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Emerson announces “Avocent Thunder” Programme

Xiaomi begins manufacturing operations in Andhra Pradesh

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Tech Summit (SIITF) 2015, 23rd September - Bangaluru The final version of Windows OS is finally here!

M

icrosoft has gifted its ultimate and the last version of Windows to the entire world. The much-awaited Windows 10 has already been introduced in 190 countries and is available to people as a free upgrade to those who are already using Windows 7 and 8.1 or with new PCs and tablets.

“A new era of Windows starts today.

From the beginning, Windows 10 has been unique – built with feedback from over 5 million fans, delivered as a service and offered as a free upgrade. Windows 10 delivers on our more personal computing vision, with a natural, mobile and trusted experience. Along with our partners, we are excited to deliver the best Windows ever,” said Terry Myerson, Executive VP, Windows and Devices Group, Microsoft.

Alphabet will be game changer in Technology space

A

lphabet, a new holding company of Google is going to create a new dimension in the era of digital world.

During the last three years, Google has developed into so many emerging technologies which is much importance in the coming days. It is just realignment of the new operating structure to increase the management scale and focus on its consolidated businesses and opportunities.

Under the new operating structure, Google will focus on search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure whereas businesses such as Calico, Nest and Fiber, as well as its investing arms, Google Ventures and Google Capital will be managed through Alphabet.

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HELLO INDIA

Technology is constantly Evolving Industry

Changes expected every moment T

he rapid pace of innovation that is taking place in technology has created a sense of urgency to train the business partners and VARs on the current trends. This is also deemed necessary to build brand loyalty that are so very important for selling IT products and solutions and for partners to make investments in education, certifications & specializations. Industry participants see a growing demand for vendor certifications in traditional technologies like networking, servers & storage with other areas of expertise in security, mobility, cloud and virtualization as well as soft skills that demonstrate business savvy, considering the growth in digital economics.

Talking about other things, India's position in matters on internet governance is seen with keen interests globally, and it is important to address critical information infrastructure for capacity building in cyber security to make the cyber space secure. Today's network attacks are overwhelming, conventional security strategies. There is a sense of urgency for more potent combination of security technologies that include next-generation IPS, DDoS, SSL and Web Fraud protection to combat these attacks. Lastly, under the security expertise umbrella, there is a growing importance of SSL and a demand for wireless security, authentication services, risk management and identity management. Going forward, there is also the need for corporate to think about the field of security, in setting up cyber security infrastructure within the country. They can play an important role in a finding more comprehensive model to secure the infrastructure.

Various initiatives by the technology savvy Government is expected to generate huge number jobs in IT, telecom and electronics manufacturing. The success of this programme will make India digitally empowered and the leader in usage of IT in delivery of services related to various domains such as health, education, agriculture and banking. The efforts by the present government however have been quite significant and the economy has seen a whole host of reforms designed to boost India’s economy and boost International trade. According to the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), the Indian IoT industry is expected to be a $15 billion market by 2020.

So this good news for every one of us.

The top two appointments in the world’s two largest technology giants have suddenly turned the spotlights on India, reason being Indians now the new power players in the Silicon Valley. The achievements of Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella not only showcase the prowess of India’s technological strengths in technical & education fields but has also set an example for many generations to come. This achievement however do not come from these new CEOs alone, research has found that the rise of Indians and Indian-Americans in the US tech world appears to be at its peak with as many as 15% of start-ups in the Silicon Valley being founded

by Indians.

The India ‘On the Go’ with all its new initiatives will bring large opportunities to the Indian telcos. With 500 million Internet users in India by 2017, the country is poised to see another mobile explosion. India’s huge market potential has already spawned several e-commerce companies in the last few quarters. The number of e-commerce and OTT players has increased manifold and newer ideas and innovation from these players will further bolster the growth.

S. Mohini Ratna However, it is left to be seen of how TRAI gets quick to fix the spectrum Policy.

Editor, VARINDIA

mohini@varindia.com

Indian-born Sundar Pichai takes over the reins of Google A

major restructuring at Google happened to have turned the tables on Sundar Pichai. India-born Pichai is named as the new CEO of Google, as co-founder Larry Page announces the formation of a new parent company Alphabet Inc which will replace Google as the publicly-traded entity.

The ‘slightly slimmed down’ Google, as Page puts down in his blog, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet, which will have Page as CEO and co-founder Sergey Brin as President.

This new structure, according to Page is expected to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities inside Google, of which Pichai will be a key part. He said that Google companies that are “pretty far afield” of the main internet products will be contained in Alphabet instead.

The parent company Alphabet will have Google, maker of Internet-connected devices for home Nest, high-speed Internet service

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Fiber, investment arms like Google Ventures and Google Capital and incubator projects like Google X, which is developing selfdriving cars and delivery drones.

Alphabet will also include ‘X lab’, which incubates new efforts like ‘Wing’, the company’s drone delivery effort.

Pichai has had an extremely impressive track record at Google, overseeing the successful launch of the Chrome web browser in September 2008.

Pichai was previously in-charge of product and engineering for Google’s Internet businesses. He had joined Google in 2004 as its vice president of product management, where he led the team working on Google’s Chrome browser and operating system. Born in Chennai, Pichai received a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and holds an M.S. in Engineering and Materials Science from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School.

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Oracle looks at driving Value for the Channel Srikanth Doranadula, who has recently been elevated to head the Alliances and Channel at Oracle, tells VARINDIA as to why it has become important for the vendor to create a conducive atmosphere for the partner to work with and how rising competition can take a toll on this relationship

C

hannel partners have always been a key part of Oracle's goto-market strategy. It will, therefore, continue to extensively invest in partner enablement, so that they can deliver Oracle’s solutions to its customers. “We have seen unprecedented growth for our products and solutions in India, especially for Engineered Systems and Oracle Cloud, and partners have played a critical role in achieving this growth in the marketplace,” reiterates Srikanth Doranadula, Senior Director & Head, Alliances & Channel, Oracle India. “Our Value-Added Distributors also play a vital role in penetrating the nonmetro cities through their base of partners. We will look at working more closely with the partners in the coming fiscal and will continue to do so in the future, too,” he says.

Oracle, through its partners, focusses on Cloud (SaaS and PaaS offerings), its entire range of Engineered Systems and Storage along with its existing businesses. It also has a unique go-to-market strategy for these solutions and attractive tailor-made programmes that suit each one of these businesses. “Unlike our competitors with limited cloud options, e.g. SaaS only, virtualization only, or hardware only, Oracle cloud offers the broadest, most complete, and the most integrated set of cloud offerings in the industry,” Srikanth assures.

Empowering Channel to be the BEST… The most important factor in working with partners is gaining their mindshare, making sure the partners are selling and servicing the vendor’s products. Both partners and brand owners (vendor companies leveraging channel partners) continue to face several challenges in working together. For example, partners often represent multiple product lines, giving them a choice of which products to sell. Without clear benefits, partners will choose to focus on other competitive products. “If you are not easy to do business with, they may go and choose an alternate product/solution. Furthermore, a partner may not actively push a vendor’s product due to lack of selling skills, product knowledge, or clear rules of engagement,” cautions Srikanth.

To avoid any discrepancies, Oracle provides many options to the Channel to engage and grow their business profitably. It has assigned a variety of roles for the Channel to choose from. A Partner could choose one or more roles depending on the competencies acquired and target customer profile.

Hence …

It becomes important that the vendor and the channel partner takes measures to constantly better the competency levels of the network.

Oracle instituted the “Know Your VAD” series with this objective in view. In the future, Oracle will look at strengthening its relationships with its existing partners and focus on forging new relationships with partners in this space. Given that customers largely prefer a one-stop solution provider for their requirements, Oracle’s partnership with the partner network tries to achieve specialization in a specific set of solutions and enables them in providing a perfect mix of solutions so as to best address the unique needs of each customer. n samrita@varindia.com

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Srikanth Doranadula Senior Director & Head, Alliances & Channel Oracle India The different roles for the Oracle Channel

• Infrastructure Providers: Partners who can sell, implement and support Oracle infrastructure solutions like Servers, Storage, Database, etc.

• Application Providers: Partners who choose to build their application portfolio around Oracle's technologies in the hardware and software space • System Integrators: Partners who can take Oracle's Applications to Disk portfolio to customers and provide implementation/ maintenance services. These are services-led opportunities in spaces like HCM, CRM, Talent Management, ERP, Demand/ Supply Chain planning & optimization, etc.

• Cloud Service Providers: Partners that can take a plethora of Oracle Cloud offerings in the SaaS/PaaS/IaaS space, and implement/manage for their customers • Resell Partners: These would be partners who simply want to sell an Oracle software licence or hardware product to their customers, but have no desire to provide any services. They are happy making their resell top line and margins • Referral Partners: These are partners who do not wish to play any role in the opportunity, except provide a referral to Oracle through our OMM (Oracle's PRM system). Oracle will pay a referral fee to the partner once the opportunity closes and is billed as per the terms described under the OMM Policy

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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 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 Marketing Manager: Shubhendu Nanda 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: L.G. Swami Plot No. 103, Sagacity Apartments, Street No. 10 Himayat Nagar, Hyderabad - 500029 Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08374935692 E-mail: swami@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. 153, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Are ,Phase-I, New Delhi-110020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi 110030, Editor - S Mohini Ratna.

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Channel Chief

Dell Wyse leading Cloud Client Computing space in India Dell has acquired around 30 companies during the last few years, of which Wyse is one of them. The acquisition has suddenly turned the spotlight on Wyse, leading to a win-win situation for both Dell and Wyse. Santosh Pandey, India Head, Dell Wyse, tells VARINDIA as to why this acquisition is the best thing that has happened and what his expectations are from this new partnership

D

ell forayed into the space of Cloud Client Computing, thin client and zero client in 2012, after having acquired a company called Wyse in 2012. It has been an interesting time at Dell Wyse since then. “Cloud Client computing is Dell Wyse’s terminology for VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) or Desktop Virtualization.

Gartner has started the usage of this terminology and is being used as an industry reference now,” opines Santosh Pandey, India Head, Dell Wyse.

India, Dell Wyse and Thin Client…

Cloud client-computing (CCC) is an essential part of the Dell Client Solutions portfolio, helping to reinforce the end-to-end story that Dell believes is the right approach to implementing client solutions technologies. Explaining the concept of Cloud client-computing, Santosh Pandey says, “An organization puts all their data and applications on a server and the employees simply need to log in, put their credentials and use whatever applications he has access to or use the data he requires.

There is nothing in the device but everything is put on a server. This offers the benefit of manageability, enhanced security and brings the cost down considerably.”

Customers from every business vertical and size from Banking, Finance, Healthcare and Hospitality sectors are using CCC. Dell has also extended its partnership with technology partners like Microsoft, Citirx and VMWare in this regard. “The fact that Dell provides endto-end solutions itself makes it very unique for its customers, whether it is in the data center space (storage, compute and networking), middleware or end-device,” observes Santosh.

India has shown a market readiness for Cloud Connect Devices and implementation of cloud client computing across sectors has seen optimistic response. India contributes 60% IPs coming from the Wyse CCC portfolio. “Michael Dell had a vision in mind while acquiring this company and did not just pick up a company from the shelf. India is the fourth or fifth largest company for thin client in the world. All of the leading markets that we are in, we are at No. 1 or 2. We want to retain this position but also extend our reach,” states Santosh.

Dell Wyse has different products in the 3,000, 5,000 and 7,000 series, but it is the launch of the new Dell Wyse 5215 All-in-One Thin Client Desktop that marked a development in the CCC business for Dell. “Based on the kind of applications that a customer would use on a VDI, we decide what kind of storage, compute or networking is needed or the device he would need,” Santosh says. “We have a complete open architecture and you will find no proprietary features in our products.

We do not create any lock-in for customers,” he adds.

The Channel ecosystem…

Post acquisition, it was not very difficult in integrating Wyse’s partner ecosystem with Dell’s. In fact, India is one of the many countries where the integration of partners happened very smoothly. The partners were integrated to the existing Dell Partner Direct program.

“When watched closely, you will find many similarities between the companies. Both are America-based companies, both of them have an aggressive approach towards working with their partners and are very passionate about each other’s partners and customers. 80% to 90% of our partners had already been associated with Dell in some way or the other,” asserts Santosh.

Dell not only works with its partners but also enables them to deploy its solutions at the customer’s site. It takes up several initiatives

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Santosh Pandey India Head Dell Wyse to certify, enable, manage, equip, enhance their skill set and incentivize them. “It is an ongoing process and will look to addressing more segments and more customer profiles and more product launches,” he says. “Our channel has done a remarkable job in the past one and a half years. The partners who are engaged in our business are doubling every year or for that matter every quarter”, he further states.

Going forward…

Dell has been doing very fairly well in some verticals and just good in others. So it feels that it has to go deep in every vertical in order to gain more mindshare. The top biggest verticals which are buying from Dell at present are Banking & Financial Services, Government, Healthcare and Retail.

From a Dell bigger story, Digital India is an initiative though driven at the planning level is an interesting opportunity. Given the expertise and competence level of the company, right from infrastructure to end point, Digital India is looked at as an interesting prospect by Dell.

“When you have a mission in hand, you cannot put limitations there,” concludes Santosh. n samrita@varindia.com

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ROUND ABOUT

Hello, Hello? Are You There, Mr Alien?

I

have started research on this article on July 25, 2015 ever since an advertisement appeared in the major Indian national dailies about Milner Foundation having launched twin projects to investigate the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Half way through my writing on this theme, the unfortunate incident of the sad demise of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam had happened, whom I held in highest esteem.

A thought had occurred to me whether I should write a sort of obituary for one of India’s greatest visionaries and a compassionate human being. Soon, I changed my mind on the belief that this subject would have been liked by him since he is an epitome of scientific temper. Dr Kalam used every forum to spread science and was imbued with inquisitiveness to unravel the unknown things. I thought that this article should be a tribute to the great man who was loved by all and yet driven by the passion of technology, peace and harmony.

Today, my views seem to be vindicated, at least in a tentative sense. I am sure many would have read a one-page advertisement about a Russian physicist turned tycoon – Yuri Milner – having joined the swelling number of extraterrestrial life freaks. He is leading by setting examples by investing US$100 million into a seemingly quixotic stuff: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The ten-year project, keenly watched by all and sundry – scientists, industry, ordinary people, quixotic genre and what have you – has been named as Breakthrough Listen initiative and will conduct the most comprehensive sweep of space for signals from intelligent aliens. The project has other novel elements. It undertakes to give funds for research in collating radio signals from the outer world and deciphering them intelligently.

Milner, one should not forget, is a blend of many personalities together: a physicist to begin with, a successful IT entrepreneur and a philanthropist. The Breakthrough Listen programme, a competition to decipher the intelligent voices from the outer world, will need specialized electronics equipment to process all the data. A huge infrastructure will be laid to create the hardware and software to make the search possible. Radical changes in the computing technology triggered by vast resources at the disposal for meaningful research will lead to technological excellence.

This aspect of the project demonstrates the physicist in Milner.

Eventually, the researchers will make all the data public, which is going to help the humanity as a whole. You may ask me how. One, mankind will be richer by new discoveries by unravelling the mysteries

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surrounding us. Two, all these discoveries will have manifold impact in terms of ferreting out newer concepts in physics, medicines, travel, communications, entertainment and how people are going to live in the future.

Three, commercial opportunities that the new discoveries will create will change the future life styles. Apart from the new products and solutions in hardware and software that are being devised to facilitate the research, during the course of the next 10 years, the pendency of the research projects, array of discoveries will take place, which can help create newer business opportunities.

I sometimes get intrigued by the way in which technology is moving. From 1980s onwards, we have witnessed how the internet led the technological revolution. Computer ruled the roost for more than four decades or so. Does it mean a new wave of technology is sweeping across us? Many predict that the next phase of technological change will have something to do with our quest for unravelling the mysteries beyond earth. Perhaps, the technologies and configurations that we use in televisions, mobile phones, etc will change to enable faster flow of messages and data.

Let me take an example which the common man can easily comprehend. That is about aviation and aerospace. The scientists are working towards developing spacecraft that can travel faster for their exploration to outer space. Such discoveries will have their own impact in speeding up the spacecraft used for passenger and cargo movements. Also, new varieties of aircrafts, which can have higher carrying capacity, can be devised. Now, travel time between New Delhi and London varies between 8 ando 9 hours. Could we have a

dispensation where the travel time is just halved by increasing the speed of the aircraft?

There are luxury shipping liners which take passengers for cruise for days together. Such ships have lavish arrangements like hotels, cinema halls, tennis courts and even golf course. Could we have a similar spacecraft which can enable the passengers on board take a break for several days together providing them facilities for a long stay in the sky, leisure and cozy entertainments? We can stretch our imagination to create floating hospitals, hotels, entertainment halls and what have you.

What motivates people to look beyond their present? The first motivating factor is business. Only those who can see beyond times can survive. Those who can master the future technology can rule the roost since it expands his or her domain and gives a headstart. Two, the quest for more knowledge has haunted the humanity from time immemorial. That quest is not driven by money or greed. Steven Hawking’s keen interest in extraterrestrial life is borne out of his scientific quest to unravel the mysteries of the world rather than commercializing the acquired knowledge.

While espousing the need for greater research into life beyond earth, we should not lose sight of the concerns expressed by many scientists about the likely harmful effects. They perceive a likely adversarial role of the aliens against earthlings. Star wars and civilizational frictions can lead to perpetual fear and heavy investment in weaponry and warfare, which will make the planet earth a habitat of eternal frictions. Fortunately, we have only a few people believing in that theory. Yet, for the sake of that argument, let us assume that life exists in other planets and there are living beings like us in the outer world, as has been predicted by some of the UFO writers and sites in the social media. In that case, what will be the likely relationship between the people of two civilizations: friendly or adversarial.

