EIITF - 2014

EVENT

EIITF – 2014

unfolds new business opportunities for SMEs T

he emerging IT hub in the country, Kolkata, has recently witnessed the Fifth Eastern India Information Technology Fair (EIITF) – 2014 amidst the presence of an august gathering of CEOs, CXOs from the corporate world, VARs and SMEs and government dignitaries from the ICT sector.

Titled “Marketing Tools for VARS to empower SMBs”, the event was attended by a total of 200+ guests. Speakers from various verticals of government, PSUs, industry bodies and industrialists also participated in the function.

The Chief Guest for the evening was Col. A.K. Nath (Retd), Executive Director, C-DAC, Government of India. The event commenced

Inaugural Session: (L to R:) Mr. B. Hari, President, CIITA, Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA, Col. A. K. Nath (Retd), Executive Director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Mr. Sachin Chauhan, Marketing Manager, OIS, Canon India and Col. HPS Bawa, CEO, WTL

L to R: Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA (Moderator); Mr. Pradeep Sharma, Director - Comnet Resources; Mr. Kapil Mukherjee, Territory (East) Head SME, SAP India; Mr. Sachin Chauhan, Marketing Manager, Canon India Pvt. Ltd; Mr. Sanjay Pradhan, MD Max Secure; Mr. Manjit Nayak, Joint Director, Officer-in-charge, STPI (Kolkata); Col. HPS Bawa, CEO, WTL

with the lighting of the ceremonial lamp by the Hon’ble Chief Guest and other distinguished guests – Col. HPS Bawa, CEO, WTL; Col. A. K. Nath (Retd), Executive Director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing; Mr. Manjit Nayak, Additional Director, STPI, Government of India; Mr. B. Hari, President, CIITA; Mr. Ganesh Chakraborty, DGM, RailTel Corporation of India Ltd; Mr. V. K. Bhandari, Chairman, Supertron Electronics Ltd; Mr. K. L. Lalani, Chairman, Lalani Infotech Ltd; Mr. Sanjay Pradhan, Managing Director, Max Secure; and Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA. While addressing the audience, Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA, stressed on how digitization is a continuous process and organizations are heavily dependent on cyber technology today. “With geographic boundaries being collapsed in this digital era, organizations are facing threats

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from the virtual world. Crimes are perpetrated by cybercriminals who leverage on the evolved ecosystems like the Dark Net. Businesses are increasingly facing challenges not only on the financial front but also irreversible damage to their brands and market reputations. As a result of this growing threat, there is a significant need for corporates to recognize cyber-threats and craft cyber response plans.”

Thereafter, many eminent speakers took the floor to address the audience on the key

issues pertaining to the industry and the Channel community as a whole. The Chief Guest, Col. A. K. Nath (Retd), Executive Director, C-DAC, Government of India, spoke on the innovations by C-DAC that act as a potential for SMEs and pave the way for these small enterprises to further penetrate into the market in the country.

While Mr. B. Hari, President, CIITA, in his address, spoke on the role of CIITA in empowering the VARs in Eastern India, Col. HPS Bawa, CEO, WTL, gave a brief introduction to the audience about WEBEL and also WTL, the company that he manages, besides briefing about the potential that the state of West Bengal holds in the area of ICT. Among the corporate presentations, Fortinet, Canon, SAP and NNR IT Solutions took turns to speak on their solutions and the current market situation. Mr. Navin Mehra, Regional Manager, West, Central and East India, Fortinet Inc., presented his views on the opportunities for Channel partners ahead with Fortinet. Mr. Sachin Chauhan, Marketing Manager, OIS, Canon India, gave the perspective of Canon on the contribution of Channel partners in bringing success to the emergingsystemintegrationbusinessinEastern India. Mr. Jagannath Pattnaik, CEO, NNR IT Solutions, global distributor for Max Secure, introduced his company. In his presentation, Mr. Pattnaik also emphasized on how essential

Col. A. K. Nath (Retd), Executive Director, C-DAC, Government of India “This will be an apt opportunity to sensitize the disclosures of the technology that CDAC Kolkata has developed. And we would like them to be penetrated in the society, in the masses through SMEs. We have lots of products which have gained lot of recognition; when CDAC was first established in 1988, the need of the country was to develop our own super computer as we were denied the super computer technology from USA. We built the C-DAC PARAM Yuva – II which is the fastest super computer in India and also been rated as the 44th most Green computer in the world. So from super computer, we moved on to language technology and many more and have our presence in 11 cities. Unfortunately we are known to people only as for education & training but our mainstream activities are research and development.”

Shri B. Hari, President, CIITA “We are in midst of a serious change in our market place with partners facing tremendous pressure in terms of margins, delays in payment, huge costs of interests and to top it all we have the online marketplace which is creating a big havoc. It is an extremely challenging time for the Channel. But let us just look at it as an opportunity and not shy away from understanding that change is the only constant factor in life.

It is time to re-invent ourselves and there is a need to migrate. However, I perceive this to be a temporary phenomenon where as a VAR you will see you are losing business and margins, but ultimately this will stabilise. We have seen this happening in many countries where online and brick& mortar stores still survive simultaneously.”

Mr. Navin Mehra, Regional Manager, West, central and east India- FORTINET Inc.

“When we talk of security, we feel that we put an anti-virus and our job is done. But it is not so. If you wish to be protected, you should be implementing the best of technologies available.

