December 2014, Issue by VarIndia

Juniper and VMware partner

Microsoft eyes Amazon customers through new deal

Customer demands spur Office Automation growth in India 36pg VOLUME 4

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Beckoning a “Progressive” Tomorrow with Smart City

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HP expands “Compute” portfolio

P has expanded its Compute portfolio with new platforms optimized for mission-critical environments. As the next milestone in HP’s Compute strategy, these platforms run the most demanding mission-critical workloads on x86 architectures with higher levels of performance, scalability, availability and efﬁciency. HP Integrity Superdome X and HP Integrity NonStop X are tailored for the most demanding mission-critical workloads. By extending these platforms to highly scalable x86 environments.

IBM to drive Next-Gen Cloud Data Centers

BM has built a highly energyefficient mainframe that could portend future data centers that consume far less power. IBM has deployed these technologies with its latest generation zEC12 mainframe system that is being run on solar power, water cooling and HVDC technologies – completely off the electric grid. With the exponential increase in data being generated through growing mobile usage, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, data center energy consumption is increasing rapidly and efficiency is at a premium. "We have created the first highly energy-efficient data center by integrating solar energy together with water cooling and HVDC solutions. This integration has opened up new possibilities in the area of energy efficiencies and is the latest investments made at the India lab to design an efficient and smarter data center," said Sandesh Bhat, VP, India Software Labs, IBM India/South Asia.

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December 2014

WD believes in Channel Empowerment In an extensive chat with Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director - South Asia, Middle East and Africa, WD discussed about empowerment of Channel Partners through diﬀerent programs, trends in storage market and recent launches.

Key offerings for Data Center and SMB customers: • WD currently offers Re and Se range of drives in India that are designed to meet the different requirements of enterprises. Re drives provide durable capacity storage and are designed to handle up to 550TB per year in any heavy application datacentre with the highest workload capabilities of any WD 3.5-inch hard drive. • WD Ae line of hard drives are designed for operating characteristics of the emerging archive tier within large-scale cloud infrastructures. Modern datacenter customers need an HDD solution designed speciﬁcally for ever-expanding colddata repositories. • To cater to the growing SMB market in India, WD will soon be offering My Cloud EX2 and My Cloud EX4 which address the increasing need for dependable and secure personal cloud data storage solutions.

Khwaja Saifuddin Senior Sales Director - South Asia, Middle East and Africa, WD

eeping in mind the growing markets like Enterprise andSMB in India and to address the need of secure personal data the storage company, Western Digital (WD) has already chalked out plans for the year ahead.But to take it forward the company is all dependent on Channel Partners as it is a channel focused company. WD continues to build mutually beneﬁcial relationships with channel partners and ensure that it invests time and effort to listen to their concerns, provide solutions and train them on products and after sales services so that they can properly address the needs of the consumers.

Partner Empowerment "WD always believes in empowering channel partners and addressing their needs. We will continue our foray into non-metros, targeting more cities in the process and spending time in educating and training our channel partners and addressing their concerns," shares Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director - South Asia, Middle East and Africa, WD. The company conducts channel partner meets and training continually across major cities in India as well as in smaller cities to engage with the partner community. ‘WD Master Blaster’ is a way of reaching out to channel partners at their doorsteps and updating them on solutions in a fun-ﬁlled manner. ‘WD Ki Paathshaala’ consists of regular training sessions with partners to apprise them of the offerings. ‘WD Contact Program’ helps to initiate and grow relationships with relatively new channel partners in the upcountry markets and provide them direct access to the company. The myWD Partner Program is speciﬁcally created to help resellers, solution providers and system integrators to grow their business. In order to expand the reach beyond metros, WD organizes partner and customer meets in non-metros. Partner meets are conducted so that

December 2014

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the particular need of each city is identiﬁed and partners are educated on the usage and availability of its drives. WD endeavours to live up to the expectations of customers. The company provides an excellent after sales service and warranty support across India. It believes that a user should be able to get a replacement product with the same ease as they have purchased the product. WD provides ‘WD Express’, a door-to-door replacement service. With ‘WD Express’, the product is collected from the user’s address and once it passes the warranty criteria, a replacement drive is then delivered to the user at the same address. A customer can also drop his product at one of the 74 drop points spread across India and then, once his product has been processed, a new product will be delivered directly to his doorstep.

Trends in Storage market With the changes in consumers’ lifestyles, the emphasis is not just on buying any storage product but a product that supports their changing lifestyle in terms of increased capacity, contemporary look and mobility. The core strategy will remain same but to keep ahead of the various trends and the way in which people are creating and consuming data, WD has undergone changes in its products. For instance, as mobility and data access on-the-go has increased considerably WD has developed My Cloud family of personal cloud storage devices, which allows users to keep their data secure and delivers on their need of data access while on the move. Additionally, The company has come up with My Passport Wireless, which is a Wi-Fi enabled storage drive that allows consumers to save, access and share stored content wirelessly with any smartphone, tablet, computer or other device.

Roadmap for 2015 WD is gearing up for an exciting 2015 where the company will be introducing new solutions and technology, especially storage for small businesses and enterprises. WD has also expressed its desire to be part of the Indian Government’s Digital India initiative and the vision of developing 100 smart cities in future. aparna@varindia.com

CONTENTS Website: www.varindia.com

Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Assistant Editor: Samrita Baruah Sr. Correspondent: Satinder Kaur 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 Ku. Jha Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@varindia.com Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: Shubhendu Nanda Correspondent: L. G. Swami D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru- 560066 Tel: 08049530399 Mobile:08904205750/9916134482 E-mail: shubhendu@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 Correspondent: S.M. Choudhury 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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December 2014

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CHANNEL CHIEF

VMware focuses on untapped India market with help from Channel Manish Alshi, Partner Sales Head - India & SAARC, VMware shares with VARINDIA the company’s Channel strategy for 2015 and how it looks forward to revitalizing its partners through its innova ve approach

he Indian market is still vastly untapped for VMware and it remains a big opportunity for it. While it continues to see growth across all segments and sectors, the SMB segment will continue to be a key area of focus as well as emerging sectors such as the government & defence segments. It has recently announced an additional 5 percent incentive for solution sales in the commercial, mid-market and SME accounts to help drive its business in this area. “We are putting all our energies behind increasing the awareness and demand for our solutions,” says Manish Alshi - Partner Sales Head India & SAARC. He further continues, “We are also aggressively pursuing the virtualization opportunity in the SMB segment and earlier this year created a SMB unit in India to drive our channel-led go-to-market strategy and have added several new features to our partner rebate program. Today, we work with a great set of partners at each level. We evaluate our partners based on their interest and commitment to the brand as well as their enthusiasm towards working with us.” However, VMware holds its partners vital for its success – especially since 100% of its business is driven through them in India. Helping its partners grow their business is a priority for VMware and it creates and run many programs to support this. For helping them grow, VMware does elaborate on the partner enablement program that helps equip the partners with the necessary technical expertise to help to build their competencies. “We also conduct many business planning meets along with sales and technical training programs. Premier events like Partner Exchange on Tour and the Partner Leadership Summit among others help enable our partners and their teams to build their business with us. As partners deepen their VMware expertise, they benefit more, and so do their customers,” asserts Manish. VMware specializations enable partners to make better profits by recognizing a partner’s level of expertise in selling VMware solutions into a vertical market segment. These specializations reward partners for the unique value they bring to customers in that market. Specializations are earned through experience in a specific marketplace plus successful completion of VMware training. Specializations give partners access to market-specific pricing, education and market information and help them drive cross-sell and up-sell revenue opportunities in their area of expertise. A partner’s membership level is determined by their investment in VMware training and sales. Increasing their level of expertise and engagement in the program through VMware training and sales moves a partner into advanced levels of membership. To better support the partner and maximize their business opportunities, VMware offers three Solution Provider Program levels: Professional, Enterprise, and Premier. In addition, VMware offers an entry point, Registered, where a partner can learn more about VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions. The recently introduced Sales Reward program has been designed to reward accredited sales Professionals within the VMware Solution Provider community. The program offers rewards for sales of eligible VMware products and for taking part in various earning activities. As a member of Sales Rewards participants will accrue points, which can then be redeemed for rewards. VMware has also restructured its incentive model recently that will help its partners drive profits even further. It has also made the entire deal registration process for its partners more transparent and efficient. “I feel that the advantages partners have are the relationships that have been built and nurtured over years with customers. Technology will continue to evolve, but as long as partners remain focused on

December 2014

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Manish Alshi Partner Sales Head - India & SAARC , VMware

Partners of VMware are encouraged to -

• Build competencies to differentiate themselves in the market • Own the entire sales process with customers - this only beneﬁts them as they will have more control over the sale. VMware will continue to focus on enabling them with the skills and know-how to sell its solutions • Remain focused on cultivating strong customer relationships as they will continue to see success even with any changes in the technology landscape cultivating strong customer relationships, they will continue to see success even with any changes in the technology landscape,” shares Manish.

Going forward… VMware is optimistic and excited about what’s ahead in 2014 as it continues to help its partners and customers benefit from its technologies. Partners in India will continue to play a key role and as they deepen their expertise, they benefit more, and so do customers. “We’re encouraging the partner community to focus on building competencies to differentiate themselves in the market and to remain focused on cultivating strong customer relationships. We will continue to strengthen our relationships with our partners ensure that VMware is one amongst the top five portfolios for every partner we engage with,” sums up Manish. samrita@varindia.com

ROUND ABOUT

Where Information Technology ends and Metaphysics begins!!! A

t the end of November, a news item was released that took the Internet by storm: an ex-employee of NASA, who was part of the Mars expedition’s downlink operations, claimed to have seen two human-like beings walking towards the Viking Mars lander. Minutes after the story broke, the Internet witnessed a flurry of activities. Stories ranged from denouncing the claim, saying that no such expedition on Mars took place, to a number of conspiracy stories, claiming that NASA was involved in a cover-up. We may never know what actually happened that day, but the study of outer space and beyond has always been a passion for many over the centuries. Around thirty or so years ago, “Star War” was a fictional hallucination that many predict it could turn into a reality in the future. In the past, the Moon was a revered object, invoking both love and fear. But we managed to turn dreams into reality by getting a man on the moon. When it came to Mars, some believed that mankind could never penetrate into the mystical appeal of the red planet. But that changed when the Viking Explorer sent images of Mars back to earth. I have a feeling that the next big breakthrough in information technology will come in the form of visiting planets that we once thought were far beyond our reach – such as Mars, Neptune or maybe even Saturn and Jupiter. Perhaps, one day in the future, we will have the ability to establish a tower in Mars, frequently broadcasting images back to Earth. Maybe in the future, we will have technology so advanced that we can establish regular space shuttles missions between various planets. Just maybe we will get a better understanding of our perplexing and fascinating universe. The key to these potentialities is the evolution of newer technologies. From time immemorial, space has been a source for whetting human appetite for discoveries and innovations. There have been many efforts to establish contact and understand outer space. Many theories were propounded – most of them were predictions and conjectures based on unscientific theories and unfounded knowledge. Some swore that there was life on the Moon and Mars. Even though science has disproved many of these theories, it has failed to douse the quest for people to unleash the mysteries around the universe. Perhaps, with advances in technologies, some of these mysteries will be finally solved. Every mission by NASA is dependent on the effectiveness of its communication systems. In missions to deep space, the vehicle hardly returns to Earth. Interaction with the spacecrafts is through communications, including diagnosis, spacecraft problems and their rectifications. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter undertaken in 2013 had sent nearly 25 terabytes of data. However, NASA estimates that the capability for deep space communications will need to grow exponentially in the next few decades. With the accretion of incremental knowledge of the cosmos, more pressing specific questions arise. To answer them scientifically, more sophisticated instruments are needed which can generate more data. This data then needs to be mined, processed and analyzed, necessitating more complex instruments and applications. It is an endless pursuit, which goes in cycles, bringing about tectonic changes in communication technology.

Asoke K. Laha President & MD, Interra IT As the sophistication of technology becomes incremental, its challenges become exponential. For instance, the space vehicle has to be planned and executed for traversing billion of light years from Earth. The extreme reliability of the spacecraft, the sustainability of such ecosystems, the medical research that has to go into insulating humans from unknown bacteria and viruses and last but not the least, the foolproof communication systems have to be put in place and this will eventually rewrite human history. There is an old idiom: trade follows flag. This was true when Columbus discovered American, Vasco da Gama anchored his ship at Calicut, the British arrived in India and when the Moghuls invaded India. This process is infinite, but with some changes now. That is to say, everything is germinated in fiction and that fiction merges with reality after decades, centuries or millennia. Science fiction has foretold many such things and they are still doing that. But what confounds me is whether I have written a science fiction or a narrative of the coming future: I am leaving that for the readers to decide.

Rashi CBF-X to Continue Decade Long Success

ashi Peripherals is all set to launch a new addition to the trail of success of Channel Business Forum popularly known as CBF in the industry. CBF is a platform created especially for partners and distributors/vendors to interact in a different way and understand each other’s point of view. CBF has created history by being one of the longest running events initiated by a distributor. To add to its laurels CBF comes with a unique theme to make the partners interested in the latest updates in the technological aspect. This year Rashi is launching a theme with special focus on the fact ‘Every 2nd assembled PC has ONE component sold & services by Rashi Peripherals.’ Following the tradition some important brands associated with Rashi Peripherals will also be participating in CBF-X and will be an integral part of the event. The brands associated with CBF-X are ASUS, Intel, Leadtek & Toshiba. These are high end and very popular brands extending their support for Rashi’s annual event. Channel Business Forum’s tenth edition will start its journey on 10th Dec 2014 at Kolkata followed by Patna the next day.

December 2014

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HOT BYTES

Citrix helps Future Group

uture Group has announced successful adoption of Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix Netscaler, which has enabled the company to usher in a new era of workforce optimization. Citrix solutions have empowered Future Group employees to work from anywhere, while cutting IT costs and reducing the risk of loss or intrusion when data is delivered to any device. The IT team can now control the delivery of all enterprise and cloud services, and maximize the end-user experience for all users, including mobile clients.

Vishal Khare, Director, Emerging Markets/Partner Led Business, India Subcontinent, Citrix said, “Citrix understands this critical requirement which reflects in our solutions. We are delighted to have been able support Future Group in their transformational journey which will optimize operational efficiency, with many critical and strategic benefits aligning to their business imperatives.”

Wipro and SUSE Strengthen Business Alliance

ipro has jointly developed with SUSE an OpenStack cloud solution to meet customers’ evolving needs for ﬂexible and open infrastructure models. The solution has been built using Wipro’s leading Open Source Cloud frameworks and SUSE Cloud, SUSE’s enterprise OpenStack cloud platform which is integrated with a cloud management layer, stitching the private and public cloud layer together. Anuj Bhalla, Vice

President and Global Business Head – System Integration and Maintenance Services, Wipro Ltd. stated, “Together, with SUSE Cloud and our industry leading Open source practice, our aim is to create a suite of ﬂexible open source cloud solutions that will transform the customer’s business in a tangible and rapid way. We are conﬁdent of creating a pool of Hybrid Cloud trained resources and are investing in joint engineering efforts."

Ericsson initiates “Connect to Learn”

ricsson has announced the launch of its global education initiative “Connect to Learn” in India. Connect to Learn implements information and communications

technology (ICT) in schools in resource-poor settings, to ensure that children, no matter where they live, have access to learning resources and a quality education. The programme provides an opportunity for youth to access learning resources

December 2014

that were previously unavailable to them. As a part of the programme, Ericsson, in association with three leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India – Plan International (India Chapter), Smile Foundation and Pratham Education Foundation has launched projects for periods of one to three years, that make a positive impact on the lives of underprivileged students and urban youth in different parts of the country. Each partner brings a speciﬁc contribution to the success of the initiative.

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Ricoh expands its IT Solutions and Services

icoh has announced expansion of IT Solutions and Services in the South India region. With the changing dynamics of business needs, Ricoh has transformed itself into an integrated solutions provider to fulﬁl the unique needs of customers across different industry verticals in a holistic manner. Manoj Kumar, Executive Vice-President & CEO, Ricoh India, said, “We forayed into IT services three years back, keeping in mind that today’s customers are looking at partners that can develop and provide customized solutions. Our strong capabilities in the domains of Imaging, Communication and IT Services have enabled Ricoh to emerge as a onestop business solutions provider."

Internet Grows to 280 Million Domain Names

eriSign has announced that four million domain names were added to the Internet in the second quarter of 2014, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 280 million worldwide across all toplevel domains (TLDs) as of June 30, 2014. The increase of four million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.4 percent over the first quarter of 2014. The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the second quarter of 2014, reaching a combined total of approximately 128.9 million domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net. This represents a 3.7percent increase year over year.