Opinions are divided. One set of people feel that there will be a lot of things that each civilization can learn from the other. Yet another group is apprehensive about new turf wars, new diseases, attacks, etc.

Only time will tell what will be the end-result. Till that time, let us indulge in kite flying, hallucinations, imaginations, predilections and conjectures. Hope and fear are two sides of a coin. For realizing hopes, we have to be proactive and should learn to tackle things as they unfold. For warding off apprehensions, our strategy should not be to shun quest and discovery. The quest should go on to make our civilization richer and mightier. n

Website: www.gigabyte.in; Toll-Free: 1800-22-0966; www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEindia Gujarat: 98642 30150; Mumbai, Goa, Vidarbha, Nagpur: 99677 18653; Rest of Maharashtra: 99677 18653; Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh: 98269 92970; Uttar Pradesh: 99583 72672; New Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand: 99100 86976; Punjab, Chandigarh and Jammu & Kashmir: 99100 86976; Rajasthan: 99100 86976; Bihar, Jharkhand: 90075 45577; Orissa: 99030 52251; North East: 80118 64316; West Bengal: 9748502710; Karnataka: 7411774666; Andhra Pradesh, Telangana: 9040506080; Tamil Nadu: 74117 74666; Kerala: 9895099231

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HOT BYTES

Trend Micro launches Partner Program NTT Com for its Cloud Service Partners Security and Micro has and fully capitalize on the launched the growing demand for cloud Fortinet tie up Trend Trend Micro Partner Program for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). The new program enables partners with consumption-based pricing, to take advantage of Trend Micro’s marketleading Deep Security solution, that is integrated with cloud offerings from AWS, Microsoft Azure, VMware vCloud Air, IBM Cloud, or a CSP’s own public cloud.

“This program enables partners to more quickly

security with pricing that supports the ‘instant-on’ nature of the cloud, and a broad range of business models,” said Partha Panda, Vice-President, Global Channels and Strategic Alliances, Trend Micro. “Regardless of the cloud, Trend Micro provides CSPs with comprehensive security as part of the provider’s stack in an integrated sales motion that is easy to deploy, manage and bill."

SAP Activate promotes SAP S/4HANA business suite

S

AP SE has introduced the SAP Activate consumption experience, which will allow customers to deploy SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA), the nextgeneration business suite, to drive quick time-tovalue. SAP Activate also enables partners to extend the ready-to-run business processes shipped by SAP. To help businesses run simple, SAP

Activate offers ready-torun digitized business processes optimized for SAP S/4HANA. This new experience allows customers to flexibly choose the right approach for their business needs, be it a new implementation, integration or migration scenario. SAP Activate starts with SAP Best Practices packages for any implementation and uses one methodology for any deployment mode.

NEC empowers Surat City Police with Face Recognition System

N

EC and Innovative Telecom & Softwares have successfully deployed

NEC’s Face Recognition System (FRS) for Surat City Police (Gujarat).

Smt. Anandi Ben Patel, Chief Minister of Gujarat, inaugurated the landmark deployment at the “go-live” event of the Picture Intelligence

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August 2015

Unit (PIU) at Surat Police Headquarters.

Koichiro Koide, MD - NEC India, said, “We

are delighted to announce the successful deployment of our advanced Face Recognition System for Surat Safe City. It is an honour to have partnered with the Surat City Police for building this Picture Intelligence Unit."

www.varindia.com

N

TT Com Security and Fortinet have entered into a formal partnership to provide expert security advice and security solutions to organizations worldwide.

The partnership includes incorporating a broad range of Fortinet security solutions into NTT Com Security solutions to help protect customers across the globe, irrespective of size or sector.

The partnership is another step in the long-term business and technological relationship. Fortinet and NTT Com Security will now collaborate across technology deployments, uniquely positioned to offer support, consultancy advice and the delivery of solutions powered by Fortinet’s technology under NTT Com Security’s WideAngle portfolio.

Tableau releases research report on business analytics

T

ableau, in partnership with IDC, has released a report on “How Culture and the Right Analytics drive success for Leading Organizations in AsiaPacific”.

The report highlights why the use of analytics is important and how to foster its use in organizations. It is based on the findings of a survey of 207 respondents in IT and line-of-business roles, spread across India, Japan, Australia and Singapore. The report further elaborates how self-service analytics and agile decision-making in the line of business enables organizations to identify opportunities and risks, as conditions warrant to improve business performance.

IFCI celebrates its 68th Foundation Day

I

FCI Ltd (Industrial Finance Corporation of India) has celebrated its 68th Foundation Day at Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi. The CSR initiatives for the year 2015-16 were kick-started on this occasion, by handing over cheques to four NGOs. Shreya Ghoshal, the renowned Bollywood singer, enthralled the audience with a live music programme.

The CEO & CMD

of IFCI, Shri Malay Mukherjee, and its Deputy MD, Shri Achal Kumar Gupta, handed over a cheque of Rs.47,20,000/to Shri B. N. Dewan, Advisor (Finance & Banking), and Lakshmi V. Venkatesan, Founding Trustee & Executive VicePresident of Bhartiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST).

Oracle marks its 21 years in India

W

ith the opening of its 10th Product Development Center in the Gujarat International Finance Tec City (GIFT), Oracle celebrates its successful 21 years of innovation and engineering prowess. In 1994, Oracle opened its first product development center in Bengaluru with four engineers, and has since grown its footprint across the country with sites located in Bengaluru, Hyderbad, Mumbai, NOIDA, Pune and other emerging cities.

“India employs

Oracle’s second-largest workforce of developer and engineers, making it one of our most important product development centers across the world.

The talent here and the work the teams are doing have played a very important role in helping our customers transition to the Cloud. Oracle Product Development has been recruiting very aggressively, as we aim to become the world’s #1 cloud provider,” said Thomas Kurian, President, Product Development, Oracle.

RCOM announces deployment of Cloud Xchange Nodes

R

e l i a n c e Communications has announced the deployment of Cloud Xchange (Cloud X) nodes in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

“We will achieve full deployment of our Next-Generation content and Cloud Delivery Network by the end of this year, with – what is a first in India – five fully-operational Cloud Xchange points. These Cloud Xchange nodes can help government departments access 240 times the amount of compute power currently available in Government

data centers, and over six times the high-speed storage currently available in India,” said Reliance Group Chairman Anil Dhirubhai Ambani.

Cloud X is uniquely designed to deliver not only infrastructure provisioning in a few clicks, but the deployment of complex multi-tiered enterprise applications directly on to enterprise networks in minutes.

www.varindia.com

August 2015

17

HOT BYTES

Emerson announces “Avocent Thunder” Programme

E

merson Network Power has launched the Avocent Thunder programme to incentivize partners.

This programme is valid for the sale of Emerson’s Avocent range of products for Emerson’s VARs and NSPs in India. Partners can significantly enhance their earning potential from sales of the Avocent product portfolio with the option to win exciting prizes such as motorbikes, laptops, DSLR cameras and other exciting

products or redeem PAYBACK points worth up to INR5, 00,000 for sales in excess of INR1, 00, 00,000 for the Avocent portfolio of products.

Partners can avail the benefits of this programme from Emerson’s national distributors – Ingram Micro, Inflow Technologies and neoteric infomatique ltd.

Allied Telesis opens new facility in Cambodia

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llied Telesis has opened a new office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as growth for the business continues across the Asia-Pacific region.

Allied Telesis has a long history of helping executives and civic leaders implement their visions of interconnected, smarter operations throughout organizations.

Allied Telesis has been involved in large-scale deployments in areas such as aerospace

and defence, resource management, public safety, and transport systems.

"We have seen great success across the Asia-Pacific region.

Our presence in Cambodia represents the commitment we continue to make to the market.

This new office will enable us to provide both government and private enterprises," said Jakub Duch, VP of International Sales, Allied Telesis.

Xiaomi begins manufacturing operations in Andhra Pradesh

I

n a show of commitment to Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s “Make-in-India” initiative, Xiaomi has announced that it will now manufacture its devices locally in India. Xiaomi has revealed its “Make-inIndia” plans at a special event in Visakhapatnam in the presence of Hon’ble Chief Minister Shri Nara Chandrababu Naidu and Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

Xiaomi has partnered with Foxconn Technology Group to manufacture its smartphones in India.

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August 2015

The factory is based in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. The choice of location is strategic as Andhra Pradesh is known to have highly skilled technical manpower, an enterprising population and a dynamic emerging leadership.

Foxconn has already started producing Redmi 2 Prime at their Sri City factory, and 100% of the Redmi 2 Prime units sold here are made in India.

www.varindia.com

Canon’s PPP Division unveils its first training facility in Noida

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anon India has opened a new training centre in Noida to provide technical skill development to its engineers and channel partners. The new centre will empower them with techniques and information which will equip them to handle customer queries and installation with utmost care. This is a first-of-itskind training facility that has been initiated with an objective of increasing the product knowledge of the engineers.

Canon has invested Rs.10 crore in this facility which it has termed as its first phase of growth. The facility is housed just next to its India warehouse from where spare parts are shipped to its customers nationwide.

iREVO strengthens India presence

iREVO Multimedia, has announced the strengthening of its footprint all across the country. Alongside it has also announced the appointment of Redington (India) Limited for National Distributorship.

This follows the company’s announcement of pan-India presence and availability of its Smart devices range, namely Smart TV and Smart PC in India.

Rajan Sharma, VicePresident – Sales, iREVO, said, “We have the First Mover advantage, and we are ready to capitalize our years of Engineering & Research which has helped us to bring in quality devices at price points which are favourable for Indian consumers.

We have now presence across 12+ cities in India, including all the metros.”

Motorola enhances service support with “Moto Xpress”

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otorola has announced “Moto Xpress”, a pilot project to provide after-sales services to its consumers at their doorstep in Delhi, Gurgaon and NOIDA. A home pickup and drop service, the “Moto Xpress” will rectify software and accessory-related issues, on the spot within an hour and hardware issues will be resolved within 5 working days.

The “Moto Xpress” service can be availed for just INR199 per service.

Motorola intends to create a simple process from the time buyer owns a Motorola product. In

case an issue arises with Motorola smartphone, user can dial Moto Xpress Service Booking number “011-41717124”.

The service staff will reach out to a trained Motorola representative who will be at the doorstep in no time. In India, Motorola customer satisfaction score is over 85 per cent and with the latest initiative the company aims to continue enhancing the after-sales services.

Its other customer care initiatives will continue to operate as it is.

Sonata Software invests in Enterprise Mobility

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onata Software has signed a definitive agreement to acquire through its US subsidiary, a 100% stake in the enterprise mobility enablement technology provider Halosys. Based in Santa Clara, California, Halosys provides a single Unified Enterprise Mobile Enablement platform that enables businesses build, secure, manage and deploy an enterprise wide mobile applications portfolio. This is achieved by building critical features of multiple

hitherto discrete mobility systems such as mBaaS (Mobile Back-end-as-aService), MADP (Mobile Application Development Platform), MAM (Mobile Application Management) and API (Application Programming Interface) in a unified platform with consistent workflows and enhanced user interfaces.

Kerala to bridge Digital Divide with “Vision 2020”

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o make Kerala a “Digitally Empowered” society, the state government of Kerala has now set in motion an ambitious policy framework that aims to bridge the digital divide by 2020 and make it the country’s first “digitally literate” state.

The key objectives of “Bridging the Digital Divide – Vision 2020” include transforming Kerala into a digital knowledge society to

achieve sustainable economic growth, making accessible the digital infrastructure to all at affordable cost, attracting more investments and promoting IT exports of the state. Another major objective of Vision 2020 is to ensure that the various e-services offered by the government are availed by the people and achieve social harmony and high quality of life for all, with inclusion of disadvantaged sections of society.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Ricoh Theta M15 T

he Theta from Ricoh is a compact and lightweight (95 gram) camera that has a lens on both the front and back, allowing you to take full 180 Degree spherical panoramic images in with one shot and 3 minute videos.

The device is synchronized with smartphones, where images can be immediately transmitted via Wi-Fi and viewed with a dedicated free app. The app also allows images to be pinched, swiped or rotated to edit size, shape and composition. Images uploaded to theta360. com can be shared on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, as well as Microsoft Corporation’s Photosynth. IOS and Android free apps can be used for viewing and capturing images.

Ricoh THETA m15 is a spherical camera that captures the space around you with just one touch. The fish-eye lenses on each side of the compact body capture images of just over 180 degrees, which are stitched together inside the camera body. Create a sense of presence so real that it feels like you are actually there - look around the photos in any direction on the web or on a smartphone. The Ricoh THETA app enables both remote and manual shooting; you can also use a smartphone to shoot images from a remote location without needing to hold the camera in your hand. It allows users to capture, explore and share their unique visual experiences with people around the world using unconventional, fully spherical images on all online platforms. This unique camera is perfect for lifestyle, blogs, SNS, event, parties, selfie, real estate and online media.

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August 2015

19

ON THE RAMP

Tally Launches Tally.ERP 9

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o help businesses in India address their taxation problem, Tally Solutions has launched Tally.ERP 9 Release 5.0. The new product release is designed to help businesses, their accountants and taxpractitioners, as well as taxation authorities, to quickly and easily match returns with actual data.

“When we find businesses spending time on things which are not core to their business, we treat it as an opportunity for Tally to solve their problem. Ensuring that

S

your books and returns are reconciled wastes time either during preparation of the return itself, or during scrutiny or assessment,” said Bharat Goenka, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Tally Solutions.

EMC introduces VSPEX BLUE

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MC Corporation’s VSPEX BLUE is a next-generation converged infrastructure product that redefines simplicity by delivering virtualization, compute, and storage in an agile, scalable, easy-tomanage, HCIA. Available as a single, all-inclusive product for easy ordering, the hyper-converged infrastructure accelerates time-to-market by enabling customers to go from power-on to virtual machine creation within 15 minutes.

Praveen Sahai, VP – Channels, EMC

India & SAARC, said, “EMC brings unique differentiators with the VSPEX BLUE appliance by integrating EMC’s own software, support, and other leading solutions to provide a complete, allin-one, hyper-converged infrastructure appliance to capture the evolving hyperconverged infrastructure market in India. We are excited to bring the EMC VSPEX BLUE appliance to market and leverage our distributors’ reach and scale to take this highly differentiated product to market.”

Barracuda launches Web Application Firewall for Microsoft Azure

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a r r a c u d a Networks has announced that Barracuda Web Application Firewall is the first web application firewall solution approved by Microsoft for integration into the Azure App Service. The Barracuda Web Application Firewall protects dynamic web applications against unwarranted intrusions with layered security in Azure environments. Most notably, the Barracuda Web Application Firewall provides protection when traditional security models are challenged by modern web programming techniques,

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August 2015

HP presents Enterprise Strontium brings Nitro Plus Services for Windows 10 “HP’s unique has announced Nano USB 3.0 of a relationship with Microsoft HPavailability

including JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Representation State Transfer (REST).

“The rapid transition to cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure offers many great benefits for customers. However, it still requires attention to security so cloud assets and applications remain protected. We are excited to bring this additional capability to help our mutual customers take advantage of the cloud, and we look forward to continued success in our valued relationship with Microsoft,” explains Michael Hughes, SVP WW Sales, Barracuda.

www.varindia.com

t r o n t i u m Technology has announced the launch of the Nitro Plus Nano USB 3.0. The Nano USB 3.0 is designed in an ultra-small form-factor that can be an ideal companion for tablet, slim notebooks, netbooks or car audio systems while on the move and with PCs and TVs too.

"While there are other USB 3.0 products in the market, Strontium’s Nitro Plus Nano USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a highly portable storage that provides consumers a superior performance and impressive capacity in an extremely sleek compact design that allows consumers to take their favourite files handy and also convenient to be left plugged in while on the go," said Vivian Singh, President & CEO, Strontium Technology Pte Ltd.

Zebra Technologies brings Mobility DNA Solution

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ebra Technologies has launched Mobility DNA, a set of enterprise mobility software solutions that drive greater efficiencies and productivity for businesses, mobile workers and channel partners.

They have also announced two new touch computers that expand the industry’s broadest portfolio of enterprise-class Android mobile computers.

Deep Agarwal, Regional Sales Director, Indian Subcontinent, Zebra Technologies, India, said, “Zebra is committed to end-to-end mobility solutions that enable our customers to run their operations reliably and deliver results where consumer-grade solutions simply fail."

full suite of Windows 10 services designed to help enterprises control costs while expediting the move to the new Microsoft operating system.

With this, HP will offer the most comprehensive portfolio of services available for the Microsoft enterprise ecosystem which includes Enterprise Services for Office 365, Readiness Workshop for Office 365, Enterprise Mobility Suite, Skype for Business and the new Windows 10 enterprise suite of services.

allows us to offer Windows 10 in a controlled manner integrated into the client’s world – giving both IT and the User the chance to experience the new operating system,” said Marshal Correia, VP & GM, Enterprise Services, HP India. “IT and developers get to validate the application portfolio in advance – lowering the cost and risk of a largescale migration, and the user sees innovation and a more personal computing experience.”

NETRACK launches New iRack Series

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E T R A C K has launched its comprehensive iRack Series at the DatacenterDynamics (DCD) Converged Conference held recently in Bengaluru. DCD brings together professionals from the data center industry to share ideas and discuss issues related to performance, resilience, energy efficiency and capacity management.

Ravi Raj, Brand Head, Director Sales & Support, NETRACK, said, "We have been associated with DCD for the past three years and it is great

pleasure to launch the iRack Series at this event.

This is an ideal platform for us to connect with endusers, system integrators, installers, consultants, distributors, and OEMs all at one place."

Dell brings Dell SonicWALL TZ Wireless Firewalls

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ell has released the Dell SonicWALL TZ Wireless Firewall Series, comprehensive wireless network security solutions that enable both small- and mid-sized businesses and large enterprises to realize the benefits of enterpriseclass 802.11ac wireless performance and security, with a simple network set-up and management console, all at a lower total cost of ownership.

