e-magazine February 2019 issue updated

Kaspersky Lab unveils “Kaspersky United” to empower its partners Veeam unfolds its cloud data management capabilities 11th

Odisha OITF Information 2019 Technology highlightsFair’19

the growth areas that is transforming the state 26pg

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Odisha Computer Application Centre

Excellence in IT Solutions

• Developing a well planned, robust and futuristic IT architecture for the state to ensure good governance, ushering higher economic growth and attract investment in IT & ITeS Sector through industry friendly policies.

• Nodal Agency to develop e-Governance road map for the state, provide technology support and capacity building • Implementing various e-Governance projects under National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) like OSWAN, SDC, CSC, SSDG, e-District etc. as State Designated Agency.

• Strong Industry Facilitation & IT Promotion Cell to function as the single window for the entrepreneurs in the IT sector.

Odisha Computer Application Centre E & IT Department, Government of Odisha

Govt. of Odisha

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OCAC Building, Plot No. N-1/7-D, Acharya Vihar, Bhubaneswar 751 013, Odisha, India EPABX : +91-674-2567295, 2567064 Fax: +91-674-2567842 Email : contact@ocac.in Website : www.ocac.in www.varindia.com

RP tech India finalizes acquisition of ZNet Technologies Fortinet introduces FortiGate next-generation firewalls

Theme: Powering The Digital Economy 15th, Friday, March 2019 Hotel Taj Lands Ends, Mumbai

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INTERIM BUDGET 2019: Over 40 smartphone brands depart from India owing to competition

Approximately 41 smartphone brands departed from the India smartphone market in 2018 owing to frantic competition, while 15 brands entered the market eyeing growth prospects that India has to offer.

Mirroring the same pattern, more exits than entry of smartphone players is expected in 2019 as major brands like Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, Oppo continue to consolidate their share by eating into those of the smaller brands, analysts say.

Counterpoint Research predicts the exit of 15 smartphone players in 2019 versus entry of five players.

India currently has around 200 smartphone players operating in the market. At its peak in 2014-15, the mobile phone market had over 300 smartphone players.

Google announces a new encryption solution for entry level smartphones

For cheaper entry level smartphones, Google has created a special encryption solution method called Adiantum, which would be an optional part of Android distributions going forward. Google has this new mode of storage encryption called Adiantum that is made specifically for devices that lack the capacity to use AES due to slower SoCs. Google says that Adiantum allows it to use the ChaCha stream cipher in a length-preserving mode that adapts ideas from AES-based proposals for length-preserving encryption, such as HCTR and HCH. Adiantum is an innovation in cryptography, designed to make storage encryption more efficient for devices without cryptographic acceleration, ensure that all devices are encrypted, Google wrote in a security blog.

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N E X T G E N E R AT I O N F L E X I B L E H Y P E R C O N V E R G E D P L AT F O R M T U R N K E Y, H C I , H Y B R I D Organisations want an agile, cost-efficient and trusted IT infrastructure which is future-ready, rapidly scales with demand and facilitates their business growth.

A wealth of experience, with over 23 years of building complex on-premise, hybrid and cloud end-to-end solutions

A system which enables them to take full advantage of the latest in hyper-convergence, which comes equipped with a full range of external services such as cloud, applications, security, mobility, and business continuity, while being easy to manage.

Acuutech MESH is the answer. An extensive IT platform specifically developed for agile businesses, built upon the leading technologies of Microsoft and Lenovo. MESH is a proven, turnkey IT solution, its deployment de-risks IT investment and enables organisations to get on with their core task…delivering business success.

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HYBRID Hybrid solutions extend the capabilities of your HCI platform into the cloud providing additional protection and data access solutions.

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P L AT F O R M The root of the platform is the HCI hardware appliance, available in various configurations and topologies. This platform delivers high-performance, highly available storage, networking and visualisation to support your most demanding applications.

Volume replication – Synchronous or asynchronous replication between two sites to enable fast system fail-over and disaster recovery.

Application hosting – Virtual machine creation and management.

Software defined networking (SDN) – Network segmentation and isolation, ideal for organisations wanting to separate tenants or business units.

VM encryption and protection – Encrypt and protect sensitive or secure VM’s from the base platform, allowing secure workloads to be run concurrently with other VM’s.

Managed Disaster Recovery – Fully managed DR, from on-premises to the cloud. Full design and configuration of fail-over, data replication monitoring and application fail-over testing.

Off-site backup to Azure - VM level backup of your HCI appliance, Windows VM, VMWare or bare metal systems, unlimited retention period, coupled with flexible backup snapshot intervals Hybrid File Server - Make any file server share available over the Internet or archive rarely used files to Azure, saving local space.

C LO U D Leverage the benefits of key cloud services. Fully configured solutions, curated and tuned to be simpler to use and manage.

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Infrastructure on demand (IaaS) - Flexible virtual machine and infrastructure services, simplified with support for multiple deployment locations.

Virtual desktop - Azure hosted virtual desktop solution, supporting a wide range of VM types and configurations.

Applications on demand (PaaS) - Enhance IaaS and Office 365 through support for PaaS database services and the Azure Marketplace.

Driving thought leadership in advanced technologies and solution design

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Office 365 - Full support for all Office 365 subscriptions, with migration, support and maintenance built-in.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) - Provide additional challenge and response for user logins beyond a basic username and password.

Device Management - Control and manage your user’s mobile devices and desktop computers. To protect business-related data and applications.

F E AT U R E E N H A N C E MENTS AND SUPPORT Acuutech MESH is a turnkey solution platform; upgrades and feature enhancements are included, and this approach applies to new versions of cloud-based services and on-premises platform capabilities.

The system fully supports the life-cycle of your users and systems, providing reliability today and into the future.

Platform

Hybrid

Cloud

Hyper-converged appliance

Disaster recovery

Infrastructure on demand (IaaS)

Volume replication and failover

Offsite backup

Virtual Desktop

Application hosting platform

Hybrid-file server

Application Services on demand (PaaS)

Software defined networking

Office 365 Productivity suite

VM Encryption and protection

Multi-factor authentication Device management

www.varindia.com February 2019

3

HELLO INDIA

Addressing critical issues of the Government Digitization has touched every aspect of human life. It is altering how organizations are looking at business sectors, markets, services to their customers and ideating towards new businesses.

The Indian retail industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. Retail industry in India is expected to grow up to US$ 1200 billion by 2021. With the exponential growth of e-commerce business has risen a number of regulatory issues and legal questions. Over the past few years, the digital economy has seen a significant increase in the number of e-commerce transactions. With the unprecedented growth of the online retail sector, the need to have an adequate policy to govern it has also arisen. Retailing in India accounts for over 10% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and around 8% of the employment. The introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the demonetization move has further supported the growth of the organized retail industry.

It is absolutely true that both the form of business transaction (On-line and Off-line) would co-exist, since there is scope for both and one can’t exclude the other. The Indian retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-paced industries due to the entry of several new players. The new FDI Rules issued by Department of Industrial Policy and Planning (DIPP) have been introduced which have barred online marketplaces, with foreign investments from selling products from sellers in which the online marketplaces hold a stake. There is an urgent need to have a stable regulatory framework to regulate e-commerce in India.

Publicly, affected e-commerce firms have refrained from criticizing the move. The large e-commerce companies have tried to create a monopolistic situation. With this, the entire retail sector is at risk.

There is a strong representation from various trade associations across the country to pass the draft policy without making any changes in the policy under pressure that gives undue advantage to e-commerce companies.

The Union Budget 2019-20 appears to be a full budget and not an interim budget. The budgetary provision clearly points towards a social focus and building up of the social safety net with significant provisions for the labour in unorganized sector, for small farmers and for rural industries such as fisheries and animal husbandry. However, it tends to ignore the landless farmers who will not be entitled to the annual support of Rs. 6000. Overall it is a social sector focused budget.

The recent incident at Pulwama terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir, which took away lives of over 40 Indian paramilitary men, has sparked a raging debate on how India should respond to Pakistan and what should be India’s next plan of action that has evoked nationwide outrage behind the dastardly attack. Questions are raised about India’s security and intelligence lapses, which has led to this attack.

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CONTENTS

LEAD STORY | 39

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 BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar Jha Sr. Marketing Manager: Ashok Ranjan Dash Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@varindia.com

Digital India paving the way for the Growth of Partners

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 Hot Bytes On the Ramp Voice N Data Channel Buzz Movers & Shakers

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8 12, 14 16, 18 20 22 54

EGOVERNANCE 10

‘A progressive ICT policy and a robust infrastructure make Odisha favourable for investments’

LEAD STORY 39

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TeamViewer aims for 100– 150% growth in India

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“This is a great opportunity for Microsoft to work with manufacturers and enable end-users”

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Key advantage of HCI based on Microsoft platform is the modular scale of flexibility

EVENT 24

ISODA TS9 sets the business stage ready for Indian and Qatari IT companies

28

OITF 2019 highlights the growth areas that is

Digital India paving the way for the Growth of Partners

COVER STORY 44

Opportunities galore in 2019 for the Channel to evolve and grow

BUDGET 2019 34

FACE TO FACE

© All rights are reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (1999-2016) * All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi only.

transforming the state

INTERIM BUDGET 2019: Government’s 10-point vision for 2030 presented

VAR SECURITY 52

“Our mission is to make sure that all the innovations organization is doing are for human progress”

VAR MOBILITY 53

Voto India focuses on small offline retail store in A-class towns and non-metros

www.varindia.com

December 2018

5

ROUND ABOUT

Digital vs Physical: Mutually Exclusive or Reinforcing?

The other day I asked a bookshop owner, how his business was? I was worried that I would hurt his sentiments since the popular view is that bookstores have lost their relevance in the digital era, when book lovers are changing the medium of their reading – from print to digital. Also, people use e-commerce (Internet) to buy books of their choice.

To my surprise, he was calm and stoically said that his business is doing well. Gaining some confidence upon his comfortable body language, I shot my next question: “Does Flipkart, Amazon and other e-commerce companies have any adverse impact on his revenue? “ “In no way they could cut into my business, even with deep discounts that they offer, delivery at the doorstep, sophisticated mannerisms and other goodies they offer. My business is built on trust and have a loyal list of clients, who do not go to anywhere else to buy books and that is the relationship that I have built with my clients,” he averred.

Does it mean that traditional business will continue to grow and the new forms of business transacted through digital platforms will get eclipsed in course of time? Not at all.

Futurists feel that both systems of businesses would coexist, since there is scope for both and one cannot exclude the other. There were predictions about radio being shunted out with the advent of television. The print media would eclipse with the burgeoning growth of electronic media. Many felt that people will turn more towards digital media and abandon reading books in the printed form. All these apprehensions were proved wrong by the time.

Indeed, disruptions bring changes in the habit of people or mode in which they do a work or the daily chores they carry out. For instance, habit of reading or the medium that has been used for enhancing the knowledge might have undergone a change. But nobody can take away the reading habits of the people. I enjoy reading books in the paper format. However, often I also purchase the same book from Apple iTunes store, which I read on my iPad while travelling. For instance, a businessman would like to listen to the updates on stock market, while at home from his favourite channels or reading insights of the market behaviour from a financial daily.

Early in the morning, people would like to catch up with news from the print media rather than switching on the TV sets, which may perhaps, disturb the morning quietness and serene ambience.This would mean that the situations do play an important role in selecting the medium of your choice, if you have more than one option.

I believe that there is always a hype about buying things online, which perhaps may be carefully drilled into the minds of the people,

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closer to oneself. Once it flowers or bears fruits that can trigger a sense of satisfaction or joy in the person who tends it. That I call as creative joy. Will you get that satisfaction if you create top-of-the-world images of flowers in your computer even using 3D or any other superior software? I am not hinting that such works are less creative. They are, but created in the virtual world. It does not have life, you cannot feel it. It must have originated in your brain but has not got your tender touch and care. They are inanimate, transient and lack a physical form.

especially youngsters. If you order goods or food through the Internet and get those items at the doorstep, it is often perceived as a style statement. If fifty per cent of the population does so, by the next decade or so, all malls, department stores or even mom-and-pop shops would have to be closed down. Will it happen? I do not think so. I am a strong believer of technology and I am confident that technology can transform our lives in the planet. But I am of the opinion that there is a limit to technology like limit to growth.

You may be able to create Alexas and similar robots, which will have interactive powers and can do many things that the humans can do. What about emotional quotient of such machines?

At the end of the day, human emotional and intellectual space is much beyond what machines can ever comprehend. Human mind is not linear and cannot be extrapolated.

I believe that for everyone, however big or small one may be, there is a creativity demonstrated even while doing trivial things.

An artist derives creative pleasure by creating a painting or sculpture or innovating a creative form that he or she feels can call it one’s own and the intellectual insignia can be called one’s own. A housewife can draw the same creative joy by planting a tree or nurturing a plant or a vegetable in the backyard. If you grow flowers in a pot kept inside your flat and watering and tending it every day and finally when it flowers, you can feel the creative joy.

It is something different from what you can get from buying a bunch of flowers from the market. You become an end-user and a creator of that, whereas in the case of growing a plant, nurturing it, bring the plant emotionally

I have heard about a boy in Tamil Nadu – child of ordinary folks – eking out their living by selling idlis and vadas. The boy was good at his studies and got into IIT by his own merit and later IIM. He got a good campus placement in one of the IT companies with a good pay packet. He could work their only for a few years. Stung by the feeling that he should do something for the poorer folks around his village, he left the lucrative job and started a catering service to sell idlis and vadas in the nearby places. He took orders through phones and supplied the orders at the doorstep. There was no looking back. He had collected a large number of people from his own village and nearby places and kept them as franchisees to make food and supplied far and wide through digital platforms. Now venture capitalists and investors are chasing him to invest in his company and give thumbs-up to his business model. These are entrepreneurs with a social cause and their contributions are as significant as anyone else’s.

Creativity can take several forms and hues.

It can happen in the virtual space as also in the brick-and-mortar enterprises. But I hold the view that changes will be more pronounced in the segments where virtual and brick-andmortar are blended judicially. We have realtime examples Ola and Uber; Food Panda and Swiggy; OYO and e-commerce behemoth like Amazon and Walmart, which combine the simplicity and convenience of both virtual and physical medium to supply goods and services to customers at the doorstep. I feel the future is for such operations. Aided by the strengths of artificial intelligence, these operations would be the cradle of innovations, disruptions and discoveries in the future.

No one can predict the future with precision and with a fair degree of accuracy. With that surmise, can anyone say the future will be more dictated by digital media and less by physical world, which generally is categorized as brick and mortar? How can Internet exist if there is no physical world? Both forms will coexist.

One can only reinforce the other. That will be the order for millenniums to come.

www.varindia.com January 2019

9

e-Governance

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A progressive ICT policy and a robust infrastructure make Odisha favourable for investmentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; C J Venugopal presently is the Principal Secretary to Government of Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha. Before that, he has served as the Principal Secretary to Governor and headed the position as the CMD - IPICOL, Department of Home, Science and Technology and Department of IT, Government of Odisha.

In an interview with VARINDIA, C J Venugopal shares the e-governance initiatives Odisha govt. is bringing to the citizens to ease their lives and why Odisha is slowly becoming the favoured destination for ICT investments the pipeline and there are many other companies that are showing interests in this EMC cluster.

This is really a good news for the state as we are creating the entire eco-system and also providing them the global supply chain. We are also giving them good, reliable power supply as the power outrage in our state is very low as compared to the rest of the country. For some of them who wish to come immediately, we are ensuring that they can start their manufacturing immediately without waiting for land, power and all those formalities to begin. There are more investments in the offing and we are really excited to bring these developments into the state.

What kind of innovations is the government of Odisha taking to bring ease of life to the citizens?

From the IT department, we are trying to do several interventions by which the citizen would be able to get information on different programs. Like there are CSCs at the grass-root level and a lot of services are given online and people are getting benefitted from these. Several e-governance applications are being developed, because of which the citizens are able to get most of the services online and slowly the bouquet of services that we are starting to offer are also increasing. By doing this, the ease of getting information for the citizens becomes much easier.

After Odisha has been adjudged as the No. 1 smart city, what benefits are the citizens getting at present and what can they expect in the coming days?

What are the key challenges you find when you are heading towards digitization?

There are a couple of issues that we keep facing whenever we go for digitization. Like, a lot of process engineering is required â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the government is functioning at a particular rate and once you have the IT interventions and e-governance applications happening, there are a lot of changes that needs to be done in the process. We are also trying to get skilled manpower and are trying to meet these challenges while going forward.

Could you share the friendly ICT policies for setting up of BPO/ KPO manufacturing facilities in the state?

We have a very progressive ICT policy and are giving lots of incentives to the ITITeS companies to set up their facilities in our state. We also have a very robust electronic manufacturing policy, again for which we are giving lots of incentives to these companies to set up industry here. We are currently in talks with a mobile manufacturing company that is trying to set up an Electronic Manufacturing Cluster near Bhubaneswar. And in that cluster we are going to have a mobile manufacturing unit, a solar panel manufacturing unit and there are companies that are interested in setting up PCBs (printed circuit boards). So these are all in

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"The government is functioning at a particular rate and once you have the IT interventions and e-governance applications happening, there are a lot of changes that needs to be done in the process. We are trying to get skilled manpower and are trying to meet these challenges while going forward" C J Venugopal CMD - IPICOL, Department of Home, Science and Technology and Department of IT, Government of Odisha

Bhubaneswar smart city has been a success story as it has been ranked no. 1 in the country.

A lot of initiatives have been taken by the Bhubaneswar Smart city Corporation. ICT is definitely one of the interventions that is there.

Some of these initiatives like traffic management system, keeping the city clean and green are taken keeping the present conditions in mind.

How Odisha can become the destination for investments into ICT? If we compare Odisha with other states, one is the availability of skilled manpower. There is availability of good manpower in the state and there are a number of educational institutions, engineering colleges, R&D institutes, which is a very positive stand for ICT companies to come and set up base here. The attrition rate of the employees is also extremely low, which is what the respective HR departments in most of the companies say. In addition to that, the infrastructure in the state is also very well built and robust, especially Bhubaneswar which is another big advantage for companies to come.

We also have a strong eco-system built up and consistent policies that are good for growth.

And these are some of the reasons for which we are expecting more and more ICT companies to come in and set up base.

ONE SUPPLIER, TWO SUPPLIERS, THREE SUPPLIERS FOUR… FINDING THE RIGHT SECURITY PARTNER can sometimes feel like a never ending children’s game. One for small business, another for mid-sized and yet a third for my large enterprise customers.

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Fortinet is there for you with no need for any games.

For details contact: North: Sanjeev Tyagi, E-mail: styagi@fortinet.com, M: +91 98105 00157 South: Binu Ninan, E-mail: bninan@fortinet.com, M: +91 98400 36767 West, East, Central: Navin Mehra, E-mail: nmehra@fortinet.com, M: +91 98925 60700

FORTINET SECURITY FABRIC A Security Architecture that’s Broad, Integrated and Automated

www.fortinet.com/whyfortinet www.varindia.com February 2019

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HOT BYTES

Tech Mahindra plans to expand digital growth in Bangladesh

Tech Mahindra will fuel digital growth in Bangladesh across government and private sectors. It plans to address the growing business opportunities that have come up with the booming IT market in the country through its innovative next-generation technology solutions and service offerings.

Tech Mahindra currently offers a diverse range of professional services to clients in the Telecom and BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) space in Bangladesh and is also running large-scale operations in the financial inclusion space. As part of its expansion strategy, Tech Mahindra aims to focus on generating new revenue streams through digital transformation projects in the government as well as private sector across various industries with focus on ICT (Information and Communications Technology) and government business.

With a sustained GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth rate of more than 7%, rising per capita income and improved social indicators, Bangladesh has become one of Asia’s most remarkable success stories in recent years.

Kaspersky Lab unveils “Kaspersky United” to empower its partners

Kaspersky Lab has launched a new global partner program “Kaspersky United”. This program enables Kaspersky Lab partners – including resellers, service providers, and system integrators – to focus on selling the Kaspersky Lab services and products that match their own specializations.

They will also receive access to education, sales and marketing tool kits and benefit from a new transparent monetary rewards scheme.