Avaya partners with Google

vaya has entered into partnership with Google on innovative contact center solutions for businesses. The collaboration combines Avaya’s expertise in customer engagement technologies with Google’s expertise in Web applications and Chromebooks to enable greater simplicity, flexibility and cost efficiency in contact center operations. “Contact centers are highly dynamic, business critical, functional areas. The flexibility to quickly and cost-effectively equip customer service representatives during

peak periods such as the holiday seasons, new product launches and marketing campaigns can make a significant difference in capturing revenue and improving customer satisfaction. Our work with Google will allow companies to gain that flexibility and cost efficiency using our leading contact center capabilities delivered via our channel and service provider partners and accessible through Chromebooks,” said Joe Manuele, VP, SI/ SP, Alliances, and Cloud GTM, Avaya.

Accenture and Microsoft to accelerate hybrid cloud

ccenture and Microsoft Corp. have expanded their longstanding strategic alliance with the introduction of the Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure, a powerful hybrid cloud platform. Working with Avanade, the companies are co-funding and co-engineering this platform with new hybrid cloud technologies and services to help enterprises build and manage enterprise-wide cloud infrastructure and

applications. “Enterprises around the globe are looking for the right platforms and partners to help them transform and thrive in a mobile-first, cloud-first world.TheMicrosoftcloud, combined with Accenture’s industry knowledge and implementation expertise, accelerates our customers’ cloud adoption and unlocks new benefits, including powerful new applications, data-driven insights and increased productivity,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.

Intel intros “Digital Skills for India”

ntel has launched its “Digital Skills for India” programme. Through the programme, Intel will work with the government to impact 5 million citizens by the end of 2015 with skills to compete in the global digital economy. Intel has unveiled the Digital Skills Training Application comprising of modules on Digital Literacy, Financial Inclusion, Healthcare and Cleanliness in 5 Indian languages. This Application will be available freely on the Android Play Store from

the 6th of December, while a similar ofﬂine training module will also be made available in seven Indian languages. Intel will also work with Bharat Broadband Network Limited to build capacity by imparting digital literacy training to key resource persons in the ﬁrst 1,000 Panchayats under the National OpticFiber Network rollout in India.

HOT BYTES

Juniper and VMware partner

uniper Networks and VMware together have kickstarted a joint Asia-Paciﬁc (APAC) strategy aimed at accelerating the adoption of private cloud solutions by enterprises across Asia-Paciﬁc (APAC). The announcement builds on last year’s expansion of the two companies’ global technology partnership to deliver joint marketing and sales activities and interoperable products to support simple integration of the VMware NSX network virtualization platform with Juniper Networks’ MetaFabric architecture for virtualized data center networking in

APAC. “While it is no secret that the entire IT landscape is undergoing a dramatic shift toward mobile applications delivered from the cloud, nobody should underestimate the challenge this represents to data center operations. Together with Juniper Networks, we have a strong focus on addressing data center complexity by leveraging the power of network virtualization to radically simplify IT,” said Sanjay Mirchandani, Senior VP & General Manager, APJ, VMware.

Riverbed to be acquired by Thoma Bravo

i v e r b e d Technology has entered into a deﬁnitive agreement to be acquired by Thoma Bravo, LLC and Teachers’ Private Capital. Under the terms of the agreement, Riverbed stockholders will receive $21.00 per share in cash or a total of approximately $3.6 billion. The agreement was unanimously approved by Riverbed’s Board of Directors following a comprehensive review of strategic and ﬁnancial

alternatives that the Company announced in October, 2014. “We are extremely pleased with this transaction, which we believe will be a winning proposition for all of our stakeholders,” said Jerry M. Kennelly, chairman and CEO of Riverbed. The Board unanimously concluded that partnering with Thoma Bravo was the best choice as this transaction will provide our stockholders with immediate cash value."

SAP to work with ICC

he International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced an innovative new partnership with SAP SE as its exclusive Analytics and Cloud Partner for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. The partnership, which starts immediately and runs through to the end of the tournament, will see SAP utilize its HANA platform to power numerous live match experiences across the ICC’s network of websites, to enhance the experience for fans and media with realtime data, statistics and performance analysis that

December 2014

will help them get closer to the action and tell more insightful and informed stories. Robert Enslin, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of SAP Global Customer Operations, said, “Our partnership with the ICC will allow SAP to continuously develop technology that can be adapted for inﬁnite use cases.”

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IDC releases Cloud Report

DC has released the India Cloud Report - "India Cloud Cross-Vertical DemandSide Perspective, 2014." Companies in India are making a gradual move from on-premise legacy to different forms of cloud. While the process is gradual, it is starting by migrating certain application workloads to cloud. The demand-side perspective of cloud includes a "deep dive" into the usage trends of various cloud models, acceptance of cloud, distribution of workload categories across on-premise legacy systems vis-à-vis different cloud models, key decision makers and inﬂuencers, preferred vendors, IT spends on public and private cloud, and how IT resources and skills are evolving to accommodate cloud transformation.

McAfee and Europol to fight Cybercrime

cAfee and Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that brings together Intel Security expertise with EC3’s law enforcement skills in the war against cybercrime. Intel Security and EC3’s combined resources and expertise will offer increased defense against the growing cybercrime threat. The agreement, enables the two entities to engage in joint operations to address identiﬁed cybercriminal campaigns, and allows for participation in events to share best practices as well as the ability to exchange nonoperational data related to cybercrime. The MoU will also allow for Intel Security to provide speciﬁc technical information on cyber-attacks to Europol.

Fortinet announces HP AllianceOneProgramme

ortinet has joined HP’s AllianceOne Partner programme with the HP Networking Specialization. As enterprises and Service

SDN-optimized security solutions to enhance HP’s SDN security portfolio. These solutions are designed to extend the agility and operational

Providers look to effectively deploy security in their datacenters, leveraging the beneﬁts of Software Deﬁned Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), this partnership lays the foundation for Fortinet to deliver pre-integrated

beneﬁts of SDN security solutions, delivered from physical or virtual FortiGate security appliances, enabling customers to reduce OPEX, strengthen security and derive more value from their investments in HP SDN and Fortinet Security.

Fujitsu invests €345 Million to drive innovation

ujitsu has announced details of how it is investing €345 million (50 billion Yen) over the next three years into its Global Delivery capability in order. Alongside the goal of globally standardizing its service delivery offerings, Fujitsu sees innovation as a key enabler for its customers to better and faster achieve their own business goals, while being a signiﬁcant differentiator in an increasingly commoditized global services market. Hidenori Furuta,

Executive Vice-President, Global Delivery, Fujitsu, said, “By making a substantial investment in developing both our Global Delivery capability and innovative new services, we are focussing on positioning Fujitsu as the number one choice for organizations that are looking to transform their businesses. Our approach is servicesfocussed, centred on the foundations of quality, collaboration and a dedication to understanding and serving our customers’ needs."

NComputing deploys 1.3 Million seats

Computing has achieved a significant milestone of deploying over 1.3 million seats in India. This has been the fifth year in a row that NComputing has retained its leadership position over its traditional rivals in the Indian market. In the Asia-Pacific market too, NComputing continued to retain its leadership position. Manish Sharma, VP, Asia-Pacific, NComputing, Inc., said, “The milestone achieved

by NComputing in India is a small step towards achieving 100% computer enablement in the country for the youth and knowledge workers, especially for those located in the tierII and tier-II cities/towns, and, the rural and remote areas."

ON THE RAMP

NETGEAR presents ReadyNAS 716 and 516

E T G E A R is offering ReadyNAS 716 and ReadyNAS 516 in India. ReadyNAS 716 is the fastest desktop NAS device. With a maximum capacity of 24TB, the six-bay ReadyNAS 716 enables easy storage and extreme throughput for businesses and campus environments supporting up to 500 concurrent users. It is also the only NAS in the market today capable of simultaneously streaming multiple large uncompressed Blu-ray ﬁles.

ReadyNAS716 incorporates features and capabilities previously available only from expensive, large-enterprise vendors and dramatically simpliﬁes deployment and manageability to provide businesses with affordable, dynamic, and reliable storage.

Oracle redefines its Data Integration Portfolio

racle has announced an enhanced version of Oracle GoldenGate 12c with expanded support for heterogeneous databases and big data solutions, improved manageability, and support for hybrid cloud environments. It provides real-time data integration and heterogeneous database replication. “Real-time data integration is a critical technology for organizations that want to

get more and faster value from their data and connect systems deployed in diverse cloud environments. By continuously broadening Oracle GoldenGate’s support for non-Oracle databases, deepening integration with Oracle technologies, and streamlining cloud integration capabilities, we’re helping customers to easily achieve continuous access to timely data,” said Jeff Pollock, VP of Product Management, Oracle.

WatchGuard launches NextGen Security Solutions

atchGuard Technologies has announced the nextgeneration firewall (NGFW) and unified threat management (UTM) appliances specifically engineered for mid-size and distributed enterprises, which are struggling to effectively and affordably secure networks in the face of explosive growth in bandwidth rates, connection speeds and encrypted traffic. The WatchGuard Firebox M400 and M500 appliances are up to 61 percent faster

December 2014

Brocade extends Dell PowerEdge FX bridges gap from traditional to new IT Effortless ell has announced represent the IT Network D the next- infrastructure of the generation of PowerEdge future and will bring Strategy FX architecture, greater levels of ﬂexibility

than competing solutions and up to 149 percent faster performing HTTPS inspection. "Our customers do not want to be forced to choose between protecting their networks and ensuring their end-users have the performance needed to do their jobs and with our new Firebox solutions, they don't have to," said Scott Robertson, Vice-President APAC & Japan, WatchGuard Technologies.

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rocade has announced advancements to The Effortless Network strategy, enabled by Brocade HyperEdge Architecture, including scale-out networking with the Brocade ICX 7750based distributed chassis solution, the new Brocade ICX 7450 enterprise campus stackable switch, and the availability of OpenFlow 1.3 support. “Campus customers require a highperformance network infrastructure that is simple to manage and that can scale at the speed of business. The latest innovations advance these capabilities and ensure that customers are prepared for the New IP,” said Jason Nolet, Brocade VP of Switching, Routing, and Analytics products.

Xerox introduces C60/C70 Printer

erox introduces the Xerox Color C60/C70 Printer that gives users a costeffective option for a wide range of printing needs. Suitable in any print environment, the device offers turnkey features and mediaweight versatility. Users can easily enhance and expand their application offerings to include rugged polyester labels, menus, signs and vinyl window clings. Balaji Rajagopalan, Executive Director, Technology, Channels & International Distributor Operations, Xerox India, said, “The launch of these printers yet again reinforces Xerox’s commitment to the Indian print industry by bringing the latest technology to the Indian subcontinent along with a global launch.”

combining efficient management of IT building blocks of server, storage and networking to optimize both modern and legacy workloads, bridging from a traditional datacenter to softwaredefined datacenter. Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions Group, Dell India, said, “Softwaredefined datacenters

enterprises by allowing them to optimize their IT environments to meet speciﬁc workload needs. Today, with the launch of our new products across the datacenter, we enable our customers to future proof their environments and embrace the 'softwaredeﬁned revolution', while minimizing the impact to legacy infrastructure."

SanDisk launches Ultra Fit USB 3.0 Flash Drive

anDisk has announced the release of the high-speed SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 Flash Drive that delivers exceptional performance in a tiny form-factor, while providing expanded storage for PCs and other devices. Media enthusiasts can now transfer a fulllength movie in 40 seconds, enjoy transfer speeds up to ten times faster than standard USB 2.0 drives and be conﬁdent that the streamlined USB

will offer reliable storage in minimal space. “As a leader in the ﬂash storage space, our goal has always been to deliver the best, most reliable products. While there are other USB 3.0 products on the market, SanDisk’s Ultra Fit USB 3.0 Flash Drive offers consumers superior performance and impressive capacity in an extremely compact design,” said Rajesh Gupta, Country Manager India, SanDisk Corporation.

Huawei and Red Hat to deliver OpenStack-based Cloud Solutions

uawei and Red Hat have announced a new global partnership to enable OpenStack-based cloud deployments. By expanding their relationship, Huawei and Red Hat aim to accelerate collaboration around OpenStack for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) required by Communication Service Providers (CSPs). Ren Zhipeng, President, Huawei's Cloud Computing Product Line, said, “We are honoured to expand our existing

partnership with Red Hat to include collaboration on OpenStack for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). Through open collaboration with partners like Red Hat, Huawei aims to support the business reform and transformation of the telecom industry. This partnership will focus on NFV and the development of joint solutions to foster an open, interconnected, and innovative ecosystem that supports the entire OpenStack community.”

ON THE RAMP

Delta strengthens its position in datacenter power solutions

elta Electronics has announced the global rollout of its Modulon DPH Series UPS 75/150kW, to join its existing 200kW model. Along with the launch of the new 75/150kW Series, an inbuilt rackmount p o w e r distribution cabinet and battery modules are also available as options for DPH, which allow upgrading as an ultracompact solution, including power

protection, power distribution, and battery runtime to streamline p o w e r management in small- and medium-sized datacenters. Suhas Joshi, Vice-President, Delta Power Solutions, stated, “With this highly intelligent and integrated UPS solution, Delta’s MCIS BU is conﬁdent the Modulon DPH series is the best choiceto provide backup power for modern datacenters in this dynamic era of Big Data.”

Konica Minolta introduces Bizhub PRESS C1100 and C1085

onica Minolta has announced the launch of the bizhub PRESS C1100 and bizhub PRESS C1085 colour digital presses which have set a new standard in productivity. These next-generation digital presses combine speeds with a wide range of substrate handling and ﬁnishing options for superior ﬂexibility and performance. “Konica Minolta

has always provided competitive products that provide consistently high-quality and meet user demands. The new bizhub PRESS C1100 and C1085 series sets a new benchmark in the colour production printer market. It will help us boost the productivity for improved workﬂow performance,” said V. Balakrishnan, EGM – Marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions IndiaPvt.Ltd.

BenQ showcases W+ Series Home projectors

enQ has launched home video projector W+ Series with two models – W1070+ and W1080ST+ in the short throw category. The launch of these newgeneration home video projector aims to reinforce BenQ’s market leadership and competitiveness as the leading projector brand in the 1080p projector segment. The W+ series is a complete full home entertainment package with exceptional audio performance and delightfully easy installation which can turn any living room into

December 2014

an instant home cinema that can be enjoyed by the family and friends. “The W+ series is targeted at people seeking a fun and easy way to have large screen cinematic experience for movies or sports with family and friends while being the comfort of their home. These new-generation home video projectors are what we’ve worked hard toward bringing the simplest home cinema solutions into the living rooms of young families,” commented Rajeev Singh, MD, BenQ India.

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QCS launches new switches from TRENDnet QCS Communication Technologies has announced the launch of best-in-class TRENDnet switches in India. These switches are listed on the Recommended Networking Product category as the best solution for home and business automation by Control4, a leading provider of personalized automation and control solutions. Naresh Padhee, Founder CEO, QCS Communication Technologies, said, "Smart homes and ofﬁces are here and the automation as well as security of smart homes are integrated and controlled from mobile, tablets and smartphones from anywhere by adapting home automation solution. Switches play a very important role and are the key component in home automation solution."

GajShield launches Firewall GajShield has launched GS560dc, the next-generation ﬁrewall designed to provide greater security to enterprises. This latest addition to GajShield's popular NextGeneration Firewall appliances is contextbased and has an enhanced UserSense engine for BYOD protection. Sonit Jain, CEO, GajShield, said, "We understand the challenges faced by enterprises these days. With emerging trends like BYOD and mobile, threats come both from external as well internal sources. Investing in good security infrastructure is not enough until you get the returns in terms of greater security and RoI. GS560dc is designed to deliver those capabilities with such compactness."

Seagate announces new Enterprise NAS HDD

argeting businesses seeking to optimize their computing for performance and reliability using Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems, Seagate Technology has announced its new Enterprise NAS HDD. With enterprise reliability and NAS optimized performance in up to 16-bays, the EnterpriseNAS drive is available in capacities up to an industry-leading 6TB, and is designed to perform at high levels even under demanding workloads and in environments that call for global availability and 24x7 accessibility. “As the industry

moves deeper into the cloud era, all businesses need solutions that enable applications to be accessed anywhere at any time. With our portfolio of NAS products, we can effectively target the needs of all types of businesses and scale with them as they grow in size. These drives are tailored to the requirements of businesses, ensuring customers have choices so they are only paying for the features they need,” said Scott Horn, Seagate VP of Marketing.

EMC reiterates hybrid cloud with new solution

MC Corporation has announced availability of the EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solution, delivering hardware, software and services from EMC and VMware to unite the strengths of private and public cloud. The EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solution enables IT-as-aService (ITaaS) in as few as 28 days. Organizations no longer will have to make tradeoffs between speed and agility of public cloud services and the control

and security of private cloud infrastructure. Vikas Arora, General Manager, Professional Services Delivery, AsiaPaciﬁc & Japan, EMC, said, “As per our 2014 EMC Survey with IT decision-makers, around three quarters of the IT decision-makers in India (76%) believe that a combination of public and private cloud services allows for a higher level of agility and security, and 31% have already deployed hybrid cloud.

