E-Magazine December Issue 2018

Vertiv buys MEMS Maintenance Business

Hitachi Vantara comes up with Pentaho 8.2

Digital Disruption & Transformation rule the roost at the 17th Star Nite Awards 2018

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Zendesk brings Sales Force Automation Tool Zendesk Sell Cambium Networks launches cnMatrix Enterprise Switches

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ANALYTICS

DIGITAL MARKETING

WEB DEVELOPMENT

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CCF-APAC 2018 focuses on AI, Hybrid Cloud and Automation 44pg

China bans iPhone models

A Chinese court has ordered Apple to restrain the sale and import of most iPhone models as a result of the trade war between the United States and China. Qualcomm had claimed that Apple violated its patents related to photo resizing and managing apps on touchscreen.

On November 30, the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled in favour of the chip-maker Qualcomm and issued the order barring the import and sale of iPhones. Qualcomm claims that Apple violates two of its patents in the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. The patents allow people to edit and resize photos on a phone and to manage apps by using a touchscreen, according to Qualcomm.

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BlackBerry reinforces its commitment to accelerate development of smart cities

BlackBerry Limited has announced its commitment to helping the private and public sectors come together to accelerate the development of Smart Cities and Intelligent Transportation Systems with a Security Credential Management System (SCMS) service.

BlackBerry is addressing this need by making available today, with no service fees to automakers and public offices involved in smart city and connected vehicle pilots, a SCMS service which provides the mechanism for vehicles and infrastructure, such as traffic lights, to exchange information in a trustworthy and private manner using digital certificates.

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December 2018

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HELLO INDIA

Will the Indian e-commerce market be ruled by “Made in India�?

Retailers have to expand globally. The world is becoming flat and the Indian e-commerce industry still has a long way to go. This industry is expected to be the largest part of the Indian internet market by 2020, with a massive projected value of $100 billion.

India is ranked the second largest smartphone market after China. Users are moving from laptops and desktops to mobile devices for activities such as checking emails and shopping that is helping the growth for the Indian e-commerce industry. It is also a fact that, online shopping is very convenient with a value addition for the e-commerce companies by offering deep discounts, cash-on-delivery, and a 30-day return policy across most platforms, which is helping the segments to grow further.

Technology is bridging the gap in India's fragmented logistics sector, and this sector is booming.The logistics industry is touted to be worth $307 billion by 2020. The increasing popularity of online retail companies have survived purely on Private Equity (PE) funding. Online retail is expected to be at par with the physical stores in the next five years and has grown 23 per cent to $17.8 billion in 2017.

Global market places are definitely on the rise and they are here to stay. They provide a perfect starting point for selling your products abroad. In addition, they can help to find out whether there is a market for your brand before you have to invest in your own online shop. Marketplaces attract customers to a large number of products available, typically at lower prices. The world's largest conglomerate such as Alibaba and Amazon are dominating the industry.

With the number of Internet users in India expected to touch around 600 million by 2020 and smartphones penetration to touch 600-700 million in 2020 mostly in lower tier cities and rural areas, this is expected to bring newer opportunities. Hence, retailers and brands are focusing on how to leverage the rise of marketplaces for the benefit of their business.

Both the retail, online and unorganized retail companies have to work together to ensure better prospects for the overall retail industry, while generating new opportunities to the customers. Marketplaces have both advantages and disadvantages, but Istill believe that they will positively drive retail towards innovative thinking and acting.

The recently concluded Star Nite Awards acted as a platform to showcase the potential of the partners and VARs in the country and was a grand success.

With this I wish all the readers a Merry Christmas and a very happy and prosperous News Year 2019!

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CONTENTS COVER STORY | 48 Website: www.varindia.com

Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Deputy Editor: Samrita Baruah Sub - Editor: Aparna Mullick Correspondent: Lopamudra Das Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera

STRATEGY

ANALYTICS

DIGITAL MARKETING

WEB DEVELOPMENT

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar Jha Sr. Marketing Manager: Ashok Ranjan Dash Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar

MARKET RESEARCH

CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@varindia.com

CIOs aligning their vision with marketing goals for achieving organizational growth

Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: S. Kamala kar Correspondent: L. G. Swami D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru- 560066 Tel: 080-49530399 | Mobile:09886280836 E-mail: kamlakar@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: K. Parthiban F1, Meadows Green Apartments, 64, Chetty Street 1st Cross, Mel Ayanambakkam, Chennai - 600 095 Cell No. : 98400 55626 E-mail: parthiban@varindia.com Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: Sunil Kumar Sahu 32-161/3, 202 Neha Paradise, Nr. Maissamma Temple, Venketeswara colony Ramakrishna Puram, Hyderabad - 500056 Telangana, Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08100298033 E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: B Kiran Dutta 123 SDF Building, Block GP Sector V, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700091 Mobile: 08100298033, E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Mobile: 09903088480, E-mail: kiran@varindia.com Printed and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of M/s. Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. Shed No. 203 - 204, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110030, Editor - S Mohini Ratna.

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REGULARS Round About CEO Speak Channel Chief Channel Guru Hot Bytes On the Ramp Voice N Data Channel Buzz Movers & Shakers

8 10 14 12 16, 18 20, 22 24 26 58

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VARINDIA'S 17thAnnual Star Nite Awards witnesses VAR Symposium

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SonicWall strengthens its Partners with new capabilities

START-UP 40

Emerging start-up ecosystem in India

FACE TO FACE

COVER STORY

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Dell EMC bullish on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure segment

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“Partners can play significant role in accelerating growth in storage” Real-time behaviour based analytics forms the core of Gurucul’s solutions

TECHNOMANIA

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Prysm and Inflow Technologies look to growing together in the UCC space Extreme Networks Pushes For ‘Unmatched, Unrivalled’ Services And Support

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CIOs aligning their vision with marketing goals for achieving organizational growth

3 Things you should consider when buying Flash Storage

INTERNATIONAL EVENTS 28

Dell EMC strives to seize great opportunities and win together with its channel

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CCF-APAC 2018 focuses on AI, Hybrid Cloud and Automation

INDUSTRY EVENTS

VAR SECURITY

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Digital Disruption & Transformation rule the roost at the 17th Star Nite Awards 2018

Proactive security framework required to safeguard a sophisticated attack

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December 2018

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ROUND ABOUT

Trump and Tariff: The Paired Ts The letter “T” is used now more often than ever before. Let me share my reasoning. Yes, I had deduced my hypothesis from Trump and Tariff, as both start with the letter “T”. As if to prove my reasoning, the other day President in his inimitable style proclaimed through his one-liner tweat “Trump stands for Tariff ”.

Let me come to the point: the significance of Trump and Tariff, the ubiquitous pair of Ts. To put in correct perspective, the United States had accumulated a significant large trade deficit in the last twenty+ years, thanks to a global trade policy which is against American interests.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), products manufactured in Canada and Mexico can be imported into the U.S. duty free. A U.S. Corporation can shut down their factory in Michigan or Indiana, resulting in the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S., and set up a factory in Mexico, and import the product into the U.S. without paying any duty, which contributes to large trade deficit with Mexico.

Thanks to low or no tariffs, the manufacturing jobs started disappearing, unemployment went up significantly and resultantly trade deficit had increased significantly every year. The candidate Donald Trump campaigned vigorously against unfair trade practices and imposition of tariffs in the 2016 Presidential election. It is not surprising that, soon after President Trump took office, he actively started taking steps towards negotiating unfair trade treaties, imposing tariffs, and reducing trade deficit.

During the last two years, unemployment is all-time low during the last fifty+ years. The U.S. economy is very healthy at present, and NAFTA has been negotiated to protect the U.S. economic interest. The US prosperity can be attributed directly to President Trump’s economic policies.

Some consider Trump’s penchant for tariffs shook the basis of global economic foundation. It is not alone the businesses mainly in two countries had reacted, but the entire gamut of stakeholders including farmers, common man and the list goes on. Why such things are happening now?

Here I will induct a bit of IT. The other day, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada. Incidentally, that was at the same time when President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping were hammering out a truce on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Argentina.

At this juncture, it is instructive to see the reasons that led to the detaining of the Huwei executive. A clear-cut reason is still to emerge. China has formally asked for the reasons for the detention, which is speculated to be something political. Illegal exports to Iran, technology theft, illegal trading, etc are said to be the reasons behind the arrest.

Another war that has erupted can be traced back to technology.

That involves mastering technology and using it for gaining economic advantage over others. Accumulation of the state-of-the-art technology had given certain countries both financial and military muscle power.

Undoubtedly, this had led to arrogance and supremacy of these countries over those which could not command such powers due to a variety of reasons, including lack of resources, inadequate research infrastructure, etc. Slowly, this had led to theft of technology, even the high-ended technologies. Though many conventions were brought to the fore and several institutions were created to prevent such thefts, the distortions continued unabated.

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The present dilemma of tariff war is mainly due to lack of trust between the U.S. and China in technology and related fields. The U.S. accuses China of heavy theft of technology. It also feels that major technologies developed in the U.S. laboratories are clandestinely taken away to China. Once they dissect such technologies and minutely examine them, they will be in a position to come out with the same technology, if not a better one. The U.S. claims that most of the technologies, which are being improvised in the laboratories and incubators in China including in the field of Artificial Intelligence and telecom, are all developed and tested by the U.S., including some of the nuclear inventions.

President Trump claims that this was going on for a long time, and the successive governments did turn a blind eye to such happenings to make the whole world know that the U.S. has a magnanimous mind to accommodate everything, including such things that weaken the very foundation of the nation. As a businessman, he swears that he cannot be a moot spectator to these unfortunate happenings. He wants to restore the pristine values and supremacy of the US. The coinage “America First”, unilateral imposition of tariffs, the subsequent trade wars, etc are being triggered by the unsavoury developments that have put the American interest at the bottom.

President Trump has his own supporters in the US. Everyone thought his firm stand and uncompromising views were primarily to focus on the electorate to gain mileage in the electoral process. Once the elections were over and the President receiving a solid setback in the elections, everyone thought, things were getting a little calmer. The late-night dinner with the Chinese President was construed as Trump is waving an olive twig towards the Chinese cowed by the huge pressure being exerted by some corporations and farmers’ lobby. Before the reportedly frugal food both shared away from the glittering lights of the media, the first signs of commotion after a thaw has started showing up with the arrest of the Huwei senior executive. Will that put the pendulum back to where it has started? Only time will be able to tell that. But one thing is clear that Trump has found a new ally in Tariff – an ally he may believe more than the countries in the NATO or trusted people in his own administration.

Will it give him another four years in the White House? That is apparently the question being asked by many. Clearly, it eludes a precise answer.

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CEO SPEAK

DIGITIZATION’S PRODUCTIVITY GAINS DEPEND ON CLEAN AND RELIABLE ELECTRICAL POWER

JEAN-PASCAL TRICOIRE

YUANQING YANG

Chairman & CEO Schneider Electric

Chairman & CEO Lenovo

Hong Kong: In one of his keynote addresses at an event, Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman & CEO - Schneider Electric spoke about his company powering the digital economy through its numerous solutions as it lives by the mission of supplying energy to people across the globe.

Hong Kong: At one of the prestigious events, Yuanqing Yang, Chairman & CEO - Lenovo spoke on how the shift to narrow the geographic focus of Lenovo’s handset business is starting to pay off, while also outlining the company’s IoT and artificial intelligence (AI) strategies.

Schneider Electric has announced EcoStruxure IT for partners, an open, cloud-based, multi-tenant platform developed for IT solution providers focused on data center and distributed IT sites. This platform is highly secured and is enabled by EcoStruxure’s predictive analytics and will host applications and tools for solution providers to build new, recurring service offerings and business models.

It then shifted its focus to selective markets and a narrow price band, which he said “has been very helpful in turning the business around”. He said Q3 was a milestone for Motorola as it recorded its first profit in ten years.

The first EcoStruxure IT application being made available is the monitoring application called EcoStruxure IT Expert. This application enables IT solution providers to deliver a remote monitoring service empowered with real-time data and proactive recommendations, reducing meantime to repair and improving system availability.

By leveraging big data and intelligent benchmarking from distributed IT environments to the data center, EcoStruxure IT Expert provides a faster and easier way to deliver the services and support required by customers as they grow more dependent on their critical IT infrastructure.EcoStruxure IT Expert provides the foundation to give partners visibility into multiple customer sites and develop additional potential revenue streams.

“In the near future, we will deliver additional functionality and applications within EcoStruxure IT for Partners, offering our partners additional capabilities to remotely access customer sites and increase efficiency and control, reducing the need for onsite visits,” said Jean-Pascal.

As part of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture, EcoStruxure IT operates on all IoT-enabled physical infrastructure assets like secure power and cooling — including the new Smart-UPS with APC SmartConnect, a cloud-enabled UPS, designed to be fast and cost-effective for deployment in small, distributed environments.

In the 21st century, where many people still don't have access to reliable energy, our mission is to supply energy. We develop or supply combined solutions of power and digital because they are the source of life. We live in exciting times, at the convergence of IT and power. If you look at the equation of energy in 15 years from now, energy consumption will grow one-fold. Electricity will grow twice the pace, and IT four times.

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LENOVO WILL FOCUS ON THREE AREAS – SMARTER IOT, NEW IT AND SMART VERTICALS

December 2018

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Yang said that the company has three approaches to capture a share of the growing smart IoT sector - making traditional devices including PCs and smartphones smarter; building new smart devices including speakers, displays and AR/VR headsets; and working to connect smart IoT devices and components to the cloud to give customers smart solutions.

The company is piloting a smart IoT-driven warehouse platform for one of the world’s largest retail companies to improve its efficiency.

He described intelligent transformation, an approach, which he said refers to tapping the unlimited potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution through AI. “The true impact of AI will not only make our homes smarter and offices more efficient, but will also completely transform every value chain in every industry.”

As far as the data centre business is concerned he said, it hasn’t seen a turnaround yet, but is improving profitability every quarter.

Being a global vendor, Lenovo puts its best foot forward in terms of showcasing its latest and innovative offerings directed towards the channel community of the region.

Yang Yuanqing is the Chief Executive Officer and an executive director of the Lenovo and has been appointed as the Chairman of the Board on November 3, 2011. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field of computers. Under his leadership, Lenovo has been China's best-selling PC brand since 1997.

He is also a director and a shareholder of Sureinvest Holdings Limited which holds interests in the issued share capital of the Company.

We believe the larger potential lies within commercial IoT. We are only scratching the surface of these new smart IoT product categories. In future, Lenovo will focus on three areas - Smarter IoT. So we view PC and the smartphone as part of it; second is new IT, software datacenter, supercomputer and hyper-scale businesses; and third is smart verticals.

But that strategy didn’t work, so we lost a lot of money.

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Barco to strengthen and consolidate its channel business in 2019 Ramya Chatterjee, Director – Sales (Visualization & Entertainment), Barco India, who works closely with the channel partner community plans to leverage their strength in bolstering the presence of Barco in the country. While the company was on an expansion mode in 2018, it will look to consolidating both its business and channel presence in 2019 Barco as an organization has multiple Business Units (BU)as it caters to 3 different verticals – Entertainment, Enterprise and Healthcare. Different verticals have different product line catering to different needs of customers. Also, these different business verticals have got their distinctive go to market strategies.

“We will look to further strengthening and consolidating our partner eco-system. 2018 was a year of expansion for most of our business line in the metros. By doing so we understood who our top performing partners are and so in 2019, we are going to expand our business beyond the metros to tier II and III cities. The major focus will be in the capital cities though.

Education is also going to be a big focus area next year,” explains Ramya Chatterjee, Director – Sales (Visualization & Entertainment), Barco India.

Channel consolidation in 2019 In 2019, since consolidation and expansion will happen simultaneouslyfor Barco, it will run various partner loyalty & engagement programs.

Barco has conceptualised an interesting channel program for tier II & III town partners and it will continue to do it next year too.

Channel Connect Program is one such program that has been developed for the tier I & II partners globally. Here partners are provided back-end rebates, certification programs, preferential price support for large deals, joint customer calls, besides giving product demo assistance & POCs, time bound target driven incentive programs, customized EDM program, workshop, and also partner on-boarding programs sometimes.

Barco has different nature of partners to cater to different verticals – Audio Visual partners, Office Automation partners, IT & Networking partners, Security partners, education driven partners and so on. All these partners are carrying a different kind of supplementary and complementary products in their portfolio and the programs will be designed in such a manner

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partners, the enterprise business (ClickShare) has 150+ partners, and in the healthcare space Barco works with select 25-30 partners who with their expertise add value to its business. The company has at present 3 distributors for its enterprise line of products - Supertron, Online Instruments and Ceeco Technologies.

“By 2020, we would like to double our active partners who associate with us for our ClickShare business,” says Ramya.

While selecting partners, Barco keeps in mind 3 parameters – • The investment appetite the partner has • The partner’s capability to focus on technology-based products since Barco products need a different kind of engagement • The partner’s focus on those product lines which have got a long gestation period

Message to the partners “Barco is a stable company and we are doing extremely well worldwide.

We are a cash rich company and are present in 90 countries. Our top-line and bottom-line has been quite steady since six years and we are in the process of expansion in India this year. I request our partners to come and shake hands with us as we want to grow together.” that they will help these partners to grow.

Barco follows a two tier model of distribution.

The national distributors export the products from Barco Belgium and then they give them to their next tier of partners who are called the VARs or stockist partners and they in turn sell it to the end customers. Sometimes big system integrators like Honeywell, Siemens, Larsen & Toubro also come into the picture when it involves products like control and command center solutions. Barco’s Cinema business has 400

“Since our products are niche and not mass products, our partners need to have a prolonged engagement with the end customer. Also, the RoI is also very high on these products,” he says.

He further adds, “When we sign up with the partners, we try to build a win-win proposition.

We invest in terms of both money and time with our partners and certify & train them so that they come to that level where they ooze confidence whenever they deal with our customers. In 2019, we would be investing heavily on partner training and enablement program.”

And so…

Today more than 85% of Barco’s business comes through channel. “For instance, our cinema business is done through the channel, except for the PVR account which is done direct. Our ClickShare business is again through channel. In the control room business where we deal with Video Walls, control & command centre solutions, 90% business is done through SI partners. In the Healthcare and also in the virtual & Augmented reality space, 100% business is done through the channel. n

Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com

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December 2018

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CHANNEL CHIEF

Lenovo to continue investing in Channel

Ivan Cheung Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, Lenovo Asia Pacific, Regional General Manager, Lenovo Central, Asia Pacific

Rahul Agarwal MD and CEO, Lenovo India

A 100% channel driven company and has the highest channel penetration in Asia Pacific market, Lenovo has acquired the top position in APAC market. In a chat with Ivan Cheung, Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, Lenovo Asia Pacific, Regional General Manager, Lenovo Central, Asia Pacific and Rahul Agarwal, MD and CEO, Lenovo India discuss about B & C class cities, channel profitability and company’s growth

Kindly brief penetration?

us

about

Lenovo’s

Channel

At APAC level (without China) 95% of our business comes from channel. In Asia Pacific our market share for PC is 72% which is actually the highest and 95% of this market share is through channel partners.