According to a Kaspersky Lab survey, when it comes to cybersecurity, the complexity of IT infrastructure is the factor that’s putting the most pressure on CISOs. Cybersecurity providers may need to develop indepth expertise in certain domains to offer customers specialized IT security solutions and services.

Through the Kaspersky United program, partners can maintain and monetize their specializations across different status levels (Registered, Silver, Gold and Platinum) in one or several domains: by solution (hybrid cloud security, threat management and defense,or fraud prevention), or by services, such as managed service provider, managed detection and response provider, or authorized training center.

OPPO sets up an Electronic Manufacturing Cluster in Greater Noida

OPPO is setting up a Greenfield Electronic Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) in Greater Noida, to manufacture electronics and support accessories locally in the country as well as generate huge employment opportunities in the state. The project is being set up by TEGNA Electronics Private Limited (TEGNA), an SPV of Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA), along with OPPO and a few Indian companies, under the support of the Department of IT & Electronics of the Government of Uttar Pradesh, and an approval on principle by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The EMC will facilitate a common platform for existing electronic manufacturers and exporters to come together and establish an integrated hub for manufacturing electronics and hardware – primarily focused towards smartphones. The EMC will not only bring together strength in volumes of production and offer an attractive scale of operation to buyers, but also incorporate state-of-the-art infrastructural facilities for the stakeholders.

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Sangoma appoints Iris as an authorized VAD for its VoIP solutions

Sangoma Technologies has signed Iris as a technology distributor in India to sell their complete portfolio of globally scalable VoIP and UC solutions.

The company serves customers in over 150 countries across the globe.

Sangoma’s subsidiary companies include Digium, the CCD division of Dialogic Corporation and VoIP Supply LLC. Sangoma offers the most comprehensive range of UC solutions under a single trademark.

Sangoma’s Voice over IP offerings include on-premise and cloudbased phone systems, SIP trunking services, and telephony hardware, which enables businesses to transition to modern, VoIP-based telephony by leveraging their legacy infrastructure and saving money.

Aveek Roy, Regional Sales Director – India, Sangoma, says, “Sangoma is confident that Iris will be able to add immense value to the distribution of Sangoma products through their existing channels and their extensive know-how of the Unified Communications industry in the Indian subcontinent. We are glad to be affiliating with Iris and believe that this will be a win-win partnership for both companies.”

eScan brings in interesting deals for channel partners

eScan has introduced a special incentive program for the channel partners that include various gifts like gold coins, silver coins and gift vouchers to be claimed by the partners. This program has been designed to reward the channel partners for their contribution towards the growth of eScan products. The offer is valid for all the sales made from 1st January to 31st March, 2019.

The specially designed program is valid on the purchase of eScan's products for Small Office & Home segments. This segment includes products like eScan Anti-Virus with Cloud Security, eScan Internet Security Suite, eScan Total Security Suite, etc.

This special offer has been created to encourage partners to participate in the program and get various gifts with a minimum purchase of Rs.5, 000 onwards up to Rs.50, 000. The partners have to register themselves on the Touch Point Network (TPN) Reward program, created by eScan for more benefits to the partners.

Infosys partners with HPE to accelerate enterprise digital transformation

Infosys has announced that it has adopted HPE GreenLake to accelerate clients’ digital transformation. The partnership will help enterprises make smart infrastructure investments, paying for what they consume, while benefiting from the security offered by a trusted managed services provider. Clients will also benefit by having a secure private cloud and the advantages of economics and flexibility that exists in public cloud. Together, this will help enterprises accelerate their Hybrid Cloud transformation providing them increased agility and reduced total cost of ownership.

Narsimha Rao Mannepalli, Executive Vice President & Head, Cloud & Infrastructure Solutions Service, Infosys, says, “Enterprises today are looking at optimizing their Hybrid IT investments and accelerating their digital initiatives. Our partnership with HPE will provide enterprises a compelling value proposition of a consumption-based IT model and the comfort of managed services. As part of the expanded offerings, Infosys will continue to invest in building deep skills and solutions across the Hybrid Cloud to drive significant business outcomes for our clients.”

www.varindia.com February 2019

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HOT BYTES

Nutanix sets up its new regional office in Singapore

Nutanix has officially opened the doors to its new Singapore-based Asia Regional Office, as part of its continuing investment in the region.

Located at Suntec Tower 1 in the heart of the city, the new facility is capable of housing 120 staff to meet the company’s rapidly-growing workforce. Dedicated to providing the most modern workplace environment focused on employee engagement, productivity, creativity and customer experience, the Suntec office will be Nutanix’s flagship facility in the region. The office overlooks the Singapore city skyline from the 31st floor.

The new office is officially opened by Nutanix Global Chief Financial Officer Duston Williams.

The open-floor facility includes an employee café – with free food, a common benefit in all Nutanix offices, refresh zones that include a pool table, air hockey and a library. There is also a dedicated training centre and collaboration lounge where both staff and customers can get hands-on with Nutanix’s latest technologies.

MG Motor joins hands with Adobe to roll out digital strategy

MG Motor India has entered into partnership with Adobe to roll out a unique digital-focused pre-launch marketing strategy in India. MG Motor is kicking off the brand’s customer experience focus in advance of their first product debut planned for early 2019.

Kulmeet Bawa, Managing Director, Adobe South Asia, comments, “Technology has transformed the way customers interact with the world around them, and rapidly evolving the expectations of brands. Digital and the era of experience are at the core of brands looking to thrive, especially in hyper-competitive sectors like the automobile industry. This industry has an array of objectives including appealing to a wide audience, establishing a deeper customer connection, and truly standing out from the pack. We are excited to partner with an iconic brand like MG Motor and look forward to working with them as they enter the Indian market.”

HARMAN Professional Solutions strengthens its distribution partnership with Brightstar Telecommunications

HARMAN Professional Solutions has announced their distribution partnership with Brightstar India to include HARMAN installed solutions for their enterprise portfolio in India.

Brightstar India has an existing relationship with Harman Lifestyle division, and this partnership will enable Brightstar to deal in the complete

India now among top nations in GDPR readiness according to Cisco

Cisco has announced that its 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study has placed India amongst the leading nations globally in their preparedness towards the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

According to the report, organizations worldwide that invested in maturing their data privacy practices are now realizing tangible business benefits from these investments. The study validates the link between good privacy practice and business benefits as respondents report shorter sales delays as well as fewer and less costly data breaches.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which focused on increasing protection for EU residents’ privacy and personal data, became enforceable in May 2018. Organizations worldwide have been working steadily towards getting ready for GDPR. Within Cisco’s 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study, 59 per cent of organizations reported meeting all or most requirements, 29 per cent expect to do so within a year, and 9 per cent will take more than a year. Interestingly, Indian stood sixth globally with 65% of Indian organizations showing higher preparedness towards meeting most or all of the GDPR requirements.

Infor joins hands with ESDS to drive digital transformation

Infor has partnered with ESDS, India's leading Managed Data Center and Cloud Hosting Service provider.

The collaboration will combine Infor’s industry-specific cloud solutions with ESDS’ extensive experience in providing auto-scalable, multidimensional cloud solutions for highly-reliable and scalable IT infrastructure for businesses.

Through this partnership, Infor and ESDS will provide a robust and modern IT infrastructure that delivers state-of-the-art user experience along with an integrated platform for seamless collaboration across existing systems and deep data analytics capabilities to drive informed business decisions.

G.S. Murthy, Chief Executive Officer, Global Business, ESDS, says, “Organizations across industries are in the midst of the digital transformation wave and looking to the cloud for business growth.

They can leverage ESDS cloud to stay ahead in the digital curve, enabling businesses to save costs, ensure enhanced security and drive agility for operations. Together with Infor, we aim to support organizations in their digital transformation journey.”

RP tech India finalizes acquisition of ZNet Technologies

range of professional installed audio and video products for the enterprise business.

Sanjeev Chhabra, Managing Director, Brightstar India, says, “HARMAN is a global leader in end-to-end AV solutions, and we are excited about this partnership. Inclusion of complete range of JBL, AMX, SVSi, BSS, Dbx, AKG, Crown, and Soundcraft will now help our partners to supply a complete audio-video automation solution from Harman which end-customers have been asking for a long time. We will also be the onestop shop for all HARMAN preferred partners in enterprise business.”

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RP tech India has announced the acquisition of Cloud Services Provider ZNet Technologies. With this partnership, RP tech India will now offer ZNet’s cutting-edge Cloud services and solutions to potential SMB and Enterprise customers in India.

Under the terms of the acquisition, RP tech India will take a majority stake in ZNet and will invest in enhancing R&D capabilities and upskilling technical manpower to support latest technologies like Cloud, IoT, AI, etc. ZNet will continue to operate as an independent legal entity and various existing brands of ZNet will continue to operate as normal.

Kapal Pansari, Director, RP tech India, says, “This partnership is a win-win for both RP tech India and ZNet. RP tech India’s vast IT distribution network and financial backing, supplemented with ZNet’s Technical expertise at the back-end will help propel this partnership to become the leading distributor of end-to-end IT infrastructure, including new- age cloud services in the next 24 to 36 months.”

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www.arraynetworks.com | sales@arraynetworks.com www.varindia.com February 2019

15

ON THE RAMP

Toshiba launches 16TB MG08 series HDDs

Toshiba has announced MG08 Series with the capacity of 16TB Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) HDD. MG08 16TB drives are compatible with the widest range of applications and operating systems, and adapted to mixed random and sequential read-and- write workloads in both cloud and traditional data center environments. It has 33% more capacity than today’s widely adopted 12TB drives, and 14% more capacity than prior 14TB models.

The MG08 Series is Toshiba’s second-generation helium-sealed HDD family, and eighth-generation Enterprise Capacity HDD family. Toshiba has delivered its industry-leading 16TB capacity and improved power efficiency by utilizing the 9-disk helium design, introduced last year in 14TB models, and its own advanced precision laser welding process to ensure the helium remains sealed inside the drive case.

Takayoshi Tokushima, Senior Director of Storage Products Marketing Group, Toshiba Electronic Components Taiwan Corporation, says, “Toshiba’s new 16TB MG08 Series delivers new levels of storage capacity and density while delivering improved power efficiency for our cloud-scale and storage solutions customers. Only high-density HDD technology can achieve our customers’ critical TCO objectives at a cost of pennies per GB.”

Check Point announces Maestro hyperscale network security solution

Check Point Software Technologies has introduced Check Point Maestro, a truly hyperscale network security solution. Check Point Maestro is a revolutionary new architecture that enables businesses of any size to enjoy the power of flexible cloud-level security platforms, and to seamlessly expand their existing security gateways to hyperscale capacity.

With Check Point Maestro, organizations can easily scale up their existing Check Point security gateways on demand, in the same way as spinning up new servers and compute resources in public clouds. Maestro enables a single gateway to expand to the capacity and performance of 52 gateways in minutes, giving companies elastic flexibility and enabling massive Terabit/second firewall throughput. This almost limitless scalability enables organizations to support 5G networks’ high data rates and ultra-low latency, and secure the largest, most resource-hungry environments, setting new standards in hyperscale network security.

Avaya launches location reporting solution for emergency response

Avaya has announced unprecedented, life-saving device location reporting capabilities that are now available as part of Avaya communications solutions for emergency response management, providing real-time information that can help make the difference in life or death situations.

Avaya communications solutions are the first to provide location discovery for devices, and place that data into a national Next Generation 911 (NG911) repository, making that information readily available to firstresponders, helping enable them to more accurately locate the position of the caller’s device as well as access additional critical information when calls are made from an Avaya communications system. This unique integration allows Avaya solutions to directly provide public-safety answering points (PSAP) with accurate, real-time location, floor-plans and other critical information that could help save lives.

Across the country, 911 dispatchers in more than 6,100 emergency contact centers or PSAPs are working with underlying technology that was created in the landline era and optimized for people calling 911 from traditional landlines, thus creating a significant communication gap for today’s emergency response personnel.

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Veeam unfolds its cloud data management capabilities

Veeam Software has announced general availability for new cloud data management capabilities as part of Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 4 as well as the upcoming Veeam Availability for AWS and Veeam Availability Console v3. The new major capabilities deliver cost-effective data retention, easy cloud migration and data mobility, cloud-native backup and protection for Amazon Web Services (AWS), portable cloud-ready licensing, increased security and data governance, and solutions to make it easier than ever for service providers to deliver Veeam-powered services to market.

IT leaders are increasingly concerned about cloud workloads in their multi-cloud environments. As 58 per cent state that the migration of data is challenging, 82 per cent are worried about application uptime and 61 per cent are not confident about their cloud workload backup and recovery. Veeam’s new capabilities address these concerns and challenges for enterprise IT leaders.

HID Global introduces HID Origo Cloud platform for connected workplace

HID Global has announced the availability of its HID Origo cloud platform that opens a brand-new world of opportunities for partners to create more seamless and intuitive workplace experiences that are built on HID’s proven access control infrastructure. The platform combines HID’s technologies for mobile IDs (and location services in the future) with its expansive access control architecture to bring together physical security and a wide range of building applications, services and IoT use-cases via a unified cloud experience.

The new platform provides an app-based innovation model that delivers a comprehensive suite of integration, enablement, developer tools and services geared towards simplifying how partners and a growing community of new developers and resellers bring access control solutions to market. Rather than requiring that entire solutions be developed and enabled one customer or site at a time, HID Origo will make it possible to develop new applications and integrated solutions for HID’s complete installed base of millions of access control devices and system – all at once.

Denave introduces DenTrack Sales Process Automation Tool

Denave has unveiled its proprietary Sales Process Automation tool for trade marketing activities – DenTrack. Designed primarily to address business challenges encountered while planning and executing trade promotional activities, DenTrack is an end-to-end integrated solution offering complete visibility to all stakeholders on Sales, Funds, Coverage and Brand advocacy of channel ecosystem.

DenTrack, available in both web and mobile interfaces, provides real-time market and competition stand that help define marketing strategy via 360-degree Information Capture Mechanism and in-depth analysis. It is a holistic Workforce Process Automation tool fully integrated with relevant HR systems facilitating real-time Field force tracking driving last-mile visibility of trade marketing activities and its impact on Sales.

Prashant Rohatgi, Global Head – Technology, Denave, says, “DenTrack is a robust Sales Process Automation tool facilitating real-time tracking and managing on-ground team performances while enabling effective influencer management, smart budget management and catering central information centre underlining Business Intelligence to help accelerate RoI.”

www.varindia.com

December 2018

9

ON THE RAMP

UiPath launches UiPath Connect! online platform to unite RPA professionals

UiPath has unveiled UiPath Connect! The collaborative, peoplecentric online platform serves as a destination for anyone in the UiPath community to connect with peers, find inspiration, share expertise, ask questions and get advice in a real-time, “real talk” social setting. Designed to create a unified social experience for its ever-growing community, UiPath Connect! offers yet another way for individual users, business, technology and community partners to exercise their curiosity and passion in the Automation-First era.

Ana Cinca, Vice President of Enabling Technologies, UiPath, says, “Just like our corporate culture, we believe true disruptive innovation is best fostered through openness and exchange. UiPath Connect! deepens our commitment to building a social community that powers and progresses not only our product roadmap but the RPA industry as a whole – and helps organizations everywhere put Automation First. All organizations benefit from RPA knowledge-sharing to accelerate the pace of automation and productivity in the workplace.”

Ixia introduces new software for advanced, centralized management of visibility solutions

Keysight Technologies has announced that Ixia, a Keysight business, has launched a new software solution for robust, centralized management of a wide range of wired, wireless, and/or virtual visibility solutions. The new Ixia Fabric Controller (IFC) Centralized Manager supports network packet brokers, taps, bypass switches, and cloud visibility solutions via a single graphical user interface (GUI).

Recep Ozdag, Vice President of product management for Keysight’s Ixia Solutions Group, states, “Serious gaps in device management can lead to performance issues, visibility blind spots and security vulnerabilities.

Professionals responsible for managing enterprise networks need a resource that can provide a comprehensive view of their monitoring devices at any time, despite location. Ixia’s new IFC Centralized Manager delivers the centralized network platform needed to address those gaps, improve performance and reduce blind spots.”

IFC Centralized Manager eases configuration and monitoring of taps, virtual taps, data monitoring switches, and network packet brokers, including third-party devices, through a single pane of glass.

HP unveils premium Spectre series - Spectre Folio and Spectre x360

HP has unveiled the new premium Spectre range that sets the bold standard for premium PC innovation. With this range comprising the HP Spectre Folio and HP Spectre x360, HP has reinvented every aspect of the PC from the material used to build it, to the experiences it can deliver. The result is the transformative form factor designed for true mobility and equipped to easily adapt to everyday use cases.

The HP Spectre Folio provides a PC experience unlike any other. As the world’s first leather convertible PC, HP has embraced the art of “manucrafturing”, where it combines meticulously designed hardware with handcrafted leather and accented stitching.

The HP Spectre x360 is designed for an on-the-go lifestyle, while offering superior design, leading security and enhanced performance. The model features a cut design that can only be achieved by CNC machining.

The attention to craftsmanship and detail is visible in the functional design, which enables four distinct positions: Laptop, Tent, Reverse and Tablet.

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Acer introduces two sleek Chromebases – 24V2 and 24I2 for Meetings

Acer has debuted two sleek and elegantly designed Chromebases – the Acer Chromebase for Meetings 24V2 for effortless video conferencing with Google Hangouts Meet, and the Acer Chromebase 24I2, an all-in-one Chrome device designed to fill multiple roles, either as an individual desktop working device, or as an in-store kiosk.

The Acer Chromebase for Meetings 24V2 is a dedicated all-inone touchscreen video conferencing system designed for individuals and small- to mediumsized spaces, such as phone booths, huddle spaces and desktops. It helps businesses remotely collaborate and engage with colleagues and customers as though they were in the same room.

The Acer Chromebase 24I2, powered by Chrome OS, provides a streamlined experience filling multiple roles in modern small and medium business. With an optional touch display, it’s ideal as an individual desktop working device, or as a shared workstation.

Fortinet introduces FortiGate next-generation firewalls

Fortinet has announced its new high-performance FortiGate NextGeneration Firewalls (NGFWs), comprised of FortiGate 3600E, FortiGate 3400E, FortiGate 600E and FortiGate 400E Series, enabling organizations to implement Intent-based Segmentation into their security architecture.

The combination of business growth, workloads migrating to multiple clouds and increasing cyber-attacks makes it difficult for organizations to maintain a robust security architecture that effectively implements consistent security policy across all network environments. Having flat networks with a single enforcement point further compounds this problem by making it easier for cybercriminals to get inside the network.

Once inside, they become part of the trusted zone, allowing them to quickly spread threats laterally. It’s extremely hard to detect and contain these cybercriminals as they move deeper into the network, resulting in cascading risks and exfilteration of valuable data.

Fortinet is making it easier for organizations to adopt Intent-based Segmentation with the introduction of its new high-performance FortiGate NGFWs, which include FortiGate 3600E, FortiGate 3400E, FortiGate 600E and FortiGate 400E Series.

Microsoft unveils Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 in India

Microsoft has announced the availability of Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 in India via e-commerce platforms (Amazon and Flipkart) and select retail stores of Croma, Reliance, Vijay Sales, and other retailers. The devices will be available for commercial/enterprise customers through authorized resellers.

The next generation of Surface devices will deliver incredible experiences, and enhanced productivity for individuals on-the-go. With the power of Surface, Windows and Office, connected through the cloud, users are empowered to be more creative with their choice of Surface devices.

Priyadarshi Mohapatra, Country General Manager – Consumer & Devices, Microsoft India, says, “The Surface experience is one that supports users to build their vision and dreams. The beautiful and stylish hardware is an instrument that strings together our best solutions to help unleash users’ creativity and sharpen their focus on honing their craft. For users seeking to make new breakthroughs in 2019, Surface will be a perfect companion to bring their innovative ideas and thinking to life.”

www.varindia.com February 2019

19

VOICE-N-DATA

Rakuten chooses VIAVI to certify endto-end cloud-native mobile network

VIAVI Solutions has announced that Rakuten Inc. has selected the VIAVI TM500 system to support rapid deployment of a nationwide, endto-end cloud-native mobile network.