The Dell SonicWALL

TZ300 Wireless-AC, TZ400 Wireless-AC and TZ500 Wireless-AC are available immediately, while the SOHO Wireless-N solution will be available in August.

TECH TRENDS

Intel-powered Navachara Museum at Rashtrapati Bhavan to drive Innovation I

n line with Intel’s vision for Innovating the World Now, Rashtrapati Bhavan will have access to “smart” devices, built on the latest technologies, which will enable children to kindle their spirit of exploration.

‘Navachara’ (New Ideas) is a culmination of indigenous technology exhibits which will keep changing in our quest of inspiring Innovation in India. Across the year, projects on new technology-based innovations will be given and selected makers will get an opportunity to feature their exhibits in this museum.

To complement the Digital India (developing skill and innovation) and Make in India initiative, there will be huge requirement of computing sensors and need to be affordable. In an exclusive meeting with Kumud Srinivasan, PresidentIntel India, she says that Intel brings innovation at every step with 6500 employees’ strong presence in India.

"Intel has entered into the 50th years of excellence. The usage of computing and transistor is doubling in every 2 years.

The objective is how to meet the demand and there is also the need to be effective, powerful and affordable."

Apart from these various initiatives, Intel also has significant contributions into R & D for Clean Ganga and smart city projects in various states, including Chattisgarh.

The spread of technology is transforming our world, inspiring breakthrough innovations, new industries and new opportunities. As the pace of change accelerates, young people must develop the skills that will prepare them to compete and succeed. As the next generation of innovators, young students are poised to make a significant difference to the pace and direction in which the knowledge economy evolves. More than ever, it is imperative for them to explore the possibilities powered by information and technology access. Nurturing an interest in design and discovery, cultivating an awareness of a DoIt-Yourself (D-I-Y) culture and instilling a creative confidence are small steps in building a robust scientific temper among tomorrow’s innovators.

The Navachara museum at the Presidential Estate has a compelling mix of information, scientific know-how and inspiring innovation designed to encourage young people on the path to scientific discovery and learning.

Some of these innovations are -

The ‘Robotic Dog’ is sure to excite young students’ curiosity! Clumsy, as the dog is called, resembles a real dog, with the help of 16 Servo Motors that enable him to perform complex motor actions like walking and squatting and sensors that allow him to see, touch, hear and see! Just like a brain, the microcontroller board takes inputs from these sensors and controls his movements!

What is special is that Clumsy has been designed by a talented school student who won prestigious awards at an International science competition.

The ‘Virtual Tabla’ now makes playing the drums as simple as moving the hand.

Play the drums and hear its rhythmic sound without touching the drums at all!

Sensors detect hand movements and play a corresponding sound with the help of microprocessors.

Now, who would’ve thought of that?!

Like the Robotic Dog, the Virtual Tabla has been created by a school student at a makeathon. These innovations demonstrate vividly how young minds can be inspired to take their ideas to a whole new level through the power of technology.

The ‘Stringless Piano’, similar to the Virtual Tabla, is a sensor activated device that creates music seemingly out of thin air! It has a wireless, touch-sensitive electric sound producer that responds to action mechanisms to sound like a regular piano.

Ever heard of a ‘3D printer’? This one enables making a three dimensional solid object from a digital file by laying out successive layers of material until the entire object is created. The 3D printer is pre-programmed using the open-source Intel® Galileo development board, which enables the printer to be customized in various ways to achieve different objectives. What a fantastic solution for printing low-cost prototypes before going in for mass production!

The Virtual Tabla like the 3D printer, are testimony to the ease with which modern technologies facilitate innovation. Both these innovations are built on the Intel® Galileo development board; a microcontroller board that makes it easier for those without a technical background – whether it is be a school student, an artist, a designer or just a D-I-Y enthusiast – to quickly prototype simple interactive designs such as LED light displays that respond to social media, or to tackle more complex projects from automating home appliances to building lifesize robots controlled by a smartphone.

The museum also has a ‘Talking Wall’ and a ‘Planet Wall’ intended to inform and encourage students on the path to discovery.

An interactive audio-visual display will arouse curiousity about various discoveries and the mechanics of innovations.

It gives information about national science fairs where students can showcase their talent and also features young geniuses, through the passage of time, who have earned international recognition through their ground-breaking research. The next one on the wall could easily be you!

There is time for some fun at the end of the intense experience that Navachara is designed to provide. Click a selfie 3D-style with the President’s House as a backdrop!

The Intel RealSense 3D camera, the world’s first and smallest integrated 3D camera, is designed to sense a user’s head and hands in 3 dimensions to provide a natural and immersive interaction. n

www.varindia.com

August 2015

21

ON THE RAMP

Panasonic launches Toughbook CF-54

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anasonic has l a u n c h e d Toughbook CF-54. It is a semi-rugged PC and the thinnest and the lightest in its category.

With smart business users demanding access to data anytime and anywhere, mobility devices are becoming integral components of the overall technology landscape.

This PC is appropriately suitable for smart business professionals who are always on the move. It can also be customized

with integrated ports, 3G, dedicated GPS and other customization.

The Toughbook is a unique tool in its ability to transform the way mobile professionals work – wherever and whenever and is 29.8mm thin and 1.99 kg light. This makes it approximately 50% thinner and 25% lighter than the previous model CF-53.

Riverbed extends product line with SteelHead 9.1

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i v e r b e d Technology has introduced Riverbed SteelHead 9.1, delivering new capabilities that are designed to ensure cloud applications and provide IT the visibility, optimization, and control to deliver applications over hybrid WANs to maximize business performance and cost efficiency.

Riverbed has also expanded Riverbed SteelHead SaaS optimization and flexibility with new

universal SaaS licensing and performance optimization for Box, ServiceNow, SAP SuccessFactors, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “SteelHead 9.1 offers the most complete solution to ensure all applications – whether running on-premises or in the cloud – perform as the business requires,” said Paul O’Farrell, Senior VP & GM, SteelHead and SteelFusion Product Groups, Riverbed.

Acer brings Windows 10 Devices to India

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cer India has unveiled its latest range of devices on this platform. The devices include the hugely popular Aspire E5-573 with solid performance packed into a sophisticated design, the Aspire V NitroBlack Edition with more powerful processing and gaming-grade graphics, and the Aspire R 13 with Acer’s unique Ezel Aero Hinge that allows the six different modes of usage.

Announcing the launch, S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India, said, “Working closely with Microsoft, all our

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August 2015

2015 products have been designed to be Windows 10 ready. As a result, customers who have purchased or plan to buy a 2015 Windows PC from Acer will transition seamlessly to Windows 10. Acer was one of the first brands globally, to unveil Windows 10-based products and we are happy to have maintained the same lead even for the Indian market.”

www.varindia.com

HyperX releases VMware announces new solution in support of Windows 10 HyperX FURY management has endpoint DDR4 Kits announced a strategy and can help VMware

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yperX, a division of Kingston Technology, has announced the addition of 8GB and 16GB dualchannel kits of two to the HyperX FURY DDR4 family. The new kits will be available in low-latency 2,133MHz, 2,400MHz and 2,666MHz frequencies and are optimized for the new Intel Skylake platform. HyperX FURY DDR4 is the first product line to offer automatic overclocking via plug-andplay functionality for the next generation of highend desktops utilizing 6th- Generation Intel Core Processors (former codename Skylake-S) and the Z170 chipset. The 8GB and 16GB kits of HyperX Fury DDR4 will be available in India by midAugust for approximate MRPs of INR6,400 and INR12,800, respectively.

Zebronics launches Metal Earphones

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ebronics has launched its latest Metal series of earphones ZEB-EM1 and ZEB-EM2.

With professional sound and superb noise cancelling properties in a compact and lightweight design ZEB EM1 and ZEB EM2 is designed for supreme comfort with a seamless sound transmission advantage, delivering an unparalleled experience of audio fidelity and supreme comfort.

Priced at Rs.699/-, the high-fidelity metal earphones are ergonomically engineered which allows the audio drivers to do what they are designed to do. Its distinctive precision machined metal allows the sound to be crisper, tighter and punchier with strong bass and great detail, prevents from tainting your listening experience.

comprehensive solution to support Windows 10.

Customers upgrading to Windows 10 can

organizations enroll or migrate users and devices to Windows 10, configure or deliver applications

take advantage of the management, transition and app delivery tools provided by the VMware Workspace Suite, which includes AirWatch Enterprise Mobility Management, VMware Horizon, VMware Identity Manager and VMware Horizon FLEX. Further, VMware complements this unified

to Windows 10 devices and help manage security policies and lifecycles of devices and users.

Enterprise customers can enroll their Windows 10 devices in VMware Workspace Suite, VMware Horizon and AirWatch today. For consumers, VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation are available for support.

GIGABYTE launches New 100 Series Motherboards

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i g a b y t e technology has announced its new 100 series motherboards based on the Intel Z170 chipset with support for Intel’s new 6th-Generation Core processor. This updated platform marks a new era for the desktop PC with the continued support of DDR4, introduction of USB 3.1 over the new Type-C connector as well as an array of onboard features and technologies that lets the user unleash the full power of their PC.

"We are very excited to launch our new 100 series motherboards based on Intel’s new Z170 chipset here at Gamescom in Germany,” commented Henry Kao, VicePresident of GIGABYTE Motherboard Business Unit.

“We know everyone has been eagerly waiting for this, so we made sure our 100 series motherboards are packed with features which will make them stand out and provide the best possible experience."

Seagate offers Hybrid Cloud Data Protection Solutions

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eagate Technology has announced new and updated Hybrid Cloud Data Protection solutions that enable customers to manage explosive data growth and increasingly complex security needs easily and cost effectively.

The new and updated hybrid cloud solutions in Seagate’s portfolio include: Seagate Backup and Recovery Software, Seagate Cloud Backup and Recovery Services, Seagate

Backup and Recovery Private Cloud, and Seagate Data Management Services. These solutions will be delivered by Seagate, its value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs) to customers from small- and medium-sized businesses up through large enterprises for private, public and hybrid cloud deployments.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Canon Pixma IP2870S The new Canon PIXMA iP2870SColour Inkjet Printer is compact in design and affordable in cost. Being compact and lightweight in design, it can easily fit even in small space and can be carried away anywhere. The printer is capable of printing borderless docs also. Moreover, it comes with Energy Star certification; thus is power-efficient in nature. Canon iP2870 Single Function Printer is compatible with various operating systems including Windows 8/ Windows 7/ Windows XP/ Windows Vista, Mac OS X v10.6.8 and later. The maximum output capacity of this Canon iP2870 Single Function Printer is 20 sheets. The printer consumes approximately 8W power while printing, approx. 0.4W in off mode and 0.8W in standby mode. It comes with energy star certification; thus it is quite power efficient in nature. Canon iP2870S Single Function has 426 × 235 × 134 (W × D × H) mm dimensions and is approx. 2.3 Kg weight.

And this is not all! You can print your documents using PG-745 and CL-746 ink cartridges. But, if you want to print your documents very frequently then you need to choose the optional XL ink cartridges.

The Canon iP2870 Single Function Printer supports USB 2.0 interface so that you can easily share your important data from your USB drive or laptop.

www.varindia.com

August 2015

23

VOICE-N-DATA

TP-LINK presents Archer D9

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P-LINK has launched its dualband gigabit ADSL2+ Modem router, Archer D9.

Offering connectivity speeds of up to 1.9 Gbps, the router is designed to provide superior Internet connectivity for seamless online gaming, music and HD video streaming plus mobile connectivity.

The D9 comes in an attractive white and silver with three detachable antennas.

Archer D9’s integrated Shield Cover reduces interference and priorities traffic for lagfree streaming and gaming as multiple devices and applications connect to the network simultaneously.

As a result, the enduser benefits from greater bandwidth, increased reliability and enhanced wireless quality for gaming consoles, smart TVs, laptops and smartphones.

Indian Mobile Internet users to reach 236 Million by 2016

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he mobile internet market in India is rapidly growing.

According to the IAMAI and KPMG Report “India On The Go – Mobile Internet Vision 2017”, India is projected to have 236 million mobile internet users by 2016. The Report further projects that mobile internet users in India will reach 314 million by 2017.

The Report also points out that India will have over 500 million internet

users by 2017. According to the Report, 2G user base in India is projected to decline in the coming years as more and more customers are expected to migrate from 2G to 3G. The 3G user base in India is rapidly gaining market and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 61.3% from 2013-17. There were approximately 82 million 3G subscribers in India by 2014 and the number is projected to reach 284 million by 2017.

DIGISOL unveils IEEE801.11AC

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he newlyl a u n c h e d DIGISOL DG-WM6305SI Dual Band wireless Access Point provides wireless data transmission rate up to 300Mbps in 2.4GHz and up to 900Mbps in 5GHz Frequency Bands which enhances the sharing of files, photo, audio, video and gaming experience over wireless network. It is perfect choice for hotels, office premises and education institutes.

DIGISOL Wireless Access Point DGWM6305SI enables communication between wireless and wired

24

August 2015

notebooks/desktop computers in the network.

It complies with IEEE 802.11n and IEEE802.11ac standards. It supports IEEE802.3afPoE, which helps in easy installation by eliminating the need of a dedicated power source for the camera, and easy configuration of Master and Slave Access Points with just a press of WEC Button.

The Access Point features up to 26 dBm transmit power that delivers long-range coverage and enables its wireless signal to better penetrate walls, ceiling and floors.

www.varindia.com

Uninor signs Huawei for Network Modernization

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ninor in association with Huawei India will modernize its entire telecom network across all its circles. All 24,000 base stations will be swapped with new equipments.

The deal also involves Huawei becoming the managed services partner of Uninor.

Vivek Sood, CEO, Telewings Communications Services (Uninor), said, “ With this ambitious drive, we will be able to offer any advanced internet service to our customers and provide a superior experience both on voice and internet.

Being a mass market player, we continue to focus on building our capabilities to offer better Internet and voice services at Sabse Sasta prices.”

Reliance Jio and RCOM to sign pact over spectrum sharing

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ith the Narendra Modi government allowing spectrum sharing, Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Reliance Jio Infocomm are set to ink a pact that will enable the Mukesh Ambani-owned telco to offer fourth generation (4G) services over the 800 MHz band across 10 circles.

It is believed that the airwaves sharing pact will allow Reliance Jio to access 10 MHz of contiguous 4G bandwidth in Mumbai, UP-East, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Northeast, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

NETGEAR introduces AirCard 785 4G LTE Hotspot

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ETGEAR has announced Super-fast 4G LTE & 3G speeds worldwide.

With the AirCard 785, up to 15 laptops, tablets, smartphones, digital cameras, gaming consoles, or other Wi-Fi-enabled devices can easily and securely connect on-thego to the built-in 802.11b/ g/n wireless access point and share a single mobile broadband connection.

“The new innovative products at NETGEAR emphasize our commitment to offer customers the most

innovative and broadest range of connectivity products, so that no matter where you live, you can find the right option. And with the launch of AirCard 785 Mobile Hotspot, we have succeeded in providing our esteemed customers to connect more devices to the Internet to make their life easier and more enjoyable,” said Subhodeep Bhattacharya, Regional Director, India & SAARC, NETGEAR.

Airtel accelerates 4G Services in 296 Indian towns

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harti Airtel has commercially launched its high-speed 4G services in 296 towns across India, following the successful trial of services in select cities and the feedback received from customers.

The launch of Airtel 4G, now available to customers across a range of smart devices including mobile phones, dongles, 4G hotspots and Wi-Fi dongles, comes even as Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm is readying to launch its own 4G services commercially around December.

Incumbent rivals Idea

Cellular, Vodafone India and Reliance Communications have also announced launch plans for their respective 4G services – either later this year or early next.

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel (India & South Asia) said that with the help of the feedback received from the beta launches, the company has now built India's first commercial 4G network that will make high-speed mobile broadband a reality. The national rollout is another small step in its journey to be the most customer focussed brand.

BlackBerry secures its enterprise portfolio with AtHoc acquisition

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lackBerry has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AtHoc. The AtHoc platform will integrate with BlackBerry’s enterprise portfolio and trusted global network to offer customers new capabilities for safety, security and mission-critical business communication.

AtHoc’s networked crisis communications platform alerts any device – including iOS,

Android, PC and Mac desktops, digital displays, radios, IP phones, and endpoints such as sirens,

fire panels and speakers – helping organizations and people to connect and share information in times of crisis. AtHoc also supports public and private enterprises across the world, including healthcare providers and industrial facilities.

FACE TO FACE

Lenovo thrives on Service Support to gain Customer Loyalty Gone are those days when customers used to be price sensitive and considered features of a product as their guide before investing money. Nowadays customer behaviour is constantly evolving. After sales support has become the key aspect that is driving customer decision. Discussing the importance and expansion plans of its services foot print, Yu Jie, Vice-President – Asia Pacific Services, Lenovo speaks about the importance of turnaround time, service centers and its new initiatives through Social Media

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company is always known by its innovative products and its after sales service. A company like Lenovo with a significant share in a competitive market like India looks at after sales service support as the backbone of the company. It considers it, as an important facet of the company that earns brand loyalty among customers.

Lenovo currently has 200+ service centres across the country.

Lenovo is planning to spread its reach further to support its customers with Lenovo flagship service centers. The company which upholds customer satisfaction aims to provide high quality of service to every customer.

By the end of this year, Lenovo will have 5 exclusive service centers and will increase this number over time to be an Enabler of Lenovo's customer success and differentiator of the company's value e proposition, according to Yu Jie, Vice-President, Asia Pacific Services - Lenovo.

