entrepreneurship ecosystem and facilitating networking with professional resources, mentors and funders.

www.varindia.com

March 2016

25

ON THE RAMP

Intel makes Cloud adoption easy

I

ntel has come up with a new range of technologies, investments and industry collaborations. This will help in easy deployment of agile and scalable clouds.

Intel is easing the path with new processors, solidstate drives and a range of industry collaborations to help businesses deliver new services at the scale and speed of advanced public clouds.

“Enterprises want to benefit from the

efficiency and agility of cloud architecture and on their own terms – using the public cloud offerings, deploying their own private cloud, or both. The result is pentup demand for softwared e f i n e d infrastructure. Intel is investing to mature SDI solutions and provide a faster path for businesses of all sizes to reap the benefits of the cloud,” said Diane Bryant, Sr VP & GM, Intel’s Data Center Group.

Edimax launches WAP2600X 10GbE Access Point

E

dimax Technology has introduced the WAP2600X 10GbE access point for large-sized Intranet data transfers at incredible speed. The WAP2600X is a dual-band wall-mounted access point supporting 802.11ac Wave 2 and with a 10GbE LAN port.

The latest 802.11ac Wave 2 revision delivers faster Wi-Fi speeds with more channel width (80 + 80MHz or 160MHz) and spatial streams (4 x 4 : 4), making it even more capable of high-

performance connectivity.

One of the key technology advancements – MU-MIMO (MultiUser MIMO) – improves data transmit times, helps Wi-Fi networks to scale, and increases capacity by allowing APs to utilize multiple streams that supports very high density (VHD) up to 100 client devices per radio simultaneously. Offering up to 10GbE Ethernet, the WAP2600X removes speed bottlenecks at wired switches and Network Attached Storage (NAS).

Verizon launches Unified Customer Experience Solution

B

usinesses serving all industries will soon be able to connect seamlessly with their customers through Web chat, social media, email or mobile via Verizon Enterprise Solution’s new Unified Customer Experience solution.

The latest addition to the company’s continually-evolving Customer Contact Solutions portfolio will enable enterprises and government agencies to deliver a personalized and superior omni-channel experience to clients.

“This platform-

22

April 2016

based holistic solution provides seamless customer conversations, including assessment and analysis of the customer’s journey throughout their experience,” said Prashant Gupta, Head of Solutions, Verizon Enterprise Solutions India.

www.varindia.com

Tableau 9.3 launched

T

ableau Software has launched Tableau 9.3 with new ways to analyze data and share findings faster.

Enhanced features like “always connected” Tableau Desktop, improved global map coverage, faster ways to prepare data for analysis, more governance features and easier administration and direct connectivity to the Snowflake Elastic Data Warehouse has been added.

“We have prioritized sharing and collaboration in Tableau 9.3, and it will be immediately noticeable once people open Tableau Desktop.

The ‘always-connected’ feature means it’s easier to share while staying in the flow of your analysis.

We’ve also addressed customer requests to advance our global map coverage and to make data prep easier, as well as made improvements across Tableau that create a more delightful experience for everyone,” said Chris Stolte, Chief Development Officer & Co-Founder, Tableau Software.

Axis introduces Mini Dome Cameras

A

x i s Communications has introduced three new mini dome network cameras to the AXIS M30 Series. The new models offer HDTV image quality to capture all details, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) technology to adapt to variable lighting conditions and Axis’ Zipstream technology to reduce storage and bandwidth requirements without sacrificing important image details. The factoryfocused cameras can be mounted on walls or ceilings and easily be levelled and directed in any direction using a 3-axis camera angle adjustment.

Panasonic extends its MultiChannel Speaker System portfolio

P

anasonic has added two new multichannel speaker systems to its existing lineup.

Along with a powerful compact subwoofer and easy connections for all media devices, the SCHT18GW-K houses an FM tuner and SC-HT21GW-K has an in-built Bluetooth function for AnywhereEntertainment.

Ashish Sasidharan, Product Head, Consumer Electronics, Panasonic India, said, “We have received positive feedback from the customers for our recently launched products, the 2.1Ch HT20

and 4.1Ch HT40. We have focused a lot on the design and sound of 2.1 Mini.

The 2.1 BT is a product extension of our hero model launched last year, the HT20 2.1Channel speaker System, and delivers an enhanced sound performance. The Bluetooth connectivity of 2.1 BT is simple and hassle free. We are confident of the success of both the products.”

Emerson launches new Liebert GXT MT+ CX

E

merson Network Power has introduced the new Liebert GXT MT+ CX uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with 1/2/3 kVA capacity in India.

The availability of the true double conversion online backup power feature on this new UPS system makes it a reliable and uninterruptible power supply source for optimal running of small data centers, data networks, voice networks and process automation equipment, even in harsh power environments.

The Liebert GXT MT+ CX model will be sold through various channels including VAR’s (Value Added Resellers), IT Resellers, Distributors and Business Partners in India. A major feature of this product is its adjustable battery charging current of up to 16 Amps.

Additionally, this UPS also has a high output power factor of up to 0.8 which allows for more efficient utilization for business continuity as well as mission-critical IT equipment.

SanDisk unveils Connect Wireless Stick

S

anDisk has expanded its mobile storage portfolio by upgrading its mobile flash drive. The SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick is now available in 200GB capacity, with faster transfer speeds, giving users even more options when it comes to expanding the capabilities of their mobile devices.

“With the explosion of content, people need more advanced storage solutions to keep up with the volume and quality of

the photos, videos and files they’re creating on their mobile devices. Our goal is to deliver innovative, intuitive offerings that help them capture life’s great moments without worrying about storage limitations,” said Rajesh Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC, SanDisk.

FACE TO FACE

ESET eyes on tapping En ter prise M arket In a chat with VARINDIA, Parvinder Walia, Sales and Marketing Director, ESET, APAC, discussed about the changing nature of cyber threats, strategies, its channel ecosystem and also the recent focus areas of the company

T

he threat landscape of Asia-Pacific is evolving continuously. The methods and strategies used by the cyber attackers have become extremely sophisticated. In the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), where more devices than ever before are becoming connected to the network, there are more potential points of attack for cybercriminals always on the lookout to make a fast buck.

This makes it more important than ever before for consumers and businesses to be aware of the risks, and take the best preventative measures to protect themselves against attacks. “One of the trends we are seeing includes the increase in more innovative and sophisticated attacks targeting enterprises and government networks. By hacking into these systems, attackers are able to gain access to valuable data and intellectual property that can be used against the victims or sold to competitors. We have also seen cases which involve cyber spying, where attackers launch malicious attacks in order to spy on government or high-profile individuals,� said Parvinder Walia, Sales and Marketing Director, ESET, APAC. “Given India’s incredibly high mobile

Report 2015, which highlighted that India has one of the lowest awareness rates when it comes to cybersecurity, compared with other countries in the region. This, in itself, could make internet users in India more vulnerable to online threats,� added Walia.

Strategy and Channels

Parvinder Walia Sales and Marketing Director, ESET, APAC adoption rate, it is unsurprising that many of the attacks surfacing in the country are targeting mobile devices, including various kinds of malware. This is dangerous, considering the results of our Asia-Pacific Cyber-Savviness

Though the business comes from tier-I cities, tier-II and tier-III cities are also showing signs of growth. So, to provide a better coverage to the users and increase brand awareness, ESET works through two channel partners. Understanding the mindset of its customers, ESET has brought simple and easyto-use security solutions with an inclusive approach. The products are aimed to meet the requirements of the users.

Already, a pioneer in the SMB market, ESET is now focussing to reinforce its position in the Enterprise and corporate market across globe. For that, the company is focussing to understand consumer’s needs along with simplifying things for its customers. n aparna@varindia.com

2VBMJUZ JT /FWFS $PTUMZ *UT 1SJDFMFTT

8F %FMJWFS *5 4PMVUJPOT GPS

)FBMUIDBSF

&EVDBUJPO

.BOVGBDUVSJOH

XXX WFFSUSBHDPNQVUFST DPN

#BOLT

7FFSUSBH $PNQVUFST 1WU -UE JT B i5VSOLFZ *5 4PMVUJPO 1SPWJEFSw 0VS JO EFQUI 5FDIOJDBM &YQFSUJTF BOE TUSPOH 8PSL &UIJDT IBWF IFMQFE VT CFDPNF QBUIĂśOEFST JO UIJT JOEVTUSZ BOE POF PG UIF CFTU *5 TFSWJDF TPMVUJPO QSPWJEFST

(PWFSONFOUT

JOGP!WFFUSBHDPNQVUFST DPN

www.varindia.com

April 2016

23

ON THE RAMP

Microsoft Launches SQL Server 2016 DataWind icrosoft has unveils Tablet unveiled SQL M Server 2016. It is a data platform built with processing capabilities PC i3G7 advanced predictive analytics capabilities.

It helps businesses with intelligence-based decision making, giving them a strong competitive advantage.

“Data is the new electricity for businesses today. I. Microsoft’s SQL Server 2016 is built for this data driven world – customer tested and battle ready. SQL 2016 supports encrypted query

for advanced analytics, machine learning, mobile business intelligence, and data integration that addresses the security concerns of customers. It is today the world’s only relational database to be born ‘cloud-first’ with the majority of features first deployed and tested on Azure,” said Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft Corporation India.

Lenovo launches Ideapad 100s

L

enovo has launched its thin and light laptop – Ideapad 100s.

Lenovo Ideapad 100s is available in silver at INR14, 990/- and will be exclusively available on Snapdeal. Speaking on specifications, Ideapad 100s is backed by a QuadCore Intel Atom processor and provides a powerpacked performance that runs up to 8 hours without plugging in. It has 1366x768 HD display and the Dolby Advanced Audio. The device also offers connectivity with USB 2.0 and HDMI ports, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth options.

Ashok Nair, Director, Home and Small Business, Lenovo India, said, “Lightweight notebooks that offer superior functionality at affordable price points are a compelling choice in an era where consumers are always on the go and want to stay connected.

Another feature that is every consumer asks is a long battery life which we are offering with this really cool product. With its attractive design and specifications, Ideapad 100s offers unmatched end-user experience for both families and professionals.”

NetApp enhances its EF-Series and E-Series Storage Arrays

N

etApp has introduced a new software for its NetApp EF-Series allflash and E-Series storage arrays. It has dramatically boosted the performance

high-bandwidth analytics when delivered on disk arrays and low-latency response times when matched with all-flash media. By combining this performance with

and value of data analytics applications.

Lee Caswell, VP, Products, Solutions and Services Marketing, NetApp, said, “Our SANtricity software meets the challenge with

enterprise reliability and unmatched density, the E-Series and EF-Series arrays make enterprise storage economically superior to even whitebox servers for real-time analytics applications.”

24

April 2016

www.varindia.com

D

ataWind has launched Tablet PC i3G7 priced at INR5, 999. In addition to regular voice calling functionality, this 1.2 GHz Intel Quad-Core X3 64-bit processor tablet incorporates DataWind’s Internet-delivery platform covered by 18 U.S. and international patents allowing the devices to deliver the fastest mobile web experience on regular GSM-EDGE-based (or 2G) networks.

This unique technology reduces bandwidth consumption by up to 97%.

Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO DataWind, said, “With this new product, we are offering Indian consumers a unique combination of superior technology and unmatched style. Like its predecessors, the tablet offers the right mix of features and on-thego connectivity.”

WinMagic intros SecureDoc

W

inMagic has introduced security software that encrypts virtual machines running on Infrastructure-as-aService (IaaS) platforms in India. Addressing the growing concerns of protecting critical assets stored within virtual environments, SecureDoc CloudVM is an enterprise encryption solution that offers support for Windows-based platforms running in public, private and hybrid cloud environments through application aware intelligent key management.

The solution increases visibility and strengthens data security within virtual environments by controlling the encryption key management system across a vast array of layers.

Dell brings new Inspiron 15 7000 Series

D

ell India has launched Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Series Notebook, using the latest 6th-Gen Intel Quad-Core Processors and Performance class NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M Graphics card.

“With the new Inspiron 15 7000 notebooks, users will be able to experience the fun in everyday computing, with the pleasure of extended performance. We pushed the limits on this device, so that our consumers can push theirs, using

powerful technology that keeps up with their pace of entertainment consumption. These highperformance devices are also equipped with the latest and best graphics capabilities that allow users to do much more,” said Alen Jose, Product Marketing Director, Consumer and Small Business, Dell India.

Sony launches new Projector Series

S

ony has launched its combination of three new laser and lamp projectors. Sony’s new projectors include three 3LCD laser models (VPLFHZ65, VPL-FHZ60 and VPL-FHZ57) to expand Sony’s growing line of Z-Phosphor laser light source projectors.

The new WUXGA (1920 x 1200) laser models deliver brightness of 6,000 lumens (VPL-FHZ65), 5,000 lumens (VPLFHZ60) and 4,100 lumens (VPL-FHZ57).

For applications better-suited to lamp-based projection,

Sony’s new VPL-FH65 (6,000 lumens) and VPLFH60 (5,000 lumens) offer cost-effective options that still deliver highquality performance.

Each uses BrightEra panel technology to reproduce natural and vivid colour.

The new laser models are designed to deliver enhanced picture quality with new features such as “Reality Creation” and “Contrast Enhancer,” both technologies already in use by Sony’s home theatre projection systems for high-end consumer entertainment.

Seagate brings enhanced storage solution

S

eagate has launched its 10TB enterprise capacity hard disk drive.

The new, robust 10TB Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD provides maximum storage capacity for easy system integration by using the standard 3.5-inch CMR design.

Incorporating seven platters and 14 heads, the drive seals in helium to create a turbulencefree, quiet environment, decreasing both friction and resistance on the platters and delivering the industry’s lowest power/ TB ratio and weight specifications for a 10TB HDD.

“Cloud-based data center storage needs are expanding faster than many current infrastructures can sustain, rendering the capacity demands of users a herculean task for cloud managers.

Our new helium-based enterprise drive is designed precisely to help data-centric organizations worldwide solve the needs of their growing storage business,” said Mark Re, Sr VP & CTO, Seagate.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

25

VOICE-N-DATA

Nokia to help Idea Cellular in 4G LTE rollout

I

n three key regional circles – Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, Nokia will provide technology to help Idea Cellular to roll out 4G LTE. Under the agreement, Idea Cellular will deploy Nokia’s unique Single RAN technology, which enables simultaneous 2G/3G/4G operation on one platform. Nokia will also support modernization and expansion of Idea Cellular’s core network and operational support

systems to support the 4G LTE rollout, along with professional services for network deployment, network planning and optimization, system integration and supervisory managed services support.

