April 2014 - Magazine Issue

Cisco and TSSC to encourage Skills Development

Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic Launches in India

23rd Friday, 2014 At Hotel Shangri-La, Connaught Place, New Delhi, India

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Big Data ushers a new era of Business analytics

42pg

HP expands its leadership in Enterprise Security

H

P has unveiled new solutions and services that enable organizations to proactively share threat intelligence and openly collaborate as an industry to combat the growing ecosystem of adversaries.

With organizations in Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) experiencing cybercrimes caused by malicious insiders, denial of service and web-based attacks that they are unable to stop due to outdated or insufficient threat intelligence, enterprises need to strengthen their security posture to defend their organizations.

The platform is now strengthened with the introduction of the HP Threat Central Partner Network.

IBM debuts new offerings for Mainframes

F

or the rapid development and deployment of mobile applications, the Big Blue IBM has reportedly announced new offerings for System z.

As part of the announcement, IBM is also unveiling a new flexible pricing model for mobile mainframe clients that will allow them to pay only for the computing capacity they need and use.

With three times the number of mobile phones in the world as computers, it is essential that businesses have an IT infrastructure that can enhance their ability to deliver new mobile and cloud services. Combined with trends showing that by 2015, there will be twenty times more content, fifteen times more applications and four times the number of mobile transactions as there were in 2011, it is clear why many organizations are turning to the mainframe to manage their enterprises.

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HELLO INDIA

Newer opportunity with million challenges A

ccording to one estimate, people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook and 40% internet accessed by the employees is not work-related. While it is utterly out of question that Internet access can be withdrawn but it can be restricted to reduce unproductive Internet use.

The knack for online presence is what is pushing the brick and mortar businesses to go for aggressive tapping of the e-commerce platform. One of the fastest ways to spread information about your business products or services is social media and a host of interactive platforms such as blogs and review platforms.

It is certainly to the point to underline the fact that online presence is adding “muscle to business".

Survey indicates that by 2017, the worldwide mobile payment transaction market would be worth $721 billion, with more than 450 million users. e-Commerce and mobile industry is transforming traditional retail and will continue to be the preferred choice of communication platform for masses across the world. Not surprisingly, they will dominate the markets for engaging, retaining and selling services and products to a wide spectrum of customers drawn from different walks of life. With internet penetration in India is driven largely by cellphones , with a base of 110 million mobile internet users, of which 25 million are in rural India.

As technologically advanced ways to deliver online services to customers increase, security is becoming complex with the each passing day. This is obvious because excessive indulgence in internet give birth to new set of security threats. Due to the increasing proliferation of mobile devices, apps and transactions, one can expect mobile threats such as man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks to increase in 2014.

Against the backdrop of above-mentioned internet landscape, it can be said that since the cyber-villains are looking for greener pastures for making money as hacking is now a big business. However, to offset these nefarious activities one should not lose sight of the security tips advised by websites. If you are going for online shopping, you should try it only form trusted and credible web portals.

With the recent acquisitions of WhatsApp by Facebook and Viber by Rakuten, there is every possibility that there will be a major consolidation that will take place in social messaging front in 2014. These acquisitions are signal to the shape of things to come whereby social communications, and particularly messaging, are becoming a core focus in social networking, gaming, or even commerce.

All eyes are set on the results of the parliamentary elections which will be declared on 16th May. A firm and stable government is the need of the hour if our economy has to be put on the trajectory of high growth path. Let us hope that India elects a government whose priority would be pulling the country out of the economic turmoil and ensuring cyber security and prevent cyber crimes. mohini@varindia.com

How do you leverage the Channel power to grow your company?

Channel is very important for us. Look at any successful company, they never would have grown or sustained without the Channel.

Huawei understands this and the proof that 100 % of our enterprise business is only through Channel clearly explains this, except for some large projects that get structured through large operators. So we respect that, acknowledge that and hence we want to improve and further grow this.

How is the Channel aligned for 2014?

The agenda of the theme is – Connect, Build & Engage. We started our work before 6 months; identified specific partners who can really add value to the customers or to the portfolio. We started building capabilities within their organization and also learning a lot of things from them. As we move forward, we will engage more with customers. That is what we want to do the entire year and will see how it moves forward for us.

We have some strategic partnerships with whom we are building strong relationships as we move forward. One of them is Allied Digital that is based out of Mumbai. We are trying to look at the entire Huawei stack.

Huawei is also looking at putting up an

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Experience centre with them and getting a lot of customer projects and POCs done there. Beetel is more of a networking and IP relationship which is very strategic in nature.

Beetel being a large player, we are looking at it as a strategic partner. With Iris, we have a significant relationship and have just started off from a server and IT portfolio perse on distribution.

Any message to the Channel?

My only message is that - look at Huawei as a serious contender. If there are products and solutions that customers are looking for, Huawei is that best of breed products. Huawei has got the capability and capacity to do innovation for a customer’s specific need. We developed the product specifically for India called the Battery switch. Because of limited power supply in remote areas, our switch has come up with an inbuilt battery which gives a back-up for 8 hours. This is an innovation we did on customer’s requirement. Our Partners work with us, integrate and inform us what customers really want; we have the capability to innovate and build a particular product for them. Huawei’s key strength is R&D. we invest a little more than 10 % of revenues that comes to $ 40 million in R&D. We have 150,000 employees globally of which 70,000 employees are in R&D. n

Suresh Reddy Vice President Huawei Enterprise

Suresh Reddy joined Huawei Enterprise Business Group as the Vice President in October last year.

Prior to this he has worked at HCL Infosystems as the Vice President and Business unit Head for DDMS IT and OA business groups. His appointment is part of Huawei’s plans to increase focus on enterprise business and it came at a time when the company is strengthening its core team to scale its business.

Reddy brings along rich experience of more than 14 years. His earlier stint includes working for organizations like Dell, HP India, Oracle and GE and has more than 14 years of experience.

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CONTENTS

BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Ku. Jha Circulation Manager: L G Swami Regional Manager (North): Ashok Ranjan Dash Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar

OPEN

Flexibility

Coding

COVER STORY

Bangalore: Bureau office Branch Manager: L. G. Swami Marketing Manager: Shubhendu Nanda Correspondent: Aswini Kumar Panda #97,IInd Floor,16th Main, 4th ‘T’ Block, Jayanagar, Bangalore- 560041, Tel: 91-80-40939454 Mobile:09916242600/9916134482 E-mail: aswini@varindia.com, swami@varindia.com

CHANNEL EVENT

Chennai: Bureau office Branch Manager: Parthiban K A2, R.C.Residency, Cholambedu Road, Thiruvenkada nagar, Ambathur, Chennai - 600 053 Mobile: 098400 55626 E-mail: parthiban@varindia.com Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: L.G. Swami Correspondent: S.M. Choudhury Plot No. 103, Sagacity Apartments, Street No. 10 Himayat Nagar, Hyderabad - 500029 Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08374935692 E-mail: swami@varindia.com Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: Kiran Kumar New Korola, Near Alampur, Land Mark Asian International School, Howrah - 711302 Mobile: 08100298033, E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Printed and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of M/s. Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. 153, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Are ,Phase-I, New Delhi-110020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi 110030, Editor - S Mohini Ratna.

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

Mumbai: Bureau office Regional Manager (West): Anil Kumar Sr. Correspondent: Mamta S. Anurag Residency, 204 - “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

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Product Coding Usability Public Content Layout Traffic Usability Layout Approach Usability

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

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Big Data ushers a new era of Business analytics

Spectrum Group facilitates its Channel Partners in Dubai

MARKET WATCH

36

Mobility is 'NOT' posing a 'BIG' challenge to UPS market…

INDUSTRY WATCH

38

Exploring Open Source!

VAR SPECIAL

28

Channel Business continues to thrive... VARS are the Key drivers.

VAR SECURITY

48

D-Link bets on Cloud as the future in Surveillance

CHANNEL BUZZ

34

HP helping partners with “New Style of IT”

VAR MOBILITY

50

MAXX believes “Feature Phone” segment holds huge potential

52

Who would be the 'NEXT KING' of smartphones?

REGULARS Guest Speak

06

Channel Guru

10

Channel Chief

12

Round About

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Hot Bytes

16, 18

On the Ramp

20, 22

Voice N Data

24

Channel Buzz

26

Product of the Month

35,41

Pick of the Month

47

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April 2014

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A new strategy… a new equation with partners for Dell Message to VARs

“We welcome all new and existing partners on board. This is an excellent opportunity for growth and profitability and we will help you grow and thrive. We want to give our customers the best quality in terms of products and services.” $24 billion is what IDC quotes as the size of the Indian IT market.

A considerable part of this market belongs to the Channel. To ensure that this market does not remain untapped and hoping for growth for its overall commercial business, Dell has recently announced its willingness to work together with its distribution partners. This will not only result in extending coverage across Tier-II and Tier-III cities but also drive Dell’s commercial business in an even faster way.