Rakuten offers e-commerce, fintech, and digital content and communications services to over one billion members worldwide.

The company received approval for its fourth- generation mobile communications system (4G) special base station deployment plan, and is targeting October 2019 to launch the new service. The network deployment plan is driven by a cloud-based architecture, from the RAN to the core, an industry-leading level of automation and collaboration with the top vendors in the mobile ecosystem.

Rakuten will use TM500 for user equipment (UE) simulation as part of a state-of-the-art operator lab, designed to simulate and stress the network from end to end. As consumers and regulators increasingly demand highly resilient and high-quality network performance, the lab’s mission is to provide all stakeholders with a high degree of confidence in the quality of service and reliability of the live network for both existing and future services.

Airtel, along with its QR scan makes switching to the new TV pricing easy

Airtel Digital TV has announced the a-la-carte pricing of the channels on its website, as per the TRAI regulations. With the new TRAI pricing regime for TV coming into effect starting February 1, 2019, TV viewers can now opt to pay only for the channels they want to watch.

This will enable customers to easily switch their plans on Airtel website or the My Airtel App or by calling the customer care team.

With an aim to make this transition even more convenient and seamless for its customers, Airtel is now enabling them to opt for their favourite channels with just a QR code scan on their television screen.

Customers can make their own plans or select from a range of recommended plans, as per the new TRAI guidelines on channel number 998 on Airtel digital TV. Yes, it is as easy as viewing all channels and their prices, selecting them and finally just scanning a QR code to activate their selection.

Ericsson announces new segments and solutions for cellular IoT

Ericsson has unveiled the next step in the evolution of cellular IoT and launched new solutions that will enable service providers to address a larger part of the IoT market with diverse use-cases across verticals, including automotive, manufacturing, and utilities.

Ericsson outlines cellular IoT evolution in four market segments: Massive IoT, Broadband IoT, Critical IoT, and Industrial Automation IoT. Two of these segments are new – Broadband IoT and Industrial Automation IoT. Broadband IoT adopts mobile broadband capabilities for IoT and supports higher data rates and lower latencies than Massive IoT. Industrial Automation IoT will enable advanced industrial automation applications with extremely demanding connectivity requirements.

In line with its cellular IoT vision, Ericsson is launching enhanced functionalities for Massive IoT and new solutions for Broadband IoT. One example of Massive IoT enhancement is the NB-IoT Extended Cell Range 100km, which stretches the standards-based limit from around 40km to 100km through software updates without changes to existing NB-IoT devices.

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BT receives domestic telecom licences from China Ministry of Industry & IT

BT has announced becoming the first international telecommunications company to receive nationwide licences from the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The two “value-added licences”, China nationwide Domestic IPVPN licence and China nationwide Internet Service Provider (ISP) licence, will enable BT China Communications Limited to c o n t r a c t directly with its customers in the country and bill them in the local currency.

The value-added licences represent a major step for BT in China where many of its multinational customers require secure and reliable connectivity to expand within the country.

Bas Burger, CEO of Global Services, BT, says, “We are delighted with this major benefit for our customers. Thanks to cooperation between the governments of the PRC and the UK, we are now able to offer a nationwide service in China that can be scaled up to match the ambitions and needs of our customers.”

Spectra enhances its broadband products for growing businesses

Spectra has announced the launch of new broadband products for growing businesses. Spectra has raised the bar in the segment with 1 Gbps packages across the most value- intensive packages. Spectra is the only ISP in the country with 100% fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network.

Udit Mehrotra, CEO, Spectra, says, “At Spectra, we believe that broadband truly is the gateway to the digital transformation our country needs today, and the biggest shift is required at the foundation of our economy: growing businesses. Our business solutions are geared towards enabling every small business by providing the digital backbone they need.”

With Spectra, growing businesses can now choose from the two solutions - broadband and broadband with a static IP, with speeds options ranging from 200 Mbps to up to 1 Gbps. Both solutions are available in monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly subscriptions and with exponential benefits on longer-term subscriptions such as double data volume and even free subscription for 3 months.

Verizon receives DoT’s Virtual Network Operator Licence

Verizon India has been awarded a Unified Licence for Virtual Network Operator (VNO) Internet Service Provider (ISP) by the country’s Department of Telecommunications. The VNO licence allows Verizon to resell internet services from other telecommunication service providers in India. This, in turn, will enable Verizon’s enterprise customers to take advantage of the company’s entire suite of Managed Network Services – including Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Virtual Network Service (VNS) bundles – with internet connectivity directly sourced from local providers.

Robert Le Busque, Managing Director of Verizon’s Australia, New Zealand and India, says, “We are grateful to the Department of Telecommunications for the licence which will allow our customers to speed up their network deployments by allowing us to offer a full end-to-end managed service experience which includes internet connectivity. A robust virtual network is the backbone of any business transformation and the proliferation of virtual networks will further help India achieve its goal of a Digital India by enhancing connectivity across the country.”

www.varindia.com February 2019

21

CHANNEL BUZZ

NEC hosts “NEC Partner Conference 2019” for UC across India

NEC Technologies India has organized “NEC Partner Conference 2019” across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore. With an aim to showcase NEC’s latest Unified Communication business activities, the event attracted more than 195 partners and 285 participants from India.

The event in each city was focused on NEC’s latest UC business activities ranging from small and medium up to the enterprise business sector. During the event, partners had the opportunity to see live demonstrations of various UC applications in order to have a better understanding of the product and solution. The event also marked the introduction of new UC solutions that are specifically packaged for the ease of partners to sell to the market. The solution package includes VAM (Video, Audio and Mobility) Solution, Call Center Solution for small, medium-sized business and enterprise sector in India.

Pablo Narata, Senior Manager, UC Division, NEC Corporation, said, “NEC’s UC solution offers industry specific features to meet the demands of businesses. Our SL2100 and SV9000 series have been well received in the Indian market in recent years and with our new solution packages, we are determined than ever to provide innovative solutions to the vertical market segments”.

Sachin Watkar, Business Unit Head of PNS Business, NEC Technologies India Private Limited, commented, “NEC has been seeing good growth in UC products sales in the Indian market and we attribute this success mainly to the strong support of our partners in our awardwinning quality products and solutions. Through this event, we are delivering the latest updates to our partners in order for them to have a better understanding of NEC business and products.”

TechnoBind organizes Partner Meet in Mumbai & New Delhi

TechnoBind has conducted 2-city partner's meet in Mumbai and New Delhi. Attended by over 70+ channel partners, the event was targeted to educate and help partners capitalize on future opportunities in the enterprise security space.

Having been a distributor for Gemalto's range of solutions for three years, TechnoBind has delivered exponential growth in the Indian market.

With major customer wins in the BFSI, Telecom and Government sector, the company is poised to help partners leverage the market opportunities.

Harikrishna Prabhu, Director, TechnoBind, says, "Data is the new oil and securing/protecting it is the need of the hour. Even, the Indian government has taken the initiative by introducing Personal Data Protection (PDP) bill. The bill is expected to come into existence in June and will be applied to both government and private entities. It's the most prominent step towards protecting personal data. We, at TechnoBind, encourage this step and emphasize on adapting ethical practices and finding fitting ways to use data without getting it compromised. Having said, we keep conducting partner events/conferences/webinars to educate partners and make them future-ready."

With Gemalto, SafeNet Identity and Data Protection solutions for enterprise security, organizations can take a data-centric approach to their security posture, all the while controlling access to the infrastructure and applications they rely upon. Not only can they create trust and authenticate their transactions, but they can ensure that sensitive data is protected and controlled – both on-premises and in public and private clouds. In addition to a heightened level of protection, enterprises are also able to improve business efficiencies and scale to the identity and data protection needs of tomorrow.

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Unistal celebrates its silver jubilee year by unveiling two new solutions

Unistal Systems has celebrated 25 glorious years of serving excellence. The company shared its success stories and recognized the contribution of mentors, employees, partners, vendors, friends and family for their continuous support. The event was graced by the presence of well-known dignitaries from top corporates, partners, OEM heads and media houses.

Alok Gupta, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Unistal Systems Pvt Ltd, said, “It is always special to see what you have created turning into a milestone. We feel that completing our 25th year calls for something special. We are taking this occasion as an opportunity to thank all the stakeholders, including our mentors, partners, friends, family, ex-employees and present staff who have helped us in successfully steering through the testing times and achieving this milestone.”

The company also launched two new products, in data security vertical, Protegent Enterprise Security Solution, a next level security solution developed to protect data and assets of SMEs and large enterprises. In oil & gas vertical, SmartGasNet Solution is a complete solution for city gas distribution network.

Vertiv showcases critical solutions to its partner network and customers

Vertiv has launched “Vertiv Xpress – Partner Drive” to showcase its complete stack of critical infrastructure solutions to its partner network and customers in India. Kicked off in Delhi on 21st January, 2019, the multi-city initiative will engage partners through unique programmes, and work on collectively growing the partner’s business in a fast and evolving digital landscape.

Vertiv aims to further enhance its engagement in the Indian market and build a strong channel network across the country. The Vertiv Xpress, a 52-foot trailer, will showcase a range of infrastructure solutions and give a view of the company’s vision to stakeholders. To build a better understanding of Vertiv products, training sessions will be offered for partners to create awareness around energy efficiency and to showcase the benefits of energy- efficient solutions. The launch will start in Delhi and cover more than 20 cities over the next ten months.

Through this year’s “warrior scheme”, partners can earn incentives by generating leads.

Sunil Khanna, President & Managing Director, Vertiv India, said, “India is a key region for Vertiv and through this travelling Xpress we’re able to work closely with our partners and customers to help them get ahead in the market. Evolving with trends around data centers, we plan to invest more in terms of product innovation as well as research and development in the near future. With the Vertiv Xpress initiative, we will showcase our energy-efficient solutions that will change the way businesses address their efficiency needs.”

The first Vertiv Xpress included over 60 events with a footfall of over 7,500 personnel covering over 15,000 kilometres across the country, making it one of the most successful events for Vertiv in India.

FACE TO FACE

TeamViewer aims for 100–150% growth in India How India is very important for you?

If you see by any skill, India is the fastestgrowing digital country in the world. The way how we have adopted digital technology and digital transformation is far better than what we have seen in other countries. So, TeamViewer's strategy has been very clear. There are three important pillars which we look at when we look at a country. One is the technology adoption, second is the business acceptance and the business itself and third is society, how is the societal impact. When we talk of technology, India would be in top ten countries in the world for adoption of new technologies. The various initiatives which India has taken in the past decade which is far ahead of a lot of western countries, including smart banking and smart citizen services. So, there is a whole lot of technology adoptions available. We are by far one of the fastest-growing cloud countries in the world. So, one is technology, second is business.

There is a lot of acceptance towards digital transformation in large businesses. Maybe in the last three years we have seen the highest number of start-ups coming into a variety of segments and industries so business is flourishing. There is a forecasted GDP growth, which is well beyond a lot of countries in the world. Third is society. So, there are initiatives like Digital India, Smart City, Skill India which are empowering the citizen and there is a push which is there from the society and government, to make this all a reality. Our sweet spot is somewhere in-between these three.

We support all kinds of businesses. We are trying to bring the best-of-breed of technology, which is secure and forward looking and we can support a lot of society initiatives using TeamViewer.

How strong you are in India?

We started in India very recently. We already have a very good ecosystem that has used TeamViewer and appreciates the features and functionality. We are building on that, educating people about new solutions, innovation and technology. We are also building our own ecosystem when it comes to resellers and partners. In India when I look at the resellers segment, we already have 100+ signed resellers across India and just to give you a prospective we have 70+ resellers who have done more than two deals in the last four months or so, which means that partners are understanding the solution and they are able to sell it. Also, customers are understanding the value of TeamViewer’s software and packages.

Which are the verticals that have adopted your solution?

TeamViewer is a very horizontal application and it's a connectivity tool. So we have customers in all shapes and sizes. We have customers who are

Launched in 2005, TeamViewer empowers users to connect anything, anywhere, anytime. It focuses on-based technologies to enable online remote support and collaboration globally. Its solutions offer secure remote access, support, control and collaboration capabilities for online endpoints of any kind. In a chat with VARINDIA, Krunal Patel, Sales Head, India and South Asia, TeamViewer, discusses about the importance of the Indian market, its positioning, channel strategy, R&D, etc into retail with showrooms and with dealership; we have customers who are enterprise and also customers who are in NGOs and education space for using this as a teaching aid. As we are a horizontal solution, we operate in all the industries. Currently, we have customers in ITeS, FMCG, banking, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and higher education research industries. Majority of the industry uses this as a remote support and remote access tool.

What is the R&D support of the team viewer in India?

TeamViewer is developed, designed and enhanced in Germany. Our entire development centre is right now in Germany. When we came to India, we were trying to solve two major problems – one was to be closer to our customers and the second was to support them well. So, the first thing what we did, unlike only opening a sales office, we opened a customer support office also. We set up a customer support call centre here; we opened a local toll-free number, which will become operational from this month. The problem it solved is that earlier we were supporting customers from Australia and Germany, now we have local support unlike very few cloud service providers or cloud software service providers. We still believe in talking to people and that's why we are having a call centre, a toll-free number, and people can call us. The first objective is we want to be closer to our customers. In our GTM, we will have people regionally available, who can talk to customers, make them understand our product, try it for some time, our partner can talk to them, there are partners who will be educated on TeamViewer solution and the second is customer support, so that we are available full time when customers want us. Why customer support is important, because on an average maximum use of TeamViewer happens when there is a crisis situation, when something fails because generally you don't remote connect when everything is okay. So, we are there to support and handhold a customer when they need it the most.

How do you approach to market – channel or direct?

So globally we have multiple GTMs. We have direct GTM and indirect GTM. Indirect GTM basically is the distributor-reseller model, where we have appointed a distributor right now and now we are appointing resellers. It will be a balance of online and offline sales. Currently, we have an online webstore where we sell direct.

Gradually, we believe offline GTM would also be equally important. There are multiple GTM, there is direct GTM which is basically selling direct to the customer and there is indirect GTM. We would constantly work to balance and would be transparent in both the GTMs. We will continue to work with resellers, partners and customers to ensure that they can get the best solution.

How do you integrate distribution network like distributor, biller, etc?

So currently we have Ingram Micro, which has signed us as our first distributor and we have three levels of partnership – Silver, Gold and Platinum. Silver and Gold partnership works with distributor and platinum partners work directly with TeamViewer. There are very few Platinum partners at this point of time and we are looking at our current Platinum partner Software one and Softline. We may not have more than five Platinum partners because we want to grow the reseller ecosystem. We will support and go out of the way to support our Silver and Gold partners.

What kind of revenue you are earning in India and how do you want to scale it up?

So far, we have not reported Indian revenues in a separate manner, but from the growth stand, we are at least looking at 100–150% of the growth, depending on what investments we are putting in the business. n

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EVENT

ISODA TS9 sets the business stage ready for Indian and Qatari IT companies Qatar Tourism and the Indian Embassy for helping ISODA organize the event in Doha.

“ISODA is a member orientated institution where every members are individual business owners. There are 200 plus business owners who have come and formed this association called ISODA. Every year they meet at some place outside India. But every time this event took place in South-Asian countries; this is for the first time ISODA Tech Summit has come to middle-east and we thank Qatar tourism and Indian Embassy here for facilitating this,” he said.

DR R SEETHARAMAN CEO, Doha Bank The 9th edition of ISODA (TS9) Summit took place at Hotel Ritz Carlton, Doha, which was joined by around 120 plus delegates. This year, ISODA has joined hands with Indian Business Promotion Council (IBPC) and Indian Embassy – Doha. IBPC is a flagship forum in Doha and it helps in connecting easily with the world of business and professionals in Qatar.

The Summit got underway on 31st January, with a Business Networking dinner supported

by Indian Embassy – Doha. It provided a platform for ISodians to network with Qatari IT companies and Indian IT companies in Doha.

While inaugurating the Networking session, ISODA Chairman, N K Mehta introduced ISODA to everyone while thanking

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February 2019 www.varindia.com

HE P. Kumaran, Ambassador of India to the State of Qatar, who inaugurated the session said, “It is a pleasure to meet you all today. As I came to know about this, I was very excited to know that ISODA is looking at Qatar as its next destination for their annual conference TS9. Today Qatar National Tourism Council, earlier called Qatar Tourism Authority has prioritized India as a major market for promotion of Qatari tourism.

They have recently unveiled their strategy and some interesting things came out. Last year the increase of Indian tourists coming to Qatar was 18%; it’s quite sizable considering that we have a 700,000 Indian diaspora here. The base level of tourism from India, because of family members, relatives, friends etc visiting the Indian community here, is quite high.”

Dr R Seetharaman – CEO, Doha Bank, who was the keynote speaker at the session said, “It is my pleasured privilege to be an intricate part of this interesting and exciting session. In the changing phase of the world, it is important for us to recognize that global sustainability is at stake and digitization can play a very big role and that is what we should

HE P. KUMARAN Ambassador of India to the State of Qatar all aim at. A great amount of transformation is taking place in the world, which is eventually leading companies to change their business strategies.”

ISODA TS9 was driven by workshops which focused on providing insights to reflect and help in achieving business transformation process. It also provided the opportunity for ISODA members to network with 12+ Qatari IT companies and 30+ Indian IT companies in Doha.

The ISODA Awards for Business Excellence were also announced during the event. Software partners who were rated the best in terms of business performance, business practices and innovations during Financial Year 2017-18 were awarded. The Jury constituted of Devesh Aggarwal of

Compusoft Advisors, Kavita Singhal of Kamtron Systems, Nandini Sharma of Comnet Resources and Hiren Shah of Dynamic Computer Services.

The Jury members independently rated every question in the nomination form and consolidated the marks. Post collation the top ranker was awarded the Business Excellence Award. Besides the Business Excellence Award, the jury had identified 4 categories in which the nominations were distributed based on individual nominations competencies/ projects mentioned. The top of each category

was also awarded.

The ISODA Business Excellence award was given to Secure Network Solutions India; Icons Infocom was awarded the ISODA Best Digital Transformation Partner; Beehive Software Services as the ISODA Best Software Solution Provider; Shivami Cloud Services as the ISODA Best IT Services Partner and Dev Information Technology as the ISODA Best Innovations Partner.

P. Kumaran and Dr R Seetharaman gave away the awards to the five channel companies. n

WINNERS SPEAK NK Mehta from SNS India commented, “SNS is into 19th Year of protecting our customers data assets against cyber-attacks. While other companies also do security, we only do security. This sharp focus makes us the preferred security partner of customers. We are a CRISIL SME-1 rated, ISO 27001 Certified company with 8 branches in India. We keep upgrading our skills and take pride in providing best technical support services to our customers. SNS strives to become No 1 Data Security Company of India.”

Haresh Awatramani from Beehive Software Solutions said, “Beehive with its established footprint in the space of Human solution helping companies to automate HR functions and manage complete lifecycle of an employee. Continuation to our growth initiatives in the coming year Beehive platform with its talent matrix will help companies to analyze the talent, empower and engage with employees and take data driven decision for employee engagement, talent retention, competency assessment, goals v/s performance monitoring, compensation planning, succession planning etc with its AI based matrix reporting platform.”

Manish Goenka from Icons Infocom said, “As we all are seeing the Indian Healthcare Industry growing with leaps and bound with many Indian biggies are consolidating, new JVs are formed in the Healthcare we personally feel the Industry will have a huge IT demand, future of technology in Healthcare especially AI, ML and Speech Recognition will have huge expectance in the Healthcare. Also our customized Indianized Speech Recognition is well accepted by the Clinicians across India. ICONS currently operated from 13 locations wants to further expand in 2 tier cities and our AIM is to expand to SAARC countries. We are closely working with many International Hospitals who are looking to enter Indian sub-continents.”

Punit Thakkar from Shivaami Cloud Services said,“Team Shivaami appreciates the ISODA community and the Judges for entrusting us with Prestigious ISODA award for IT Services Partner of the year 2019 at TS9. The purpose of Shivaami is to make positive change in the lives of people we connect, by providing solutions & services which brings profits & happiness.