We are highest in channel penetration and have 17,000 registered channel partners in Lenovo Partner portal. We are now number one in APAC. Channel is important for us.

In APAC, 95% of business comes from channel and five percent through direct. In India, our consumer and SMB business is 100% through channel. Our relationship business may be 70-30 or 75-25%. So, on a whole we are close 90% even for India.

How are you targeting the emerging Tier 2 & 3 cities?

There are two ways to target these cities. First, the good old distribution wherein you go to T1 and then to the regional distributors and then they go to the smaller stores. There are about 20,000 PC stores in India as per GFK. We sell to 10,000 stores. We are expanding our distribution network and appointing more regional distributors. In last six months we have appointed 30 more regional distributors.

Second, a lot of B & C class consumers are buying online. So, therefore we are making sure that we put those products which are preferred by these customers.

Third, our exclusive retail network so that we can continue to expand.

Every quarter we are opening 30-40 exclusive outlets and many of them are in B & C class cities.

Lenovo is also investing multimillion dollar to enhance the channel

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experience especially the Lenovo Partner portal. We not just put information in it but for order, channel partner program, publish ability and training on IoT products etc can be managed in the partner portal.

We are also trying to invest in AI in this because now we have over 17,000 channel partners in Asia Pacific. With the AI capability, it will be not that easy to have a tailor made experience for each individual partner. So that is why we are combining some AI or Big Data in the partner portal so that it can be more personalised. It is one thing that will come out in 12-18 months.

How Lenovo will help channel to stay profitable?

The way we are expanding our portfolio, Lenovo will keep playing every strong role in IoT devices, we are also coming up with new products like AR, VR, commercial IoT and think smart hub. So, channel will have more to sell from Lenovo. So what channel wants is wider portfolio and to work with a profitable vendor. Lenovo is the No. 1 vendor, almost the most profitable in PC business and we are widening our portfolio. We are making ourself future proof. So this is what our partner needs.

What kind of growth you are witnessing presently?

If I look at last year, we look at PCs and Smart Devices which is PC and tablets, we grew by 44% and the market grew by 5%. We totally outgrew the market. If you want to do well in India, you have to have the right share in all the channels like etail, traditional distribution, our own exclusive retail, LFR, institutional selling etc. So for the first time, in last quarter over 20% share in all the segments. In tablet we have over 30%, consumer is 22%, SMB is 20.1% and in enterprise it is 22%. So, we have to press all the levers because this is a market there are only three players which means that till the time we get 25% share we will not be happy.

Today, we are about 4% away from 25%.

CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE

Blog

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December 2018

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HOT BYTES

Route Mobile joins hands with Oracle Marketing Cloud

Route Mobile has entered into collaboration with Oracle Marketing Cloud, part of Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Cloud Suite, which empowers organizations to take a smarter approach to customer experience management and business transformation initiatives.

“Being a technology-driven cloud communications platform provider means staying ahead of the innovation curve with innovative products and strategic partnerships. We intend to continue to ensure seamless delivery of SMS messages to companies so that they can have deeper mobile customer engagement with two-way SMS communication, which makes the interaction more engaging and generates an excellent customer experience,” said Rajdipkumar Gupta, MD & Group CEO, Route Mobile. “We are excited about this collaboration. We believe that Oracle Responsys customers will benefit from our quality A2P SMS routes across the globe, proprietary cloud communications platforms, and domain expertise. We will aim to ensure every enterprise is armed with a cloud or on-premise solution.”

iValue inks VAD agreement with Arcserve

iValue InfoSolutions has signed a VAD agreement with Arcserve for their Business Continuity Solutions – for Data Protection, Replication & Recovery Solutions, for both on premise and cloud of every organization.

Arcserve provides next-generation data protection solutions that are feature-rich and instantaneous on usage. They also provide cloud storage and disaster recovery-as-a-service along with 100% uptime for enterprises' most business-critical systems and applications.

Nikhil Korgaonkar, Regional Director, India & SAARC, Arcserve, s a i d , "Arcserve Business continuity solutions for over 3 decades have helped organizations worldwide to prevent data loss, manage regulatory compliance, minimize downtime and protect mission-critical data. We are pleased to partner and leverage iValue's vast customer and partner base, for effectively addressing evolving data availability and security needs of customers. Arcserve is committed to invest and grow India business along with iValue."

Qlik expands its leadership in AI and Machine Learning

Qlik continues to lead the analytics and business intelligence industry in delivering AI (augmented intelligence) innovation that expands the value of Qlik’s platform for all users.

With the November 2018 release of Qlik Sense, Qlik has introduced new machine learning (ML) capabilities into its cognitive engine and platform. Precedent-based machine learning allows the Qlik cognitive engine to get smarter over time, continually learning from user interaction and feedback as well as other sources. Qlik is the first analytics company to bring AI and ML capabilities together with human intuition in a way that truly augments the user’s power to discover.

Qlik’s new machine learning capabilities will initially be utilized in Insight Advisor, which debuted as part of the June 2018 Qlik Sense Enterprise release. Insight Advisor auto-generates and suggests the best analytics and insights to explore based on the overall data set and a user’s search criteria, making insight suggestions increasingly relevant and valuable as the machine learns from the user’s analytics interactions. Users can directly train the machine by manually creating analytics, altering what the machine suggests, and providing direct feedback. The cognitive engine also learns from additional governed and trusted sources such as business rule definitions in global libraries and Qlik artefacts.

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Vertiv buys MEMS Maintenance Business

Vertiv has completed the purchase of the maintenance business of MEMS Power Generation (MEMS), a privately-owned company headquartered in the United Kingdom that specializes in temporary power solutions. This marks the third acquisition for Vertiv, and is consistent with the company’s growth strategy.

MEMS will now focus entirely on its generator rentals solutions business.

“The addition of the MEMS maintenance business is a natural fit for our existing U.K. business and we welcome MEMS’s more than 160 contract customers that we now have the opportunity to serve,” said Rob Johnson, Vertiv Chief Executive Officer. “By strengthening our capability in generator maintenance, and expanding our service offerings in critical infrastructure in EMEA, we’re well positioned to offer customers an unmatched suite of services.”

Attivo Networks expands its footprint in India

Attivo Networks has announced that the company has expanded its worldwide operations to support the growing demand for deception technology in India. The expansion is fuelled by enterprise, midmarket, and government agency interests in reducing dwell time, the time it takes to detect an in-network attacker and for improving incident response operations.

“The Attivo Networks ThreatDefend portfolio is locally developed in India and perfectly aligned with the Cyber Security Framework for threat deception,” said Tushar Kothari, CEO, Attivo Networks. “Deception technology adoption is soaring globally, and we look forward to addressing market demand and successfully expanding our presence in India.”

“It is exciting to see a world-class deception provider increase their presence in the Indian market,” said Apurva Mody, CEO, Adweb Technologies. “Deception is seen as an important layer of defence by both regulators and enterprises, and we are looking forward to working with Attivo Networks to further develop the market.”

HCL Technologies to buy select IBM Software Products worth $1.8B

IBM and HCL Technologies (HCL) have inked a definitive agreement, under which HCL will acquire select IBM software products for $1.8 billion. The transaction is expected to close by mid-2019, subject to completion of applicable regulatory reviews.

The software products in scope represent a total addressable market of more than $50 billion and include - Appscan for secure application development; BigFix for secure device management; Unica (on-premise) for marketing automation; Commerce (on-premise) for omni-channel eCommerce; Portal (onpremise) for digital experience; Notes and Domino for email and low-code rapid application development, andConnections for workstream collaboration.

HCL and IBM have an ongoing IP partnership for five of these products.

“Over the last four years, we have been prioritizing our investments to develop integrated capabilities in areas such as AI for business, hybrid cloud, cybersecurity, analytics, supply chain and blockchain as well as industry-specific platforms and solutions, including healthcare, industrial IoT, and financial services. These are among the emerging, high-value segments of the IT industry. As a result, IBM is a leader in these segments today,” said John Kelly, IBM Senior Vice-President, Cognitive Solutions and Research.

www.varindia.com

December 2018

17

HOT BYTES

Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic opens Security Operations Centre in India

Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic has announced the launch of its first Security Operations Centre (SOC) in Mumbai. Hitachi’s SOC will bring IT security expertise to India, enabling management of security services round the clock to monitor customer environments, detect and mitigate threats, respond to security incidents and facilitate strict compliance requirements.

Tarun Seth, Managing Director, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, said, “Organizations today are rethinking their security requirements as they are becoming increasingly aware of protecting their most valuable asset – data. Our vision is to provide a holistic view to proactively monitor and tackle cybersecurity threats, before it even has a chance to penetrate organizations.”

RP tech India bullish on Gaming Hardware Business in India

RP tech India is bullish over the booming Gaming business in India. A distributor of Gaming hardware solution said that it thrives to become a “One-Stop Shop” for all Gaming requirements of the “budding Gamers” community in the country.

The youngest country in the world with more than 65-per cent population under the age of 35, India is the highest potential market for the Gaming vendors. According to the joint study of Google India and KPMG, Indian online gaming industry is expected add 190 million gamer(s) and become a US$1-billion opportunity by 2021.

Improved broadband, increasing number of smartphones users, higher disposable incomes and the introduction of new gaming genres and competitions are the key factors driving the growth of the industry.

With 4G services at affordable cost, the online gamer base in the country is expected to grow further. Though mobile Gaming is a primary driver of this growth, the PC and Console Gaming business is also growing at a consistent pace.

Tech Mahindra to enable digital transformation for Coal India

Tech Mahindra has announced an Rs.270-crore deal to enable digital transformation for Coal India. The engagement, which will span over five years, is aimed at enterprise modernization.

The primary objective of setting up an integrated ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system in Coal India and its subsidiaries is to deploy state-of-theart information technology system, which can provide all the necessary information based on real-time data and help the management in taking quick and timely decisions to achieve the desired results.

Anil Kumar Jha, Chairman, Coal India, says, “Coal India is very passionate and committed to this project, and firmly believes that Tech Mahindra will be able to complete it well within the project timelines.”

This implementation would be taken up in phases. Phase first includes the ERP Implementation in Coal India and its two subsidiaries – Mahanadi Coalfields Limited and Western Coalfields Limited.

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Sonata Software to acquire Australia-based Scalable Data Systems

Sonata Software has announced that it has signed definitive agreement to acquire Scalable Data Systems, headquartered in Brisbane, Australia.

Scalable Data Systems is a highly respected provider of business solutions in the Australian market, with a history of more than 25 years and has built a solid reputation in providing Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O solutions for industry-leading clients in Australia, especially in Manufacturing and Wholesale & Distribution. Scalable’s IP for Commodity Trading “CTRM” has now earned market-leading reputation globally with due recognition accorded to the company as a Microsoft Gold and an ISV Partner.

Srikar Reddy, Managing Director & CEO, Sonata Software, said, “Scalable Data Systems brings great value in terms of Microsoft Dynamics 365 capabilities and resources to Sonata. This will provide Sonata with additional IP, and geographical reach, along with a strong fillip to its strategy to be a global leader in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner ecosystem with core IPs across wide range of industries and a global footprint, specifically also making us a strong Dynamics partner in the Australian market.”

UiPath appoints Ingram Micro as its Distribution Partner for RPA

UiPath has announced the appointment of Ingram Micro as its Distribution Partner for RPA in India. Under the tie-up, Ingram Micro would set up a dedicated business team focused on complete engagement with its reseller network to support UiPath business. Ingram Micro’s engagement with its reseller network would cover key areas such as partner enablement, demand generation, sales, pre-sales, and commercial fulfilment across India to drive the growth of RPA market in India.

As the market leading RPA vendor, UiPath believes that enterprises in India should have an accelerated and easy path to procuring RPA and AI solutions so that the business benefits are realized sooner and the enterprise scale-up of these solutions happens quicker.

Rajeev Mittal, MD – India Sales, UiPath, says, “UiPath’s tie-up with Ingram Micro as a distributor would help enterprises in India procure RPA technology through Ingram Micro’s vast reseller network that cover 250plus cities and towns in India. Enterprises in India are looking at RPA as the most impactful technology that accelerates their digital transformation journey. Ingram Micro’s reseller network would enable the agility and scale for enterprises to adopt RPA.”

Atos to support C-DAC in its National Supercomputing Mission

Atos has announced a major 3-year contract with the C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), an organization within the MeitY (Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, India) to supply its BullSequana supercomputers. This contract is part of the NSM (National Supercomputing Mission), a 7-year plan of Rs.4,500 crore led by the Government of India which aims to create a network of over 70 highperformance supercomputing facilities for various academic and research institutions across India.

This project will see Atos deploy its BullSequana supercomputers, with a cumulative computing power of more than 10 petaflops. These supercomputers, including the recently announced BullSequana XH2000, will be installed in various academic and research institutions, making Atos a leading supercomputing provider in India for this segment.

Arvind Bajaj, Vice-President and Head Big Data & Security, Atos in India, says, “We would like to thank the Hon’ble Minister MEIT, Secretary, MEIT, and the Director General of C-DAC, Dr Hemant Darbari for giving this opportunity to participate in such a prestigious program. We are very excited and looking forward to this unique technology partnership with C-DAC.”

www.varindia.com

December 2018

19

ON THE RAMP

Symantec comes up with Industrial Control System Protection Neural

Symantec Corp. has introduced Industrial Control System Protection (ICSP) Neural, the neural network-integrated USB scanning station that helps organizations protect critical infrastructure by preventing the devastating physical consequences of cyberattacks on operational technology (OT).

OT is mission-critical in industries such as energy, oil & gas, manufacturing, and transportation, but legacy systems are often outdated and nearly impossible to secure with traditional endpoint security.

Companies have typically relied on unscanned USB devices to update these systems, increasing the potential for malware infection and targeted attacks.

The threat of cyber warfare – including physical damage and personal safety – is very real and the consequences are potentially devastating.

Despite this, the industrial control systems that power critical infrastructure often run on outdated Windows systems leaving them vulnerable to both known and unknown threats.

Juniper Networks adds new offerings to Networks Advanced Threat Prevention Appliances

Juniper Networks has announced new offerings as part of its Juniper Networks Advanced Threat Prevention (JATP) Appliances, enabling enterprises to detect malware, understand behaviour and mitigate threats with just one touch. This solution leverages data from any third-party firewall or security data source, avoiding unnecessary vendor lock-in.

Eliminating complex, time-consuming data collection configurations, Juniper is helping security teams improve their organization’s security posture by simplifying and accelerating security operations.

“We are immensely proud of the progress we have made to date with our unified cybersecurity platform and are excited to announce the newest addition to our portfolio, JATP400 Appliance, along with the addition of our latest threat detection capabilities. The new custom data collectors, in particular, will give our customers a fast and flexible way to gain a better view of their network from all angles, using their security data to quickly identify advanced threats directly from the JATP Appliances. We look forward to bringing these new capabilities to enterprises and taking another step toward truly secure networks,” says Samantha Madrid, VicePresident of Security Business and Strategy, Juniper Networks.

Lenovo announces ThinkShield – an endto-end approach to keep businesses secure

Lenovo has unveiled ThinkShield, an end-to-end approach to securing business devices, data, online presence and identity throughout their lifecycle.

ThinkShield features a suite of security-focused innovations, processes and technologies. From physical endpoint protection to a trusted suppler program and transparent supply chain management, ThinkShield covers features that are integrated at the deepest level to ensure the highest level of security for enterprises.

Rohit Midha, Director, Commercial Named Accounts, Lenovo India, says, “While Indian enterprises and SMEs are installing ThinkPads, ThinkCentres and ThinkStations at their workplace, we wish to empower them for a smarter and more efficient workplace through Intelligent Transformation."

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Zendesk brings Sales Force Automation Tool Zendesk Sell

Zendesk, Inc. has launched Zendesk Sell, a sales force automation (SFA) tool to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for sales teams. Sell stems from Zendesk’s acquisition of FutureSimple Inc., the company behind Base, in September 2018 and marks the first step in integrating the sales force automation software into the Zendesk family of products.

In addition to a new name and logo, Sell is launching with new core SFA capabilities added since the acquisition, including simplified collaboration via at-mentions, and customizable performance dashboards.

Sell is also launching with a new integration for Zendesk Support, giving support agents more context from the sales process and allowing them to notify sales of opportunities surfaced during a support conversation. Sell now offers the deepest SFA integration on the Zendesk marketplace.

Hitachi Vantara comes up with Pentaho 8.2

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd, has announced Pentaho 8.2, the newest release of the company’s data integration and analytics platform software, providing new, out-of-thebox integration with Hitachi’s object storage platform, Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). Pentaho 8.2 better integrates Hitachi Vantara’s portfolio of products and enables users to address key industry use-cases with access to unstructured data from HCP. This release also enables customers to manage a hybrid cloud environment in new ways and expands support for the analytic ecosystem.

With Pentaho’s new integration with HCP, users can now build data pipelines that include structured and unstructured data sources – such as text, video, audio, images, social media, clickstreams and log files – allowing data analysts and data scientists to generate better insights that drive more business value.

With so many alternatives for data lakes – including NoSQL databases, public cloud options from Microsoft Azure, Amazon and Google, and onpremises object stores – organizations are taking a closer look at the best way to spend on data management and govern this data to comply with regulations. Pentaho 8.2 delivers access to new and better ways to manage data when used together with Hitachi Content Platform.

HPE announces Edge Platform Solutions to accelerate business efficiency and innovation

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced new HPE Edgeline Converged Edge System solutions that speed the deployment and simplify the management of edge applications, enabling customers to act on the vast amounts of data generated by machines, assets and sensors from edge to cloud. Based on an open platform, enterprises can seamlessly integrate a broad ecosystem of applications and operational technology (OT) devices for edge deployments – driving efficiency and innovation in industries like manufacturing, energy, and telecommunications.

The new solutions include - HPE Edgeline OT Link Platform, an open platform that automates the interplay between diverse operational technologies (OT) and standard-IT based applications at the edge to enable intelligent and autonomous decision making; HPE Edgeline systems management, the solutions designed specifically for the edge to ensure enterprise-grade reliability, connectivity and security; HPE Edgeline EL300 Converged Edge System featuring OT link and HPE Edgeline systems management, providing superior resilience against harsh edge environments for a broad range of industrial deployments; and HPE Edgeline Field Application Engineering Services are available from HPE Pointnext to help customers plan, build, and customize OT link-based Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems.

Coming Soon

8th ED I T I O N

Brand Positioning Is All About To See In Action Brand strategy is a deliberate branding plan that operates on the symbolic levels of consumer consciousness and a good positioning strategy requires a careful evaluation of market research. A large number of brands of various products are available in the industry to choose and select from.

CIO and CMO alignment drives business growth, reason being the future profitability of your company rides on the consumer experiences you provide. The CMO and CIO relationship is becoming one of the most important Csuite collaborations when it comes to delivering the kind of the digital experiences that customers demand.

Let’s find out how successful brands are working….

A healthy partnership between these two executive positions can deliver seamless consumer experiences across all best possible sectors, one can think of…

Find details in the 8th Edition - Top 25 Brands in Indian ICT Industry

Branding is one of the most important aspects of every business.

An effective brand strategy gives you a major edge in increasingly competitive markets.