Distribution – a fast track to success

“Since we want to grow the business and consolidate it, one of the fastest routes to achieve it is through distribution. We want to get to a higher growth trajectory and most importantly grow with distribution. That is the core objective where we see value for both Dell and distributors,” says Swarnendu Mukherjee, Director – Sales, Commercial Channel, Dell India.

With the strategy and the mechanism in place, the objective is very clear – to look at business acceleration and growth with the help of partners, more so by building on a mutual relation with the latter.

“We have recently launched a mechanism by which partners can go ahead and extend warranties. We are making it even more exciting by introducing contests and rebates very specifically for distribution. The agenda is to ensure that we reach out to the right set of partners and come to them with the commitment that we are here to help them,” Swarnendu opines.

One of the biggest tasks is, however, to create awareness and in order to reach out to maximum partners possible, Dell came up with the idea of organizing roadshows in the key cities of India and meeting with partners on a one-on-one basis. Delhi being the national capital region, Dell set out to kick-start its roadshow from here, followed by other cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune.

What was happening earlier with the Dell customers was that they were acting as partners and were coming to Dell and asking for products at special prices. Dell was fulfilling orders and they had to wait. It was

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Swarnendu Mukherjee Director – Sales, Commercial Channel Dell India

then that it realized while it was catering to a large customer base, Dell was not addressing a huge amount of demand which required an immediate fulfilment. Distribution in its core concept is making products easily available for customers and partners who need that.

To address this loophole, the biggest fundamental change that came into effect at Dell is to align all of Dell’s sales force to focus on the distribution sales, which means, going forward, Dell will have a set of accounts which will be given to its distributors but managed by its sales force. “We have been working with thousands of partners. We are not here to demarcate them but are opening up with everyone. We are making it inclusive, giving accounts, putting people and investments.

We have the right to partner with each one of them. It is a value for them and a value for us. Earlier, Dell products were not available in 24 hours/48 hours turnaround time, meaning there were some businesses which we could not pick it up and were lost or were getting addressed by someone else. My immediate target market would be to address that market by making our products in the commercial space available to those customers. Dell will have an equal number of people in the field and in its inside team,” explains Swarnendu.

The road ahead…

The idea is to enable Dell to take a leadership position in the commercial space. Also, this part of business is all about relationships.

“Talk to partners and account managers and they will tell you that businesses happen only on relationships. At the end of all of these is to ensure that we get to the target customer who basically drives the business for everybody and address their needs,” Swarnendu sums up.

A substantial amount of resource infrastructure has been invested

by Dell to set up this whole sales force that will help the distribution team. Dell has a very strong connect with partners and a strong media in place in terms of its ability to reach out. With adequate people in each of the key markets, Dell is betting big on building a “give-andtake” relationship with all its partners. n samrita@varindia.com

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April 2014

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CHANNEL CHIEF

“Now is the right time for HP to get into Tablets” T

he newly-launched tablet and phablet business of HP is, what HP calls, an extension of its PC business. "From a consumer standpoint, there is an overlap happening when we talk of both PC and tablet/phablet segment. After positioning ourselves as a leading player in the PC business – of both desktops and consumer notebooks, we had to have an entire range of products with all the technology available as far as mobility is concerned. This is when we decided to enter into the tablet segment," explains Rajkumar Rishi, Sr. Director, Consumer GTM, PPS, HP India.

In the category of voice tablet, HP has launched two Android-based dualSIM devices – Slate 6 which is a 6-inch phablet and Slate 7, which is a 7-inch tablet. There is also the Omni 10 – a Windows-based 10-inch tablet.

The tablet market has evolved today from where it was three years back and where it is today. There is a huge difference now. The tablet market is reported to be selling almost 1.2 million units per quarter. "It is absolutely right time for a brand like HP to get into," Raj says. "Consumers were looking for a core IT brand as now they have really evolved. A few years back when it was a new category, there were various kinds of buyers, starting from serious users to people using it as a gaming device.

But now it has come to a point where customers know very well what they want from a tablet. We have done our homework on this and we know how to get to our customers better." This is notwithstanding the fact that HP came out with its TouchPads in the global market in 2011, but discontinued it after they were in for 6 months as the market has not evolved then.

Channel Arrangement...

For sale of its tablets, HP is going to leverage its current channel.

"On the one hand, we got our exclusive HP stores – almost 300 of them in the market – we also have associated with LFRs like Croma, Reliance Digital and large multi-brand outlets. We have engaged our huge network of distribution channel and resellers in different cities. So this is one way of going to the market. Additionally, there is a telecom channel available with whom we have started engaging too. So whereas our 7-inch tablet is sold both by IT and telecom channel, the 6-inch device is sold by IT channel. So there is a mix of both," Raj exclaims.

On the marketing side, HP already has the TV, print campaigns and digital campaigns for the tablets running. In retail stores, HP is engaging below the line retail marketing tool to woo customers. "When people walk into a store, HP devices should be visible to them. We have appointed Store promoters in a large number of stores to provide product information to the consumer. So it is a 360-degree marketing that we are doing," Raj observes.

In the long run...

The channel is going to play a very key role in positioning HP's tablet business, according to Rishi. "Physical channel has played a very

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Rajkumar Rishi Sr. Director, Consumer GTM, PPS HP India

HP today boasts of a leading market share in both PC and printer segments. With its recent foray into the tablet segment, the company is inching towards consolidating itself in the Mobility space and becoming a leader. Rajkumar Rishi, Sr. Director, Consumer GTM, PPS, HP India, shares his views of how HP will position these products in the market and the strategies important role in taking HP to where it is today. Since this is a new category, I have been in touch with a large number of partners and they all are very excited. We need to work hard to make our presence in this segment. For a brand like HP, we will have to play a balanced role and ensure there is a fair play between different channels. Traditional Channel is growing like we are growing. Similarly, branded shops are growing with us and so do the MBOs and LFRs." Raj further reiterates, "We are No. 1 in almost every sub-section of our PC and printer business. If you have to be equally strong in tablet, you have to get across a larger segment rather than focussing on one particular segment."

HP's strength lies in its dealer network, its support service and most importantly the brand HP. Adding to it is the technology HP overall has. To further boost consumer interest, HP has roped in Deepika Padukone as the Brand Ambassador for the newly-launched tablets.

The partnership drives home a simple message – that both Deepika and HP being multi-faceted will go a long way in making HP tablets a big success in the market. n samrita@varindia.com

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April 2014

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ROUND ABOUT

Election Blues: Does it Hold Good for IT business

Asoke K. Laha

President & MD, Interra IT

W

hat is the differentiator of poll 2014 as against the previous ones? That was the theme of a discussion among a group of people from different walks of life. For that matter, their discussions understandably were bereft of inflation, corruption, black money, etc, which would normally engage an acrimonious interview for a newspaper feature, which are vying for the eyeballs and increased readership.

In many ways, the forthcoming elections will be different and using an adjective like differentiator in a singular way may not be appropriate.

This is the first time an election is being fought drawing candidates widely from all segments of the population, such as film artists, musicians, IT professionals, academicians, journalists, activists and you name any.

It is observed that the coming polls will be the longest and the largest ever fought in India. But this poll will have a maximum number of voters – 80 crore or so – and as to how many of them are eligible or those who are eligible will exercise their franchise. Of all the set of differentiators marked by the people present, the most interesting observation was about the technology and communication strategy.

The use of technology and varied shades of communication were unparalleled in this election. Ranging from 3D screen to internet blitz, poll 2014, when it is completed, will surpass all records on this count.

According to him, election 2014 is being fought and the votes are being sought not entirely through the usual mode of issues and promises.

Technology is becoming a game-changer redefining the election ecosystem in the country.

Political parties are relying on technology to reach out to their voters, party workers, vendors who help in their campaigns such as logistics managers, web designers who orchestrate their views in the sites, bloggers who help them in expressing their viewers, journalists who follow election trails, etc. Importantly, Gallup polls conducted by agencies are using extensively technology and advanced techniques in sampling to extrapolate the likely results. It is another matter whether such predictions come true at the end of the day. If the predictions go overboard, they will also refer to the limitations of the scientific investigations. Margin of errors, tolerable errors in extrapolation

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techniques and the like are ready alibis for explaining prediction horrors (errors). But sometimes they underestimate the power of the voters to mislead them by giving wrong feedback. Then again they have the explanation: last-minute swing or the absence of it.

Assuming that on May 16, 2014, the day the votes are counted and the texture of political affiliations are decided, voters decide on an individual, party or group which had spent maximum on technology and internet, to rule for another five years, that will be a defining moment for the political history of India. The subsequent elections will see more parties using technology tools for their electioneering. Parties in power or in opposition will invest more in such technologies for espousing their causes in the days to come. Assuming that India has to have a general election once in five years and the assembly elections are due at varying time frame for states and union territories, we have businesses lined up throughout the year.