Lenovo’s service partners provide support for all Lenovo products that include PCs, tablets, smart phones and servers. “We have specific channel partners who are providing services for smart phones, PCs and tablets. We have certain Enterprise partners who provide end to end services as system integrators,” says Yu Jie. Lenovo continues to provide its enterprise services through IBM. The reason for doing this is to ensure that there is a smooth transition and there is no impact on customer experience.

Professional services such as Smoothstart installations, Services Champs, educational and consulting type of services are offered by Lenovo and most of these are delivered by Lenovo authorized channel partners.

“Though Lenovo will have its own flagship service centers, we will still leverage some of our ecosystem partners because we want to make sure that regardless where our partners are, customers must get faster services from our partners. India being a large country geographically, it is difficult to set up and manage our own service centres everywhere.

Hence, our ecosystem partners are very important to us. We wanted to pioneer some new innovative ideas and processes at our flagship service centres to offer Best in Class Service, after which we will enable our partners to follow the same to improve their service levels,” adds Yu Jie. The turnaround time of Lenovo products depends on the availability of parts to fix the problem. “It depends on the what problem is and how fast we can repair it and get it resolved,” reiterates Yu Jie.

Social Media – A New Customer Strategy

Social media is a new initiative started by Lenovo, “Since India is a market where we see the internet population growing rapidly, we decided to leverage this new platform to deliver a better service experience to our customers. So, social media is a unique initiative that we have started in the country. India is the first region in the whole of APAC where we have initiated this new idea,” says Yu Jie. Through social media, Lenovo can gather a lot of data on customer feedback. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc are helping the company accrue information on customer behaviour, the problems customers face with their products and how Lenovo can respond quickly.

“So besides leveraging voice assistance (Call Centres), emails and service centres, Social Media is also one of the new channels to get in touch with our customers quickly. Later, we will also use social media to do many more innovative things,” comments Yu Jie. Customer

Yu Jie Vice-President – Asia-Pacific Services Lenovo

Key Attributes of a Lenovo partner • Services mindset of partners • Training and certification process • Scalability and bringing in consistency across the geography, particularly in non-metros • Services strength in terms of certified engineers, infrastructure, facilities • Periodic Partner reviews for performance enhancement feedback is really important for an organization and social media is one of the best platforms to gather a wide feedback from customers.

And thus…

Lenovo wants to deliver high quality services to customers either directly by the company or through its authorized partners. Lenovo’s partners on their part not only want to become product partners but also want to deliver quality services. This is because they not only want to sell to customers but take ownership of the customer relationship.

"Lenovo has stringent criteria for partner selection. Post selection processes, Partners who complete the certifications process are enabled to deliver high quality services to our customers. Lenovo has refresher training programs among other things and implemented pay for performance for partners to improve performance," asserts Yu Jie. Future is nothing but growth. Lenovo Service Centres will lead from the front and strengthen its existing Service Centre through this journey of being No. 1 in Services. Along with its 5 P culture, Lenovo is leveraging selected partners and social media in making efforts to deliver high-quality services and be ahead of the curve.

Channels act as one-stop solution for customers both on Sales and Services. Many a time, Channels go beyond the call of duty and support customers to create a WOW factor!!! n

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Flashsoft - Host Based Solid State caching Critical IT challenges o o o o

Meet the increasing demand for application performance Overcome slow data delivery due to storage bottlenecks Take full advantage of virtualization density while maintaining performance Squeeze more from existing hardware

Critical IT challenges o o o o

Meet the increasing demand for application performance Overcome slow data delivery due to storage bottlenecks Take full advantage of virtualization density while maintaining performance Squeeze more from existing hardware

In line with Moore's law server performance doubles every 18 months with faster operating speeds and adding more cores per processor. Unfortunately storage is only growing bigger, but not faster.

Most of the times the CPUs just wait and do nothing due to relatively slower disks.

It's even worse with Virtualization where there are a lot of random I/O operations that get bottlenecked resulting in an I/O blender effect

Solution Add lots of Disks to improve performance

Drawback A lot of unused capacity and limited IOPS

Upgrade the SAN by putting faster switches, Very Expensive solution HBAs and cables Keep throwing flash into the storage array

Without a methodical approach it results in expensive hardware with limited IOPS

So a cost effective and least disruptive option is to use flash in server as a primary storage for caching. By nature data arrives in bursts of IOPS and follows the 80-20 rule, that is, 20% of data demands 80% of the IOPS requirement. Placing this hot data in cache will help accelerate the average IOPS to a large extent. So essentially only 20% of the total storage capacity needs to be cached which results in using less flash storage but getting relatively higher IOPS.

Flashsoft is an intelligent caching software that monitors the data between Host and Storage and determines the right data to be cached.It also caches metatdata which helps reduce onboard memory requirement and also helps recover faster in case of a server crash.

FlashSoft software enables server-side solid-state technology (SSD) to reduce I/O latency in VMware速 vSphere速, Windows Server速 and Linux environments Flashsoft supports two kinds of caching mechanism.

Write-backmode allows FlashSoft software to significantly accelerate execution. Write-back mode is not recommended if there are not enough physical SSDs to create a redundant cache, eg. RAID-1.

Write-through mode helps accelerate READ operation. If an application is almost read-only, it is advantageous to use a write-through cacheIn write-through mode, the physical SSDs can be concatenated to provide a larger cache Cache Device Bundle offer SanDisk delivers the industry's broadest portfolio of integrated serverside solid-state caching solutions with Cache Device Bundles. Whether you are looking to accelerate databases and applications on stand-alone Windows or Linux servers or address I/O bottlenecks and latency issues in virtualized servers, there is a Cache Device bundle to address your needs. These bundles cover widely deployed hypervisors, operating systems and solid-state devices to provide you with options to fit performance, capacity, and price targets.

Flash Caching Can Help Solve These I/O Challenges and Flashsoft does exactly that.

For more information please visit the weblinkhttp://bigdataflash.sandisk.com/flashsoft For enquiries please contact India Sales team at DL-OEM-IndiaSales@sandisk.com 息 2015 SanDisk Corporation. All rights reserved. SanDisk is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their holder(s).

CHANNEL BUZZ

ASIRT organizes management evolve sessions at Techday

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he Association for System Integrators and Retailers in India (ASIRT) has recently concluded their Techday for the month of July. With more than 50 participants, ASIRT arranged two management evolve sessions of interest to business owners: “Iceberg in Your Organization”

by HR consultant Deepak Patil of Pinnacle, and “Negotiate to Win” by Communication Coach Sunil Ullal.

“Iceberg in Your Organization” session was an eye-opener for members as to how employees can be motivated to contribute in journey of a business towards overall vision of the company, how to identify bad apples, how to evaluate them based on their performance and several other management techniques relating to HR. In a short session of one hour, Deepak Patil left a lot for members to think and apply in their organization.

“Negotiate to Win” session

by Ullal turned out to be an exciting journey for members to

communicate better peppered by gripping stories and wisdom quotes. In his own unique style, Ullal merged fiction with mythology and management principles to enlighten about communication; right communication at the right time and in right situations to win negotiations in a way in which they are win-win for both parties and build long-lasting relationship.

Rakesh Patel of APC by Schneider is a prolific speaker who humorously explained data center products. He spoke on requirements and technology in a simple lucid language before moving on to product specifics of UPS, power delivery methods, focussed air-conditioning and other requirements of data centers and enterprises.

Members jelled over afternoon beverage, evening high tea and dinner. It was the most complete event an association can have and members can expect out of an association that cares.

D-Link connects to its Partners pan India through Connections 2015

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onnection 2015 D-Link’s flagship channel event has successfully reached out to resellers in over 24 cities pan India. The key focus of this year’s Connections 2015 programme was to intensify channel engagement and educate partner on new technology trend in networking segment.

Connections – D-Link’s channel engagement programme in format of a roadshow has garnered widespread appreciation amongst channel community since its inception.

This nationwide roadshow is aimed towards connecting with partners/ resellers present across the country; interact and strengthen business relationship, and educate them on future trends in networking segment.

“While we, at D-Link, diligently follow the Feet on Street model with our sales force regularly interacting with the channel partners/ reseller; Connections is an extension of our commitment towards

partner engagement. This year, Connections 2015 reached out to 2,300-plus reseller present in metros as well as B & C locations.

Over the years, Connections has evolved into an ideal platform to meet, interact, engage and most importantly aide partners in embracing the future networking trends,” said Sanjay Sehgal, VicePresident – Sales, D-Link (India) Limited.

The key highlight of Connections 2015 was D-Link’s latest product line – Connected Home Solution based on Internet of Things (IoT). D-Link used this event platform to introduce partners to its Connected Home product line that essentially comprises of Wi-Fi Smart Plug, Motion Sensor, Audio Extender and apps to connect them and get them talking to each other.

D-Link Connected Home solution is designed to bring the convenience and flexibility of mydlink to everyday household electronic devices.

‘Our products are exclusively designed for Indian consumers’ Raghav Kumar Sharma, Country Manager – Elecom India gives out details of his company besides citing how Elecom is different from the rest In a country that is dominated by Chinese How is ELECOM positioned in products and every brand is selling products the market today?

Established in 1986, ELECOM has been leading the PC and AV Accessory & Peripheral market in Japan for years now. Headquartered in Osaka, Japan, and with subsidiaries across Europe and Asia, ELECOM has gained a reputation for high quality and unique products globally. Elecom is a premium brand with Japanese technology products. It is known for its exclusive design and innovation products like Zeroshock product range, high resolution earphones and innovative mouse product.

Could you tell us more about Elecom India?

Elecom India started its operation in India on January 14th 2012 and is a subsidiary of Japan’s No. 1 Lifestyle IT accessory and peripheral company, ELECOM Co Ltd.

What is your competitive strategy in the market? Who are your main customer verticals today?

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made in China, Elecom products are marketed as best quality products especially made for the Indian consumers. Elecom product designs stand out from all others. Our commitment to high quality and design has been proved by many of our products. We are poised to position Elecom as not only an IT Brand, but a unique lifestyle brand in India.

We are selling to Apple stores and LFRs like Croma, Reliance, Jumbo, Relay, Landmark, Crossword, Planet-M, Music Land and Mobility World.

What is the current focus of the company?

are associated with all premium sales partners in India and looking forward to increase the network of our regional distributors to capture the general trade market.

Elecom India has its focus to increase its market share and penetrate the market via premium retail chains and sales partners.

How have you structured your Channel ecosystem? How many partners do you work with today?

What are your investment plans with regards to Sales & marketing and market expansion?

We have great sales network with more than 150 plus POS visibility pan India. We have ties up with sales partners like Apple resellers, LFRs, Airport stores and distributors who show trust in Elecom premium products. n

We are planning to open our own stores/ Kiosks in India with our sales partners. We

FACE TO FACE

Internet of Things is opening up a new era in Home Automation

Sameer Saxena, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Legrand Group (India) tells VARINDIA of how the Home Automation industry has undergone change with change in lifestyle of Indian customers and how that has impacted Legrand’s business strategies for the Indian market

How is Legrand focused on the Home Surveillance space?

Legrand is the global specialist in Electrical and Digital building infrastructure.

While, Legrand’s products find application in residential, industrial and building projects, we also have wide presence in the home automation segment. With the rapidly increasing purchasing power clubbed with the exposures to technology and lifestyles' experiences, Indians (HNI, rich and upper middle class) are increasingly experimenting with various available forms of home automation stand-alone/completely integrated/mixed. These are the opportunities where Legrand sees growth coming from in the future.

With urban population on the rise, and the culture of people living in large societies on the rise, security is becoming an increasing concern. The home surveillance requirement is driven by such gated societies and upper- middle class clientele. In the Home surveillance space, Legrand offers Video Door Entry systems and are offering both systems (for multi apartments) and stand-alone kits (individual homes).

What is your go-to-market strategy?

Legrand manufactures most of the products it sells in India, here. In addition to that our USP is the simplicity of our products.

We might have the most advanced technology inbuilt but the user interface is always kept simple which enables easy usage. This makes us different from the other competitors in the market and helps them grow. Legrand has the philosophy of Listen-Design-MakeSupport which focuses on intently listening to customers and then taking those insights to our research lab to design user friendly products.

The entire work, beginning from the design of the system till the commissioning is handled by our authorised and trained system integrators. They are also responsible for taking care of all after sales maintenance, if any.

What are the current trends that are driving the Surveillance space?

The Home automation industry is now evolving towards a converged offering with integration of Lighting, Security, AV and Automation. Advances in the areas of apps are also changing the user interfaces and it is becoming much more user friendly and simple for users to manage, even on their handheld

Technologies developed

by Legrand India Zigbee Technology: The Zigbee technology is based on international low consumption radio communicator. It is used via wireless transmitters and receivers.

This technology controls lightning, roller blinds as well as technical alarms. It is used to control the scenarios and bi- directional communication between the devices. The products that fall under this technology would be scenario controllers, lighting control switches and curtains/ blinds control switches. This is a wireless solution for controlling home automation products.

• BAC Net Interface: By the launch of the BACnet interface, Legrand is able to provide its customers a very unique opportunity of having exchange between their system and any BACnet certified devices. The device ensures two way communication between ‘Our Home Automation’ offer and HVAC systems, specifically in case of medium and large installations. By using their proprietary driver software they are able to command air-conditioning systems (VRV, VAV, FCU, ATU) and also have real time feedback from these systems in their command units (3.5" touchscreen).

• SCS: Simplified Cabling Systems is Legrand’s own proprietary protocol developed to provide an extremely robust and reliable system. However, designing with this protocol and installing the products remain simple because of which our business partners prefer our systems in comparison to other available protocols in the marketplace.

devices. Trends like fine lighting, standalone dimming, collective dimming, and scenario control etc. are the trends coming up in the automation segment.

Legrand also believes that the Internet of Things is opening up a new era for buildings.

We are deploying a program designed to speed up the deployment of its connected devices offering and thereby facilitate the emergence of connected buildings wherever IoT can enhance use value for all users internationally.

In most residential complexes, there are needs for 2 or 3 layers of security – first at the main entrance, second at the entrance to the building/ tower and the final at the entrance of the home owner. Depending upon budgets and profiles of the societies, they opt for 2 or 3 tier security.

In few geographical locations, these are clubbed with demands for integration with intercom, society broadcast/ messaging and CCTV.

What are your business plans with regards to market and product expansion?

Legrand India is a Euro 4.49 billion group based in Limoges, France. The group has manufacturing facilities in 60 countries and its products are sold in over 180 countries.

Legrand India offers a wide range of products in the categories of Energy distribution, Wiring devices, Home Automation, Structured Cabling, Lighting Management Solutions, Cable Management and Industrial application products. The company’s geographical reach, across market segments, caters to new requirements of customers with smart solutions.

Today because of the rapid urbanisation and the multiple threat perceptions, door phones are becoming an intrinsic part of the project. We expect this trend to spread out more in coming years and we are accordingly planning to launch solutions to cater to them.

Which are the top 3 technologies in the Home Automation segment?

Legrand has acquired and built in technologies to connect lighting, shutters, sound systems, home theatre for its home automation offering. The home automation systems are generally modular so these can be integrated with different products to deliver seamless performance. These can be accessed on the user’s fingertips due to integration with smartphones and other smart devices. n

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VAR EVENTS

(From left to right): Col. A K Nath, E.D – C-DAC; Mr. D K Sahu, Publisher – VARINDIA; Shri Ashwani Jain, COO, Telecom-PGCIL; Shri Upender Jit Singh, MD – WBEIDC; Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI); Ms. S Mohini Ratna, Editor – VARINDIA; Mr. HPS Bawa, CEO-WEBEL Technology Ltd and Shri. Manjit Nayak- Addl. Director- Officer-in-charge-STPI (Kolkata)

EIITF 2015 brings SMEs of Eastern India to Limelight VARINDIA for the sixth consecutive year successfully concluded its EIITF (Eastern India Information Technology Fair – 2015) on 22nd July, 2015 in the City of Joy – Kolkata. The topic of this year’s event was “Capitalizing the Indian SMB Opportunity”.

The event provided a common platform for the corporates to share ideas, discuss various issues and challenges to target the growth of SMBs in the country. The event brought together the leading spokespersons from the respective stakeholders from Eastern and North Eastern India that included WEBEL, STPI, VARs, SIs and Solution Partners who discussed issues critical to the development and growth in Eastern India.

The event was attended by over 200 senior

Opening remarks by Mrs. Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA

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officials from the IT Department, WEBEL, WTL and STPI. The Chief Guest of the event was Shri Kaushik Haldar, Commissioner IT and Telecom, Government of West Bengal. The other guests who attended the event and were present at the lamplighting ceremony were Shri Upender Jit Singh, Managing Director, WBEIDC; Dr Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI); Shri Ashwani Jain, COO – Telecom, PGCIL; Col A. K. Nath, E.D., C-DAC; Mr Shubhendu Mitra, Regional Manager, Canon India; Mr Santanu Dutta, Partner Business Manager, SAP India, besides Mr D. K. Sahu, Publisher, VARINDIA, and Ms S. Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA. The event kick-started with an address by the Editor of VARINDIA, Ms S. Mohini Ratna. In her speech, she stressed on the growth that the Indian SME market is seeing and the remarkable progress that the industry is making in various industries like Manufacturing, Precision Engineering, Food Processing, Pharmaceuticals, Textiles & Garments, Retail, IT, Agro and Service sectors.

“SMEs are finding increasing opportunities to enhance their business activities in the core sectors. Driven by these initiatives, several SMEs have now developed capabilities to cater to the needs of other MNCs and have commenced supplying to them, in the

process promoting India as a manufacturing destination.”

While Dr Govind, in his speech, talked about how important it is to empower the Indian SMEs for a Better India, Shri Upendrajit Singh, MD, WBEIDC, talked about the various opportunities that the nodal agency WBEIDC has opened up for SMEs of the Eastern region. The Chief Guest, on his part, spoke at length about the initiatives that are driven towards making the Smart City and the Digital India programme successful in the state.