Himanshu Kapania, Managing Director, Idea Cellular, said, “Our excellent partnership with Nokia now enters a new phase as we launch 4G LTE services to bring a superior experience to our customers.”

CEAMA forms Mobiles and Communications Council

C

o n s u m e r Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers’ Association has announced its extension by forming a Mobiles and Communications Council to advocate for the mobility industry.

Manish Sharma, President, CEAMA, and MD, Panasonic India & South Asia said, “The local component ecosystem is still not fully in place, resulting in dependency on international machineries and mechanisms.

Therefore, the industry

should be given an opportunity to build the ecosystem and encourage the initiatives being taken in this area. We believe the new Mobile and Communication Council will appropriately connect and be able to propagate the recommendations of industry players to government and policymakers.

CEAMA is working to ensure that majority of components be made domestically, which will need time and further encouragement by the government to make this happen.”

Tata Communications and Anam tie up

T

a t a Communications has partnered with Anam to create an endto-end solution that helps mobile network operators globally to tackle revenue loss caused

by A2P SMS spam, fraud and “grey route” messaging traffic. The combination of Mobile Messaging Exchange and Anam’s SMS firewall protects mobile networks against grey routing and spam traffic, ensuring secure and reliable SMS delivery, and enabling mobile network operators

26

April 2016

to recoup revenues owed to them by unauthorized message senders.

Anthony Bartolo, President of Mobility and Collaboration Services, Tata Communications says, “A2P SMS can be a hugely effective customer engagement tool for businesses – no OTT service can today match the ubiquity of SMS. But in order for mobile network operators, messaging aggregators and enterprises to reap the benefits of SMS, secure message delivery and reliability are the key.”

www.varindia.com

DIGISOL brings new offering to target the SOHO segment

D

IGISOL has come up with 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Desktop unmanaged switch DG-FS1016D-A. The new solution accelerates bandwidth needs of small Ethernet workgroups.

The DG-FS1016D-A Switch offers 16x10/100Mbps Ethernet ports which gives small workgroups a flexibility to integrate Ethernet and Fast Ethernet in a single network. This Switch also allows for auto-sensing and auto negotiation of highest available speed (10/100Mbps) and duplex mode, providing an automatic and flexible solution for the network.

With its backplane capacity of 3.2 Gbps, data transfer is at an average of 200 Mbps per port at full duplex mode allowing every node to perform at their maximum performance.

LAVA plans to invest Rs.2,615 Crore

L

ava has associated with the national cricket team captain M. S. Dhoni, as its brand ambassador.

Solomon Wheeler, Vice-President & Head – Marketing & Communication, Lava International Limited, said, “We are very proud and privileged to be associated with M. S. Dhoni."

Aligning itself with the Government of India’s “Make-in-India” initiative, Lava has already set up its first manufacturing plant in Noida and plans to invest Rs.2,615 crore in a phased manner to scale it up to have an annual production capacity of 216 million phones.

Ericsson signs BSS transformation contract with Bhutan Telecom

E

ricsson has signed a Business Support Systems transformation contract with Bhutan Telecom.

Under the agreement, Ericsson will transform Bhutan

Telecom’s billing systems into a convergent environment supporting mobile, fixed line and broadband subscribers.

This partnership will enable Bhutan Telecom to launch promotions and notifications, product and service cross-bundling, cost-control for postpaid subscriptions and service

personalization.

The operator will be able to designandofferpromotions and campaigns in real time and in accordance with subscribers’ interests, while monetizing ongoing growth in data traffic.

Ericsson will be responsible for design, deployment and systems integration of the solution. The convergent charging solution, based on Ericsson’s BSCS iXR4 offering together with data monetization features such as PCRF, will be integrated with Bhutan Telecom’s existing infrastructure.

Bhutan Telecom will migrate its subscribers onto the new platform by the third quarter of 2016.

Aircel and BSNL sign 2G ICR agreement

A

ircel and BSNL have signed 2G ICR agreement on a panIndia basis. This is a first agreement between a stateowned operator and a private telecom player that will see the culmination of an intra-circle roaming (ICR) agreement with the private operator for all circles.

With this strategic tieup, both organizations will be able to enhance customer’s experience, besides utilizing each other’s assets and network

strength. Besides reducing call drops, this deal is expected to improve the quality of services to mobile subscribers along with better connectivity.

Starting this financial year, BSNL expects to earn Rs.300–Rs.400 crore a year through signing various ICR arrangements. In ICR agreements, passive infrastructure such as base transceiver stations will be shared among the operators when a subscriber of an operator roams in that circle.

LeEco to invest US$10 million

B

y the end of 2016, LeEco will set up in-house Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) in ten cities across India. The in-house CDNs across 10 locations in India (including key cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore) will be connected to LeEco’s global 650 CDNs through cloud, allowing LeEco smartphone or television users to stream audio, video or internet television content on-demand seamlessly and reliably, wherever they are.

LeEco is also planning to investment over US$10 million to set up this CDN/cloud infrastructure which will provide content delivery capabilities in linear channel, live events, and video on demand serving both mobile and TV segment, giving consumers a better user experience on LeEco products. Through this service, the company is aiming to reach out to close-to 10 million user base in smart devices in these 10 locations across India.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Canon Pixma G2000 Canon Pixma G2000 is a refillable ink tank All-In-One printer which is designed for high volume printing at low running cost.

According to the company, it is capable to yield as high as 6,000 pages mono prints and 7,000 pages colour prints. The printers have individual ink tanks for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. PIXMA G2000 printer use Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE) to create high-density print heads with microscopic ink droplet sizes. FINE enables the printers to achieve high resolution images.

This printer can also print borderless photographs up to A4 size. With Built-in integrated ink tanks create a compact printer body. Users can also view remaining ink levels easily at a glance. The sleek and compact Canon Pixma G2000 Multifunction Printer measures 445 × 330 × 163 (W × D × H) mm and weighs only 5.8 kg. The matte black finish makes it look very eye catching. It is equipped with four individual ink bottles with 2pl min ink droplet size and total 1472 nozzles. You can easily fit this small sized printer in a limited space of your office. Its portable design and light weight enables you to shift it conveniently from one place to another. The Canon Pixma G2000 Multifunction Printer produces crisp and clear prints with a maximum resolution of 4800 × 1200 dpi. It has a high document printing speed with approx. 5 ipm for color and approx. 8.8 ipm for Black & White. For connectivity it has Hi-speed USB 2.0 interface which allows you to directly print all your important documents and images from your USB flash drive with ease.

Lenovo PHAB Lenovo PHAB is a blend of Smartphone and a Tablet.

The device merges all the functionality of a tablet with the true portability of a smartphone. Stretching the versatility of a Smartphone, PHAB is optimized for single-hand use with a large 6.98-inch screen; offering best-in-class entertainment, speedy Internet, and all-day battery life. The slim design and UI with several shortcut features aid in single-handed operation, making it more comfortable to hold and use the PHAB. Additionally, it is loaded with Android 5.1, which provides a clean and efficient operating interface for the end-use. The device comes with 360 Voice feature and its three-microphone solution and dedicated voice processor ensure clean voice input and flawless on-speaker sound. The PHAB also addresses the consumer’s 24/7 connectivity needs with its Dual SIM fast connectivity, ensuring a reliable and fast connection. Adding to its slew of features is 2GB of RAM and an expandable memory of 64GB. The quad-core Qualcomm processor, ensures a responsive and smooth-running device. Lenovo PHAB has 13MP rear auto-focus camera and five advanced lenses that help it produce sharp images even in low light conditions. For more realistic colour tones, it comes with a DUAL LED flash. In the front, the PHAB houses a 5MP camera with a wide angle lens and a pano selfie mode. The PHAB comes with a built-in Dolby ATMOS 3D Audio soundbox at the back of the device, which helps to project and enhance the sound experience.

The ATMOS processor on the device produces a sensation of movement and overhead sound that brings the story alive all around you.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

27

28

April 2016

www.varindia.com

www.varindia.com

April 2016

29

CHANNEL BUZZ

Gemalto honours partners at Annual APAC Partner Summit

G

emalto has announced the winners of its 2015 APAC Annual Cipher Partner Awards. Each of the awards recognizes the individual achievements of Gemalto’s indirect channel partners and their contributions to help protect customers from data security threats. This year’s awards ceremony was held on March 16 in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Rana Gupta, Vice-President of the APAC region, Identity and Data Protection, Gemalto said, “We are very proud to acknowledge their efforts in supporting Gemalto and helping organizations evolve their data security strategies to protect the ever-changing data threat landscape with our industryleading encryption and identity protection solutions.”

TIS Inc. of Japan and Telecommunications & Security Systems Ltd of Hong Kong were recognized with the Rising Star of the Year award.

PT. Transition

Systems Indonesia received the Marketing Excellence Award for generating the most sales opportunities from Gemalto’s partner marketing campaigns in 2015.

Adost of South Korea was recognized for the Solution Partner of the Year award .

• The Cipher Partner of the Year was awarded to Nera Telecommunications Ltd of Singapore.

• The Top Contributor of the Year award was given to Transition Systems of India.

Kaspersky Lab Concludes Partner Meet in New Delhi

K

aspersky Lab India has conducted its partner meet with SEA Infonet, its national distributor for enterprise products. The meet discussed about their future business strategies with a focus to develop market in emerging geographies, for its rich and wide suit of offerings for the new financial year.

The partner meet brought together 35 partners and 80 participants, covering the most vital links of the Kasperksy Lab network in India. Ajay Kumar Joshi Director, Channel Sales introduced with a review of 2015 and charted out the plans for the 2016. Partners were made aware of the latest developments and new opportunities that could be explored together.

Also discussed in the space of Government business, the DGS&D rate contract awarded to Kaspersky where the partners can make the most of the opportunity. Another concern that was discussed in the event was Targeted security solutions for Virtualizations, Storage and Mobile.

30

April 2016

Huawei concludes Cloud Congress India 2016

H

uawei has successfully concluded “Huawei Cloud Congress 2016” in Mumbai this year. It focussed on “Transforming with Cloud” while being aptly themed “Make IT Simple, Make Business Agile”.

The event saw a gathering of over 200+ attendees, including industry experts and opinion leaders from key organizations like Relaince, TATA, Vodafone,

and issues in their road to digital transformation. As the strategic partner for a lot of global carriers, Huawei will together “BUILD A BETTER CONNECTED WORLD” with operators as they transform digitally.

David Li, Head of India Sales for Huawei, commented on the Open ROADS strategy, “With consumers demanding more personalized and innovative

Idea who gathered to discuss the latest trends in the Cloud technology.

Huawei demonstrated its latest offerings in cloud solutions and showcased its products.

TRANSFORMATION towards a DIGITAL EXPERIENCE and how to make businesses agile truly reflects the main idea of this year's Huawei Cloud Congress, India 2016 Huawei has been communicating with more than 400 carriers worldwide, and is well aware of the pain points

digital services, a superior user experience is becoming critical to global carrier success.”

Encompassing five fundamental characteristics – Real-time, On-demand, All-online, DIY, and Social – "ROADS" encapsulates Huawei’s definition and vision for the ultimate user experience.

IT is the foundation for digital businesses. From a landing point of view, cloud data centers are the core support and foundation for digital transformation.

TAIT Paathshaala Programme launched for Partners

T

Sharing insights, Altaf Halde, Managing Director - South Asia, Kaspersky Lab, said, “Regular partner meets are crucial to keep the communication clear and effective, and also to help understand how things are getting executed at the ground level. This 2-way communication is beneficial to everyone. The meet was very insightful and productive, as, we all got to share notes and carefully study the road ahead for 2016.”

www.varindia.com

he Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) has launched its TAIT Paathshaala programme in Mumbai for TAIT members and their staff with the tag line "Kuch Naya Sikhte Hain". The TAIT directors and other members actively participated in the workshop.

Rushabh Shah, CEO, Graham Information Systems and TAIT President, took the initiative in conducting the first edition of this project titled Office Suites and Spreadsheet productivity.

He covered the different types of Office suites (collection of programmes comprising of word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software). He also explained the merits, demerits of these packages and educated members the licensing needs of these programmes.

The second workshop was conducted with a focus on Tally ERP by Ketan Gandhi of V-Intech which demonstrated the new Tally capabilities. The

workshop covered “Post-dated Cheque Management in Tally.

ERP9 Release 5.x” – a feature which is very useful to the IT community.

“New Statutory Features in Tally. ERP9 Release 5.x” was another topic discussed during the session that explained Tally has simplified Statutory Taxes management and feature related to VAT was specifically dwelt upon.

In the open house session, queries related to handling e-commerce sales transactions and generating related reports, multi tax in single invoice, usage of delivery challans salesman wise outstanding, etc were answered.

BREAK THE STATUS QUO:

THINK BIG. START NOW. Brocade Network Subscription empowers you to leverage the latest networking technology without sacrificing your budget—or your flexibility.

It's time to subscribe to a future with unlimited scalability and total freedom from term commitments and depreciation cycles.

Start your journey to the New IP today.

www.brocade.com #NewIP

© 2015 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

31

FACE TO FACE

Intel Innovating to support Smart City in India Fostering innovations worldwide, Intel is now stepping and working aggressively towards the Make In India Project. From powering the latest devices, technologies, cloud, to driving policy, diversity, sustainability, and education, Intel has been creating value for their stakeholders, customers and society. Kavitha Mohammad - Director, IoT & Smart Cities at Intel (Asia Pacific Japan) shares Intel’s vision towards Indian IT space in an exclusive interview with SPO India The internet of things is now growing exponentially and is reaching different verticals and industries. It is all about developing the infrastructure and connecting different devices.India is one of the countries where a lot of innovation is happening around IoT across different verticals and technologies. Intel is one of the leaders in the production of low-powered chips to connect IoT devices.

According to Kavitha Mohammad - Director, IoT & Smart Cities at Intel (Asia Pacific Japan), there is a huge potential in the IOT space, especially in the Asian Pacific Japan (APJ) and in India markets. “India is one of the booming industries in IOT space, where lot of investments are seen happening in the domain of manufacturing, automotive, mining, healthcare, banking and education,” she says.

However, all these verticals require lot of investments into infrastructure as well as technology. “Technology becomes the catalyst and that’s the crux of IOT scope for us. Technology is being used highly, due to which lot of data is coming out and when there is data, you need mechanism as well as high end technology to analyse that data in the backend. That perhaps is the scope in the IOT space at present in the country,” states Kavitha.