I am told that a major political party, which is fighting election now and widely believed to play a significant role in governance, has spent millions of dollars for investing in technology to reach out to the people.

A rough estimate puts that there are thousands of IT professionals both in India and the US working round the clock to create virtual platforms for their parties or leaders to project them across the country. Apart from this, several crores of rupees are being spent by the leading political parties on advertisements in print, electronics and social media. Some of them have engaged Indian and foreign agencies to advise them on image building and in evolving appropriate strategies for reaching out to the people. They have to be paid in millions. Such things will add up to quite a tidy sum.

Why Indian elections are fought in such a feverish manner? That should be the subject- matter of study by a political student. Yet, a comparison of how elections are fought in two largest and oldest democracies – the US and India – will be appropriate here. In the US, there is the Presidential form of government where the election process is different.

However, all these points and counterpoints will vanish into thin air once the election 2014 proves that information technology has given a political edge to the party or group that has deployed it in a larger measure. Others will try to follow the trend. What that means: More business to IT entrepreneurs, web designers, internet managers, bloggers, net writers, mobile companies, mobile messaging – and what have you. Here, I am not counting the freebies that have been offered by the political parties once they come into power. I believe that there is still no bar imposed by the Election Commission for extending freebies.

For instance, the Tamil Nadu Government had offered colour TVs and PCs free of cost to the voters in the State. The UP Government had offered laptops free to every student. That generates businesses for the IT hardware companies.

Could we assume safely that IT will be the biggest gainer in 2014 and beyond? Yes, there are indications to show that the IT fraternity will stand to gain in the new paradigm of electioneering. For instance, if the elections are held on the same day throughout India and the counting also takes place on the same day, a lot more opportunities will be there in terms of providing sophisticated software for making the polling and counting simultaneous, creating strong linkages among the polling stations in one constituency and connecting it with the central nodal point, for the final national tally. That may be a farfetched idea presently for India on account of the security compulsions. But the Indian democracy is maturing fast. Elections are free from rigging and other malpractices. Sooner or later, we can expect a regime where elections are held on a particular day and results are declared on the same day. It will be a great saver to the exchequer as also a great spinner of business in the IT. Let us wait for that day, which also signals the maturity of the Indian democracy. n

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15

HOT BYTES

VMware to invest up to $500 Million Netmagic Mware has Bangalore. expands Data CEO Pat Gelsinger announced that it V projects investment of up said, "India continues to Center footprint to $500 million in India play a crucial role in our over the next three years to help fund its growing operations in this market.

The company's R&D and support operations in India are second in size and scale only to those at VMware's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., U.S. In 2013, the company’s headcount in India grew 17 per cent to 2,300, while the recent acquisition of AirWatch has added additional employees in

global product roadmap and growth strategy. The country's outstanding engineering t a l e n t continues to impress us, and we stay committed to investing and growing our team here over the long term."

A VMware-sponsored study on server virtualization in AsiaPacific estimated that server virtualization will save businesses in India approximately US$3.89 billion by 2020.

Cisco and TSSC to encourage Skills Development

T

elecom Sector Skill Council (TSSC) in partnership with Cisco, ITI and UTL, has reportedly organized the Skills Conclave to promote Skills Development for the telecom sector, taking forward their collective vision of imparting skills training to 80,000 youth across India over the next 18 months.

“With the launch of the Skills Development programme, TSSC is

addressing one of the biggest challenges Indian businesses face today – the lack of relevant skills and an employable workforce.

As part of this initiative, we will deploy the Cisco Education Enabled Development (CEED) platform – our cloud-based video delivered solution to empower rural India with skill development courses,” said AravindSitaraman, President, Inclusive Growth, Cisco.

eClerx selects Fortinet to deploy Network Security Platform

eClerx has selected Fortinet to deployed FortiGate network security platform to strengthen its security posture, reduce management complexity, and free up real estate in its data center. The

Manager for India & SAARC, said, "The virtualization capability offered in our FortiGate appliances uniquely enables organizations to segment their network into multitenant environments for delivering best levels of

outsourcing firm chose Fortinet's solutions for their high performance, superior range of network security features – including single sign-on and virtual domains – and cost-effectiveness.

Rajesh Maurya, Fortinet's Country

protection and flexibility.

This, along with our solution’s ideal mix of performance, feature set and manageability, allows us to gain strong traction in enterprises such as eClerx and be increasingly favoured over traditional point solutions."

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GoDaddy launches new marketing campaign

N

etmagic has launched a new data center in Electronic City, Bangalore. This 100,000-sq. ft. data center is the first time Netmagic and NTT Communications have collaborated in building an entire facility from the ground up, and thereby draws from their combined engineering and operations expertise.

“This is a moment of pride for us, as this new data center will give Indian and multi-national enterprises and opportunity to experience the state-ofthe-art data centers that NTT Communications operates across the world.

The added advantage of Netmagic’s excellence in IT infrastructure management and service delivery in the Indian enterprise space, gives this data center the capability of becoming the new benchmark for data centers in India,” said Akira Arima, President & CEO, NTT Communications, at the unveiling of the data center.

MindTree inks partnership with Pegasystems

M

indTree has announced a strategic alliance with Pegasystems to develop and optimize custom BPM solutions. The solutions will be based on Pegasystems’ Build for Change technology platform.MindTree’s EAI / BPM centre of excellence conceptualizes and incubates key solutions that provide clients with better performance and highquality processes at reduced costs. Through a consulting-led approach, technology expertise and proven methodology, MindTree delivers large-scale EAI/BPM transformation.

GoDaddy has launched its latest marketing campaign featuring Mithun Chakraborty. The multi-channel campaign aims to educate small businesses in India about the real-world benefits of getting a Website, and comprises two television advertisements along with search, display, email and social media marketing.

“We believe that

small businesses and entrepreneurs are the driving force behind India’s economy and we are here to empower them with the right tools. An increasing number of small businesses in the country are turning to GoDaddy to help them easily and affordably establish their online presence”, said GoDaddy India MD and VP Rajiv Sodhi.

Akamai collaborates with Sify Technologies

A

k a m a i Technologies has announced a strategic partnership with Sify Technologies Limited.

This partnership will enable Sify Technologies to offer Akamai’s global expertise and solutions in Web acceleration and applications delivery to its Enterprise customers across India.

The collaboration is intended to help Enterprises, especially those in the BFSI, ITeS and manufacturing

verticals to enhance cloud adoption for their business and functional applications. “It is Akamai and Sify’s shared vision to give customers industryleading solutions and expertise to accelerate their online delivery and quality of service. We believe that this partnership will help Akamai reach out to a new set of customers through Sify and help expand our footprint across India,” said Sidharth Malik, Managing Director, Akamai Technologies.

Konica Minolta aiming for a bigger share

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onica Minolta has reportedly launched pagepro1580MF which is a monochrome laser multifunctional printer. The product is equipped with printing speed of 20 papers per minute, supports 16MB memory and can be used for A4, letter, B5, A5, A6 executive size printing.

It allows functions such as copy settings colour scanning and job cancel at the touch of a button.

Balakrishnan, EGM – Marketing, Konica

Minolta Business Solutions India, pointed out that the company has been doing well even though there is a general economic slowdown. He said, “Our competitive price range and high quality have helped us win the customer’s confidence and establish our brand. We always focus on customer requirements and strive to work closely with our customers.”

www.varindia.com

April 2014

17

HOT BYTES

Red Hat collaborates with Google

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ed Hat has entered into collaboration with Google that will

enable Red Hat customers to move eligible Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions to Google Compute Engine using Red Hat Cloud Access, reinforcing the flexibility and choice afforded by the open hybrid cloud.

Google joined the Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider program in November

2013, joining a group of technology industry leaders who offer tested, proven solutions that extend the functionality of Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud solutions.

Tim Yeaton, Senior Vice-President, Infrastructure Group, Red Hat, said, "As customers move to the cloud, they want flexibility and portability, which is a key component of our vision for the open hybrid cloud is to enable freedom of choice across both new and existing heterogeneous infrastructures.”

Microsoft joins hands with Ixia

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xia has announced that it has been selected by Microsoft as the official provider to qualify mobile devices for use with Microsoft’s Lync application. The expanding use of mission-critical applications encompassing voice, video and messaging is placing increased strain on mobile devices, while, at the same time, customer expectations for quality are rising. Ixia’s Wi-Fi device qualification includes rigorous testing in realworld scenarios to ensure that smartphones, tablets

and laptops perform as expected when running Microsoft Lync.

“Mobile usage is growing exponentially with more and more users depending on mobile devices to connect to and use mission-critical tools such as Microsoft’s Lync collaboration suite.

Quality of Experience is no longer a ‘nice to have’, as enterprises and individual users rely on mobile devices to work anywhere and anytime.” said Joseph Zeto, Director – Product Marketing, Ixia.