Every effort of the BRAND BOOK is to make your brand stronger.

The 2019 issue will focus on the Brand Mapping Strategy of the corporates Corporate Office: Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. VAR House: A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110068, Tel: 011-41656383, 41655458 Fax: 46061809, Website: www.mybrandbook.co.in Bureau Offices: Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bhubaneswarwww.varindia.com

December 2018

21

ON THE RAMP

Commvault Activate and its portfolio of applications to define innovation

Commvault has announced powerful innovation in the quest to improve business outcomes with data-driven insights and actions. With Commvault Activate and its portfolio of applications, customers will be able to merge the knowledge and analysis of their data with actionable use-cases. With this ability to know their data, customers will increase their potential to “activate” their data for significant returns across areas like improved business decision making, lowered data storage costs, compliance readiness, risk, and other customer critical use-cases. The innovation in Commvault Activate solves one of the most vexing challenges facing CIOs: gaining a complete picture of their data environments. The announcement has been made at Commvault GO 2018, the company’s annual customer conference being held in Nashville, Tennessee.

Commvault Activate unleashes a powerful open, dynamic index (the Commvault 4D Index) and embraces artificial intelligence (AI) learning methods that enrich the data context, meaning and understanding across data sources regardless of location or data type. Enterprises can utilize Commvault Activate to discover and gain knowledge about their data across all environments, whether managed by third-party tools, managed with Commvault tools, or not under management at all.

Panasonic launches new handheld TOUGHBOOK devices for evolving mobile workforce

Panasonic has unveiled its next generation of highly capable handheld TOUGHBOOK, FZ-T1 and L1 – a series of slimline, rugged model perfect for today’s evolving mobile workforces seeking an all-in-one solution. The brand-new TOUGHBOOK devices are one of the most versatile and compact Android-based offerings that are boasted by Panasonic’s industry-leading reputation for durable design and flexible functionality.

Stocked with multiple evolutionary characteristics alongside a multifaceted functionality range, the FZ-T1 and L1 can be used for shelf stocking, order taking, logistical record keeping, queue busting and long lasting field use. With an easy viewing display, the TOUGHBOOK devices have an efficient 10-finger input, are capable of operating in the rain and can be used with gloved hands or an optional passive pen.

The seamless use of these features alongside its balance of mobility, durability and 12 hours battery life(FZ-T1) / 9 hours battery life (FZ-L1), ideal for industries such as warehousing, manufacturing, and public safety; has the ability to their improve workforce productivity and the ease of efficient business operability.

Sophos announces lateral movement protection to XG firewall

Sophos has announced that its next-generation Sophos XG Firewall now includes lateral movement protection to prevent targeted, manual cyberattacks or exploits from infiltrating further into a compromised network.

The SophosLabs 2019 Threat Report discusses a rise in targeted ransomware. With the SamSam ransomware campaign estimated to have earned more than $6.5 million, it is not surprising that criminals are attracted to this method. In these attacks, cyber criminals target weak entry points and brute-force Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) passwords. Once in, they move laterally, working one step at a time to steal domain admin credentials, manipulate internal controls, disable backups and more. By the time most IT managers notice what’s happening, the damage is done.

“Many organizations are set up to protect against automatic bots, but not interactive, human-driven attacks. If active adversaries get into a system they can ‘think laterally’ to troubleshoot roadblocks, evade detection and move around. It’s hard to stop them unless the right security measures are in place,” said Dan Schiappa, Senior Vice-President & General Manager of Products, Sophos.

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Acer releases OJO 500 Windows Mixed Reality headset

Acer India has unveiled its new Acer Windows Mixed Reality headset – Acer OJO 500. The new headset features a one-of-a-kind detachable design that offers superior flexibility, comfort, and hygiene for consumers and businesses.

The Acer OJO 500’s unique design enables the lens and head strap to be individually removed, making the headset easy to store and clean.

This is especially beneficial for businesses who want to provide customers with clean headwear for each use.

Available with either a hard or soft head strap, both provide a snug yet comfortable fit. The soft head strap is machine washable, and the extralarge padding on the hard headstrap helps the headset fit securely and firmly in place. In addition, the mask can be flipped up, eliminating the need to remove the entire headset to answer the phone or converse with people in the room.

Cambium Networks launches cnMatrix Enterprise Switches

Cambium Networks has announced the availability of cnMatrix Enterprise Switches.

Atul Bhatnagar, President & CEO of Cambium Networks, says, “Enterprise IT managers, Managed Service Providers (MSP) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) need affordable enterprise-grade solutions that satisfy end-users. cnMatrix enterprise switches and the cnMaestro cloud management system provide simple, secure, cloud-managed, affordable administration of a unified wired/wireless network.” cnMatrix switches feature Policy-Based Automation; Auto Policy Wipe; Network Segmentation; Wireless Aware; Site Survivability; and Cloud Management.

Rad Sethuraman, Vice-President of Product Line Management for Cambium Networks, says, “Cloud-managed cnMatrix switching together with cnPilot Enterprise Wi-Fi solutions provide Intelligent Edge capabilities that improve network performance while reducing the time and cost of deploying and managing a unified wired/wireless network.

Intelligent Edge solutions bring policy-based automation that simplifies operations and improves security. The network is more resilient to outages and users stay connected.”

ASUSTOR and Seagate announce IronWolf Health Management Software

ASUSTOR, working closely with Seagate Technology, will soon be officially launching the new IronWolf Health Management in the next version of ADM. ADM 3.2.2 has improved IronWolf Heath Management by implementing graphical charts to provide users with a clear view of hard drive health, workload and temperature analysis as well as regularly scanning drives, to maintain optimal performance and security in an ASUSTOR NAS. "ASUSTOR is constantly pushing NAS to the next level. With the drive to innovate, Seagate is proud to announce Asustor to be the first to implement IronWolf Health 2.0 with features such as workload charting, temperature monitoring, and easy access to data recovery," said Melyssa Banda, Vice-President of Client and Enterprise Storage, Seagate Technology. "With IHM 2.0, users can expect the best possible NAS experience through Asustor's ADM NAS operating system."

www.varindia.com

December 2018

23

VOICE-N-DATA

DIGISOL announces gigabit ethernet PoE Huawei inks 22 5G commercial contracts Huawei Executive Director & President of Carrier BG, Ryan Ding, has announced that Huawei has signed 22 commercial contracts for 5G. Switch

DIGISOL Systems has unveiled the DG-GS1512HP, a Web-managed Switch with 8 Giga POE ports, 4 Giga Combo ports and 4 SFP slots.

An intelligent network manageable switch DG-GS1512HP is designed for network environments that require high performance, high port density and easy for installation. The switch also supports VLAN, Port Mirroring and Port Trunking.

DG-GS1512HP is an exceptional L2 Web-managed switch with 24 Gbps switching capacity. Its wire-speed switching performance helps to take full advantage of existing high performance on PCs and laptops by significantly improving the responsiveness of applications and file transfer times.

IEEE 802.1w Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol provides a loop-free network and redundant links to the core network with rapid convergence, enhancing overall network stability and reliability.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 releases with enhanced AI and 3D biometrics

At the Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit in Maui, Hawaii, the US chip giant announced the Snapdragon 855 mobile platform, designed to "connect the world with 4G and 5G". This Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 system includes the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem that supports both sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequency, while a built-in Snapdragon X24 LTE modem enables 90 percent of carriers to achieve multi-gigabit LTE. The tech giant announced that Android device vendors would begin shipping devices with the 5G-supportive Snapdragon 855 system-on-achip (SoC), and at the same time, partner carriers ranging from SingTel to AT&T and China Mobile would be establishing test beds worldwide for 5G deployment for both sub-6 GHz and mmWave systems.

OnePlus has been confirmed as the first firm to offer United Kingdom 5G-ready smartphones via a partnership with EE.

Tenda unveils Outdoor CPE & wireless ceiling access point – O1 & I9

Tenda has launched the Tenda O1, an Outdoor CPE, and the Tenda I9, a 300mbps wireless access point. Both these devices are targeted at an affordable rate with value-for-money specifications. The Tenda O1 2.4GHz Outdoor CPE is designed to provide WISP CPE solutions and distant wireless network solutions for video surveillance and data transmission till 500 metres. The Tenda I9 is a wireless access point specially designed to efficiently perform in indoor environments like office, bar, coffee shop, etc.

Frank Rao, Director, Tenda India, says, "O1 and I9 are two budgetfriendly products from Tenda in the Indian market. Both these devices are designed and crafted with the thought of value-for-money and best specs at rate scenario. Our customers always demanded us for such units where project was of limited budget and they did not need any high-end device to execute the task. Well, here is the solution from Tenda for all those requests."

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Ding has emphasized during his speech that the contracts are a reflection of customers' strong recognition of Huawei's leading 5G end-to-end capabilities and innovative products and solutions.

Ding in his speech, titled "5G is ON, Taking Mobile to New Horizons", has noted that 5G is ushering in a new era for ICT and has the potential to increase connection capabilities by ten fold. 5G will bring unprecedented opportunities to the mobile industry. Release 15 – the first 5G specifications – focuses on enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and will encourage individual users to consume more data, because they can do more with their connections. 5G will provide high bandwidth for households and make WTTx connections the first choice for broadband. It will also enable new capabilities, including massive connections, superfast speeds, and ultra-low latency that will reshape business models and create enormous business value for carriers.

Leading carriers are moving quickly toward 5G commercial deployment, because first movers will benefit first.

R&M launches a worldwide initiative – "Better connected"

R&M is launching the “Better connected” initiative. The focus is on the entire life cycle of data networks – from planning to multiple years of operation. The initiative proves why networks incorporating R&M components help to save time and money.

"It is all about taking more into account than just the material and installation costs and the common standards when planning data networks.

A top-quality installation with higher initial costs is always the less-expensive solution over the long term," says Hermann Christen, M a r k e t D e ve l o p m e n t Manager, R&M. Experts in the more than 40 R&M branches worldwide will be providing consulting services to the markets as part of the initiative. At the same time, new training programs are being offered by the R&M Academy which awards places to interested planners, project leads, installers and distributors. Academy graduates become qualified R&M partners. They receive exclusive certificates as well as comprehensive specialist, technical and logistical support in network projects.

BharatNet scheme links 1.2 lakh panchayats through optical fibre

As the backbone of Digital India initiatives to provide Internet, the e-panchayat facility at all panchayats, the first phase of BharatNet scheme has connected 1.2 lakh of the targeted 2.5 lakh gram panchayats (GPs), or village blocks through optical fibre, with 1.16 lakh of them ready with broadband services as well, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha informed Parliament on December 12. The scheme is centrally funded and aims to connect over 6 lakh villages through optical fibre by March 31, 2019.

"As on January 21, 2018, optical fibre connectivity has been provided to 1,10,848 gram panchayats by laying 2,58,635 kilometres of optical fibre cable and 1,01,936 gram panchayats have been made service ready under the BharatNet project (phase I)," the minister said in a written reply.

The second phase of the project is aimed at connecting the remaining 1.5 lakh gram panchayats and is targeted to be completed, as per the modified strategy, by March 2019, he added.

www.varindia.com

December 2018

25

CHANNEL BUZZ

TAIT hosts "Market Adda" on "How to Survive the Competitive Online Market"

The Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) hosted an insightful panel discussion as part of their “Market Adda” initiative. The event brought together industry veterans from across the IT ecosystem, to discuss and share insights on how IT retailers and traders can survive the competitive online marketplace and evolve their business. The event was a major success, with members passionately participating in Q&A’s and engaging with speakers post the event.

With e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart announcing mega sale ahead of the festive season, the panel discussion was hosted

by TAIT at a strategic time. With the competitive online marketplaces offering huge discounts, fear of losing out business and most of all, becoming eventually irrelevant, were some of the genuine questions that the “Market Adda” addressed through the panel discussion.

The panel discussion began with the introduction of the stellar set of speakers, namely Rakesh Shah, Director, Best IT World, India (Director, i-Ball); Dushyant Mehta, Mediaman Infotech Pvt. Ltd (A prominent personality in the IT Channel industry); Gurbir Singh Bhatia, Prime A B G B Pvt. Ltd; Shrenik Shah, Options Computers; and Devendra Sayani, D. C. Infotech.

Sameer Parekh, President, TAIT, said, “This was yet another event organized with the objective of assisting the growth of the member organisations, and I am happy to have received a good response from all members."

EverestIMS hosts Channel Partners Meet

EverestIMS Technologies (Everest) has conducted a closed-door partner event at Conrad Bangalore, to recognize and felicitate their Bangalore partners. EverestIMS took this opportunity to share their growth plans and upcoming product release details with partners. It was an open platform for partners to understand more about EverestIMS solutions and to engage with the top executives of the company.

The event witnessed 21 key delegates from over 17 organizations. The main agenda of the summit was • Partners and senior leadership discussion forum around challenges faced in Infrastructure and operations management.

• Recognition of key channel partners of the business • Announcement of new releases on the existing EverestIMS products Satish Kumar V, CEO, Everest, said, "Our partners play a crucial role in accelerating Everest's business figures.

These get-togethers enable us to explore and understand the challenges faced by our partners and take customer's feedback. We choose to take partners along our growth journey. I am overwhelmed to appreciate the contributions of our partner team. We look forward to work with the team and achieve more milestones in coming future."

Facilitating the partners, Everest conducted an award function and thanked all the partners for their efforts and contributions in accelerating Everest's business.

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Ingram Micro organizes Pinnacle Industry Meet 2018

Ingram Micro has hosted Pinnacle 2018 at the St Regis, Mumbai. A landmark event in the Indian ICT industry, Pinnacle is a forum for leading technology providers, resellers, and consumers where top ICT vendors and partners from across the country gather and discuss their current performance and potential for the coming years.

The event has seen eminent leaders like Sukesh Jain, Vice-President, Samsung; Ashish Sikka, Director SMB, Lenovo; Rajan Malhotra, Future Group; B. Raghavendra, Channel Head, Cisco; Sunil Jose, Country Head, Salesforce; and Hemant Tiwari, Hitachi India. In attendance were country heads of brands like Samsung, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, along with senior executives from large and small retailers, channel heads of e-commerce players like Flipkart, Paytm and representatives from enterprise customers like Infosys, L&T, Bharti Airtel among others.

Diego Utge, SVP & Chief Executive – India, said, “Pinnacle 2018 is an initiative by Ingram Micro to bring together the leaders and partners in the ICT industry in India to discuss the market scenario and future trends.

As market leaders, our endeavour is to create new benchmarks on how the market operates. With 35% market share in India, Ingram Micro is aiming to grow substantially over the next coming years.”

K7 Computing hosts AVAR Conference in India

K7 Computing Private Limited has hosted The Association of AntiVirus Asia Researchers International Conference (AVAR) in association with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) recently at Goa. The conference witnessed a gathering of more than 400 participants along with 67 speakers from 25 different international security companies who addressed and discussed the significant and acute aspects of cybersecurity. The theme of the conference was “The Dynamic Security Ecosystem.”

In its 21st year in a row, this was one of the largest gatherings of cybersecurity experts, researchers, product developers and eminent speakers from around the world, engaged in panel discussions and paper presentations.

K7 Computing has been associated with AVAR since its inception.

Hosting the event for the second time and bringing back the event to India for the third time, J. Kesavardhanan, MD & CEO, K7 Computing, said, “Since its inception, AVAR has witnessed increasing participation from leading cybersecurity players from around the world. It has also evolved as a platform to discuss on the latest trends, innovations and disruptions impacting the cybersecurity industry. This year, we had participation from more than 25 leading cybersecurity players from across the globe.”

He further added, “It is our privilege to be associated with AVAR and to host it again in India. We are very happy with the success of AVAR 2018.

With initiations like these, we aim to further our cybersecurity mandate of bringing the industry together to discuss and develop an advanced roadmap to curb cyberthreats.”

Allan Dyer, Chairman, AVAR, said, “Considering the expanding digitalization, India is one of those nations where the need for cybersecurity solutions and awareness on cyberthreats is immensely required. Therefore, forums like AVAR play a pivotal role in bringing the cybersecurity industry together to brainstorm on the complexities of the threat landscape and discuss the way forward to deal with these.”

FACE TO FACE

Dell EMC bullish on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure segment In a chat with VARINDIA, Rajesh Ramnani, Regional Director, CPSD, Dell EMC India, discusses about the potential of HCI business, the investment required in it and the strategy for this segment

Dell EMC is very bullish about its Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) business and foresees huge potential in it. It believes that this business will continue to grow as it has witnessed a growth of around 70% in this segment. The company is investing heavily in its R&D and go-to-market strategy also.

“We are very focused on HCI business from the Dell EMC side, and we understand that this business has good potential and that’s why we are doing well. Loads of investments have been going on not only from the R&D perspective but also from the go-to-market perspective. We believe this business will grow and we have seen 60-70% growth in this segment which none of the other infrastructure segments has seen. Globally, we are at about 40% plus. As far as hyperconverged business is concerned, we are number one. In India, it is similar, but we have a business along with a partner called Nutanix wherein we deliver mixed workloads. In India, the share is lightly higher, an excess of 50%,” states Rajesh Ramnani, Regional Director, CPSD, Dell EMC India.

Strategy The success of Dell EMC in HCI lies in the fact that it is focused to cater different product range in different price ranges.

Understanding the needs of the consumer, the company comes up with its products. It offers products for 1U and 2U to large consumers.

Rajesh Ramnani Regional Director, CPSD, Dell EMC India

Shift from traditional infrastructure to HCI The shift from traditional to hyperconverged infrastructure is very seamless.

Customers tested and then gradually started shifting their critical application on HCI. Now, almost every application can be hosted on it.

“When we started with HCI four years ago, customers were sceptical of putting their products and workloads on HCI. Customers started off with test and development workloads. Slowly and steadily, they started moving critical application to hyperconverged infrastructure and started seeing results. Today, almost every application that an organization needs to run a business can be deployed on it. The transition from the traditional virtual infrastructure to HCI is very seamless. It uses the same platform which the virtual infrastructure uses,” explains Rajesh.

Investment required in HCI Compared with traditional infrastructure, HCI is more cost-effective for organizations.

The cost involved in HCI is 60%–70% lower than traditional infrastructure. Even management of HCI is very convenient and easy.

“When you have a data center today, there are 3–4 components which you need to invest in. First, data center space itself, which involves data center rack, power and cooling for the infrastructure. Second, infrastructure components like storage, servers and network.

Third, software components like hypervisor, which is on top of the infrastructure. Fourth is management of the entire solution.

In the case of HCI, all these elements have been looked at granularly and are optimized.

Today, the requirement of data center space, power and cooling in the case of HCI is about 60%–70% lower as compared to a traditional infrastructure. The cost of infrastructure in the case of storage, server and network is nothing but a bunch of nodes with builtin software, has come down by 30%–35%.

Management of the entire solution is extremely crucial. You require trained people to work on these and it is difficult to find the resources and retain them. But HCI is very user-friendly, and a layman can operate it. You do need trained resources in large numbers and that contributes to reduction in cost,” says Rajesh.