Intel has entered into a strategic investment in the IOT space in India. As an opportunity, be it in the manufacturing or smart city area, there is need for local solutions to be built up. Intel’s investment is basically bringing the thought leadership in, upon which the company has worked aggressively and will continue to do that.

Opportunity in IOT space…

Opportunities in IOT is based on the different needs of verticals as well as countries. In India, security and surveillance segments are the first opportunities. It is one of the important and sensitive subjects which are not just about physical security and surveillance like cameras. etc., but it’s about data security. As per current scenario, more devices are being connected which creates the need to keep date safe and secured. Also, transportation, manufacturing and waste management will increase the need for more IOT devices in the country. Also technology will help these verticals in lot many ways like improving productivity, quality, etc.

The Smart city project is also about optimization of transportation, energy and all other different verticals that run in the city. Surveillance as a solution is an integral part of smart city and Intel has done several projects in the country for the same. “As an integral part of smart city, at this point of time we are actually enabling Wi-Fi, surveillance, smart lighting which will result in saving of energy and smart metering,” adds Kavitha.

Intel is also running several programs to trigger the innovation part in support of the Make In India project. As in Make in India program, where one designs, concepts and also manufactures, Intel runs a similar concept that calls for collaborations with industry bodies to create innovation labs to provide components to entrepreneurs.

For this, Intel conducts 2 to 3 days workshop where it invites entrepreneurs, startups and let them meet together and work which generates several new ideas. “Recently, we have announced and identified 10 start-ups that came up with ten different innovative ideas,” says Kavitha.

Further, moving from the designing stage, Intel takes these start-

32

April 2016

www.varindia.com

Kavitha Mohammad Director, IoT & Smart Cities at Intel (Asia Pacific Japan) Opportunities in IOT is based on the different needs of verticals as well as countries. In India, security and surveillance segments are the first opportunities. It is one of the important and sensitive subjects which are not just about physical security and surveillance like cameras. etc., but it’s about data security. As per current scenario, more devices are being connected which creates the need to keep date safe and secured. Also, transportation, manufacturing and waste management will increase the need for more IOT devices in the country. Also technology will help these verticals in lot many ways like improving productivity, quality, etc.

ups to the scaling stage which is the manufacturing phase. She adds, “In manufacturing if these guys are given the right opportunity as well as exposure, they can meet the needs of Indian markets. Also, identified entrepreneurs in our workshops get the opportunity to collaborate and work with other ecosystem partners of Intel which helps them scale up to make manufacturing more productive.”

Intel is not only supporting these startups make products, localized designs and concepts in India, but also helping manufacturing units to improve their productivity. The chip maker is also looking forward to providing solutions which are customized as per Indian needs, while providing intelligent technology that supports the Make in India project. n

FACE TO FACE

Netgear tapping SMB market with smart solutions N

ETGEAR has been innovating networking products that connect people, power businesses, and advance the way people live. Providing a range of products for the home segment, SMB Networking and Storage, NETGEAR, has been continuously expanding its business in India and SAARC geography.

Subhodeep Bhattacharya Regional Director, India & SAARC of NETGEAR, shares insights and plans of the company for ongoing year with the VARIndia team – As a part of their expansion plan, Netgear proposes to address Eastern India in a better way with their whole range of products encompassing end-to-end retail, networking, storage, wireless, security and telecom access products. With a three-dimensional approach in expanding their business, the company is focussed on expanding their product line to be able to address more categories and segments. Secondly, they wish to expand geographically to reach out to more and more customers in many more locations.

And last but not the least, the company eyes a channel expansion strategy wherein they can add more channel partners.

India offers many opportunities to an IT

product manufacturer and the low penetration of IT would ensure that many of these sectors would be growing fast. Commenting on the same, Subhodeep Bhattacharya stated, “We believe in the current scenario, surveillance, campus wireless, 10G, gigabit switching, mid-market storage solutions and security solutions would continue to show strong growth. Government, SMBs, education, healthcare and retail should continue to grow as segments.”

NETGEAR has a huge focus on SMB and smart home automation. The company has been designing products to get configured in simple or complex solution environments in SMB and SME organization. “We have many proven solutions designed and deployed across the country. These solutions range from storage solutions like virtualization and backup to network solutions like 10G network and campus wired and wireless solutions.

These solutions have been deployed in media, hospitality, healthcare, education, government, and manufacturing sectors.

We are focussed on the SMB market in India,” he added.

For 2016, Netgear will continue to introduce new switches in the 10G, gigabit, smart and chasis switches categories.

Wireless and storage are, thus, going to be the focus area in 2016. Also, it has plans to introduce new automation solutions for home and small offices. Additionally, BYOD has been a trend for quite some time now. As the company is focussed on connecting people to networks and the internet, BYOD is also going to be central to Netgear’s plans. n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

33

FACE TO FACE

Why companies need to harness the power of real-time data?

Companies are always trying to find the best way to store data in a meaningful format so that they can make better business decisions. Since the birth of data warehousing almost 30 years ago, numerous innovations in data management have been made, such as Hadoop and NoSQL. According to experts, SAP HANA has established itself as a baseline for further innovation by having introduced its High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA), a platform for processing high volumes of operational and transactional data in real time. Arun Kumar VC, Senior General Manager – Enterprise Solutions, HTC Global Services, shares the insights on developments and challenges faced by companies while adopting SAP HANA – Real-time data offers several benefits to businesses of all sizes. It delivers the first level of interaction with business data for any application, analytics, or transaction. With real-time data, organizations can access data quickly, enable collaboration among teams and partners, and deliver new business insights and scalable transactions. It can also lower IT costs through automation and simplification, reduce hardware requirements, optimize data caching and eliminate data duplication. The major benefits of real-time data management enables real-time data sharing and quality, enables much richer data sharing and improved data quality and allows any application to access any business data in real time.

There are certain challenges that one comes across while migrating to SAP HANA, for instance identifying challenges, assessing requirements and resources, creating plan, preparing infrastructure, performing migration and validating migration. At an initial stage, businesses see different challenges like budget, dependency on factors like sizing,

The Latest Trends and Challenges in SAP HANA –

Arun Kumar VC Senior GM – Enterprise Solutions, HTC Global Services infrastructure, resources, migration strategy, getting the right partner, deciding on onpremise, cloud or hybrid strategy while in the execution phase, unicode and dual stack split, code optimization, cutover, downtime issues are generally faced by the companies.

A real-time example can be given of that of SAP ERP that is powered by SAP HANA. It brings in speed to ERP system processing utilizing in-memory computing capability and real-time data processing capability utilizing the best in software and hardware innovations.

SAP HANA also brings in the ability to process structured as well as unstructured data, to provide predictive and complex analytics and drastically simplifies the customer’s SAP ERP landscape. “With the inclusion of various innovations and simplifications based on SAP HANA’s capabilities, SAP ERP has evolved into a one-stop solution for an ERP solution which includes ERP applications / solutions, innovative user experience, inclusive analytics, real-time data processing, big data and more,” says Arun Kumar. n

• Landscape Simplification by utilizing SAP HANA as an Appliance • SAP Business Suite on HANA implementations / migrations • SAP Business Warehouse on HANA implementations / migrations • S-innovations inclusion in Suite on HANA • S/4HANA enterprise management: Next-generation business suite and the foundation, covering the digitized mission-critical business processes of an enterprise • On-Premise and Cloud deployment of Suite on HANA • Big data analytics utilizing SAP HANA • E-Commerce (SAP Hybris) powered by SAP HANA

The main reasons why companies choose SAP HANA – • Speed – ability to manage massive data volumes at high speed • Agility – permits real-time interactions across the entire value chain • Insights from structured and unstructured data, predictive and complex analysis • Supports running next-generation applications • Advanced cloud platform – supports business innovation • Simplicity – fewer layers and a simpler landscape for lower costs • Value – innovate without disruption and add value to legacy investments • Choice of working with your preferred partners at every layer

Qualcomm encourages Make in India vision with “Design in India” Challenge

W

ith a view to catalyzing the creation of a product and hardware design ecosystem in India, Qualcomm, in association with the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), has announced the ten finalists of the first edition of the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge which was launched in December 2015.

“Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s Make in India vision, Qualcomm is excited to support the possibility of making India a hub for design capabilities that would drive the value chain from a service focussed to product capable industry. We are thrilled at the overwhelming response to the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge and look forward to incubating the top ten finalists in the Qualcomm Innovation Lab to transform their ideas from concept to product stage,” said Sunil Lalvani, Vice-President & President, Qualcomm India & South Asia.“ “We are happy to be associated with Qualcomm in this progressive effort, to actualize the Make in India vision,” said R. Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM. “This initiative, closely aligned with NASSCOM’s own vision to ‘Connect, Collaborate and Co-create’, is a great platform to drive innovation.”

The ten shortlisted companies for the first edition of the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge are: Aarav Unmanned Systems, Artificial Machines, Carnot Technologies, Green Robot Machinery, iFuture Robotics, Lensbricks Technology, Myelin, Treepie Computing, Uncanny Vision, Watchy Technology.

These ten companies will now be incubated in the Qualcomm Innovation Lab and the top three winners will each receive a funding of $100,000 at the end of the incubation period expected around November 2016.

34

April 2016

www.varindia.com

Movers & Shakers

Rajiv Gauba appointed as Secretary, Urban Development

Amitabh Kant appointed CEO of NITI Aayog

NASSCOM gets its new Chairman for 2016-17

C Sukumaran appointed as Assistant Director of CSP Division, Canon

Gauba, a 1982 batch Jharkhand cadre IAS now posted in his cadre has been appointed as Urban Development secretary. He has been appointed in place of Madhusudan Prasad, a 1981 batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre, on his retirement on March 31, 2016.

Gauba has wide-ranging experience in senior positions at policy making and programme implementation in the Central and State Governments and in international organisations. Hailing from Punjab, the 1959 born Gauba is a physics graduate from Patna University.

National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has appointed CP Gurnani as its Chairman for 2016-2017. He has succeeded BVR Mohan Reddy, who served as Chairman of NASSCOM for 2015-16. He is part of the NASSCOM’s Executive Council and is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Tech Mahindra. As Chairman of the Executive Council, Gurnani will lead and assist NASSCOM in catalyzing the growth of the Indian technology and services industry and enabling the fulfilment of its future goals and aspirations.

The Executive Council has also announced the appointment of Raman Roy, Chairman & Managing Director of Quatrro Global Services, as the Vice-Chairman of NASSCOM for 2016-17.

Amitabh Kant has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NITI Aayog and has taken over the office from April 1st. He is a 1980 batch Kerala cadre IAS officer.

Kant has been appointed in place of former IAS officer Sindhushree Khullar, who was appointed as the first CEO of the National Institution for Transforming India (Niti) Aayog, a body that has replaced Planning Commission, for a fixed one-year term beginning January 1, last year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is Chairman of Niti Aayog.

Canon has announced the appointment of C Sukumaran to the designation of Assistant Director of Consumer Systems Products (CSP) division at Canon India.

C Sukumaran will be leading CSP division’s Laser and Inkjet printer business in India and will be accountable to take the marketing and sales of the products to the next level. He will be reporting to Andrew Koh, Vice-President, CII Group, Canon India.

Under his leadership, the CSP division will continue to focus on government and enterprise business, making Canon the industry leader in the printing domain. Sukumaran has been associated with Canon for over 15 years. Prior to this, he was working as the Assistant Director of the Business Imaging Solutions (BIS) division.

After 98 years Panasonic gets a young Indian Executive Officer

Kaspersky Lab names its new MD, Asia Pacific

Hitachi Data Systems appoints Raghuram Krishnan as Director-Channel and Alliances

AT Rajan elevated as CEO at Ricoh

Manish Sharma has been appointed as Executive Officer of Panasonic Corporation and President & CEO of Panasonic India & South Asia, from his most recent role as Managing Director, India. He is the first Indian ever to be appointed as Executive Officer of the Corporation.

He will be responsible for driving profitable growth along with strategy planning and sustainable business development across businesses.

Sharma joined Panasonic in 2008 and has been instrumental in spearheading the growth and transformation of Panasonic India from a consumer-electronics company to a technology solutions company.

Hitachi Data Systems has roped in Raghuram Krishnan as Director-Channel and Alliances. He will spear head the Channel and Alliance business of the company. With over 16 years of experience, Raghu will be driving the channel eco-system with its partners, technologies and application vendors of HDS.

Kaspersky Lab has appointed Maxim Mitrokhinas Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab Asia Pacific. Based in Singapore, Maxim will spearhead the company’s dynamic growth strategy in the region.

Having joined the company in 2008 as the Director of Operations in APAC, Maxim is now responsible for continuing Kaspersky Lab’s business growth in the region with a focus on reinforcing B2C market share, as well as driving channel engagements and development in the B2B sector. With strong leadership skills and vast experience in the region, Maxim is ideally placed to take the Kaspersky Lab business to the next level.

AT Rajan has been appointed as the CEO of Ricoh, following the resignation of its former MD & CEO, Manoj Kumar from the Board of Directors effective from April 2nd.

AT Rajan has earlier served in different capacities at Ricoh. He was previously the Sr Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer and before that the Chief Marketing Officer. He has also worked with CEAT and Taj Services before joining Ricoh.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

35

FACE TO FACE

Lenovo relies on a 4-pillared Service Model VARINDIA has had the opportunity to speak to Sudipto Ghosh, Executive Director – Services, Lenovo India, to know about the various services initiatives that Lenovo has started, of late. He also talks about how being a differentiator helps the company to stay ahead of the curve Service has become very important for Lenovo as they see themselves as a differentiator in this business. This is also in line with Lenovo’s strategy to provide a highly differentiated and interactive customer experience that the brand has always been doing all these years.

Sudipto Ghosh, Executive Director – Services, Lenovo India, is of the opinion that, while offering services, one should provide the base level of services. According to him, they comprise the 4 pillars of service. “If I am providing services, I should have a contact centre, field service executives, spare parts and transportation,” he quotes.

Lenovo set up its first in-house contact centre in Bangalore in the year 2013, on 2nd of April. This state-of-the-art in-house centre is the first to have come up outside China. It has employed around 500 people there and carries out service-related activities for both commercial and consumer level of products.

“Customers can reach out to us in various ways – Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is one such way. Our engineers take complaints from the customer and try to resolve these cases over phone. Around 42% of the consumer product cases and 20% of the commercial products are resolved over call. To make this smooth, we have developed a problem diagnostic tree (PDT), a methodological way to look at the problems. We also put a check on whether they are consulting this particular PDT or not. We also have an option of asking customers for a remote access of their device, (Remote Takeover, RTO) because if it is a user-related problem, we can sometimes solve that problem only when he gives the access to his device. There are certain customers who do not like going through the IVR process. In such cases, we have the ‘Call me back facility’ where Lenovo people would instead call them back. Customers just need to mention the preferred time in the form online,” explains Sudipto.