Schneider Electric announces InfraStruxure for Indian SMBs

chneider Electric IT Business has announced “InfraStruxure” (ISX) for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) in India. The ISX for India solution is an offer which allows SMBs to deploy their IT solutions in an adaptable, affordable and simple fashion. Nikhil Pathak, VicePresident & Country General Manager – India & SAARC – IT Business, Schneider Electric India, said, “We at Schneider

Electric have taken an effort to deliver industryleading solutions through our extensive research and development, ‘InfraStruxure’ for SMB IT is one such answer that has been customized considering the Indian market. We believe it will be a compelling solution as it understands real-world customer challenges and offers a comprehensive, problem-solving and affordable approach.”

VOICE-N-DATA

Huawei and Ukko present LTE 450MHz Network

kko Mobile has announced going live with the world’s ﬁrst commercial LTE 450MHz network. At the launch, the network was proven to cover an astonishing 99.9% of the Finland population and became the network with the best LTE coverage overnight. As a strategic partner of UkkoMobile, Huawei provides endto-end LTE 450MHz network solutions. The deployment and commercial launch of the world’s ﬁrst commercial LTE 450MHz network marks the 450MHz

spectrum’s entrance into the LTE era. It is now widely expected that the 115 CDMA 450MHz networks across the world will migrate to LTE450MHz technology in due course. Huawei LTE 450MHz network solutions can not only facilitate the smooth migration of CDMA 450MHz to LTE 450MHz, but also re-use legacy network resources like base stations, sites, power, and antennas to help decrease network investment.

Videocon Telecom upgrades network to 2.75G EDGE

ideocon Telecom has announced their network upgrade to 2.75G EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution), which is a 3G standard Technology. This 2.75 G EDGE Network is capable of delivering consistent speeds up to 473.6 Kbps which is almost six times the maximum speeds delivered by conventional 2G Network. The company’s strategy to upgrade to 2.75G EDGE Network is based on the fact that

very large audiences of approx 80% of Mobile internet users still have 2G handsets and can be catered to by an enhanced 2.75G EDGE Network. Further, the 3G telcos offer 3G Network only in select pockets, which deteriorate the customer experience while moving from 3G pocket to 2G network. Here with 2.75G EDGE network, the telco will be able to offer a seamless network and experience to the Customers.

IBM and Ericsson become partners on 5G Antenna Design

BM and Ericsson have announced collaboration to jointly research phased-array antenna designs for 5G, allowing networks to provide customers with data speeds orders of magnitude faster than what is available currently. Thomas Norén, Head of Product Management Radio, Ericsson, says, “Ericsson is performing world-class radio research that will enable the extremely high data rates that will be required in the future.

December 2014

We have already showed 5 Gbps over-the-air in trials back in July. We are also working to solve the size barrier and look forward to developing antenna technology with IBM that will open up possibilities for new uses. We recently launched the industry’s most flexible small cell, which allows for concurrent use of multiple technologies.”

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Lava rekindles hope for Nokia

innish handsetmaker Nokia has got a buyer for its Chennai manufacturing unit, if market sources are to be believed. The Indian handset-maker Lava is in talks with Nokia to buy the latter’s non-operational Chennai factory. For this, the two companies have already signed a nondisclosure agreement. The deal, if struck, may bring hope of reemployment to the former employees of the plant. As per the news sources, the manufacturing team of Lava has visited the plant and did their assessment. Now, it is all set to put forward a proposal to Nokia in mid-December after taking all aspects into consideration. However, Nokia’s ongoing tax issue with the Indian Government needs to be sorted out before signing a ﬁnal deal.

Nokia Networks expands TATA DOCOMO's 3G network TATA DOCOMO is set to offer high-quality mobile broadband services to its customers. The operator has modernized its 3G network based on Nokia Networks' Single RAN (radio access network) product and services. Neeraj Dindore, chief technology ofﬁcer at TATA DOCOMO, said, "This initiative underlines TATA DOCOMO's focus on further enhancing customer experience by bringing best in class solutions for mobile data consumers in India. With its extensive knowledge about our infrastructure and expertise in executing similar deployments worldwide and more speciﬁcally in India, Nokia Networks was our natural choice for this project."

Operators plan massive growth in Carrier-Grade Wi-Fi

mdocs has announced at Small Cells Americas the results of new, independent research exploring the transition from “best-effort” to “carrier-grade” Wi-Fi networks among Multiple Service Operators (MSOs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). This transition comes in response to new end-user expectations for improved capacity and quality for “everywhere” content, and the need to support new revenue streams. The Amdocscommissioned research,

conducted by Real Wireless and Rethink Technology Research, reveals plans for massive growth in carrier-grade Wi-Fi. Service providers realize that “best-effort” Wi-Fi is becoming less proﬁtable and that new revenue streams can only be built once a higher quality of experience (QoE) is assured. This higher QoE is necessary for services such as TV everywhere, health monitoring, enterprise voice, online gaming, media streaming and voiceover Internet protocol (VoIP) services.

Wi-Fi Broadband Services launched at ND Railway Station Wi-Fi facility has been launched at the New Delhi railway station in line of the PM’s dream of Digital India. Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Union Minister of Railways, inaugurated the Wi-Fi Broadband Services at the station. The project is being executed by RailTel, a Public Sector Undertaking of the Ministry of Railways. Also present among others

on the occasion were Meenakshi Lekhi, Member of Parliament from New Delhi; Arunendra Kumar, Chairman, Railway Board; D.P. Pande, Member Trafﬁc, Railway Board; A.K.Mital, Member Staff, Railway Board; Pradeep Kumar, General Manger, Northern Railways; R.K.Bahuguna CMD, RailTel and other senior ofﬁcials of the Railways and RailTel.

Vodafone provides 3G Services across India

odafone India has announced the launch of 3G roaming services to its customers in Odisha circle with immediate effect. With this launch, Vodafone also becomes the ﬁrst Telco to provide 3G services across India. Deepak Saluja, Business Head – Odisha, Vodafone India, said, “We, at Vodafone, want to accelerate mobile internet adoption through deeper penetration, simpliﬁed consumption and provision of value addition. Vodafone customers in Odisha can now avail of faster,

smarter and better mobile internet experience. As a special introductory offer, Vodafone pre-paid customers will be offered a 40% off on data plans for ﬁrst 10 days. Any customer who takes a Data pack in this offer period will continue getting the same offer for the next 6 months also. We are conﬁdent that availability of 3G services will facilitate easier and quicker adoption of data services amongst Vodafone customers in Odisha, increase usage patterns and build a community of high-speed internet experiencers on the go.”

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Brocade Appoints Swapna Bapat Brocade has appointed Swapna Bapat to the newly created role of director of Systems Engineering for India. In this role, she will be responsible for leading the company’s technical developments in data center and software networking, as well as developing best practices and excellence for systems engineering in India. Bapat will be based in Bangalore, India, and will report to Brocade senior director of Systems Engineering for Asia Paciﬁc (APAC), Orcun Tezel. Bapat brings more than 16 years of experience in the networking industry to Brocade, with a remarkable track record in conceptualizing, developing, and deploying products and solutions in both the service provider and enterprise markets. She was most recently with Cisco India, where she was responsible for charting the go-to-market strategy for the Enterprise Networking portfolio. Prior to Cisco India, Bapat held technical leadership roles at Alcatel Lucent, Ciena and Juniper Networks, where she drove market adoption for various technologies including IPTV, mobility and network security.

Seagate ropes in Rex Dong as new MD for sales for Asia

Michael Fey joins Blue Coat as President & COO Blue Coat Systems has announced appointment of Michael Fey as President and Chief Operating Ofﬁcer effective immediately. Fey brings operational and go-to-market expertise that will drive revenue growth and extend the reach of Blue Coat in the market. He will report to Blue Coat CEO Greg Clark. As President and COO, Fey will bring to Blue Coat a critical focus on aligning the company’s leading web security, encryption management, cloud offerings and advanced threat protection solutions with customer requirements. Additionally, he will be responsible for ﬁeld and customer-facing business operations, and collaborating on strategy. “I have long admired Blue Coat’s solutions. Over the last three years, Blue Coat has innovated to deliver advance malware detection capabilities integrated with a strong forensics solution that creates a powerful security offering that is unique in the marketplace,” said Fey.

Micromax Informatics appoints new COO

Seagate has appointed Rex Dong as the MD of the sales and marketing organization for Asia, excluding China and Japan. Dong will assume responsibility for sales, marketing and business development for Asia, in addition to his existing responsibilities as the Country Manager of Taiwan, Seagate Technology. Dong was the former OEM Manager for Seagate in Taiwan from 1992 to 2000, and he joined Seagate as the Country Manager of Taiwan, responsible for sales, marketing in 2008. Prior to this, Dong was the General Manager of Portwell, President and Senior VP of Ennoconn Corporation, an embedded solutions provider owned by Foxconn Technology. In addition to that, he held various management, sales and marketing positions at Mitac and Wiso Electronic in Taiwan. Dong majored in Electronic Engineering at the Tamkang University, Taiwan and graduated from the eMBA of National Chengchi University, Taiwan.

Micromax Informatics has appointed Amarinder S. Dhaliwal, former Co-Founder & CEO of DONE BY NONE, as the Chief Operating Ofﬁcer (COO) for its new Internet brand, YU. With over 20 years of experience managing and incubating businesses, Amarinder has earlier led leading brands, including Indiatimes Shopping and Zigwheels.com. Amarinder’s appointment is a testimony to the vision for YU, which is to bring in the best minds from the Internet industry and build a world-class team. Amarinder will work closely with Rahul Sharma, Co-Founder,Micromax, to build an innovative digital brand that engages directly with the user community. Amarinder brings 20 years of diverse experience across e-commerce and internet, media businesses as well as investment banking. He has been in business leadership, sales & marketing, category management, strategy & business planning roles. Over the last decade, he has gone through a rich entrepreneurial experience of incubating new internet businesses.

Ganesan Arumugam steps down from his position at VMware

HCL Infosystems CEO Harsh Chitale quits; Premkumar Sheshadri joins

Ganesan Arumugam has quit VMware after serving the company in the capacity of Director of partner alliances and small medium businesses for ﬁve-years. Arumugam is credited with building VMware strong channel ecosystem and implementing several partner programs including the VMware Partner Network. He has an experience of over 20 years in the ﬁeld of Direct Sales, Channel and Global partner management. He had earlier served companies like Symantec, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Veritas, Wipro and Mastek. He has a MBA degree in Marketing and Finance from Bharathidasan Institute of Management Tiruchirapalli and a BE degree from Anna University.

As per the latest announcement made by HCL Infosystems, company’s Managing Director and CEO Harshavardhan Madhav Chitale has resigned from his post. However, he will remain with the company till this monthend. If reports ate to be believed, company’s Director and Executive Vice-Chairman Premkumar Seshadri will now take charge as MD, w.e.f. January 1, 2015. Infosystems spokesperson said in a statement, "Harshavardhan Madhav Chitale has resigned as Managing Director & CEO and as Director of the company with effect from close of business hours on December 31, 2014. The Board has in its meeting held on December 8, 2014, approved his resignation”. In September 2014, HCL Infosystems had appointed Premkumar as the executive vice chairman of the company. Prior to that, Premkumar was the group CEO of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise.

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December 2014

CHANNEL BUZZ

Cyberoam concludes Channel Convention 2014

yberoam has successfully concluded the third edition of its yearly Channel Convention in a grand fashion. The convention this year was organized in Dubai from October 9 to 11. The event with the theme “Think Big, Think Success” is organized every year by Cyberoam to acknowledge the efforts of its extensive partner community. Cyberoam Partner, Sudhir Sharma, Owner, Versatile Infosecurity, commented, “We are new to Cyberoam and this was our ﬁrst time at the convention. One must say that the conception and execution of the entire event has been exceptional. We had a great time and enjoyed our stay in Dubai. We wish to express our contentment with Cyberoam’s way of mixing business with fun.” Sunil Sharma, VicePresident – Sales & Operations (India & SAARC), Cyberoam, presented an overview of future opportunities and prospects in the security market in India.

Cyberoam MD & CEO Hemal Patel shared his experience as an entrepreneur and gave tips on how to promote value innovation within an organization, manage organizational tasks and find avenues to convert challenges into opportunities. Patel included several anecdotes from his own career to illustrate numerous decision challenges an entrepreneur comes across in a business and how having a firm faith in one’s own abilities can help people from losing the focus. Combining technology presentations with invaluable motivational sessions, an excursion to Atlantis and Burj Khalifa along with fun-filled activities during the awards night, Cyberoam Channel Convention was a big hit among the partner community.

K7 delights its partners with Bangkok Incentive Trip K7 Computing has completed its all-expense paid incentive trip to Bangkok and Pattaya for

This scheme was an extra step to further incentivize and engage our partners. Along with the

selective channel partners across the country. “Like our every other Trip schemes, visit to Bangkok received significant response from our channel partners. We are happy to achieve the significant mark of 600+ partners qualifying for the scheme and for the first time ever 600+ partners have qualified for a trip scheme operated by a Security Vendor.

consistent and effective schemes rolled out for the channel partners from time to time, we also ensure that state-of-the art Security Products are reaching the last leg that are tested rigorously by testing labs across the globe. To highlight at this point, K7 Total Security has gained the coved VB100 certiﬁcation again,” said Bepin Roy, Vice-President – Sales & Marketing – K7 Computing.

December 2014

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Intel concludes IoT Roadshow in Bengaluru

ntel has recently concluded its two-day Internet of Things (IoT) Roadshow in Bengaluru. 130 innovators from across India came together at this 24-hour hackathon to build IoTenabled solutions based on Intel Galileo Gen 2 development board and a total of 43 solutions were created. The winner, iAquadesk, created a smart IoT-enabled aquaculture solution that uses the principles of aquaponics. "Aquaponics” is a system of aquaculture in which the waste produced by farmed fish provides nutrients for plants grown hydroponically, which, in turn, purifies water –a selfsustaining ecosystem where plants and fish help each other to thrive. The solution takes automated corrective action to balance the variations based on data collected which can, in turn, help in maximizing yield, reducing risks and potentially useful in helping our water bodies. Narendra Bhandari, Director, APJ, Intel Software and Services Group, Developer Relations Division, said, “The objective of this roadshow was to provide a platform for young and enthusiastic

innovators and hobbyists in India to demonstrate their creativity using Intel IoT Developer Kit. The participants demonstrated keen ways to combine sensors, the IoTDeveloper Kit and cloud infrastructure in their implementations. IoT has the potential to improve our lives. Intel is investing with innovative products and growing the ecosystem of makers and collaborators in India and across the globe. The practical ideas and enthusiasm of developers motivates us to further this effort.” Other notable projects that made it to the top were Smart Shopping Cart that aims to automate the billing process and reduce waiting times, Posture Probe – a preventive healthcare solution by continuously measuring our posture, Smart Street Lights, Swachh Bharat, for efﬁcient garbage collection and disposal, and Transynth – a gesture-based sound synthesizer.

TAIT members meet to discuss FAIITA proposal

s per the directives from FAIITA on the proposed protest to refrain from purchasing fresh stocks effective from December 15th 2014 onwards, TAIT convened a meeting with its members to have a discussion on the issue. K. R. Chaube, TAIT President briefed the members about the predatory pricing at which e-commerce portals are selling their goods. Champakraj Gurjar, Regional Representative, - India West, FAIITA updated the members on the series of dialog FAIITA had with the Vendors, National Distributors at National level. The meeting concluded that TAIT will reafﬁrm its stand to support proposed refrain from purchase from 15th December 2014 and will commit to show solidarity on the issue with the fellow IT associations across the country. It was also opined by the advisory members that Debit note will not be raised on T1 Channel Partners (National Distributors) by the T2 (Sub distributors, Regional distributors) / T3 & T4 (Dealers,

System Integrators, Retailers) on the price disparity of their stocks. There will also be efforts to convince T1 Channel Partners to take back their unsold stocks by OEM/Vendor due to these concerns. The companies from which purchase will be refrained are Apple, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Canon, D-Link, Ricoh, Epson, Brother, Samsung, A DATA, IOMega, Seagate, WD, Hitachi, SanDisk, Transcend, Kingston, BenQ, LG, Viewsonic, AOC, Logitech, iBall, Intex, F&D, TPLINK, Netgear, Sennheiser, Cooler Master, Sony, Digilink and Portronics. The members are also advised to share the names of OEM/Vendors that have predatory pricing issue for their products through e-commerce portals. TAIT members who are the Sub-Distributors, Regional Distributors are advised to defer their payments to National Distributors. A discussion with National Distributors led by Parag Shah and Pravin Dhoka will soon be followed.