“Dell started off with the HCI model with an entity called VCE. The latter started this model and were the pioneer to introduce this infrastructure which was a combination of VMware, Cisco and EMC and it is a part of Dell EMC right now. With the learning that we have had, we realized that in the HCI world, it is not that “one size fits all”. Problems in the traditional world are magnified in the HC world. What I mean is let’s buy a traditional solution from a different vendor. Then, if a new patch comes in one of these infrastructure elements, then it may not be compatible with other elements. This concept has taken off well, and the hyper-converged world eased the traditional model. A virtual network has less chance of errors.

Dell EMC realized the importance of market and deliver products and solutions which are best fit for the consumer in the present and even in the future. So our products are different like one product which is completely based on VMware stack which means all different components are a part of the VMware hypervisor. We have another product which is based only on Microsoft and the consumer uses end-to-end Microsoft. So we have an HCI model based for Microsoft also. According to the requirement of the consumer, we come up with products.

There is a third model where a consumer may use different elements and they would want a solution which may cater to their work need. We have products aligned with the customer need. There is a short-term and long-term goal according to the requirement of the customers. There is also HCI which caters to scale. Like a vendor catering to 10’s and 100’s requiring large HCI. We have appliances for smaller consumers like 1U and 2U and for larger consumers we have complete rack with multiple components, engineered as a single product with multiple nodes delivered at the doorstep. None of the players have this focused strategy like Dell EMC across different product ranges and also across different price ranges. All this has allowed us to be successful,” reveals Rajesh.

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INTERNATIONAL EVENTS

ANIL SETHI

Vice President & General Manager, Channels India - Dell EMC Knowledge Exchange, Peer Engagement, One-one-One Meetings, Fun & Folic – this is how the recent Dell EMC India Partner Summit 2018 can be defined that took place at Lisbon (Portugal). The four-day event brought together 80 channel partners of Dell EMC from India – distributor, titanium, platinum and authorized resellers – gathered together, alongside the company’s global and regional leadership. The platform provided Dell EMC an opportunity to connect, share and spark conversation with its partner ecosystem to understand their challenges and help to educate them on the future of digital transformation.

While Anil Sethi, Vice President & General Manager, Channels India - Dell EMC speaks about Dell EMC’s support for its channel and how it addresses their challenges through its various expertise, the partners who participated at the Summit talk about their experience while also sharing about the kind of commitment they hold for the brand How are you seeing partners to address security challenges in the country?

Lloyd’s of London estimated that a serious cyber-attack could cost the global economy more than $120 billion – as much as catastrophic natural disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Most cyber-attacks are financially motivated and Ransomware continues to be a major threat. However, Ransomware isn’t the only type of attack companies are worried about since data corruption can stem from different attacks including insiders and wiper-ware (e.g. NotPetya). Earlier, security was an afterthought but today it is a part of the board room discussion. As the world is getting more and more digital, data is becoming more valuable to hackers.

Today, partners are also upping the ante against cyber threats and becoming the first point of contact for the customers in case of any security breach. They have played an active role in helping customers recover from ransomware attacks, and helped prevent prevalent malware in their networks. With the help of vendors, partners have also helped with intelligence on breaches in security, helped in incident forensics and have also collaborated with law enforcement agencies to nail cyber criminals.

In the last 2 to 3 years, partners have matured to address security challenges in the country more efficiently and effectively.

How is Dell EMC committed to support extra mile to its partners?

We are constantly working towards a holistic strategy aimed at delivering results for our partners. We are focused on driving profitable growth; all while continuing our promise to be Simple, Predictable, and Profitable. In addition to this, we are strongly focused on data protection solutions this year. The Dell EMC partner program has now seen several enhancements along with the support of channel partners that can help deliver higher growth rates. We have a team called Emerging Channels that looks to bring new partners into the fold while we build and sustain the relationships we have with existing partners in the program. We want partners to work with us long-term and we want to equip them with the skills and capabilities and relationships to stay competitive in the market.

At Dell EMC, we take the responsibility to educate organisations to think differently today. They need to transform from the “security as per budget” mind-set to “budget as per security needs” approach. This is important as organisations typically spend huge sums on IT infrastructure but do not have proper financial planning when it comes to securing the same.

COL. BALWINDER SINGH

Managing Director – Targus Technologies The event was meticulously organized and executed keeping all fine details in consideration.

It was a fun filled, informative event which focused on the participants’ bonding. The major takeaways have been the – the information on market trends, the Dell portfolio vis a vis competition in terms of popularity and saleability; the latest roadmap of Dell; Information on new channel initiatives and the detailed deliberation and information on partner enablement in terms of upcoming technology trends.

Dell is a great vendor to work with. It ensures timely or early delivery by shipping the orders directly to the customers on behalf of partners to reduce the transit period. It also ensures to keep up the pace with the latest technology trends and assist with the POC as and when required.

SANJIV KRISHEN

Chairman - Iris Computers The event was extremely well managed, meticulously planned and executed to perfection.

In my opinion, a big event like the one held in Lisbon should be held once a year. However, there should be one smaller event during the year to keep the channel contact alive and to update them on the directions Dell EMC is focusing so that their business can be increased.

It is great to know that Dell EMC as a rapidly growing organisation company is building for the future and is concentrating vigorously to become a channel focused entity. The company is helping us offer products that are on the forefront of technology. This gives a compelling proposition for our customers, covering the entire IT range of PCs, Servers, Storage and Networking.

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DIEGO UTGE

SVP & Chief Country Executive – India, Ingram Micro

The event was top-notch, right from the venue to the audience to the activities. It was everything we could expect from Dell EMC and more. In terms of the key takeaways, we got a good understanding of the focus areas for 2019. As always, it was great to interact with Anil Sethi, Tian Beng, Alok Ohrie and the senior management of Dell EMC in a fun environment.

Dell EMC is one of our largest vendors globally both in the Enterprise and Consumer spaces. We are privileged to have such a fantastic working relationship with Dell EMC and we look forward to working together on launching offerings that combine Dell’s world class products with our unparalleled reach. We will continue to work closely with Dell EMC to help our partners and customers across the region

RANJAN CHOPRA

CEO & MD - Team Computers If I put it in simple words, the event was Absolutely Wonderful. I enjoyed every bit of it; from fun bonding over ‘Kiss the chef’ to Vijay Ramachandran’s session.

I cannot describe the peels of laughter we all were in when people from different regions met. The whole event was spot on; one that could be etched in the heart as a beautiful memory.

I took away a lot of learning from Vijay Ramachandran’s session. I also learnt from the effort put into the marketing. It was theatrical- just how Marketing should be.

Such events are always fun and full of learnings. Once again, I had an absolutely brilliant experience and am already up for making new memories with Dell.

TARUN SETH

Managing Director, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic The Dell EMC India Partner Summit 2018 was interspersed with intuitive keynotes, round tables, breakouts, focusing on building a compelling channel ecosystem. We have gained meaningful insights which will help strengthen the relationship with Dell EMC and seize business opportunities together. We are also proud to be recognized as ‘Partner of the Year’ and ‘Titanium Partner of the Year - Server Solutions’ at Dell EMC India Partner Summit 2018 for exemplary commitment to the growth story of Dell EMC business in India.

As businesses shift and create new imperatives for enterprise IT, a growing number of CIOs are challenged because they remain focused on delivering traditional business critical workloads. Along with Dell EMC, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic helped customers realize faster delivery, greater productivity and efficiency.

SANJAY PATODIA CEO & Director - Galaxy

The Dell EMC India Partner Summit held in Lisbon last month provided an excellent platform for system integrators to connect with Dell EMC’s leadership team. We could network with some of the leading names in the industry and discuss a range of topics, including specific challenges, and how we can jointly resolve them to achieve revenue growth. With a relatively informal setting that helped set the tone for such hands-on discussions, we could deep dive into many areas of mutual interest and map the path forward.

The PAC meeting too was important, since lots of crucial things came up during the course of this meeting and we could together identify some areas of improvement.

DEEPAK CANO Director - Aspire NXT

The event was very well organised and one of the best amongst all the Dell events in the past. Lisbon was a great place. We are absolutely convinced that Dell EMC is on the right track from a partner success perspective, and is continuously investing to raise the bar for themselves and partners like us. Such strong partner program, coupled with the excellent line-up of end-to-end solutions are ensuring continued success for customers, business growth for partners, and for Dell EMC itself.

Dell should continue to organize these annual events as we get a better perspective on their GTM for the year ahead.

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INDUSTRY EVENTS

DIGITAL DISRUPTION & TRANSFORMATION RULE THE ROOST

AT THE 17TH STAR NITE AWARDS 2018 {From L to R): S N Tripathi, Secretary, Parliamentary Affairs - Govt. of India; Manjit Nayak, Addl. Director - STPI; C P Gurnani, MD & Chief Executive - Tech Mahindra; Dr. Deepak Kr. Sahu, President & CEO - VARINDIA; Shyam Jaju, Vice President - BJP; S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA; Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director - C Dot; A N Rai, Advisor to Minister of State for Communications and Minister of State for Railways, Govt. of India; Deepak Chanduka, Deputy Director General - DoT, Govt. of India and Alok Gupta, Managing Director - Unistal

The most coveted IT Awards Nite – the 17th edition of VARINDIA Star Nite Awards 2018 concluded in the capital city of New Delhi amidst the presence of the who’s who of the ICT industry. The event provided a platform for all to discuss latest technological disruptions that are going on in the Information Technology industry, technical presentations and also business networking 30

December 2018

The evening commenced with the lamp lighting ceremony that was graced by dignitaries including S N Tripathi, Secretary, Parliamentary Affairs - Govt. of India; Manjit Nayak, Addl. Director - STPI; C P Gurnani, MD & Chief Executive - Tech Mahindra; Dr. Deepak Kr. Sahu, President & CEO - VARINDIA; Shyam Jaju, Vice President - BJP; S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA; Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director - C Dot; A N Rai, Advisor to Minister of State for Communications and Minister of State for Railways, Govt. of India; Deepak Chanduka, Deputy Director General - DoT, Govt. of India and Alok Gupta, Managing Director - Unistal. The presence of all these dignitaries raised the bar to a different level never witnessed earlier.

Dr. Deepak Sahu, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Kalinga Digital Media in his evening welcome speech highlighted that India is becoming the global hub for manufacturing, the measures taken by the government will surely grow confidence amongst the manufacturers which will eventually create business opportunities. “Unique IDs for companies will definitely go a long way in contributing towards interest of the nation and increasing transparency by corporate. The iconic BharatNet project, where the government’s announcement to promote digitization through greater connectivity will fuel uptake for collaboration and remote working solutions resulting in a more productive and connected India.”

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In her keynote address, S Mohini Ratna, Editor – VARINDIA said that India will remain the top-most offshoring destination for IT companies across the world. “In order to prove capabilities in delivering both on-shore and off-shore services to global clients, leading IT firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Tech Mahindra and Accenture are diversifying their offerings and showcasing leading ideas in blockchain, artificial intelligence to clients using innovation hubs, research and development centres, in order to create differentiated offerings.”

C P Gurnani, MD & Chief Executive – Tech Mahindra, who was the special guest at this year’s event was honoured as the IT Man of the Year by VARINDIA. In his speech, Gurnani while lauding VARINDIA’s contribution in propagating the PM’s vision of Digital India explained how this ambitious initiative can be turned into a reality.

S N Tripathi, Secretary, Parliamentary Affairs – Govt. of India in his speech said that today is the age of ‘Dataway’, or like PM Modi calls it as the ‘Infoway’, which can literally take anyone literally anywhere if it is able to be managed.

A N Rai, Advisor to Minister of State for Communications and Minister of State for Railways, Govt. of India while addressing the guests said that he belongs to a profession that is related to connectivity and that this connectivity is not always visible to the people as they are in the background.

IT MAN OF THE

YEAR

C P Gurnani, CEO & Managing Director-Tech Mahindra receiving the IT Man of The Year award from S. N. Tripathy, Secretary,Parliamentary Affairs, GoI; Shyam Jaju, Vice President-BJP; A N Rai, Advisor-Minister of Communications and MoS Railways-GoI and Dr. Deepak Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor-VARINDIA

“So what does Digital India means to India? I would ask everyone to reflect on what has actually changed – it is a fact that the world has changed as digital transformation started taking shape. Along with this the type of leadership that is required will also change, as it has changed like what it was in 1960's. The reality is that the fundamentals of leadership is going to remain the same - the fundamentals of leadership has always been about having a mission, a vision and having the capabilities of harnessing the resources that are available to you and deliver extraordinary results, beyond the expectations of a normal individual. But now words like digital, information technology, communication have come in and they all got converged. And we have seen this convergence reflected in the initiatives of the PM – be it his ‘Mann ki Baat’ or his portal.”

Shyam Jaju, Vice President – BJP while highlighting the special initiatives of the BJP govt. said that he came to Delhi at that time when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the PM of India, when trunk or STD calls used to be made to call relatives and friends staying far-off, but a lot of revolution has taken place in the telecommunication field post that.

of Hewlett Packard Enterprises.

In the Tech Talk session, Shailendra Mandrawadkar, VP – Enterprise Sales – Happay; Sunil Sharma, MD (Sales) – Sophos and Harsha Bennur, Enterprise and Government Marketing Lead – India, NetApp presented their respective company’s transformation process and its key growth and success factors.

In the corporate presentation Hursh Chetan, Consultant – Solutions Presales Group, HPE spoke about various initiatives

Like every year, Star Nite Awards took the opportunity to recognize the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO), and the top performing

IT Vendors (Corporates) serving the Indian ICT Industry. The Awards Nite saw 11 CMOs being recognised. The top CMOs felicitated during the event ceremony are from NetApp, Adobe, Lenovo, NVIDIA, Suse, HPE, Barco, Netmagic, Seagate, UiPath and Veeam.

In the vendor award ceremony, close to 40 vendors have been recognized in various categories, based on the feedback received through an online voting from channel partners and VARs.

S N TRIPATHI Secretary, Parliamentary Affairs – Govt. of India “I always believe in one simple philosophy - One mile of road can lead you to cover only one mile. But one mile of runway can take you anywhere. Today is the age of ‘Dataway’ or ‘Infoway’ as our PM calls it. Data is involved with anything and everything today. Our work is to manage the state but that too involves data – how will citizens react to certain policies, laws & rules, what kind of policies should be made by the govt. and so on. My Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs has come up with an e-Vidhan application where we are going to give you instant access to all the 31 assemblies in India, both Houses of Parliament and 7 councils.”

A N RAI Advisor to Minister of State for Communications and Minister of State for Railways, Govt. of India “For citizens to know what initiatives the govt. is taking it is very important to understand what projects are being undertaken. One just lucrative project is the BharatNet. The project will help the industry to serve the people in remotest of areas. We have achieved good success and have reached more than 1 lakh villages. We plan to cover roughly 2 lakh Gram Panchayats by March next year. The moment we expand our activities, the maintenance too becomes very critical. Once people are used to making payments through their smartphones, they want that service to be available 24 hours. For that maintenance capabilities have to increase and I request the industry to come up with better methods, technologies for keeping the maintenance at a much higher level than it is today.”

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INDUSTRY EVENTS

Hursh Chetan Consultant – Solutions Presales Group, Hewlett Packard Enterprise “The need for data has always been there. People have been using data to collect information and use it for different purpose. With the advent of multiple technologies, it is feasible today to collect data at more regular intervals and people can now slice, dice and look at this data and use it more beneficially at a faster, better reach and pace. When such information is available for people, they start thinking and start using that information to transform the way they work.

The transformational forces when they run on the foundation of digital technologies can be called as digital transformation. There are 3 parts to HPE’s digital transformation – people transformation, talent pool transformation and IT transformation.”

Harsha Bennur Enterprise and Government Marketing Lead – India, NetApp “The industry is transforming and the IT landscape is changing. Customers want to leverage the power of hybrid and multi cloud while continuing to utilize the current infrastructure they have in their environment. 65% of the businesses are adopting a cloud-first model and in that 80% are using a multi-cloud environment. So customers will have an Azure or AWS or Google Cloud and have data in multiple places. So how would you move your data from one place to another given data security is a major concern nowadays? NetApp with its Data Fabric architecture enables customers to move their data seamlessly from one cloud to another. It’s just at the click of a button that you can move your data from AWS to Google Cloud.”

Sunil Sharma MD (Sales) – Sophos “Sophos is the name that has made cyber security simple and we truly believe in this theory.

We as a company are into the cyber security business, based out of more than 130 countries headquartered at Abingdon, UK. As of today we provide end-to-end security and our revenue is roughly $800 million as per last audited report. We have so many OEM partners who buy from us and then they sell to partners like you and you sell to customers. Everyone is talking about security, but until you have your network and endpoint security talking to each other and you have one dashboard which a customer can control it from his mobile app, you cannot call yourself to be providing security.”

Shailendra Mandrawadkar VP – Enterprise Sales – Happay “Happay is leading the technological revolution in India. And it is true that financial technology has grown as an industry today. Just recently PM Modi had been to Singapore attending a Fintech event and he hinted at why and how the fintech is the next big thing. And Happay as a company is doing a lot of innovative work in the fintech area. Companies going forward are going to spend a lot of money in the fintech domain. So if you want to get a big share of the pie in the revolution happening, you must look at partnering with fintech companies. Today a lot of the start-ups that are coming up in the fintech space. There are also companies that are spending a lot to automate & digitize their travel and expense management. So as partners you too can explore this space.”

Shyam Jaju Vice President – BJP “This was in 2001, when STD calls or Trunk calls used to be made to keep in touch with friends and relatives staying far-off. There has been so much revolution after that in the field of telecommunication. STD booths are not visible anymore but you will find a mobile phone in everyone’s palm today. The mobile industry is one of the fastest growing industries in India and no industry has seen such a pace as this industry. And the biggest contribution has been of our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who in his words has said, ‘it is not just sufficient to run a country but it is also our responsibility to take this nation ahead. And the initiatives that helped in spurring this revolution go endless - the Jan-Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar unification number, penetration of smartphones that has further helped the world to come closer and so on.”