This is all happening in voice. But the trend today is transitioning from voice to non-voice. In the non-voice category, Lenovo has introduced a lot of e-services, which allows customers to have personalized self-service by logging on to the dedicated services website.

This service is 24x7, while call centre is only from 10 to 7. For commercial segment, it is 5 days a week, while for consumer products it is 6 days a week. In the commercial space, 50% of the customers have availed the e-services and in the consumer space around 35%.

Beyond this, Lenovo also has a spare part despatch arm. Today, it has achieved 93% of spare part despatch just with the help of voice. For the transportation of these parts, Lenovo has partnered with DHL. “We have

36

April 2016

www.varindia.com

20 locations where we have our own support warehouses. Most of the state capitals have these kinds of warehouses which we call it sub-warehouse. In our terminology, we call it Forward stocking location (FSL). Bangalore is the central warehouse that houses the spare parts in a 1-lakh sq. ft. area. For out locations, we will send it through a courier,” says Sudipto.

Lenovo has two types of service centres – one is carry-in, where any customer can walk in to its centre and another is the onsite. Today, Lenovo has 318 such carry-in service centres across India which are thirdparty owned. “We train the service personnel on the technical aspect, soft skills and on CRM, because they should know how to use the customer relationship module,” he comments.

Besides, Lenovo also has its own service centres. It has got two exclusive service centres – Delhi (Nehru Place) and another in Bangalore. “We want to ensure the best customer experience to our customers. As soon as you enter the service centre, you find a kiosk where you give your mobile number and immediately after that you will receive a ticket number and counter number. And

Lenovo set up its first in-house contact centre in Bangalore in the year 2013, on 2nd of April. This state-of-the-art in-house centre is the first to have come up outside China.

It has employed around 500 people there and carries out service-related activities for both commercial and consumer level of products.

Different Service initiatives

by Lenovo – • E – Services – This allows customers to have personalized self service by logging on to the dedicated services website • Call me Back Facility - This facility allows customers to schedule a call back based on their convenience • ‘Len Care’ App - a one of a kind android app that will help customers register complaints on their mobile phones and help them track the progress • Lenovo exclusive Service Centres (Delhi & Bangalore) - Lenovo has launched wholly owned and operated service centers in New Delhi and Bangalore • Zip code mapping - Lenovo services has increased accessibility as the company reaches out to 29,000 pin codes across 180 + locations then from a centralized monitoring system, I can monitor whether the customer has been attended or not and also about his waiting time. Customers can also rate our services on their part,” Sudipto assures.

Lastly, Lenovo has also developed an in-house app, “Len Care”. It had initially developed the app only for its channel earlier but soon realized that it can be used for customers of both commercial and consumer products. It is a one-of-its-kind Android app that will help customers to register complaints on their mobile phones and can also track the progress. There are plans to expand it to iOS and Windows platforms in the next phase.

“We started with India first on 4th November, 2015 and are now doing it for the rest of AsiaPacific also. This app will soon get embedded in our notebooks and desktops, too. The idea is to decongest our contact centres,” sums up Sudipto. n

FACE TO FACE

Tape Storage for Quantum is still doing wonders Sanjay Hasija, Country Manager – India, Quantum, opens up with VARINDIA as to what Quantum seeks from the Indian market and why does he still consider tapes as the best form of storage in spite of the coming of other improvised storage technologies –

G

lobally, Quantum enjoys around 30-per cent market share, but business in India has also been excellent. During the last one-and-a-half years, it has grown by almost 200per cent. And this year again, it is targeting a 100-per cent growth. “We are on track,” says contented Sanjay Hasija, Country Manager – India, Quantum.

“We have gone deeper into areas like solution verticals where we are targeting the government business, followed by surveillance.

We have very smart solutions around surveillance, in which we try to reduce the storage cost by 30 to 50 per cent. We smartly capture the data from NVR (Network Video Recorder), integrate with the popular VMS (Video Management Software) and then take it to the storage (Storage Area Network, SAN) and then to the tape. Even when the data is moved to the tape, it still remains visible to the person accessing the application,” he explains.

The tape cost is basically one-tenth of the total storage cost, ensuring that there is maximum cost saving. Also, the operator can keep a track of where the data is, which is another advantage of saving the data on tape. It also gives the flexibility in terms of scaling up the solution, in case more number of cameras need to be added or change the resolution of the camera from normal to HD to 4K. “We have these smart solutions for other verticals too, like Geospatial is one area where we are doing really well. Similarly, oil & gas is another focus area. Media and entertainment is our another forte worldwide. We have around 150 customers in which we have top TV channels as our clients today. We are now trying to position the same solutions into corporate training and marketing videos. Network forensic is another area we are trying to focus,” says Hasija.

For data centers again, Quantum has very smart solutions in general for archiving and backup. “Any organizations looking at storing long-time data, we can help them reduce their costs. We The customer today has understood Quantum’s value proposition, and when it says that it can look at longtime retention of data at a lesser cost of 30 to 50 per cent, it is more than enough to convince its customer. have different storage options depending on the criticality of the data,” he supports.

Quantum also sees Smart City as a big opportunity. If not for making a city smart, Quantum definitely has a few announcements coming wherein it is participating in the city surveillance project.

“We have got multiple of them. We are pitching a complete end-toend solution, right from capturing the data in the NVR to storing it on the SAN and then moving to the tape. The tape library alone can store up to 72 petabytes of data and if clubbed with SAN, it goes up to 74–75 petabytes. Other competitors do not have an integrated solution like this and we have an edge on this,” Hasija quotes.

The good thing is that Quantum’s technology is an open one and supports any kind of storage or networking platform, operating system or bandwidth network. Though experts are of the view that tape has gone obsolete, Quantum still believes in having customers 4–5 years from now using tapes. “We still see customers using LTO-3 technology, though LTO-7 is the norm now in tapes. The tape has also the benefit of using less cooling power, as it stops once the data is written on it, but a disc happens to rotate continuously for which it needs excessive power for cooling.”

The customer today has understood Quantum’s value

Sanjay Hasija Country Manager – India, Quantum Top Business Verticals for Quantum – • • • • • • •

Government Surveillance projects in Smart Cities Geo-spatial Oil & Gas Media and Entertainment Corporate Training and marketing videos Network Forensic

proposition, and when it says that it can look at long-time retention of data at a lesser cost of 30 to 50 per cent, it is more than enough to convince its customer. “You ask us to do a POC, we can turn it around in 48 hours. That is our strength today. We also have a Centre of Excellence (COE) in Bangalore. However, for a customer in Delhi or Mumbai, we can make the POC available here in 48 hours or maximum 72 hours.” Quantum has its R&D in the USA, but because it has its COE in India, it is able to test and integrate its solutions in India also.

Quantum also has a strong distribution channel. It works with two distributors – Ingram Micro and iValue Infosolutions. Ingram is responsible for getting major projects, while iValue has been more of a value-added distributor, focussed on getting government and BFSI customers. It has also tied up with all the top 15 system integrators of the country.

And hence...

There is, undoubtedly, a huge opportunity for both the company and its partners. It is just that Quantum needs to shift gear from its traditional data to other data like video, voice and images because these data are growing by zetabytes. Major 90-per cent growth is expected to come from these structured data and that is where Quantum expects to play a very strong role. n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

37

FACE TO FACE

Power of PRYSM is all about Technology collaboration lifecycle Prysm is changing the way people work by delivering seamless experience that is collaborative, powerful, easy, streamline communications, increase productivity and accelerate the time to decision

Amit Jain President & CEO - Prysm

D

igitization of content is proliferating in the company environment. It comes from automation, whether you are buying different cloud-based tools, ERP systems, CRM systems, data storage systems, etc which help access of any content from anywhere. “These days, there are two other trends that need to be watched out– Mobility and Millennials,” says Amit Jain, President & CEO - Prysm Mobility is a huge trend which helps one stay connected digitally and visually. It also enables one to work from anywhere.

“Workplace is no longer a boundary of four walls. Now whether you are travelling or are at home, you can deliver the work.

What is even more important is the delivery of work on time and hence mobility is very important these days,” observes Amit.

The second is Millennials who are fostering consumerization of the corporate world. “In this, they are given easy access to storage, can put files and pictures on the cloud which are accessible from anywhere.

They are using very easy-to-use devices, whether it is iOS, Android, Touch Pads, iPads, laptops which have become cheaper and accessible to everyone. Millennials carry their content, which includes workplace and even their personal place. So one can access their important files in seconds, without the need to rummage through heaps of files and documents,” he explains.

The power of both mobility and Millennial consumerization are forcing the corporate world to completely change. Millennials are the largest force though, especially in India that has one of the youngest populations

38

April 2016

www.varindia.com

in the world and has also one of the highest concentrations of Millennials in the world.

“And this force is going to take us to the next level.” “Digitization of content, accessibility of content, ease-of-use from any device – has, thus, become the need of the day. And that is why we call it the Digital or a visual workplace,” he further adds.

Evolution of the Modern Day workplace…

Prysm is defining a new way of work – one where applications, content, video conferencing and the web can all be easily combined into a visual workspace. These interactive workspaces are stored in the cloud and available on any screen irrespective of its size. Prysm’s Visual Workplace solutions span from conference room to home office, executive visit centre to data lab, huddle room to custom walls – and most importantly workplaces of every size.

Prysm has also recently announced the Prysm Enterprise, a first-of-its-kind combined hardware and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution which enables businesses and their employees to easily collaborate in real time across every size screen. With Prysm Enterprise, the newest offering in Prysm's Visual Workplace portfolio, applications, content, video conferencing and the web are all combined into cloud-based visual workspaces where anyone can create, edit, share and store work, and then go back and re-access the saved workspaces later from any location via the cloud.

Through this significant step in the enterprise collaboration space, Prysm has been able to expand the reach of its technology to mobile devices and the cloud.

Prysm Enterprise lets users collaborate from anywhere and on any device through cloudbased visual workspaces, where they can create, edit and share work. The work also can be stored on the cloud and is available to users who want to reaccess it.

The new offering, which is part of Prysm's Visual Workplace portfolio, is designed to address the ongoing transition in the video collaboration space. Businesses are trying to manage a number of trends that are playing into the evolution, including the increase in the number of mobile devices being used, an increasingly mobile workforce, bring-yourown-device (BYOD) and security.

Talking about the Indian market, Prysm is currently focussed on global enterprise, IT services, BFSI, Telecom and Public Sector verticals. “We cater to our customer’s requirements of collaboration video walls for customer briefing centres, Command and Control Centres, data labs, huddle rooms to digital briefcase solutions.

Hence, our customers can deploy Prysm in conjunction with their existing investments in collaboration with technologies,” Amit sums up.

Millennials are the largest force though, especially in India that has one of the youngest populations in the world and has also one of the highest concentrations of Millennials in the world.

ISODA CORNER Subscription model fails to impress Indian customers

Paresh Shah, Director, PH Teknow highlights why software subscription model has failed to take-off in India There is a heated debate over pros and cons of the subscription and perpetual licensing models. While many customers and partners are not pleased with the move toward subscription licensing, I have mixed views about the change.

In my view, subscription licensing is not a winwin proposition for the Indian customers, at least, presently. Indian customers are largely conservative when it comes to IT upgrades. Nobody upgrades IT, specifically the software, as fast as the vendors want them to do. Even large Indian customers have an upgrade cycle of 5-7 years and SMBs have an even longer one.

While on the positive side, the subscription model offers the ability to tone down the capex and ensures always-upgraded infrastructure, the flip side is that customer end up paying significantly more over 5-7 years. Perpetual license on the other hand remains active for life time, even if the customer doesn’t upgrade. For example, the perpetual license for Microsoft Office sells for Rs 20,000, but the annual subscription is Rs 5,000, which well exceeds the cost in over a 4-year period.

For partners, perpetual license deal is a one-time business and for the next 5-7 years there might be no business from the customer, unless the company goes into an expansion phase. On the other hand, subscription model offers constant revenues.

Vendors need to work out subscription fees in a way that customers see the RoI in opting for it, over the 5-7 year period.

They also need to do something innovative to convince more customers to move to subscription considering the low adoption rate so far.

Best practices for payment collection

Rajeev Mamidanna, Director - Eden Infosol talks about simple business practices that have helped his company reduce payment delays The continuing economic slowdown has led to increase in payment delays and the risk of defaults have increased manifold.

In order to streamline the payment collection mechanism, we began involving our Finance department as well as that of the customer to finalize on payment terms. Involving the finance team from both sides helps arrive at realistic payment term. This is essential in large deals where managing the finances become crucial.

In case the customer’s payment terms aren’t agreeable to us, we don’t hesitate to walk away from the project. For instance, for a deal with payment term of 30-45 days, we expect at least 10 percent margins. On large deals with similar payment period we keep a 15 percent margin. Today the cost of capital is high and hence one needs to factor in the interest on the payment in every deal.

In many deals, we insist on customer paying 25-50 percent advance. While many existing customers pay in advance, it is still a challenge with customers where we have stiff competition from other partners. Still, this practice is minimizing payment risks to a significant level and helping us manage our cash flows.

We have also appointed a person in our finance team dedicated for payment collections. Her job is to send payment alerts and reminders 10 days in advance of the due date.

We have realized that by bringing discipline in the payment collection process, one can get at least 75-80 percent payment within the agreed time.

ISODA Expands With Pune Chapter ISODA has inaugurated its Pune Chapter in a bid to increase its membership across the country and to have increased representation from smaller cities.

“Pune is an important market with a strong IT partner ecosystem. Hence, we decided to open a local chapter. Our aim is to have a larger representation of partners from across the country in addressing the challenges and issues, and foster collaboration among our members,” said Rajeev Mamidanna, Regional Secretary, West - ISODA. ISODA held the inaugural event on March 9, 2016, which was attended by ISODA Western region committee members and leading partners from Pune, including Askari Infotech, GTS Technologies, C-DOT Systems, Supreme Computer and Software, Vintech Electronic Systems and Sujata Computers.

The event witnessed a discussion about smooth on-boarding of new partners and how ISODA can add value to Pune partners. ISODA committee also noted some of the critical issues faced by Pune partners and promised to represent it at the right forum.