AMD announces 'Aspire – Motivate – Design' Program for partners

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MD has also announced the official launch of the new AMD Partner Program, aimed to strengthen and reward its global c h a n n e l partners in India today.

The program is based on three cornerstones: Aspire, Motivate, Design AMD. The AMD Partner Program provides welldefined and transparent criteria through a tiered program offering a broad range of attributes including: financial, access, marketing, referral/ recognition, technical, and material benefits. An enhanced AMD Partner

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April 2014

Portal provides up-to-date information to partners through secure web access, with content tailored to help channel partners

grow and prosper with AMD’s broad, industryleading technology portfolio.

"Over the last year AMD introduced some ground breaking new technologies with our next-generation APUs, HSA features and our AMD Radeon R-Series GPUs," said Roy Taylor, Corporate VP, Channel Sales, AMD.

www.varindia.com

Creative Technology selects Fortune Marketing

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o r t u n e Marketing has been appointed by Creative Technology Ltd. as its nationwide distributor to promote the company's extensive range of speaker, headphone, audio and gaming products, across India.

On appointment as a nationwide distributor, Manoj Gupta, Director, Fortune Marketing Pvt. Ltd., said, "We are extremely excited to be partnering with Creative Technology.

It is a premium brand in sound technologies.

We believe that the company's products have a large potential market in India and look forward to making this partnership a highly successful venture."

Unistal selects Conduit Technologies

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nistal Systems has appointed Conduit Technologies as its regional distributor for Maharashtra. With this appointment, Unistal will primarily target B- and C- class cities to strengthen its presence across Maharashtra. This appointment will help in extending better and faster service to their customers in this region.

Rajib Banerjee, VicePresident – Sales, Unistal Systems Pvt. Ltd., said, "With the appointment of Conduit Technologies as RD, we have confidence that they will certainly facilitate Unistal's growth and will help us in reaching the tierII and tier-III cities of Maharashtra. Our main focus lies on the quality of the product and the service which we offer."

Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic Launches in India

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itachi Systems has announced that Micro Clinic India Pvt. Ltd. has been converted to a Group company based on a share purchase agreement and a shareholders' agreement.

The company started operations as Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic Pvt. Ltd. ("Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic") as of April 3 when the procedures for changing company names were completed.

Yoshinori Okami, Chairman and Director of Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic Pvt. Ltd. said," It gives me great pleasure to welcome Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic into the Hitachi Systems Group.

The combination of more than 600 excellent engineers, as well as a strong customer platform of more than 200 clients at Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, with the advanced IT technology, data centers and other infrastructure that Hitachi Systems has nurtured in Japan over more than half a century will not only contribute to the development of the Indian economy, which continues to grow at a spectacular rate, but also provide superior services that impress customers in East Asia and worldwide."

Axis and Inflow Tech become Distribution Partners

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x

i

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Communications has expanded its distribution in India by signing on Inflow Technologies.

With this association, customers in India will now have an easier access to a complete range of Axis products, accessories and solutions along with an augmented expertise and service from Inflow Technologies.

“Axis is a 100-per cent channel-driven

organization, and we are aggressively building our channel network in India to meet the evolving needs of our customers across industries,” said Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications, India.

Inflow will leverage its expertise in network design and data storage to support its reseller network while introducing benefits of the Axis brand to the marketplace.

CP PLUS CORAL-HDCVI Technology widely acclaimed HDCVI technology has recently introduced CP PLUS CORAL series of analog CCTV cameras and Digital Video

Recorders, with an aim to equip the analog solution to deliver long distance high definition video under conventional coaxial cabling environment at an affordable value.

Hari Prasad

Sharma from Prasad Communications stated, “Most of our customers demand for analog based high quality videos at an affordable cost.

Such challenges had created hindrance in providing adequate solution to them. Now, we provide HDCVI technology based surveillance solution to our customers that can just not only detect but also capture minute details of any incident.”

www.varindia.com

April 2014

19

ON THE RAMP

WD offers My Cloud

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D has introduced its new My Cloud family of personal cloud solutions.

My Cloud is a complete solution for users to organize, centralize and secure the digital content from all of their computers and mobile devices and access those files from any device, from anywhere in the world.

Available for iOS and Android devices, the new WD My Cloud mobile app allows users to view photos, stream video and access their files from anywhere on their smartphones or tablets. The mobile app also makes file sharing and

collaborating simple and secure, allowing customers to easily email files, share files as a link, and print and open files with thirdparty apps.

Additionally, the My Cloud mobile app integrates major public cloud services so that customers can easily transfer files between their Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive public cloud accounts.

Infor announces Application Suites in the Cloud

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nfor has announced Infor CloudSuite available on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud. Infor CloudSuite provides beautiful software with deep industry functionality and a flexible, subscriptionbased delivery model that significantly reduces upfront IT expenditure.

“SaaS today refers primarily to HCM,

CRM or another edge application, never to mission-critical business operations.

Infor CloudSuite redefines cloud for the enterprise, delivering the first full suite of business applications purposebuilt by industry running in a public cloud through Amazon Web Services,” said Charles Phillips, CEO, Infor.

GIGABYTE launches Gaming Motherboards

G I G A B Y T E Technology has introduced a range of its G1-Killer series motherboards, with features and price points that will entice both casual and serious gamers, to include these offerings in their ultimate dream gaming rig.

GIGABYTE G1-Killer series motherboards are packed with absolutely everything one needs to build an uncompromising, highperformance gaming PC. Loaded with advanced audio technologies, maxed out multi-card gaming support, and advanced cooling and high-quality heatsink

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April 2014

design, GIGABYTE G1Killer motherboards are the ultimate choice for PC gamers across the world.

GIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboards come with the Killer E2200 from Qualcomm Atheros, a high-performance, adaptive gigabit Ethernet controller that offers better online gaming and online media performance compared to standard solutions.

www.varindia.com

MAXIMUS unveils Video Door Phones range

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AXIMUS has introduced their advanced Video Door phones for villas segment - MV-4C and MV-7C video door phones that provide the highest level of security as well as comfort and luxury to the consumers.

The latest MAXIMUS video door phones are based on advanced technology and are equipped with TFT LCD screens in 7’’ and 4.3” variants. Both devices have convenient two-way communication system, Remote Unlock functions, Do Not Disturb (DND) feature and that provides ease and comfort to the users.

The MAXIMUS video door phones not only bring convenience to home occupants but also add value to physical security and safety.

Designed aesthetically, these VDPs go well with the interior of home and are perfect for both new & existing infrastructure.

NEC unveils Smart Solutions

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EC India has reportedly announced its smart enterprise solution strategy and launch of the latest generation of its Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) software – UNIVERGE 3C. UNIVERGE 3C is a combined unified communications, collaboration and software services platform for businesses of all sizes and cloud operators. As a single software application, it delivers the essential tools to increase workforce productivity by making it easy for users in different roles to collaborate from anywhere, anytime, using virtually any device.

ASUS announces Zenbook UX302

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SUS has announced panIndia accessibility of their touchscreen Ultrabook with a scratch-resistant finish – Zenbook UX302.

Zenbook UX302 has a strikingly gorgeous design refined with crystalline Gorilla Glass 3 and classic brushed metallic finish.

Peter Chang, Regional Head – South Asia & Country Manager, ASUS India, said, “We were the pioneers of bringing Ultrabooks in the market. Our first model was introduced in 2011.

Introducing the Zenbook UX302 is one of our elite ranges of products, will be further enhancing our Ultrabook Series and quality offerings to our

customers. Amazingly, it is just 15.5mm thick – 14% thinner than the previous Zenbook. It is a first-ever Ultrabook which comes with NVidia GT 730M 2GB VRAM accelerating the performance with responsive multimedia and faster gaming. We are affirmative that this device will content techies with fetish for excellence in the country. It is the Ultrabook you will want with you, wherever you go.”

ECS launches AMD FM2+ Platform Motherboards

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CS has announced the whole new AMD FM2+ Platform motherboards – A78F2P-M2, A58F2PM4 and A55F2P-M2, featuring the new AMD FM2+ APU socket.

The motherboards offer native support for PCI Express Gen 3.0 as well as DirectX 11.1 support integrating the high-performance “Steamroller” core. In addition, ECS AMD FM2+ motherboards provide native 4K

resolution for ultimate visual experience.

Additional features of new ECS AMD FM2+ motherboards include RAID 0, 1,10 support for full internal ports for a rapid storage speed, PCI-Express Gen.3 x16 bus designed to optimize the external graphical display, USB 3.0 for a faster data transfer rate, 4K resolution displays support on HDMI port, 2 DDR3 2133 MHz DIMM slots for up to 16GB RAM.

GajShield introduces Enterprise series UTM appliances

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ajShield has announced the launch of GS 240dc and GS 360dc enterprise series UTM appliances for flexible network connectivity.