Besides the keynote address and other delegate speeches, there were showcases and presentations from Canon, SAP/ Yash Technologies, NIXi and Cyberoam.

Towards the end of the event, the Best VARs from the Eastern region of India were recognized. A lucky draw was announced where lucky winners walked away with prizes sponsored by TP-Link and Cyberoam.

The objective with which EIITF was organized was well achieved with key takeaways for SMEs to focus on and advantages from the disruptive technologies and social media in terms of business outcome. The event managed to touch upon all the important aspects that are critical to SMBs, for them to leverage on the business opportunities and sustain it even during the bad times.

VAR EVENTS

Dr. Govind, CEO - National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) “Empowering the SMB sector is the key focus of the government of India today. SMB contributes around 45 % of the total industrial output and about 40% of the exports of the country are constituted by this sector. They employ around 60 million people by creating 1.3 million jobs everywhere that are equally important for the urban as well as the rural India. They produce about 8000 quality products for domestic and international markets. The key aspect to empower the Digital India program is to prepare India as a knowledge-based economy. There are 3 components of this Digital India program – first is the Digital Infrastructure, Governance & Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of citizens. Hence there are massive works going on to enable such large scale utility to every citizen of the country.”

Shri Upender Jit Singh, MD – WBEIDC “WEBEL embraces and supports the SMB business and has through the government of West Bengal introduced lots of incentive schemes. Some of the schemes that we have are the ICT incentive scheme 2012 and the state capital investment subsidy, the trading subsidy, employment generation subsidy, WEBEL & Electricity unit and so on.

WEBEL has helped the govt. is coming up with many IT Software Parks and Manufacturing clusters where most of them are plug and play; SMBs can come and start their business and operations here. We are constructing around 16 IT Parks around which eight will be ready by this year. Siliguri Phase 2, Siliguri Phase 3, Durgapur Phase 2, Asansol, Rajarhat, Haldia, Barjora, Kharagpur, Purulia, Kalyani, Howrah, Krishnanagar, Malda, Bolpur, Taratala and Bantal are the places where we are building these IT Parks.”

Shri Kaushik Haldar, Commissioner IT and Telecom, Govt. of West Bengal "Digital India and Smart City are occupying our attention from the last few months and we are very excited about it. The Government of West Bengal is providing various facilities and amenities to the It and SME sector in the state. Like any other states we also have several incentives for boosting this sector. Today the IT sector is trying to expand in terms of verticals and space. Technologies like Internet of Things, Cloud though not new but very pioneering ideas which the IT industry is trying to grab today. The IT industry being a capital intensive industry needs skilled manpower at the moment.

So training is one aspect we are looking at seriously. Also the Government is trying to go beyond Kolkata to set up various IT Parks and hubs and keeping the development not just confined to this city."

Corporate Presentations

Santanu Dutta Channel Business Manager SAP India

Vikas Kumar Sr Officer, Telecom Powergrid Corporation of India

Suvendru Mitra Regional manager Canon India

“A small survey done on SMBs reveals that 90% of them is ambitious while another 46% are very ambitious. If we categorize on the ambitious part, we find that 1 in 6 of the organizations surveyed define ambition by saying that they are going to increase their revenue by more than 50%. On the very ambitious part, the growth in the next 2 years is going to be more than 50%. So both these subset of organizations have got different aspirations.

In the Indian context, the ambition quotient is defined in three basic areas – somebody who wants to achieve growth, somebody wanting to achieve customer success and somebody improving business processes. The survey also reveals that many of the organizations are heavily doing business within their geography and with their own product line.”

“Power Grid is one of the fastest growing utility in the world. We provide very competitive and robust solutions for long term orders, we have tie ups with System Integrators for back-end IT support for packaged solutions and there are various OPEX and CAPEX models of ownership of our hardware, software and equipments available in the market. We are also extending our reach; we are already present in the rural areas in the tier II, III cities and industrial hubs and we are extending this reach through STU (State Transmission Utility) Network. There are a few new areas we are focusing – one is Desert Power India, Smart grid for the Smart cities and Green Energy Corridor.”

“We are today at a point of time when digitization is becoming very important in order to digitize our old records. Digitization as we all know is fast becoming the backbone of today’s organizations. It offers lots of advantages in terms of security of the data, retrieval of the old data, efficiency. India is a country where digitization has to be started from the scratch.

With new documents getting created everyday, digitization is becoming the need of the hour.

Canon helps as an enabler with the help of its document scanners. We have different scanners like desktop (Non ADF), personal/portable, workgroup and departmental scanners. These scanners have lot of advanced features that make them easily operable.”

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(From left to right): Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher – VARINDIA (Moderator); Col. A.K. Nath – ED, CAC (Retd.); Dr. Govind, CEO - NIXI;Mr. HPS Bawa, CEO-WEBEL Technology Ltd.; Shri. Manjit Nayak- Addl. Director- Officer-in-charge-STPI (Kolkata) & Shri. Ashwani Jain, COO (Telecom) – PGCIL

Panel Discussion –

‘Capitalizing the SMB Opportunity’ Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher – VARINDIA moderated the panel discussion on the topic “Capitalizing the SMB Opportunity”. The key focus of the discussion was to deliberate on the emergence of new technologies, changing role of business and the growth of ICT industry in India becoming highly dependent on SMEs. With various initiatives by the Government like digital and skill India programme, there is a great opportunity for the SME growth. It is to discuss further on this topic that Mr Sahu called for the active participation of the senior delegates present at the event. The panelists were from cross sections of the industry that included STPI, WEBEL, System Integrators and Government. The panelists on the dais were Shri. Manjit Nayak- Addl. DirectorOfficer-in-charge-STPI (Kolkata); Shri.

Ashwani Jain, COO (Telecom) – PGCIL; Mr. HPS Bawa, CEO-WEBEL Technology Ltd.; Dr. Govind, CEO-NIXI and Col. A.K. Nath – ED, CAC (Retd.)

Shri Ashwani Jain remarking on the currently prevalent Net Neutrality said that anything new that brings out an opportunity should always be welcomed and if the SME sector benefits from it, Net Neutrality should be encouraged. But at the same time, the concerns of the telecom operators should also be addressed.

Dr Govind asserted that that SMB is already contributing to the GDP of the economy. But the need of the hour is to see of how fast is this sector adopting newer technologies like Internet of Everything (IoE) that presents a big opportunity. There are other areas where the SMB can contribute in the integration of these technologies. While explaining this, he cited the example of how we can create our own search engines in different regional languages. Content development in the local languages is a must for this. India does have the capability to develop like China. Today there are 300 million Internet users but to take this number to billion, there has to be a localized content. Even the far flung areas can be reached only through content, which is developed in the language that they understand. This opportunity remains bare for the SMB sector to come and grab it.

On behalf of STPI, Shri Nayak talked about the various schemes it has both from the industry as well as the hardware industry side and how it has been serving this sector for the last 2 decades. Throughout India, more than 5000 different organizations have adopted these schemes. Because of its focus on SMB, STPI is creating lot of infrastructure that is facilitating their growth.

Defining the role of WEBEL in empowering SMBs in West Bengal, Mr. Bawa

Audience at the Event

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said that the agency works for a number of projects in which it partners with the SMB sector and they in turn help in implementing these projects. However the one principle that it follows is that if WEBEL wishes to grow by means of working in these projects, the SMB sector is also ensured to follow in the same growth pattern.

Commenting on how the SMB is responding to the App model, Col. A.K. Nath said that the SMB is very quick to adopt things and with the explosion of apps in the mobile world, there is an immense opportunity for the SMB. He said that instead of Google browsing, we are nowadays doing App browsing. So this is an evolution. Here comes the significance of Big Data and the tool of Analytics can be used which will enable the SMB to think to the perspective of how a customer can use an App to fulfill his day to day needs. Questions like ‘What’s next’, ‘What if’ should start coming to them.

The discussion concluded on the note that SMBs are indeed the backbone of the country and their presence cannot be ignored in the process of decision making. They are the people who will drive the Digital India and the Make in India vision of our Prime Minister and their growth will reflect on the growth of the economy.

VAR EVENTS

Solution Display Kiosks

EIITF Award Winners

Lucky Draw by TP-link

Best Retailer, Eastern India

Supreme Technologies Private Ltd

Best Reseller, Eastern India

Lalani Infotech Ltd

Best VAR, Eastern India

Eastern LogicaInfoway Ltd

Best Value-Added Distributor, Eastern India

Savera Marketing Agency

Best Solution Partner, Eastern India

Techniche Consulting Services

Best System Integrator, Eastern India

Embee Software Private Ltd

Best National Distributor, Eastern India

Supertron Electronics Private Ltd

Solution display by Canon

Lucky Draw by Cyberoam

Event Supported by -

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SPECIAL FEATURE - PSU DIGITIZATION

HUDCO and NIELIT savour the Digitization Dream In the June edition of VARINDIA, we had observed in the story “Is Digitization in PSUs still far from reality?” that most organizations are not yet prepared for a “digitally-charged future”. Digitization is still a far cry when we talk of PSUs. In fact, more than 60 per cent of CEOs are yet to form an integrated physical and digital strategy. The realization of adopting Digitization is yet to dawn upon them.

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owever, this is not the case when we talk of organizations like HUDCO and NIELIT. These organizations have been pretty fast in realizing the Digitization dream and have successfully oriented their organizational processes in favour of a digitization strategy. Their tryst with digitization can make for an interesting read for our readers and give them an understanding of how the strategy worked.

A quick recap on Digitization...

A strong IT infrastructure is absolutely essential in today’s digital era. The Hon’ble Prime Minister has launched the Digital India programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally-empowered society and knowledge economy. It is planned to transform the entire ecosystem of public services, through the use of information technology.

Digitization using state-of-the-art scanning methodologies and subsequent archiving of documents has many advantages, when compared to maintaining bulky documents in large-storage areas. Not only does it extend the life of documents but also provide portability and secure access to multiple-users at the same time. Security of digital documents can be ensured by using passwords, encryption, etc, and they can be easily kept at multiple locations, which make them safe from calamities like theft, fire, etc.

Search and query facilities make the access to documents easier and faster. Digitization of documents is also critical for effective service delivery. Quick delivery of services is possible only if the documents that are necessary for making decisions are available immediately.

For instance, at times for availing a particular service a citizen may be required to fill in an application form and furnish supporting documents as proof of his/her identity, date of birth or address. All these documents, once submitted by the applicant,

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Dr M. Ravi Kanth, IAS (r) Chairman & Managing Director, HUDCO should be archived electronically for future reference. Documents once digitized and stored in the central archive, can be made available anytime, anywhere to all key stakeholders. This gives impetus to the whole decision-making process and results in faster delivery of services to citizens.

The Government of India at various points has taken aggressive steps towards streamlining government processes and digitizing relevant information. The digitization of land records, court cases and UID project are some of the key government initiatives taken.

However, as discussed in our previous issue, there are several challenges that need to be met first to make Digitization a success.

HUDCO treading the Digitization path...

Since the inception of HUDCO in 1970, the Indian economy and the financing sector have witnessed major changes. To ensure

profitability in spite of its social mandate, HUDCO had to identify new sectors and fresh business avenues like power, transport, commercial infrastructure, real estate and other emerging sectors, and had to adopt newer financing models like, PPP model, consortium funding, etc. HUDCO responded by undertaking an organizationwide restructuring exercise, which paved the way for creation of specific Special Business Units (SBUs) to cater to the requirements of the new-market scenario.

Innovation is more than just coming up with a good idea. Translation of an idea into a successful outcome is what is required for innovation to take place. HUDCO has been fully focussing on innovation and set up an innovation cell at the corporate office.

Innovation officers have been identified across all departments and all regional offices. This has helped in developing new products to cater to the competitive-market

SPECIAL FEATURE - PSU DIGITIZATION requirements.

Recognizing the advantages of digitization and in tune with the vision of Shri Narendra Modi, HUDCO has undertaken digitization of important documents that have been stored since its inception. “We have digitized 60 lakh pages of important files, and most of the documents shall also be digitized on a need basis. We are constantly working towards maximum digitization in HUDCO, including, but not limited to an intranet, website, E-procurement, E-Auction, etc, so as to bring greater transparency and accountability in our operations,” explains Dr M. Ravi Kanth, IAS (r), Chairman & Managing Director, HUDCO. HUDCO is also in the process of setting up a robust network and security infrastructure for the establishment of an enterprise, wide-integrated application with the implementation of ERP package. After this, documents will be available in digital form at the point of generation. “This will also be an important step in moving towards a paperless office. HUDCO is also planning to modernize its IT infrastructure completely, so as to provide better and efficient services to all the stakeholders,” confirms Dr Kanth.

Digitization wave sweeping through NIELIT...

The National Institute of Electronics and Information technology (NIELIT) is a body with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (deity), Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India, and is actively engaged in the development of qualified human resources in the areas of IT: electronics communication technologies like cyber law, cybersecurity, IPR, GIS, cloud computing, ESDM, e-governance and related verticals. NIELIT also undertakes various projects under capacity building in ICT with the objective of creating human resources at various levels and is also a preferred agency for many state governments for rolling out capacity building projects and digital literacy programmes in the state.

While establishing itself as a premier organization, NIELIT has realized that with the advent of internet technologies, preservation and digitization has assumed greater significance. Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, NIELIT, feels that the resources in an organization can be better utilized through an improved mechanism for sorting and accessing of documents. “There is a need to transform conventional offices into more efficient and transparent offices, eliminating huge amounts of paperwork. In this context, the Government has introduced the e-office product to support governance by ushering in more transparent and efficient inter- and intra-government processes. NIELIT has implemented the e-office product as a part of its programme to modernize and inculcate greater transparency and accountability in processes,” In NIELIT, all existing documents are being digitized and till date more than two

Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma Managing Director, NIELIT

The Government of India at various points has taken aggressive steps towards streamlining government processes and digitizing relevant information.

The digitization of land records, court cases and UID project are some of the key government initiatives taken. lakh pages have been successfully converted into digital format. “We hope to achieve complete digitization very soon,” confirms Dr Sharma.

Concerted efforts have also been made to facilitate the stakeholders though online web-based services, which include online registrations. By using technology platforms like online examinations, payment gateway facility, etc for process re-engineering, NIELIT has put in place an institutionalized mechanism for issuance of digitally-signed online certificates which is being further reinforced with digital locker technology.

Aadhaar has also been introduced to uniquely identify beneficiaries being trained under government schemes with provision of crediting scholarship amount to the beneficiary accounts through direct benefit transfer (dbt) scheme.

With a view to further support the Digital India initiative of the Government of India, the roadmap of NIELIT takes into account capacity building initiatives, diversification

of activities and strengthening of internal mechanisms. NIELIT has also developed anytime-anywhere learning through e-contents for 81 modules which are expected to facilitate the student community and seeks to address the skilling needs of students in the rural areas.

But it is not just for adopting a digitization strategy in its organizational premises that NIELIT can be counted for. The IT body is also trying every bit to spread the word of Digitization to all and sundry. To take the message of digital literacy across, NIELIT has also conducted a cycle rally some time back from Electronics Niketan (CGO Complex) to Harijan Basti (Valmiki Colony), Mandir Marg with a view to sensitize the local residents of Harijan Basti about “Digital India”. “It is our humble endeavour through the cycle rally to move beyond religion, caste, class to spread awareness about the various components of Digital India, especially to the underprivileged sections of society,” Dr Sharma cited.

Summing up...

India is poised for a digital revolution in the coming years and the introduction of a programme like Digital India further reaffirms this fact. The Government of India has made a modest beginning with Digital India and it is now left to the organizations, corporates and professionals of the country of how they perceive this change and take this initiative ahead. While a switch to a Digitization strategy seems eminent in the near future for Indian PSUs and organizations, a foolproof plan to migrate to a digital environment is what is required initially. Accordingly, challenges like lack in digitally skilled manpower and resources have to be met. n

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COVER STORY

NETGEAR Creating the Right Ecosystem for Partners to Grow There are a few companies for which Channel comes first and NETGEAR happens to be one of those few companies that take the Channel route to reach to its customers. Subhodeep Bhattacharya – Regional Director, India and South Asia – NETGEAR explains why a detour is not possible and how this carefully chosen route brings out the best results for the company

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ETGEAR’s vision is that of SMART IT. Its value proposition is simple – continue to innovate connectivity solutions for homes, SOHOs and SMBs and for doing so, completely rely on its partners to carry them to their customers. NETGEAR that started out as a switching brand and was a key innovator in switching technologies is focused on delivering infrastructure for new age IT needs, to secure connected homes and enable businesses in the SMB space.

“We were the innovators of Smart and Plus switches and are global leaders. Our key markets are the US, Western Europe and Asia and the products we innovate and design are all targeted at the technology and quality conscious markets. As a result all the products that we sell in India are from the same lineage. The focus on constantly leading technology innovation keeps our products always updated and on the leading edge,” asserts Subhodeep Bhattacharya – Regional Director, India and South Asia – NETGEAR. NETGEAR also wants the world to be connected to the cloud. “The world is slowly getting connected to the cloud and so we want to connect access devices to the cloud. We want to create infrastructures of data connectivity, storage and enable sharing across internet and intranet. We believe that technology is steadily transforming the lives of all individuals and organisations alike and we are focused on bringing technological innovations to wider masses,” says Subhodeep.

The Channel eco-system

To reach a large audience effectively one needs to work with partners. According to Subhodeep, NETGEAR believes in developing long term relationships. It is a 100% channel company and it is present in all states of India through them. Its multi-tier distribution model facilitates its reach to the farthest corners of India. “We are here for the long

term. NETGEAR has been built by partners and our partners take pride in representing NETGEAR and its ethos to our customers.

We work with broad line distributors like Rashi Peripherals and Redington as well as task specific geography focused distributors like Printlink. They in turn cater to retailers, sub-distributors and SI partners,” he explains.