Under its ISODA 2.0 vision, the industry body has ambitious plans to open more chapters in smaller cities in coming months. “Each of these chapters will have full autonomy and will conduct their regional meets independently. Members from these chapters will have access to all the initiatives and activities conducted by ISODA including our annual TechSummit forum. We want partners across the country to partake in various programs being undertaken by ISODA for the benefit of the community,” added Rajeev.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

39

COVER STORY

Enterprise Mobility –

The Biggest Trendsetter for 2016 Enterprise Mobility has emerged as the need of the hour with organizations that are looking to increasing businesses productivity, forging better customer relationship and making decisions faster. But the question is how much time before India picks this trend –

E

nterprise Mobility has emerged as a big business booster for enterprises of different sizes. It gives the workforce liberty to operate freely from anywhere and also from any device. Now it is no more a compulsion to go to office and use a particular desktop to access data. Not only has the liberty of working triggered the growth of Enterprise Mobility, but easy access to data from any devices, improving business productivity and availability, and enhanced customer relationships with quicker response time, improved sales-cycle, and faster decisionmaking have made it an integral part of any business.

Customers are experiencing all the enhanced facilities due to the growing penetration of mobile devices. Mobility has

Parag Arora Area VP & Country Subcontinent, Citrix

40

April 2016

Head,

India

www.varindia.com

predicts that Enterprise Mobility market in India will touch $2.3 billion in 2017. Indian enterprises are experiencing considerable technology transformation across infrastructure, applications and end-to-end user computing.

Enterprise Mobility: A fundamental of all businesses

Mitesh Agarwal Vice-President – Oracle India

Sales

Consulting,

seeped into all walks of our daily life. It is becoming the necessity for all businesses today.

According to a survey by BlackBerry, India Enterprise Mobility is a top priority for most organizations with 71 per cent saying they either have a mobility policy or are, at present, in the process of drafting one. About 66 per cent respondents said mobility solutions helped firms in real-time data collection and reporting from mobile workers, while 56 per cent said it helped in reducing paper work, administration time and expenses. The top three investment areas for enterprise mobility include business consulting services, telecom expense management solutions and mobile device management solution.

Furthermore, a report by Infographic

While it is true that Enterprise Mobility gives employees freedom to work from their preferred devices, it also gives the organizations an opportunity to save various operations and maintenance cost without loss of productivity.

“Enterprise Mobility has become a business reality. It is no longer a luxury – it is

Rajesh Shetty Director, Enterprise Networking Sales, Cisco India & SAARC

fundamental to support a happy and productive workforce. Organizations adopting mobility are leveraging its multiple benefits. Enterprise Mobility has not only enabled employees to operate freely from their preferred devices but has also given enterprises the opportunity to save on various operating and maintaining costs without any loss of work productivity,” says Parag Arora, Area Vice-President & Country Head, India Subcontinent, Citrix.

Reiterating the same, Mitesh Agarwal, Vice-President – Sales Consulting, Oracle India, says, “Mobility has transformed the way we live, work and play. With the advent of mobile computing, applications are no longer tied to the desktop and end-users expect to be able to switch between desktop, tablet and smartphone anytime, anywhere.

This multi-channel environment has become the new norm.”

He further continues, “Mobility in India is mostly driven from within the organization.

Organizations want to be able to extend their enterprise applications to mobile devices because keeping the workforce connected empowers everyone to make decisions, take

Narendra Nayak Managing Director, BlackBerry India action, and stay informed. What we are seeing is that Mobility is taking the same trajectory as that taken by the Web when it came into being. Today, nobody questions the need for a web presence. Similarly, time has come when it is imperative to have a mobile presence for all applications and services.”

The Setbacks….

No technology can be adopted without facing challenges. Organizations face various technological as well as other challenges while implementing any new technology into their IT ecosystem. Shifting of existing infrastructure into new model, management of multiple applications etc are some of the challenges seen while adopting Enterprise Mobility.

However, the biggest challenges being faced are in terms of data privacy and security.

“Organizations face several barriers to adoption like shifting their existing infrastructure into a new model, integration with the existing and legacy systems, and new investments involved. Other challenges include data privacy and security,

Sajan Paul Director, Systems Engineering – India & SAARC, Juniper Networks management of multiple platforms and devices, providing secure access to enterprise resources, management of several applications, malware attacks, and more. Keeping sensitive data and information secure is very crucial for businesses today, so they must evaluate their environment, create a robust strategy and roadmap before taking a step towards mobility,” states Manish Godha, Chief Executive Officer, Advaiya.

Secured access of real-time data and securing mobile applications are equally important for organizations embracing Enterprise Mobility.

For this, a strong network infrastructure with dynamic technologies is needed to secure the risks involved in it.

“Enterprise Mobility is not limited to merely providing a smartphone to your workforce. Real-time data access and secure access is what we are aiming at. It is highly important to have a strong Enterprise Mobility Management System in order to keep the IT department up-to-date with the usage of sensitive professional data, at all times. Securing the mobile apps is equally important for the safety of confidential data.

Since the mobile employees working on BYOD policies operate on different devices, it is not only important to keep the confidential data safe but also differentiate the professional data from the personal records, on any device in use. A robust network infrastructure strongly aligned with advanced changing technologies is the need of the hour. While rigorous efforts are being made to keep data safe, as CIO’s show added leadership in order

Syed Wasim Jafar Vice-President (Service Delivery), Xavient Information Systems

to keep sensitive information away from any threat, there is still a long way to go before mobility runs with no risk at all,” suggests Syed Wasim Jafar, Vice-President (Service Delivery), Xavient Information Systems.

Enterprise Mobility does not only mean access to corporate data. With the trend of BYOD, employees can access their personal data along with corporate. But at the same time the employee’s personal data may be at stake and also exposed to employers.

“Many companies today are offering BYOD programs to employees, giving them access to corporate applications and data on their personal devices while still maintaining a level of security on the device. As a result, endusers are becoming increasingly concerned with their own privacy and how their personal information and actions may be exposed to their employer. The employee and employer disconnect grows as it is unclear to end-users as to what information is accessible by their employer and what is not,” opines Sundar Balasubramanian, Senior Director, General Business, VMware.

BYOD which is one of the fuelling

Manish Godha Chief Executive Officer, Advaiya elements behind the growth of Enterprise Mobility has further increased the woes of CIOs. Security of data poses as the biggest challenge in Enterprise Mobility. Selection of right security solution and preventing the secured environment from encroachment are the biggest challenges for the organizations.

“In the wake of frequent security breaches and data thefts, enterprises globally are under tremendous pressure to provide an end-to-end secure framework. The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is adding to the woes of modern-day CIOs. Devices nowadays are extremely powerful and a small instance like misplacing or losing a mobile device can translate into a major security breach. For optimal security, organizations should seek out solutions that are capable of meeting corporate network requirements while concurrently providing three layers of security at the device, server and network level. With the right Enterprise Mobility solution, organizations don’t have to compromise their security requirements to allow employees to carry the devices they choose. But the challenge becomes preventing

www.varindia.com

April 2016

41

COVER STORY

Amulya Kapoor Head, Digital Research, Infosys the secure mobile computing environment from encroaching on the user’s experience,” says Narendra Nayak, Managing Director, BlackBerry India.

Moreover, SMBs, which generally are the early adopters of technology, are reluctant to bank on Enterprise Mobility owing to the security reasons, costly solutions and complex mobile environment.

“A number of enterprises and SMBs are hesitant today to embrace mobility owing to data security and overall security concerns, high perceived costs (most organizations consider the current breed of solutions as expensive) and the heterogeneous nature of mobility initiatives (Indian organizations are not prepared to manage a complex enterprise strategy that extends across devices, applications and software). Low network speeds, lack of customized applications, complex device management, high TCO and complex software are also deterring organizations from implementing enterprise mobility,” points out Amulya Kapoor, Head, Digital Research, Infosys.

Growth drivers…

Adoption of mobility in business is not the only reason for fuelling the growth of Enterprise Mobility. There are other factors like BYOD, innovative mobile applications, affordable smart devices, network expansion and introduction of 4G services that have worked as a catalyst in driving growth of Enterprise Mobility.

“Over the last few years, India has seen a tremendous upsurge in the number of smart devices. The convergence of mobile devices, internet, smartphone prices, the extensive 2G/3G network expansion and the growing adoption of 4G services have been the largest factors driving this trend. This increased adoption of smart devices has resulted in Indian companies implementing BYOD policies to enhance employee’s productivity. Hence, it is no surprise that business productivity has now become largely dependent on enterprise mobility.

Right from entry-level mobility applications such as email to advanced mobility-enabled enterprise applications such as salesforce automation, ERP, SCM, CRM, unified communication and billing, every

42

April 2016

www.varindia.com

aspect of business is going mobile. The BYOD market is growing rapidly. Big Data and Cloud Computing paradigms are providing valuable insights by processing, managing and analyzing data from mobility applications,” states Rajesh Shetty, Director, Enterprise Networking Sales, Cisco India & SAARC. Organizations are also investing heavily in networking models in order to improve daily business services. Enhancement in network model is taking place as the organizations are looking for agile, secure and scalable networks.

Moreover, this will lead to improved business services and higher rate of customer satisfaction.

“Apart from rapid smartphone adoption, the Internet of Things and SMAC are also aiding the growth of Enterprise Mobility in India. Cloud and virtualization-based networking models have also proved to be go-to-solutions for organizations opting to expand, integrate and better optimize their network infrastructures. One of the key trends we have seen over the year is that organizations are now investing large sums of money into networking models based on virtualized hybrid

Virender Jeet Sr Vice-President, Newgen Software clouds. This, in turn, allows them to move a lot of daily business services to the cloud, thereby providing for and enabling a high level of Enterprise Mobility. Transition from private clouds to hybrid clouds is happening as organizations start looking for agile, secure and scalable networks that can cater to larger amounts of network traffic,” opines Sajan Paul, Director Systems Engineering – India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

Start-ups and Enterprise Mobility…

The new-age start-ups that embrace newer technologies to provide mileage to their business have shown a positive approach towards Enterprise Mobility. To achieve their business goals, real-time information along with pace and agility are required. And, these start-ups are using this technology in an effective way to widen their services and gain customer’s satisfaction.

“As businesses experience the next level of transformation, they are looking to do more with less. Customers in the digital age expect faster responses while employees on the move

Sundar Balasubramanian Senior Director, General Business, VMware

demand advanced tools to meet their goals.

Real-time information capture along with processing speed and agility is determining future market leaders across industries.

Thus, Enterprise Mobility is being adopted at a rapid pace by both the start-ups as well as the established enterprises. In India, banks are leading this adoption with an objective to delight their customers by serving them at their doorstep. Government agencies with their endeavour to foster innovation in citizencentric processes, are also aggressively rolling out mobile governance initiatives. SMEs, right from BFSI and telecom to logistics & transportation and healthcare, are increasingly relying on robust Mobility Platforms to widen their service offerings and increase operational effectiveness beyond boundaries,” states Virender Jeet Sr Vice-President, Newgen Software.

Voicing a similar opinion, Syed says, “Start-ups will definitely take the BYOD trend forward and since mobility is penetrated deeply within the IT enterprise, the young start-ups have an edge to initiate their mobility initiatives towards their target audience. Startups are now better aligned to strategize and prioritize their mobility solutions. Among the early adopters of technology, policies like BYOD and CYOD are being highly promoted and demanded, thus leading the transformation in technology trends.”

Lastly…

Though Enterprise Mobility comes with issues regarding security, it has nonetheless proved to be a business stimulator for organizations of all sizes. It has helped organizations to increase efficiency, improve productivity and increased customer’s satisfaction. Taking forward this concept of mobile computing forward, Mitesh concludes, “The next frontier for enterprise computing will see the convergence of the Internet of Things with mobile computing to create a ‘Connected Enterprise’. Being able to leverage mobile technology and make it meaningful by finding significant links to multiple, varied sources of data (for example linking biometric values with environmental factors, or calendar data with home control and monitoring) is what will lead to promising developments for enterprise mobility in 2016.” n

FACE TO FACE

Channel is our Mantra of Success

In a chat with VARINDIA, the newly-appointed Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director – Sales – South Asia, HID Global, discusses the latest launch, business model of the company, channel empowerment programs and the opportunities in the market –

W

ith its latest global launch of Mobile Access solution that delivers a more secure and convenient way to open doors and gates while introducing a simple secure identity management process and which is not only operable from mobiles, but now it is also accessible on wearable watches. HID Global claims itself to be a channel-centric company.

The company operates in the market through three of its strong distributors – ADI, AutoCop and Inflow Technologies.

“HID Global is a channel-centric company. Our business model is purely based on channel partners. We look at it in three ways. We have national distributors in the market, OEM partners because some of our products are hardware and for that we need an OEM to help us with the software and lastly we also have the key accounts which are directly handled by HID. We have more than 2,000 channel partners across India and have three distributors – ADI which is a Honeywell group company, AutoCop which in the recent past has been a very strong security distributor and Inflow Technologies.

The advantage that we get from all of them is that they not only cater to the channel partners of security business but as India is growing, we get the IT partners also to start working with us,” says Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director – Sales – South Asia, HID Global.

Keeping in mind the latest trends, Digital India and Internet of Things (IoT), HID Global has launched its IoT-based flagship product Mobile Access. Through a secure identity management process, users can open doors and gates in a secure and convenient way.

“HID is into Access Control System and it is one of the foundations of IoT. We have launched our flagship product, Mobile Access, which means access credentials on mobile so you can use your mobile phone to enter into a premise. It is a foolproof secure solution.

With the PM’s focus on Digital India and IoT which is a mantra today, it all fits the build perfectly. Globally, Mobile Access has been launched and its getting upgraded, which means it was accessible only on mobiles but now it can also be operable on wearable watches,” states Kulkarni.

Opportunities & Market size For HID Global, the opportunities in the Indian market are huge. The company

Vishwanath Kulkarni Director – Sales – South Asia, HID Global

We have launched our flagship product, Mobile Access, which means access credentials on mobile so you can use your mobile phone to enter into a premise. It is a foolproof secure solution.

With the PM’s focus on Digital India and IoT which is a mantra today, it all fits the build perfectly

runs various channel programs like training sessions, certification programs, roadshows, product expos, etc.

considers a small office with less number of employees irrespective of verticals as their potential customer. “The market is huge.

Even if there is an office of four people, they also need an Access Control System.

Every vertical, every person who works in a company needs a card. Every company in any vertical needs a reader to access themselves.

It is not only for security or it could be for attendance.