The appliances help organizations meet cost and performance needs of growing networks by allowing them to migrate to newer technologies without ripping off their existing hardware and security investment.

Sonit Jain, CEO, GajShield, said, "We are

happy to launch the new series of enterprise-class UTM appliances GS 240dc and GS 360ds products.

These appliances allow organizations to upgrade their network with next-generation threat technologies, easily and cost-effectively. Addition of these appliances to our product portfolio has further strengthened our security offerings which gives zero-hour protection without comprising on the network performance."

A New Standard in Durability

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GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd.

Tel: 022-40633222; Website: www.gigabyte.in; Toll-Free: 1800-22-0966; www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEindia Mumbai, Chhattisgarh, Vidharbha, Goa 99677 18653; Rest of Maharashtra 99221 13396; Gujarat: 97250 59195; Delhi, Uttar Pradesh: 99583 72672; Punjab, Chandigarh, Jammu & Kashmir: 97818 33433; Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand 99100 86976; Madhya Pradesh 96695 45600; Rajasthan 99100 86976; Bihar 90075 45577; Jharkhand 90405 06080; West Bengal 90075 45577, 9748502710; North East 98642 30150; Orissa 90405 06080; Andhra Pradesh 99675 15866, 90000 77671; Karnataka 99675 15866, 81236 86976; Tamil Nadu 99675 15866; Kerala 98950 99231 www.varindia.com April 2014 21

ON THE RAMP

Seagate announces 2nd Gen External Storage

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eagate Technology has announced the second generation of its sleek external storage lineup, Seagate Backup Plus Slim. With a svelte compact design and superspeed USB 3.0 interface, the 2TB Backup Plus Slim drive is the ideal storage solution to aggregate and back up valued photos, videos and other files despite being spread across numerous devices, social networks and personal computers.

“Today, digital storage is important for everyone who uses a personal computer or a mobile

device. We are all creating content, whether that be photos from our last activity, video of a baby’s first steps or a proposal for your next project. All of these files hold a special place of importance and Seagate is in the business of providing products that can store those valuable files,” said Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Seagate Technology.

Toshiba announces Next Generation HDDs

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oshiba has announced new additions to the AL13SX series of enterprise hard disk drives (HDD) - the AL13SXB and the selfencrypting AL13SXQ. With a 2.5-inch form factor, the AL13SXB and AL13SXQ have 15mm z-height and spin at speeds up to 15,000 rotations per minute (RPM), making the AL13SX series ideal for mission critical enterprise

storage applications.

“The 15,000 RPM disk continues to be the backbone of mission critical IT operations.

Toshiba’s AL13SX doubles available capacity while preserving the low-latency and energy efficiency customers require,” said Kashiwabara, Senior Manager of Marketing Sec., Toshiba Digital Media Network Taiwan Corporation.

Trend Micro safeguards Android for Mobile Devices

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rend Micro has launched its latest Personal Edition for Mobile Security that works on Android Platform for Mobiles and Tablets. This Mobile Security not only helps keep your tablets and mobile phones away from various threats and data theft but also prevents the potential loss of these personal gadgets.

Anand Shringi, Sales Manager, SMB & Consumer Products, India & SAARC, Trend Micro, said, “As mobile malware are expected to grow in the year 2014 and mobile will become an attack vector of choice for cybercriminals, securing the mobile device with up-to-date security software is advisable. With BYOD policies, cloudbased applications are becoming mainstream and companies are at risk. Our comprehensive solutions will keep this information safe without impeding the mobile experience.”

EMC redefines data protection SanDisk rolls out Extreme PRO SDHC with new suites anDisk Corporation

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has announced the SanDisk Extreme PRO SDHC/SDXC UHS-II card.The new SanDisk Extreme PRO SD UHS-II card offers up to 250MB/s write speeds for continuous burst mode shooting and transfer speeds of up to 280MB/s for maximum workflow efficiency. The SanDisk Extreme PRO SD UHS-II card is UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) enabled, a new specification allowing for high-quality 4K video recording.

Optimized for the next generation of highend DSLRs and pro video cameras that support the UHS-II standard, the SanDisk Extreme PRO

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April 2014

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SD UHS-II card delivers the uncompromising results that professional photographers demand.

Fast write speeds of up to 250MB/s allows users to take high-resolution images, such as RAW and JPEG, in succession.

In addition to industryleading read and write speeds, the card offers the highest video performance available for sustained video capture of 30MB/s (U3), allowing capture of cinema-quality 4K, 3D and Full HD videos.

www.varindia.com

MC Corporation has announced new products and technologies that address the full continuum of data protection requirements facing users, both today and as they address the challenge of transitioning to software-defined data centers. Surajit Sen, Country Manager – Data Protection & Availability Division – EMC said, “There are two clear shifts under way within Indian enterprises.

First, the capex-based IT infrastructure investment model is shifting to IT-as-aService (IaaS) model shaping the software defined movement."

Plustek forays into large format Scanner Market

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lustek Technology has announced its entry into the largeformat scanner arena with the launch of the PlustekOpticPro A320. Designed to offer professional results, regardless of document size, the A320 includes seven one-touch scan buttons to simplify and automate the most common scanning functions (i.e. scan, OCR, copy, fax and email). With competing scanners costing more than double, the A320 is ideal for professionals who require the best of both worlds—high quality

scanning coupled with speed and efficiency – at an affordable price.

Plustek’sOpticPro A320 takes the pain out of large format scanning. Microsoft Vistacompatible, this highspeed USB 2.0 scanning device can scan an A3 size document at high-quality (1600-dpi with a scan area as large as 12” x 17”) in a blazing fast 8.5 seconds.

Lenovo launches ThinkCentre M73 Desktop

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enovo has unveiled a new ThinkCentre M73 Tiny, a compact, high-performance desktop, perfect for modest workspaces.

Starting at Rs.28,500 plus taxes, the affordable desktop comes with VESA mount support, which allows the M73 Tiny the flexibility to fit anywhere in the workspace – on the desk, or behind a monitor.

Ashok Nair, Director – SMB, Lenovo India, said, “The SMB market is witnessing a surge in the adoption of compact technology which helps

them save space. M73 Tiny is an affordable, powerful and compact desktop, offering the features and functionalities required to address the users' increasingly varied demands.”

The Lenovo ThinkCentre M73 Tiny features the rugged ThinkCentre design, providing high-quality hardware and reliabilityfocussed design. The desktop is furnished with industry-leading SSHD solution, advanced Wi-Fi and USB 3.0 support.

Zicom introduces Hybrid Range of Mini DVR

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icom Electronic Security Systems has launched the first-ofits-kind, next-generation Intelligent Hybrid Mini ‘Digital Video Recorder’ (DVR) with the unique capability of connecting IP as well as Analogue C a m e r a s .

This compact ‘Hybrid Mini DVR’ is specifically designed to

cater to the new demands of facilitating use of both IP and Analogue in the same premise without much hassle of integration or increased investment. It is rich on features, powerful and delivers better performance, and the portable size makes it easy to handle.

The product is available in 4, 8 and 16 Channel.

www.varindia.com

April 2014

23

VOICE-N-DATA

NETGEAR presents JR6150

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ETGEAR is debuting JR6150 dual-band gigabit Wi-Fi router in its family of next-generation 802.11ac wireless products. It is a dual-band router that supports faster Wi-Fi speeds up to 300+450 Mbps with Fast Ethernet wired connections, providing secure and reliable Internet connections for fast downloads, clearer voice calls, uninterrupted HD video, and lag-free gaming.

“In the last couple of years, there has been an explosion in the number of Wi-Fi devices connected to the home network. To future-proof the network and keep it humming

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along at peak performance, we need to upgrade to AC wireless. The newest smartphones and Mac already have 802.11ac inside. It enables you to be more productive at home and to experience the world of entertainment available through the Internet in a seamless fashion,” said Subhodeep Bhattacharya, Regional Director, India& SAARC.

Merit Network selects ADVA 100G Metro

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DVA Optical Networking said that Merit Network has deployed the ADVA 100G Metro solution to provide increased bandwidth capacity on a critical path of its core network that spans from Ann Arbor to Detroit and Lansing, Michigan to its optical fiber ring in Chicago.

This connectivity provides Merit Network's community of research and education (R&E) organizations with dramatically increased speeds to access the Internet2 national high-

speed backbone, which is connected to Merit Network's fiber ring in Chicago. As Michigan's only access to Internet2, this connectivity is vital for Merit Network R&E Members that wish to collaborate on bandwidthintensive national and international science projects.

Stretching across 800 km of fiber, the ADVA 100G Metro transports data from Michigan to Merit's Chicago fiber-optic ring to get to the Internet2 network without any regeneration.