Being a Premiere Partner of Google, (Top in terms of Number of Clients served) Shivaami has succeeded in providing the cloud services to a variety of SMB clients across India, numbering 9000+ till date. We, at Shivaami, are fully committed to fulfill the purpose for development of our clients and our team members. Shivaami believes in 10 X growth with the adoption of Women Empowerment as a focused area for the growth of the society.”

Pranav Pandya from Dev Information Technology said, ““Dev Information Technology Ltd. believes in making Digital Transformation a practical reality for its clients spread worldwide. Right from advisory to execution backed by expert applications and infrastructure management; we optimize our client’s IT into a strategic asset. We empower businesses globally with our tightly integrated end-to-end IT services and innovation to accelerate our client’s digital transformation journey. Becoming the best End-to-End IT Services Provider is a never-ending pursuit for us.”

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FACE TO FACE

â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is a great opportunity for Microsoft to work with manufacturers and enable end-usersâ&#x20AC;?

In a chat with VARINDIA, Sam Gillman, Contractor to Microsoft Ltd, OEM Lenovo Server Lead, AP & EMEA, discusses about the hyperconverged solutions of Microsoft,investment in it, R&D spend, etc

Kindly, brief us about the hyperconverged solutions from Microsoft?

In the software-defined space, Microsoft and many others have begun to simplify the solutions. So Microsoft solutions based on the Windows server 2019 licensing has the functionality within the licence. So there are no additional costs here. The functionality, volume replication, data deduplication are all within the licence. So we are working as an ecosystem with partners to provide a system like Lenovo-certified system, and we use WSST, Windows Server Softwaredefined certification to ensure that the hardware manufacturers are certified to provide that level of service and end-users have a solution which works for them.

Hyperconverged is a game-changer for most people. It will take time for the market to fully understand and appreciate the benefits.

When we are talking about a solution on industry standard service with internal discs, networking and a Windows server licence, we are looking at 20% typically of the cost of most of the solutions and multiple times of the performance. So I think it is a real gamechanger for end-users in terms of making sure that they manage their budget and businesses. But for Microsoft it is a great way of driving the hybrid cloud story.

This is a great opportunity for Microsoft to work with manufacturers and to enable end-users to have a solution that helps them to move forward.

How Microsoft is looking towards investing in hyperconverged environment?

Over the last few years, we have seen Microsoft to be focused and have helped to grow the business significantly. This is a great success and we will see even more success moving forward on the cloud business. There are similarities within the hyperconverged business.

Microsoft over the last few years with Windows 2016 licensing added a number of pieces of features and functionality into the licence and that is being developed in 2019 licensing. We will see huge development and growth as Microsoft looks to support that hybrid cloud infrastructure.

What kind of investment you have done in R&D for this particular segment?

A huge amount has been spent on R&D over the last few years.

Billions of dollars are spent to ensure that Windows server licensing has enabled this hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) capabilities.

What we are now doing is working with alliance partners like Lenovo and some of the other hardware manufacturers to ensure that we can bring that WSST platform. So we are working in partnership with our ecosystem to ensure we can bring solutions to the market that are validated and users have confidence that these solutions will work, support and drive their business profitability.

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"IT WILL TAKE TIME FOR THE MARKET TO FULLY UNDERSTAND AND APPRECIATE THE BENEFITS. WHEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A SOLUTION ON INDUSTRY STANDARD SERVICE WITH INTERNAL DISCS, NETWORKING AND A WINDOWS SERVER LICENCE, WE ARE LOOKING AT 20% TYPICALLY OF THE COST OF MOST OF THE SOLUTIONS AND MULTIPLE TIMES OF THE PERFORMANCE"

Sam Gillman Contractor to Microsoft Ltd, OEM Lenovo Server Lead, AP & EMEA

Who are the other players in this segment? What percentage is Microsoft aiming for the next year?

There are a number of different players like Nutanix, VMware, etc.

In a number of countries worldwide, both have taken a reasonable market share and there has been a strong focus from them. However, most people do not know that Microsoft with its HCI solutions hasalready got many thousands of clusters worldwide that are working. It has always beena marketing-based approach around HCI. In the coming months, you will see much more proactive messaging towards end-users both from Microsoft and also from partners such as Lenovo. So you are seeing the Microsoft and HCI proposition with Windows Server 2019 begin to drive into the market. We will look to work with our ecosystem partners and will look to drive that message and support it so that the resellers and end-users can understand the message and leverage it. n

FACE TO FACE

Key advantage of HCI based on Microsoft platform is the modular scale of flexibility A 24-YEAR SERVICE PROVIDER, ACUUTECH IS SPECIALIZED IN DELIVERING TURNKEY AND ADVANCED SOLUTIONS BUILT ON MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY. THE COMPANY PROVIDES ADVANCED SOLUTIONS TO ITS CUSTOMERS SO THAT THEY CAN FOCUS ON BUSINESSES. IT BUILDS SERVICES – ON-PREMISE, HYBRID AND CLOUD. IN A CHAT WITH VARINDIA, PHILIP MOSS, GROUP CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, ACUUTECH, AND BHAVESH MEHTA, GROUP CTO, ACUUTECH, DISCUSS ABOUT THEIR LATEST PRODUCT ACUUTECH MESH, HYPERCONVERGED PLATFORM, ENTERPRISES ADOPTING HCI, MARKET SIZE, ETC

PHILIP MOSS Group Chief Product Officer, Acuutech

Acuutech Mesh The service provider, Acuutech has come out with a new hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution which is based on Microsoft platform. It addresses on-premise, hybrid and public cloud interface.

“We have basically developed an HCI solution based on Microsoft platform that is quite well rounded. It addresses on-premise, hybrid and public cloud interface all in a single frame of glass, and the product is called Accutech Mesh,” says Bhavesh Mehta, Group CTO, Acuutech.

Further explaining about the product, Philip Moss, Group Chief Product Officer, Acuutech, highlights, “We have various solutions built on Microsoft technology. Our prime solution is built on Microsoft latest generation hyperconverged platform on server 2019 which uses storage space direct with software-defined networking to deliver turnkey, integrates the appliances that scale from small SMEs to large enterprises.

These solutions increase scale and performance unparallel to the industry, and the price point is significantly low.”

Hyperconverged platform Unlike traditional market which includes storage, networking and compute, hyperconverged combines hardware, storage, networking and virtualization into a single platform, and to manage these it also has software. The most important aspect is it

reduces the operating cost.

“The traditional market is driven by three-tier architecture – storage, networking and compute.

Using hyperconverged allows to reduce operating cost, combining physical hardware, storage, networking and virtualization into a single platform and using a pair of software to manage, administrate and deliver these capabilities traditionally deliver by hardware appliances,” explains Philip Moss.

Hyperconverged solutions strengthen small and large businesses to take benefit of high availability, for tolerance, failover to the cloud, etc. Also, the key advantage of HCI based on Microsoft platform is flexibility.

“The enterprise market traditionally uses large infrastructure-based solutions, the SME traditionally is served with a combination of small business solutions and systems that did not live up to high availability. Hyperconverged solutions have enabled those small and large businesses to take advantage of high availability, tolerance and the type of distributing data and application delivery traditionally available to large organizations.

All the key advantages of hyperconverged infrastructure, especially the one built on Microsoft platform, is modular scale of flexibility.

One of the powers of hyperconverged is allowing customers to meet their daily needs and then expand as the requirement increased.

Also, the advantage of hyperconverged softwaredefined decouples relationship between the internal platform and the application allowing organizations to work with applications and services independently of their core platform.

This drives down cost ad increases flexibility,” explains Philip Moss.

Enterprises adopting hyperconverged Talking about adoption of HCI among the enterprises, Philip Moss says, “The enterprises are moving towards HCI to drive down cost.

They are getting flexibility and reducing capital expenditure associated with traditional platforms. Many organizations are saying that the cost of an entire HCI platform including software is lower than what we are just spending on storage only by solutions, thus resulting in 80% cost reduction compared to traditional IT platforms.”

BHAVESH MEHTA Group CTO Acuutech

Market Size The opportunity for HCI is huge in the global market as the traditional storage, network and compute market and the adjustable market can be easily converted into HCI. “If you look at the traditional storage, network, compute market, it is $55 billion today and that market can easily convert over to HCI market. Then, if you look at the market of over $100 million in the cloud services and hyper service market, you have $155 billion market which is open to HCI marketplace,” views Philip Moss.

Talking about the Indian market, Bhavesh Mehta says, “We have sized up the market based on various IDC and Gartner report, hyperconverged combined with traditional storage plus cloud is a $200-billion market and that portion for India will be worth $2–3 billion in the next two years.”

Verticals The HCI solution is not for specific verticals but can be used by every vertical. It is mainly useful for the organizations which deal with a huge amount of data.

“There is no specific focus on verticals, but if I give a quick summary it would be anyone dealing with a large amount of data. It could be people doing large-scale analytics. There is a really good edge computing in IoT play in this which we could address,” explains Bhavesh Mehta. n

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EVENT

OITF 2019

HIGHLIGHTS

THE GROWTH

AREAS THAT IS

TRANSFORMING DR. PRASANNA KUMAR PATASANI MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, GOVT. OF INDIA

C J VENUGOPAL PRINCIPAL SECRETARY, ELECTRONICS & IT DEPARTMENT, GOVT. OF ODISHA

THE STATE

Bhubaneswar, Odisha recently played host to the VARINDIA 11th edition of Odisha Information Technology Fair - OITF 2019that provided a platform to the IT industry to converge and discuss some of the key vital issues concerning the state. The invitees to the event included IT & Telecom honchos, senior Government officials, industry leaders, VARs and SIs. The evening commenced with the ceremonial lamp lighting ceremony in the presence of high profile guests that included Chandra Sarathi Behera, Minister of Electronics & Information Technology, Sports & Youth Services, Government of Odisha; Dr. Prasanna Kumar Patasani, Member of Parliament, Govt. of India; Priyadarshi Mishra, MLA-Bhubaneswar (North), Govt. of Odisha; CJ Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha and Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAIand Mr Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA. While talking about the growth of start-ups that are emerging in cities such as Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Pune and Ahmedabad in his opening speech, Dr Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA said that as per the survey done by VARINDIA, there are around 15,000 start-ups in the country that is slowly moving towards 20,000. “India continues to rank third in the global pecking order of start-ups ecosystem, after the US and Israel,” he said. “These start-ups are rapidly embracing the smaller cities over the bigger metros by targeting the growth of key industries such as fintech, health tech, SaaS, agritech, Taxi aggregators, B2B enterprise products (e-commerce) and deep technologies etc. Now the start-ups are really growing to solve the regional specific issues with deep learning and special designed AI techniques. It’s really an amazing experience.During our survey, we visited a few start-ups and found out that they are aiming at solving immediate issues that are affecting people at the grass root level.”

The evening saw the government officials, as well as top industry executives present speak on topics concerning technology in the state. C J Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha enlightened the audience on the opportunities in Bhubaneswar and it could be turned into a smart city. He said, “We have a very good ICT policy which brings very good incentives for the ICT sector. We have moved a proposal to set up a mobile manufacturing unit here in Odisha.

We are also in the process of discussing with several other manufacturing vendors to make the electronic manufacturing cluster in the state.”

Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI spoke about the telecom and digital landscape in the country, while also giving the roadmap for 5G in 2019. “If we look at the industry today, it has invested 15 lakh crore rupees in terms of spectrum and network investments. Odisha has around 17,000 cell towers and Rs 5,000 crore has been invested already, while looking further for growing the network.”

In the corporate presentations, IT Corporates, Sophos and NetApp shared their vision for the state and how to make it smarter. Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos presented his company’s views by corelating security to the physical world. Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise IT Architect, NetApp spoke on how NetApp is committed to bringing the state-of-the-art technology to bring secure and scalable storage technology

C J VENUGOPAL Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha “We have moved a proposal to set up a mobile manufacturing unit here in Odisha. We are also in the process of discussing with several other manufacturing vendors to make the electronic manufacturing cluster in the state very robust and vibrant. I request everyone to participate in this eco-system whenever it is required. Recently we had a meeting with all the ISPs from the communication infrastructure and had a detailed discussion. In the course of the discussion, we understood that out of the 40,000 villages in the country that have no mobile connectivity, close to 10,000 of them are in Odisha. This is extremely poorer state of affairs as far as the communication infrastructure is concerned. It is a matter of deep concern for all of us which we have taken up as a mission to see that every place is connected. The new National Digital Communications Policy talks of a huge 100 billion investments and how data is growing at a pace of 30 times on a year and year basis.”

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11th

Odisha Information Technology Fair’19

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Soubhagya Routray, Past President, ITAO; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India; Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA; S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA; Dr. Prasanna Kumar Patasani, Member of Parliament, Govt. of India; C J Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha; Ayashkant Mohanty, MD - Tatwa Technologies; Cmdr (Dr) J Jena, Dy. Director General COAI; Debabrata Panigrahi, MD - Institute of Quality and Environment Management Services; Ashok K Mohapatra, Chairman - Organising Committee, VARINDIA IT Cup to the state of Odisha.

The theme for the panel discussion was Unlocking the Potential of Odisha and was moderated by Dr Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA. In Bhubaneswar, almost 90% of the smart city budget is allocated towards Area Based Development, which entails retrofitting, renewal and extensions in 985 acres of the city. This includes projects related to infrastructure engineering and building development, slum housing, green and park areas, road development and accessibility.

The discussion delved into how it has become important for a robust infrastructure to be there in Bhubaneswar in order for it to become a smart city. The panelists at the discussion were – Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDGCOAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India; Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India, and A K Mohanty, CEO- TATWA Technologies.

The event also witnessed the award ceremony that felicitated two vendors, Cisco and Sophos and the Regionals VARs from the state of Odisha. While Cisco was awarded in the category of Best Converged Infrastructure, the award for Best Security Services Company went to Sophos Technologies. Five Regional VARs were awarded in the categories of The Best VAR, Odisha; The Best Software Distributor, Odisha; The

Best Reseller, Odisha; Best Technology Services, Odisha; and The Best Software Services Company. The names of the winners respectively are - Nigama Comptech, Tristar Software and Solutions, Info care Solutions, Tatwa Technologies, and Suyog Computech.

The event also took the opportunity to felicitate the winners of the 9th VARINDIA IT Cup 2018 Cricket Tournament, which was played by 20 teams representing different companies. The cricket matches were played at Kishore Club Ground, Bhubaneswar and was supported by STPI and Electronics & IT Department, Govt. of Odisha.

The first semi-final match was played between Esquare and SPARC, where Esquare won the match by 8 wickets. In the second semi-final match played between TCS and Luminous Infoway, the latter (Luminous) won the match by 10 runs. The final match was played between Luminous Infoway and Esquare, in which Luminous Infoway clinched the title, while Esquare emerged as the Runner-up of the 9th VAR INDIA IT CUP 2019.

The Man of the Final Match award went to Soumya fromLuminous Infoway and S K Mustqul Ali of Luminous Infoway won the Man of the Tournament award.

RAJAN S MATHEWS Director General, COAI “In October of 2016, Reliance Jio has brought a significant transformation in the industry in terms of it moving to 4G. Previous to Reliance rolling out its network, there were 3 principal technologies in play – 2G, 3G and 4G. But once Reliance started its network operations, it became very clear that 4G is now the dominant technology. All of the operators are busy implementing 4G roll-outs in almost all the states. So we expect 4G coverage to happen very soon.

Reliance has committed that 95% of the country will be covered by 4G in the next 8-9 months, which will be followed closely by Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, etc. When we look at the networks of today, what 4G does is also to prepare the country for 5G. Globally people are already talking about 6G and 5G is already becoming a part of yesterday’s story.

The Govt. of India has put together a high level committee to ensure that India does not miss the bus in terms of developing IP, the royalty that is attached to the development of IP, developing manufacturing, training the people for the 5G environment and so on.”

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EVENT TAUSIF SIDDIQUI Enterprise IT Architect, NetApp “We power up our customers to change the world with data. The world of technology is changing and we need to achieve a lot. There are a lot many things that need to be done. Technology is being viewed as the backbone and is changing our everyday lives. Every business needs to go through the stage of digital transformation. A lot of organizations nowadays have traditional IT from which they would like to deliver IT services but they cannot reach agility till the time they transform their business. And this is what we precisely do. As a data management company, we help the organizations to digitally transform their IT operations. According to the IDC report that came out in 2017 says that digital transformation spending of companies is going to hit $1.7 trillion. That is a huge budget if seen from an IT perspective and is a 22% increase from 2017. If you see 10 years back, the top organizations used to be in areas of Gas, manufacturing etc. But nowadays if you see, the top organizations are companies like Twitter, Facebook that have completely invested into digital.”

RISHI SHARMA Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos “Everyone is award of the term ‘virus’. The full form of virus is Vital Information resource under seize. If we corelate the security to the physical world, the latter has been in existence for the past thousands of years while digitization and computerization have been there for only past 15 years, not more than that. The crime in the physical world has been there for thousands of years and the crime that is happening in the digital world is inspired from the physical world.

For instance Ransomware, which is nothing but the kidnapping of the data. The kidnapping used to happen in the real world as well but now that has started taking place in the digital world too. Sophos has been there in the industry for the last 33 years. Over these years our complete focus and forte has been cyber security, starting from endpoint security, scaling to network security and cloud security. Our complete focus is only on security. The tagline of Sophos is – Cyber security made simple.”

AWARD WINNERS

NIGAMA COMPUTECH RECEIVES THE AWARD FOR THE BEST VAR,ODISHA

TATWA TECHNOLOGIES RECEIVES THE AWARD FOR THE BEST TECHNOLOGY SERVICES COMPANY,ODISHA

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February 2019 www.varindia.com

SUYOG COMPUTECH RECEIVES THE AWARD FOR THE BEST SOPHOS RECEIVES THE AWARD FOR THE BEST SECURITY SERVICES COMPANY

INFOCARE RECEIVES THE AWARD FOR THE BEST RESELLER,ODISHA

SOFTWARE SERVICS COMPANY,ODISHA

INFOCARE RECEIVES THE AWARD FOR THE BEST RESELLER,ODISHA

(From L to R): Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA (Moderator); Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDG- COAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India; Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India; A K Mohanty, CEOTATWA Technologies

PANEL DISCUSSION: UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF ODISHA The theme for the panel discussion was Unlocking the Potential of Odisha and was moderated by Dr Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA. Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDG- COAI said that developing the eco-system through scaled manpower and start-ups can become the starting point for large industries to come into the state. These become the main criteria for any industry to come and set up in Odisha.

Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos highlighted the shared responsibility concept. “For an OEM the product has been supplied but the main thing lies with the implementation. So the product will be implemented along with the advice from the OEM by understanding exactly for which purpose that product has been bought for and then transferring that knowledge further to the SI, who will be deploying that particular solution. These are the key points that need to be taken care of so that the implementation does not become a bottleneck for that particular product.”

Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India said that it is not just about selling a product in a particular place but it is also about localized services by working with local partners, who understand the interests and preferences of the local customers better. “The customer is more open to the local partner and then the latter is able to add more value to the eco-system. We have been a partner-led organization and we always look forward to working with local partners and that has always been our priority.”

Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India said that for augmenting agriculture and farming in terms of their productivity through various government initiatives, a lot of technology research needs to be done in the background so that the right process could be understood.

On how technology has been a big enabler for developing the state of Odisha, A K Mohanty, CEO- TATWA Technologies said that the way things are moving now, technology is very much required for putting all the things together. “To make cities smarter and citizens more smart, technology is an important enabler whether it is to obtain, retrieve or transfer data.” He further said that Odisha has a very ambitious policy to give impetus to the SME ecosystem in the state, but there are several hiccups and it will take time to come up at par with other states.

LUCKY DRAW AT THE EVENT

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EVENT

THE 9TH EDITION OF VARINDIA IT CUP VARINDIA organised the 9th edition of VARINDIA IT Cup as the Annual Cricket Tournament, where 20 major SME IT/ITeS companies participated. This year the IT cup was played among 20 teams representing different companies. The cricket matches were played at Kishore Club Ground, Bhubaneswar and was supported by STPI and Electronics & IT Department, Govt. of Odisha.