Furthermore, while explaining the different channel programs, Kulkarni says, “We have different channel programs that are run throughout the year for direct as well as indirect partners. Direct partners are distributors, OEMs and the key accounts, while indirect partners are the channel partners of distributors. Programs that are run throughout the year are training sessions, certification, etc to facilitate them. We also have some online programs called Advantage Partner Programs where partners get training materials and videos which are focussed on the technology part starting from understanding the product till commissioning.”

“It is very much aligned to the India’s growth. We have been growing as per the top 100 companies of India. The GDP of India is growing,” adds Kulkarni.

Channel Empowerment Channel empowerment programs are very important for a channel-focussed company.

Like other companies, HID Global also

“Empowerment, to put it both technically as well as marketing of brand, we have different programs. We do city-wise technical trainings in the tier-I, -II and -III cities. It is a year-onyear exercise that we do. The brand building we do with our distributors. There are expos, roadshows, multiple activities which they do. Also, there are a lot of webinars that are conducted and EDMs are floated in the market,” explains Kulkarni.

While conveying a message to Channel Partners, he says, “India is growing and we are all part of the growth. HID wants everyone in the ecosystem to grow.” n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

43

FACE TO FACE

With double-digit growth Zebra’s momentum continues

Deep Agarwal, Regional Sales Director, Zebra Technologies Asia-Pacific, tells VARINDIA more about the company and its positioning strategy, post acquisition of Motorola’s enterprise business

T

he acquisition of enterprise business of Motorola Solutions by Zebra Technologies has spawned the creation of a new business category for the company – Enterprise Asset Intelligence. “We do various solutions for different verticals – retail, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, from which we derive close-to 80–90% of our revenue. Healthcare and government are emerging verticals for us.

Government is a focussed vertical for India but not necessarily across the globe. We have seen implementations happening in the Excise Department, Forest Department in some of the states. We also have use cases in government hospitals, with AIIMS and a few government hospitals in Kerala having deployed our products,” explains Deep Agarwal, Regional Sales Director, India Zebra Technologies Asia- Pacific.

Zebra’s products are designed for tracking and getting visibility for any kind of physical assets (like people) that would, in turn, generate information and eventually faster decisions could be taken. It provides realtime visibility into organizations’ assets, people and transactions. Globally, Zebra is a US$3.65-billion company and is publicly listed. “Our revenues in India are in line with most of the companies in this line of business; approximately 13% of the total revenue which is US$463 million comes from APAC market,” Deep states.

Post acquisition of Motorola’s enterprise business, Zebra is seeing a positive sentiment both in the partner community and with its customers. “When we both were operating independently, we virtually used to target the same set of market segment. With us coming together, we have a much larger product portfolio that we can offer as one company, and a seamless integration could be established between our set of products,” he says.

Zebra is largely a partner-driven organization. It meets with customers directly, but business execution is done by partners. On paper, it today has close-to 300 partners, but only 20% of them are active with remaining of them coming on a need basis. “We have our own offices in five locations – Delhi, Mumbai,

Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata and have our partners all spread over. We also have our global development centre in Bangalore that caters to the entire globe,” Deep asserts.

There are three broad categories of partners that Zebra deals with – system integrators like HCL, Wipro, TCS where its products go as one small component of their entire solution.

Secondly, Zebra has specialized partners who are from the identification and data capturing industry and they would specifically focus on bar coding and RFID solutions. Third are the independent software vendors (ISVs) who create their own specific solutions and would recommend Zebra’s hardware. “We keep adding new partners in new domain and geographies. If you look at our Top 10 partners, some of them have been with us on an average for 7-8 years,” says Deep.

Zebra has a two-tier model – distributors and then the three sets of partners. Zebra works with three National distributors – Ingram Micro, Inflow Technologies and Neoteric.

Zebra is also seeing a lot of penetration in the tier-II and -III markets. Around 20% of its revenue comes from these markets and the new partners that it brings in are essentially from these markets. “Zebra Technologies believes in long-term growth and APAC including India is very important for the global business. We have grown by double digits during the last few years and this momentum is going to continue in the coming years too,” Deep concludes. n

Foxconn is optimistic for Make in India

Josh Foulger M.D, Foxconn India

A

s India is at the cusp of digitisation mainly driven by the mobile devices, adoption of smartphone is increasing day

44

April 2016

www.varindia.com

by day. There is another key factor for growth that could be witnessed in growing competition over the pricing , the ease of access of content and language localization.

Government Incentives through Make in India and prevalence of internet-enabled services on smartphones are some of the reasons for this propelling growth . Smartphones are already outpacing the growth of feature phones and are expected to show a massive 36% CAGR over the next 5 years.

Foxconn's upcoming plant in Maharashtra, is getting to be operational with an investment of Rs 35,000 crores and to employ around 50,000 people in the next 5 years.

Foxconn has made the blue print ready for creating a supplier eco-system (Component manufacturers would have to build a global supply chain in India, which can then be used for products across multiple categories starting from mobile phones to tablets, laptop and TVs),similar to the model in China and

Taiwan by bringing component suppliers so that it can reduce its manufacturing cost for both domestic consumption as well as for exports.

Josh Foulger, M.D, Foxconn India, said "Manufacturing mobile phones presents a fantastic opportunity in India and India is the most suitable pick for all manufacturers after china."

Currently, Foxconn manufactures mobile phones for Asus, Gionee, Oppo, Microsoft, In-Focus, Xiaomi and Microsoft feature phone (NOKIA) from India and according to sources very soon Huawei and Iphone are also going to get manufactured in its India plant. Foxconn is producing about 1 million phones in a month and also manufacturing Televisions for certain brands in India.

Speaking on Make in India, Foulger said, "Ecosystem players must have a long term vision and should come with open mindset to localise." n

FACE TO FACE

Big Data to streamline business offerings for IT industry Being a processor to lead business model transformation, Big Data is a true differentiator having limitless possibilities and has taken the corporate sector by storm. According to a joint study conducted by NASSCOM and CRISIL Global Research & Analytics, the Indian Big Data industry is set to cross US$1 billion in 2016. Ram Prasad Mamidi, CIO, Tata Teleservices Ltd, shared his views on the adoption of Big Data.

Big Data adoption rates have been steadily growing over the last couple of years with Telecom, Retail and Pharma leading the way.

How far has Big Data Cloud computing is also an important evolved currently? What is the arena which from experimentation has become adoption rate of Big Data by the a critical enabler for the transformation Enterprises? of next-gen telecom companies. As a vital Big Data as a true differentiator of endless possibilities has been taking the corporate sector by storm being a processor to lead business model transformation. As per a joint study conducted by NASSCOM and CRISIL Global Research & Analytics the Indian Big Data industry is set to cross USD 1 billion in 2016. One of the recent IDC data surveys also showed that nearly 36 percent of information available will be useful only if analyzed. The surge of information consumption will lead to the quick adoption of big data analytics which is inevitable. Advanced analytics is the key to solving complex data, thereby, providing an ability to conduct analysis and simulations of every single business related matter wherein the results achieved are completely accurate, concise and relevant.

Big Data adoption rates have started steadily growing over the last couple of years with Telecom, Retail and Pharma leading the way. According to a study done by IBM adoption rate has increased by over 40% YoY and some of the factors driving the interest in Big Data are Finding correlation across multiple and disparate data sources (eg., Clickstream, Geospatial and transaction), Predicting Customer Behavior, Predicting product/service sales and Fraud and Financial risk.

How is Tata Teleservices tapping on Big Data & Cloud as an opportunity?

Tata Teleservices has been using big data for a while now, emphasis while using it has been on the end to end customer experience management strongly. It has been helping us to define systems to measure stage-wise experience parameters for a given customer and correlate them for personalized delivery, not to forget the predictive tools and robust data warehousing which are in place. While these solutions enable us to leverage structured data, we are also looking at available options for effective mining of unstructured data.

Using the Hadoop framework we have leveraged Big Data for more effective Vigilance Tracking and Monitoring.

strategy provider it enables service providers to provide a collaborative platform for internetworking with over-the-top-players.

Adoption of cloud technology provides CIOs with ample time to focus on other myriad business related issues rather than being in a reactive mode to hold all the information together at one place.

How do telecom companies look at the role of Data Analytics?

Data analytics has been taking a major foothold in corporate sector, its institutionalization will provide boost to firms to reach the bottom of the pyramid and help in aiding personalized support. It is equally important for firms to seamlessly ingrain any successful data analytics concepts in the IT infrastructure to deliver excellent customer experience. As an upcoming tool of innovation, differentiation through innovative offers, social media and enterprise mobility must be used to provide new offerings to customers.

As a concept, even smaller firms today inspired from industry leaders are ensuring to seep big data analytics into their respective IT infrastructures as it tends to be a cost-effective tool which in turn helps their business function efficiently due to critical deep insights. Firms following the lead of industry leaders use the large chunk of data through big data analytics, thereby, gaining insights on customer behavior to purchasing trends.

They use it intelligently to equip themselves with opportunities to streamline processes and customize product and service offerings.

What future do Big Data and Cloud hold for the Enterprises?

The big data industry is expected to reach $ 41.5 billion by end of 2018 and analytics will be the key growth drivers by 2020 as per a report by IDC. Given the immense potential of the technology in terms of driving business impact and efficiency, the need of the hour is to encourage talent that is able to

Ram Prasad Mamidi CIO Tata Teleservices Ltd effectively plan and manage the mining of big data elements and drive awareness amongst stakeholders to utilize the insights derived from these analytics.

Cloud, as a strong communication backbone is a key success factor which has immense potential for adding greater value to other companies. Through the help of cloud and software-defined datacenters, corporates will create new opportunities into the enterprise world by unlocking evolutionary levels of insight, flexibility and scale. Such insights will help them take right decisions for their business and help them move ahead in the right direction, thereby, utilizing their time on making business more effective.

Which are the segments Tata Teleservices is eyeing the maximum growth in 2016?

The most growth is expected in the booming arena of mobile internet, if estimates are correct, then more than 45 percent of the world’s population in Asia are the biggest users. With more and more upcoming brands, manufacturing will see a new high in terms of internet and smartphone. As a trend, this segment will be likely benefitting exponentially in the coming times. n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

45

INDUSTRY WATCH

Incentive and Channel Programs – Pillars of IT industry The excitement and challenge of all business activities centre on motivation. With properly run incentive programs, one can motivate their channel partners to outperform expectations. But that is also where the challenge is: to run a measurable, effective motivation program specifically designed to achieve the stated business goals.

O

ver the years, the IT sector has evolved rapidly. In today’s fast-changing and increasingly specialized technology space, businesses want to work with partners with indepth technical expertise, and those are leaders in the delivery of secure apps and data.

In the present-day scenario in the IT industry, not only is an organization careful while choosing a partner, but a partner also places faith when he/she chooses to associate with a product company. Hence, the channel incentive programs combined with the available training and other skillbased resources, are the ways of rewarding

Khwaja Saifuddin Senior Sales Director, South Asia, Middle East, and Africa, Western Digital and motivating partners who show confidence in the brand. A well-motivated and skilled partner not only helps in taking the product to the market but also helps the customer derive value from those solutions. Partners also ensure that their customers are using solutions that best match the needs and business model.

This way, the customers, product companies and partners all receive benefit.

To ensure that the program is structured for success, segmenting the target audience, grouping channel partners are required according to their levels and interests. Defining the participants makes it easier to develop an awards program that is appropriate, with rewards that are suitable for each group.

The actual segments used for any incentive program are based on the character of each corporation. But, in general, it is helpful to organize channel partner into several categories, determine what appeals most to each group and then tailor the incentive rewards according to structure and take IT industry to next level. In order to establish

46

April 2016

www.varindia.com

and build relationships with the channel and partner community, vendors organize a variety of programs and offers. Throwing light on the same, some of the IT veterans from the IT industry shared their insights about the benefits of channel partner programs.

WD offers a gamut of programs designed specifically for channel partners such as myWD, WD Ki Paathshaala, WD University, WD Eureka, etc. Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, South Asia, Middle East and Africa, Western Digital, stated, “myWD Partner Program aims to offer training, sales support, value-added benefits and incentives to security and surveillance system integrators, installers, solution and service providers to help them enhance their business opportunities and profitability. ‘WD Ki Paathshaala’ consists of regular training sessions with our channel partners to apprise them of our offerings.

‘WDpedia’ is an initiative for the relatively new channel partners. Thus, such initiatives help WD build and grow relationships with them in the upcountry markets and provide them with direct access to our company.”

Channel partners can provide a fast and effective way to penetrate new markets and expand existing customer relationships, allowing high-tech companies to focus on other strategic imperatives and core competencies.

Channel partners bring established local-level networks and are closer to customers. The channel partner engagement strategies help to increase IT opportunities. The incentive programs and Channel schemes create stronger and more strategic relationships with the customers which directly increases business of the IT industry.

“Effectively selling today’s networking solution requires a partner that understands

Shrikanth Natarajan Director, Channels & Alliances, India and SAARC, Brocade

Eklavya Bhave Head Partner Strategy & Sales (India & SAARC), Citrix what it takes to succeed. That is why Brocade is committed to helping our partners grow their businesses, leveraging our innovative, highly-differentiated technologies. We work closely and collaboratively with our partners to develop their solutions expertise, sales skills, and profitability. The Brocade Partner Network (BPN) supports our partners by making a shared investment in developing knowledge-rich practices that address evolving technology trends and changing customer’s needs. It offers a complete set of enablement programs and resources that help our partners grow their businesses and improve their bottom line. Our focus to reward the Partner Sales team is also paying off rich dividends. We reward individuals who bring in an opportunity and drive the sales cycle,” elaborated Shrikanth Natarajan, Director, Channels & Alliances, India and SAARC, Brocade.

The partner's role today has elevated from only connecting the vendors to the customers but also involves a consultative approach.

Hence, it is very important that partners are well rewarded for all the efforts that they put.

All in all, the IT industry has witnessed a surge in specialist partners who possess technical expertise and position the products effectively in the market.

On the same, Eklavya Bhave, Head Partner Strategy & Sales (India & SAARC), Citrix, keenly observed, “At Citrix, our partner network is a significant contributor to our growth story globally and in India. Citrix believes in regular enablement of our partner network across the solution and technology landscape. For this, we drive regular channelenablement programs which provide onthe-job training to support the partners, so

Vishwanath Kulkarni Director of Sales, Physical Access Control, India and SAARC, HID Global

Vishal Parekh Marketing Director, Kingston Technology – India

Rajesh Gupta Country Manager, India & SAARC, SanDisk Corporation

that they are well prepared to leverage every business opportunity from existing and new customers. Citrix thrives on a strong channel ecosystem to leverage its solutions in the market. The channel network adds value to our offering, as they help their own customers implement products that are best suited to the business. Channel partners help us serve and understand our customer base better by sharing valuable insights.”