TECHNOMANIA

Android security acquires a “New Meaning” with Samsung KNOX C

andy Crush, WhatsApp and Facebook or Salesforce, Webex and Citrix? BYOD, CYOD, COPE are the buzz words in the enterprise mobility space that points to one large trend – employees want to bring in their choice of device and employers want to make sure that the data being accessed on these devices stay secure. Companies in India that permit these policies mostly allowed only email to be accessed from the mobile devices. But that is changing at a rapid pace. As business expands beyond geographical and political boundaries, enterprises are forced to look at enabling business as fast as possible to increase productivity and revenue. Be it Salesforce automation, Supply chain management, Mobile Analytics, healthcare, HR, etc have become important tools for the Indian workforce to be readily available on their mobile devices. The Indian enterprises were very reluctant to the BYOD trend initially. But as BYOD Solutions matured and added cloud solutions, enterprises started seeing the business edge and financial advantages and started embracing BYOD in a big way. While BYOD spread, Android has become the most preferred platform in the BYOD scenario and, according to market figures, Samsung is leading the pack with nearly 40% of this mobility pie. To rightly balance the personal and work requirement, Samsung, in its leadership responsibility, has introduced Samsung KNOX, the most secure platform available for BYOD in today’s Android landscape. Samsung KNOX is a holistic enterprise platform that provides enhanced security and container solutions with cloud-based enterprise mobility management services

December 2014

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as well as a marketplace, which provides KNOX products and Software-as-aService (SaaS) apps. With greater security and improved usability, Samsung KNOX provides an evolving platform for today's dynamic enterprise mobility requirements. It provides for two personas – Work and Personal that are completely independent of each other and allows enterprises to have complete control of enterprise data on the work persona. Samsung KNOX meets the needs of the most demanding enterprise business environments by offering comprehensive protection against malware attacks and hacking with its multi-layered security model and industry-leading device management capabilities. Samsung is able to achieve this by completely revamping the Android stack right from the hardware layer. Enhanced Security is provided throughout the security chain within the platform layers. It delivers the security needed for the enterprise Android devices from the hardware to the application level. The multi-faceted security is rooted in the tamper-resistant device hardware through the Linux kernel and Android operating system. The result of this is that this solution is strong enough to run even government networks. Galaxy devices with KNOX embedded have received Common Criteria (CC) certification, as officially documented by Gossamer Labs of Catonsville, MD. The common criteria is the international “gold standard” for secure and trusted systems, specifically to ensure that they satisfy the predefined set of security requirements designed for enterprises. Samsung KNOX confers enhanced security upon mobile

devices, helping enterprises protect mobile access to high-value information assets. The Samsung KNOX-enabled devices have also been approved by the US Department of Defense for use in DOD networks. KNOX is the first Android platform to achieve this significant milestone on the Android platform. In addition to the core features of KNOX, Samsung has also announced new cloud-based services, KNOX EMM and KNOX Marketplace, broadening the KNOX customer base by catering specifically to SMBs.

Conclusion Whether you are planning to empower your sales force with mobile-based CRM, or enhancing employee’s productivity with internal apps on the mobile, providing your executive team with business analytics that needs to be delivered in the most secure way on an Android platform, then Samsung KNOX is the only solution available in the market today. Samsung KNOX provides the best-inclass Android security that is compatible with most leading MDM solutions or on its own through Samsung KNOX EMM – the free cloud-based MDM solution for KNOX-enabled Samsung Devices.

The Ministry of Urban Development has published a concept note on public domain on the development of smart ci es. It is good for us that there is a commitment to build a resilient smart city. However, the understanding what would cons tute a resilient smart city is presently a work in progress. There is a whole set of commitments that are required from the ULB or state governments that will take charge of smart city project within India. These do include disaster management plan and if we are talking about 100 smart ci es then there are ci es that are yet to be included. It also involves a colligate system of decision-making. Prof. Jagan Shah Director, Na onal Ins tute of Urban Aﬀairs

Purushottam Kaushik M. D. Sales, CISCO Systems

J Jena, Director, TCOE India

Dr. Jyoti Parikh Executive Director, IRADe

R. U. Mahesh, Director, TARU

Modera ng the round table discussion

“When we are talking of smart cities, we need cities that are not just about technology, economics or social. It has to be a good mix of physical, economic and social part. We talk a lot of technologies when it comes to smart cities, putting up of various systems, we need to get the governance system going, need to get the people involved, need to see how resilience can be built into different sectors. How do we get smart cities for everyone, where everybody can feel it is their city and they must take care. It is bringing everybody together into the system and makes it resilient. Resilience also comes getting the governance structure right.” Prof. Usha P. Raghupathi NIUA

The subsequent discussions were wide-ranging, but participants agreed on the importance of the following points: • Ensure India’s Smart Cities are also resilient cities • Employ smart methods to manage limited natural resources • Use early warning systems to mitigate risks • Provide reliable access to services necessary for compact and smart cities • Promote network - informed planning • Create an enabling environment for the private sector and communities • Introduce community-up planning • Employ big data for ULB management – Regulating urban metabolism • Harness big data to target services and infrastructure on the poor • Shift the focus of traffic solutions from mobility to access

Saon Roy Senior Fellow, ICRIER

The Panel

Sunandhah Tiwari Deputy Director, South Asia Secretariat, ICLEI

Priyanka Kochhar Senior Programme Manager TERI

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December 2014

OFFICE AUTOMATION SPECIAL

Inaugural Session (L to R): Dr. Alok Bharadwaj, Chairman - CII OA&I Division and EVP, Canon India, Shri S.N. Tripathi, IAS, J.S. MSMF, GOI, Mr. Vipin Tyagi, E.D - C Dot, Shri S.N. Srivastava, ADG Supply, DGS ND, GOI, Shri Saurabh Diddi, Energy economist, BEE, Ministry of Power, GOI, Dr. R. C. Chopra, Sr. Advisor, CII.

CII hosts a seminar to promote ‘Digital India’ Vision O

fﬁce Automation & Imaging (OA&I) sector has come to be recognized as key to personal and organizational productivity. The product categories covered by this sector are integral to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry and are increasingly ﬁnding tremendous opportunity in myriads of applications – be it in e-Governance, Education, Healthcare, Insurance, Rural Development, Smart Cities,

Surveillance, etc. and playing a vital role in empowering inclusive growth and making the businesses more efﬁcient. The “Digital India” initiative is one of the most focussed agenda for the Government and OA&I products would be the key to realizing Government’s vision of Digital India and Smart Cities. CII OA&I Division has been organizing this annual seminar for the last four years. CII’s effort is to create a platform for “With new energy and enthusiasm instilled by the leadership, the Office Automation & Imaging industry would be able to realize the objectives envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ‘Digital India’.” Dr. Alok Bharadwaj, Chairman - CII OA&I Division and EVP, Canon India “There is an unimaginable need for digitization, particularly in rural areas. Indigenous Research & Development are keys for achieving the desired objectives of Digitization. There is a need for Digitization especially in rural India.” Mr. Vipin Tyagi Executive Director, CDOT

December 2014

“Digitization is significant for democratization of information and it plays important role in the growth and expansion of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. If we become digital, it would be beneficial for us in every aspect of life.” Mr. S N Tripathi Joint Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, GOI www.varindia.com

deliberating on the subjects not only of topical interest but also in line with the business interests of the majority members. This year, the theme for the Fifth CII OA&I annual event was “Digital India for Skilled, Smart & Secure Nation”. The theme is in line with the vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister of developing “100 Smart Cities” and the Digital India initiative. The Seminar provided a platform to highlight and deliberate on the strategic importance of

OA&I products in realizing the vision of smart and secure nation, imparting need-based and customized skills, extending the reach of existing pedagogic system and enhancing the quality of education, harnessing the demographic dividend, identify potential areas of application where the deployment of OA&I products would result in higher productivity, efﬁciency and in turn result in raising quality of life. “With effect from 1 January 2015 DGS&D would achieve complete digitization, doing away with the manual processing of files that’s currently being followed. There is a need for strengthening of infrastructure, better standards and robust testing facilities.” Mr. S N Srivastava ADG Supply, Directorate General of Supply & Disposal, GOI "Digitization plays indispensable role being played by digitization in creating an energy efficient economy. BEE has a progressive vision for making energyefficiency standards mandatory over a period of time.” Mr. Saurabh Diddi Energy Economist, BEE, Ministry of Power

"We organized skill development programme last year, which was the star programme where we did the entire process ranging from recruitment, testing and assessment through the digital platform. Even the results had been uploaded digitally and certificates had been issued accordingly. Under this programme, 1.4M people from Aug 16th last year to 31st of Oct this year participated in this programme." Mr. Dilip Chenoy CEO & MD, National Skill Development Corp.

"Office automation is very important for us as hospitals cater to a lot of digital data and information in the form of patient’s reports and bills. We have around 2,300 employees in our hospital, working in different positions. We have deployed numerous MFDs (multifunction devices), placed on different locations and connected with the central control, which are capable of scanning and printing. In the next phase, we are planning to give control to people for using these devices according to the role they are playing in our hospital.” Mr. Kapil Mehrotra CIO, Artemis Hospital

"As we all know that the digitization of the skill development, which is nowadays shaping the scheme of things, is the foundation for the economic growth of a country. So, industry should bank on the Sector Skill Development Council standards, which unfortunately have not been followed yet completely." Mr. R. Manikandam Director, Business Development, PPS, HP India

"As far as digitization is concerned, we are all for digitization. We are trying to put customers on our website completely. They can access our website from wherever they are for downloading any policy, from next year onwards.” Mr. R K Sahijwani General Manager(Marketing), IFFCO TOKIO General Insurance

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Panel Discussion: Session I

Panel Discussion: Session II

The Panel Discussion on Document Security & Surveillance - Opportunities & Challenges was moderated by Mr. Anuj Aggarwal, Senior Director Canon India Pvt Ltd. and the panelists included Mr. Gulshan Karmani, Sr Manager (Security Product) - Sony India Pvt Ltd; Mr. Subroto K Panda, CIO - Anand and Anand; Mr. Kapil Mehrotra, CIO - Artemis Hospital and Mr. R K Sahijwani, General Manager (Marketing) - IFFCO TOKIO General Insurance Co Ltd. The panelists deliberated on how security has undergone a paradigm shift and with the ever-increasing volumes of data in everyday life, how protecting the data and documents have become an important concern for stakeholders and owners alike. Additionally, the emphasis put on digitization of records and documents further lends momentum to the current Digital India campaign of the Govt. and the panelists gave their views on how this will help different departments to cut down on costs, time and energy and keep authenticated records of important information. However the next level of innovation has to be planned in this regard.

The Panel discussion on Education & Skill Development was moderated by Mr. R. Manikandam, Director, Business Development, Printing & Personal Systems, HP India and the panelists included Mr. Yogesh Sachdeva, Director, Axis Computech & Peripherals; Mr. Rakesh Rathi, Head-Education Vertical, Ricoh India; Mr. Dilip Chenoy, CEO & MD, National Skill Development Corporation; Dr. M Sasikumar, Associate Director, Centre of Devlopment of Advanced Computing; Ms. Mona Jain, Head-Planning and Strategy, HP India.

Emphasizing education as one of the most important requirements for any nation, CII organized its second panel discussion on the significance of Education & Skill Development. It has been revealed that the Govt. has allocated Rs.500 cr. in the Union Budget 2014-15 to set up five more IITs as well as five new IIMs to further boost growth in the education sector. With a view to realize the vision of the Digital India and Smart Cities, it has been discussed that promotion of education is a must and OA&I products help in imparting skills of uniform quality in sync with the user’s requirements at any geographical location.

Product display Kiosks

Sony

Ricoh www.varindia.com December Canon 2014

OFFICE AUTOMATION SPECIAL

Customer demands spur Office Automation growth in India In recent years, automation has emerged as the key buzzword across industries, especially in the printing business. Office automation today has become indispensable to run a modern office and its infrastructure. Customers today demand less manual operations and rely more on automation to help them save time, increase efficiency and concentrate on what matters most – their core business. For example, Database and Spreadsheet programs running on high-powered personal computers allow ordinary users to input, store and use data in ways that once would only have been possible on large mainframe computers operated by specialist programmers. However, urbanization is also another factor that is adding to the growth of office automation. Generally, there are two parallels to the Office Automation industry: one is the organized sector where there are brands offering printing solutions and the other is the unorganized sector. Apparently, both are of the same size today, but with BIS coming in and the government becoming stricter with regulations, end-customers will benefit the most as they can enjoy a reliable product that has warranty and the latest technologies embedded in it. This will trigger a huge growth and this growth is further going to penetrate into the rural areas. Once that happens, the market will automatically expand.

Dr Alok Bharadwaj, Executive Vice-President, Canon India Pvt. Ltd With over 1,100 registered patented technologies in Digital cameras, 2,300 in Inkjet printers, 5,600 in multifunctional printers, Canon has emerged as one of the leading technology innovators in the digital imaging space worldwide. It takes pride in not only bringing quality products to the market but also contributes to minimizing environmental burden through effective application of environmental technologies. The company focusses on the development of resource-conserving products that are smaller, lighter and easy to recycle. There are several growth engines in India for Canon such as Education, Healthcare, BFSI, Pharma, Manufacturing and IT-ITeS where there is high document centricity, which not only involves printing and scanning but also includes operations around document. “This is the reason why the whole gamut of digital imaging has moved beyond hardware. These verticals are particularly creating new opportunities at a faster rate.” For 2015, there are several new marketing programmes that have been launched or will be launched across these different verticals. The thrust on three of these initiatives is going to be quite innovative. One of them is expansion of its business services. “What started as hardware initially has moved into services and Canon is now looking at offering several business services and converting the proposition from a pure hardware supplier to one taking contracts to handle entire end-to-end. For instance, for a library that wants to get its books digitized, Canon here will not supply any hardware but involve itself into the entire digitization process. Likewise, record services, record management and e-publishing are several of the services Canon has in its portfolio.” Since system integration has not been leveraged well by Canon, a strong thrust on system integrators will be another initiative by Canon for many of the mid-end and high-end products. “The third will be the initiative around consumer market which are our Inkjet printers, Digital SLRs and PIXMA printers. Here, we are looking at a younger generation as potential customers. Large initiatives will be taken at the school and the college levels and even for the school children who are not our customers yet. But this initiative will ensure that we are creating a pipeline for future customers. That is vital when it comes to B2C customers.” These initiatives can be a big opportunity for Canon to grow in the times to come.

Lalit Chaturvedi, Marketing Manager, Kyocera For Kyocera, education is an important vertical. It already has a campaign running in Kerala in the government-run schools where Kyocera has its products installed. “The campaign is designed in accordance with the convenience of the school teachers and students where just prior to 10 minutes of the start of exams the command is given and the question paper starts printing. 5 minutes prior, the question papers are distributed to the students. These are some of the solutions we have for the education sector. We started in a small way in Kerala and the same model will spread to other parts of the country.” Talking about its GTM strategy, Kyocera has two modes of reaching its customers. It has the direct Channel in which it has its sales people who sell to the corporates and the Government and then the dealer network to cater to smaller markets like tier-II and -III. “The corporate sector will continue buying high-end machines and solutions, but the customers in smaller cities are coming to the level where they are beginning to understand the internet. So that is the real market for us.” 90% of its sales happen in the smaller cities through its Channel and remaining 10% in the Corporate, but the revenue stream usually remains the same. Because in corporates the high-end machines that get sold cost around Rs.12–13 lakh, but the individual units sold in the smaller cities will cost Rs.30,000–Rs.40,000 each. So the revenue when seen for both the set of customers remain at par. In 2015, Kyocera wants to establish itself in rural markets so that it is there when the market for printing solutions evolve. “Kyocera not only aims at business expansion or proﬁt making, but we also engage in CSR activities such as providing jobs because we need people to run these machines and to deliver spares. So it becomes a win-win situation for both us and the society.”

December 2014

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V. Balakrishnan, EGM, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd With the Digital India initiative of the government in the pipeline, Konica Minolta looks forward to playing a major role in it. It partners with such organizations that specialize in addressing these segments. While it offers the technological ability, the partnered companies would provide the services. “Our products and solutions are designed to address such initiatives. The opportunity to grow is good as economic activity picks up. So, overall, we are looking forward to growth. In the times to come, Services, Manufacturing, Government and Financial Services will provide good opportunity for us to grow.” Konica Minolta focusses on creating as many connect points as possible with its prospective and existing customers. Most of these activities are focussed on one-to-one activities of the target segments. This enables the company to promote its unique value proposition and create new value for customers. As for its distribution network, it has opted for a very ﬂat channel structure. “We are partnering with regional distributors across India. This enables us to connect to the Channel community quickly and also position our products at compelling price points while assuring good returns to the channel – primary and resellers.” Konica Minolta has a 24X7 customer service call centre dedicated to cater to its customer technical enquiries and it has been recently revamped for better accessibility and to serve its customers in a much better way. Majority of Konica Minolta machines are connected to its service centres. So if any machine is facing any problem, the centres are automatically notiﬁed about the problem, even before the customer could call or register the complaint.