The true vision to start this VARINDIA IT Cup Cricket, an IT Corporate Cricket League with the Tennis ball, is to bring the hidden talent of every hard working employee of Corporate/PSUs/Govts across the IT and Telecom fraternity in Bhubaneswar, who spends maximum hours working and sitting in 4 x 4 cubicles 24x7. The ultimate mission to start this sport is to bring the Corporate in touch, where they can know each other and experience the real spirit of the game.

WINNER VARINDIA IT CUP 2019

The first semi-final match was played between Esquare and SPARC, where Esquare won the match by 8 wickets. In the second semi-final match played between TCS and Luminous Infoway, the latter (Luminous) won the match by 10 runs. The final match was played between Luminous Infoway and Esquare, in which Luminous Infoway clinched the title, while Esquare emerged as the Runner-up of the 9th VAR INDIA IT CUP 2019.

The Man of the Final Match award went to Soumya from Luminous Infoway and S K Mustqul Ali of Luminous Infoway won the Man of the Series award.

WINNERS OF VARINDIA IT CUP 2019

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February 2019 www.varindia.com

MAN OF THE MATCH SOUMYA (LUMINOUS INFOWAY)

MAN OF THE SERIES S.K. MUSTQUE (LUMINOUS INFOWAY)

RUNNER-UP VARINDIA IT CUP 2019

VAR MOBILITY

OPPO introduces OPPO K1, priced at Rs.16, Honor View20 now available at Rs.45, 999/Honor has announced the 990/launch of Honor View20, its

OPPO has announced the entry of K series with the launch of OPPO K1. The OPPO K1 will be available on Flipkart from 12th February for Rs.16, 990/-, and will come in two colour variants – Piano Black and Astral Blue.

The OPPO K1 is a competitively priced smartphone, which comes with an in-display fingerprint scanner and 6.41-inch screen with AMOLED display, ensuring the consumers enjoy their favourite shows/movies in higher definition.

The new device features a 25 MP front-facing camera and is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 Mobile Platform, making it ideal to support heavy applications. The OPPO K1 uses Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and comes with a 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM memory, improving the speed and performance.

Will Yang, Brand Director, OPPO India, says, “We are delighted to introduce OPPO K1 – our first smartphone from

the globally successful K series to the Indian market. At OPPO, we understand the evolving market trend and hence focus on making products in line with requirement for our consumers. Today, the Indian consumers are rapidly embracing e-commerce platforms and therefore to cater to this demand, we have adopted a multi-

TECNO has announced the launch of 2019 first duo offerings from their deck, namely CAMON iACE2x and CAMON iACE2. The smartphone flaunts many industryfirst innovations in the sub-Rs.8K

savvy millennials who consider smartphone as their first and preferred choice of taking decent pictures and sharing them via social media."

Giving more power in the hands of customers, all TECNO smartphones come with a unique promise of “111” under which it offers one-time screen replacement, 100-days free replacement, and 1-month extended warranty. Apart from that, it comes with the commitment of bringing to consumers the best aftersales service through its service brand – Carlcare – which has two COCO (companyowned, company-controlled) service centers and more than 960 multi-brand service touch points for its customers across the country. It is this ownership of the end-to-end customer journey, both before and after the purchase that has helped build trust and confidence among our consumers and partners.

channel strategy for the K series.

Having won hearts in the offline space, OPPO is now all set to put more energy behind the online channel as well. We hope that our consumers have a memorable and delightful experience with the OPPO K1.”

OPPO K1 comes with a 6.41inch AMOLED Full HD + display with screen resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels.

latest flagship on Amazon.in.

Making a significant leap in the smartphone industry, Honor View20 leads the market with its disruptive technologies and features. Priced at Rs.37,999/-, the 6GB +128GB variant will be available in two colours – Midnight Black and Sapphire Blue, and the 8GB+256GB variant will be available in Phantom Blue colour at Rs.45,999/- on Amazon.in, starting 12:00 AM on January 30, 2019.

The all-new Honor View20 features eight first technologies, namely 48MP AI Camera, All-View Display (world’s first in-screen front camera design) Kirin 980 AI chipset with Dual NPU manufactured by 7nm process, A76-cortex-based CPU, Mali-G76 GPU, 1.4Gbps cat21. Modem and SoC Supporting 2133MHz LPDDR4X RAM. Allen Wang, Vice President, Huawei India, says, “Strengthening our portfolio of top-notch smartphones, we are delighted to launch the HONOR View20 in India on Amazon.in. We understand users’ sentiments and their requirement of smartphone

that outperforms their expectations.

Packed with eight world’s first-ever technological advancements, the Honor View20 bespeaks of our commitment to deliver premium and power-packed smartphones.”

HONOR View20’s rear camera is 48MP AI camera coupled with the SONYIMX586 with a 1/2inch large CMOS, and equivalent 1.6μm pixels in Quad Bayer array.

The sensor, boosted by the Kirin 980 chipset, supports new 48MP AI Ultra Claritymode to produce photos with unmatched detail and clarity even if it is zoomed multiple times.

Realme launches U1 smartphone in offline TECNO brings in CAMON iACE2X & CAMON markets iACE2 smartphones in sub-Rs.8K section Realme has announced that our commitment to deliver best

smartphone segment such as the 3GB RAM, 8MP AI selfie, and new gradient colour.

Arijeet Talapatra, CEO, TRANSSION India, says, “We are a youth-centric brand, listening to and understanding the voice from our customers have formed a part of our very DNA. CAMON portfolio is designed to cater to the aspirations of today’s tech-

U1 smartphone will be available in the offline stores throughout the country. The selfie-centric smartphone is the first-ever smartphone powered by the AI master MediaTeK Helio P70 processor globally and comes with an AI 25MP front camera.

The device was launched in November last year with two variants – 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM at Rs.11,999/- and 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM at Rs.14,499/- in three exquisite colours – Fiery Gold, Ambitious Black and Brave Blue.

Initially, Realme U1 will be available in 2,500 stores in 30 cities eventually reaching 100 cities by March 2019.

Madhav Sheth, Chief Executive Officer, Realme India, said, “Considering the rapidlygrowing customer demand towards Realme U1, we are making the device available at our offline stores. Initially, the device was available for sale exclusively in Amazon.in and saw a phenomenal response. The initiative is to fulfil

consumer experience to our customers.”

Recently, Realme announced expansion of the offline sales to 150 cities in 2019. The young brand will

start with top cities of the country, gradually moving towards 150 cities phase by phase. The “Proud to be Young” brand has collaborated with offline retailers which will be known as Real Partners and will give a value addition to customer experience.

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BUDGET 2019

INTERIM BUDGET 2019:

Government’s 10-point vision for 2030 presented THE INTERIM BUDGET 2019 HAS BEEN A POPULIST ONE, RE-INSTATING THE GOVERNMENT’S PRO-GROWTH AGENDA TO CREATE AN ENABLING FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. WHILE THE GOVERNMENT IS PRESENTING THE VOTE ON ACCOUNT FOR THE NEXT FOUR-TO-FIVE MONTHS, A FULL-FLEDGED BUDGET WILL BE PRESENTED AFTER THE HOUSE REASSEMBLES AFTER THE GENERAL ELECTIONS. 34

February 2019 www.varindia.com

Piyush Goyal, who has been appointed as the interim finance ministerpresentedhis maiden Union Budget in the Lok Sabha. While a full-fledged budget will be presented once the new Central government is formed after the general elections due in March-April, this interim budget, as has been the custom, will seek the Parliament’s nod for meeting the expenditure for the next few months of the new fiscal.

In his speech, while taking the opportunity to throw some light on the various schemes introduced by the Modi Government in the past years, Goyal claimed that India is poised to become a 5 trillion dollar economy in the next five years, and a 10 trillion dollar economy in the next eight years.

On inflation, Goyal commented that India has controlled double-digit inflation. “From 10.1% during 2009-14, inflation in December 2018 was just 2.1%. We have broken the back of backbreaking inflation.”

On GST, Goyal remarked that the implementation of GST has brought arelief of 80,000 crore rupees to the Indian consumers and most items of daily use now brought in the 0-5% tax bracket.

Further India has become one common market through tax consolidation, inter-state movements have become faster through e-way bills and Ease of Doing Business has improved.

Fiscal deficit pegged at 3.4 per cent in the Interim Budget, while Capital expenditure is pegged at 3.36,292 lakh crore. Expenditure is expected to rise by 13% from revised estimate 2018-19 to budget estimate 2019-20, Goyal said.

Anil Valluri, President, India & SAARC Operations, NetApp comments, “The Government, in its Budget 2019 has articulated a compelling vision for India, both for the medium and long term.

It has provided direction, and a finite and ambitious goal for India, of becoming a USD 10 trillion economy by 2030. I look forward to the details and to the Government marking progress against it.”

The budget has something or the other for everyone, but more particularly the middle class, the agricultural community and marginalized sections of society.

The sense of inclusion, financial as well as welfare is much needed to build the force for a stronger nation that can march towards Vision 2030.

Says Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research, “The Union Budget appears to be a full budget and not an interim budget.

The budgetary provision clearly points towards a social focus and building up of the social safety net with significant provisions for the Labour in unorganized sector, for small farmers and for rural industries such as fisheries and animal husbandry.”

Agrees Rajesh Agarwal, CoFounder, Micromax, “This year's Budget has brought significant changes, focusing on various key aspects which are largely stressed upon our overall economic growth – Rural, Agriculture, job creation, healthcare, housing, Structural reforms and infrastructure development, which will help stimulate and strengthen the Indian economy.”

According to Rahul Agarwal, CEO and Managing Director Lenovo India the Government’s balanced focus on various sections of society, such as farmers, middle class and corporate houses as opposed to a sector focussed approach is a refreshing change.

“The increase in tax rebate for smaller income group as well as hiking the gratuity limit means the consumer will be left with more disposable income. This is very likely to drive up demand for consumer goods and services across several industries, which is heartening for the growth of our economy,” he says.

“The Interim Budget proposals should augur well for the Indian economy by providing a growth impetus through a boost in consumption as well as an inclusive framework designed to benefit agri and rural communities, unorganised sector workers as well the middle class,” says Sanjiv Puri, Managing Director - ITC Limited, echoing similar sentiments.

“The PM Kisan Samman Nidhi programme and the increase in

HIGHLIGHTS FROM GOYAL'S BUDGET SPEECH – • No income tax for earnings up to ₨5 lakh • Individuals with gross income of up to ₨6.5 lakh need not pay any tax if they make investments in provident funds and prescribed equities • Standard tax deduction for salaried persons raised from ₨40,000 to ₨50,000 • TDS threshold on interest on bank and post office deposits raised from ₨10,000 to ₨40,000 • TDS threshold on rental income increased from ₨1.8 lakh to ₨2.4 lakh • I-T processing of returns to be done in 24 hours • Within the next 2 years, all verification of tax returns to be done electronically without any interface with the taxpayer • Package of ₨6000 per annum for farmers with less than 2 hectares of land. Scheme to be called Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi.

• Vande Bharat Express, an indigenously developed semi high-speed train, to be launched • One lakh digital villages planned in the next five years • Fund allocation for the Northeast region increased to ₨ 58,166 crore, a 21% rise over last year for infrastructure development • Anti-camcord regulations to be introduced in the Indian Cinematograph Act to prevent piracy and contact theft of Bollywood films.

• Single window clearance for Indian filmmakers.

• 25 per cent of sourcing for government projects will be from the MSMEs, of which three per cent will be from women entrepreneurs.

• National Artificial Intelligence portal to be developed soon • ESI cover limit increased to ₨ 21,000. Minimum pension also increased to ₨ 1000.

• Mega pension scheme for workers in the organised sector with an income of less than ₨15,000. They will be able to earn ₨ 3000 after the age of 60. The scheme will be called Pradhan Mantri Shramyogi Maan Dhan Yojana.

• 2% interest subvention for farmers pursuing animal husbandry.

• All farmers affected by severe natural calamities to get 2% interest subvention and additional 3% interest subvention upon timely repayment • Decision taken to increase MSP (minimum support price) by 1.5 times the production cost for all 22 crops • The 22nd AIIMS to come up in Haryana

Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research

Rajesh Agarwal Co-Founder Micromax

Rahul Agarwal CEO and Managing Director Lenovo India

Souma Das Managing Director Teradata India

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35

BUDGET 2019 allocation to rural infrastructural development will indeed go a long way in enabling empowerment of rural communities.”

Sanjiv Puri Managing Director ITC Limited

Sridhar Pinnapureddy Founder and CEO CtrlS Datacenters Ltd

Prakash Mallya VP, Sales and Marketing Group, Intel

Rajiv Kapoor VP, India & SAARC Cambium Networks

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Says Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder and CEO - CtrlS Datacenters Ltd, “Financial Inclusion and e-filing of income tax returns where 99.54% of income tax returns have been filed and accepted online, while GST filing is fully online, while 34 crore Jan Dhan bank accounts help direct and the plan to converting 1 lakh villages into digital villages to ensure technology is leveraged at the grass roots including telemedicine, distance education etc, this will help encourage start-ups and foster growth. Glad to note that the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has helped MSMEs transact over 17,500 crores.”

IMPETUS TO AI, DIGITAL INDIA The emphasis on establishing a programme to bring in direct efforts towards building a holistic ecosystem for Artificial Intelligence is an impressive development. The government announcing initiatives like the National Center for AI and a National AI Portal, is a step in the right direction to drive technology adoption in the country. Moreover, the government’s announcement around expanding Common Service Centres and creating digital infrastructure in the villages will be a significant step in the Digital India mission and growth of the Make in India initiative.

Comments Rajiv Kapoor, Vice President, India & SAARC - Cambium Networks, “The government’s planning to setup 100,000 digital villages in the next five years is a huge step towards leapfrogging India’s march on critical initiatives such as Digital India. By placing wireless connectivity at the heart of India’s development particularly in rural areas, the country is poised to further consolidate its position as the global hub for disruptive innovations."

Says Sumeer Chandra, Managing Director, HP Inc. India, “The focus on leveraging emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence to enable a positive impact on the lives of people is an encouraging step.

Further, the expansion of rural industrialization using digital

February 2019 www.varindia.com

technologies, development of clusters encompassing the MSMEs, village industries and start-ups, will boost rural manufacturing, job creation and strengthen the overall economy.”

Prakash Mallya, Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group, Inteltooopines, "The Budget clearly showcases the importance of a digital-first India and the government’s commitment to drive innovation and technology advancement in the country. With the government setting a target to become a $5 Trillion economy in the next 5 years, Intel believes that emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 5G will play a crucial part in this vision. The Budget also pointed out the growth in the telecom sector; this definitely provides impetus towards building a strong 5G ready ecosystem in the country. Additionally, the government has set a goal to create 1 lakh digital villages in the next 5 years taking technology penetration to a new level that can help build a truly digital India.”

Deepak Maheshwari, Director - Government Affairs, India, Symantechopes that the Budget proposals such as those on artificial intelligence, one lakh digital villages and the thrust on RFID usage will not only fuel entrepreneurship, but also unleash enormous job opportunities. “In addition, with the continued momentum on digitizing transactions using Aadhaar and the need for real-time monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness and efficiency of various government schemes, the critical role of cyber security resilience and data protection towards fostering and inculcating trust cannot be overemphasized,” he says.

Souma Das, Managing Director, Teradata India says, “The investment proposed by the government in the field of Artificial intelligence and allied technologies will pave a strong foundation for making revolutionary transformation in the scope of governance and the opportunity to provide seamless and improved citizen services experience. We welcome the government’s decision to establish National Centre for Artificial Intelligence.”

“Expanding rural industrialisation using modern digital technologies to generate massive employment is the Fourth

Sumeer Chandra Managing Director HP Inc. India

Deepak Maheshwari Director - Government Affairs, India Symantec

J K Gupta CFO Tata Technologies

Suresh Pansari Director RP tech India

Sunil Jose Senior Area VP and Country Leader - Salesforce India

Dr. Keshab Panda CEO & MD L&T Technology Services

Government’s intent to create 1 lakh digital villages over the next 5 years, under the ambitious Digital India initiative. The Government also stated its commitment to deploy three lakh common service centres which will be delivering digital services, especially to the rural areas.”

Kushal Nahata CEO & Co-founder FarEye Dimension of the vision,” says Rajiv Bhalla, Managing Director, Barco India.“This will be built upon the Make in India approach to developing grass-roots level clusters, structures and mechanisms encompassing the MSMEs, village industries and start-ups spread in every nook and corner of the country. India is now on the way to becoming a global manufacturing hub in various sectors including automobiles and electronics, defence and medical devices.”

Says Rajan S Mathews, DG – COAI, “Amongst many welcome steps, Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal expressed the

Even Sunil Jose, Senior Area Vice President and Country Leader - Salesforce India feels the same. He supports it by citinga recent research commissioned

by Salesforce, in which 65% of Indian respondents were positive about AI and its usage. “Businesses using AI have the opportunity to amplify our human intelligence, better connect to consumers and impact societies like never before.

We are delighted and welcome the government’s visionary step to support and democratise access to AI and related technologies.”

FOCUS ON GREEN INDIA, DIGITALISATION IN LOGISTICS The government’s focus on clean and green India enabled by a growing market for electric vehicles will provide much-needed impetus to the rapidly maturing ER&D sector leading to more disruption and jobs.

Rajan S Mathews DG COAI

Says J K Gupta, CFO - Tata Technologies, “The government’s recognition of the importance of clean energy to build a pollutionfree India is evident through its Vision 2030 roadmap. The initiative envisions India driving on Electric Vehicles with renewables becoming a major source of energy.”

“The vision to position India as the global renewable energy hub will enable enterprises and smart city developers to build energy efficient infrastructure. ER&D will also help provide affordability in healthcare and medical devices using promising new technologies such as 3D printing,” says Dr. Keshab Panda, CEO & MD - L&T Technology Services. He further added that engineering will be the cornerstone for India’s rise to become a $5 trillion economy in the next 5 years.

According to Kushal Nahata, CEO & Co-founder – FarEye, it was a great move by the Customs authorities to introduce comprehensive digitalisation of export and import transactions.

“Using RFID to enhance export logistics was a much-needed initiative. This will ensure seamless movement of goods, drastically improve visibility and reduce

Varun Rathi COO and Co-Founder Happay

transportation costs. Digitizing core logistics processes is a key when it comes to building a sustainable supply chain.”

However there are many like Suresh Pansari, Director, RP tech Indiawho feel that from the IT hardware industry perspective, there are not any major announcements in terms of present taxation policies and ease of doing business. He however commended the Govt.’s efforts to boost Digital India and Make in India initiatives, which he feels will indirectly benefit the industry by generating demand for hardware.

Again, according to Varun Rathi, COO and Co-Founder, Happay, currently there is a lack of structured data availability in India. “This doesn't look infeasible at all and timing couldn't be better than this to launch a nationwide AI center. UIDAI, NPCI and GST council has laid the foundation of the most important piece of the puzzle - getting the identity, demographic, financial and skills data recorded in a structured manner. An AI council can now start laying some ground rules and create a regulated and open platform for anyone to innovate and create value for India.”

RAHUL KUMAR Country Manager India and SAARC - F-Secure “Leading the world in mobile data consumption is a big milestone for India and promises a great opportunity for development. The lower rates of 4G data are pushing the opportunities for digital growth, even in the hinterlands of India.

We believe that the next crucial step will be addressing cyber security concerns, as a number for first-time users; and users with a lack of nuanced understanding of cyber security are expected to on-board the digital bandwagon. Hence, educating the new internet users about data privacy and online safety should be highly prioritized. As the world moves towards digitization and IoT connected devices, personal data is the most vulnerable commodity and must be carefully safeguarded.”

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BUDGET 2019 SNEHASHISH BHATTACHARJEE Global CEO - Denave “The budget gives much awaited technology push for the fast paced Indian economy. The CoE of Artificial Intelligence (AI) reaffirms government’s intention and interest in pushing India to develop as hub of emerging technologies. It shall also prove to play a pivotal role in massification of ground-breaking technologies as well as providing headwind to the ongoing skill development and job creation agenda. It is a huge opportunity for the tech start-ups, and the contribution of India Inc. in the initial stages of implementation shall prove to be significant.”