HID also runs various incentive programs to support their partner ecosystem – for example, the HID APP (HID Advantage Partner Program), various rebate programs like CO-OP fund and MDF. “The incentive programs are an integral part of the channel growth. These programs help in building trust and loyalty with the partner ecosystem.

In a saturated market, the biggest concern is profitability of a company, Such incentive programs help the partners increase their profitability hence bringing loyalty,” said Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director of Sales, Physical Access Control, India and SAARC, HID Global.

For lifestyle technology brands like Kingston, HyperX and others, channel partners contribute to the company’s brand image and sales. Over and above the sales aspect and market share, vendor’s incentives are focussed on creating a sense of belongingness, encouraging a competitive sales environment.

Channel schemes, thus, help in maintaining the business momentum and it also boosts channel partner’s margin and profitability.

Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director,

Kingston Technology – India, mentioned, “Channel network is our first priority. We work closely with partners and believe in formulating schemes that create a win-win situation for all parties involved, including the end-users. There is a need to be effective value addition to and from the entire supply chain. With such programs, we encourage our channel partners to grow their reach and try new avenues. That is not all. We give them an edge with two very important elements – topnotch quality products and best after-sales service – to supersede the realistic goals.”

The objective behind launching incentive programs and channel schemes is to cement the company’s terms with channel partners and build a stronger bond with them. Companies rely on channel partners to increase their brand visibility and attain top-of-the-mind

brand recall at pan-India level. These channel partners play a crucial role when it comes to building wider outreach for brands, especially in geo-expansion markets. For this reason, it is essential to stay connected and appreciate them regularly for their efforts in supporting the company’s growth. Promotional schemes and programs provide partners the much-needed motivation so that they go the extra mile in maintaining the company’s brand name in the market and increase awareness among people about its products and services.

Rajesh Gupta, Country Manager, India & SAARC, SanDisk Corporation, stated, “At SanDisk, we believe in keeping our channel partners motivated and as a way of strengthening our engagement with them, we regularly introduce incentive schemes and training programs for them. This year, we have launched SanDisk HC League, a oneof-its-kind invitation only privileged club for the preferred channel partners. Through this special program, SanDisk aims to reward, recognize and motivate our elite partners with exclusive rewards and privileges."

Companies strive to launch innovative programs, schemes and training programs for partners on a regular basis and recognize their contribution in the company’s growth and development by offering them various rewards.

“Dell’s rebate and incentive plans are designed to acknowledge and incentivize our Channel partners for their contribution to our business. “Dell Storm”, our flagship rebate program for our quota partners is designed in a

Kartik Sachdev Marketing Head, Solar, Su-Kam

Channel schemes also have an added effect of increasing loyalty of the channel partners towards the brand.

Usually, the scheme involves a mix of volume and value product, thereby ensuring the channel familiarity in selling value product. Schemes designed for a longer term with key filters like certifications, product mix, healthy payment schedule and lead to solve tracking can help the partners increase their profitability as well as gradually evolve from traders to solution providers.

Sharad Gupta Channel Director, India, Veritas

Rajeev Singh MD, BenQ India www.varindia.com

April 2016

47

INDUSTRY WATCH

Ajay Sehgal National Head – Small and Medium Enterprises, Vodafone Business Services way that it not only ensures the profitability of our partners for the business that they bring in for Dell, but also provides higher rewards for the key solution areas that bring more values for our customers. Through higher incentives, we ensure that our partners are focusing on the key technology areas that are shaping the dynamics of the IT landscape in India,” stated to Anil Sethi, Director & General Manager, Channels, Dell India.

Anil Sethi Director & General Manager, Channels, Dell India Companies like Dell encourage their partners to train and certify themselves on these technology areas through certification programs. There are attractive incentives for the partner sales and pre sales teams as well for these certification. This ensures that company has parallel focus on enhancing the capabilities of its partners which is essential for their growth as well and they are ready to address the fast changing requirements in the IT industry.

Kartik Sachdev, Marketing Head, Solar, Su-Kam, explained, “We feel it is very important to make our channel partners feel important and appreciate their efforts.

Incentive programs and channel schemes are a great way to show that the company cares and recognizes their dedication. Reward schemes are created in such a way that the incentives push our channel partners to perform even better. We often launch incentive programs during our dealer and distributer meets that we organize quite frequently throughout India.”

A good mix of incentive programs and channel schemes is certainly beneficial to the

48

April 2016

www.varindia.com

Manoj Khadkikar Head Channel Solutions Group – Zicom IT industry as it drives the right behaviours in the channel community – by helping partners to win and coordinate in the industry.

Working with the right partners in a dynamic market like India is vital for accelerating the positive growth of our business and market presence. Sharad Gupta, Channel Director, India, Veritas, said, “In India, Veritas is gaining strong traction with the right set of partners, and we will continue to invest in our partner program by introducing courses and certifications on strategic technologies for our channel partners to help us build the skill base and strengthen the foundation of competencies to support Veritas’ strategic growth and expansion plans in India as the leader in information management.”

Incentive and channel programs are very strong pillars of the IT industry. These become the reason for an extra push due to which channel partners achieve great numbers. Also, most of the time due to excessive competition, the channel partners surpass their margins to sell more. Hence, the incentive is the only profit they keep for themselves, thus bringing sustainability in the business.

BenQ strongly believes in strong familial values and always cherish them. Adding to this, Rajeev Singh, Managing Director, BenQ India, elaborated, “BenQ is consistent on monthly and quarterly incentive plans for our channel partner. These channel R&R programs are not limited to just increase our partner’s profitability but also to give them unique experiences which our partners cherish.

Our programs give our channel partners a unique identity in the industry. We motivate them with the help of such channel programs, and this is not restricted to the brand but it becomes a benchmark and motivation for the industry to strive hard and become better.

Programs like outbound tours give them a refreshing break from their tight working schedules. We also encourage spouse programs and give them the added incentive of bringing their families along.”

Sundar Balasubramanian, Senior Director, General Business, VMware, said, “We shared with the partner community our company’s new vision for IT based on ‘One Cloud, Any Application, Any Device’. In it are the following top priorities or best bets, designed to help partners develop and cultivate a rewarding and sustainable business practice

Sagar Gosalia Sr. Vice President – Marketing & Sales, Matrix Comsec with support from our organization for Predictable Profitability, Creating Value in Our Partners’ Businesses and Rewarding Healthy Growth.”

Ajay Sehgal, National Head – Small and Medium Enterprises, Vodafone Business Services, mentioned, “Vodafone runs a quarterly program to evaluate the allround performance of a Channel Partner and continuous evaluation to motivate the

Sundar Balasubramanian Senior Director, General Business, VMware channels to improve Q-o-Q.” Manoj Khadkikar, Head, Channel Solutions Group, Zicom, believes that, while one scheme focusses on volume-driven business and the product mix, whereas the other scheme incentivizes partners to increase the share of services in their business. We feel that an ideal incentive scheme should be designed in such a way that it cannot be discounted by the channel partner, but should have the bottom line of the deserving partners to maintain a healthy competition in the industry.

Sagar Gosalia, Sr VP – Marketing & Sales, Matrix Comsec, believes in “Keep it Simple” approach when it comes to channel incentives.

No long term, no accumulation. Benefit on the spot is what we feel works better. We do have monthly incentive schemes based on targets as well as loyalty benefits based on regular achievements. Apart from monetary benefits, we feel that “Things which money can’t buy” also has a separate importance and an effect of its own. n rajbala@varindia.com

FACE TO FACE

The evolution of institutional selling We are living in a competitive business environment where the sales force is engaging with an evolved version of the buyers – a totally empowered set. Buyers today are far more informed and easily disengage with sellers who provide no value and relevant information, in the given time. A study quoted by Qvidian states that 58 percent of buyers disconnect with sales teams because sales representatives are not aligned to the buyer’s specific business challenges. In addition, a survey of B2B buyers

by Forrester, states that 61 percent of sales people add no value to the purchase process.

H

owever, in the technologically empowered age that we are living in, it is often debated that the requirement of the sales person will eventually fade away. While it is a given that the environment has changed, we are of the opinion that the requirement of a salesperson in institutionalized selling, especially in the B2B scenario, will never go away. In fact, the advancement in technology has indeed helped in streamlining and automating few processes that has led to increased sales effectiveness.

Institutional selling like any other sales strategy has evolved and needs to focus on certain key elements including maximising ROI on all sales and marketing investments, anticipating and capitalising on rapid changes in uniform buying behavior, finding ways to leverage interactive database and network technologies to grow sales and keeping track of customer behavior and leverage collaborative CRM system that enhance collaboration and build customer loyalty.

Technology evolution has reduced the leg work/ face to face interaction of sales reps by increasing access to relevant information and taking charge of the back-end tasks. However, the orientation, skill and intelligence on how to leverage and apply this in the best possible manner, is still required to be acquired by them.Here are some ways in which sales representatives can leverage the technology advancement to their benefit in order to gain a competitive edge: • Sales repsneed to leverage new age technology tools in order to keep abreast of the developments. Eg., use smart database access platforms to create pre-profiled organizational map by leveraging automated information access through social media, association websites, events, blogs etc.

• Use technology platforms that provide effective Account Management solutions by keeping trackof influencers/ decision makers in target organizations and connecting with them with desired information/ solution more effectively.

• Leverage technology enabled sourcing tools to keep track of customer requirements.

• Leveraging GPS/GPRS enabled Sales force automation tools to have real-time access to information and submission of information to enable quicker turnaround time on field actionable.

• Leverage Marketing automation platformsto help create relevant leads and lead nurturing services to effectively convert a suspect into a qualified prospect • Leveraging tele-based CRM platforms such as DenCRMto covert marketing generated opportunities (MGOs) into sales wins In order to address the needs of savvy customers, enterprises and sales representatives must transform the way they sell and the way they look at sales.Evolving the methodologies and the manner in which sales representatives carry out their operations to cater is important to succeed and meet the sales objectives.

Snehashish Bhattacharjee Global Ceo & Co-Founder, Denave

Trends that are driving the growth There are various technology-driven industry trends that are driving the growth of institutional selling, including: • Technology enabled whitespace database generationto reduce the gap between the addressed customer base versus what really is the addressable segment • Smart database access platforms for a more effective targeted prospect database • Social media/ web advertising for targeting customers realtime with increased relevance • Tele-CRM collaborative solutions for imbibing a consultative approach • Marketing automation for strengthening the process right from identifying the suspect to finally move them to the nurturing phase • Technology enabled Account Management tools/platforms reducing the need to map organizations manually • The above arealso fuelled by developments such as mobility adoption, cloud penetration and analytics.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

49

FACE TO FACE

HP sees a big opportunity in Composable Infrastructure Vikram K, Director, Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India, in a chat with VARINDIA, retells HP’s growth story, this time from the perspective of Composable Infrastructure and how it tries to synchronize the strategies of its server division with that of the various growth initiatives of the country –

F

or years, innovations have continued to thrive for HP and it has become even more prominent after HP Enterprise has come into existence. Accelerating new innovations, ideas and new beginnings are now a part and parcel of what HP does.

“In the last two quarters alone, we have had at least three major releases. It is not from a converged system or a hyperconverged perspective, but we have done it in the composable infrastructure category.

‘Compose’, in English dictionary, means to create, write or put together something in an artistic manner. So this infrastructure that we are talking about brings together everything from the traditional IT perspective, like relative database, IDBMS, OLTP, VMs, under one roof,” explains Vikram K, Director, Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India.

In a composable infrastructure, resources are logically pooled so that administrators don't have to physically configure hardware to support a specific software application. Instead, the software’s developer defines the application’s requirements for physical infrastructure using policies and service profiles and then the software uses application programming interface (API) calls to create (compose) the infrastructure it needs to run on bare metal, as a virtual machine (VM) or as a container.

“This is encompassing of everything that HP had in its history of compute. This also brings together a whole lot of service capabilities with software defining intelligence. It claims to cut data center costs and slash the time it takes to spin up new applications,” says Vikram.

For almost close-to a year now, HP has been staying focussed on four transmit areas – • Transmission to Hybrid IT Infrastructure • Things around Big Data • Things around Digitization • Security and End-User Workplace From a server standpoint, Vikram points out that the way HP has been aggregating on its market share has really been excellent. “I find big changes happening since the time I took over this role 14–15 quarters back. There has been a consistency in our growth pattern. We have had a growth of 39.14% in Q4 2014, 38.62% in Q1 2015, 41.52% in Q2 2015, 43.77% in Q3 2015 and 47.05% in Q4 2015. That is the strength of product innovation of HP, of its labs and the product suite,” he says.

The server market, if seen from the size and the number of units sold, is not growing that significantly. “Because of the coming of virtualization, you also get cases of servers getting abstracted. But, unexpectedly, the revenue size is definitely growing,” Vikram says.

HP is also doing extremely well in each of the verticals – service provider (Telecom), Manufacturing, Government, BFSI and Public Sector. It finds each of these verticals moving to the next level with HP’s products and solutions. “You will also find our partners mentioning about the SMB segment which is another growing segment for HP. Especially in the last threefour quarters, the story has been of tremendous growth,” supports Vikram.

HP also has a very defined go-to-market mechanism. It has appointed a separate vertical Head with a full-fledged vertical team for each of the verticals. Due to the fact that the market is

50

April 2016

www.varindia.com

Vikram K Director, Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India more of compute oriented and not server oriented, there are lots of service opportunities as well.

The talk of digitization and HP could not have lagged behind.

“We see a lot of our customers digitizing their supply chain or bringing digital into a variety of business functions that they were traditionally been into. The government is also doing a lot of work in the same space. For instance, every citizen is going to get a Digital Locker which will be of 1GB. So it is, indeed, a big market that HP is going to cater to in terms of server and compute space,” he observes.

According to Vikram, Smart City is a localized project as it is starting to get implemented in the top 20 cities, but HP is surely looking forward to being a part of it. “It also cannot be looked at from the perspective of just one vendor, but it is a combination of many vendors coming together and offering to build the infrastructure. HP also has been a part of building many smart cities worldwide and is definitely looking forward to this opportunity with unabated breath,” he sums up. n

FACE TO FACE

F-Secure focusses on B2B space With evolving threat landscape, the Indian security market is observing a steady growth.