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Acer India receiving the award for Best Gaming Laptop

Adobe Systems India receiving the award for Best Digital Experience Platform

APC by Schneider receiving the award for Best Power Management Solution Company

Barco Electronics receiving the award for Best Bezel Less LCD Video Wall Platform

BenQ India receiving the award for Best Projector

Cambium Networks receiving the award for Wi-Fi Vendor Of The Year

Canon India receiving the award for Best photo copier & Best Imaging Solution Company

Check Point Software Technologies receiving the award for Best Data Security Company

Cisco Systems receiving the award for Best Networking Solution Company, Best Unified Communication Solution Company & Networking Solution Company

CommScope Solutions receiving the award of Best Structured Cabling Company

Oracle India receiving the award for Best Business Application Solution Company

Dell India receiving the award for Best Note Book- Consumer

Dell EMC receiving the award for End To End Technology Solution Company, Hyper Converged Infrastructure Solutions & Storage Solution Company

D-link India receiving the award for Best Networking Switch Company & Editor's Choice Award For Best Structured Cabling Vendor

Elitegroup Computer Systems receiving the award for Best Mini PC

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INDUSTRY EVENTS

NTT Com Netmagic receiving the award for Best Data Center in India

NVIDIA receiving the award for Best Graphics Card

Seagate Technology receiving the award for Best Internal & External Hard Disk Drive

Red Hat India receiving the award for Best Open Source Infrastructure Solution Company

VMWare Software India receiving the award for Best Innovator in Cloud Technology

Western Digital receiving the award for Best Flash Drive- SSD

Radware India receiving the award for Best DDOS Vendor

Kaspersky Lab receiving the award for Best Anti-Virus –SOHO

Kingston Technology receiving the award for Best Memory Module

Lenovo Global Technology receiving the award for Futuristic Company into Channel

Lenovo India receiving the award for Best Note Book -SME

Microsoft receiving the award for Best Operating System

Microworld Technologies Incorporate (eScan) receiving the award for Internet Security Suite – SMB

Sophos Technologies receiving the award for Best Next Generation Firewall

VEEAM Software receiving the award for Best Databack-up and Recovery Software

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BEST CMO AWARD

Harsha Bennur from NetApp receiving the Best CMO Award on behalf of Parag Amalnerkar

Tanvi Maheshwari from Adobe Systems receiving the Best CMO Awards on behalf of Sunder Madakshira

Nikhil Sharma from VEEAM Software receiving the Best CMO Award

PARAG AMALNERKAR NetApp India

SRIRAM GOPALASWAMY Lenovo India Rishi Prasad from Seagate Technology receiving the Best CMO Award

PAWAN AWASTHI

Vijayant Khattry from Barco Electronic Systems receiving the Best CMO Award

NVIDIA

SRIHARI GOPINATH HP Enterprise

VIJAYANT KHATTRY Barco Electronic Systems Deepti Sharma from SUSE India receiving the Best CMO Award

Gautam Khurana from Lenovo India receiving the Best CMO Award on behalf of Sriram Gopalaswamy

NIKHIL SHARMA Veeam Software

PRASENJIT ROY NTT Com

DEEPTI SHARMA Prasenjit Roy from NTT COM Netmagic receiving the Best CMO Award

Suse

Hursh Chetan from HPE India receiving the Best CMO Award on behalf of Srihari Gopinath

RISHI PRASAD Seagate

RAJESH KUMAR UI Path

Pawan Awasthi from NVIDIA receiving the Best CMO Award

SUNDER MADAKSHIRA Adobe Systems India

Ashutosh Kapoor from UI Path receiving the Best CMO Award on behalf of Rajesh Kumar

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INDUSTRY EVENTS

Epson India receiving the award for Best POS & Best Inktank Printer

F5 Networks receiving the award for Best Application Delivery Network Vendor

McAfee receiving the award for Best Enterprise Security Solution

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise- ARUBA receiving the award for Best Wired And Wireless Infrastructure Provider

HP Inc. receiving the award for Best Note BookEnterprise, Best Inkjet Printer(Single & MFP), Best Laser Printer(Single & MFP) and Channel Favourite Company

HPE receiving the award for Best X86 Server

FITBIT receiving the award for Best Smartwatch for Health

Fortinet receiving the award in the Best Enterprise Network Firewall category

Audience at the Event

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SOLUTION DISPLAY KIOSKS

Gold Sponsors

Managed Hosting and Multi-Cloud Sponsor

SPONSORS Supporting Sponsors Principal Sponsors

Gold Sponsors

Networking Sponsors Managed Hosting and Multi-Cloud Sponsor

Media Partners Media Partners

Supporting Sponsors

Networking Sponsors www.varindia.com December 2018

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8

From Left-to-Right: Krishna Raj Sharma, Director & CEO - iValue InfoSolutions; Rajesh Kaul, Senior Director - Tech Data India; Amalendu Mukherjee, Managing Director - Fourth Dimension Solutions; Alok Gupta, President - PCAIT; Champak Raj Gurjar, President - FAAITA; S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA; Dr. Deepak Kr. Sahu, President & CEO - VARINDIA; N K Mehta, MD & CEO - Secure Network Solutions; Rajiv Kapoor, Vice President, India & SAARC - Cambium Networks; Bharat Sharma, Director, Presales - India & SAAC - Cambium Networks; and Pradeep Suri - Partner Business Manager - VMware India

VARINDIA'S 17TH ANNUAL STAR NITE AWARDS WITNESSES VAR SYMPOSIUM This year’s VAR Symposium invited India’s Top 100 VARs from across the country to learn about Technology tranformations RPA, Virtualisation, opportunities in Wi-Fi and its implications on the channel growth and newer business opportunities The VAR Symposium 2018 that concluded at Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi on 23rd November has been specially designed to create a conducive platform for discerning industry folks to converse, learn, and disseminate knowledge & ideas. The daylong session included discussions on new business strategies to discover how to capitalize emerging customer needs. The main attraction of this year’s event was the presence of the 110+ CEOs from the VAR community including system integrators, solution partners, IT service providers, VADs and VARs from across the country, who converged under one roof to share ideas and drive discussion on the topic of Digital Disruption that is already shaping the industry. The event witnessed 4 Corporates giving their presentations on their service offerings that includes VMware, Schneider Electric, UiPath and Cambium Networks.

The theme for this year’s event was "Accelerating Digital Transformation”, around which most of the discussions revolved.

The event started with the lamp lighting in the presence of guests Rajiv Kapoor, Vice President, India & SAARC – Cambium Networks; Ranjan Kumar, GM – Schneider Electric IT Business India; Champak Raj Gurjar, President – FAAITA; Alok Gupta, President – PCAIT; Pradeep Suri – Partner Business Manager – VMware India; Krishna Raj Sharma, Director & CEO – iValue InfoSolutions ; Dr. Deepak Kr. Sahu, Publisher – VARINDIA and S Mohini Ratna, Editor – VARINDIA. The event commenced with the welcome speech given by Dr. Deepak Sahu, President & CEO, Kalinga Digital Media. He has highlighted the fact of how technology companies are rapidly expanding their portfolios through R&D or acquisition to provide new services to their clients. “Facebook is developing Messenger to become its search platform. Google is architecting a fiber connectivity network. Dell bought EMC to create an end-to-end hardware and software powerhouse. Similarly, convergence is driving the VAR industry as telecom companies incorporate leading routing and security services into their connectivity offerings. Now even cloud service providers are providing the market solutions directly to the end client. This brings newer opportunities and challenges to the VARs and Partners.”

In the corporate presentations, Pradeep Suri, Partner Business Manager – VMware India spoke about how technology is transforming every industry and businesses are slowly going digital and how as a channel-friendly company is VMWare helping partners achieve this.

Ashutosh Kapoor, VP – Partnership, UiPath Inc. introduced RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to the partners and that a common enterprise RPA starting point is Finance and Accounting.

Bharat Sharma, Director – Presales (India & SAARC) – Cambium Networks in his presentation said that LTE, 5G can be a very good backhaul option for wi-fi indoor and outdoor coverage, but the second option for partners and wireless service providers is to offer wi-fi-as-a-service or connectivity-as-a-service Ranjan Kumar GM – Schneider Electric IT Business India said that Schneider always talks about IT being on and everything on real time, while also ensuring that customers and their infrastructure always remains on.

A total of 100 awards were given in different categories of Best Wi-Fi Partner, Best Smart City Solution Partner, Best Networking Partner, Best System Integrators, Best Solution Partner, Best Retailer, Best IT Service Provider, Best Sub Distributor, Best VADs, and Best Security Partner.

While 7 partners were awarded as the Best Wi-Fi Partners, 2 as the Best Smart City Solution Partners, 2 as the Best Networking Partners, 23 partners were awarded the Best System Integrators, 26 as the Best Solution Partners, 3 Best Retailers, 14 Best IT Service Providers, 14 Best 2018 aswww.varindia.com 38 December Sub-Distributors, 6 Best Value Added Distributors and 11 Best Security Partners.

BHARAT SHARMA

Director – Presales (India & SAARC) – Cambium Networks Our motive at Cambium is to connect the unconnected. Our idea is to build smart cities and smart villages. A total of 3.5 billion people are already connected through one or other medium but at the same time there are 4 billion people who are unconnected and that’s the addressable market for us. So we have a solution for them – either wi-fi or RF to connect them to the network. There are lots of initiatives taken by the govt. of India as alone one technology cannot do it. There are a mix of different technologies that people are using - LTE, wi-fi and fixed broadband are a few of them.

The govt. is also bullish about 5G now, and is ready to install hotspots in villages.

ASHUTOSH KAPOOR

VP – Partnership, UiPath Inc. I call RPA (Robotic Process Automation) as the ‘new age’ of software enterprise business. 2 years from now, this is what customers would want to know. Its idea is simple - anything that can be repeatedly done, why should a human do it and why can’t we put a robot. UiPath is all about software robots. Every time you come across terms like AI, financial & accounting (F&A), or payroll processing, or any other automated jobs, normally you employ full time employees. But people are increasingly putting software bots now that has an intelligence at the back-end. Most companies have deployed F&A, because that’s the place where maximum automation takes place. But its scope is there in every department and not just confined to F&A.

MOHIT GUPTA

AGM, Sales – Schneider Electric Business India At Schneider I drive a program called ‘Digital Channel Transformation’, through which we are digitally transforming the channel eco-system. Our partner portal has different offerings for every channel partner that helps in increasing profitability, and business.

We have 4 categories of partners and have 4000 partners listed, with around 12,000 partner contacts registered on our portal. First is the Registered Partner for which no certification is required; second is the Select Partner from which we start launching the profitability programs (we have close to 500+ Select Partners; next comes the Premier Partners and finally the Elite Partners (we have 25 of them in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh put together). The last two category of partners are directly managed by the Schneider Electric.

RANJAN KUMAR

GM – Schneider Electric IT Business India Schneider always talks about IT being on and accessing everything real-time. We ensure that the customers’ IT infrastructure is on, and so provide the fiscal layer in IT to insure all the IT infrastructures are on. Technology changes is fueling innovations.

Nowadays everything is accessible through a mobility device on our palm, cloud is the buzzword and whatever we are accessing we are doing it through cloud most of the time. Then we also have sensing which is an important aspect because we are talking about a lot of IoT products. Schneider is one of the leaders in terms of IoT connectivity in the industry. We also have a lot of sensors. While sensing we also generate a lot of data and then we analyse it and then we talk about securing that data.

PRADEEP SURI

Partner Business Manager – VMware India Digital transformation is all about creating the newer possibilities for our own respective businesses. It is driven by the desire for innovation, better ways of productivity, improved business models which leads to greater revenues and new customer experiences and interesting ways of engaging with the customers. According to a recent report, India stood at 88th position about 18 months back in terms of internet data usage globally.

Thanks to Reliance Jio, we are today at No. 1 position; this is how we have completely transformed in terms of how we consume data today. Technology is transforming every industry, whether it has to do with media, banking, telecom, healthcare, IT-ITeS, etc.

Take for example in banking, with help of technology it has become very convenient to do any banking transactions online without any hassle.

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INDUSTRY EVENTS

BEST WI-FI PARTNERS ENRICH DATA SERVICES PVT. LTD. ORVA NETWORKS PVT. LTD. REPL SANGHVI INFOTECH PVT. LTD.

TELEXCELL INFORMATION SYSTEMS LTD. TRANS VIRTUAL PVT. LTD. VALLEY TELEGENCE PVT. LTD.

BEST SMART CITY SOLUTION PARTNERS BLOOM ELECTRONICS PVT.LTD.

NETCON TECHNOLOGIES INDIA PVT. LTD.

BEST NETWORKING PARTNERS ESSI INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES PVT. LTD.

BEST SYSTEM INTEGRATORS

BEST SOLUTION PARTNERS

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TECHNICHE CONSULTING SERVICES PVT. LTD.

ACMA COMPUTERS LTD. AMTRAK TECHNOLOGIES PVT.LTD. ARROW PC NETWORK PVT. LTD. CACHE DIGITECH PVT.LTD. CACHE INFOTECH PVT.LTD. CHOICE SOLUTIONS LTD. CIPL DIMENSION DATA INDIA E SQUARE SYSTEM & TECHNOLOGIES FOURTH DIMENSION SOLUTIONS LTD. FUTURESOFT SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. GREEN VISION PVT. LTD.

GURUSONS COMMUNICATIONS PVT. LTD. MACAWS INFOTECH MAGNAMIOUS SYSTEMS PVT. LTD. MAYANKS IT SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. ORBIT PERIPHERALS PVT. LTD. ORIENT TECHNOLOGIES PVT. LTD. ORTEK COMPUTERS PENTACLE IT SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. PENTAGON SYSTEM & SERVICES PVT. LTD. PRINTLINK COMPUTER & COMMUNICATION PVT. LTD. TARGUS TECHNOLOGIES PVT. LTD.

ACPL SYSTEMS PVT. LTD. ADIT MICROSYS PVT. LTD. ALLIED DIGITAL SERVICES LTD. ALSUN SYSTEMS CAPRICOT TECHNOLOGIES PVT. LTD. DELTAKRAFT SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. ENJAY IT SOLUTIONS LTD. HITACHI SYSTEMS MICRO CLINIC PVT. LTD. INNOVATIVE TELECOM & SOFTWARES PVT. LTD. IRIS GLOBAL SERVICES PVT. LTD ITS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION PVT. LTD. MEGAHERTZ INFOTECH PARK NETWORK PVT. LTD.

PC SOLUTIONS PVT.LTD. POWER SOLUTIONS QUADRA SYSTEMS.NET INDIA PVT. LTD. SPARK TECHNOLOGIES PVT. LTD. SYMMETRIX COMPUTER SYSTEMS PVT. LTD. TEAM COMPUTERS PVT. LTD. TECHNOLOGY EXCELLENCE GROUP TRIFIN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PVT. LTD. VALUE POINT SYSTEMS PVT. LTD. VDA INFOSOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. VIBS INFOSOL WYSETEK SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGISTS PVT. LTD.

BEST RETAILERS COMPUTERLAND GROOVY COMMUNICATIONS

SSDN TECHSOLUTIONS

BEST IT SERVICE PROVIDERS COMPAREX INDIA PVT.LTD. COMPUSOFT ADVISORS CORPKART FUTURENET TECHNOLOGIES INDIA PVT. LTD. GO IP GLOBAL SERVICES PVT. LTD. (SYROTECH) MAXTONE ELECTRONICS MODI INFOSOL

TECHLINK INFOWARE PVT. LTD. KAMTRON SYSTEMS PVT. LTD. KPLUS INFOTECH PVT. LTD. LDS INFOTECH PVT. LTD. NEW COMPUTRONICS PROGRESSIVE INFOTECH PVT. LTD. SONATA SOFTWARE

BEST SUB DISTRIBUTORS COMNET RESOURCES PVT. LTD. DREAM'S SYSTEM PVT. LTD. E SOFT SOLUTIONS INC. ELCOM TRADING COMPANY PVT. LTD. KRISHNA AGENCIES PVT. LTD. MATRIX TECHNOLOGIES INC. MSM NETWORKS ENTERPRISE MICROGENESIS CADSOFT PVT. LTD.

PARAMOUNT SYSTEMS SEVI COMPUTERS SOFTMART SOLUTIONS STERLING INFOWAYS PVT. LTD. SURYAN TECHNOLOGIES SYNAPSE NETCON TECHNOLOGIES INDIA PVT. LTD.

BEST VALUE ADDED DISTRIBUTORS BRIGHTSTAR TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDIA LTD. IVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. INSPIRA ENTERPRISE INDIA PVT. LTD.

PRESTO INFOSOLUTION PVT. LTD. RAH INFOTECH PVT. LTD. TECH DATA CORPORATION NETCON TECHNOLOGIES INDIA PVT. LTD.

BEST SECURITY PARTNERS RAKSHA TECHNOLOGIES COMPROMPT SOLUTIONS LLP PVT. LTD. D M SYSTEMS PVT. LTD. RUBIK INFOTECH PVT. LTD. DIGITAL TRACK SOLUTIONS SECURE NETWORK SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. INDIA PVT.LTD. ESSENVISION SOFTWARE SILICON NETSECURE PVT. LTD. PVT. LTD. TECHNOSPROUT SYSTEMS FORTUNE GRECELLS PVT. LTD. PVT. LTD. JNR MANAGEMENT RESOURCES www.varindia.com December 2018 UNISTAL SYSTEMS PVT. LTD. PVT. LTD.

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START - UP

EMERGING START-UP ECOSYSTEM IN INDIA The start-up ecosystem in India has finally picked up pace, now that it is the 2rd largest in the world and is expected to witness YoY growth of 10-12%. As per the figures of the Govt. of India, there are 20,000 start-ups in India, with around 4,750 of them being technology led startups. 1,400 new tech startups were born in 2016 alone, implying that there are 3-4 tech startups born every day.

Bangalore has also been listed within the world’s 20 leading startup cities in the 2015 Startup Genome Project ranking. It is also ranked as one of the world’s five fastest growing startup cities.

Along with start-ups, venture capital investments have also picked up in India. As per KPMG, the start-up ecosystem saw over $2.5 billion investment in the third quarter of 2018, which was almost double from over $1 billion invested in the second quarter. Despite the increase, this is half of the $5 billion invested in the third quarter of 2017. The report says that India saw a quarter on quarter increase in VC investment buoyed by $1 billion raised by hotel booking company Oyo Rooms to finance its expansion into China.

As per another report by Innoven Capital, leading factors that make India appealing as a startup nation are- Cost of doing business, Proximity to customers/vendors, and Size of domestic market. While 7 million college students graduate come out every year, 55% of the youth prefer working in startups over corporates.

It has also seen that online marketplaces continued to gain a lot of traction in India. The country is witnessing a rapid rise in the B2B tech startup landscape, focused on verticals like health-tech, fintech, and ecommerce/aggregators. Investments in startups across segments such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Fintech, Logistics and Software as a Service (SaaS) touched $6.1 billion, with investment in 575 firms since 2016. Till now fintech topped the chart in terms of funding with $4.4 billion, followed by logistics at $838 million.