LG sets up LTE experiential zone

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G Electronics, in a joint initiative with Airtel and Qualcomm, has set up an engaging LTE experience zone in Bangalore, for consumers to come and experience the blazing high-speed service and innumerable possibilities of 4G LTE. 4G technology, which is very new in India, offers seamless switching between content, greater connectivity and better speed.

Amit Gujral, Product & Marketing Head, LG Mobile Communications, LG Electronics, India, at

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April 2014

Airtel and IBM ink strategic partnership

the launch of G2 4G smartphone, said, “4G will become main stream in India by the end of 2015 and LG G2 is a first step to realize the new mobility service for the Indian consumers. LG G2 is one of the most exciting and ambitious phones in our company’s history and we are optimistic that 4G G2 version will repeat the same success. ”

www.varindia.com

or the next five years, Bharti Airtel and IBM have signed a new agreement to manage Airtel’s infrastructure and application services in India. This agreement builds on the 10-year-old relationship between the two organizations which has driven the co-creation of industry-leading telco solutions and customercentric services.

The agreement is based on Airtel’s new IT vision that defines the next generation of services for its ever-growing customer base and to offer best-in-class services to its customers through solutions leveraging cutting-edge technology.

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel (India & South Asia), said, “As we embark on the next phase of Airtel's growth journey, I am confident that the agreement with IBM will help us offer innovative and cutting-edge products and services to our customers, enabling us achieve our vision of being the most loved brand.”

Videocon Targets Rs. 2500 Cr revenue in FY 2014-15

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i d e o c o n Telecom has achieved impressive topline revenue of Rs. 1000 Cr. in the financial year 2013-14.

Since making a comeback into the telecom market early last year, Videocon has strongly grown in terms of subscribers, revenue, brand visibility and positioning in the industry. This makes it one amongst the top telecom brands across its operational circles. The top-line turnover of 1000 Cr. which Videocon Telecom has achieved in this financial year includes revenue earnings from its 4 operational

GSM mobility business circles, NLD/ILD operations and its Wire line business in Punjab.

Arvind Bali, the Director and CEO of Videocon Telecom said, “Since our comeback in the Telecom domain early last year, we have taken a whole lot of initiatives to sustain and grow in this over competitive market and today Videocon Telecom is synonymous with bestin-industry products & services."

Broadcom launches first 802.11ac MIMO Platform

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roadcom has introduced the industry’s first six stream 802.11ac MIMO platform for home networks.

Broadcom’s 5G WiFi XStream is up to 50 per cent faster than MU-MIMO routers and gateways.

The new platform has twice the bandwidth of existing 802.11ac routers and gateways, and provides advanced software to

double performance of today’s best-selling Wi-Fi devices for high-definition (HD) streaming and data consumption. By offering Wi-Fi data rates up to 3.2 Gbps, Broadcom’s 5G WiFi XStream delivers an ideal experience for users who are simultaneously consuming more data, connecting Internet of Things devices and streaming HD content to multiple screens.

Amdocs finds 98% of mobile network sessions Micromax, MediaTek are “Data” and Aircel team up mdocs has released

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new research into mobile traffic, showing an almost complete shift from voice to data. The research highlights the urgency for service providers to build and optimize mobile networks to assure network performance and quality. The annual State of the Radio Access Network (RAN) white paper includes analysis of more than 4 million voice and data connections from more than 100,000 mobile devices at some of the busiest network locations around the world in the past twelve months.

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icromax has announced a strategic partnership with MediaTek and Aircel.

Aimed at offering the best out-of-the-box experiences for the Indian users, the partnership will see a unique amalgamation of the expertise of the three companies. While Aircel will offer one-stop solutions to address the increasing data demands, MediaTek along with Micromax will redefine the user experience creating a win-win ecosystem for the Indian users.

Under this unique

alliance, Aircel will team up with Micromax to introduce a range of offers for the consumers which will be almost equivalent to the cost of the device. Powered by MediaTek chipsets, the devices promise to deliver a seamless and a powerful user experience, while the bundled Aircel offers will drive data growth in the country.

Supported by:

Broadband for Sustainable Development May 23, New Delhi

IT Forum is an annual meeting of the Indian leaders into IT and Telecom Industry and other key stake holders. It is a unique platform to meet, discuss and explore opportunity to discuss on emerging business models, technology innovations and one to one networking with the key leaders. The objective is to help the leaders to grow their business with their service and solutions offerings.

Emerging Trends in Cyber Security and e- Governance: Afternoon Session (CIO Summit) CIOs (Experts from the ICT arena) from various segments will discuss on their existing network Infrastructure-to support and deliver business applications through the Cloud. A round table discussion where the Indian IT decision-makers will deliberate on the present challenges on the Trends in Cloud & Security. *In-house Cloud implementations for better traffic optimization *Adapting applications to suit the cloud infrastructure for delivery over IP *Emerging Trends in Cyber Security and I Governance

Broadband for Sustainable development in the country: Evening Session (Customers summit) VARINDIA does this annual event to address the end Customers & is very important for the corporates to take up some of the important agendas which not only interest the entire industry with also attract the Government attention to a large extent. The event is supported by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India.

Strategy and enablement session for Indian telecom-Opportunities in Rural, Enterprise and Service provider segments (Focus on Rural broadband & telephony, einnovation, e-security and e-governance)is utmost important, Simultaneously, the role of Cloud computing is connecting the globe and Indian IT leaders are struggling off challenges with their existing network infrastructure and end-to-end cloud solution stack.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EVENT •

• The third edition of BRAND BOOK on the Indian ICT Industry.

• Launch of innovative technology and solutions by leading brands Business lounge, Conference & Product display and Interactive Panel Discussions.

• Award ceremony

Panel Discussion on: Emerging Trends in Cyber Security and i-Governance Previous Year Partners

Corporates to be recognized Brand of Excellence

2014

Most-Trusted Company

2014

Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. www.varindia.com

April 2014

25

CHANNEL BUZZ

Huawei hosts Multi City Meet for Partners

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ntending to promote its new range of Wi-Fi Datacards, Huawei has concluded dealers meet in Delhi and Chennai.

Huawei has also introduced its marketing campaign – “Internet Pooling is Here”. The campaign

to make the purchase and selling process easier at retail points with our new naming classification of data cards – Laptopi-Fi, Power-Fi and Mobi-Fi. Our new campaign ‘Internet Pooling is Here’ is targeted towards educating

aims to streamline naming structure – Laptopi-Fi, Power-Fi &Mobi-Fi to simplify data card purchase by consumers and help retailers sell easily. The event was attended by over 150 dealers from Delhi NCR and over 200 from Chennai.

Huawei recognizes the efforts of the valued partners such as Redington, Nirja Infotek from Chennai and Uniglobe Enterprise from Delhi, in making the brand an undisputed leader in the data card market. Nirja Infotek and Unilglobe Enterprise were awarded for their outstanding Performance in the last quarter of 2013.

Anand Narang, Marketing Director, Huawei India, said, “With feedback from trade partners and consumers, we have simplified the naming structure

youth, young professionals and families about easy and affordable ways to access internet on multiple devices and share it with multiple devices simultaneously.

Indian users are consuming a lot of content on the go like in cars, hotels, at homes and offices on a variety of internet-connected devices.”

Under the new range of Wi-Fi Datacards, Huawei has launched seven new Wi-Fi open data cards offering connectivity for up to 5–10 devices simultaneously.

The new Wi-Fi datacard range is designed to suit the needs of Indian consumers who demand for high-speed data consumption across multiple devices, share internet with friends and families from the same datacard and the freedom to choose their favourite network operator.

Kaspersky Lab conducts Customer Pitstop in Nagpur

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aspersky Lab has been focussing on increasing its presence in the tier-II markets and Nagpur. Trailing this, Kaspersky Lab along with its National Distributor for Enterprise, Sea Infonet and partner Optimistic Technologies (OTSPL) conducted a Customer Pitstop in Nagpur.

According to Altaf Halde, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab – South Asia, "We recently

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April 2014

signed up Optimistic Technology Solutions as one of our focussed resellers for Enterprise business with the aim to offer a broad range of solutions to our customers and work together to enlarge our reach to newer customers in the tier-II markets."

www.varindia.com

Dell conducts multi-city roadshow

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ell has announced a cross-country roadshow covering the cities of New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune to kick off the newly-formed distribution strategy for its commercial business. The roadshows are an effort to strengthen awareness and build acceptance of Dell’s new distribution strategy and

considerably through the next year by broadening its coverage in several key tier-2 locations and improving the reach of its end-toend range of products.

“Distribution will be one of the key factors driving growth in the commercial business and we are going all out to increase the quality and quantity of our channel partner relationships across the

programmes for channel partners.