It also has challenges like price difference and piracy. Discussing about the security market, Amit Nath, Head of Asia-Pacific (Corporate Business), F-Secure, also mentions about channel strategy, roadmap and its contribution in Digital India initiative.

How is the India security market doing? What kind of competition are you facing in the market and what measures you have taken?

With a growing economy and a fast rising Internet population, the security market in India is witnessing a steady growth. At present, the Indian security market is estimated to be around Rs. 1000 crore and is expected to grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 10%. There is an apparent growth in the market because of the constant use of internet enabled systems and handheld devices. Every organization and individual using computer and internet needs a comprehensive virus protection policy in order to combat growing threats. Hence, the security market is only growing.

Price difference and piracy are the biggest challenges in this industry. The Indian market is not only price-sensitive but also quite uncontrollable. In the SMB segment, where there is a moneycrunch and no dedicated staff, under-licensing is a big issue. If there are 100 users, they will often buy 50 licenses and use it for 100 users.

We are planning to do a series of seven-city road shows in major cities across the country. This would allow the users to get handson experience with connectivity and integrated security. Along with it, we have tied up with four ISP partners to provide security as a service to the users. In addition to this, we are conducting various training programs for partners to enhance their knowledge on products and their positioning in the market along with our distributors.

Being a channel driven company, what strategy are you following?

With 27 years of experience, we are now focusing on higher security techniques. We sold our storage business last year and are continuing to expand corporate and bigger enterprises vertical like finance sector, aviation, online gaming sector.

Moving from an antivirus and PC consumer security market, we have established strongly in cyber security space. We have introduced ‘F-secure Sense’ which is a hardware device which secures your smart home with one device, now and in the future.

We are also building advanced threat protection solutions like cyber security alarm with sensors signs like motion sensors in enterprises. These sensors basically raise the flag of alarm when somebody is trying to intrude into the network.

Amit Nath Head of Asia-Pacific (Corporate Business) F-Secure

In an earlier announcement you said F-Secure will appoint 6,000 resellers globally. How many of them are appointed in India?

We have 120 resellers across India.

How do you contribute to PM's Digital India initiative?

With PM’s digital initiative, the SMB’S (Small and medium sized businesses) and startups are rapidly growing and expanding. All these segments require strong security solutions and consultations.

Our security solutions and consultations are very much strong and the masses are familiar and savvy with these services being offered to them.

What is the road map of the company in 2016?

In 2016, our focus in India would continue to be on the corporate B2B segment. We will be launching new products in B2B segment where we forecast a big growth and most of our activities in terms of expansion will be around this. Expanding the channel partners in the country will also be the key in meeting growth targets. n

www.varindia.com

April 2016

51

India market is poised for growth in next 5 – 8 years Atulya Chandra , General Manager-South Asia, Honeywell Security and Fire India, Automation and Control Solutions has discussed with VARINDIA the current scenario of video surveillance market, company’s strategy and the scope in India market sustainability, and communication. Honeywell Security& Fire has an extraordinary range of solutions across intrusion detection, Video surveillance, access control technologies & Home systems. Caters to all electronic security needs for Industrial, Government, Defense, Transportation, Commercial, Retail, Hotel, Hospital, Corporate Buildings, IT, ITES, Banking and also the Residential market,” claimedAtulya.

Factors like increasing criminal activity, terrorist attacks, Smart City initiative, growing awareness etc have triggered the growth of surveillance market in India. Customers are looking for a holistic surveillance solution rather than only IP CCTV solution.

India Market IP cameras have gained momentum due to its advanced features and also it is used because of its large coverage areas which helps reduce the number of cameras to cover a particular area.

“With increase in criminal activities, IP security solutions have become more sophisticated, complicated and increasingly being customized. IP megapixel cameras are now used to reduce the number of cameras required for covering the same areas. IP technology has advanced features relevant for today’s scenarios like video analytics, megapixel IP cameras and the ease of integration with other security systems and platforms which is catching the trend. Common network usage for data, voice, video telephony and CCTV reduces the overall infrastructure cost as well.

Also to add on, PoE reduces lots of cabling and overall costs.” said Atulya Chandra , General Manager-South Asia, Honeywell Security and Fire India, Automation and Control Solutions.

Not only advanced features but other factors like declining price, terrorist attacks, growing awareness, increase in government spending etc. have added to the rise in adoption of IP cameras in India “Declining prices, terrorist strikes, government initiatives, rising public infrastructure, increasing government security spending and growing awareness have fuelled the adoption of IP Surveillance systems in India. Further, surging need for video analytics and remote monitoring has also led to rising penetration of IP surveillance systems in the country,” added Atulya.

Scope Previously, it was only the large projects like

52

April 2016

www.varindia.com

Strategy

Atulya Chandra GM-South Asia, Honeywell Security and Fire India, Automation and Control Solutions critical infrastructure and transport application and government projects that generate the demand for IP video surveillance solutions. But now the growing awareness about it has seen demands coming from the SME segment also.

“There is a gradual increase in the general level of awareness about the importance of IP video surveillance solutions and it is poised for a steady growth for the next 5-8 years.

In India, while the IP video surveillance market was largely being driven by large government projects, critical infrastructure and transportation application, we witness a growing demand from the SME applications as well. Other key growing applications includebanking & financial, retail, and commercial offices,” stated Atulya.

Moreover, with the launch of Smart City initiative by Government of India has further unlocked a wider market scope for the surveillance segment.

“The government of India has launched an ambitious and transformational scheme to develop 100 Smart Cities. These smart cities will be enabled by a number of smart solutions including those targeted to infrastructure, energy, transport, utilities, environmental

Today customers do not only look for IP CCTV solution but at the same time they seek for integrated security solutions as it will add value to their businesses.

“Customers are looking for business value in surveillance security solutions. All pervasive, online and proactive solutions will be to the fore, driving the technology roadmap.

Integration of business intelligence software to the video surveillance system will be a major trend. Closely integrated security solutions instead of standalone solutions in IP CCTV segment will be the major trends in the coming years,” explained Atulya.

Honeywell has the best suited product portfolio which fulfill the demands of the new age customers. Also, it offers low total cost of ownership.

“Honeywell’s new Performance Series fully-featured IR True Day/Night IP cameras are the perfect complement to customer’s need. Together, they are an excellent costeffective option for both indoor and outdoor surveillance applications, including retail stores, schools, colleges, hospitals, commercial sites, industrial parks, airports, gated entrances, loading docks, and driveways.The range is best suiting customers looking for professional IP video surveillance solutions and systems with low total cost of ownership but same time do not want to compromise on key features like Auto focus, low light performance, codec efficiency and clear & crisp resolution,” said Atulya. n aparna@varindia.com

VAR MOBILITY

LG K10 LG K10 smartphone comes with 5.3-inch HD screen with 1280*720 pixels resolution. This smartphone will be the first to offer LG’s glossy pebble design, a contemporary, stylish look with a curved, modern finish aimed at younger audience. The glossy pebble design is complemented by LG’s new 2.5D Arc Glass for a smooth and seamless style that could only be made possible due to the sides of K10 smartphones being free of button clutter.

With design cues borrowed from nature, the K10 look far more expensive and exclusive than they really are. K10 has 13MP camera on the rear and 8MP on the front. LG K10 featuring LG’s popular Gesture Shot and Gesture Interval Shot, taking selfies is easy and hassle-free. Gesture Shot enables users to take photos simply by raising an open hand in front of the lens and then clenching it into a fist. Closing one’s hand twice automatically leads to the Gesture Interval Shot and will produce four consecutive photos. K10 are equipped with Flash for Selfie in the front to help users capture priceless moments whenever and wherever the need might arise, even in the dark. K10 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2Ghz Quad Core Processor paired with 2GB of RAM. Also on offer is 16GB internal storage that can be further expanded using a microSD card. Connectivity options include dual-SIM card slots (nano SIMs), 4G LTE support (on SIM Card 1), VoLTE and VoWiFi support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. The smartphone will be available in White, Indigo and Gold colour options.

Micromax Canvas Spark 3 Micromax Canvas Spark 3 Q385 Smart Phone is powered

by Android 5.1 Lollipop and 8 MP rear camera with LED flash and for perfect selfies it comes with 5MP front camera. It comes with a 5.5 inch HD IPS capacitive touchscreen display that has 1280 x 720 pixels of the screen resolutions which delivering stunning colour consistency and vivid display.

The smartphone brings you an impressive audio experience of 2509 speaker with 1.5 CC box. Micromax Canvas Spark 3 Q385 runs on 1.3 GHz Quad Core processor with 1 GB of RAM on slot. It has an in – built memory of 8 GB which is expandable upto 32 GB through micoSD card slot. This new smartphone has two carrier facility working on GSM (2G) and HSPA (3G). It is packed with 2500mAh battery and running Indus language solution. There are also necessary features available in this new smartphone like EDGE, GPRS, WiFi, GPS, Radio, Bluetooth and USB. The smartphone is also provided with the G – sensor, light sensor and proximity sensor. It is available in two different colours - white and black. It come with dual SIM support similar to most other Micromax smartphones and has powerful loudspeaker at the back.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

53

VAR MOBILITY

Huawei rolls out P9 and P9 Plus Smartphone

H

uawei Consumer B u s i n e s s Group has unveiled Huawei P9 and P9 Plus. photography.

The P9 brings together hardware and software,

from optical lenses, to sensors, to image processing algorithms, empowering users to capture the highest-quality images.

With a 5.2-inch 1080p display, the P9 is powered by the new Kirin 955 2.5GHz 64-bit ARM-based processor for leading-class mobile performance. The 3,000mAh high-density battery offers P9 users outstanding mobility and battery life.Huawei is also unveiling the P9 Plus,

featuring a 5.5-inch Press Touch display and a larger 3,400mAh battery. The P9 Plus also offers dualIC Rapid Charge, giving users six hours of talktime after a 10-minute

charge.

The P9 and P9 Plus also protect users’ privacy and information security with Huawei’s biometric fingerprint recognition technology. The enhanced fingerprint sensor allows users to personalize and safeguard their devices by significantly lowering the possibility of fraudulent or accidental device access, while also ensuring users can quickly and securely access their smartphone.

Lava rolls out V2s and V2 3GB 4G-enabled Smartphones

L

ava International has launched V2 3GB and V2s. These are Cat4 4G LTE (VoLTE Upgradable) devices powered by MediaTek’s 64-bit quad-core processor with a 5-inch HD IPS FL display.

Lava V2s runs on Star OS based on Android Lollipop – 5.1 and V2 3GB runs on Android Marshmallow – 6.0. Both the devices support dual 4G SIM slots and dual standby.

The V2 3GB has a 3GB RAM with 16GB internal storage that is expandable up to 32 GB. The V2s has a 2GB RAM with 8GB of internal storage that is expandable up to 32GB. Lava V2 3GB and V2s sport a 13MP and 8MP rear camera, respectively and an 8MP “selfie” camera with Front Flash.

Gaurav Nigam,

54

April 2016

Head – Product, Lava International Ltd, said, “We are delighted to launch V2 3GB and V2s with the best combination of camera hardware and software features. Through these devices, we aim to build a wide portfolio of high- performance and great camera experience smartphones to enhance our consumers overall smartphone experience, thereby empowering them to do more and be more.”

Apart from 4G, other connectivity options on the devices include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB and OTG capability. Battery backup on both is 2,500 mAh. V2s is available across all national retail stores, multi-brand outlets and online platforms and V2 3GB will be available in the coming week across all the channels.

www.varindia.com

Samsung launches Made for India S bike mode

S

amsung has launched Galaxy J3, featuring the S bike mode, a dedicated feature for two-wheeler riders that is designed to enable responsible and tension free riding.

Once activated at the beginning of a ride, any caller trying to reach the Samsung Galaxy J3 user will be notified through an automated answering machine that the user is riding and cannot take calls so that the ride remains uninterrupted.

“Samsung is constantly in the pursuit of meaningful innovations that make people’s lives better. S bike mode is a result of that vision.

We are very happy that we have come up with something that will benefit millions of twowheeler users and promote responsible riding,” said Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President - Samsung India Electronics.

The J Series was launched with the Ultra Data Saving (UDS) mode in September 2015, a feature that has helped consumers save up to 50% of mobile data usage.

Samsung has further enhanced this feature to include data savings on popular music streaming apps and over Wi-Fi after witnessing an adoption rate of over 50% among consumers. In order to carry the local innovation forward, Samsung is keen to establish the S bike mode as a responsible riding ritual where Samsung Galaxy J3 users will activate the mode before commencing their ride. Both UDS and the newly launched S bike mode have been developed in Samsung’s Indian R&D centres. S bike mode will be available across all 4Genabled Galaxy J series devices over a period of time.

Panasonic ELUGA Arc launched in India

P

anasonic India has launched the Eluga Arc phone today at a price of Rs.12,490. With its latest 2.5D curved HD IPS, the device also features additional security with a fingerpoint sensor.

In terms of specifications, the Panasonic Eluga Arc comes with a 4.7-inch HD IPS display and is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor coupled with Adreno 306 GPU and 2GB RAM. The phone comes with 16GB of internal memory which is further expandable by up to 32GB via microSD card. The dual-SIM phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop and supports 4G VoLTE connectivity option.

On the camera front, the Eluga Arc has an 8-megapixel camera on the rear with LED flash along with a 5-megapixel camera on the front. The Arc is

backed by an 1,800mAh battery and supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 1.0.

"For smartphone users, a major concern is the confidentiality and security of the highly volatile data, with cloud storage usage growing rapidly across segments.

This control-sensitive device, which achieves complex tasks with a single fingerprint is personalised for the user and protects the smartphone investment," said PankajRana, Business Head, Mobility Division, Panasonic India.

Vivo Launches V3 and V3 Max

V

ivo has launched its V series smartphones-V3 and V3Max and also roped in actor Ranveer Singh as its brand ambassador.

Alex Feng, CEO of

The phone is equipped with a powerful Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor and paired with 4GB RAM and 32GB ROM which is expandable up to 128 GB. The device

Vivo India said, “India remains our prime focus and the launch of these models is a testimony of our commitment to cater to the ever growing demand of customers in India and worldwide.”

The fingerprint unlocking allows the user to unlock the phone as fast as 0.2 seconds.

runs on Funtouch OS 2.5 based on Android 5.1.

V3 is powered by Octa-core Snapdragon 616 processor. The Vivo V3 is coupled with 3GB RAM and 16GB ROM. Both V3 and V3 Max house the same camera hardware. They feature a 13MP primary camera and 8MP front camera.

www.varindia.com

April 2016

55

56

April 2016

www.varindia.com

56 pages including cover