Balaji Rajagopalan, Executive Director, Technology, Channels & International Distributor Operations, Xerox India Xerox has a strong presence in the print services and equipment market with a strong service support network across the country. Both the services and technology business are the verticals in which Xerox sees most of the growth in and they will continue to be its focus areas in India. “We as a company are relentlessly focussed on delivering differentiated and innovative technologies and solutions that are future-ready as well as industry-leading. To cater to the growing demand, Xerox has equipped its products with features which enable automation of workflows. Xerox’s automated solutions provide an integrated, modular, and scalable approach to workflow automation, enabling lower operating costs and increased revenues for customers. In printing equipment, we also brought in the next level of evolution with our revolutionary ConnectKey controller which allows our equipment to seamlessly integrate with the workflows and connect to the cloud with enhanced security.” In the production area, Xerox has further strengthened its portfolio this year with the introduction of Xerox Versant 2100 and Xerox Colour C60/C70 that have already set new benchmarks in productivity, quality and efficiency. The digital printing market is growing steadily at a rate of 30% and with these new launches, it is hopeful to further strengthen its presence in this market segment. Xerox’s GTM approach will continue to be through its channel partners. “Earlier, within the business model, we used to have a GC team, which was associated with 40 partners and a non-GC team with 300 partners. We decided to merge the two teams to leverage the engagement of these partners for equipment sales. We have also emphasized furthermore on training and equipping our partners to do business better and brighter and we will bring in new initiatives and models as we move ahead in the year.” In the coming year, with the government’s push towards “Digital India”, emergence of new technologies and applications, specifically connecting devices and machines will further catch the attention of all. Indian enterprises have begun to realize that there is a need to build intelligent and innovative solutions. We believe customer evolution is set to extend beyond traditional verticals such as banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), telecommunications, healthcare to retail, ecommerce and public sector and Xerox looks forward to this change.

Toru Hasegawa, Divisional Managing Director, Solutions Division, Panasonic India Panasonic is heavily focussed on the SME Segment. It believes in the introduction of such models which can give value add to the end-consumers and ensure that the customers get value-for-money by offering him lower CPC through programmes like Genuine Reﬁll, thereby bringing the total cost of ownership down. Apart from a customer-centric approach, it introduces regular channel and loyalty programmes for Tier-I and Tier-II markets to motivate all its performing partners and SIs to consolidate a strong relationship. “Panasonic currently has 1,115 unique service centres providing one-stop solutions and 250 brand shops and we are looking at expanding them further. We are focussed on localization of products and technologies to suit the domestic requirements, by making ‘Indovation’ integral to its business strategy which means creating products in India for the Indian market. As a philosophy, for us the customer comes ﬁrst and we provide the best after-sales service to cater to customer needs and focus on customer’s satisfaction, which is of utmost importance to us.” Considering the urbanization challenges, India has taken the right path to manage its urbanization better by the initiative of creating 100 smart cities. The innovations in sustainability and advancements in technology will result in evolving and reinventing Indian cities to become world-class sustainable townships, which will not only improve the quality of lives for residents, but have very less negative environmental impact too. However, there is also a time factor consideration to this as creating smart cities could potentially take up to 10–20 years and not only requires government’s initiative but citizens involvement too. Panasonic is equally committed towards contributing to the society and environment with technological innovations. Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town is one such initiative on its part to build a sustainable, self-reliant and smart city in the vicinity of Tokyo.

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December 2014

INDUSTRY WATCH

Beckoning a “Progressive” Tomorrow with Smart City With the unveiling of the ambitious plan of building 100 Smart Cities already spelling a big opportunity for both IT and telecom vendors and spurring a great amount of business interests, what remains to be seen is how the vision is going to be realized with the adoption of the right business model and with necessary regulatory policies in place. A look at how different vendors view this opportunity as –

“smart city” is an urban region that is highly advanced in terms of infrastructure, sustainable real estate, communications as well as market viability. It is one which focusses on high-quality knowledge, communication and social infrastructure. In a smart city, information technology is the principal infrastructure and is the basis for providing essential services to citizens. The essence of smart cities is, thus, to ensure how citizens can essentially improve every aspect of their daily living – governance, healthcare, retail, ﬁnance and work with the help of technology. Many leading nations across the globe have integrated technology in their growth strategy and have taken up several initiatives in this regard. Noteworthy amongst them are the smart cities initiatives in Singapore, United States and EU countries – Vienna, Toronto, Paris, New York, London, Tokyo, Berlin, Copenhagen, Hong King and Barcelona. India isn’t far behind as the country is gradually realizing the true potential of developing smart cities, with the Government of India announcing initiation of projects in 34

Niranjan Thirumale Chief Technology Officer EMC India Center of Excellence

December 2014

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Prashant Chaudhary Sr. Director, Sales – State Government, CA Technologies smart cities across 7 states. To this extent, the Ministry of Urban Development has unveiled “Concept Note on Smart Cities”, giving broad contours about smart cities and their related aspects like ﬁnancing and selection criteria. The smart city project opens up a huge opportunity in each aspect of smart city planning, project execution and management. Though at present the government has allocated Rs.7,060 crore (approx. $1.2 billion) in the current year, the overall investment needed for building smart cities will be much larger. “It is clear that we live in a world where billions of people and devices are increasingly interconnected with each other, which we call the hyper-connected world. The Internet at the heart of this hyper-connected world plays an important role in making these connections. The Indian Government’s move to create smart cities as one of the key initiatives under an overall umbrella puts emphasis on the digital medium to interact with and provide services to its citizens,” reiterates Sidharth Malik, Managing Director & Vice-President, India, Akamai Technologies. There are many technological platforms

involved in realizing a smart city but not limited to automated sensor networks and data centers alone. “Though this may sound futuristic, it is now likely to become a reality as the ‘smart cities’ movement unfolds in India under the guidance of the newlyelected government. Every service in a city, ranging from energy management, pollution controlling, trafﬁc monitoring, parking area monitoring, etc depends on network and communication services. The IT infrastructure in a smart city, therefore, is required to be evaluated and monitored through a controlled data center that can distribute, allocate as well as track utilization of resources,” remarks Prashant Chaudhary, Sr Director, Sales – State Government, CA Technologies. In today’s world, consumers are increasingly connected when they are on the move and expect to be able to access information and services anywhere. Ambarish Deshpande, Managing Director, Blue Coat Systems – India, states his view on this, “Basically, a smart city is nothing but allowing people to get more connected and work from anywhere they want to. I think it is the initiative that is going

Sidharth Malik MD & VP - India Akamai Technologies

Purushottam Kaushik MD – Sales Cisco to bring in connectivity and eventually you are going to have all the cities connected to each other through some mechanism. There is a huge amount of infrastructure that is required, to start with. For instance, with connectivity and the entire city being Wi-Fi connected, you can access the internet continuously on the move. It is there today to some extent, but you are probably experiencing it in a fragmented manner but tomorrow it will be more in a consolidated way.” However, a city has to be safe in order to be smart. Video surveillance can play a big role in improving the lives of the people and enable the city to transform into a safe and a smart city. Cameras can be installed across the city to track trafﬁc and for monitoring important locations. These cameras can be controlled via a centralized network and get alerts on any untoward incidents and accidents. “In the long term, video surveillance systems can be used to collect sophisticated information including motion detection and smart analytics and receive automated alerts. This kind of an advanced system will enable authorities to take the right measures when required and equip them to prevent criminal activities,” says Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications India & SAARC. Axis Communications is well equipped to grow in this changing environment. The company has already provided surveillance solutions to Junagadh which is helping the city police to have a better command on the city. The Superintendent of Police (SP) of Junagadh was looking for a video surveillance solution for the city for two primary reasons

Ambarish Deshpande Managing Director Blue Coat Systems- India

– first to keep a watch on terrorist and antisocial activities in the city and secondly to assist the police departments as a proactive tool to detect and deter criminal elements. The surveillance solutions were installed at eight different locations spread all over the city of Junagadh. Niranjan Thirumale, Chief Technology Officer, EMC India Center of Excellence, underlines the fact that data is central to governance and smart city architecture. “Being able to handle the explosion in data from sensors and other data capture mechanisms, storing, managing, and securing the data will become the key aspects of a Smart City. In the end, the smartness of a Smart City will depend on how we are able to create value out of the data and use it for intelligent, automated decision-making.” Putting across his views on how it is important for a Smart city to become resilient, Purushottam Kaushik, MD – Sales, Cisco says, “We need to define the time period in which a smart city needs to be built and accordingly the business model will evolve. Secondly, none of the factors like resilience or smart

Ashish Gulati Country Head India Telit Wireless Solutions will work unless there is an integrated view. So an integrated approach is what is necessary if we wish to get some productive results and fill in the gaps wherever they occur. Third is sustainability. We have around 45 odd solutions and have deployed it in smart cities like Barcelona, Chicago etc. But the real challenge will arise when we talk about the Indian setting, because if we try deploying any of these 3 solutions here, none will work. We need to think how they will work at an affordable rate here and adapt them to the Indian environment." Vendors upbeat about Smart City opportunities... With Smart City solutions and the foundation of a Smart City laid, life is envisioned to be quicker, efficient and effective and citizens would witness a change with diverse initiatives for transportation, energy, water and public safety. It would benefit the workforce, citizens and the environment alike. The focus is on Digital intelligence which is the key to making life safer and

Sudhindra Holla Country Manager, Axis Communications India & SAARC more efficient. Additionally, there would be more benefits when objects become more intelligent for understanding complexity and respond to it swiftly. As a market, smart city technologies will encompass an incredible diversity of customers, suppliers, technologies and requirements. Sarvesh Mishra, AGM – Marketing, PTNO, Schneider Electric India, observes, “The Government’s decision to earmark Rs.7,060 crore for smart cities development is definitely going to attract FDI from global multinationals and create a competitive landscape that shall boost the country’s longterm potential economic growth rate.” As far as Schneider is concerned, it has recently launched the FTTH (Fibre to the Home) solution and is extremely upbeat about it, and because of the numerous advantages it brings on to the table, Schneider believes that it is the future of cabling in India. According to Murugesan, Director – Sales & Marketing, Enterprise Networks, TE Connectivity, “The new Government’s initiative has boosted the morale of vendors across the IT, telecom, cabling, networking, and enterprise sectors which are deeply interested in creating smarter cities and developing infrastructure corridors.” “With our successful track record of TOSP solutions for FTTH systems, we are well placed in the upcoming smart city boom. Fiber to the Home concept is all set to meet Indian subscribers’ inexhaustible requirement of bandwidthhungry applications, thus changing our way of life,” he adds.

Satish N Jadhav Director – IoT – Embedded Sales Group, Intel South Asia www.varindia.com

December 2014

FACE TO FACE

Zebra optimistic on the growth in APAC region I

ndia is emerging as one of the world’s largest and fastestgrowing markets for smart cards. The market size is anticipated to reach $1 billion by 2015. A huge component of the growth is expected to come from the ongoing government projects like PMJDY, RSBY, PDS, driving licence, vehicle registration, financial inclusion, toll collection, metro rail projects, 100 smart cities project, etc. With a population of over 1.2 billion people, the ability to track all assets and transactions occurring across India is a real challenge. Through automatic identification and data-capture (AIDC) technologies like smart cards, Zebra’s solutions grant every individual, asset, and transaction occurring in the country a unique digital voice, thereby generating a pool of real-time insights and intelligence and giving stakeholders a detailed picture of each operation. Latest trends in smart card technologies According to the Transparency Market Research, the global smart card market was valued at US$4.5 billion in 2011 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.7% to reach US$7.9 billion by 2018. The telecommunication sector is the largest revenue generator for the smart card market, contributing about 50 per cent of the revenue. Geographically, EMEA is the largest revenue generator for the smart cards market on account of technology competence and demand for secured transactions. Smart card-enabled applications are becoming more prevalent in many of today’s businesses. The payments industry in India is moving towards smart cards. There has been rapid acceptance of smart card technology for fast, convenient, and secure credit and debit payment. Recently in India, Indian Railways has introduced “Go India” smart card last month to enable passengers to pay for tickets for long- or short-distance journeys in the reserved and unreserved class, including suburban service, with an aim to reduce transaction time at booking counters. Another example is Mother Dairy who has recently teamed up with the State Bank of India to introduce a smart card, which can be used to purchase products from its outlets instead of paying in cash. Zebra Technologies’ modus operandi Technology, whilst being an enabler for businesses, can create risks if not properly managed. However, there are many ways in which the end-user can mitigate such security risks, simply by being more aware of the way they use technology. For example, by simply monitoring and managing access to card printers that issue secure ID cards, the organization takes steps towards protecting themselves from loss of data integrity and/or identity theft, which could result in reputational damage and even financial losses. From the other side of the fence, technology has also made notable advancements in improving security. For example, Zebra’s ZXP Series 7 and Series 8 card printers comes with the best covert and overt industry-leading security features, including secure Holographic lamination, on-demand UV printing, secure lock for individual printer, software lock features, and even AES encryption for communication with the printers. Ajay Rao, Head of Cards Business & Pre-Sales, India and Subcontinent, ZebraTechnologies, shares, “With proper management and implementation of such solutions, Zebra significantly reduces the amount of security risk they are exposed to.” Zebra Technologies’ presence in India With India emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for smart cards, Zebra can see potential in this market as well. Aside from the range of government projects using smart cards

Ajay Rao Head of Cards Business & Pre-Sales, India and subcontinent Zebra Technologies

"With the introduction of new projects by the Prime Minister of India like PMJDY and 100 smart cities, India will soon witness a huge surge in demand for smart cards. The above trend clearly indicates that India will soon surpass the projected growth rate of smart cards." technologies, there are several other sectors that are also jumping on the bandwagon. Illustrating the increasing usage of smartcards at different places in India, Ajay Rao further says, “In the education industry, schools and colleges require smart cards for access management (student and staff IDs, library records), tracking records (student registration, exam entries, network log-ins, club memberships), and also in enabling cashless campuses. In the retail sector, smart cards are being adopted to improve the level of service provided through loyalty programmes (loyalty cards, gift cards, etc.), access management (staff IDs), and tracking of assets and transactions (cash register log-ins). Lastly, the BFSI sector has also started adopting instant personalization of customer cards, micro-banking, e-passbooks to improve the service level provided to customers.” As far as the market share is concerned, Asia Pacific represents about 15% of Zebra’s total sales. It is one of the fastest-growing regions, and they have a variety of customers across the manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and transportation & logistics industry. Zebra is confident about seeing more partnerships from the APAC region. satinder@varindia.com

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December 2014

FACE TO FACE

Cyberoam's success mantra is

'Channel First' strategy

acked by a strong management team with in-depth experience in the security domain, Cyberoam offers one of the most comprehensive portfolios of security solutions for SMEs and SMBs. It provides compelling next-gen security features to SMBs, which include high-performance EAL4+ certified firewall, plug-and-play IPS, VPN, industry-leading application control and visibility and exhaustive web content filtering. Besides these, Cyberoam’s layer-8 user-identitybased security remains a cutting-edge capability that defends SMBs against insider threat and provides dramatic improvements in driving employee’s productivity. There are many “firsts” that Cyberoam has launched in the recent past like FleXi Ports, in-depth on-appliance reports, NG Series appliances offering fastest security to SOHO/SMB segments that are purely based on the needs of our customers and give us an edge over competition. While Cyberoam continues to be a leading vendor in the SMB and SME space, garnering rave reviews and recognitions for products and continued trust from partners and customers alike, slowly and steadily, it is also gaining a strong foothold in the large enterprise segment.