We have seen some interesting start-ups come up in Kerala, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Chandigarh and Pune and present a list of a few start-up companies from each of these places-

PROMOTER

COMPANY

SOLUTION OFFERINGS

HYDERABAD

Kisshhan Psv, Founder & CEO

H-Bots helps enterprises reimagine their businesses for the digital age, offers an integrated portfolio of products, solutions , services and Research space built around Digital, IoT, Automation, Analytics, Hardware prototyping amongst others website: h-bots.com

Vamsi Kotte, CEO

Syntizen’s solutions are being used by various clients and huge numbers of e-KYC, Authentications and SMS’s are being used for their business purposes. Syntizen provides a Network Operations Centre (NOC) for smooth operations of Aadhaar & NSDL’s transactions website: syntizen.com

Ravi Teja Avasarala, Founder

Ayasta is an enterprise focused IoT startup working on Digitising Electrical building a proprietary platform called CEGMA, a culmination of sensors, Machine Learning and Computer VIsion to monitor, analyse and detect anomalies in the electrical systems both inside a given facility and outside in the electrical grid website: ayasta.com

Vivek Aalok, Co-founder

STICHIO is a first-of-its-kind social network that offers a large assortment of readily available ideas in the form of DARES or challenges. These challenges can range from fun, talent, fitness and puzzles to totally outrageous ones website: stichio.co.in

Nikhil Mandalika, Vice President and co-founder

Wozart Technologies is an IoT startup that has built a wireless home automation and Apple Homekit licensed product. It provides OS level integration with smart devices providing future proof home automation product and absolute data privacy and military grade encrypted communication protocol through the usage of iCloud for data communication website: wozart.com

H-Bots Robotics

Syntizen

Ayasta

STICHIO

Wozart Technologies

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COMPANY

PROMOTER

SOLUTION OFFERINGS

GURGAON

Joe Hukum

Arihant Jain (Co-founder)

Joe Hukum sets out with a vision of building the most cutting edge technology around chat automation, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots website: joehukum.com

One Labs

Rahul Gupta, CEO and Co-founder

One Labs flagship product ‘inOne’ is a services conglomerate and transaction engine app to get Movies, Shop, Groceries, Cabs, Home Services and more within a single app website: onelabs.com

GAMOOZ

Gaurav Wadhwa, Founder & CEO

GAMOOZ is an Interactive Books Platform based on Augmented Reality. Students can scan pages in a book to reveal hidden content, which helps them in learning more from the book and allows Book Publishers to add fun and interactivity to their books website: gamooz.com

NIKSUN

Parag Pruthi, Founder, Chairman & CEO

NIKSUN is a provider of real-time, forensics-based cyber security and network monitoring solutions to secure critical infrastructure, optimize service delivery and reduce compliance risks website: niksun.com

Ashish Kashyap, Founder

INDwealth is an AI and machine learning-based wealth management and advisory platform that aims to provide solutions to investors ranging from wealth management, investments, micro-savings, taxation, lending, expense management, and portfolio management website: indwealth.net

INDwealth

KERALA

Amarnath Sankar, Co-Founder & CEO

CAT CyberLabs is a provider of training programmes which cover public lectures, presentations and seminars on Cyber Security & Ethical Hacking

Suraj Kumar, Founder

Aspirantz InfoSec is a provider of intensive, immersion security services that cover ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing, Information Security, Network Security, Web Security and range of certifications in different security domains Website: aspirantz.in

Rajesh Babu, Founder

Mirox Cyber Security is a provider of IT Security and Networking Solutions which also cover training and development services to Banking, Insurance, Healthcare, Research center, IT, Government and other key sectors Website: miroxindia.com

EyeROV

Johns T Mathai, CEO

EyeROV is a cost-effective underwater rover that works up to a depth of 100m. It can be easily controlled using a laptop or a joystick. A camera fitted on to the underwater drone (ROV), gives a live video feed of the underwater environment Website: eyerov.com

Qwave

Gopakumar Parameswaran, Founder & CEO

Qwave works with Silicon Vendors, Product Companies, End Users and Start-up companies dealing with Architecture, Design and Development of innovative hardware systems Website: qwaveinc.com

CAT CyberLabs

Aspirantz InfoSec

Mirox Cyber Security

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START - UP

PROMOTER

COMPANY

SOLUTION OFFERINGS

CHANDIGARH

iNVERTEDI

Ketan Sharma CEO & Co-founder

iNVERTEDI is a mobile application development domain working on developing customized apps and varied type of software for enterprises to manage businesses resources accounts and inventory etc. efficiently Website: inverted.com

ActiFend

Sastry Tumuluri, CEO

ActiFnd is an enterprise class web security – deployed in the cloud as a shared resource combines the power of a full SIEM tool along with Incident Response collaboration capabilities that will help defenses stay relevant well into the future

Aseem Ghavri, Co-founder & CEO

Code Brew Labs is an award winning mobile app development company that excels in working with alien computing technology. Build identities and experiences to elevate and empower organizations with computing technology Website: code-brew.com

Click Labs

Samar Singla, Founder

Click Labs provides mobile strategists, designs and develops, dedicated to help companies of all sizes leverage the exciting and dynamic world of application development and solution consultation Website: click-labs.com

MobiProbe

Manish Kumar, Founder and Technical Architect

MobiProbe is a space grade, malleable, realtime, performance and engagement measurement workbench for connected devices, systems and applications Website: mobiprobe.com

Code Brew Labs

PUNE

Anshul Abhang, Founder & CEO

Delta Proactive Risk Management is a provider of proprietary services such as extensive risk management, IT Security Audits, Digital Forensic Investigations and Secure SDLC Services Website: fluxonix.com

Pivotchain Solutions

Deepak Rao, Founder, CEO

Pivotchain Solutions is a provider of advanced analytical solutions using Big Data, Machine Learning & AI frameworks and to improve revenue and cut cost extract value and insights from data Website: pivotchain.com

NetConclave Systems

Niranjan. P. Reddy, Founder & CTO

NetConclave Systems is a provider of information security consultancy & training services across the globe Website: netconclave.com

Prashant Phatak, Founder & CEO

Valency Networks is a provider of monolithic and quality based portfolio of IT security solutions that covers IT performance and monitoring solutions, Penetration Testing, Ethical Hacking, IT audit, compliance and governance Website: valencynetworks.com

Neeket R Pokharrna, Founder & Director

WebDefenders is a provider of a portfolio of security services which encompasses Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing, Cyber Crime Investigations, Security Audits, Data Backup and Recovery, cyber law consulting, forensics, R & D and cyber training Website: webdefenders.com

Delta Proactive Risk Management

Valency Networks

WebDefenders

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TECHNOMANIA

3 Things you should consider when buying Flash Storage Applications of flash storage are poised for explosive growth, thanks to increasingly lower-priced and higher-capacity SSDs. In fact, the newest generation of 3D NAND flash technology has now reduced the cost of a single SSD to less than US$1 per GB. As a result, more and more users are using all-flash arrays to build their own data centers. All-flash storage is expected to account for nearly 30% of storage in data centers in 2018, according to third-party authorities.

In addition to SSD performance, the cost effectiveness of deduplication and compression must be considered. Deduplication and compression greatly reduce the amount of physical storage space needed, and alleviate investment, environment, and maintenance pressures. Deduplication and compression can also effectively reduce the number of write times and amounts of data written to hosts, prolonging the service life of SSDs and protecting customer investments.

All-flash storage benefits IT systems in many ways -

3. Strong security and reliability are critical to centralized data access With all-flash storage, performance is 10 times better than with HDDbased storage. This means that a single all-flash storage system can host many more services, such as CRM systems, billing systems, B2B reselling, server virtualization, and office systems. If you're going to put all your eggs in one basket like this, that basket had better be extremely reliable.

Vendors have their own ways of ensuring high system reliability. Some vendors improve their underlying algorithms, some use multi-controller redundancy architecture, and some leverage active-active or geo-redundant DR solutions. It can be challenging to evaluate a vendor's approach to ensuring reliability, but the key factors are as follows.

First, check whether underlying virtualization technology is used and whether physical disks can be logically scattered and effectively organized.

These features prevent the permanent data loss that can be caused by timeconsuming data reconstruction using traditional RAID groups. Underlying virtualization technology enables all disks in the disk group to simultaneously reconstruct data if one disk is faulty, instead of reconstructing data on a single hot spare disk. This dramatically shortens reconstruction time.

Currently, only HPE and Huawei are capable of offering this technology Huawei's all-flash storage can reconstruct 1 TB of capacity in just 30 minutes. That's 10 times faster than traditional storage.

Next, check whether the architecture can provide multi-controller redundancy. In other words, if multiple controllers on a single engine fail, can service continuity be ensured? Only HDS and Huawei currently offer this ability.

* It improves user experience. All-flash storage can quickly respond to service requests. For example, in the securities industry, all-flash storage enables traders to smoothly process online transactions.

In the medical industry, registration, diagnosis, and treatment can be quickly coordinated, and patient information can be swiftly retrieved from the hospital IT system. * It reduces O&M costs. Traditional storage systems need dozens of disk cabinets and tens of thousands of HDDs to meet performance requirements. Now, the required performance can be delivered using just a few all-flash cabinets. This significantly reduces procurement costs, power consumption, space requirements, and maintenance manpower, all while slashing OPEX by more than 75%. * It supports discovery of new business opportunities. For example, consider a cloud service provider that uses the original IT architecture and provides only gold, silver, and copper services.

All-flash storage could help that service provider provide a platinum cloud space leasing service with higher performance and lower latency.

Deduplication and compression make the provider's services even more commercially competitive.

When the time comes to make the switch to all-flash, here are three crucial points to keep in mind 1. Hardware architecture should offer large capacity and efficient data exchange In the past 10 years, SSD performance has seen a 4000-fold improvement, but CPU performance is only about 20 times better. The bottleneck at data centers lies in CPU usage, because it reaches 90% or higher when only a dozen disks are used. To get the most out of SSD performance, the latest CPU must be used to meet business requirements.

This is especially true for front-end financial transactions, carrier CRM, billing, and any core business with high storage performance demands.

Only with the right all-flash hardware architecture can these needs be met.

The use of SSDs drives demand for larger cache capacity. Data on SSDs is scattered all over the place. As a result, corresponding metadata increases as storage data grows. In particular, after deduplication and compression are enabled, metadata must be frequently invoked and fingerprints must be compared before data is flushed. In the cache, more and more metadata is stored. Therefore, every all-flash array must offer a cache with large capacity.

2. All-flash data centers need software architecture designed for all-flash storage Your software architecture cannot be wasting SSDs at places such as protocol parsing, data flushing, and space reclamation. In addition, to maximize SSD performance, read and write I/Os must have the highest priority in obtaining resources.

Last but not least, check whether the activeactive solution is simple and reliable: * Is the gateway-free SAN and NAS integration mode used? This mode can reduce faults and latency while cutting procurement costs. * Does the solution enable access in active-active mode, rather than active-passive mode? This mode can implement rapid site failovers and achieve RTO ≈ 0, and RPO = 0. * Is a simple networking mode adopted? IP or FC networking can be used to meet the requirements of different users. NetApp and Huawei are the only vendors in the industry that can implement this architecture.

The Ideal Choice for Mission-Critical Business Considering hardware architecture, software architecture, and reliability, there is only one solution available that checks all the boxes: Huawei OceanStor all-flash storage.

A storage system specially designed for flash storage, OceanStor boasts both industry-leading reliability and superior performance. Equipped with SmartMatrix 2.0 (enhanced intelligent switching matrix), this storage system features full redundancy with 4 controllers in a single engine.

With OceanStor, you can rest assured that your data center is supported by the best in the industry.

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INTERNATIONAL EVENTS

CCF-APAC 2018 focuses on AI, Hybrid Cloud and Automation The 10th edition of Canalys Channels Forum (CCF 2018) for the APAC took place from 4th – 6th December 2018 at Hotel Kerry, Hong Kong. The theme of the event was “Independent Intelligence”, where 1000 senior level IT executives from the IT fraternity across the APAC region participated. The focus of the event was on Artificial Intelligence, Hybrid Cloud enablement & adoption and the whole issue of addressing digital transformation in the channel space.

Global vendors such as Dell EMC, Lenovo, HP, Schneider Electric, Huawei, AMD, Citrix, Fujitsu and VMware among others put their best foot forward in terms of showcasing their latest and innovative offerings directed towards the channel community of the region. The event witnessed important keynote speeches given by three CEOs. They are Yang Yuanqing, CEO of Lenovo; Jean-Pascal Tricoire, CEO & Chairman of Schneider Electric and Steve Brazier, CEO - Canalys. The other senior dignitary includes Ng Tian Chong, President Asia Pacific and Japan – HP Inc.; Ng Tian Beng, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Channels, Asia Pacific Japan – Dell EMC Corporation and Dmitri Chen, Chief Operating Officer – APJ & VP, Speciality Sales - Dell EMC. Various other companies also showcased their products and solutions, which includes LogMeIn, a secure remote desktop software access provider; UI Path, the fastest growing company into the sector of RPA; MobileIron, a modern workforce security enabler; Bitdefender; Kaseya, an IT management software and monitoring solutions provider and FusionGrove, an account based revenue orchestration enabler, among others.

On the keynote speech Steve Brazier spoke about a ‘multi-cloud world’. He pointed out to a moment a couple of years ago when Jeff Bezos stood up and predicted that Amazon will go bankrupt. “Now, if that isn’t a clear message to give your customers that you do not want all your IT on one company‘s platform, you need to spread your risk. If you go all-in on one cloud, nasty things might happen. Bankruptcy, hacking, system failures and political events are all outlined as examples.”

He also spoke about the US-China tradewar and its effects on economies and markets.

“We are going to see more and more overlap and you are going to see more competition from those big companies, and you need to stay very alert as they move onto your space, or take advantage of the opportunity and sell your business to them,” Brazier said.

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"Security is, of course, another major trend - there is little new to say here except that those who are selling into this area are going to continue to win," he said.

Bitcoin and its related markets are dead except for “drug dealers and terrorists,” according to Brazier. “It was hype, it was a bubble. You shouldn’t be in the market. It has collapsed. It will not come back” - the message is pretty clear."

Yang Yuanqing CEO of Lenovo

Blockchain is treated skeptically by Brazier. “It’s a shared spreadsheet, an Excel file. There’s a lot of hype but whether it really changes the world the way people hope, we really doubt. Most experiments are not going well.”

Vendor and partner tension is beginning to grow as vendors are stepping on the toes of resellers and integrators, according to Brazier He further continued, “You need edge computing, you need on-premises computing, you need security, and if you’re only reselling public cloud, you can’t provide the customer the full experience. Most born-in-the-cloud companies are not making money, and we expect them to be acquired, either by channel partners providing multi-cloud experiences or system integrators. That bubble will burst.”

Brazier also spoke on several technologies he feels represent hot opportunities for the channel. “Flash, wireless, hyper converged, software-as-a-service, IoT and sensors, managed security and public cloud are all extremely high growth,” he said.

Jean-Pascal Tricoire CEO & Chairman of Schneider Electric

“Our end-to-end experience & LOB engagement is key for channel partners moving forward. We are here to help! Huge thanks to our APAC Partners for the great results this year. Japan and ANZ did really well for us. It is surprising when everyone only expects the emerging markets to grow, and yet the mature markets did really well," remarked Dmitri Chen, APJ COO in his speech.

“87% of our business is through the channel and we want to be innovative with a purpose, to be very customer-insight driven,

Ng Tian Beng Senior VP & GM, Channels, Asia Pacific Japan – Dell EMC Corporation

and to have our character. Arrogance and complacency are the biggest enemies," said Ng Tian Chong, President of HP Inc. APJ. “We have focused on improving elements of our program in being predictable how (sales) are selling into accounts our partners have been selling into to protect the investment, and how we help partners sell into new accounts," Ng Tian Beng, Senior VP and GM, Dell EMC APJ Channels said.

“We believe the larger potential lies within commercial IoT. We are only scratching the surface of these new smart IoT product categories. In future, Lenovo will focus on three areas - Smarter IoT, so we view PC and the smartphone as part of it; second is new IT, software datacenter, supercomputer and hyper-scale businesses; and third is smart verticals," said Yang Yuanqing, CEO – Lenovo.

“In the 21st century, where many people still don't have access to reliable energy, our

Ng Tian Chong President Asia Pacific and Japan – HP Inc.

mission is to supply energy. We develop or supply combined solutions of power and digital because they are the source of life.

We live in exciting times, at the convergence of IT and power. If you look at the equation of energy in 15 years from now, energy consumption will grow one-fold. Electricity will grow twice the pace, and IT four times," said Jean-Pascal Tricoire, CEO- Schneider Electric.

“As digital transformation unfolds around the globe, a new reality is emerging - Digitization’s productivity gains depend on clean and reliable electrical power,” added Jean-Pascal.

“AI will become a new general-purpose technology and will dramatically change all industries and organisations. Our strategy for industry digital transformation is "platform plus AI plus ecosystem," said Ma Yue, VP of Huawei EBG and President of EBG Global Sales.

Steve Brazier President & CEO - Canalys

CCF-APAC 2018 focuses on AI,

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COVER STORY

STRATEGY

ANALYTICS

DIGITAL MARKETING

WEB DEVELOPMENT

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

MARKET RESEARCH

CIOs aligning their vision with marketing goals for achieving organizational growth To keep pace with digitalization, organizations are going under various type of transformations. CIOs, while keeping this transformation in mind are thinking of reshaping their role from delivery head to business head and are beginning to help and transform their firms to exploit technology innovation and become more digitally product-centric. The CIO role will therefore transform to a business leader as innovation, digitalization and new technology enabled business models evolve and gain success Market demands and the fast changing business environment has enabled CIOs from all big companies to undergo role transformation and become Corporate Innovators. Today it is not the CMO alone that decides the go-tomarket strategies of the company, but it is taken both by the CMO and the CIO jointly.

Of course, the vision and the roadmap are

the first pre-requisites to a 2-3 year strategy for a CIO. As Amitabh Mishra, Chief Digital Officer - Vedanta Resources puts it, the IT and digital strategies have to reflect business priorities. “For example, if cutting costs is business priority #1, the technology strategy has to reflect that reality. After the strategy is formulated, it's important to obtain the buy-in of key business stakeholders and identify key initiatives. After Sanjay Chowdhry Chief Information Officer Hamdard Laboratories India

"CIOs & their team need to continue dig deep into the internal & external processes of the organization. This will give them an insights into the manual processes still utilized even after technology is used for broader process"

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that, formulating the action steps to execute those initiatives is not a hard thing to do.”

“A CIO vision should always align with business goals that both can be achieved together,” agrees Ravinder Arora, Head – Information Security, IRIS Software. “Regular review with stakeholder and board also ensure that overall vision can be tracked and monitor.

There should be clearly define KPI and approach ensures that measurement tools will be tightly focused on collecting, analysing, reporting and responding to specific key vital signs.”

A CIO should always think proactive - what is going on nearby, what are the new things available, analysing the technology of how they can be benefited to my business growth and same time we should always think the solution’s pros and cons. A CIO should have a 360 approach towards any issue or any solution. CIO action should not be always only monitory benefits, but it should also be time saving and accurate, which indirectly will contribute towards business growth.

Sandeep Jamdagni Head IT Ashiana Housing Ltd

Amitabh Mishra Chief Digital Officer Vedanta Resources

D V Seshu Kumar Asst Vice President – IT Head Orient Cement Limited

"The CIO vision has to be focused on today’s world opportunities.

Having an understanding of business strategy and close market watch, any disruption in business process and introduction of technology can be done for business revenue growth"

"If cutting costs is business priority #1, the technology strategy has to reflect that reality. After the strategy is formulated, it's important to obtain the buy-in of key business stakeholders and identify key initiatives"

"Convincing the Board for introduction of a new solution becomes a huge challenge. How can ROI be calculated while improving efficiencies of the operations etc., balancing the needs to influence business strategy are some of the things that has to be kept in mind"

Says Sandeep Jamdagni, Head IT - Ashiana Housing Ltd, “I believe the CIO vision has to be focused on today’s world opportunities, but also have a clear view of business directions and transformation for future. Having an understanding of business strategy and close market watch, any disruption in business process and introduction of technology can be done for business revenue growth.”

impact. The Board is willing to invest in the technology if any of the business parameters like Revenue, Improved customer satisfaction & Outreach in the market is improved. To get the approval, project plan is prepared & parameters like productivity, revenue enhancement of the organization is calculated and presented to the Board members.

black box without adding business value and growth. In most of the cases, it is found that IT functions are focusing on delivering products and service but it is often forgotten to evaluate their value addition to business growth.”