Earlier, Dell announced its increasing focus on distribution to drive growth in the commercial business and increase availability of its end-to-end solutions across the country. Currently, Dell has over 2,000 channel partner relationships across the country who will benefit from these new initiatives through more access to Dell’s direct clients and dedicated sell-through and sell-in. Dell is looking to increase this number

country. These new initiatives will enable us to increase coverage across India and in ensuring that we meet the demands of our customers quickly,” said Ravi Bharadwaj,Executive Director – Marketing, Dell India.

At the first event that concluded in New Delhi, Dell announced a range of new programmes for channel partners that are aimed at ensuring better profitability for both Dell and its channel partners.

Raritan hosts Partners Meet in Bangalore

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ntending to help partners gain insights in Raritan's products and solutions, including a host of new product, Raritan has conducted partners meet in Bangalore. Thirty executives from the key Raritan partners attended this event. This event helped partners gain insights about Raritan's products and solutions, including a host of new products.

Henry Hsu, Vice-President – Global Power Architecture, Raritan, had specially come to India to empower partners with a larger perspective of Raritan's offering to the Indian market. His crisp yet powerpacked presentation followed by interaction with partners helped them get a clear view of Raritan's strong presence across the global market. He outlined how Raritan, with its focussed approach, is building its market

share across the globe. He also shared Raritan's vision, roadmap and a comprehensive ecosystem with respect to products and solutions in the DCIM space.

Henry said, "India is one of the most exiting markets for Raritan in terms of opportunity, growth as well as footprint. While Raritan keeps partners abreast with latest global technological trends, partners provide the required geographical reach. " The event created a platform for partners and helped them understand the innovative and the cutting-edge features offered

by Raritan's products over its competitors. The partners expressed their confidence about opportunities of working together with Raritan and growing their businesses by offering unique, value-added Raritan products and solutions.

CHANNEL EVENT

Spectrum Group facilitates its Channel Partners in Dubai S

pectrum group, the holding company for Comguard India, facilitated its channel partners for their contribution towards its success in the Middle East and India at its third Annual Partner Conference in Dubai, a three-day event from 15th to 17th April 2014.

The partner conference, named Tech Convergence 2014, was attended by over 250 channel partners from across the Middle East, North Africa and India. Channel partners were rewarded for their efforts and hard work put in during the past year at a glittering Award Ceremony held at the prestigious Hotel LeMeridien, Dubai.

This year’s Partner conference was a three day event which started on 15th April and culminated with an Award Ceremony to facilitate the hard work and success of its channel partners for the past year on 17th April.The Partner conference opened with a keynote speech by Ajay Singh Chauhan, CEO at Spectrum Group, who outlined the roadmap for Spectrum group and its expansion plans within the region as well as outside the Middle East region.Our organisation is making many changes and we are exuberant in meeting these changes during a larger global change in IT Security and Networking scenario.The aorld of IT Security and associated technology is an exciting subject to be with,to work,study and experiment.

Deliberating on the two programmes (Comguard Channel Accelerate and Comguard Commit) he said that these two will initially be implemented in the Middle East before extending the initiative to North Africa and India. These programmes will help

Ajay Singh Chauhan CEO, Spectrum Group to raise skills levels, business and growth of its channel partners in the Middle East region.

Also on the agenda will be providing more incentives to the resellers and their staff.

Ajay assured the partners that Comguard will continue to invest in resources and create world class infrastructure to enhance customer satisfaction, generating new business and attaining better margins.

Ajay also explained the partner programme, saying that reseller companies will be evaluated on carrying multiple products, proof of concept (PoC)/demo placements, account mapping, training and certification, deal size and product revenues in dollars. Delineating about the new initiatives on creation of a dedicated partner portal where companies and individuals will have to register and join the programme with full details on how it works," he explained

that reseller firms will be able to redeem points for marketing activities, advertising and public relations campaigns, vouchers for demo equipment, free conference attendance and credit notes. For individuals, Chauhan said they will be able to redeem points for sales travel incentives, air/shopping vouchers, training and certification programmes, hotel/ ground transportation vouchers.

The awards ceremony, wherein Spectrum group awarded partners in various categories, made it a memorable night for the channel fraternity and vendors participated in the conference were delighted to attend this year's conference, since they could meet their partners in one-on-one interaction. In fact, they are looking forward to engaging Comguard on a range on solutions they take to market. n

The partners to the event were

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VAR SPECIAL

B.Suryanarayanan Director Sales Intel South Asia

we want to develop a broad community of channel members who support each other and participate in a network, supported by Intel that leads the industry in innovation.

Kaushal Veluri Director- Channels & Alliances, India subcontinent, Citrix

Partners need to demonstrate how technology can aid the IT roadmap; therefore, they need to be more of solution providers with a consultative approach than just being product resellers.

Niraj Kaushik VP, Alliances & Channels Oracle India

For Oracle, channel fraternity means partner nirvana, a partner that can go and sell a software application all the way down and make a successful business out of it.

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n corporate mechanism, it is virtually impossible for organizations to directly sell their products to the endusers. So they always work with a team of intermediate channel including Direct (on-site), Direct Mail, Telemarketing, Internet (e-commerce), agents, wholesalers and retailers.

Channel partners have become an essential part of the IT industry in India. All the major players are in some way or the other using channel partners to extend their reach in the country so as to be able to cater to a larger audience and increase coverage.

The channel partners not only bring in sales and carry marketing messages, but are also considered as the face of the principal organization. Corporates do understand that price is never the factor for increasing volume and gaining market share, it is the influencer who defines the success and the failure of the brand. If the influencer is influenced enough, the brand will attract buyers even in a price- sensitive market. To ensure profits, corporates frequently announce different schemes and programmes for partners and yes channel programmes should be conducted frequently as they help in ascertaining the growth, opportunities and new business achievement. Channel strategies should always revolve around the target audience, understanding their needs and demands. Actually, the frequency of the programmes depends on the scale and depth of the channel operations as well as the fresh

Yogesh Sawant, director, partner sales and field alliance organization, India, Hitachi Data Systems

SM Ramprasad DGM, Consumer Products, Epson India

We have the relevant technology which will help you address your customers’ pain points and unearth new opportunities.

– The aggressive nature of Epson partners along with their need for understanding their customer is very crucial that will help the Epson channel to put forward us.

Pradeepto Dey Sr. Manager, Channel Sales, Red Hat India

We provide complete support to partners at every level including organizing business planning session, defining joint solution, identifying target customers and providing support through demand generation activities.

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Toru Hasegawa Divisional MD, Solutions Division, Panasonic India

With an aim to meet our targets, we assign approximately 4-5% of the annual budget mainly for incentive trips for the channel partners.

rates of the products and solutions. They also depend at times on the seasonality and response from the market itself. There are a number of factors associated which are taken care of while planning a channel programme for a company. Corporates carefully follow certain guidelines while executing any schemes, to avoid any adverse situations.

Hitesh Shah Director, Channel Sales, BlackBerry India

We ensure our partners, retailers and resellers are acquainted with the latest technology and product offerings so that they are able to aptly market the product with relevant information to consumers.

Generally, partners are encouraged to: 1. Build competencies to differentiate themselves in the market 2. Own the entire sales process with customers - this only benefits them as they will have more control over the sale.

3. Remain focused on cultivating strong customer relationships as they will continue to see success even with any changes in the technology landscape.

Channel selection and deployment

No doubt, channel partners are great for business. They help in flourishing not only the company, but also the brand, allowing them to know that working together is driving increased profits and even more customers to the company. However, it is important to remember that choosing the perfect partners is quite essential.

Making the wrong choice could potentially be detrimental to the

Ravi Koul Channel Manager-Distribution and Sales, Brocade

Ganesan Arumugam, Senior Director, VMware

Zubair Alam GM, Enterprise Business, NEC India

We’re encouraging the partner community to focus on building competencies to differentiate themselves in the market and to remain focused on cultivating strong customer relationships.

Altaf Halde MD Kaspersky Lab South Asia

Brocade prefers to work with those partners who build and tailor solutions to specific industries, as they have in-depth knowledge of the industry.

While designing any program for partners, we usually keep in mind the potential, opportunities, industry trends as well as profitability for partners.

“We recommend our channel partners to play the role of a consultant to their customers, look beyond traditional solutions, and focus on bottom-lines to support their customers.� April 2014 29 www.varindia.com

VAR SPECIAL

Amitabh Jacob Channel Director, India Symantec

“Channel partners are extremely critical to Symantec’s business and engaging with partners and training to enable them to satisfy the end customer forms a huge focus area for us.”

brand but also to the organization’s long-term strategy too.

Channel selection and deployment is one of the most critical issues that companies are facing today. All successful channel strategies are built on the foundation of customer to channel alignment. To develop this foundation, corporates must clearly understand the customer’s buying preferences and behaviour ensuring that the chosen channels are able to support the sales of specific solutions to these customers and they must identify the market opportunities. Also, a channel strategy cannot remain static for long. Organizations are dynamic and are constantly changing in order to provide new products and services to their customers in increasingly diverse markets.