DR. RISHI BHATNAGAR President-Aeris Communications & Chairman IET IoT Panel India “Companies are deploying considerable investments in emerging technologies to match customer expectations. To support the deployment of these emerging technologies, skill development and enhancement is imperative amidst the current digital disruption scenario. According to MDSE’s annual report, 2017-18, the demand for skilled labour in 34 sectors across industries has been estimated to be over 12.8 Cr between 2017 and 2018.

Interim FM in this Interim Budget has announced the decision of making the National centre for Artificial Intelligence and building Centre of Excellence. The Government of India has opened the path for the youth in India to leverage the new state-of-the-art developments and upskill themselves to widen the jobs pool for themselves. We appreciate the GOI’s perspective of making India digitally enhanced and look forward to add value by providing the Indian talent with opportunities to grow in the IT industry.”

NIKHIL ARORA MD and VP - GoDaddy India “We welcome the Union Interim budget 2019-20 and the government’s focus towards helping small businesses, start-ups and women-owned MSMEs. With impetus on strengthening the digital infrastructure, e-marketplace, initiatives supporting rural India and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, government has reiterated its commitment to bring a holistic and sustainable technology-led development for the country. Moves to allow tax payers with income upto Rs. 5 lakh to get full tax rebate and abolish custom duty from 36 capital good are consumer friendly steps that will help put the money back in the consumers’ pocket and encourage ease of doing business. In this year’s budget, we were hoping for a solution for the current credit issue troubling MSMEs.” KRISHNA RAJ SHARMA Director & CEO - iValue InfoSolutions “Despite being an election year, it's good to see Government allocating money where its required - farmers, middle class families, pension scheme for unorganized sector, more allocation to health, education and defense.

Despite missing out on Fiscal deficit target for current as well as next fiscal, the FM took rating agency and investors in to confidence by explaining the need for supporting farmers which was well received as seen by the market reaction. With GDP growth being upgraded, 0.1% to 0.2% slip of Fiscal deficit should be manageable. Good to see FM recognizing and rewarding honest tax paying middle class citizens with tax exemption up to 5L salary along with higher TDS.” DR. DEEPAK KUMAR SAHU President & CEO- VARINDIA “The Interim Union budget unveiled by Piyush Goyal on 1st February, 2019 in Lok Sabha brings various reliefs as expected by general public in Income tax to increase their disposal income such as increase in basic exemption threshold limit, increase in maximum limit of deduction u/s 80C, increase in standard deduction for salaried class persons etc. Every sections of the society had been looking forward to the changes that the government has brought in.”

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RAJARSHI BHATTACHARYYA Country Head - SUSE "We see the interim budget addresses 3Ps i.e., People, Progress and Propensity of the country. When the government has a long- term vision that supports tech-related initiatives such as Make In India, Digital India, these are going to help improve the social and economic fabric of the country - whether it is job creation, bridging the digital divide, uplifting the lower class, reducing taxes for middle class and much more.

The aim of converting one lakh villages into digital villages, having a national program on artificial intelligence and even making India into a global manufacturing hub, all these are going to provide further opportunities for open source technology providers like us as we help organizations drive innovation through flexibility, freedom and openness. As such, we welcome what's been announced in the interim budget and look forward to supporting the latest digitalization project opportunities in India."

RAJESH MAURYA Regional VP, India & SAARC - Fortinet “The short-term plan to make one lakh digital villages in the next five years clearly outlines that digital transformation and economic transformation have to go hand in hand for all round development. The Interim budget unfolds a vision to become a Ten Trillion Dollar economy by 2030. Digitalization is the path chosen by the government to reach every sector of the economy across the country down to every single Indian. Addressing the security concerns of Economic Digitalization, the government has already introduced the Personal Data Protection Bill 2018, IT Act, Right to Information Act, Right to Privacy, Aadhaar Act as the laying ground for data protection and cyber security.

Fortinet firmly believes in the importance of collaboration and threat information-sharing to secure Digitalization.

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is the way forward with leaders from the private and public sectors coming together with a shared commitment to secure the digital attack surface and related vulnerabilities that represent a very real threat to governments and growing digital economies.”

LEAD STORY

Digital India paving the way for the Growth of Partners The Digital India program has been launched to prepare India for the knowledge future. The program leverages technology to empower its citizens, transforming society and economy. It is aimed at making information available to citizens through all the channels securely.

Digital India is such an initiative that has inspired every organization whether small or large to transform digitally.

It has the potential to transform India from a developing to a developed nation. It is projected that this initiative has potential to increase 23-30% of GDP by 2025.

The basic of transforming a nation digitally is through a robust IT infrastructure. A strong and quality IT infrastructure can lead this initiative on the road to success.

Due to this initiative many opportunities are opening up.

The Digital India initiative has influenced to build a strong broadband connectivity across the nation. Not only this, it has also opened up opportunities like identity solutions, payment systems, web delivery structure.

These days data is an important aspect and as this

initiative is for the betterment of citizens, a lot of data is easily available. So keeping the recent threat landscape in mind, people should be aware of cyber security which is also a critical piece of Digital India program. Cyber security framework should be embedded into the design and it is applicable for both large and small organizations.

Apart from these there are various kinds of opportunities like Cloud, Video Analytics, Fintech Solutions, IOT and machine-to-machine solutions, Smart Learning Solutions etc.

All these are opening opportunities for the IT solution partners of the nation. With more and more organizations transforming themselves digitally, the need of the IT infrastructure is also growing and this widening the opportunity for solution partners.

Partners are also aligning their business strategy with Digital India initiative. We have garnered the views of few solution partners to understand how Digital India initiative has opened opportunities for them and helped them to made their way to growth trajectory.

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LEAD STORY LUX RAO Director & Head – Solutions, Dimension Data India “In terms of Digital India there are several opportunities that have opened up. It is providing an opportunity to build the broadband infrastructure for the country. We are actually becoming a digital native nation which means majority of our population is digitally savvy. It opens up plenty of opportunities by way of identity solutions, payment systems, web delivery structure etc. We are hearing a lot about some of the technology advancements that are riding on top of digital infrastructure.

It is an exciting time for IT fraternity because Digital India is providing an entire platform for delivering services easily.

One thing we have to keep in mind that with such enormous amount of data being available of the citizens, one of the things that we need to be cognizant of is cyber security. It is a critical piece that needs to be taken seriously. As part of the defence, security should be embedded in the design itself. It is applicable for every organization small or large because data is extremely attractive for hackers.

There are multiple benefits in digital transformation. Healthcare has gained significantly from digital revolution. Smart Cities is a part of Digital India mission and it will enable the citizens. I believe smart cities will enhance citizen’s life, technology makes smart cities possible however citizen is the center point of any smart city initiative. If we keep the citizens in the center and provide services and values to the citizen only that city will become smart.”

TARUN SETH Managing Director, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic “Digital India programme was launched to leverage technology platform for transforming society and economy focusing on four pillars of development education, employment, entrepreneurship and empowerment.

Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic has consciously undertaken projects which contribute towards such initiatives.

We have emerged a leading systems integrator offering mature OT & IT strategy. Some of our projects for Digital India include, architecting and implementing state data centers, enabling safe banking and promoting e-governance.

The success mantra of the company lies in - Understanding real objectives of customers, Architecting Solutions based on objectives and to deliver outcomes, Focusing on customer success, Translating experiences and expertise of Hitachi across the globe to India, A team that has over 1000-person years of IT Infrastructure and Information security solutioning expertise in India that delivers exemplary customer experience.”

PRATEEK GARG CEO and MD, Progressive Infotech “Cloud has been the game-changer in bringing in the Digital Transformation in organization and it perhaps one of the key enabler of digital transformation. It accelerates go-lives and user adoption, speeds global deployments, and helps organizations adapt quickly to new business needs. Progressive’s Digital offering can be bucketed under Enterprise Intelligence (Analytics, AI/ML & IoT), Digital Business (Enterprise Content Management, Digital Workplace and Mobility) and DevOps. Progressive Infotech has been reinventing itself to remain relevant to the global market place and bring significant value to our client’s engagements. This unflinching commitment towards customer success and customer experience is the reason our customer endorses the value we add to their business, and it is the biggest testament to our promise of Experience Outcomes. Thus the key to Success is Focus on Outcomes, not Metrics.”

RANJAN CHOPRA MD, Team Computers “Digital India is quite a blessing. With its reach across the country, it has become possible for us to provide IT solutions even in remote areas. With the new digital infrastructure that the government is going to launch, many Public Sector Units are developing new projects where they shall be needing Servers, Data Centers, Cloud solutions etc. This has given us a massive opportunity to contribute to these avenues as well.

With Digital India, huge amounts of data is flowing in from all ends, especially in E-Commerce. Villages in India are on mobile with internet connectivity. Team plays a major role here - we manage their data, provide data analytics solutions and ensure that the data is secure at all times.

With IT, our gain is only when our customers benefit from the solutions we provide. Be it managing their hardware, managing and securing their Data, using Advanced Analytics to help them understand their customers better, or optimising their costs by understanding their company’s requirements; we grow only when our customers grow.

Every solution that we offer, is designed to increase the customer’s productivity, cost optimisation, smooth functioning of their hardware, deeper understanding of their customers.”

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February 2019 www.varindia.com

RS SHANBHAG Chairman & CEO, ValuePoint Systems “Strengthening our Leadership position in the market place has always been the corner stone of ValuePoint system’s core philosophy. Over past couple of years, we have realigned ourselves to be the “Digital Transformation Partner” in the new digital economy our clients are aspiring to invest in. We strongly believe that the Digital transformation is just not changing technology, but the way we do Business.

This has led us to position ourselves as a strong player in the “As-a-Service” economy. VPS’s organisation structure has been redesigned to serve the above Service Horizontals across the geographies augmented by Large-scale-deployment capabilities across our client base. Our unwavering focus on BFSI, Public Sector, Education, Healthcare domains with large-scale System Integration and program management capabilities has made us preferred partner to some of the world’s largest programs implemented. This has immensely helped the clients to move away from Capex to Opex models and stitch the key strategic components of zig-saw puzzle across different layers of transformation. For seamless strategic alignment, our core strategies of partnership with OEM/ODM have also undergone a transformative change too.”

GURPREET SINGH Managing Director, Arrow PC Network “Digital India is a great initiative which has inspired every customer to adopt digitisation. Arrow PC Network has seen tremendous growth due to this and implemented projects in various verticals like manufacturing, retail, BFSI, IT/ITES, Telecom etc. We have been helping our customers, both in SMB and enterprises for modernisation of their current IT infrastructure.

Our solutions on IT Infrastructure modernisation are welcomed by our clients where we are helping them to improve their IT practices which are for next generation and future ready. Our wins have provided us more such references to grow the business. We work on trust and establish ourselves as sincere and transparent service providers.

We shall increase our reach PAN India and keep innovating to help our clients improving business efficiency while optimising the cost using our latest IT Infrastructure.”

PARESH SHAH CEO, Allied Digital Services “Digital Transformation is our key offering currently. For every customer, IT is a major enabler in the business strategy. By default, every customer now expects minor to major transformation in its IT operations.

We are a comprehensive service provider, with innovative service management platform, AI capabilities and strong systems integration expertise.

Thus, we have successfully delivered path breaking transformation projects, both for corporate as well as government sector. Being a global player, we claim ourselves as “Global Transformation Architect”.

NEHA BATRA CMD, Mayank’s IT Solutions “Digital India focuses on transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy, thus, impacting all facets of businesses, citizens and environment. It is projected that Digital India has the potential to provide an incremental 20-30% increase in GDP by 2025, resulting in an opportunity of close to $1 trillion annually by 2025. The impact of this programme can be felt across all domains through the adoption of technology in key sectors including manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, agriculture, energy, infrastructure and education Upcoming new opportunities which arise as a part of Digital India initiative:1. Increase availability of ICT infrastructure for rural and remote areas to connect to the internet and access digital India services 2. Video Analytics – AI based intelligent video analytics 3. FINTECH Solutions – banking and financial services 4. IOT and machine-to-machine solutions which enables users to control house-hold utility such as heating, air conditioning, music, lighting and security systems through smartphones.

5. SMART Learning Solutions - education in today's digital age. It reflects how advanced technologies are enabling learners to digest knowledge and skills more effectively, efficiently and conveniently.

6. SMART Lightning – smart solution that allows you to use light where it’s needed, when its needed, resulting in significant energy saving and bunch of other benefits 7. SMART power and water solutions using solar technologies 8. Application Security solutions – Build software intelligence to improve customer satisfaction s Smart Cities- is a major step towards building safer, greener and intelligent cities We as MITS consulting, running end-to-end IT business integrations for more than 2 decades and providing single point solutions for all digital India requirements. We have recently delivered a major project for digitization of finger prints solutions and are working with OEMs on couple of other initiatives”

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LEAD STORY SAIRAMAN MUDALIAR Director & Co-Founder, Pentagon System & Services “Data has become the asset of organisations, we see an exponential growth in Data Security and Analytics.

Our focus is considering digital transformation as a catalyst for our business and we have already started the journey. There is going to be an exponential change in the way organisations are looking at their IT and Business model. With more discussions on developing services around cloud, hyper-converged and multiple innovative services, partners like us will play a critical role.

Gaining trust, confidence and exceeding customers expectations in Enterprises and BFSI vertical as a solution provider through our multi-vendor & multi-cloud offerings has helped us a lot in growing year on year and has always been the success mantra for our organisation .

As the curtain rises for 2019-20, we are looking forward to a great year ahead in expanding our footprint globally with our strong and improved execution capability along with riding on the newer technology trends. We are driving various initiatives for better customer experience and innovations.”

N K MEHTA CEO & Managing Director, Secure Network Solutions “The idea of Digital India is to utilize technology to empower citizens. Making information available all the time, through all the channels securely is the core objective. Applications such as Umang or Digi Locker, have brought-in government records to the citizen’s finger tips and simplifying payment processes through payment Apps such as Bhim. Cash-less or less-Cash economy means more and more streamlined economy that can give valuable insights. These insights can help the country to rapidly develop its economy in several ways.

Digital India initiatives usher private sector to do more, though they have always leading in the Digital Transformation initiatives. Such rapid journey to Digitization increases the exposure to Cyber Threats.

SNS helps customers in Securing their users, applications and data through advanced Security solutions that are backed by analytics, automation and Machine Learning.

Our success mantra is Fiercely Focused on Information Security, Trained & Certified Work Force and Right Solutioning that works for our customers.

Wide spread adoption of Cloud pushed the demand for Cloud-based Security offering. On-Premises Security infrastructure will not go away anytime soon. Therefore, customers will be faced with the challenge of Securing both On-Prem and Cloud-based solution, a hybrid network environment posing new challenges. SNS will continue to act as a trusted Information Security partner to our customers helping them in designing right security solutions to adopt right on-Prem or Cloud Security options.”

S KARTHIKEYAN Managing Director, Bloom Electronics “Digital India is a Programme to prepare India for a knowledge future. The focus is on being transformative – to realize IT (Indian Talent) and IT (Information Technology) for a better IT (India Tomorrow). The focus is on making technology central to enabling change. It is an Umbrella Programme – covering many departments.

It weaves together a large number of ideas and thoughts into a single, comprehensive vision so that each of them is seen as part of a larger goal. Each individual element stands on its own. But is also part of the larger picture.

We work with our customers from end to end and our slogan says we are always with them.

We are working on the Smart Solutions for Smart Cities and Digital Villages which covers various solutions.”

PUNIT THAKKAR Director & CEO, Shivaami Cloud Services “The Digital India campaign has created an aura among all the industries that the technology is advancing and it is good time to adopt these changing technologies.

Shivaami is partners with some of the best cloud solution providers like Google and Microsoft, we encourage the customers to move from their legacy IT infrastructure to cloud, since cloud is new solution for any IT infrastructure, which is more cost effective and more secure.

We have a purpose which we all follow wholeheartedly and that is “The purpose of Shivaami is to make positive change in the lives of people we connect by providing solutions and services that bring profit and happiness”.

Shivaami primly believes in providing solution to the problem of the customers which has helped us gain their trust and also the company to grow in terms of sales and in size of the company.”

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MANOJ KANODIA CEO, Inspira Enterprise “Digital India holds the potential to transform India from a developing into a developed economy and nation. ICT infrastructure lies at the very groundwork of the success of Digital India. The robustness and the quality of ICT infrastructure will govern the success of digitization of Indian economy and success of Digital India.

We focus on Technology-driven innovation, which involves the development of new advanced technology systems, Market-driven innovation, which includes disruptive products that create personalized value propositions for our clients.

Many industries have lost the digitization battle. Through smart bundling, disruptive technologies and innovative IT products and services, Inspira is creating new avenues to bring aboard new technology more swiftly. The rate of adoption is increasing, as technology capabilities are reinforcing and creating a virtuous circle of value while lowering the risk of adoption; this is happening due to incremental and fast learning as well as faster access to information.

At Inspira we always believe in futuristic innovative and disruptive technologies that will make difference to our clientele overall business positively. We will be catering to all verticals – Government/ PSU, Defence, BFSI, Healthcare, Enterprise and Smart Cities.”

DEEPAK JADHAV Director, VDA Infosolutions “This Digital India drive is bringing tremendous growth with regards to IT infrastructure products, Security products and acceleration in cloud adoption. Customers are finding ”more with less“ if they adopt digitalisation hence putting these projects on priority.

The success mantra of the company lies in understanding what is customer’s objective, understand the business process of customer, prepare a roadmap for customer and be a leading contestant for their Digitalisation drive. Acquire all necessary skills in driving Digitalisation solutions.

We already started our journey towards making our self fully skilled to guide customer in their journey of digitalisation and share the learning with customer, today we are almost fully ready to take complex projects of any size. This is one of our major focus areas.”

SEWAK NAUTIYAL Managing Director, Spark Technologies “Due to massive digitization in India, there is need of IT Infrastructure. Being a Value Added Distribution Company, we are helping and supporting our partner to participate and pitch the right solution to their customer.

We had incorporated company in 1994 and drafted a mission document. Our mission is to provide outstanding services to our partner / customer and make profit.

We are targeting 30% growth than our last year turnover. Hope we are on track.”

LIMESH PAREKH CEO, Enjay IT Solutions “There are many opportunities, but I would like to highlight few which are very much related to our business.

Firstly, since GST and Digitization, more and more business now want to use the Accounting package more than just taxation. Now they are using it much more proactively. That is the reason why we see a serious rise in the Cloud ERP requirement. That is the reason, we see an upsurge in the Tally Cloud Requirements.

Secondly, now even SMEs in India are becoming more and more aware of the Customer experience. Be it marketing, sales or after sales services, everywhere technology adoption is growing very fast. This is where our CRM solution is helping our Customers to manage their business.

Overall we see that Digital India is very good for the Indian IT Industry.

Innovation and best Customer Experience have always been pillars of Enjay. Hence, our business mantra is "Empowering Enterprise with Ennovation". We are probably the only IT product company which has its head office and main development centre in a small village in Rural India.”

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COVER STORY

GIANTS IN INDIAN ICT INDUSTRY Channel to evolve and grow....

Over the years, technology has revolutionized various aspects of life - how we learn, communicate, travel and work. The newer technologies that we intend to adopt in the coming year are a mix of high quality yet simple interfaces for data entry. The newer technologies will help us to connect to external systems with a level of reliability which is unheard as of now. In this endeavour channel partners will have to embrace this technology and will play a very pivotal role in educating customers and helping them to adopt it without dramatic changes to the way their businesses are conducted.

The Channel is expected to help business embrace new technologies by offering consulting services and handhold the businesses embracing the technology to complete the journey of transformation.

While these are opportunities for the channel to grow and evolve, there are also many aspects which pose big challenge to the vendors.

One such challenge is holding inventory by distributors, which is why corporates are now beginning to focus on retailing. Vendors are now gradually reaching directly to the retailers, thereby abolishing the concept of sub-distributors. As a result of this, National Distributors are playing the role of a regional distributor and many of the large vendors are now counting on them for specific products and regions.