NETGEAR also has a leveraged model with Sub Distributors who take its reach from Agartala to Jammu to Bhuj and to Madurai. “It hence gives the company tremendous strength and pride to say that we have a much attached channel community,” says Subhodeep.

The upgradation of NETGEAR’s channel is however focused on 3 important elements - training, improving share of wallet and geographical expansion. The primary focus is to create a more trained channel partner base that are aware of the product offerings and are able to position the right product to the right customer.

NETGEAR has launched a slew of training programs aimed at sales and pre sales people that are regularly delivered face to face or over the web.

The other area of focus for NETGEAR is to have a higher share of wallet in the partner’s business. “That can happen when the partner sees value in the products and solution we are providing to them. Here the important thing is to understand the partners well and introduce them to the range of products that

From the Distributors Rajesh Goenka VP Sales - Rashi Peripherals “Rashi Peripherals has been associated with NETGEAR since November 2004, and the two have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship.

NETGEAR is a wellestablished name in the market, which offers a plethora of products at various point range.

Its superior quality and excellent packaging along with its special focus to SMBs are a few reasons that make NETGEAR a formidable force.

With Rashi’s 26 years in the IT distribution industry, the widest reach across India and a strong channel engagement, Rashi helps NETGEAR establish a strong foundation to build upon its brand in the country.”

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Anand Chakravarthy President – Commercial and Enterprise Business Group, Redington India Ltd “We are associated with NETGEAR since FY’13.

Its broad family of products in wired and wireless Edge Networking space is a key differentiator for NETGEAR. Simplicity in configuration and affordable solution further adds to the strength of the NETGEAR brand.

Redington’s 50+ branches and large community of partners spread across Indian cities, ranging from small resellers, VARS, SIs add as a Core Strength to the partnership between NETGEAR as a brand and Redington as a Distributor.”

COVER STORY

Partners Speak Ashok A Chhabria Director – Geeta Monitor (Bangalore) “We have been with NETGEAR for seven years and it has been great to put in one word. NETGEAR believes in long association and we have got great support from them. Our Technical support capabilities are strong, we have a wide reseller base and the NETGEAR products have high reliability which makes this a core strength which is sustainable.

NETGEAR has a wide range of products to choose from and they are of global quality standards. These get refreshed regularly.

Hence it’s a great product to pitch to customers."

Rajesh Dora Managing Director - Printlink Computer & Communications Pvt Ltd (Bhubaneshwar) “We have been associated with NETGEAR for the last 2 years wherein we mostly engaged in the projects and system integration segment. We are also distributing Netgear products in specific geographies.

As margins continue to shrink in the traditional box business, it is important for business owners to align with the next growth drivers in IT which is wireless internet, storage, security and switching infrastructure to support voice, video and data. The NETGEAR portfolio offers an exhaustive array of products that address all the above growth segments with out of the box solutions for home, SOHO and SME. There is a tremendous scope for growth in wireless, storage and security both for homes and offices in future.”

Yagnesh Shah Infomac IT Solutions Pvt Ltd (Mumbai) “We started our firm 8 yrs back. Today when we look back, we see one OEM standing behind us and that was NETGEAR India, and they still stand tall in terms of support for sales and after sales. NETGEAR also has one of the best replacement policies in the market today and lot of other OEMs actually follow them. Tying up with Netgear has given us growth and confidence to grow our business and also our stature in market as a Brand ambassador for the OEM. Our strength being the channel in and around Mumbai, we have been consistently growing NETGEAR Retail business and have taken higher targets to maximise our partner base so that NETGEAR is displayed at 100% outlets in Mumbai. We still believe that we have more to take and give back to NETGEAR Business.”

Mukesh Vohra Proprietor - City Computer Systems (New Delhi) “It is really a pleasure to have worked with NETGEAR for the last 7 years. Their support structure and channel strategy is friendly. Their Technical support structure is strong in terms of replacements and end customer technical support is good.

It is needless to say that NETGEAR is one of the best brands to work with. Their products are of good quality, with their current focus on switch and NAS business. Everyone has a high probability to grow with them in terms to revenue and margins.

NETGEAR is the only networking brand in my forte and almost 60% of my resource is being occupied in promoting and developing NETGEAR business. We had recently added 3 additional manpower to focus further on SI and end customer segment, which will definitely develop new roots for us to grow with NETGEAR.”

they can sell. As we constantly introduce new products we are able to keep our partners focused on developing their business on NETGEAR products,” he says. NETGEAR products are for all – its range starts from as low as Rs 600 for the entry level switches and goes up to many lakhs for the complex 360TB NAS solution suitable for complex surveillance, back up solutions.

Finally there is the focus on part of NETGEAR to develop new geography and this is a central point to its partner development plan. It is focused on reaching the top 100 cities in India and is always scouting for new partners who can represent the company in these markets. Developing new partner in new geographies is central to its vision.

Company, NETGEAR is sensitive to partners and service providers’ changing needs. NETGEAR partnerships are long term association based on trust and it does not have any flexible short term tactical approach. “Firstly we do not infringe in the partners services earnings part, which many other companies do. Partners are free to add additional SLA and services outside of warranty on our products and we do not plan to have any play there,” assures Subhodeep.

NETGEAR is happy to be a component of a solution and give the lead to its SI partners whom it leverages and supports but never makes an attempt to lead a customer situation. NETGEAR believes that it is the partners who take it to a customer and they should play the lead. “We are happy to back the partners up,” Subhodeep sums up. n

Therefore...

Being a new age IT Infrastructure

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MARKET WATCH

The SMB Growth story continues…

The SMB story in the July edition, “The ‘BIG’, ‘FAT’ SMBs of India” clearly talked about how SMBs are slowly rising and are conceived to be driving the next level of growth for the vendors, with the latter considering them as an important vertical. The SMB story will continue to unfold as long as the market grows and vendors will drive opportunity by landing up with some of the biggest deals from this sector

Ozair Yasin MD - SoftAge

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lobally the SMB market accounts for around 44% of the total IT spend, out of which BRIC countries specifically account for more than 37% of the global SMB IT spend. IT spending worldwide is expected to touch $3.5 trillion in 2015, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. Analysts estimate that this market will grow at a rate of above 10% during the period of 2014-2019.

Talking about the India market, recent initiatives and policy initiations from the government have led to the nation witnessing a burgeoning number of start-ups, SMBs and SMEs. However, with the continuously evolving digital landscape, both purchasing behaviour and marketing tactics are changing drastically. In a dynamic B2B marketplace that is constantly maturing, it’s difficult to predict buying trends.

SMB – A big opportunity SMBs and start-ups belonging to any sector, be it financial services, manufacturing, IT/ITES are always on the lookout for cost efficient IT solutions to help them improve customer service and increase business efficiency and efficacy. They realize that they may not have the financial means to invest heavily on technology and resource intensive solutions like datacenters. This has opened up avenues for companies to play a major role in the day to day operations of these businesses.

SMBs more often than not operate on small bottom-lines and are constantly finding ways to decrease operational expenses, for e.g. upgrading IT infrastructure in the best cost effective way as possible. “SMEs and SMBs who although generate large amounts of data, have to make do with perhaps two to three servers. They are always on the lookout for smart solutions that can help them save and manage data without having to build new datacenter space. This approach, helps them increase their data center capacity, improve IT control and business efficiency without having to build a new datacenter,

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which would involve the company incurring huge costs,” says Ankesh Kumar, - Director Product Management (Channel, IT Solution) & Marketing at Emerson Network Power India.

For these SMBs to make it to the next level of evolution they will also have to rely on the latest technologies to be relevant and competitive. Emerson understands this need and helps propel these SMBs to the next level with the state of art IT solutions and services which in turn can help them in operating efficiently. It is looking to offer an agile IT infrastructure to 700 SMB and MSBs spread across varied sectors like banking, financial services, IT/ITES, manufacturing, retail, automobiles etc. With the initial focus being banks and retail, it is now focussed on auto ancillary and manufacturing hubs. “We hope to target a bulk of these businesses by working with our channel partner base as their network affords us reach into tier II and III locations across the country. With the prevailing market scenario, we expect a majority of our business to come in from this particular customer segment,” says Ankesh.

SMB sector is center of attraction for all as there is a huge list of prospected buyers in various categories of business. They have caliber to equally compete with other established players in market. “As a vendor we do see large opportunities within the SMB sector as industries are aggressively growing and adopting new technologies very frequently. Around 20 percent of our business is coming from SMB sector which is gradually growing every year,” summarizes Ozair Yasin, MD - SoftAge. Technology Adoption on a rise…

The SMB segment is witnessing a steady growth and IT spending in the sector is likely to see a huge impetus in the coming years. The sector has really shown pace in adopting new technologies. “A few years back, SMBs were little rigid in investing into technologies due to the traditional operations and management.

But time has changed now and to exist and grow in this competitive market, most of the companies have taken the step forward and are really benefited by the latest technologies and solutions. Many companies have moved forward and adopted IT trend for business expansion and better coordination,” observes Ozair.

Ozair also points out that although the SMB segment has really come out from the traditional boundary and diversified themselves, there are few industries still available where adopting IT technologies is a challenge.

Ankesh Kumar Director - Product Management (Channel, IT Solution) & Marketing at Emerson Network Power India Ankesh puts it that SMBs still perceive IT adoption to be time consuming and a complex process and therefore prefer to stick to their existing traditional processes. As it stands, IT adoption amongst SMBs in India is still around 10-20 percent. “Despite these numbers, the fact is also that many SMBs in India are technology-ready and have begun to transform themselves from the traditional 'pen & paper' business culture. Amidst their apprehensions about adoption and the need to grow bigger and better, SMBs are now seeking technologies that will help them optimize efficiency and resources at an affordable price,” cites Ankesh.

In conclusion…

According to the results of the 2015 State of Small Business Report, SMBs are optimistic and are positive of how the economy will have a significant impact on how their businesses will work in 2015.

India has a total base of 48.8 million small and medium businesses, making it one of the fastest growing SMB nations globally. SMBs may look small in terms of name; however it has a very big share in Indian market and contributes more than 60 percent to the Indian GDP. Over the last few years SMBs in India have grown and evolved and have gained strategic importance from corporations and government. Today 1.5 million SMBs export their products or services outside India which is a sign of the sector’s rapid evolution.

There is indeed a huge potential lying in this sector in terms of opportunities and growth. Large enterprises have realized the importance of SMBs and have started catering by offering customized solutions. n

Movers & Shakers

Sunil Lalvani appointed as VP & President of Qualcomm India

Qualcomm has appointed Sunil Lalvani as Vice-President & President of Qualcomm India. Lalvani will report directly to Cristiano Amon, Executive Vice-President and CoPresident, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. With more than 20 years of experience in sales, business development, strategic planning and business operations across the IT and telecom sectors, Lalvani joins Qualcomm from BlackBerry, where he served most recently as Managing Director of India and SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). There, Lalvani was responsible for overseeing and driving BlackBerry’s overall business strategy and growth in India and was focussed on driving differentiated solutions for consumers and enterprise customers. Lalvani was also instrumental in leading a strong engagement with Carrier partners and ISV’s in India, to drive uptake of BlackBerry’s services portfolio in the Indian region.

Airtel appoints Rajiv Mathrani as Chief Brand Officer

R. S. Sharma named as new TRAI Chairman

R. S. Sharma has been appointed by the Union Government as the new chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Sharma’s appointment has been approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. As per the government’s notification, he has been selected for the position for a period of three years or until further orders, whichever is the earliest.

He is a 1978 batch IAS officer of the Jharkhand cadre. He has played a major role in implementing Aadhaar project and designing a roadmap for the government's Digital India programme. He is credited also to have designed key digital services, such as digital locker, digitize India and fast execution of schemes to push electronics manufacturing in the country.

Sharma's appointment comes at a time when there is a debate over net neutrality and TRAI has to give its view on the same to the government.

Accenture Announces new Chairman and Country MD for India

Rajiv will lead Airtel’s brand positioning, strategic initiatives and associations, and will report to Srini Gopalan, director – Consumer Business, Bharti Airtel (India). He takes over from Mohit Beotra, who has decided to move on from Airtel to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.

Rajiv has held various leadership, marketing and sales roles earlier in India and other emerging markets across organizations like Pepsico, Marico Industries, Citibank and Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Healthcare. He has spurred business growth in large businesses by leading some of India’s most successful and acclaimed campaigns including the 2011 Grand Effie winner Pepsi ‘Change the Game’ Cricket World Cup campaign, and also activated the first edition of Pepsi IPL.

Accenture has announced that Rekha M. Menon will be chairman of Accenture in India and Anindya Basu will be country managing director in India. These appointments are effective August 21, 2015.

As chairman, Menon will play an active role in growing Accenture’s business and further strengthening the company’s presence in communities across India. She will continue to be deeply engaged in the company’s Inclusion & Diversity and Corporate Citizenship initiatives and will also be responsible for institutional relationships with public authorities and industry associations.

Basu will continue his role working with Accenture’s Products clients in India, as well as serving as the APAC regional lead of the company’s Automotive, Industrial, Infrastructure and Travel & Transportation Industry practice. During his 23 years with Accenture, he has held leadership roles spanning multiple industries, including Automotive, Industrial Equipment, Travel and Transportation, Consumer Goods and Chemicals.

Debjani Ghosh appointed as MAIT President

L&T Infotech Appoints Sanjay Jalona as CEO & MD

MAIT has announced the appointment of its new President, Debjani Ghosh, Vice-President Sales and Marketing Group, Managing Director South Asia, Intel Corporation, during its 32nd Annual General Meeting for the term of 2014-15.

Ghosh is the first-ever woman President of MAIT in its 32-year history. She has been with Intel for over 19 years. She has managed a variety of roles, including setting up Intel’s education programme for the Asia-Pacific region. Before assuming her current role at Intel, she was the Managing Director for the Southeast-Asia region. In 2013, Debjani was ranked amongst the 25 Most Powerful Women in Fortune India. In 2014, Information Week gave her the ICON award at the Women Achiever in IT award ceremony. Debjani currently chairs the IT Committee at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Larsen & Toubro has announced the appointment of Sanjay Jalona as the chief executive officer & managing director of its whollyowned subsidiary L&T Infotech, with a mandate to lead the company in its next phase of growth.

He has also been inducted as a director on the board of L&T Infotech. Prior to joining L&T Infotech, Jalona was with Infosys as executive vice president and global head of High-Tech Manufacturing & Engineering Services.

During his 15 years at Infosys, Jalona had held senior leadership positions across USA, Europe and India. His track record includes achieving rapid business growth and winning prestigious client engagements globally.

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eCommerce in India: Growth unlimited yet no profits Driven by smartphones and internet penetration, India’s eCommerce market is growing at 60 - 70 % a year. But where are the profits? eCommerce market in India has witnessed a phenomenal growth in last few years, giving a strong indication of how Indians are moving up the value chain. The birth and rise of many eCommerce players in a matter of few years is a proof of the growing market size and great business opportunity. Given the trends which are cropping up in all parts, it looks that the eCommerce mania will continue to further and cover more areas. What has added to the growth of eCommerce in India is the significant improvement in the Internet connectivity.

Experts are of the opinion that the market will see more disruptive changes as it improves further. A sizable portion of population is still waiting to be touched.

Experts and analysts do point to the growing market and untapped opportunity.

Most of the experts are of the opinion that Indian market has started to see the momentum.

According to Forrester Research, only 16% of India’s total population was online in 2013. Of the online users only 14% or 28 million were online buyers. The research further says that India was still in a nascent or immature stage of evolution of online retail spending. China was in ascending stage at 50%, whereas Japan (69%), Australia (57%) and South Korea (70%) were in mature stage.

Billion dollar opportunity A plethora of reports validates the growth opportunity in the eCommerce space in India. According to Gartner, India is one of the fastest-growing eCommerce markets in Asia/Pacific. The research firm estimates that India represents a $3.5 bn market, growing at approximately 60-70% a year. With large global players like Amazon entering the fray, and local eCommerce players like Flipkart and Snapdeal intensely competing, the competition has become truly fierce. Almost all the players

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are showering discounts and offering big deals to win over customers. We witnessed the battle royal last year close to the festive season when Flipkart and Snapdeal fought for consumer interest through their big billion day sale.

In its report ‘eCommerce in India: Accelerating Growth’, PwC identifies significant growth in this area. The report says.

“Since the eCommerce industry is fast rising, changes can be seen over a year. The sector in India has grown by 34% (CAGR) since 2009 to touch 16.4 billion USD in 2014. The sector is expected to be in the range of 22 billion USD in 2015.”

The study further outlines that online travel comprises 70% of the total eCommerce market. But PwC sees substantial growth in e-tailing. In the report it outlines that e-tailing, which comprises of online retail and online marketplaces, has become the fastest-growing segment in the larger market having grown at a CAGR of around 56% over 2009-2014.

The size of the e-tail market is estimated to be at 6 billion USD in 2015. E-tailing has been successful in its mission to create the first wave of buying because of the popular products in the categories such as books, apparel and accessories and electronics which are the largest selling products, constituting around 80% of product distribution.

The increasing use of smartphones, tablets and internet broadband and 3G has helped in creating a strong consumer base which is further expected to spike. The market is hot as everyone wants to reap the opportunity.

Today, the market consists of homegrown companies coupled with a strong flow of investment from foreign investors as well as entry of giants such as Amazon and Alibaba.

These are strong indications and will strengthen the environment in the market. The entry

of global players has made the competition intense. While the players such as Flipkarts are vary of foreign players, their entry will help the market to mature and bring more professionalism.

While the eCommerce boom is Asiawide phenomenon, India market reserves the greatest chance to expand and grow manifold.

India because of the late adopter of the trend will be able to use the learnings in these markets. According to an estimate, “In 2013, Asia-Pacific emerged as the strongest businessto-consumer (B2C) eCommerce region in the world with sales of around 567.3 billion USD, a growth of 45% over 2012, ranking ahead of Europe (482.3 billion USD) and North America (452.4 billion USD).”