We have been hearing about viruses, Trojans, malwares which are now things of past. Threats have become much more sophisticated. In other words, Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) like the recently discovered Stuxnet which came into light when Iran was posing a threat to some of the nations who expected them to become a nuclear armed state. This could not have been done by a hacker but requires big intelligence, governance and persistent approach to penetrate the organization. India is moving towards becoming a nuclear power resource and there are similar threats and challenges that pose for us also.”

“At SAP, we roughly consider any company with a turnover of 2, 500 crores as an SME. SAP is divided into 2 avenues – very low-end products and solutions which are for customers with revenue from 5-10 crores to probably 100 crores and the high-end products. The intent of SAP has also been to be friendlier with customers in terms of our products. In this context, I will try to bring in 3 things – one is the SAP HANA which is the fastest database that SAP has today, second is the SAP applications that can be managed on mobile and the third is the Cloud. This is keeping in mind the SME segment which does not want spend much on technology or for that matter many do not have the requisite resources to hire a CIO.”

Mr. Jagannath Pattnaik, CEO, NNR IT Solutions

Col. HPS Bawa, CEO- WTL “West Bengal is a state where opportunity still exists. Seeing this potential, WEBEL has built IT parks in Siliguri, Durgapur and these are some of the upcoming markets after Kolkata where you will find adequate talent. WEBEL as a state nodal agency was started in 1975 for facilitating the implementation of IT projects of West Bengal govt. The state has also got an incentive policy available on the websites of WEBEL and Ministry of IT. There are various opportunities that SMEs can make use of. WTL, a subsidiary of WEBEL does a lot of business for WB Govt. and there are a number of projects that we are involved with. We also do business outside in states like Tripura, Meghalaya, Jharkhand and Bihar. We work with both large corporations and SMEs in these states with whom we partner to implement different projects. ”

Mr. Kapil Mukherjee,Territory (East) Head SME, SAP India

“Security is very essential. But at the same time, there is nothing t feel worried about, because today’s generation is quite capable of understanding of how the things work. We as a Security vendor are in the end-point security area and we provide security both to home users and SMBs and also to large corporates. To keep it a simple affair, we have simplified our security offerings for the SMBs without making it too complex. It’s just that an SME has to keep themselves aware of what security products are there available in the market. Today, the best of breed end-point security products for PCs, laptop or mobile do not cost much.

And with the advent of Social Media and the importance of end-point security increasing, it becomes all the more essential for a user to install it in his device.”

“The country has somewhere around 4.8 crore SMEs and the figure is still growing. In fact, India is going to be the largest growing SME nations in the world. If we look from a printing perspective, SME craves for a low cost of ownership and want their printing costs to be down.

He wants to have maximum profit so that the same can be invested again for business expansion and also look at compatibility and scalability factors of his systems and software once this expansion happens. The demand for multi-function printers has slightly gone up and standalong printers has lost its market share considerably. And this is true for the SME segment as well. While catering to the SME segment, Canon tries to be different from all its competition on the technology front and makes its product features and interface quite friendly for the users. Our products are also backed by services that are one of the bests in the country.”

Mr. Sachin Chauhan, Marketing Manager, OIS- CANON India www.varindia.com August 2014 29

EVENT

Award Winners at 5th EIITF – 2014

Best Network Integrator, Eastern India - Techniche Consulting Services

Best Reseller, Eastern India Lalani Infotech

Best Retailer, Eastern India Supreme Technologies

Best System Integrator, Eastern India - Suntronic Infotech Pvt. Ltd

Best VAD, Eastern India Savera Marketing Agency

security is for enterprises and government today. Mr. Kapil Mukherjee,Territory (East) Head SME, SAP India, spoke about the opportunities for SMEs in eastern India and how these opportunities can be leveraged to streamline their growth further.

The Panel discussions towards the end of the event was on the topic – “Marketing Tools for VARS to empower SMBs” and was moderated by Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu. The panellists on the dais who represented cross-

sections of the industry included Mr. Manjit Nayak, Joint Director, Officer-in-charge, STPI (Kolkata); Col. HPS Bawa, CEO, WTL; Mr. Kapil Mukherjee, Territory (East) Head SME, SAP India; Mr. Sachin Chauhan, Marketing manager, Canon India Pvt. Ltd; and Mr. Sanjay Pradhan, Managing Director, Max Secure. The discussions concluded that the use of innovations in technology continue to have a massive effect on business and society. It is a fact that technology acts as an enabler that can

Fortinet

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pave the way for being competitive. Small and medium businesses across all verticals can play a critical role in the resurgence of the Indian economy, though they continue to face tough challenges in the volatile business environment and global competition. Businesses and governments must think deeply about the opportunities and risks presented by evolving trends.

The event also took the opportunity to felicitate the Channel community from the East in different categories. The resellers, distributors and system integrators recognized were Supreme Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Lalani Infotech Ltd, Caltron Group, Savera Marketing Agency, Techniche Consulting Services, Suntronic Infotech Pvt. Ltd and Supertron Electronics Pvt. Ltd There was also a lucky draw announced where six lucky winners walked away with 2 Canon scanners and 4 Max Security Antivirus software with lifetime validity. n

CANON

C-DAC

Solutions Display

Best National Distributor, Eastern India - Supertron Electronics Pvt. Ltd

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Max Secure