It is also becoming evident that to reach out to large consumer audience, vendors have been taking the e-commerce route (through companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba and others) to clear old inventories and a few new arrivals.

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In our recent survey, another e-commerce player, Naaptol, which is funded by Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mitsui & Co. that owns and operates TV shopping & e-commerce platform targets tier-IV and tier-VI cities in the country.

This online selling module of Naaptol competes with Reliance owned HomeShop 18, Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest TV shopping site as well as with TVC Skyshop and Star CJ. The Indian retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-paced industries due to the entry of several new players.

The exponential growth of e-commerce business has given risen a number of regulatory issues and legal questions. The new FDI Rules issued by Department of Industrial Policy and Planning (DIPP) have been introduced which have barred online marketplaces, with foreign investments, from selling products from sellers in which the online marketplaces hold a stake. The good part is vendors are managing to sell their old inventories through online. Their brand showrooms on the other hand are witnessing slow business, where vendors keep the latest products only for the branding point of view.

There is a strong representation from various trade associations across the country to pass the draft policy without making any changes in the policy under pressure that gives undue advantage to e-commerce companies. Industry sources say online retailers set up new structures to get around those loopholes by mandating other sellers to buy from those large sellers and then in turn sell those products on e-marketplaces.

However, some experts believe that lawyers will find a way to work around the updated guidelines as well.

“SMB IS ONE OF OUR FASTEST GROWING PARTNER LED SEGMENT”

“WE WANT OUR PARTNERS TO TRANSFORM FROM BEING A HARDWARE RESELLER TO RESELLING SOLUTIONS”

JOYBRATA MUKHERJEE

ANIL SETHI

Director - Channel, SI, Alliances and Service Providers, HPE India

Vice President, Channels Dell EMC India

“We have been at the forefront in enabling our channel partners to provide the best solutions, which help customers to deliver business outcomes. This year, we expect to witness a more edgecentric, cloud-enabled and data-driven enterprise approach, alongside flexible, consumption-based IT. We have always considered our partners as an extension of our own team and will continue with our unwavering commitment towards them. Through our enhanced Partner Ready Program, we are enabling our partners to earn more by increasing their focus on high-growth areas of the market. Additionally, the program will also ensure they improve their skills to more effectively sell solutions in the future through new training and competencies.

SMB is one of our fastest growing segment which is partner led. The SMB sales team works closely with our channel partners to drive aggressive growth in SMB. We are also seeing exciting growth opportunities in telecom, public sector and banking.”

“WE HAVE A DEDICATED TEAM TO RUN CHANNEL PROGRAMS AND INCREASE OUR FOOTPRINT”

“Channel partners, system integrators and distributors have played a critical role in empowering Dell Technologies customers on their path towards digital transformation. The Dell Technologies Partner Program has been instrumental in ensuring profitability and scale for all our partners in India and across the globe. We believe that the partner program will further catalyse our go-to-market strategy and business growth.

We really want our partners to make the transformation from just being a hardware reseller to reselling solutions that meet business objectives. They may not be able to move 100 percent in quick time but they can at least start the journey. It will be a good start for partners to sell more lines of business at their customer end, for example, they can sell storage or networking products than just selling a server. We would like our partners to give us candid feedback.

While we are doing well in our results, we definitely do not want to be overconfident. We remain humble as we want to hear the feedback as there might be many things we still need to improve on."

“ACER ENSURES PARTNERS TO GROW & EVOLVE AND RESPOND TO CHANGING MARKET NEEDS”

VINAY SINHA

CHANDRAHAS PANIGRAHI

India Business Lead and Senior Director, India Sales – AMD

CMO & Consumer Business Head Acer India

“With digital transformation changing the dynamics of businesses, modern workloads are led by innovations with deeper adoption of emerging technologies such as data, cloud, AI and IoT among others. This further enables organizations to let channel partners take more charge and cater to the changing requirements of the end customers. Channel partners will have to play the role of strategic consultants and build on their specializations to add value to customers.

At AMD, we have a dedicated team whose primary objective is to run an SMB and channel program to increase our footprint in these segments, by adding more experienced and effective channel partners to our network.

We will also continue supporting our channel partners’ market specific initiatives and ensure enough market exposure is in place to a) expand partner network to new users, and b) increase mindshare of the value and benefits that AMD has to offer.”

“Acer that has always been a very channel friendly company has devised a range of programs for partners for 2019, starting from regular product training, introduction of thin and light series of products (both gaming and mainstream) and strategic programs which will help the partners to grow.

Acer is working on ease of doing business by partners with us by streamlining processes, providing the right sales and marketing materials, progress reports and many others. In addition to these, we also look at specific regions, the potential to grow and acceptability of our products into that existing ecosystems. We also look at them as an extension of our business; for instance, with Microsoft ending their support with Windows 7, customers will gradually have to shift to Windows 10 which means, channel partners will need redirect the end users towards modern PCs which are faster, sleeker and feature rich for better customer experience.

By introducing the right product to the right customer channel partners will always play a key role in providing extensive market reach and coverage to introduce the new technologies to the market."

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COVER STORY FOR LENOVO DCG, 90% OF BUSINESS COMES FROM CHANNEL PARTNERS

PARTNERS PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE FOR ORACLE IN PUSHING ITS CLOUD GROWTH

ASHISH TANEJA

RITESH SYAL

Channel Head Lenovo DCG India

Senior Director and Head – Alliances & Channels, Oracle India

“In 2019, we anticipate an overall transition where we will see enterprises moving towards Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) through hyper converged Infrastructure (HCI). Additionally, we see emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High Powered Computing (HPC), along with consolidation of cloud as some of the trends that will impact business in 2019.

These trends is changing business models, and mean that channel partners have to adapt and have a strategy that caters to their customers. At Lenovo DCG, we understand that it is important to understand the customer’s goals and their need for change, and we will continue to work closely with our partners to enhance and monetize their specializations.

“In the digital economy, we foresee a lot of opportunities for our partners to drive business transformation for customers. For Oracle, channel partners play an important role in pushing the overall cloud growth in India, which is one of the fastest growing markets for Oracle APAC. With cloud as the foundation for success, channel partners today have numerous opportunities around the implementation of new, innovative technologies.

Our objective is to be the partner of choice. As a channel-first company with 90% of business coming from our channel partners, we work closely with our channel partners by providing them with tools to harness their specialization.”

Two key growth areas for Oracle India in 2019 are: a) emerging as the cloud SaaS leader, leading with cloud ERP; (b) help Indian organisations upgrade to the technology of tomorrow, today with generational innovations like Oracle Gen 2 cloud and Oracle Autonomous Database - the world’s first and only ‘self-driving, selfsecuring and self-repairing’ database. This will also result in building a robust cloud service partner network and expand cloud adoption among Oracle’s large customer base in India.”

“OUR CHANNEL STRATEGY IS TO ARM CUSTOMERS WITH CLOUD, FLASH AND HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE"

“OUR GOAL IS TO SET UP A SKILLED TEAM OF PARTNERS, COMMITTED TO GROWING WITH INFOR”

KAUSHAL VELURI

JONATHAN WOOD

Director - Channels & Alliances NetApp India & SAARC

General Manager, India, Middle East, and Africa (IMEA) - Infor

“2019 will be an important year for the IT channel industry as customers continue to become more data driven and look for products and strategies that will make their digital transformation journey smooth and easy. We aim is to continue educating our customers and partners so that they understand data, know how to manage and analyse it and get insights from it.

“Channel partners play a crucial role in Infor’s growth story as they help in penetrating the breadth and depth of the market by offering strategic industry-specific cloud capabilities. Infor has been committed to the growth of our partner network, called the Infor Partner Network (IPN).

Our channel strategy for 2019 is to arm our customers with cloud, flash and hyper-converged infrastructure. Since our partners play a major role in the go-to market strategy, we ensure that they are equipped with the right skill-set so that they can confidently talk to the end customers.

We equip our partners with world-class solutions, the highest quality of training, support and enablement in the industry. Our goal is to organize a skilled team of partners, committed to growing with Infor, expanding their businesses and staying ahead of the market, while providing customers with innovative technology suites that are beautiful, functional, and easy to use.

Our channel partner ecosystem is a comprehensive one consisting of three key aspects – innovation, skill-set and revenue. We have various programs and summits which will help them to invest in sales and marketing related activities, acquire new customers, and expand in cities or markets.”

In India, we see great growth opportunity in the SMB and enterprises sector, pegging growth from tier-2 Indian cities. We are ramping up our channel business by investing and recruiting more partners in key geographies, and recruiting world class channel managers to support this growth.”

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IN 2019, AVAYA LOOKS TO INNOVATE, TRANSFORM, AND GROW IN VALUE TO ITS CHANNEL PARTNERS

“PARTNERS ARE THE STRONGEST AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PILLARS SUPPORTING KASPERSKY BUSINESS”

SACHIN VIG

ANAND SHRINGI

Sales Director Emerging Enterprises Avaya India

Channel Head- South Asia Kaspersky Lab

“Over the course of 2018, we have made significant investments in technology partnerships which have paid dividends, leading to fully formed solutions, that are now available on Avaya’s platforms and, crucially, to our channel partners.

And lastly, Avaya will be focused on inclusivity and open innovation. We aim to empower our channel partners to provide holistic solutions to their customers through our open platforms (APIs), creating opportunities for innovation-minded channel partners and ‘take the lead on innovation’.”

“In the very first quarter of 2019, we at Kaspersky Lab have announced our new partner program- Kaspersky United. It is a global partner program that enables Kaspersky Lab’s partners – including resellers, service providers, and system integrators, to focus on selling the Kaspersky Lab services and products that match their own specializations. This is a step by Kaspersky to be transparent and rewarding to the partners globally at an equal level.

We have always said this that our partners are the strongest and the most important pillars supporting our business. And to empower them for us means indirectly empowering our business. In 2019 we are determined to focus on conducting more channel partner trainings, better schemes which are rewarding for both channel and consumers. Just like they have bestowed their faith upon us,partners should maintain the same and we together will do wonders and achieve great success in 2019.

As they are our channel to reach to end consumers, we need to completely rely on them as and when we adapt to new technologies.

We will soon be announcing the new schemes that we have chalked out for Q1 and Q2."

“OUR STRONG TEAM OF CHANNEL PARTNERS ENSURE WIDER REACH AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION FOR XEOX”

“WE HELP PARTNERS UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER BUSINESS NEEDS & PROVIDING OVERALL SECURITY”

In 2019, we are looking to further innovate, transform, and grow in value and relevance to our channel partners. This year, Avaya will be focused further on three major aspects to drive its channel strategy. First is an intense focus on the cloud. We aim to make cloud services available to every partner irrespective of their business size/ model. Secondly, the focus is going to be primarily on enabling the partner community to move from one value proposition to more advanced ones.

VINEET GEHANI

VINAYAKA B S

Director – Technology and Channels Xerox India

Channel Alliance Leader, India & SAARC Check Point

“Channel partners are critical to Xerox India business. They help the company gain important market feedback, insights and customer expectations. We have seen about 30% growth in channel partner numbers in FY18 and we attribute this success to the new initiatives undertaken towards channel development.

With an aim to deliver new value and aid growth for our channel partners, we have recently announced our new Global Partner Program. The globally acclaimed program will help accredited partners expand into new sources of predictable and profitable revenue with award winning products, supplies, and solutions that are easy to sell and easy to use. In 2019, our efforts would be directed to ensure that our partners reap greater revenue benefits with Xerox.

We would urge all partners to best leverage the provided technologies and the tools available to them, while remembering that Xerox is always ready to support them further.

As an organisation, we are focused on further innovating with digital solutions. We also share space with major IT players in the areas of automation and digitization – and together with our channel network, we are working towards tapping these significant newer opportunities."

“We shall see a paradigm shift in terms of the growth of channel partners in 2019. This is more likely owing to the fact of evolution of more sophisticated Cyber Threats in 2019. We are empowering our Channel with solutions & architecture to address the gap in terms of the attack vectors & the solutions.

We are helping our Channel Partners with the consultative approach, helping them understand customer business needs & providing overall security beyond traditional controls. The emphasis is on educating our channel community with not only the latest solutions, but also help them understand & disseminate the relevant Industry regulations & compliance with our Infinity Architecture which helps customers overcome their business challenges.

We will be launching our new Channel Partner Program “Check PointS” in April 2019 which will ensure Channel Partners working with us more cohesively. This program will work in parallel with our existing Stars Partner Program in 2019 & will replace the same in 2020.”

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COVER STORY “THERE IS A HUGE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL ACROSS ALL INDUSTRIES IN RPA FOR CHANNEL”

“OUR STRATEGY IS TO WORK WITH PARTNERS WHO SEE OPPORTUNITY IN THE CLOUD BUSINESS”

ASHUTOSH KAPOOR

MURALI URS

VP of Partnerships UiPath India

Country Manager - India Barracuda Networks

“RPA is a new area where we see lot of opportunities for channel. Just in over a year we have identified and worked with over 65 automation specialist VARs who are serving some of the largest Indian enterprises.

We see specialization within the channel ecosystem based on implementation services, managed services, ISVs, training, and industry-specific expertise. The year would also see channel partners move deeper into areas which are a combination of AI, ML, and RPA. So there is a huge untapped potential across all industries for RPA. The role of the channel will be to help customers get on to a rapid adoption path of new digital technologies. The channel will have to develop expertise in RPA, AI, and ML by training and/ or employing the right talent with digital technology skills and develop an expertise in understanding business processes.We have embarked on a multi-tier channel strategy in India and had appointed Ingram Micro as the national distributor to serve the needs of our Indian channel partners.”

“The growth of channel partners will be more driven by the adoption of cloud. With dwindling margins and increasing competition, the need for channel partners to focus on services in and around cloud will define their growth for 2019 and beyond.

“FORTINET PARTNERS CAN PROVIDE VALUE IN SIMPLIFYING AND SECURING THE NETWORKS OF CUSTOMERS”

“CITRIX LOOKS FORWARD TO WORKING CLOSELY WITH ITS PARTNERS IN 2019”

Our strategy is to work with partners who see opportunity in the cloud business – both for security and data protection. Barracuda has this unique story which helps partners to open new doors in existing customers and also open doors are new customers as well.

Evolve and scale and adopt -these are the 3 important words the partner community will need to be the mantra.”

JITENDRA GHUGHAL

RAGHURAM KRISHNAN

Director Channels, India & SAARC Fortinet

Director – Partner Citrix India

“Partners have a sizable business opportunity in helping customers successfully address today’s security challenges. Customers need to automate their security hygiene measures and replace isolated security devices with an integrated security fabric architecture that can seamlessly span the growing attack surface. Leveraging threat assessments, expertise, and centralization, partners can reduce complexity and enhance security for their customers, while growing their own business.

Security services offered by partners ensure that organizations of all sizes can consistently receive the security support they need across their entire security lifecycle, including planning, designing, implementing, integrating, managing, operating, and optimizing the security infrastructure—all provided by experienced security professionals with broad visibility into global threat trends and strategies.

As organizations seek ways to reduce operational complexity, partners can play a role in assistingto select and integrate tools and streamlining security processes. This is place where Fortinet partners can provide value in simplifying and securing the networks of their customers, while growing their own business.”

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Barracuda has one of early adapters of cloud as a platform and we have developed all most all of our products to suit the cloud adoption by our customers. This inturn gives all our channel partners to work with us and offer a portfolio of solutions that will help customers to secure their cloud adoption.

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“Citrix has a robust partner ecosystem and we are quite proud of the work they have done in the previous years. With our solutions around workspace and networking, we at Citrix are leading this space. With the proliferation and growth of digital tools through technologically enhanced workspaces, we look forward to working closely with our partners in 2019 to bring about a change in the current industry landscape.

Citrix has the solutions that customers need for a complete digitized work suite and provides them with an opportunity to accelerate at a faster pace. Partners that embrace intelligent workspaces along with our networking solutions will enjoy multi fold advantage.We expect 2019 to be a great year for us and our channel partners, as they will experience immense opportunities in growing their business with us. This will also be the year that we substantially grow our market and categorically move away from virtualization.

We can safely conclude that Citrix not only has the solutions that customers need but is also playing a key role in helping them in their digital transformation journey."

NETMAGIC SUGGESTS PARTNERS TO BECOME MORE SOLUTION CENTRIC AND PROBLEM SOLVERS

“TALLY PARTNERS WILL HELP EXISTING BUSINESSES SMOOTHLY TRANSIT TO THE NEWER TECHNOLOGIES”

SHANTARAM SHINDE

JOYCE RAY

VP & National Head - Channel, Business NTT Com-Netmagic

India Business Head Tally Solutions

“In 2018, our traditional SI partners brought in few big collocation and data centres. In 2019, we expect this to grow by about 30% to 35%. The drivers for this growth will be multi cloud, private cloud, SD-WAN, and security services. Two other main contributors will be ‘born in the cloud’ and application integration partners. Changing partner profiles is what we see as a positive outlook for 2019.

Our aim is to suggest partners to become more solution centric and problem solvers as opposed to reselling the available set of services. Customers will also look at them as a solution or consulting partner with this kind of an approach rather than a reseller for a particular OEM. Our partner programmes are detailed to ensure that there is no room for misunderstanding, doubts, or error. The key in all of them is simplicity and ensuring both short- and long-term success.

Going forward, we will ensure constant and transparent conversations regarding our partner programmes with all concerned – as has been the norm always. Clear and simple communication is the gateway to achieving the desired objectives."

CHANNEL PARTNERS ALIGNING TO INDUSTRY 4.0 PRACTICES SHALL CONTINUE TO SEE GROWTH

“2019 is going to be an exciting year for all of us. Continuing with the efforts that we have been putting over the last two years to help businesses automate accounting, we will focus on connecting businesses to each other, and ensure that they are able to fully benefit from the newer ways of working and technologies that are available to us. In this task, our partners will play a very important and pivotal role in ensuring that the 1.6 million existing businesses have a smooth transition to the newer technologies.

The channel strategy for 2019 for Tally will be a mix of growing capability and capacity of our partners across India and countries outside India. In this we are deeply committed to ensuring profitable growth for our partners which translates to small partners becoming 5-6 member organizations, medium partners becoming 10-20 member and our large partners now progressively becoming more than 100 plus member organizations.

The key message from all of us at Tally to our partners who are an integral part of our family is for them to prepare their organisations for an exciting decade ahead. In doing so our partners have proven time and again that they have adapted quickly, learned very fast and indeed helped businesses in this transformation journey."

“OUR MANTRA IS TO WORK WITH HANDPICKED PARTNERS AND TRAIN THEM IN LATEST TECHNOLOGIES”

AMIT GUJRAL

SHIBU PAUL

CMO LG Electronics India

Vice President – International Sales Array Networks

“The business construct in India is such where channel partners are integral part of businesses. The fundamental constructs of business remain same and thus growing economy based growth in business is attributing to the growth of channel partners as well. However, the dynamism of consumer behaviour on channel adoption is varying and therefore channel partners who are aligning to Industry 4.0 practices shall continue to see growth.

Increased penetration to rural markets via adequate channel and significant balance between offline and online channels is what is being envisaged by LG. We have dedicated BUs under the umbrella of B2B catering to enterprise needs and strategies are drawn for multi-fold growth in this segment.

Certainly AI and IoT are the biggest change that constitutes this Industrial revolution 4.0 and these technology applications shall enter in every sphere of life and basis the use case applicability, these shall be adapted in all functions of business including channel.”

“The Channel is witnessing a gradual transition from the traditional asset model to an asset less model driven by cloud technology. Solutions like AI & ML are becoming more relevant to business.

Our mantra is to work with handpicked channel partners, train them and help them create build sustainable and profitable business models. Our strategy is to empower our partners by offering solutions on our patented Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) in Networking & Security platform. With the help of our dedicated channel ecosystem, we are focused on developing a skilled pool of resources. Moreover we will be investing in training and certifying our partners as well as joining customer engagement programs.

In order to ensure that channel partners are rewarded for all their efforts, we will be assuring maximum margins in all Array deals.

Array has the potential to make a difference to the channel community by creating a highly trained channel ecosystem capable of propelling the company towards the emerging trends.”