Key Factors that will fuel growth “A significantly low (19%) but fast-growing internet population of 243 million in 2014 is an indicator of the sector’s huge growth potential in India,” underlines the PwC report. China is far ahead when it comes to eCommerce that is because of the internet-connected population.

India is fast catching up as the internet is becoming accessible in India at low rates on different devices. Beyond this, eCommerce is expected to witness a lot of growth avenues if the industry and the government are able to look at a few things quite seriously.

Internet penetration: As stated, India has on 243 million internet users which is a low number if we compare to the size of the population. However, the growth in the internet users in India has seen significant spike in last couple of year. It is because of the new class of users that eCommerce has moved further. In addition, there is a lot of business opportunity in the sector. The government’s Digital India plan is focused on laying the base infrastructure that will boost eCommerce

Indian Market Scape significantly since the biggest beneficiaries will be the end users who will have access to the fast broadband even in remote areas.

Localization of content on eCommerce: The Internet in India is dominated by English language. It is noticeable that even eCommerce companies are using English as their primary language. Whether it is Flipkart, Snapdeal or Amazon, all of them have their web content available mainly in English language. Why localization becomes important is because there is a strong demand for local content on the Internet. Google India recently stated that web content search in Hindi has grown a whopping 155 % in the last year, which is significantly higher than the growth of content search in English. Google further underlines that Hindi content searched through mobile Internet grew at even higher rate of 300 per cent in the same period. Growth in traffic in other languages, too, was impressive.

Although Snapdeal, Makemytrip and others have begun to realize the importance of localization, it would be critical for them to strengthen their localization strategy.

At present their moves are only cosmetic.

Snapdeal has launched versions in Hindi and Tamil languages whereas MakeMyTrip has launched its Hindi app and also plans to add more languages such as Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.

The local content is going to be new growth driver for the eCommerce companies in 2015 and coming years. It will help subscribers to understand the worth of the product in their preferred and local language. But for localization, eCommerce players have to innovate. It is much more than the translation of everything into the local language.

Targeting cities beyond metros: Metropolitan cities are good to start as the internet users in these cities are gullible and try many websites for buying. But this was the case earlier. Today, most of these users are pretty much the same. Plus, the market has barely any growth left as every player is targeting these markets. So, the only growth avenue, which is the largest, is beyond metros.

A sizeable chunk of population lives in cities beyond metros which are potential consumers for the eCommerce players.

There is a growing demand for products in tier 2, tier 3 and even tier 4 towns. These towns and cities are critical for playing the volume game. A 2012 Nielsen report says: “While metros will remain a staple for marketers and increasing a rural footprint will be critical for volumes in the long run, there is a growth opportunity that is vastly under-rated by many marketers today, which could emerge as a key growth engine for the next 10 years. Middle India, a region made up of approximately 400 towns each with a population of 1-10 lakh, are home to 100 million Indians.”

Snapdeal has admitted recently that its over 60 % of the sales happen in small towns and cities beyond metros. Other eCommerce players do also admit the same trend. eCommerce players such as Jabong, Zivame, Pepperfry and Lenskart, etc which are focusing on a segment within eCommerce do also witness the similar

trends.

Growth of mobile commerce: eCommerce players’ growing reach in non-metro cities is because of the rise in usage of mobile internet in the country. If the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) is to be believed, the number of mobile internet users in the country was at 173 million in December 2014 which is set to grow manifold by 2020. A Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) report predicts that in the next six years, the number of people accessing the internet through mobile is set to reach 600 million. This is a whopping number. In short, the growth of mobile internet is the real reason behind the growing interest in eCommerce in small cities and towns. As the smartphone adoption is set to touch 50 per cent by 2020, it will impact the eCommerce market in a big way. Even eCommerce players believe that it is one of the drivers for their growth. eCommerce players such as Snapdeal and Flipkart recently launched discounts and deals only for their mobile app users.

What boosts this trend further is the fact that consumers are willing to spend more through their debit cards. According to an estimate, the debit card usage has grown

Though there are legal provisions pertaining to foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign exchange management act (FEMA), national taxation laws, cyber law due diligence, cyber security due diligence and e-commerce due diligence, etc. But they are openly ignored in India. However, we have seen the Enforcement Directorate (ED) initiating investigation against big eCommerce players such as Myntra, Flipkart and many others for indulging into unfair trade practices and predatory pricing.

Flipkart’s Big Billion Day is one of the biggest examples which is under scrutiny.

The Indian government needs to come out with an eCommerce Law or make provisions into the Information Technology Act 2000 to address eCommerce related issues.

The government has to formulate a strong law around this growing area as there are instances of mistrust, cheating and other issues growing in this space. The presence of a legal framework will help the industry develop a strong ecosystem for managing their business.

In addition, consumers will have more trust.

They will be sure that their money will not be lost if they transact through their credit or debit card. Right now, there is heavy dependence on the cash on delivery (CoD) system which is a pricy affair.

Profits are still to come

nearly by 140 million in the country in the last two years. Even the use of debit cards at PoS terminals has gone many steps up by 86 per cent. In simple words, the consumers are now adopting a cashless approach which is a healthy sign for eCommerce companies. It will reduce their dependence on the CoD (cash on delivery) model which is a costly affair and constitutes nearly 70 % of all transactions.

Growing investment in logistics and warehouses: Most online retailers claim to have their reach to “12,500-15,000 pin codes” out of nearly 100,000 pin codes in the country.

The online retailers are also entering into tie ups with India Post and petrol pump stations to extend their reach to other parts of the country. This calls for a huge investment in logistics and warehouses. eCommerce players will be able to tap a larger mass if there is significant investment of about $2 billion in logistics and warehousing by 2020. It will help them to reach the remotest parts of the country.

Regulatory framework around eCommerce

As a concept eCommerce has originated in foreign jurisdictions especially in developed countries like United States where there are adequate laws and infrastructure to cater to the needs of eCommerce stakeholders. But in India eCommerce is not regulated as there is no law in place that helps the stakeholders and players. It is neither regulated by any dedicated eCommerce law nor contributing towards the economic and social growth of the country.

Flikarts and Snapdeals of India are growing at a rapid pace but only as brands. Their sales are also growing annually at unimaginable numbers. However, none of them is making any profits. They are spending too much on their brand value and reaching customers.

Most of the players have garnered fundings from foreign and domestic investors. One of the biggest reason of not making profits is that a lot goes in supporting the ecosystem. For every Rs 100 spent on eCommerce, Rs 35 is spent on supporting services like warehousing, payment gateways, and logistics, among others.

According to an estimate, delivery costs a platform owner 8-10% implying significant burn. Most of the eCommerce companies are trying to get rid of this burden as they are adopting a different model. They are engaging players in the retail business to offer products.

Flipkart, Snapdeal, Infibeam, Homeshop18 and others have begun to do this. Presently, aggressive pricing in India is eating profits. eCommerce players are in huge losses. For a Rs 100 sale of a book, the online retailer incurs a loss of Rs 24, a loss of Rs 13 in mobiles, and Rs 8 in apparel.

Experts believe that the market will mature and consolidate in next two to five years.

Then there would be focus on creating value through other things rather than predatory pricing. Once it happens only specialized and established players will survive in the market.

India is still far away in the eCommerce space when it comes to competing with China.

But China’s strength has been its internet connectivity. India has now begun its move recently for a strong digital infrastructure.

As the number is growing, the eCommerce market is growing. The smartphone users have driven the market. n

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FACE TO FACE

Intel tries to give ‘Digital India’ a shape Intel has always reiterated its commitment towards promoting digital literacy in the country through its Digital Literacy mission. With PM Modi bringing the ‘Digital India’ initiative into limelight, the vision of Intel further gets extended and having announced its commitment to it, the company stands resolute to achieve its aim. Srinivas Tadigadapa - Director, Enterprise Solutions - Intel South Asia discusses this more at length -

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igital India may be a recent concept, but Intel had long aspired to drive digital literacy in the country in the form of National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM). NDLM was initiated in 2012 by Intel and NASSCOM. The move seeks to bring into focus the need and importance to promote and execute digital literacy for millions in India and also includes active participation of not for profit organizations like the Digital Empowerment Foundation and NASSCOM Foundation. “NDLM is a great vindication of the announcement by the Ministry of Communication & IT in the “National IT Literacy Mission” that make at least one adult per household in India digitally literate,” says Srinivas Tadigadapa - Director, Enterprise Solutions - Intel South Asia. “The key focus states are Kerala, Karnataka, TN, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, UP, Chhattisgarh and the north eastern belt.”

As an essential measure under the NDLM, the ‘Follow the Fibre’ (FTF) program was launched in November 2012, initiated by Intel and implemented by the Digital Empowerment Foundation. The purpose of this initiative was to drive 100% digital literacy in the first three panchayats to receive the National Fiber Optic Network connectivity.

In December 2014, Intel announced its commitment to Digital India as an extension to the NDLM programme. Reiterating its commitment to support the Government’s Digital India vision, Intel India further launched its ‘Digital Skills for India’ Program.

“Through the program, Intel India will work with the government to impact 5 million citizens by the end of 2015, with skills to compete in the global digital economy,” explains Srinivas.

As part of the initiative, Intel India also unveiled the Digital Skills Training Application comprising of modules on Digital Literacy, Financial Inclusion, Healthcare and Cleanliness in 5 Indian languages. This Application is available freely on the Android Play Store while a similar offline training module is also made available in 7 Indian languages. Intel India is also working with Bharat Broadband Network Limited to build capacity by imparting digital literacy training to key resource persons in the first 1000 Panchayats under the National Optic Fiber Network roll-out in India.

The manifold outcomes from the FTF pilot are a wide learning experience for further relevance. It enabled connectivity and access

Srinivas Tadigadapa Director, Enterprise Solutions Intel South Asia in an information poverty environment. In a span of 10 months, the program conquered the challenges of digital literacy in rural India and brought 100% digital literacy in all three locations. It promoted entrepreneurship and employability change in approach among youth, including young women and infused new methodology for livelihoods and to make living sustainable.

Intel’s technology leadership makes it an exclusive expert in delivering end-to-end solutions which are vital for Digital India. We will work with large system integrators to implement it and make it a success,” assures Srinivas. n

Paytm crosses a significant milestone Paytm has crossed 100 million mark wallet users who carry out over 75 million transactions every month.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO, Paytm says, “The company now wants to revolutionize the m-commerce landscape and transform India into a cash free economy. Our platform is accepted by 80,000 merchants, we have plans to reach 10 million merchants by end of next year. Users can load money to Paytm wallet by using debit card, credit card, net banking and with over 20,000 cash deposit points.”

To have better penetration Paytm has partnered with various banks to enable users to add money through bank branch and ATM machines.

“The Investor confidence in our company reflects the growth story the company is concocting. I am sure that with sheer perseveration we should be able to get half a billion Indians on the Paytm platform. We believe Paytm is new India’s new way to pay,” Vijay says.

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FACE TO FACE

Canon Aims for the #1 spot globally in Digital Printing Puneet Dutta, Director of Professional Printing Products Group - Canon India in a chat with VARINDIA tells us more about the Professional Printing division of the company and the go-to-market strategy that is very unique in the industry

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ost merger with Oce, the vision of Canon has been to be the no. 1 digital printing company in the world. And surely it is making its move to be one with its unique strategies and marketing policies. “Canon has been growing faster than the industry. Our growth rates have been in the range of 20%+ whereas the digital industry is today growing at the rate of 12%,” says Puneet Dutta, Director of Professional Printing Products Group, Canon India.

Canon’s professional printing division has 6 different segments – Commercial printing segment forms the larger umbrella followed by the Wide-Format printing. “We segregate the Digital printing into 2 streams – one is Commercial printing and the wide format.

Within them we have the sub divisions,” explains Puneet. Within Commercial printing, Canon has Display Graphic solutions, production printing and Commercial Photo Printing. Under Wide Format, Canon has Technical Document Systems and Inkjet solutions.

There are various business segments that these 6 segments cater to. From Digital photo labs to print-for-pay to Book POD (Print on Demand) and transactional printers, the demand comes in from different segments. “In the imaging space, right from capturing an image to processing it and then printing that image, Canon is known to be extending the complete end-to-end experience and that is the strength we bring to the customer. We look primarily at the AEC segment which is the Architect, Engineering and Consultants market and the manufacturing market, graphics card & signage market, photo albums and occasionally to people who have these large photo labs across India,” says Puneet.

Accordingly, Canon has specialized people catering to each of these segments as also a separate go-to-market strategy designed for them.

The Channel Model...

Canon has both direct sales force and channel partners to cater to its customers. But the percentage varies between commercial and wide format segments. “So while for commercial, almost 95% of our business is through our direct sales force, only 5 % is through channel. In wide format 80% is through channel and remaining 20% is through direct sales,” explains Puneet.

Offering direct sales and services is something that is very unique to Canon and is built as its USP. Right from the day Canon launched imagePRESS in 2007 in its production printing category, the unique proposition has been direct sales and service. Because these are technologically superior products and investments go up to as high as 50 lakhs in a product, Canon needed a sales force that is technically superior in handling these products. But as the portfolio moved towards relatively cheaper and lower products, Canon came to increasingly rely on its Channel as it realized that it would need their help to increase its presence. “Nevertheless we would like to keep the direct service as the strongest proposition going forward and hence we are on the lookout of very strong sales partners,” opines Puneet.

In order to sell a Canon product that is very aggressively priced, a partner needs to know the value proposition that is offered to the end customer and this comes in the form of tangible benefits.

So whether it is a very high speed printer or application oriented printing or the technical advantages of the printer, a partner has to be well accustomed with it. “And this is why we spend a lot of energy and time in training our partners. Our products can’t get sold unless partners understand the value proposition it can offer.

Puneet Dutta Director of Professional Printing Products Group Canon India Apart from the product managers, our HRD (Human Resources Development) Team also has a dedicated trainer for professional printing who go out and train the channel partners in tier 1 & 2 markets and enable them to sell more,” tells Puneet.

Canon works with close to 75 channel partners, with whom it has direct connect.

Going ahead...

Since all the 6 segments are very different from each other, Canon wishes to strengthen its brand in each of these segments and wants to reach to its customers in a unique manner. “Internet being the source of information for many, we make sure that the information we provide on our vast ranges of products and services on our website is updated every day. Also it might get difficult for a customer to search for different products, considering the ranges of products we have. So we are investing on a standalone website for all professional printing products, where customers can come and look at virtual demo or case studies,” cites Puneet.

Apart from that, Canon would also look at investing more on advertising campaigns and extensive exhibitions and roadshows.

For this it is looking specifically at B class towns. “We are looking for more partnerships to cover the length and breadth of India.

We might be very slow and steady but very firm in our resolution to reach out to as many customers as possible. We are also keen on investing in the packaging industry, in which we are pioneers worldwide,” sums up Puneet. n samrita@varindia.com

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FACE TO FACE

Fortinet in pursuit of Excellence With a tagline of “Fast, Secure and Global”, Fortinet has carved for itself a niche in the Networking security and wireless domain. Sanjay Salman, Regional Business Head – North, Fortinet India, throws sufficient light on how Fortinet has been able to keep pace with the industry by acquiring Meru Networks and about the ecosystem it has developed to empower its partners

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ortinet has been a market leader in the Network and cybersecurity space and has been delivering the most innovative, highest-performing security platform to secure and simplify the IT infrastructure of its customers. Its acquisition of Meru Networks has further catapulted the company to expand on its secure wireless vision and enterprise growth focus and broaden the company’s solutions portfolio in the Wi-Fi market. “Fortinet has already pruned itself in the wired networks area where physical infrastructure comes into play. Since people now are integrating both the wired and wireless networks, both of them are becoming an integral part of their networking world,” opines Sanjay Salman, Regional Business Head – North, Fortinet India.

Prior to Meru’s acquisition, Fortinet had its own category of WiFi security appliances, but the coming together of these companies has further helped it to broaden its base of security solutions in the wireless domain. “We have taken an integrated approach with both Meru’s Wi-Fi product portfolio and Fortinet’s state-of-the-art product line,” says Sanjay.

The Channel upbringing...

Fortinet has an existing partner base that has been with the company ever since it has set up base in the country. With Meru’s products getting integrated into its product line, partners will have the flexibility of covering the entire product portfolio or a part of it. “So whether it is the wired or wireless product category, partners will continue their support for us. In fact, we will be offering a more broadened solution base to our partners and customers. It will also help partners coming from Meru’s side to integrate with our partner base,” reiterates Sanjay.

With more of wireless partners joining Fortinet, they, however, may not be having end-to-end expertise on the security and wireless domain at the same time. To facilitate such partners, Fortinet has designed several specialized programs for them which partners can get enrolled in and they can thereafter be termed as Fortinet Security specialists or Wireless Specialists. They will also have the liberty of going for any of the specialized programs. “So if they want to opt for 100% wireless-oriented products, they can go for the Fortinet Wireless Specialists Program. We have been doing our part in specializing our partners in various domains and we will continue to do so,” Sanjay asserts.

Fortinet has a huge partner base. For instance, in North alone, it is working with 500+ partners. To enable these partners and to grow Fortinet’s business, the company ensures to interact with them on a quarterly basis, updating them on their latest products and the latest technological developments. It also conducts lots of pre-sales and post-sales trainings for these partners and encourages them to go for the various certification programs that help to hone their skill sets. The network Security Expert Certification Program is a new addition to the Fortinet Partner Program that is aimed at helping partners grow their knowledge and expertise.

Looking ahead...