Sunil Sharma Vice-President – Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam

Cyberoam’s relationship with partners Cyberoam has recently introduced Inner Circle programme, which is envisaged as a collaborative initiative, whereby the company promoted the best practices in security by working closely with the IT Heads / CIOs and bringing together experienced and innovative security managers. The first edition garnered tremendous response, witnessing participation from over 60 elite CXOs from different verticals. Sunil Sharma, Vice-President – Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam, exerts, “We were applauded for our vision and we are committed to scale this to even larger level. Our Channel first strategy has been the reason for our success in India. Our proactive partner programme has given us the strength to forge strong relationships with partners as well as customers. Our dedicated National Channel Manager acts as a bridge between the company and the partners. Secondly, our ability to constantly innovate on our products or features is definitely a valuable differentiator that we offer against competitive products.” Cyberoam’s support process is defined in such a way that makes business easier for its customers. In fact, company’ s support team members are equipped with the right know-how and can confidently tackle and trouble shoot for any network security product issue of any brand. Cyberoam’s marketing strategy Cyberoam’s marketing strategy is more channel-centric. Sunil Sharma adds, “We aim at creating the right opportunities for our channel partners by creating great visibility through presence in multiple media and events.” The company’s region-specific approach has helped them reach out

December 2014

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to customers in the tier-II and -III cities / towns which are home to the emerging SMEs and SMBs. On the other hand, Cybeoam also aims at capturing a sizeable market share in the enterprise segment. Cyberoam’s holistic security portfolio has allowed the company to extend network security expertise for a wide range of customers in the verticals of education, retail, government, defence and researchoriented organizations, healthcare, IT, hospitality and more. Cyberoam’s presence in India Cyberoam has successfully expanded into over 125 countries. Middle East, Africa and APAC are the company’s strongest markets, and it is clocking impressive YoY growth. At present, Cyberoam is also making aggressive moves in North America and LATAM region. India contributes nearly 25% to the company’s global business.

Cyberoam’s plans for 2015 Having joined forces with Sophos, Cyberoam is all set to catalyze greater value and a wider range of innovative and differentiated products and solutions for customers. For partners, this translates into a signiﬁcantly large opportunity. Together, Cyberoam is chasing emerging opportunities in UTM, NGFW, Wi-Fi security, end-point security and more. satinder@varindia.com

FACE TO FACE

“Strong after-sales support is helping SanDisk to win accolades ” W

ith a mission to enrich people's lives through digital storage anytime, anywhere, SanDisk delivers peace of mind that data is readily available and reliable, even in the most challenging environments. As a result, it has retained its top position with 35-per cent market share in India across all three categories – microSD cards, SD cards and ﬂash drives. SanDisk actually touches a wide spectrum of storage solutions in many areas, including Data Center, Computing, Mobile and Consumer Electronics. Elaborating more on the company’s position, its channel strategy and after-sales support, Urvashi Sheth, Sr Director, Global Customer Support, SanDisk Corporation, has had an exclusive interaction with VARINDIA. Edited excerpts:

What is the major segment where SanDisk is concentrating on right now? We are ﬂash memory manufacturers and we create solutions. Our focus is on creating innovative solutions and products which are ﬂash based in both sectors – OEM and retail. OEM mostly goes to enterprises and retail goes to consumers and we innovate in both spaces.

What is your strategy around support? My support organization is basically catering to all the countries, except for the embargo countries like North Korea or Iraq. We are everywhere. I often get calls/e-mails from countries which I have no idea about so I have to go on Wikipedia and ﬁnd out where that country is. Our support in phone call and chat is available in 16 different languages and we have call centres worldwide. Our support team is very culturally diverse and is adjusted according to the culture/country which requires us to make sure that we respond to that culture’s need. For India, we have all these services like knowledge-based, SMS, Live Chat, Phone calls, Forums, Reviews plus more. We have about 20 depots in 20 different cities in India where you can physically go and get your warranty replaced. If you want, we can mail it to you too. When you give a call to SanDisk, you are provided with an RMA number (Return Merchandise Authorization), we SMS it to you, you take that SMS to our depot in Nehru Place and you will get an immediate replacement.

How important is after-sales service for SanDisk?

and that philosophy has helped us win the Gartner Award as well. As a customer service organization, we received a Gartner Gold Award for best customer experience in the world. We got this award six months ago and it is a big honour for us. As a company, we need to maintain and establish trust with our customers and we can only do that when we are providing the world-class services and tools and difference channels for our customers.

For a company like SanDisk, which has a global presence, what kind of challenges do you face? More than challenges, it is a learning process. But of course like any big company, we have challenges and they help us to improve. The biggest opportunity we have is – different cultures. For example, we all have a USB Drive. Suppose one customer is in China, another in Japan and yet another in India. We have the same USB drive and the same questions about the drive. But all the three will approach differenlty for they belong to three different parts of the world. Like being in China, the customer might want to go to the service centre, the other being in Japan only wants the answers on the phone and the customer who is in India might just want to use an SMS as a means for his questions to be answered. We need

Urvashi Sheth Sr Director, Global Customer Support, SanDisk Corporation

"We have four channel partners in India – Rashi Peripherals, HCL, Beetel and Ingram Micro."

the companies like to sell their products via traditional channel, while some prefer e-commerce portals. What is your take on to make sure we are providing culturally this? appropriate responses to our customers. Other than that, the challenge is that it takes time to understand any culture. My team and SanDisk genuinely believes in listening to the customers in order to understand them. Listening to them will help us in giving them the best support.

How do you measure the level of customer’s satisfaction? We send surveys after every call, chat, e-mail and every single interaction we have. Our survey return rate is very high and our customer’s satisfaction rate in India is 92 per cent which is extremely high. We do listen to our customers every single day. In the survey, we allow and encourage our customers to give us comments on how to improve, what more would they like us to do.

These days, there is a tussle offline and online Yes, of course. It is extremely important between distribution models. Some of we think. This is SanDisk’s philosophy

Our take on this is that we support both. Our channel partners are extremely important to us and we support them. Even e-commerce is very important and we support them as well. But channel partners have been there traditionally and we have a long partnership with them and hence nothing is going to change in terms of support and the way in which we are doing our business with them especially from customer’s service perspectives.

What are your plans for 2015? SanDisk is continuously coming up with new products. The latest one we came up with is the iXpand ﬂash drive in the global market. Like we have a Dual Drive for the Android phones, our iXpand drive is for the iPhones. So we are continuosly working on getting new products for our customers. The iXpand will release very soon for India and it is a USB drive for the iPhone, most probably by late Q1 2015 or early Q2. satinder@varindia.com

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December 2014

COVER STORY

As we prepare to bid goodbye to 2014 and welcome the New Year, we make a concerted effort to look at some of the interesting trends in IT that are going to shape up the technology landscape in 2015 and set the stage ready for development of futuristic technologies in times to come

ccording to Gartner, while worldwide IT spending will grow at a CAGR of 3.2% to reach $3.16 trillion; India will see a growth of CAGR 6.8% to reach $93.4 billion by the end of 2018 with communications, media and services currently being the largest market. This trend is going to continue in 2015, with signiﬁcant investments made in speciﬁc areas like Cloud based services, telecom infrastructure, security & surveillance and collaboration.

Enterprise Business Server, Storage & Networking Technology when it comes to IT infrastructure is being inﬂuenced by the rising technology trends that are affecting the current IT environment namely Big Data, Mobility, Cloud and Software Deﬁned Everything. “At Dell we believe these new

Arun Shetty Director of Collaboration Solutions - India, Avaya

December 2014

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forces will transpire into several new data center trends. • Hyperscale computing paradigms - Vendors will start to leverage hyperscale design principles as a model to meet broader enterprise needs – but in a way that works for each business. • Converged infrastructures will gain ground. For new projects, more and more datacenters will choose a converged infrastructure approach • Microservers will solve important niche requirements. High density, energy efﬁciency and a space-saving form factor will be the key factors • Datacenter Management will go increasingly mobile. Administrators will ﬁnd a growing number of options for monitoring, infrastructure hardware from a mobile device.

Sanjay Hasija Country Head Quantum

With the new GTM strategy working well for us, we will continue with our focus on channel and distribution to strengthen our coverage and reach across India,” says Sudharsan R, Commercial Marketing Head, Dell India. Modern data centers look far different than they did just a decade ago. The emerging challenges with businesses are motivating the new innovation of the networking and storage in the data center. “We are building and developing efﬁciency around the modern data center where evolution of new technologies demand more power for new hardware requirements. To consolidate all hardware equipments at one place in order to improve efﬁciency, industries use racks,” explains Ravi Raj, Brand Head, Director Sales & Support at NetRack. The year 2015 is going to be the year

Abhilash Purushothaman Country Head, Solution Sales, Enterprise Management, CA Technologies

Manoj Khilnani Country Marketing Head –Enterprise, BlackBerry India of Data. The entire volume, velocity and variety of this data will further transform the IT landscape. Businesses that use datadriven decision making methods are 5% more productive and 6% more profitable than those that don’t. “To store, retain, access and transform this massive volume of data, storage has become the new engine of the IT universe. HGST plays a vital role in unlocking the value of data with innovative and industry-leading storage devices and solutions,” replies David Chua, Director of Distribution Business, Asia Pacific South, HGST. A common trend in data storage is what according to Quantum is “Backup’s Busted”, which means that with data doubling every single year it is getting just impossible to manage or tame this data. “As a response to this problem, we help customers simplify their backup, reduce their costs, and monetize digital assets that may otherwise be inaccessible. We help educate customers that by segmenting their data by data type such as structured and unstructured data can help them improve their backup process,” says Sanjay Hasija, Country Head, Quantum. According to S Sriram, CEO at iValue InfoSolutions, Data, Applications, Analytics, Mobility, Privacy and Productivity are growing as some of the key business needs now. “With an objective to help business grow profitably through effective protection and management, iValue continues to focus on evolving Business and IT challenges around Data, Network and Application.” However, the next big thing to look

Sudharsan R Commercial Marketing Head, Dell India.

Santhosh D’ Souza Director- Systems Engineering, NetApp Marketing & Services Pvt. Ltd India forward to in 2015 is software deﬁned datacenters (SDDC), which will encompass a host of functions and technologies, including servers, storage and networking. “As the IT industry continues its tectonic shift to cloud computing and virtualization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to deliver support across the major hardware architectures and commercial cloud providers, allowing customers to adapt by simplifying the transitions between physical, virtual and cloud deployments,” explains Jagjit Singh Arora, Director – Regional Sales, Red Hat India Agrees Santosh Rao, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, “In the infrastructure space, technologies such as SDx (Software deﬁned Compute/Network/Storage), converged systems and cloud computing promise to bring in the much needed agility to an IT organization. While SDx can help protect existing IT investments, converged systems consolidate compute and storage on the same platform and help to scale capacity linearly along with business.” The past 12 months has seen a scramble of trends such as cloud, BYOD and big data, which compelled CIOs to work closely with business decision makers and further compelled them to rethink towards their overall IT strategy. “A major focus for vendors will be on developing tailor made solutions to cater to this mobility shift – for BYOD initiatives in the internal IT space as well as in the rapidly evolving customer facing mobile app space,” asserts Abhilash Purushothaman, Country Head, Solution Sales, Enterprise

Jagjit Singh Arora Director – Regional Sales, Red Hat India

Srinivasan R Chief Technology Officer Ramco Systems Management, CA Technologies. Cloud As IT organizations move rapidly towards Hybrid Cloud environments, the conversations around “software defined datacenter” (SDDC), has crystallized into something more meaningful. Clearly, though at nascent stage, Indian enterprises are realizing the benefits of SDDC. “EMC sees the capability of our customers to redefine their IT infrastructure using parts of or all of the federation company’s capabilities to then enable themselves in redefining their business,” asserts Abhijit Potnis, Director, Technology Solutions, EMC India & SAARC. Furthermore, the rise of SDN technologies will change the dynamics around securing the data center network, offering opportunities for improved automation as well as new security concerns. “More advances will be made with software-defined networking which will maximize its benefits while minimizing or even eliminating its weaknesses. As a new technology, there is still a lot of work to be done though many businesses are pursuing the goal of better protection for their network, and SDN is just one way this goal may be achieved,” assures Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis. Mega trends (SMAC- social, mobile, analytics and cloud) have fundamentally changed the expectations of consumers and end-users. Mrityunjay Kumar, Director Sales Enterprise and Channels at Juniper Networks however adds a 5th element to the commonly trading SMAC term, which is IoT (Internet of Things), hence terming

Harsh Marwah Country Manager, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, India

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December 2014

Santosh Rao Principal Research Analyst, Gartner it as SMACI. Most importantly, Network will become the most important enabler in how these elements will be delivered to the end customer and will continue to grow at a faster pace. “Mobility and Analytics are at an advanced stage today. As for the Cloud, though we see Private cloud gaining traction and a lot of customers starting to move their non-critical applications to the Cloud, it is the hybrid Cloud that customers are looking at with interests,” he says. Santhosh D’ Souza, Director- Systems Engineering, NetApp Marketing & Services Pvt. Ltd India shares a similar practice, “We are witnessing that CIOs of enterprises across the globe and in India are shifting their business applications from dedicated infrastructures to private and public cloud environments. The year 2015 will find enterprise platforms beginning to encompass hybrid cloud architectures. As CIOs realize the technology benefits of the hybrid cloud, it will become more important for organizations to figure out how and where the hybrid cloud will save them money.” In the views of Srinivasan R, Chief Technology Officer, Ramco Systems, hybrid cloud, big data, applications and wearable technologies are going to be the major buzz words in 2015. “Software defined networks and Fabric data centres and infrastructure that involve the amalgamation of many technological elements, is gaining ground in the industry. We believe that 2015 will be the year for growing economies. Hence, we will continue to increase our presence globally by offering products with user-friendly interface

Ryan Perera Country Head for India, Ciena

December 2014

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S Sriram CEO iValue InfoSolutions and increased mobility.” To the IoT story, Harsh Marwah, Country Manager, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, India adds, "As industry consolidation drives wider IoT adoption, enhanced tools in cloud computing, big data, and analytics— combined with more comprehensive security —will simplify machine-to-machine communications, resulting in higher user conﬁdence, better outcomes, and more clearly deﬁned return on investment." Mobility Mobility has changed our lives, habits and the world around us in ways that we would not have even imagined a few decades back. In today’s competitive world, enterprises are realizing the power of mobility and a mobile workforce that has become an imperative to meet growing customer demands. Moving beyond boardroom discussions, mobility has emerged as a top priority across enterprises of different sizes and sectors in 2014. “At BlackBerry, we’re focused on meeting the needs of mobile professionals – business users that are productivity-driven and thrive on achievement – empowering them with mobile solutions that allow them to work smarter, collaborate better and achieve more,” says Manoj Khilnani, Country Marketing Head –Enterprise, BlackBerry India The India telecom market is facing a mobile revolution. Users are embracing smart phones and driving mobile penetration up. As more consumers embrace the use of smartphones, they will naturally demand better coverage. With such a large potential consumer base the potential for small cell

Abhijit Potnis Director, Technology Solutions, EMC India & SAARC

Subhasish Gupta Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis deployments in India is immense. “As existing mobile networks are increasingly congested and real estate for deploying new macro towers is harder to come by, mobile operators will look to lighten the macro tower traffic load through the rollout of an increased number of small cells, which will also significantly improve overall network coverage. We expect to see more small cell deployments in 2015,” Ryan Perera, Country Head for India, Ciena. Additionally, improved coverage and download speeds will result in a significant increase in traffic across metro networks, which interconnect wireless access points. Therefore, broader adoption of 10GbE mobile backhaul connectivity between macro towers and metro networks is also expected to rise in 2015. 2015 will also be a special year in a way that it will affect the way team members work with each other via the use of Mobile collaboration tools, Social Collaboration tools (both Cloud-based and internal) over the ubiquitous desktops and e-mails. "Avaya is enabling engagement by providing technology that is effortless, flexible, contextual and complete to help companies create a more agile business. Our solution team engagement solutions are aligned against the business needs we’re hearing from our customers for evolving legacy infrastructures and generating growth, increasing productivity and efficiency and maximizing customer lifetime value," supports Arun Shetty, Director of Collaboration Solutions - India, Avaya.