In recent times, IT has become the driving force for an organization's growth. New and emerging technologies are being discussed with respect to its RoI, business and customer

According to Anoop Handa, Managing Director - Anlight Consulting Services, the RoI on all Technology Initiatives should be measured with respect to business results.

“Unless Technology initiative undertaken by CIO increase revenues or enhance customer services or yields productivity and operational gains, they should neither be approved nor undertaken by CIO,” he says.

Opines Ashok Jade, CIO - Shalimar Paints, “In most of the organisation IT is not expected to generate direct Revenue or Profits. However, they are certainly expected to help increase revenue or profit and focus on consumer need.

Considering this fact, it is not advisable for IT operating by its own set of rules, as a mysterious

While CIOs are recognized as business transformers and members of senior executive team, there are many challenges in current scenario to transforming CIOs vision into an action and measuring the business results, as pointed out by D V Seshu Kumar, Asst Vice President – IT Head, Orient Cement Limited.

“Analysis says now a day CIOs are spending more than 50% of their time for innovations.

However convincing the Board for introduction of a new solution while replacing the disruption of existing workaround becomes a huge challenge. How can ROI be calculated while improving efficiencies of the operations etc., balancing the needs to influence business strategy are some of the things that he has to keep in mind while introducing anything new into the organization,” he says.

Arindam Singha Roy CIO - East India Udyog Ltd. Sanjay Singh Gahlod (General Manager), System & IT Department - Oriental Rubber India "A modern CIO should choose technology which should be cost effective and easily deployable. A CIO should be open for new technology and prime focus should be data security and instant IT up time in case of failure"

"My planning process is a systematic approach to strategic planning and a way of managing progress towards achieving the vision and strategic goals of the organization. It aligns the strategic objectives with the IT resources and action plans"

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COVER STORY

CIO Best Practices Bipradas Bandyopadhyay, Head of IT - Zuari Infraworld India “In my current profile many technical innovations have been done that have brought good business result for the organization both internally & externally. Using Data Science and Analytics I have formalized a social media marketing strategy that increased lead generation by 200% in a span of 3 months and subsequently conversion also increased quite substantially. Internally as process improvement initiative, implementation of the centralized document management software has improved turnaround time of our Projects, Procurement Departments by 33% in a period of 6 months."

Ravinder Arora, Head – Information Security, IRIS Software “There are many projects I have delivered where I have seen my role changing from an enabler to an innovator, some of which are Automation of overall application Security framework and Automation of all compliance tracking.”

Sanjay Singh Gahlod (General Manager), System & IT Department, Oriental Rubber India “We are in the process now to remove Buda (Unnecessary doing things) on daily routine and trying to remove those things or giving solution from system so that we can save time and energy and the same time can be utilized in effective work resultant will be contributing towards business growth.”

Arindam Singha Roy, CIO - East India Udyog Ltd. “My planning process is a systematic approach to strategic planning and a way of managing progress towards achieving the vision and strategic goals of the organization. First of all, I try to understand what the vision is. Secondly I design the strategies and tactics to help us move towards that vision. Thirdly metrics are defined that determines what needs to be measured, to ensure that the effectiveness of those strategies are working towards a common vision with Key Performance Indicators to ensure that they can measure correctly the performance of those tactics. Fourthly the Master Schedule is done for a clear project plan that identifies the actions required to deliver that.”

- - - -

Anoop Handa, Managing Director - Anlight Consulting Services “Few of the best practices/suggestions that have worked for me individually and for my teams as well, are Understanding my business very well Developing good relationships across functions and across levels Never working in isolation. Interacting, Exchanging Ideas and listening to business issues/pain areas and then trying to resolve those issues Never adopting Technology for sake of it and just because it’s a trend. On the contrary, enabling your business with ‘Fit-for-purpose’ technology solutions that deliver business value."

Amitabh Mishra, Chief Digital Officer - Vedanta Resources “It is important to bring in an outside perspective, for example, from a top 4 consulting company. In addition, a service with an exclusive advisory consultant such as Gartner is also advisable. Based on these outside perspectives, the IT leadership team can formulate a set of critical initiatives that will bring the greatest impact to business. The next step to remember is that IT needs to be assertive and ask business a lot of questions. If business asks for something to be done, IT leaders have to not just execute the task, but also ask pertinent questions that'll show business what the real issue is. Business likes to be challenged by IT and other supporting services.”

Sandeep Jamdagni, Head IT - Ashiana Housing Ltd “In our organization, we follow the approach of regular exchange of information – of having formal and informal meetings with all departments and understanding their constraints in process as a team member and not as an IT Guy. There were dedicated customers service executives who use to spend most of their time in providing ledger/pending payments and interest details to customers. As per organization policy of transparency in all processes, 3w enabled our customer service portal and linked it with CRM customer financial data (account ledger), where customers can see and understand all his/her payments/receipts and charged interest on delayed payments. This also saved the customer care executive time, which he/she can devote in more productive activities and engaging more new customers.”

Sanjay Chowdhry, Chief Information Officer - Hamdard Laboratories India “CIOs & their team need to continue dig deep into the internal & external processes of the organization. This will give them an insights into the manual processes still utilized even after technology is used for broader process. Even after implementing various digital / IT projects, small processes still exists inside every technological driven process. I and my team has gone a step further in recognizing those small processes by continuously remaining in touch with the end users. An innovator or out of the box thinking is required to digitize these small processes.”

Ashok Jade, CIO - Shalimar Paints “Over the period of time, IT team has become comfortable for keeping themselves away from business. We create a condition and environment in which people can express them freely - they encourage team-members to go beyond their tribe, silos and patterns. They also understand and recognize that each individual is capable of creating innovation and ideas in their own capacity.

Although it is easy to say to have ROI for each project, but in reality it is very difficult to have an win-win equation on IT Budget wherein business function also agrees on business value which IT has brought in to respective function.

D V Seshu Kumar, Asst Vice President – IT Head, Orient Cement Limited “CIOs are having tremendous opportunities to become top business executives, and not just single-minded IT geeks. Potential CIOs know how to change the dynamics of the Organization by refining information and leveraging technology for business advantage. In my view it is very important that they would devote their time and energy to gain understanding of the business inside-and-out.

In my view some of the traditional CIOs are often live in the silo, take the inside-out lens to run transactional way. The outlier CIOs are innovative business leaders who can step out of the conventional thinking.”

Dheeraj Chawla, Sr. Area Manager Marketing - Shib Dass & Sons “In today's world, it is the macro prospective of looking towards the things that really matters and not the micro one. Being a CIO/CMO of an organisation comes with tremendous challenges; any decision to be taken for implementation have to be seen in the light of feasibility and reliability and if so a proper timing need to be attached. CIOs, CFOs, CEOs or any head of the organisation should tune things as per business objectives."

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Anoop Handa Managing Director - Anlight Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd. "The RoI on all Technology Initiatives should be measured with respect to business results. Unless Technology initiative undertaken by CIO increase revenues or enhance customer services, they should neither be approved nor undertaken by CIO" Role of the Modern CIO… According to many CIOs and CTOs, the modern CIO must wear the hat of a business head and be well conversant with issues plaguing the business – be it in Sales & Marketing, Operation, Administration or general governance.

“As CIO, he/she should be able to correctly identify the problem/pain areas, suggest appropriate resolution by using updated or latest technologies and ensure good level of monitoring of the implementation of the solution proposed and be sure that the implemented solution is indeed the resolution of the problem identified.

Dheeraj Chawla Sr. Area Manager Marketing Shib Dass & Sons "The modern CIO is not a person with a bundle of technical knowledge only but is a person who is flexible in taking the role of CFO, CMO, as it is aptly said that the best person is the one who can read other’s mind well"

A detailed understanding of existing business challenges, products, markets and future plan of the organization is required before a CIO becomes strategic advisor of CEO - both in technological and business worlds,” says Bipradas Bandyopadhyay, Head of IT - Zuari Infraworld India.

Observes Dheeraj Chawla, Sr. Area Manager Marketing - Shib Dass & Sons, “The modern CIO is not a person with a bundle of technical knowledge only but is a person who is flexible in taking the role of CFO, CMO, as it is aptly said that the best person is the one who can read other’s mind well. Multitasking, Multidimensional, Multithinking is the new mantra for a CIO.”

Ravinder Arora Head – Information Security IRIS Software "A CIO vision should always align with business goals that both can be achieved together.

There should be a clearly defined KPI that ensures that measurement tools will be tightly focused on collecting, analyzing, reporting and responding to specific key vital signs"

Strategically, a CIO plays a mellow person’s role in most of the organization. That role need not change, because what is more important is to keep an eye on business market and open to adapt new technology and process changes.

Lastly, modern CIOs have to provide INNOVATION services to business peers, as the focal point is business, not on technology alone itself. Analysis from reputed agencies say that by 2020, 60% of large enterprises will create data management or monetization capabilities, enhance enterprises functions, competitiveness, and creating new sources of revenue, and also organizations on an average expect above 20% of their revenues comes from data monetization.

To succeed in this position, the modern CIO must be adept at matching strategic IT guidance, knowledge of trends and emerging technologies, with an understanding of key business processes. There should also be a focus on security, and an up-to-date disaster recovery plan or an internal security protocol for the staff, as well as other layered measures to catch as many potential problems as possible before they become critical issues.

Bipradas Bandyopadhyay Head of IT Zuari Infraworld India "A detailed understanding of existing business challenges, products, markets and future plan of the organization is required before a CIO becomes strategic advisor of CEO - both in technological and business worlds"

As Sanjay Singh Gahlod (General Manager), System & IT Department - Oriental Rubber India contends, a modern CIO should choose technology which should be cost effective and easily deployable. “Though it is dependent on IT budget approval, but a CIO should be open for new technology and prime focus should be data security and instant IT up time in case of failure.”

The endeavour should be to evolve and grow from doing “Running the Business” activities to being able to work and contribute to “Changing the Business” role.

Ashok Jade CIO Shalimar Paints

"In most of the organisation IT is not expected to generate direct Revenue or Profits. However, they are certainly expected to help increase revenue or profit and focus on consumer need"

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FACE TO FACE

“Partners can play a significant role in accelerating storage growth” In a chat with VARINDIA, Darren Sullivan, Senior Vice President, Global Partner Strategy, Dell EMC discusses about empowering partners with technology skill set, their role in growth, partner promotion etc.

How Dell EMC sees its partner to play a major role in growth?

can expand with our partner base.

significant role in helping us accelerate our growth in storage.

Partners are oriented more toward solution selling with solving customer problems in the data center. We really can take advantage of those capabilities that partners have, driving bigger data center solutions which can help accelerate growth in storage and drive the business.

We look in for partners to extend our reach, get to markets that we do not cover and expand with customers who are underpenetrated. We focus a lot of our time and energy with partners trying to find ways to find new markets, accounts, segments to serve. So that is a big area how we

We have a line of focused business in our program, training is very much around client, server, storage. One of the things that we are doing is figuring out about what we need to do to drive more solution orientation for future and some of the opportunities that we see in the industry. We are referring to Dell Technologies as partners and we want our channel partners to take advantage of the full suite of technologies that we have across the company - Dell EMC, VMware etc. So that we can help partners to work across Dell Technologies and really drive the agenda around digital transformation opportunities, IT, workforce and security transformation and drive

How do you empower Partners with Partners can play a very technology skill set?

more solution orientation with our customers through partners.

That is something on which we are working hard to figure out what is going to take us to there as we are very product focus and line of business focus company as we are thinking of extending our future in that regard.

How will you differentiate between Tier 1, 2, 3 channel?

We are spending a lot of time thinking about how to profile our partners, what are the capabilities that we need in organizations which are working with us for the future and how do we motivate those types of organization to work with us, how to enable them.

How do you promote the partners?

We have certain requirements

in our program, they are based on either competencies like what types of certifications the partners have achieved within our technology offers and then what is the revenue.

So we look in both the elements in terms of how we promote partners from our Gold Tier to Platinum Tier to Titanium. As partners grow in our program, they use the tier status as a branding mechanism.

So if you are a Titanium partner in our program, partners use that to promote their capabilities and new values to customers and marketplace.

FACE TO FACE

Real-time behaviour based analytics forms the core of Gurucul’s solutions Gurucul is a global cyber security company, catering to the enterprise and the government vertical, protecting their most valuable data. It provides artificial intelligence based security solutions focusing on behaviour based security intelligence.

Gurucul was started nine years back in 2010 and was founded by Saryu Nayyar and Nilesh Dhirenge.

“It has been an amazing journey so far.

We are now the leaders in the behaviour based security analytics space,” says Sandeep Puri, Country Head - Gurucul India. “Convinced that user behaviour is the leading threat indicator, Gurucul pioneered the concept of user behaviour analytics.There are many anomalies and threats and every threat has its unique posture. We tell you how risky that anomalous behaviour and the threat is, while also doing context based risk prioritising.”

Gurucul offers two solutions – GuruculRisk Analytic solution in which it provides user behaviour analytic along with identity analytics and the second one is Fraud Analytic solutions.

The back-end of both these solutions is the big data. By providing these solutions, customer retention remains its main focus.

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“The customers that we have bagged in the last 9 years are still with us. That is a very important part of our strategy. We are offering these solutions to Fortune 1000 companies across the world. We also have Gurucul Labs as part of our services,” says Sandeep.

Gurucul’s real-time behaviour based security analytics and intelligence technology combines machine learning behaviour profiling with predictive risk-scoring algorithms to predict, prevent and detect breaches, insider threats, privileged access abuse, fraud and more. Most importantly, Gurucul technology does not rely on signatures, rules or patterns. It is intended – from the ground up – to identify zero-day threats and designed to provide contextual and situational awareness to security analysts tasked to protect the enterprise from real and present danger.

In India, the company is witnessing strong growth for its solutions, in part, due to its ability to sit on top of any security infrastructure and significantly minimize addressable security alerts and deliver remediation measures on real threats, in real-time. “We work in integration with all major security vendors and players,” he says.

BFSI, IT-ITeS, enterprise and the Government vertical are the major business customers for Gurucul. A 100% channel focused company, Gurucul believes in working through the channel. In India it has a Value Added Distributor and channel partners across all the regions.

“We are spread all across the country and have an R&D center in Pune and our sales headquarter in Delhi. We have a sales team in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Also, Indian GSI partners are becoming very critical for the success of any organization. They help us get customers not only in India but across the globe,” Sandeep asserts.

The last two years have been phenomenal for Gurukul as it is seeing an amazing growth in India. The value proposition it is bringing to organizations through its behavioural analytics platform is generating a lot of interests among its customers.

INTERNATIONAL EVENTS

s r e n t r a P s t i s n e h t g n e r t s l l a W Sonic s e i t i l i b a p a c with new

region, ia and SAARC d In in s er n rt ain a best p Sri Lanka. The m r , o b m To confer the lo o C in t ized an even ers for thei SonicWall organ was to honour the best partn e t In the event, th s. er n rt a p aim of the even 40 p latform ttended by To Capture Cloud P cure ew n efforts. It was a e th d ce n u o anno t and Se company has als include Zero-Touch Deploymen h rganizations capabilities whic for distributed enterprises and o ed SD- WAN design d environments with hybrid clou

Paul Vijayakumar Director Sales, DigitalTrack Solutions A strong vendor-partner relation is the key to success for both the parties.

The stronger the relationship, the better achievements they achieve together.

For SonicWall, partners play a major role, and the company is working very closely with its Secure First partners. It helps to educate its partners on how to better address the ever-evolving security challenges and become a trusted advisor.

Debashish Mukherjee, Country Director India & SAARC, SonicWall, says, “Every partner is unique in their own way and they are addressing customer requirements and servicing their customers with the help of technologies available in the market. At SonicWall, we are working closely with our Secure First partners and educating them on addressing dynamic security challenges and becoming coming trusted advisors.

We all know in the security industry one of the major challenges is to fulfil the skills and knowledge gap. SonicWall as a responsible security solution provider has taken this initiative ahead of time and introduced SonicWall University, a webbased portal where partners both presales and post-sales can learn and certify themselves to become a cybersecurity expert. This training process is mix of webbased, classroom and finally stringent online tests to become accredited or certified depending on the level of coursework they choose to undertake.

SonicWall certified engineers can work closely with customers and help them to make right decision on implementing technologies which are relevant for their organization and requirements. Eventually, this will be a committed relationship between partners and customers rather than a one-time transaction deal.”

“Overall, the SonicWall partner event in Colombo was good, informative and very useful. In addition, the hospitality of the company in taking care of the partners was awesome.

We are predominantly security partners and SonicWall plays the vital role in our security business in addressing the customer’s pain points, now with the new feature launch it can serve much better.”

Shakunt Malhotra Vice President, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic “Security is very important for every organization today and hence it becomes a priority for us, too.

We see a lot of growth in security for distributed environments and security for email deployments in the industry.

While we have been associated with SonicWall for more than a decade, it’s just the right time for partnership with them with the new and enhanced product solution portfolio which is very relevant and effective for all sizes and verticals of customers.”

Manish Shah Director, ITCG Solutions “We wanted to thank all the people who were involved in putting together the reunion. We know what a huge effort it took to make this reunion so great. We had so much fun from the beginning till the end. It was a WOW event.

SonicWall, with the addition of new products like Capture Clients, Zero Touch deployments, Wireless, apart from UTM, gives complete solution to us for the verticals that we focus for the security domain.”

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FACE TO FACE

Prysm and Inflow Technologies look to growing together in the UCC space With the introduction of its new line of single-panel displays – the LPD 6K series, Prysm is now strengthening its distribution network to consolidate is business in India market. To this regard, the company has selected Inflow Technologies recently as its India distribution mandate for its product portfolio. GB Kumar, Vice President, APAC – Prysm and Byju Pillai, CEO, Inflow Technologies speak to VARINDIA about the significance of this partnership and how they both see to take the business forward in the country -

How do you see your business going forward in the country after partnering with Inflow Technologies?

Are there going to be any changes in the channel strategies post this partnership?

Today, Prysm conducts business through 20 channel partners, highly concentrated in the key metros of Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi.

The strength that Inflow brings in is the 150 channel partners in the UCC space that Inflow has signed up with and has access to already, in addition to the 1400+ channel partners that they are already working with for the range of 40+ OEM products that they carry. So, the immense amount of depth and reach that they can provide to Prysm’s business is where the strength of this relationship lies.

With our recent partnership, Inflow Technologies will be our sole distributor for India and SAARC countries going forward. If you look at Prysm, since the last three years, we have been doing business directly with the partners and then delivering to the end customers. So now, our go to market structure is going to change where we will have Inflow technologies as our value added distributor and they will in turn sell our products and support our channel partners.

Our partnership with Inflow will help us expand our reach. The strength of Inflow lies in terms of the number of partners that they deal with, the number of pre-sales engineers that they have, the number of post sales engineers that they have and also the number of proof of concept and labs that they have.