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COVER STORY “BARCO WANTS PARTNERS TO BECOME CONSULTANTS TO CUSTOMERS AND NOT ONLY JUST SELL PRODUCTS”

RAMYA CHATTERJEE

HARSHAVARDHAN KATHALEY

Director – Sales (Visualization & Entertainment) Barco India

Director – Channel Sales (India and SAARC) Juniper Networks

“‘Empowering’ & ‘Enabling’ the channel partners are the two core strategies of Barco’s GTM in 2019. We have devised multiple partners programs to help them be abreast of our products and technology at large.Further, we are aggressively focusing on onboarding new partners and hope to double our partner count by 2020.

We have different nature of partners to cater to different industry verticals like Audio Visual (AV) Partners, Office Automation (OA) partners, IT & Networking partners, Security & Surveillance partners, Education vertical focused partners and so on.

The partner community needs to play an integral role because we have an indirect selling strategy and that’s why our partners become all the more pivotal. As we move forward and technology continues to drive change across businesses irrespective of scale or size, it is important for partners to evolve as well. Partners will have to become consultants wherein they are not only selling but consulting customers to bring the best possible outcome.”

“2019 WILL BE A YEAR OF FOCUS ON THE ENTERPRISE FOR SONICWALL”

“Juniper’s Enterprise and Commercial business has been growing in India over the years. Our channel base has also grown accordingly and we see this growth to continue in 2019. We will also be focusing on new geographies in India as well as South Asian markets with an aim to acquire new customers along with our partners.

Juniper’s partner program framework is the most dynamic in nature towards aligning and addressing various aspects of partnership. The new 2019 Juniper Partner Advantage (JPA) deliver programs with reduced partnership requirements, DEAL-REG, Rebates, Rewards, MDF, tools and training to make it easier for partners to win with Juniper.

Partners are at the center of our “deliberately dependent” goto-market strategy. However, conversations with customers are increasingly centred on cloud & automation. Hence, it is extremely important for partners to invest in enhancing the knowledge and skillsets in keeping with the technological timeframe on cloud and automation.”

“WE ARE FACILITATING A GROWTH FOR PARTNERS THAT KEEPS PACE WITH THE DISRUPTION IN INDUSTRY”

DEBASHISH MUKHERJEE

BHAVIN BHATT

Country Director India & SAARC SonicWall

Regional Director M.Tech India & SAARC

“With the trend moving towards software define everything, the partners will be seen embracing the new wave of technological transformation including multi cloud strategy.We will also see some partners offering solutions around predictive security technologies and holistic security platforms combined with services.

Partners moving to MSSP model to deliver security solutions toSMB/SME customers would be on the growth trajectory. In short, growth of channel partners in 2019 would be directly proportional to their ability to adopt newer technologies and investing on skill development apart from adding value to customers’ business through services.

As a channel-driven OEM we ensure that we offer our channel an ecosystem that helps them evolve into a solution centric organization.

At SonicWall we have a very comprehensive channel strategy and we continue to invest in building a world-class channel programfocused on empowering the channel ecosystem by providing the best-in-class pre and post-sales support, training and certification programs, access to award-winning SecureFirst Partner program.

With a future-thinking mindset, 2019 will be a year of focus on the enterprise for SonicWall.”

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JUNIPER BELIEVES ITS CHANNEL BASE TO CONTINUE GROWING IN 2019

February 2019 www.varindia.com

“The relationships with our channel partners are proactive and closely knit, and we expect to see considerable growth not only in 2019 but also in the years to follow.

The number of channel partners may not increase substantially, however contributions to revenue from established partners are well on course to be over the previous year. We are facilitating a growth that keeps pace with the disruption in Industry.

Cloud, IoT, blockchain and AI are disrupting the IT industry and in particular to Cyber security. Cloud and AI are currently on the forefront of this disruption. Partners will be the interface to the customers and will highlight these new product lines.

They will introduce and communicate advantages of having a single solution that is futuristic, addresses multiple threats and safeguards the Networks at an affordable price point when compared with existing Hardware replacements and upgrades.”

WESTERN DIGITAL SEES A WONDERFUL GROWTH OPPORTUNITY ACROSS ALL SEGMENTS FOR ITS PARTNERS

“CHANNEL HAS TO REDEFINE THEIR BUSINESS MODEL AND MOVE AWAY FROM ‘THE TRANSACTION MIND-SET’

JAGANATHAN CHELLIAH

B S RAO

Director; Marketing Western Digital India

VP – Marketing CtrlS Datacenters

“We believe in 3E strategy, which is enablement, engagement and enrichment. Enabling the channel is always our prime focus through proper education and training. We always engage our channel partners through key marketing initiatives. We have a well-structured rewards to motivate our channel partners to encourage them for their consistent performance. We will continue to follow these in 2019 as well. Specific initiatives for channel partners to promote are being rolled out in this calendar year.”

KHALID WANI Director; Channel Sales Western Digital India

“We see a wonderful opportunity for growth across all segments, be it consumer or SMB channels. Everybody is creating lot of content now a days and trend is increasing day by day. Now consumers also realize that backup is very important whether this backup is for their PC or mobile phones. We believe that this realization is going to drive the data storage market in 2019.”

“As most information technology decision makers continue to embrace change, and align information technology with business, channel partners will have a key role in playing the role of a catalyst in their transformation journey.

The Year 2019 can be a productive and profitable year provided they will enhance their selling capabilities, invest in re-skilling their technical teams especially pre-sales, service delivery (if applicable), revamp their business model and strike new partnerships. Technologies such as Cloud, IoT, Analytics, 3D Printing virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) and opportunities such as digitization of records, migration of legacy infrastructure and applications to cloud offer enormous opportunities to players in the channel ecosystem.

Channel players should move away from ‘The Transaction Mind-set’; they will have to redefine their business model, re-skill people, and transform their selling from transaction based selling to consultative selling. They will have to build their own Centers of Excellence (CoEs) to deliver the right technology to the right customer.

Since the early 1990, channel ecosystem has been engaging customers in transactions by selling equipment, software and deploying them. They responded to the needs of information technology decision makers, however they were all treated as selling transactions. However, since most businesses are under immense pressure, they are seeking channel partners to play a key role as a consultant – advising them how to migrate from a legacy application (or) infrastructure, how to secure their business from security threats, whether or not a particular technology would be suitable. Hence, keeping in mind the expectations of customers, it is time for channels to shift their gears."

“PARTNERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO INVEST IN TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE AND HANDLE DEPLOYMENTS OF ALL SIZES” VIVEK TYAGI Business Director; Enterprise and Embedded Western Digital India

“Data explosion is happening everywhere and we see it as a winwin opportunity for our channel partners and us. We also expect NVMe technology to disrupt the Enterprise storage market with improvement in latency and performance. Our channel partners are going to be agents for this transformation and we expect them to play a very important role for Western Digital.”

ANKUR GOEL India Channel Head Plantronics

“For 2019, channel partners should invest on enhancing the overall ‘Experience’ for the end customers. “Video is the new voice” goes the thinking in many organizations today, where employees are increasingly working remotely from home offices, satellite offices, client sites and the road. Channel partners should invest in enhancing the customer service excellence and focus on investing in technology infrastructure to handle deployments of all sizes and complexities and training users to improve adoption and finally, to maintain the deployment”.

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“Our mission is to make sure that all the innovations organization is doing are for human progress” With a focus on human progress through technological innovations, Dell EMC aims to provide data protection from edge, endpoint or central. The company understands the importance of data and the evolving data protection landscape. Discussing about all this, in a chat with VARINDIA Ripu Bajwa, Director & General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell EMC, India reveals about the company’s IDPA DP4400 solution for mid-sized organizations As data has become today’s new oil, the data protection landscape is facing a lot of disruptions, and enterprises are also pulling up their socks to protect their data assets from internal and external threats. Every organization is realizing the value of data and innovation is driving digital transformation. So for protection of data, innovative solutions are equally important. These days, CIOs and CISOs are looking at modernizing data protection in terms of backup and restore as the events of compromises worldwide are increasing every day.

“We are witnessing a lot of disruptions in the marketspace. Enterprises are gearing up towards meeting internal and external threats; data is becoming the new capital on which businesses are running and organizations are differentiating themselves based on the information assets as well as the insights they are able to gather, all of which is happening more online. Today, the value of data is being increasingly felt at all levels. So while innovation is driving digital transformation, it is important to have the best-of-breed innovation. You got to have the protection of data and assets. Earlier, people used to look at having a copy of their key assets on offline. Today, they make sure that data protection is as good as you are producing data. As organizations are getting agile every day, they need to make sure that all the critical assets, data, information are protected almost always, available and accessible from any device and securely transacted between organizations.

All transactions happening through different devices or various entities themselves, all the information needs to be protected. Innovation and privacy are the two things which go hand in hand. Most of the CIOs and CISOs are gearing up to look at modernizing the data protection landscape which means getting more modern when it comes to back up and restore making sure that Disaster Recovery is available all the time and ready to meet any kind of accidence and even be ready for cyberattacks,” explains

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Ripu Bajwa, Director & General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell EMC, India

STRATEGY

The strength of Dell EMC in the data protection landscape lies in R&D and it is the only company to provide end-to-end data protection.

“This is the place where a lot of companies are entering and they need funding because they are not themselves capable to undertake a lot of research. We are positioned as leaders for many quarters because of the size and our innovation is to suit the best practices of large organizations.

We have our own largest R&D center. We utilize Dell Technologies’ entire group, leverage it as the most formidable one.

We are the first and only one to give endto-end data protection. It means we protect any kind of application which means any kind of data under any kind of Service Level Agreement (SLA) which means some people want it continuously available or a backup copy or a snapshot or a long-term recovery archival and on any kind of target which can be a server or multi-cloud so we can store it as per the need of the customer. On top of this we have a wide ecosystem of our applications type vendors. The approach we take is very unique and it is end to end,” states Ripu.

MID-SIZED ORGANIZATIONS

For the mid-sized organizations which want data protection in one appliance, Dell EMC has come up with a unique solution IDPA DP4400 which provides efficiency and a high level of deduplication. It is very simple, automated and organizations can also leverage cloud.

“We have launched IDPA DP4400 last year and it’s been a great success worldwide. In India, mid-sized organizations look at data protection as all-in-one appliance.”

"We have made sure that through this IDPA DP4400, customers can get started very simply and it is very smartly done in terms of software and the customer does not have to configure backup software or hardware, it is all built in one. It is meant to handle multiple use-cases like VM Virtual workloads, interact with other applications and deduplication happens much more efficiently. This appliance gives a very high level of deduplication which is 55:1. It actually means that instead of keeping 55 terabytes of data, it keeps in one terabyte. This is the single largest benefit and secondly it is very simple, automated and if you are ready to put data the

mid-sized organizations can leverage the cloud.

They can go to any public cloud provider and can store data to that cloud. Data continues to remain in their control because this appliance keeps the meta data. It has the intelligence to bring it back from the Cloud in the deduplication manner so it is very cost-effective and simple. So for mid-sized organizations this is one starting step,” discusses Ripu.

FOCUS

Talking about the focus of the company, Ripu reveals, “We are doing a lot in the technology space as you can imagine Dell Technologies is the leading infrastructure player.

We have our various business units, address new workloads. Our mission is to make sure that all the innovations organization is doing are for human progress. Under that guideline, whatever we are doing in terms of protecting data as it is getting generated from the edge or the endpoint or central, this data transfers very securely in an encrypted manner across to the distributed data center where processing happens and also for deep learning or insights it goes to cloud or multi-cloud. We move the data on to those operating environment and also seamlessly bring it back so that each and every point is protected and also actionable insights when they are required can be done efficiently.” n Aparna Mullick aparna@varindia.com

Voto India focuses on small offline retail store in A-class towns and non-metros Voto sees huge opportunity in the India market and understanding the nature of the market, the company is gaining foothold in the market with a good channel strategy. It has also realized the importance of service support and it has a wide network of it. In a chat with VARINDIA, Santosh Singh, National Sales Head, Voto India, discusses about the India market, trends in the tier-2 and -3 cities, channel strategy, R&D, etc.

When worldwide smartphone market is degrowing, the Indian smartphone market is progressing by leaps and bounds. The China smartphone market has deteriorated by 15.5%, whereas, as per a IDC report, the India market grew by 14.5 per cent in 2018. Voto is targeting to sell 150 million smartphones in the current year. The smartphone company is trying to place itself right in the market by following the strategy of best price, quality and services.

“Every brand has some uniqueness compared to their competitors, to give the best offers in the best price segment.

Worldwide, smartphone market has degrown.

In fact, China, the biggest market, has degrown by 15.5% and clocked around 398 million handsets during this financial year, whereas the Indian market is in the growth trajectory, and we are expecting to sell around 150 million smartphones only in the current year, which was 133 million last year and overall mobile phone can do more than 300 million. In that scenario, everyone has an opportunity to do good if we place right in the market, and Voto is trying to do the same by giving the best price, best quality and best services. Voto Mobiles aspires to be one of the leading smartphone companies by offering its superior handsets at the most competitive prices,” explains Santosh Singh, National Sales Head, Voto India.

STRATEGY

Understanding the hyper-competitive market of India, Voto’s market strategy of differentiated sales and distribution has helped the brand to strengthen its position.

It is emphasizing on its retail presence and focusing on states with high teledensity to woo customers.

through 1,400 service centres all across pan India and are covering around 4,500 pin codes. Indian consumer wants peace of mind, and we are trying to achieve the same by giving the best price, best quality and best services.”

TRENDS

Infinity display and Notch screen are the ongoing trends among the smartphone buyers. Foldable phone, screen and battery will be in demand in the coming year. In the tier-2, -3 and rural areas, consumers are price conscious.

"THE CHINA SMARTPHONE MARKET HAS DETERIORATED BY 15.5%, WHEREAS, IN FACT, CHINA, THE BIGGEST MARKET, HAS DEGROWN BY 15.5% AND CLOCKED AROUND 398 MILLION HANDSETS DURING THIS FINANCIAL YEAR, WHEREAS THE INDIAN MARKET IS IN THE GROWTH TRAJECTORY"

SANTOSH SINGH

National Sales Head, Voto India

“Our differentiated offline strategy for sales and distribution has worked well for the brand in gaining a foothold in India's hypercompetitive smartphone market. We are focusing on a network of small offline retail stores in A-class towns and non-metro cities to sell our smartphones. Currently, the brand has a network of more than 10,000 retailers and 150 distributors. We are strongest in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Eastern belts.

Mainly, we are focusing on the states which have high teledensity to capture more and more customers,” reveals Singh.

Talking about the service support Singh adds, “After-sales service is the backbone of any company in the technical field. We already provide customer service terms in place where we try to reach out to all our customers. Currently, we provide servicing

“Infinity (18:9) and Notch (19:9) screen sizes are the talk of the town this year, whereas foldable phones will be the next flavour of market in the coming year. Screen size, battery because of usage will be in demand in the ensuing year. RAM and ROM will not excite the customer as majority of the people didn't utilize the capacity and it is not adding much value compared to other things which manufacturers can put to differentiate their product from competitors. In the tier-2, tier-3 markets and in rural areas, consumers are cautious about their spending behaviour. We have our product line starting from mid-segment to most catering price point. Full view to top-notch and then water drop with all variants would be our current lineup till now,” says Singh.

R&D

Voto believes that R&D is an important aspect for a technology company and the brand endeavours to deliver innovative product to stay ahead of the competition.

“R&D is the backbone of any company and without that existence will be a question mark for any brand. We aim to deliver innovative products with a technology which is ahead of competition. We have our specialized R&D in China. We manufacture for many brands. So for that you need to keep yourselves updated in the stipulated time frame. We don't have any plan right now to put our R&D over here in India. We do believe in the government’s Initiative of Phase Manufacturing Program and for that we are putting our bit to make it possible for Voto,” states Singh. n Aparna Mullick aparna@varindia.com

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Movers & Shakers

Intel finally names Bob Swan as its CEO

After half a year's search, Intel has announced that its board of directors has named Robert (Bob) Swan as chief executive officer. Swan, 58, who has been serving as Intel’s interim CEO for seven months and as chief financial officer since 2016, is the seventh CEO in the 50 years of Intel's operation. Swan has also been elected to Intel’s board of directors.

It has been reported earlier that Swan did not want the job.

Shareholders will be watching for Swan to continue diversifying Intel’s portfolio outside of the PC business.

Commvault ropes in Sanjay Mirchandani into its leadership team

Commvault has announced the appointment of Sanjay Mirchandani as President and Chief Executive Officer and member of t h e Board, effective immediately. Mirchandani, previously the CEO of Puppet, an Oregon-based IT automation company, replaces retiring President and CEO Bob Hammer. Hammer has led the company for more than two decades, growing it to a $3.1 billion market cap. The company has also announced the appointment of Nick Adamo as Chairman of the Board, replacing Hammer who will remain on the Board as Chairman Emeritus. Both changes will become effective April 18, 2019.

P K Purwar to be the next BSNL CMD

The Department of Personal & Training, Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) has announced that Pravin Kumar Purwar will be the next Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), who will commence office from July 1.

Pravin Kumar Purwar will replace Anupam Shrivastava, who has been the CMD of BSNL since January 2015. Shrivastava will be retiring in June this year. Under the leadership of Shrivastava, BSNL took many initiatives that included a consumer-first approach and has led enterprise businesses to contribute close to 30% of the overall revenue.

Purwar was amongst the nine applicants who had applied for the post.

Comviva appoints Ramy Moselhy as new Market Head for MENA region

Comviva has appointed Ramy Moselhy as the new Market Unit Head for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This appointment comes at a time when Comviva is aggressively focusing on expanding its footprint across the MENA region to achieve the next growth phase.

Ramy brings with him almost two decades of experience in a wide range of multinational environments in sales management roles. He brings a strong cross geographical and culture team integration and working experience in the Middle East, Europe and Eurasia regions with solid sales achievements.

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Reliance Entertainment appoints new CEO – Content, Digital & Gaming

Reliance Entertainment has announced the elevation of Shibasish Sarkar as Group CEO – Content, Digital & Gaming.

Shibasish is a Chartered Accountant by training and an entertainment industry professional with over 25 years of experience. He joined Reliance Entertainment in 2007 as CFO, and thereafter took on a larger role as Chief Operating Officer, developing tremendous operational and financial experience across films and TV production and distribution, digital content, gaming, etc. In 2018, Shibasish led the highly successful process on behalf of Reliance Entertainment for listing its Codemasters, on the London Stock Exchange.

DigitalOcean names Barry Cooks as its CTO

DigitalOcean has announced the appointment of Barry Cooks as chief technology officer. In this role, Cooks will oversee the company’s overall product direction and development and will lead the engineering, product and infrastructure teams.

Cooks brings more than 20 years of software, systems and product development expertise to DigitalOcean, including hardware and software engineering, product management, quality assurance and support. Most recently, Cooks served as vice-president of R&D, cloud operations products at VMware. Before VMware, he was senior vicepresident of products, engineering and support at Virtual Instruments, and director of engineering at Sun Microsystems.

Cognizant’s Francisco D’Souza named as Chairman of WEF’s IT and Electronics Governors Community

Cognizant has announced that Vice Chairman and CEO Francisco D’Souza has been named the Chairman of the IT and Electronics Governors community at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He said, “I am honoured to be leading this community and again participating in a World Economic Forum annual meeting, which highlights our industry’s efforts to demonstrate responsible and responsive corporate leadership. I look forward to working with my peers to identify our agenda and advance key industry initiatives in 2019.”

Veeam appoints Amarish Karnik as Channel Director, India and SAARC

Veeam Software has announced the appointment of Amarish Karnik as its Channel Director, India and SAARC. Amarish will play a strategic role to develop and expand Veeam's channel footprint and cater to the growing need for Availability solutions in a digital-native environment.

Amarish will also spearhead critical partnerships with system integrators, Cloud Service Provider and further expand distribution network across India and SAARC regions. He will report directly to Sandeep Bhambure, Vice-President and Managing Director, Veeam India and SAARC.

www.varindia.com February 2019

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RNI - NO 72399/1999 Printing Date 18 & 19

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February 2019 www.varindia.com

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

56 pages including cover

Date of Posting 20 & 21 every month