Mrityunjay Kumar Director Sales Enterprise and Channels Juniper Networks

P. Krishnakumar ED&GM, Consumer & Small Business Dell India

Security & Surveillance Physical Security/ Electronic Security Physical security has come a long way since the advent of the lock and key. Being price conscious, customers cannot afford to have security personnel but a security camera can surely help them monitor the activities in and around the premises. In the surveillance space, the share of high deﬁnition (HD) is growing. Key technologies like HDTVI and AHD will emerge and a clear consolidation will happen in these technologies in the coming years. Adding more to this, Manoj Khadkikar, Head of channel solution, Zicom Electronics says, “Services riding on the crest of hardware will be the key differentiators. More and more technologies –CCTV, ﬁre, access, and intrusion will merge into hybrid devices. IP CCTV will also increase with resolutions of 2 MP/3 MP and above becoming mainstream. ” Analytics technology will take off within the surveillance industry from 2015 and beyond for getting valuable insights from the enormous amount of both structured and unstructured information collected. More analytics are needed to help organizations make sense of the information such as images and videos. Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications India & SAARC exert, "With intelligent applications and analytics, the information can be turned into actionable insight. With network cameras’ capability to provide higher resolution video and to be connected from everywhere and around the clock, security departments are getting more

Aditya Khemka CEO & Director Aditya Infotech

Sunil Grewal Director – Sales and MarCom, GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd. information from more sources." For the year 2015, Sparsh as a company and brand would like to lead the Digital Surveillance Space by continuous innovation and offering technically advanced product in the market. Sanjeev Sehgal, Managing Director, Sparsh India shares,” Due to our focus on technology, various global leaders in electronic security have partnered with us to further advance the technology and bring these products to market.” The infrastructure sector looks quite promising as we began to see better IT security and surveillance systems at malls, offices and other public places. There is likely to be growth witnessed from across verticals such as city surveillance, airports, seaports, metros and other greenfield projects. Cyber Security Security analysts called the year 2015 the year of the mega breach, and severe vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed and Shellshock in 2014 showed that the security community can never rest on its laurels. Naresh Padhee, Founder CEO, QCS Communication Technologies says, “This is a space where major IT firms are putting their efforts. WhatsApp is the latest enterprise to take action on this issue." Sanjay Rohatgi, President- Sales, India, Symantec adds, “All indications are that 2015 will bring more of the same, with the struggle between those wishing to create new threats and exploit vulnerabilities and those looking to protect against them likely to intensify. In general, in 2015, we can expect attacks to get smarter and sharper." Besides Distributed

M A Mannan Country Manager, Corsair Memory India denial-of-service (DDoS) will continue to rise as a threat with the increase in Unix servers being compromised and their high bandwidth being used in DDoS attacks. Aditya Khemka, CEO & Director at Aditya Infotech opines, "The growth of smartphones, internet coverage area and electronic gadgets strongly suggests that the customers are getting more tech savvy. They believe in user friendly, hassle free and quick solutions." However, advancements in the IoT space, smartphone penetration also means consumers will have increased connectivity across their devices, gadgets and machines – and with this connectivity comes the potential for a whole new range of security risks. Mobile devices will continue to become a target for cyber attackers in 2015 especially when mobile devices store up a trove of personal and conﬁdential information. Agreeing to this, Govind Rammurthy, MD & CEO, eScan opines, “With the explosive growth and adoption of Smartphones, 2015 will see a huge rise in businesses clamoring to provide security that mobility devices may pose, within the corporate environment. This we believe will be the area which will garner maximum attention from us, in terms of R&D funding.” Today’s security challenges require a fresh perspective on protection architecture. They mandate an architecture that adapts quickly and keeps pace with fast-evolving threats and the ever-changing requirements of advanced enterprise information systems. “As an organization, we provide customers new and innovative security solutions to protect

Sanjeev Sehgal, Managing Director, Sparsh India

Manoj Khadkikar Head of channel solution, Zicom Electronics

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December 2014

Sudhindra Holla Country Manager, Axis Communications India & SAARC organizations of all sizes and complexities. The Software Deﬁned Protection architecture is a new-paradigm as it combines a solid, reliable enforcement layer and a fast-adapting intelligence-based control layer to deliver real time proactive protections to corporate networks,” says Bhaskar Bhakthavatsalu, Regional Director, Check Point Software Technologies. Substantial growth across industries in upgradation & innovation in systems also gives opportunities to cyber criminals for undertaking malicious activities. With increase in data browsing and free apps downloading, malicious activities have further become sophisticated. Amit Nath, Country Manager, India & SAARC, F-Secure explains, “We have witnessed constant evolution across platforms viz. mobile, iOS, etc. which remain unchanged. Simultaneously we see newer cybercrime emerging every year." Enterprises today have come to leverage online tools to either monitor or promote stronger collaboration between onsite and offsite staff. As a result there’s a clear link between how physical security and cyber security needs to be seen in tandem with each other. Sunil Sharma, VP Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam points out, “Today’s hackers are not yesterday’s amateur criminals but pose as evolved threat actors. When it comes to targeted attacks, they adopt a thorough multi-stage attack, leaving no stone unturned to gather all key information on victim.” In 2015, more and more data will be hosted on the cloud but as this move occurs,

Govind Rammurthy MD & CEO, eScan

December 2014

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Sanjay Rohatgi President- Sales, India, Symantec businesses will need to take a closer look at data governance and ensuring their data is cleaned before it is hosted there. Sidharth Malik, Managing Director and Vice President, India, Akamai Technologies adds, “While the coming year will see IoT, Big Data and Cloud leveraged in a big way, enterprise organizations will also adopt technologies that will drive business innovation and provide a strong platform for future growth.”

Sunil Sharma VP Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam 2014 saw retailers being hacked and millions of emails lifted. Majority of companies lack conﬁdence in their ability to detect targeted attacks in a timely manner. Offering an answer to this, Jagdish Mahapatra, MD India and SAARC at McAfee, part of Intel Security says, “Organizations can bolster

Amit Nath Country Manager, India & SAARC, F-Secure

Jagdish Mahapatra MD India and SAARC at McAfee, part of Intel Security their security posture by better leveraging their current solutions, without investing in new technologies. By understanding the most common Indicators of Attack (IoAs) and automating their next generation Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system to detect those events in real-time, companies can dramatically reduce risk potential.” However, according to Fortinet's Global Security Survey commissioned, this year 75 per cent of IT decision makers at retail companies are rethinking their IT security strategies in India. Addressing this changing requirement, Rajesh Maurya, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet explains, “Security buyers may seek a combination of firewall options, such as NGFW, unified threat management (UTM), virtual and stateful firewalls, to meet a wide range of enterprise needs, such as data center, small offices or highly distributed enterprises.” “Going forward, enterprise security solutions will have to become context aware and adaptive. Security organizations and leaders that fail to alter strategies to accommodate a more consumerized workforce will soon be sidelined,” says Sonit Jain, CEO at GajShield.

Hardware & Peripherals Compu ng Devices In the last few years, the computing space has witnessed many changes with a one touch revolution gripping the computing world. There is a transformation taking place, where the core of the technology solution becomes

Rajesh Maurya Country Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet

Ravi Raj Brand Head, Director Sales & Support at NetRack increasingly complex and functionally superior, while the interface for users becomes simpler and more intuitive. "We see the next wave of PC users coming from emerging markets. In a market like India, with close to only 10% technology penetration, we see the potential not only to cater to our existing customers but also to extend technology access to new users," says P. Krishnakumar, Executive Director & General Manager, Consumer & Small Business Dell India. With the introduction of high-end games and movies there is growing demand for high-performance I/O devices that allows for greater gamer customization and lighting effects than was ever possible on previous products. "Though a lot of end users prefer getting the best experience possible, the peripheral market is still latent and users need to indulge into the wholesome experience of video games and movies to know better. Next year will see Corsair trying to further improve on the user experience with advanced mechanical keyboards, ultralight and customizable mice and stunningly attractive and comfortable headsets," states M A Mannan, Country Manager, Corsair Memory India. Motherboards Mini ITX form factor devices are slowly but surely spreading their wings in the mainstream market. The popularity of MiniITX form factor-based motherboards is expected to improve further mainly because it is power-efﬁcient. "Most users in India are cost-conscious. They use PCs for their fundamental requirements, and not for

Sidharth Malik Managing Director and Vice President, India, Akamai Technologies

David Chua Director of Distribution Business, Asia Pacific South, HGST extreme or high graphics-based activities. We are giving renewed focus on offering more of Mini-ITX form factor-based motherboard models and provide a wider range of models for each user category," explains Sunil Grewal, Director – Sales and MarCom, GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd. Additionally, users in India are increasingly going for motherboards with HDMI and USB 3.0 ports and SATA3 and those which support DDR3 and SSD drives. Storage Devices Today, the number of mobile-connected devices has exceeded the world’s population leading to more people creating, uploading, downloading and sharing information onthe-go. 2015 will see a continued surge in demand for both cloud-connected technology (software and hardware), and cloud operations and managed services. "Seagate in 2015 will then heavily focus on cloud storage systems and solutions that will deliver an Intelligent Information Infrastructure to help organizations manage the massive growth in digital data and deliver on evolving workloads," says Rex Dong, Managing Director, Asia Sales and Marketing, Seagate Technology.

What's spurring these trends? While discussing the key technology trends for 2015, it will not be unwise to say that demand for technology will be truly driven by Customers. Indian customers have today grown matured enough to harness and leverage the power of IT and software powered business models and vendors on

Rex Dong Managing Director, Asia Sales and Marketing, Seagate Technology their part continue to innovate and invest into these rapidly increasing customer & market demands. This applies not only on commercial entities but also on government organizations eager to extend their benefits to citizens, with the right tools. In the coming year, with the government’s push towards ‘Digital India’, it can be seen that specialpurpose clouds and applications will emerge to focus specifically on connecting devices and machines. In the Telecom space, the recent announcement of the Government’s National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) initiative which is overseen by the Department of Telecommunications is a great example showcasing the efforts currently underway by the government with hopes of spurring economic growth. Some of the other key verticals that are poised to contribute towards the Indian economic growth this year include BFSI, Telecom, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail, Public sector along with IT/ITES. However as many point out there is still scope to build an understanding of how intelligent and innovative solutions can help these industries derive significant business benefit. However, to achieve competitive advantages, businesses must try bringing all the technology pieces of the enterprise together and embed them into global business operations. Because it is then that the full potential can be realized. edit@varindia.com

Naresh Padhee Founder CEO, QCS Communication Technologies

Sonit Jain CEO GajShield

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December 2014

VAR SPECIAL

The March towards a Digitalized India Cisco has stated time and again of its efforts to develop Smart+Connected communities with the help of Internet of Everything and of helping create a dynamic digital economy. In fact, it is this Digital India vision that inspired the networking major to unveil its Cisco Smart City initiative a few months back. Underlining this idea at the recent Cisco India Summit 2014 that concluded in Bengaluru, Dinesh Malkani, President - Cisco India & SAARC reiterated the fact that India is to become the 3rd largest IT market in Asia Pacific by 2016 and the digitization wave is to get underway in India anytime soon.

t was during this Summit that Cisco in order to leverage Internet of Everything to develop digital solutions for India’s infrastructure and smart cities, inked a deal with ILFS Technologies Ltd (ITL), a technology solutions company of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS). The announcement was made in the presence of Prem Saigal, Chairman - ITL, Dinesh Malkani; Anil Menon, Cisco Deputy Chief Globalisation Officer and President, Smart+Connected Communities and Durga Prasad, CEO - ITL. The collaboration between Cisco and ITL will focus on bringing together the best-in-class, complementary capabilities of both companies. Some of the solutions that will be jointly developed will focus on urban services and smart city infrastructure solutions such as traffic and transportation, public safety and security, command and control services, e-governance and a broader set of next generation urban services such as parking, lighting, traffic and citizen engagement services built on top of Cisco’s City Infrastructure Management. With India having the largest rural population in the world, Cisco and ITL will also collaborate to enable the delivery of cost-effective and efficient citizen services to rural communities

too. The collaboration will focus on developing IoE based digital solutions for smart villages and the infrastructure sector. “The strategy for Cisco will be to focus on any new opportunities in the Enterprise segment, its Commercial business (including both Partner-led and Velocity business) and the global service provider business. A strong partnership with its Channel will also form an important part of our strategy to realize our Smart City model,” shared Dinesh. However, Cisco and ITL are said to pursue joint go-tomarket opportunities in India as required in areas of technologies and capabilities. Meanwhile Cisco's vision of Smart+Connected Communities has been embraced by more than 90 global greenfield and brownfield projects and includes the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor in India, where Cisco is developing the ICT master plan for four pilot cities in the US$90 billion flagship public sector infrastructure project. Yet another announcement made by Cisco during the two-day event was the showcasing of its three products which have been conceptualised, architected and designed at its India engineering centre to enable the vision of a digitized nation and empower companies to be more innovative, agile and

Amit Phadnis, President, Engineering and India Site Leader - Cisco “The world is changing at an unprecedented pace. More than ever before, the Internet of Everything can play an integral role in driving growth, innovation and productivity in industries such as healthcare, retail, ecommerce and education. Cisco’s belief is that the innovative application of technology can have a positive impact on India’s competitiveness, diversiﬁcation of its industry base, its ability to create jobs and improve quality of life for its citizens.” B Raghavendran, Director – Partner Organization, Cisco India “We are working closely with our partners to harness the opportunity we are seeing in the market place in the area of Internet of Everything. We want to become more relevant from a business standpoint, drive the entire distribution network for coverage into tier 2 & 3 class cities and focus more on Sri Lanka and Bangladesh markets. We look at this focus from basically a technology standpoint. Our focus on advanced technology shows how much our partners are pouring out their hearts into technology architecture, be it collaboration or security or networking.”

December 2014

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Dinesh Malkani, President - Cisco India & SAARC “Today, only 1 per cent of all the things that surround us are connected to the network. In India every day an average of 275,000 devices will be connected to the network. Our vision of the Internet of Everything is that we will live in a world where everything—and everyone—can be connected to everything else. We have the opportunity to embrace the Internet of Everything and help enable a digital India. By enabling a digitized economy we hope to enable safer streets, smarter homes and healthier and better-educated citizens.” efﬁcient. The three products - ASR 920-O, ISR 800M and MDS 9250i are the latest in a line of industry award-winning products and solutions from India. Innovation being a core part of the Cisco culture, $5.9 billion is invested in R&D worldwide. A total of 830 patents have been ﬁled from India and 500 patents issued for innovations across all technologies. samrita@varindia.com

V C Gopalratnam, President IT & CIO, APJ&C & Chief of Strategy, Planning & Operations, Cisco India “IT is no longer in the expense column but is the real business and growth enabler. It requires fast innovation for quicker business outcome and results. IoT which is the new buzzword today is no longer Internet but an amalgamation of Intelligence, Information and Innovation. The top IT Trends for 2015 highlight how the industry is fast changing and major transitions are taking place in the market, technology and economic areas. Fog Computing, a concept which is deﬁned as putting or pushing technology from datacenter out to the edge is going to be a big trend to look out for in 2015.”

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Canon PowerShot SX520 HS T

he Canon PowerShot SX520 HS is a new super-zoom camera. It has a 42x optical zoom with optical image stabilization. This is ideal for people who want the quality of a DSLR camera without all the hassle of switching between lenses. It is especially perfect for those who plan regular family vacations, attend or host events or just happen to travel a lot. Canon’s HS system combines a highly sensitive 16MP CMOS sensor with a DIGIC 4+ processor to give users really great shots even in low lighting conditions. With an intelligent IS system, a Smart AUTO mode and a high speed auto focus, one never has to lose another precious moment to motion blur or camera shake. One can take stunning landscape photographs with the camera’s built-in 24mm wide angle lens. In case the subject is far away, the 42x optical zoom can be used to get a close up. It increases the speed at which these images are processed as well as reduces noise in images taken using a higher ISO rate. This digital camera with wide angle lens comes with intelligent image stabilization (IS) technology, which allows the user to zoom in to the subject without worrying about camera shake affecting the image. This camera comes with a dedicated movie button, which automatically puts the camera in video recording mode. To watch favourite home or vacation videos, one simply needs to hook the camera to TV through its HDMI port and enjoy a full HD viewing experience.

Free Wi-Fi service at New Delhi Railway Station is aimed at public welfare To fulfill PM Narendra Modi’s dream of Digital India, an initiative has been taken and free Wi-Fi facility has been launched at New Delhi Railway station. In a chat with Navdip Punjj, COO Airlink, who has been associated with implementation of equipments and distributing the network, has discussed the challenges and features of this project.

What challenges did you face period of time to execute the project. in the project of implementing How secure is this Wi-Fi Wi-Fi network at New Delhi network? Railway Station? This network works on AAA where This project was in thought process for two years from now. The idea is basically to digitize all the platforms coming under Indian Railways. It is aimed at the welfare of the people so that they can easily get any information or do some office works while sitting at the platform and can be connected to the rest of the world. NDLS is an extremely complicated environment and makes traditional Wi-Fi setup a challenge. NDLS handles 300 trains across 16 platforms and sees over 5 Lakh people walk through everyday, making it one of the densest public environments in the world. After surveying the complex environment, it was determined that a new breed of technology is needed to support NDLS. For this we have deployed RailTel’s fibre and put up Pronto Network’s cloud managed Wi-Fi network. There other challenges are like specific

December 2014

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proper authentication of a user is done. The user gets a code for handheld devices like tablet, smartphone or laptop to use the Wi Fi service for half an hour as the speciﬁcation is done. After the free hour, a user has option of buying a coupon of Rs 25 for half an hour or 1 hour for Rs 35.

Navdip Punjj COO, Airlink

What are the special features Wi-Fi service providers to a Apart from this feature there are normal features like browsing and option for user? In addition to the normal download there will be a feature called Movie download where a person can buy a coupon speciﬁcally for movie download and the download speed will be much higher so that in 10-15 minutes the user can download a complete movie. We will provide excess speed to the person who will opt for this coupon. The speed can go upto 9-10 Mbps which makes the download process fast.

Railway information. Indian Railways have plenty of bandwidth and they are backing the sole system. On the free Wi-Fi network we are distributing 1 MBPS of download speed to a particular user. On the revenue model there will be some advertisements. It’s a very plain and simple Wi-Fi model. The revenue comes from the advertisements.