Fortinet has got a product line which ranges from products that cater to SMEs and enterprise-class to the government. Over the years, Fortinet has had a presence in the tier-II and -III markets which, according to it, still have a great potential to get unravelled. Fortinet wants to expand its presence further into these markets. Talking about the Northern market, NCR is a big region for the company. Having a local presence in Chandigarh has helped it to cater to the Punjab market

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Sanjay Salman Regional Business Head – North, Fortinet India and move to all the growing regions there like Ludhiana and Ambala.

It is also putting serious efforts in developing UP and Uttarakhand as a potential area and penetrating there. “We look at having a meeting with the partners every quarter or month for bringing about more awareness,” Sanjay exclaims.

Tier-II and tier-III markets are, however, majorly associated with the volume business. They are into smaller deals and SMBs form a very important part of that segment of the market. “We have a product portfolio that can cater to the customers of the tier-II and -III markets.

In the security domain, you will not find many OEMs who have that varied product range. But our diverse products have helped Fortinet to leverage the SME customers and interact with partners from these regions. That has helped us a great deal,” he says.

The North being also a government-driven region, majority of deals come from this segment, followed by enterprises but SMEs continue to be an important aspect of its business.

Lastly, Fortinet is moving in the same direction as the industry is moving. For instance, since e-commerce is gaining momentum and lots of start-ups are coming up in India, Fortinet has aligned its aims as per the requirements of the market. “So our main focus for these markets remains on Cloud and Virtualization solutions,” Sanjay concludes. Fortinet also conducts an annual customer event, VIP Forum where CIOs and CEOs from enterprises come over and give their inputs on what their requirements are and how Fortinet can shape up their products that fit to their needs. n samrita@varindia.com

FACE TO FACE

F-Secure investing heavily in India Market W

ith a “CHANNEL first” approach and having penetrated deeper into the India market, F-Secure has positioned itself well in a competitive market. To further penetrate into it, F-Secure is investing in channel education, its resources and channel programs. Nishant Sharma, National Head, Channels, India & SAARC, discusses about the rapidly-growing verticals, the company’s channel initiatives and the roadmap of the company It is more than a year that the security company F-Secure has marked its presence in the India market. It has solely an end-customer driven product line and the company has a B2B business line where partners play an important role taking its security solutions to the customer. As it is a 100% channel-based company, it works closely with its Partners to expand its reach in the country.

The company has started from grassroots in India and has now shifted its focus on the Channels. “For the last one year, we have been adding new partners. It has been a good association with them. They have supported us and last year has been good for us. This year also we have significant expansion plans for our Partner community,” comments Nishant Sharma, National Head, Channels,

India & SAARC. With the growth of data centers, enterprises and mid-enterprises are investing in it. Consolidation of data centers is happening in a big way and they are adopting multiple technologies like virtualization, Linux, physical data centers, etc and with this security is becoming a concern. For the enterprise and mid-enterprise segment, F-Secure works with large SIs, mid-size security resellers or software resellers.

Similarly, in endpoint security, multiple devices are popping up and the threat scenario is, therefore, changing. So now data is not confined to an office, it can be accessed from anywhere. The partners also see security as a key aspect when they offer it as one of the product lines to its customers.

Channel initiatives Talking about its channel structure, F-Secure has a set of Managed Partners. The company is working closely with them to help them build out a business by organizing specific events with the partners. It organizes channel events across multiple cities with partners.

The company has three different levels of partners – Registered Partners, Gold Partners

Nishant Sharma National Head, Channels, India & SAARC and Platinum Partners.

“We have more than 60 active partners in the country now who are associated with us in different fronts and we have a touch base with at least 200 partners. This year, we have aggressive plans and want to double the active partner base,” says Nishant.

Roadmap of the company India is one of the key focus countries for the company. “We have sizeable investments coming in the India market with respect to adding resources, releasing new products, developing the channel and market, adding multiple engines to support our channel community, launching specific channel programs across the country and so on,” concludes Nishant.

F-Secure has added resources on the government part. It is one of the markets where it sees huge potential coming across and will be investing more on that. n

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WinMagic Secures the Cloud with data encryption With a single solution approach, the encryption specialist WinMagic provides data endpoint security to all with its heterogeneous solution. The company provides different sets of solutions on the basis of a single product. Now adding to a new offering called SD Cloud, Rahul Kumar, Country Head - WinMagic India puts forward the latest Cloud challenge that customers are facing, marketing strategies and the future roadmap of the company

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eadquartered at Ontario in Canada, WinMagic is a data security company with a single product specialization.

Focusing on data encryption, WinMagic has different sets of solutions on the basis of just one product. “One of the key USP is we provide our customers solutions to secure their data at end points across heterogeneous environment, which essentially means that if we are managing a solution for an Enterprise which may have a Mac, Windows, Linux, tablets or smartphones etc., we encrypt the data lying in those devices and manage it through a single console,” says Rahul Kumar, Country Head - WinMagic India.

The solution offers a single console to the customers to manage the security of data. WinMagic helps customers manage the risk of losing data. The solution also has certain functions and features that help customers manage things remotely.

One of the key aspects of the solution is pre-boot network authentication which means even before the operation system of the device boots, it will ask for an authentication. Even if the hard drive of the computer is taken out and connected to a different computer, the data will not be accessible as it is encrypted.

Another important aspect is management of removable devices.

In this case WinMagic provides its customers the power of controlled access to manage movable media. If a user plugs in a USB in corporate network, it will work but when it is connected to other networks it will not work.

WinMagic has a horizontal product line and it aimed at catering to every segments. It cuts across all types of companies in terms of industries and segments. One of the key trends that are visible in India is that customers are looking for specialist solutions which can help them solve a particular pain point. The demand for specialized solutions is growing. The government sector is also looking at the best of breeds solutions. For WinMagic the India market is growing the way the West has grown.

When it comes to marketing and selling its products, the company has two approaches - direct and through partners.

“In the direct approach we go to the large Enterprises directly and make them understand our product, the value addition, the value proposition. We understand the challenges that customers are facing and WinMagic tries to help them combat those challenges,” adds Rahul.

The partner approach is very simple where WinMagic approaches to government and other segments through partners so that the company has its presence more significantly. The company has focused approach in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad.

It has partners in these places who bring the opportunities and help increase the company’s footprint. By next year it also aims to increase the footprint by 100%.

In the past few months, WinMagic has added significant number of partners. Currently, the company has a working partner base of 45; most of them are tier II partners who work closely with SMBs

Cloud- Not a concern anymore

From Cloud perspective the biggest challenge that customers face

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Rahul Kumar Country Head, WinMagic India is the anticipation of security. It is not only about cloud though; a lot of large or small enterprises have their data stored on servers. The IT department of the company has access to all and it is not desirable that the department has access to important files. And here WinMagic plays its role as it has a piece in the solution called file and folder encryption. It encrypts the files and folders and can be accessed by a particular person and is not accessible to everyone. “We are also adding the cloud service to it. Many people wanted to store their documents in Dropbox, Google drive or similar applications. When a user pushes any document to Dropbox, it will be encrypted at source.

Dropbox also has its own encryption and if any person wants to see the document it will appear as a junk to him. All over the world the customers are talking safety of the cloud and we are providing them with the security key at their end point,” explains Rahul.

This is one feature that makes WinMagic different from other companies. It is called as SecureDoc Cloud (SD Cloud) and it will be in market around September-October. This new offering would be very unique and it will be very beneficial for the customers.

Future Roadmap...

WinMagic aims to solve customer’s need with the framework of encryption. The clear roadmap is that the company will penetrate deeper and will create more cloud eco-system. It aims to safeguard the Cloud for the customers.

WinMagic also has OEM relations with HP and Lenovo who sell the solutions with SecureDoc solution pre-installed with it. “Our product brings in significant value for their products,” concludes Rahul. n aparna@varindia.com

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Spice targets Indian Market with sub-Rs.5,000 category phones W

ith focus on offering the latest technology at affordable prices, Spice Mobiles is concentrating its efforts on introducing a range of affordable smartphones under Rs.5,000/- to cater to the huge Indian market, especially first-time smartphone buyers. It also has aggressive plans to expand the market share in the smartphone segment considering the huge upgrade potential for feature phone users towards smartphones. To reach out to a larger audience, the company is enhancing its distribution and service strength across India. In the coming year, Spice Mobiles has plans to partner with more international technology partners to offer the best technology to its customers. “Last month, we have launched new X Life series that has been conceptualised basis a growing demand for high-quality and good-looking phones in the sub-Rs.5,000 segment,” says Amandeep Singh, CEO, Spice Mobiles.

“A huge majority of consumers in India currently use feature phones and this is also reflected in our product mix. We have a wide and diverse portfolio of feature phone products across all price points to cater to different consumer needs,” he adds.

The company witnessed the entry of several multinational and homegrown companies in the last few years, making the Indian mobile handset market quite competitive, thus offering Indian customers a wide range of options in smartphones ranging from budget to premium.

As the mobile sector is very dynamic with new products and technologies launching almost every day, one of the most important and challenging assignments is creating and managing an impressive product portfolio which is regularly updated and offers customers the latest technology products. Spice Mobiles regularly invests in market research and consumer feedback to understand the needs of our consumers and develop products that offer them a great user experience.

“After an extensive market research, we have observed a product gap and significant market opportunity in the sub-Rs.5,000 segment of smartphones offering both technology and design. A large number of Indian consumers still use feature phones.

Hence, there is huge upgrade potential

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towards smartphones and we are targeting first-time users in Tier-II and -III cities,” added Amandeep.

Mobility Trends

The vision of Spice Mobiles is clear – it is looking at targeting the sub-Rs.5,000 segment of smartphones with latest technology and design, besides being optimistic about the 4G LTE rollout and also believes that it will bring a paradigm change in the telecom sector.

Amandeep Singh, CEO, Spice Mobiles, while discussing this, also mentions about the company’s ambition to set up a local manufacturing unit in Uttar Pradesh by this year which will help the company to come up with various product range in a short turnaround time.

It has been witnessed that customers are loyal to their mobile brands and prefer to graduate to higher technology products with brands they have been using in the past. Spice Mobiles aims for high technology products at economical prices.

Indian customers are value-conscious buyers and make intensive comparisons before making a choice on the handset brand, with key evaluation features being technical specifications, brand image, service support and price.

The company has also observed that the Phablet market is growing at a remarkable pace in India with an increasing number of consumers choosing phablets over normal smartphones. Phablets offer a great combination of utility of a smartphone and convenience of a tablet, with several useful features such as wide screen, enhanced memory and processor speeds. Its multi-utilitarian positioning makes it an indispensable personal computing device for users with the added functionality of a smartphone.

“Make-in-India” Revolution…

Spice Mobiles has plans to open a local manufacturing unit in Uttar Pradesh within this year. The local production unit will be an assembly unit for mobile phones, wherein assembling of feature phones will be done and later extend it to smartphones as well. The local unit will enable Spice Mobiles to launch a wider range of products with a shorter turnaround time and additionally reduce the manufacturing costs as well by 5 – 6 per cent through savings on import duty.

“With a local unit, we can translate relevant consumer insights into product features and cater to consumer demands in a very short time. At the moment, we do not have any manufacturing plant in India and we source our products from reputed international vendors spread across the world,” concludes Amandeep. n aparna@varindia.com

VAR MOBILITY

Panasonic Eluga Icon The new Eluga Icon is a phablet with a 5.5-inch display with HD resolutions. This Smartphone comes with 4G/LTE band network support and is equipped with an outstanding processing power with a superfast 1.5 GHz True Octa Core Processor providing an effortless experience when it comes to playing games, watching videos and switching between apps. Eluga Icon comes with the large 2GB RAM that makes it the best choice for uninterrupted performance.

Its 16 GB ROM is expandable upto 32 GB that provides ample of storage capacity. In addition, the device has a powerful 8 MP Front camera and a superb 13 MP rear Camera with auto focus and LED flash. The Icon is also equipped with cool features like ICON User Interface that provides single access to apps, iSense – a unique hand hover gesture based functionality, Smart Awake - Double Tap to wake-up screen, Air Swipe Unlock, Mediatek Hot-Knot and Blink Play feature for taking selfies or groupies with a blink of an eye. On Battery capacity, the Icon supports a powerful 3500 mAh battery providing longer battery durability than available in other products in this segment and weighs only 147gm. Overall, the 7.9mm Uni-body Eluga Icon is a perfect unification of sleek & appealing aesthetics and innovative interface with a multitude of inbuilt applications. The refreshingly new Icon User interface gives a “Single Tap” access to all applications, automatically arranges apps in thematic folders and complex functional menus are made simple yet topped with beautiful interface.

Adding to that, the Smart iSense technology from Eluga Icon is equipped with a bouquet of gesture based features to provide convenience.

Karbonn Titanium Mach Five Karbonn Titanium Mach Five comes with large 5 inch HD (1280×720 pixels) IPS Display. It is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core Mediatek Processor with 2GB of RAM. For graphics, it has a Mali 400 GPU. Titanium Mach Five has an 8 Megapixel rear camera with LED flash. For selfies, it comes with a 5 Megapixel front camera with LED flash.

It has 16GB in-built storage which can be expanded upto 64GB using MicroSD card. For Connectivity options the Karbonn Titanium Mach Five includes 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, while the smartphone features an accelerometer apart from proximity and ambient light sensors. It packs a 2,200 mAh Battery providing talktime of 16 hours 30 minutes and standby time of 565 hours. Karbonn Titanium Mach Five runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop. It is a dual sim device with dual standby support. The Titanium Mach Five comes with SwiftKey Keypad preloaded, as well as the Peel Smart Remote app.

This smartphone is 8.7mm thick, weighs 159 grams. It will be available in Blue, Black, White and Gold colours. The company highlighted that the Karbonn Titanium Mach One Plus is its first device to feature SwiftKey Keypad integration (SwiftKey 3.0), which will allow users to chat in up to 22 Indian languages.

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VAR MOBILITY

LG unleashes G4 Stylus in Indian Market

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G Electronics has launched LG G4 Stylus in India. The Stylus version of the G4 is a penenabled smartphone that

inherits the core DNA from the recently launched G4. It is exceptionally priced and shares many of the same high-end user’s experience features found in LG G4.

The G4 Stylus is a 5.7-inch handset, slightly larger than the 5.5-inch

display found in the G4.

As its name implies, the G4 Stylus includes LG’s versatile Rubberdium Stylus, allowing for easy

note taking and drawing on the generously-sized screen. It features a 13MP rear camera and 5MP front-facing camera. Other popular LG exclusives such as Gesture Shot, Glance View and Knock Code make this device more convenient.

OPPO introduces Diamondfinished Mirror 5 in India

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PPO has launched its diamond smartphone – Mirror 5 in India. With a unique diamond-like mirrored surface designed

with individual cut-glass segments consisting of different reflective properties, all crafted using a sophisticated ultraviolet embossing technique. The

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Mirror 5 comes at a price of Rs.15, 990. Beneath the attractive surface is an innovative internal structure reinforced with a bi-metallic frame and cross

beams for exceptional strength and durability, coming together to create a tough skeleton within.

The device weighs 160 gm with battery.

www.varindia.com

LAVA introduces Philips Launches Xenium stylish Flair Z1 I908 Smartphone

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ava International has taken a step forward to extend its Flair series by launching Flair Z1 with Flair Key features.

With the launch of Flair Z1, Lava aims to cater to the needs of the people who want great looks with the latest features. The smartphone comprises a

5-inch FWVGA display enabling consumption of multimedia content and is equipped with 1.3 GHz Quad-Core processor, thus making it a powerful gaming device.

Featuring smart gesture control and easy work features, Flair Z1 runs on the latest Android v5.0 Lollipop.

The smartphone further delivers a smooth experience with its 1GB RAM and an enhanced standby support with 2,000 mAh Li-ion battery.

It comes with a 5-megapixel rear camera for capturing great moments along with a 2-megapixel front camera for perfect selfies. Additionally, the smartphone holds an internal memory of 8GB to store your favourite apps, music, videos, etc. Memory is further expandable up to 32 GB. In India, the Flair Z1 is priced at Rs.5, 699/-.

The smartphone will be available in two colours –black and white, across all national retail stores.

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hilips mobile has announced the launch of two new phones in the Indian market — the Xenium I908 and S309.

With an aggressive focus on developing innovative, high-performance phones at competitive price points, the two phones are aimed at providing youth, professionals and technology enthusiasts with an uninterrupted and seamless smartphone experience. The I908 and S309 are priced at Rs. 11, 799/- and Rs. 4,999/respectively.

Philips mobile has made use of its innovative engineering capabilities and Xenium technology to create a flagship smartphone I908 with a sleek form factor, 8.8 mm thickness and leather like cover which is impressive and easy to hold. High performance is the underlining feature

of the Xenium I908 which comes with an octacore 1.7GHz processor allowing all the eight cores to run simultaneously.

This technology offers enhanced performance, power efficiency and improved user experience.

The phone is equipped with a 2GB RAM operating memory which also allows for a super-fast system experience and the 16GB internal memory as a plus. The I908 has a 5 inch full HD screen, a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 5 MP front camera with an 88 degree wide angel lens for high quality self-shots.

Motorola debuts Moto G (3rd Gen)

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otorola has unveiled its allnew Moto G (3rd Gen).

Priced at INR11,999 for 8GB storage with 1GB RAM and INR12,999 for 16GB storage with 2GB

safe from splashes and accidental drops in water.

It is packed with a long-lasting 2,470mAh battery.

The Moto G is powered by Android

RAM, the Moto G (3rd Gen) will be available exclusively on Flipkart with multiple launch.

Moto G (3rd Gen) has been designed with more meaningful experiences, enhanced performance and more customization options.

IPX7-rated protection keeps Moto G (3rd Gen)

5.1, Lollipop, the latest released version of the world’s most popular mobile OS and delivers a pure Android experience.

Featuring a 13MP camera, f2.0 lens, and Hybrid Multilayer IR cut filter, one can truly capture the best looking images in any lighting condition.

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© Copyright 2015 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

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