The second aspect is the strength of their pre-sales and engineers which adds another layer to it. Prysm is all about value added solution selling and not just about moving the products. That is where the ability to sell end to end becomes critical aspect of our success.

gives us the structure to reach the market in terms of both credit and in terms of the relationships between the partners as well as Inflow. These are the ways how Inflow technologies adds significant value to our go-to market structure compared to the way we have been doing business so far.

Indian companies are going global and global companies are starting to have their strong engineering, R&D, sales and marketing presence in India. With this, globalization is only accelerating and hence, the ability and importance of sharper, faster and better

What would be the USP of Prysm?

Also, In terms of doing business with Inflow, it

Byju Pillai CEO, Inflow Technologies

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GB Kumar Vice President, APAC – Prysm

decision making becomes key for the success of these organizations. The best way they can support their decision making is by having the Prysm visual collaboration solution, where they can have content and analytics side-byside available online and on-demand wherever the decision makers are and help them move their business much faster and in an efficient manner. That’s where Prysm sees this market growth really accelerating.

“Inflow is a value added distribution house in IT infrastructure and UCC space. Out of the 7 areas that we operate in, UCC is a very important area as it contributes about 7% to our 300 million dollar business. It is the fastest growing unit in the 7 areas that we operate in, and we believe that Prysm has got a very unique positioning in this space. With excellent solutions for boardroom, meeting rooms and customer experience centers, I think it is one of the best visual collaboration products that I have seen in the market today and because of the unique positioning in the UCC space, I feel together we will be able to see a good growth in terms of the numbers. The other important area is our technical strength which is backed by 100+ engineers focused on networking, UCC and cyber security. So we intent to strengthen that team, use our labs and leverage the skills of these engineers to help these channels with POCs’ and provide the technical handholding.

Inflow has about 1440+ channel partners that we deal with in India & SAARC countries and these partners cut across global system integrators, global service providers, Indian National System Integrators, service providers (telecom & cloud), large resellers, mid-size and small resellers and they are across 50-60 cities in India & SAARC. Out of that, we deal with 150+ partners in the UCC space alone in addition to new networking and security partners moving into the space, which is the strength of the channel.

UCC business is about 7% of Inflow’s current business and we are trying to take it to a 10% of our total business and Prysm is an important cog in the wheel to the same. With our teams focused on UCC, we hope to achieve a lot of success.”

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FACE TO FACE

Extreme Networks pushes for

‘UNMATCHED, UNRIVALLED’ services and support

Digital transformation has landed, and agility and adaptiveness are key to surviving and thriving. The customer’s network is no longer a need-to-have, but it’s an ongoing generator of business value.

In this digital era, customers need to have a network partner who will help them drive competitive advantage, accelerate innovation and improve the customer experience.

These tenets define who Extreme Networks is. Its commitment is to customer success. It collaborates with over 30,000 customers all around the globe to build software-driven solutions from the enterprise edge to the cloud that are agile, adaptive, and secure while continuing to value the attributes of a small company by remaining nimble and responsive to ensure customer success.

Extreme Networks is relentless in its commitment to helping customers and partners build networks which accelerates their digital transformation and drive disruption on their terms. It calls this Customer-Driven Networking.

Inspired by the growing need for a network that inspires innovation and ignites customer business, with an unshakable commitment to helping them succeed, Extreme has brought together the industry’s best tools, talent and technology to become the world’s first endto-end enterprise networking company. Its products focus on access/ edge, the campus core, and the datacenter and across all of these segments are applications, services and support to ensure optimal end-to-end service delivery and the highest customer satisfaction.

Extreme Networks offers the most comprehensive, high performance products and solutions that are purpose-built to meet the unique challenges within each segment, while at the same time optimizing the user experience.

In this age of acceleration and digital transformation, Extreme’s customer-driven solutions will enable its customers to achieve greater agility, efficiency and business success.

Extreme Networks Services provide customers with comprehensive options to

Bob Gault

help them transform networking from a technology necessity to a business driving, RoI generator.

Today, Nutanix’s worldwide customers leverage the power of Extreme to take their networks to the next level. Its 100% insourced support team is made of highly trained experts who are passionate about helping its customers get the most out of their investment in technology. Extreme Networks believes that there are no boundaries when it comes to implementing bright-sized network solutions on customers’ terms, no matter which industry they are in. Extreme simply asks its customers to have confidence in the expertise and support they are entitled to.

Extreme Network’s customers range from fast-growing companies, hospitals with doctors who need instant access to lifesaving information and stadiums packed with 80,000 connected fans. Regardless of size, organizations who need the utmost in performance, reliability and service on Extreme to deliver powerful software-driven networking solutions.

Subhasish Gupta

Chief Revenue and Services Officer Extreme Networks

Regional Director – India & SAARC Extreme Networks

“Our positioning is around providing solutions to big companies.

The Extreme Networks brand is all about providing the services.

We position Extreme in verticals; we have 7 key verticals that we play in and we provide them automatic campus solution and agile datacenter solutions.

“We are in a very dynamic market. The addressable market size is $800 million+. We aim to grow in this market and the way we are working out the acquisitions internally, the way we converge our solutions, that brings in huge opportunities for us and for our partners in the India market.

We bring all these solutions through a single, unified common management platform. When we do that it gives the IT Manager the ability to manage end-toend solutions underneath one single platform.

Today customers have invested in many different technologies.

We do not want to create a lock-in kind of a situation for our customers. We as a company are talking about a complete suite of products; we are talking about open standards; we are talking about not limiting to Extreme with respect to hardware products. There is a very strong software suite that sits on the top which is what integrates a heterogeneous kind of an environment. And that is not only on the wired front but also on the wireless front and we are slowly taking to the cloud.

We are strongly focused on 4-5 verticals. We do not to get defocussed by targeting too many verticals.”

We can then provide them the power shields as well as the analytics from the edge or through the campus into the datacenter. That is important to us.

The key ingredient or the ‘secret sauce’is the fabric. The fabric is something we integrated into our campus solutions and to the edge.

For us, the fabric is what automates everything.”

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Proactive security framework required to safeguard a sophisticated attack In a chat with VARINDIA, Michael Joseph, Director System Engineering, Fortinet discusses about the trends in the threat landscape, how cybercriminals are upping their game with the latest technologies like AI and ML, RBI guidelines for banks and cryptocurrency As per the Global Threat Landscape Report released by Fortinet, threats are increasing and evolving to become more sophisticated. Unique threat variants and families are on the rise. The report also upholds that organizations are adopting new technologies and strategies such as machine learning and automation to take on tedious and time-consuming activities that normally require a high degree of human supervision and intervention. These newer defensive strategies are impacting cybercriminal strategies and forcing them to shift attack methods. The cybercriminals are also adopting these technologies to launch an attack.

“Based on the Fortinet report on how sophisticated attack could become or the sophisticated tools the hackers could be using technologies like Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning etc., it is very important that customers look at a proactive security framework rather than reactive where the important pieces would be absolute visibility in terms of what is happening in your network, the kind of traffic, applications, to give alerts in any kind of abnormality happening at the application, endpoint, network level etc. and with security intelligence and security feeds what they need to collect as an end user from the third party agencies you would be better equipped from a proactive nature to counter that new threats which could be coming in,” elaborates Michael Joseph, Director - System Engineering, Fortinet.

Difference in threat trends between Global and India:

In India, the trends that are seen in the security landscape are different from global

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trends. In India, mobile malware is one of the key trends whereas it is not in global threat landscape.

“So, what we can see based on the reports, there are certain things from a threat vector, exploit, malware perspective which is unique to India compared to global trends like the android malware which was in top five in India perspective but it was not there in global trends. So what it indicates is the potential of more and more vulnerabilities being exploited or what is being currently exploited in India has a higher volume compared to the rest of the world where people needs to be careful about the applications used on mobiles etc.,” highlights Michael.

He further adds, “When it comes to India compared to the rest of the globe, we have certain differences in terms of still using few legacy applications, we tend to use a lot of applications which is not validated, using applications which may not be legitimate in nature or without the valid licences because of which the updates from the vendors are not getting applied, the probability of a vulnerability being there coming with that software is high because of which certain exploits are seen higher in India.”

Cyber threat and BFSI Industry:

Banking is the most targeted space these days when it comes to cyber threat. Keeping the recent attacks in mind, RBI has come up with stringent rules which every bank has to follow. Explaining the guidelines, Michael says, “From a banking industry perspective, post the attack which happened in Bangladesh where USD 80 million was taken away, RBI has issued much more stringent guidelines to the bank in terms of – one, every bank has been asked to set up a SOC. Second, the security framework or guidelines which was given and every bank had to follow in terms of deploying various security measures, products etc., and how the banks are progressing in terms of the guidelines, every week the senior management from the IT organization had to report back to RBI. So definitely, these are right initiatives taken to ensure that the banking sector in general, the end user’s money and infrastructure is protected. There is also a guideline which states that in case of a breach now there is a guideline which clearly mandates in terms of within what timeframe they have to report it back to various government agencies. These

MICHAEL JOSEPH Director - System Engineering Fortinet are measures which were not earlier there and have happened in past two years.”

Cryptocurrency:

Talking about the popularity of cryptocurrency, Michael opines, “There had been some legislation in place when it comes to cryptocurrency and it was said that it cannot be used in various scenarios. I would say the hype which was created in terms of cryptocurrency valuation was sky rocketing few months back.

The demand and popularity is coming down because there are various legislations which are working to ensure that this cryptocurrency is not used for anti-national or illegal kind of activities etc because in certain scenarios it was not very easy to track in terms of from where to where the exchange is happening etc.

From a cryptomining perspective, Fortinet had been able to protect customers who have deployed our solutions where we are able to give protection against that cryptomining where company’s official resources or the computing power is being misused for doing this cryptomining where customers will be able to prevent that from happening and also get the visibility in terms of happening in the network.”

VAR MOBILITY

HMD Global adds Nokia 8.1 to its Xiaomi launches OPPO debuts R17 Pro in India has announced to use Corning Gorilla Redmi Note 6 the OPPO flagship range launch of its latest Glass 6 and comes with R series device in India 8GB RAM + 128GB ROM HMD Global has HDR 10 support along Pro the quad– OPPO R17 Pro. It memory combination, announced Nokia 8.1, the with highly accurate combines a revolutionary improving the speed and newest addition to its value colour reproduction camera phone new gradient design with performance.

The device flagship range. As with delivers enhanced viewing other Nokia smartphones in the same category, including Nokia 7 plus, the Nokia 8.1 punches above its weight with extraordinary imaging achieved by its highly sensitive, camera sensor,

ZEISS Optics and Optical Image Stabilization (OIS).

Proprietary PureDisplay screen technology with

experiences even in bright sunlight, while the chipset ensures smooth performance for up to two days per charge.

All of this comes in a contemporary package with the precise craftsmanship expected from a Nokia smartphone. Running the latest Android software, Android 9 Pie, the Nokia 8.1 delivers the best Android experience with the latest innovations right out of the box.

Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer, HMD Global, says, “We’ve seen great success in the value flagship category with each of our smartphones in this class consistently introducing new premium experiences to our fans."

Honor unveils Honor 8C with massive battery and large display, priced at Rs.11, 999 Honor has launched its most power-packed smartphone – the Honor 8C. Honor 8C is backed by a 4,000mAh powerful battery, 13MP+2MP AI Dual camera and a large

15.9cm HD+ Notch display for a long-lasting experience.

It will be available in 4GB + 32GB at Rs.11, 999 and 4GB + 64GB at Rs.12,

999 variants exclusively on Amazon India, starting 10th December, 2018.

Suhail Tariq, CMO, Huawei Consumer Business Group, says, “Our endeavour for all products is designed keeping in mind the needs of consumers and our fans. The Honor 8C is packed with enormous battery backup to increase the engagement for consumers.

Additionally, the Honor 8C is equipped with a large display that supports a sizeable viewing experience in terms of user engagement. Not only with battery and display, the Honor 8C will make its mark in India as the world’s first device to be powered

by Snapdragon 632.

Xiaomi has introduced Redmi Note 6 Pro in the country. It features a twoday battery that Redmi smartphones are known for, and for the first time brings an AI-powered quad-camera experience to the segment. Redmi Note 6 Pro is the successor to Redmi Note 5 Pro, the number 1 dual camera smartphone in India as per a report from Canalys in July 2018. The Redmi Note 5 series crossed 5 million units in sales in a matter of 4 months since launch in February 2018.

Anuj Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer, Xiaomi India says, “Redmi Note has established a strong legacy in India over the last few years with each Redmi Note hitting industry milestones.

With each generation, we have improved the overall smartphone experience and brought the best specs together - be it battery, camera or performance.

Redmi Note 6 Pro provides meaningful upgrades to the bestselling Redmi Note 5 Pro and we hope Mi Fans would be able to enjoy a truly innovative product from Xiaomi.”

Redmi Note 6 Pro features a contemporary arc design and sports the capable Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 octa-core processor. It brings to the table an AI-powered quad-camera setup and a 4000mAh two-day battery with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. With highspeed LPDDR4X RAM in tandem, Redmi Note 6 Pro makes for quite a capable setup.

Thanks to the thoughtful ergonomic design, Redmi Note 6 Pro has a great hand feel and is pleasing to the eye. Support for dual VoLTE ensures customers are covered on the connectivity front as well.

innovative technologies to

is powered by a Qualcomm

bring users a smartphone that meets their everyday needs.

The R17 Pro has a 6.4-inch screen, 19.5:9 FHD+ which accounts for 91.5% of the screen and has waterdrop screen. The front camera of the R17 Pro is at the middle of the water droplet giving the consumer a higher screen to body ratio experience.

R17 Pro is the first device

Snapdragon 710 processor and supports Android 8.1 ColorOS 5.2. Talking about the camera, R17 Pro has a triple camera setup on the back which comprises of 12MP + 20MP + 3D sensors along with a 25MP front-facing camera.

The OPPO R17 Pro which is priced at Rs.45,990 will be widely available for sale from 7th December onwards.

Huawei unveils Mate 20 Pro in India Huawei Consumer Business Group, India has unveiled the most highly-

efficiency and a smoother user experience.

The smartphone comes with the

anticipated device of the year – the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, which will set a new bar for smartphone performance in 2018. The smartphone is powered

by Huawei’s densest and highest-performing system on chip (SoC) to date – the Kirin 980.

Manufactured with the advanced 7nm process, the SoC offers improved performance, better battery

world's first 40W HUAWEI Super Charger that can charge the phone’s longlasting 4,200mAh battery to 70% charge in 30 minutes.

The Matrix Camera System includes Leica Ultra Wide Angle Lens that lets users not only capture wider, but also closer with its new macro distance capability, allowing users to capture pictures from a distance of 2.5 cm.

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Movers & Shakers

Symantec ropes in Sunil Varkey as CTO

Symantec has appointed Sunil Varkey as CTO and security strategist for emerging regions. He was earlier associated with Wipro as VP and Chief Information Security Officer in the company. During his stint at Wipro, Varkey spearheaded information security and privacy at Idea Cellular.

Varkey has shared a LinkedIn post saying that the environment in the enterprise is dynamically changing, and is not confined to just a few domains, but extends to business models, regulatory and compliance requirements, and end-user demands. He also added that with financially successful and highly motivated cybercriminals, the situation we are in is not easy.

Oppo India MD Yi Wang quits owing to increasing losses

Amidst the increasing losses and growing competition in the local market, Oppo Mobiles' India Managing Director, Yi Wang has resigned from his post.

In a statement, the company has confirmed that it has been mutually decided during a meeting between the board of directors of OPPO Mobiles India that Yi Wang, managing director of the company, will step down from his position effective 30th November, 2018.

There was a pressure from the Oppo management on the India team as it was not able to get desired results at a time when Xiaomi captured the top position for almost a year in the country.

Yatish Mehrotra to spearhead Knowlarity as its CEO

Instagram promotes Vishal Shah as Director of Product Management

It’s been quiet an intensive year for Facebook's leadership. Facebook Inc’s photo- and video-sharing app, Instagram said on Monday that it promoted its director of product management Vishal Shah as the head of product, effective immediately.

Vishal Shah, who joined Instagram in 2015, assumed the position previously held by Adam Mosseri, who was appointed as Instagram’s head in October, following the high-profile exits of co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in September. Vishal is an experienced manager with deep product knowledge who lives by Instagram’s values of people first, simplicity, and craft.

Bank of America appoints Nilesh Mhatre as CIO

Nilesh Mhatre has joined Bank of America (India) as its new Chief Information Officer (CIO). Mhatre was previously the CIO at The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) India.

Nilesh Mhatre has over 25 years of extensive exposure to diversified technologies in the banking and financial services domain. His association with HSBC India began in August 1991, where his role involved conceptualizing, planning and executing all software delivery initiatives across the Group’s customer interface entities in India.

Thomas Kurian becomes the new CEO of Google’s Cloud Business

Aiming to build a growth trajectory, Knowlarity has appointed an ex-Tata Teleservices and Airtel senior leader, Yatish Mehrotra, on board as its CEO. In his new role, Yatish will spearhead the company’s overall business and growth strategy. He will also leverage his extensive domain experience to drive expansion and profitability for Knowlarity.

Yatish is a veteran telecom professional and has over 25 years of experience mainly with telecom operators, holding leadership positions with some of India’s top telecom companies. Before joining Knowlarity, Yatish was the Business Head – Consumer Business at Tata Teleservices.

Thomas Kurian, who was the former President of Oracle Product Development will be heading Google’s cloud business.

Kurian will be replacing Diane Greene.

Thomas Kurian is a veteran in the space of tech leadership. He has spearheaded a 35,000-person software development team across 32 countries and developed products that generated USD 35 billion in annual revenues including USD 5.5 billion in cloud revenue for Oracle.

He said, “I'm excited to join the fantastic Google Cloud team at this important and promising time. I'm looking forward to building on the success of recent years as it enters its next phase of growth."

James McCready to lead Japan and APAC operations for Adobe

Brightstar Telecommunications India appoints new CFO

Adobe has announced James McCready, president of Adobe Japan, is expanding his role to lead the company’s operations in Japan and Asia Pacific (APAC). The announcement follows the appointment of Paul Robson as president of Adobe in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

McCready has extensive experience leading enterprise and commercial businesses in Asia and the United States. He joined Adobe in April 2018 to lead the company’s Japan business, based in Tokyo. Prior to joining Adobe, McCready was vice president of APAC and Japan at Dell EMC, leading sales strategy and execution, as well as platforms and solutions.

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Brightstar has announced the appointment of Luciano Ferreira as the new Chief Financial Officer for India.

Luciano has more than 20 years of experience in the telecom industry and has worked in several markets including Africa, Australia, Brazil, Croatia, Spain& Dubai. Over the years Luciano has led various aspects of financial planning and execution including all kinds of corporate finance, business and finance controlling, FP&A, contract management, working capital management, treasury, project control. and commercial support. Before joining Brightstar he was Vice President & Group CFO of Ericsson Nikola Tesla.

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RNI - NO 72399/1999 Printing Date 18 & 19

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Reg. No: DL-SW-01/4030/18-20

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60 pages including cover

Date of Posting 20 & 21 every month