PICK OF THE MONTH

AXIS’s Q8414-LVS corner-mount fixed network camera T

he AXIS Q8414-LVS is a corner-mount ﬁxed network camera features a stainless steel anti-grip casing and is extremely impact resistant, supporting the IK10+ 50joules rating

as well as the IP66/NEMA 4X rating for water resistance. The 24/7 indoor surveillance camera provides superb image quality both during day and night with capabilities like Lightﬁnder technology, which enables life-like colors in low-light conditions, and built-in invisible IR LED illuminator for video surveillance in complete darkness. The new AXIS Q8414-LVS is ideal for video surveillance of small rooms in premises like correctional facilities, interview rooms, psychiatric wards, and medical observation rooms as well as elevators and stairwells. Thanks to a built-in microphone and the possibility to integrate the network camera into an alarm system via its I/O port, AXIS Q8414-LVS becomes part of the overall surveillance solution, an important tool to protect and secure the safety of the people in high security environments. In addition, privacy masks assure that restricted areas are not monitored for privacy reasons or to protect the personnel. Available in two color versions, powder coated white (AXIS Q8414-LVS White) and brushed stainless steel (AXIS Q8414-LVS Metal), the corner-mount network camera offers 1.3 Megapixel or HDTV 720p video stream. It features P-Iris control for an optimal depth of ﬁeld, resolution, image contrast and clarity. The horizontal angle of view up to 105° covers the entire room without blind spots. Capabilities such as remote zoom and focus facilitate the optimization of the captured view during the installation.

Microsoft’s first ever Brand Store on Amazon India N

ow this comes as a surprise to many as Microsoft has chosen to team up with the world’s biggest ecommerce portal Amazon to sell their hardware, software and games. This is over and above the fact that both the giants have some time back begun an all-out battle to dominate the high-stakes cloud-computing market. And incidentally it was Amazon who got there first. At the same time, one cannot deny the online war that is going on. This is interestingly Microsoft’s first such exclusive store in India from where consumers can now purchase both hardware and software. What is even more interesting is the fact that in order to attract consumers to their brand store, Microsoft is offering several bundled packages which are exclusively available on their Amazon store. A spokesperson from Microsoft India however said, “We see tremendous opportunity in delivering Microsoft products especially the Xbox and our Lumia phones to the natively digital customers. The Microsoft Brand store on Amazon.in will help us to reach more such customers and offer them some of the

best deals on our products. The exclusive launch of brand store will ensure that they are purchasing only the original product, at the right price with full benefits of after sale service.” The official outlet of Microsoft will offer complete range of Microsoft’s products, right from Lumia and Nokia mobile devices, Windows phones and tablets, Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles, games and accessories, packaged software products like Windows and Office and accessories such as wireless keyboard, wireless mice and web cameras.

Earlier, Microsoft has not facilitated any such ‘one stop’ destination for consumers to buy Microsoft’s products (especially hardware) and they in turn had to purchase them from the dealer network. However, the association is not an old one as Microsoft had in August this year teamed up with Amazon to sell Xbox One exclusively on their platform. With this new brand store on Amazon, the Seattle area’s two biggest technology companies have not only taken their partnership forward but also opened an easy, seamless interface for Indian consumers to purchase their products.

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December 2014

DIGISOL product delivers unparalleled value T

he IP surveillance market in India is witnessing buoyant growth today and, more importantly, the demand for CCTV and surveillance products is going to be sustained with very consistent and high-growth rates over the next four to five years. DIGISOL is continuously setting new benchmarks within the Converged Communication solutions with its innovative product portfolio in India. Its legacy of developing quality products further gives them the coveted competitive edge. Having discerned the precise requirements of the customers, DIGISOL is in the process of developing a wideranging product portfolio that encompasses Switching, Broadband Routing, Wireless LAN, Converged Communication, IP Surveillance and VoIP. DIGISOL’s well-trained engineers offer assistance in designing optimum systems and provide value-added services like consultancy, site evaluation, network planning, site audits, etc. to meet customer’s needs. With a pool of certified engineers, the company is always available to provide its customers with prompt technical support, presales and post-sales. DIGISOL's “Future-proof and Future-ready” products deliver unparalleled value and enable customers to excel through lower network ownership costs, enhanced productivity, total reliability and easy scalability of their networks. Current trends in the surveillance market in India The industry has reached next stage after evolution, but still has a long way to go. Rajshekhar Bhatt, AVP – Surveillance, DIGISOL, says, “End-clients are becoming aware as they know the importance of surveillance. Right now, people prefer Analogue vs IP surveillance because of cost and other factors. But IP is definitely growing rapidly. Adoption of technology is always subjected to frequent use of the same. As people will start using the product and technology would start appreciating the new or upcoming trend, the onus is on the industry to make people aware and show the importance of new technology. Of course, IP is a better technology and offers better value for money, especially in mid to large installation but the true RoI is realized over a period of time not immediately but after the installation.” DIGISOL in India DIGISOL works closely with its channel partners and system integrators who value the power and quality of its products. It also invests considerably in training and

December 2014

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Rajshekhar Bhatt AVP – Surveillance DIGISOL

"With the present duty structure, taxation, less user awareness of technology and products, no industry standards are some of the major challenges that hinder the growth of the surveillance market in India." empowering the channel partners to build their technical expertise as well as enhance DIGISOL’s brand positioning and visibility in the industry. Regarding the budget-conscious customers in India, Rajshekhar Bhatt says, “It is important to have reliability and support of the brand recognition from DIGISOL associated with what we offer. We want to extend our security offerings for people who are looking for budget-friendly security solutions. We recently enhanced our portfolio with DG-CC5820V, which boasts of superior built quality, longevity and technical speciﬁcation at a pocket- friendly price.” DIGISOL always sells its products not as a box but as a solution. As the consumers will get educated, DIGISOL feels people will start asking for IP surveillance. satinder@varindia.com

Grab your WINTAB today and win exciting gifts @ www.wintab.in or visit your nearest store For Sales Enquiries +91足 7755929818. +91足20足65119993. email : sales@wintab.in SMS : WINTAB<space>BUY to 56263

Product, Marketing & Distribution – Success Pillars of Sony W

ith unlimited passion for technology, content and services, and relentless pursuit of innovation, Sony has continuously been delivering groundbreaking new excitement and entertainment in its own way. As far as the smartphone segment is concerned, Sony’s aggressive focus is highlighted with the launch of over 30 new smartphone models, including variants, in 2014. India is a very strong and high priority market for Sony and is gaining a nice percentage of revenues globally. Sony is a premium brand and offers more in terms of product quality, design and features. The company has plans to maintain this position in the market in future also. Even in the sub-Rs.10,000 segment, Sony will continue to offer a premium proposition and will retain its proposition of offering, the best in design, quality and features. Sony’s India business is showcasing one of the fastest growth rates globally.

Sony’s Presence in Indian Smartphone Market Sony India has achieved strong growth across categories. Sunil Nayyar, Head, Sales, Sony India, shares his views, “Our Xperia range of smartphones is forecast to contribute 45% to our overall sales for FY14, as compared to 30% in 2013. This strong growth has been basis expansion of our smartphone range that now offers over 30 models (including colour variants) across price points ranging from the premium end, mid-range and the affordable sub-Rs.10,000 segment.” Beside smartphone, Sony has also introduced other innovative products in the smartphone ecosystem, including Sony SmartWatch, Sony SmartBand, and a host of other exciting accessories.

Sunil Nayyar Head, Sales Sony India

"Sony has received a very encouraging response from the market for its range of Sony’s Pillars of Success smartphones. It allocated Rs.350 crore Sony’s business is laid on three towards Xperia marketing in India. As far main pillars: Product, Marketing and Distribution, and the company as distribution is concerned, it has been is aiming to grow by continuously improving on each of these, with expanded to a solid 9,000 touch-points and innovations and challenging market paradigms. Sunil Nayyar further about 250 exclusive Xperia Stores in FY14." adds, “We will continuously expand our product portfolio with the latest technologies and innovations and offer best-in-class offerings to customers. There is a strong focus on taking leadership in future technologies like wearable technologies, etc. The recent progressive policies of the government allowing foreign companies operating in India to sell online, has been received very positively by our management. We are always

December 2014

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open to explore the option of manufacturing in India, but right now it is too early for us to share any concrete update on this front.”

Plans for 2015 Sony in smartphone segment has increased its distribution network from 20,000 outlets in the last ﬁnancial year, to more than 24,600 in FY14. Further, it has plans to expand its distribution and servicing network in the country to achieve increased penetration across markets. In India, Sony also has a very strong service presence across the country with 475 service outlets. satinder@varindia.com

VAR MOBILITY

VIVO X5Max VIVO X5Max is the world’s thinnest phone with just 4.75mm in thickness. VIVO comes with its Hi-Fi and Smart technology. The perfect combination of Stainless steel and anti-ﬁngerprint coating brings a cozy touch. VIVO marks its India entry in style by launching the worlds slimmest smartphone, the X5Max along with four edgy and trendy smartphones targeted at the versatile Indian youth. VIVO X5Max is equipped with extreme Hi-Fi and 5.5 inch SUPER AMOLED 1920*1080 display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 64-bit Octa-Core processor. It has 2GB RAM+16G ROM. Operating on Funtouch OS (based on Android 4.4), the phone comes with a powerful 13-megapixel main camera and 5-megapixel selﬁe camera. It comes with sensor like Gesture sensor, Light sensor, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, Electronic compass, Gyroscope. For connectivity it has 4G, OTG, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS. X5Max is Friendly, considerate, and safe.The control center of background and shortcut menu is very suitable for one-handed operation. An upgraded iManager offers attentive services such as Phone clean, Flow monitor, Privacy zone, Power management and so on. It comes with Smart Wake Slide on the black screen to wake a particular app. Slide leftward or rightward to switch to another tune. Slide upward to unlock. Draw “C” to wake dialer. Draw “W” to wake WhatsApp. Draw “e” to wake browser.

OPPO R5 OPPO R5 has an ultra-thin body which measures at just 4.85mm. In addition to the smartphone’s thickness, another major highlight of the phone is the adoption of higher-strength stainless steel in place of the commonly used aluminum alloy to make its unique micro-arc frame. The device comes with 5.2-inch AMOLED display with Full HD (1920x1080 pixels) screen resolution which translates to an impressive pixel density of 424 PPI. The smartphone has a stainless steel body paired with a micro-arc frame that is hand polished. However, those with small palms might find it difficult to carry the device around. It is powered with Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor with octacore CPU, 4G LTE connectivity and Adreno 405 GPU for superior graphics and gaming experience, boosting 3D interfaces, colors and textures. OPPO R3 was the latest to release a 13-megapixel Exmor RS IMX214 camera smartphone. With the R5's PI 2.0+, we are once again realizing new possibilities in smartphone photography. A five minute charge gives you a two hour phone call. 30 minutes will restore 75% of the R5’s battery. With 4x faster charging speed than conventional chargers, the VOOC rapid charging system will have your phone ready to go when you are on your way out the door. A five minute charge will allow the OPPO R5 to support a two-hour call. A 30 minute charge will get the OPPO R5 to 75% of battery. Specially designed for the most comfortable experience, the OPPO R5 contains five layers of thermal protective coating to prevent the device from overheating while charging.

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December 2014

VAR MOBILITY

Huawei uncovers Ascend P7 smartphone in India

uawei is all set to create buzz with the India launch of its flagship product Huawei Ascend P7. Building on the success of Huawei Ascend P6, the all-new Ascend P7 redefines smartphone excellence with top-notch features and easier navigation in a beautifully crafted design that places it in a class of its own. Huawei Ascend P7 was launched globally in May 2014 and has been well received by the techsavvy global audience. The newly-launched smartphone, best known for its camera quality with features like 10level auto face and video enhancement, is targeted at the youth, especially the selfie lovers. Ascend P7 comes with 5-inch FHD In-Cell Display technology having 445

PPI, 16:9 aspect ratio and Corning Gorilla Glass 3. Ascend P7 with its ultra-sleek design, fast processor, 8MP front camera that ensures picture-perfect moments, reinforces Huawei’s expertise in providing world-class technology to its users. With 2500mAh battery, Kirin 910T chipset and 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 13MP rear-facing BSI camera with DSLR Level ISP, the Ascend P7 is bound to be the mostcoveted offering from Huawei. It is powered by 1.8GHz quad-core processor, Android OS 4.4.2 software customized with Huawei’s patented Emotion UI 2.3, Ascend P7 delivers excellence with edge. Ascend P7 supports 4G LTE Cat4 supporting FDD band 3 that Indian operators are expected to launch during 2015.

Lenovo extends its S-Series Smartphones with S580

enovo has announced the launch of S580, a new addition to its popular S-series smartphones. The S580 combines sleek design elements with quad-core performance, laser-etched fabric-feel rear cover and 12.7cm (5) wide-view HD display for an overall impressive mobile user experience. P o w e r e d by a 1.2GHz Q u a l c o m m Snapdragon quad-core processor running on Android Jelly Bean (upgradable to Android 4.4 KitKat), the S580 smartphone delivers smooth and responsive gaming, music and videos. It sports an 8MP rear and 2MP front cameras. "Lenovo has been in the forefront of product innovation offering consumers a range of

December 2014

superior value-formoney smartphones. The new range of S series smartphones are stylish and feature-rich suiting the users’ aspirations. The S580 is

an amalgamation of stylish design, blazing fast processing speeds, and integrated Lenovo proprietary apps making it a unanimous choice for users looking at smartphones at a subRs.10k price category,” said Sudhin Mathur, Director– Smartphones, Lenovo India.

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Micromax unveils Canvas Selfie

i c r o m a x Informatics Limited has announced the launch of Canvas Selfie in India. Designed for the image-conscious women, the new smartphone equipped with 13MP rear and front cameras offers a perfect amalgamation of innovation, style and performance promising a superior mobile experience. Vineet Taneja, CEO, Micromax launched the phone with the IPTL stars Sania Mirza, Ana Ivanovic, Kristina Mladenovic and Daniela Hantuchova. Vineet Taneja, Chief Executive Officer, Micromax, said, “At Micromax, customer centricity has always been at the core of developing products. With over a million selfies being taken every day, out of which 40% claim to re-touch them, we have created a perfect blend of hardware and software to give you that perfect selfie. The Canvas Selfie is an ideal smartphone for the selfie-obsessed users delivering fantastic images and equipping them with great beauty editing tools to look glamorous always.” Running on the latest Android 4.4 KitKat, the dual-SIM Canvas Selfie gives users the access to a number of features including voice search, Google Drive, Hangouts for video calls, smart contact prioritization, etc. Available in Mystic Blue and Angelic White colours, the smartphone comes with an expandable memory of up to 32GB relieving users of all the storage woes.

Motorola announces Nexus 6

otorola has announced availability of Nexus 6 on Flipkart at Google’s Great Online shopping festival. Nexus 6 will be available in two colours – Midnight Blue or Cloud White. With Nexus 6, Motorola has worked with Google to bring you a bigger phone with more screens, more speed, more power and more everything. It is the best Android experience ever with the latest specs and technology built in. "We are humbled by the response we received in India for Moto X. And today, we are delighted to announce the launch of Nexus 6 in India with gosf.in. The Nexus 6 brings with it Better

multitasking capabilities, Helpful notiﬁcations and Beautiful design enhancing the user experience and style quotient. We are conﬁdent that the Indian consumer will enjoy our latest offering," said Amit Boni, General Manager, Motorola India. Speaking of the device, the Nexus 6 will be available in four exclusive offers on Flipkart like the 3-month free subscription of Flipkart First, exchange offer where you can return your old smartphone and get up to Rs.10, 000 discount, get Rs.1, 500 Cash Back on purchasing on various monthly EMIs via HDFC/ICICI bank and get pre-selected Flipkart eBooks worth Rs.2,100 for Free.

Panasonic strengthens ELUGA range

anasonic India has announced the launch of its new smartphone ELUGA I for the Indian market. This is in continuation y existingg of the already ies, which has ELUGA series, become onee of the most sought-after phones from n India and it is Panasonic in these phoness which have n recognized always been sign, superior for their design, b u i l d quality and unique user interface for singleh a n d operation. Redefining

Eluga series culture, wherein the model has been introduced to reinforce our category strength with one of the most innovative phones g series while in the Eluga

technological innovation and software advancement, the company continues to introduce devices which are equipped with top-ofthe-line hardware. Manish Sharma, Managing Director, Panasonic India, said, “With the launch of Eluga I, Panasonic India is offering a new dimension to the company’s unique

meeting the needs and requirements of the customers.” The company has also introduced an innovative Smart Swipe functionality with ELUGA I, wherein a combination of number of ﬁngers and direction of swipe can help user perform various predeﬁned functions providing ease of access.

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60 pages including cover