Given the complexity of managing a distribution network, it is essential for companies to interact with their distribution

Jagdish Mahapatra MD, India and SAARC McAfee

It’s critical for security vendors such as McAfee and channel partners to collaborate and invest in deepening the domain expertise levels for a swift and proactive alignment with customer needs.

S. Rajendran CMO, Acer India

We follow an indirect business model; our partners have played a pivotal role in positioning Acer as a leader in the technology segment and remain the key medium to reach out to our target market.

partners frequently and ensure that they have a robust channel programme in place. Apart from aiding seamless sale of products and services, this helps companies understand the market, the consumer attitudes and preferences and accordingly undertake necessary steps to implement the channel programme successfully.

Listed below are some of the imperatives which a company must undertake before embarking on a channel programme or strategy: • Business objectives and their alignment with the Channel Strategy: Companies must define their business objectives. It is the first step towards developing a successful channel strategy.

Identifying objectives should include outlining the target audience and brand positioning.

Arati Bam Head of Marketing, The Attachmate Group India

Aditya Khemka CEO & Director at Aditya Infotech

The channel community needs to play true to their name as a Value Added Reseller.

They need to invest so that the entire community sees that extra value of trust.

“Aditya has always believed in relationship and trust. Channel partners and integrators are our strong arm that we need to strengthen on a regular basis.”

Vipin Tuteja Executive Director, Technology, Xerox India

Channel partners are our extended team; Xerox lays a lot of emphasis on robust channel engagement, programs & recognition platforms.

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• Win-Win Proposition: Distribution is fundamentally the business model where you leverage on the partners local market business knowledge, reach and investments to ensure they get the desired business margins which is healthy for the organization both his and ours and non-taxing to the customer as well. The partner leverages on your brand, product and service offerings and ensures he takes it to the market for you and earns for himself as business.

• Understand customer’s need and preferences: More often than not, retail stores and channel partners are on ground, interacting and selling directly to the consumer. Therefore, they sit on a heap of data that pinpoints customer tastes, brand preferences, needs and purchase behaviour. It is, therefore, important to design the channel strategy, keeping in mind what the consumer demands

Jitendra Ghughal National Channel Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet

This year partners can look forward to grow their Fortinet business in the face of new opportunities in Wireless, NGFW, Web Application Security, DDoS prevention and Sandboxing.

Subhodeep Bhattacharya, Regional Director - India and SAARC, NETGEAR

Our entire business is designed around channel and we focus a lot of our resources, marketing budget, people, and programs in driving business through channel partners.

and the latest market trends.

• Business Partners are like your employees who earn their salaries by ensuring they deliver the company’s goals and one must treat them as internal employees and ensure their well-being.

• Training: Channel partners are extremely important in a company’s go-to-market strategy and therefore it is crucial to invest a lot on training and educating these partners while they play an important role in influencing a consumer’s purchase decision.

Companies should conduct structured training sessions based on both classroom and in-store training model, especially at the time of new product launches and repeat such sessions periodically to ensure that we all speak the same language when it comes to

R. Murugesan Director – Enterprise Networks, TE Connectivity India

Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director, Commercial Business Segment, Lenovo India

In a difficult market situation, we would like to thank all the partners for their sustained support. Throughout the last year, partners’ support has been our strength in the enterprise segment.

Rajesh Khurana Country Manager, India & SAARC, Seagate Technology

Apratim Sharma, Country Product manager – System Business Group, Asus India

Channel Partners are experienced in handling the present situation but at the rate at which the industry is developing they must keep up with the new technologies in the industry.

Extensive and close partnerships with channels are essential for gaining success in the market.

Our channel partners are extremely important for us. We value their contribution and ensure substantial incentives in return.

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VAR SPECIAL

Sanjay Zadoo Country Manager, Channel Business, Emerson

We always focuses on providing specific solutions. This is exactly what we try to instil in partners too. Steer away from being box pushers and adopt a solutions based approach.

the product, company, values and more so the customer-focussed approach.

Corporates not only provide the knowledge foundation required to deliver unparalleled value to its end-users, but also they regularly have an open dialogue with their partners through different partner forums and regular surveys. This equips them with the essential skills that will help them to not just clinch orders but also grow as a professional in the long run.

There are various factors that they keep in mind while designing any channel programme, mainly buying criteria in the geography, reach of the channel, product positioning, features and competition and past trends. Altogether, there is a lot of holistic planning and strategy that goes into conceptualizing a cannel programme that aims to not only adequately incentivize, but also motivate the partners to consistently perform better.

In general, channel programmes are of two kinds – long-term programmes and short-term initiatives.

Praveen Sahai VP, Channels, India & SAARC, EMC

I would like to encourage the channel ecosystem to invest in skilling themselves in new technology innovations like software defined data center, software defined storage and Big Data.

Rajesh Gupta Country Manager India SanDisk Corporation

Our growth in India is a result of our strong channel partnerships; we value our esteemed channel partner base.

Long-Term Programmes: These works globally across the organization, like we at Novell (The Attachmate Group) have the Partner Net programme that is divided into three levels – Platinum/Gold/Silver. The benefits for a partner who is a part of this programme vary by the level and they also have some core benefits across all levels.

Short-Term Initiatives: These are typically country driven and are targeted both at the partner organization and the partner employee. The short-term ones for the organization are termed as Partner Incentive schemes and the others are called SPIFF programmes. These are completely dependent on the business and GTM priorities for the country and are aligned to the channel partners. Every year, we roll out such schemes where partners can be incentivized for selling our products and solutions.

New challenges waiting Ahead…

Over the years, the role of channel partners has evolved from mere device sellers to technology consultants, inclusive of recommending customized solutions and service support as per the needs of the customer and helping the organizations to do business profitably and reach out to a larger audience with value propositions. Therefore, they need to become trusted advisors who can assess industry trends, challenges, opportunities and align strategies accordingly for its customers. At present, many partners are embracing cloud, security, virtualization, etc for sustainable growth. They must maximize productivity by efficiently scaling capability and capacity, enter new markets, and develop repeatable business practices. With the changing customer landscape and

Salini Pandey Sales Director Monitor Business AOC India

Ranjit Nambiar Director of Sales, South Asia, HID Global

Working with partners is a mutual learning experience. Through our programs we try to motivate them to increase their numbers and earn more incentives.

We may change the way we interact with customers, change the way solutions are provided, but old fashioned trust and a strong business value for partners is the bedrock of our success.

Girish Mamtani Country Head ViewSonic India

We have always stood by the channel and as a brand have been endorsed and recommended, when others have expressed ‘they-can’t’.

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Sunil Grewal Director – Sales, GIGABYTE Technology (India)

We like to treat channel partners as GIGABYTE’s extended family members.

Since all our business comes from partners, we go the whole hog to ensure their profitability.

increasing digitization, the responsibility equally lies with the channel partner to meet the brand halfway and leverage the information and technical know-how to maximize sales.

The channel community serves as the crucial link between the brand and the consumers. Therefore, they should also bring in critical market insights for the company that help flourish and create joint business opportunities.

Those vendors who rely completely on channel partners to sell products and services face a wide range of challenges when it comes to working with partners efficiently. The need is to establish a balance between the need to sell as many products and services as possible with the needs of each individual partner require a delicate, diligent approach. Besides best intentions sometimes, when two separate teams (corporates and channel partners) come together, disorganization and miscommunication can impede an otherwise successful partnership.

But armed with careful planning, communication and support – as well as a laser focus on the objective – a cohesive and successful channel partnership can emerge.

Using a combination of field and technical engagement, solid marketing planning and executive management relationships – from both the reseller and manufacturer, of course – channel partnership success is indeed within reach and it is believed that the channel business is definitely poised for a positive growth in the years to come. n satinder@varindia.com

Rakesh Gupta Head- Products & Strategy JAINHITS

Sandeep Arya MD, Amtrak Technologies

The channel fraternity is the face of a corporate, and also an extended family. We are working towards all the uniqueness, newness, and competitive technology for the channel.

Sushil Virmani Director – Sales, Eaton Electrical, India

We believe in continuous technology upgradation with innovation, serving the end customers ethically.

Sudhindra Holla Country Manager, Axis Communications India

Cynthia Gokhale Marketing Head, Zicom

JAINHITS is the most cost effective and time efficient way for LCOs to digitize their networks.

We not only provide the knowledge foundation, but we regularly have open dialog with our partners through our partner forums and regular surveys.

We have a two prone approach towards Channel Programs – annual and monthly; our Annual Programs are targeted towards building associations and community, while monthly programs are developed to build revenues. www.varindia.com April 2014 33

CHANNEL BUZZ

HP helping partners with “New Style of IT”

Faisal Paul Director, EG Marketing Alliances, HP India,

and

HP is the only organization in the industry that can design, build, integrate its own IP and support all the required elements of Converged Infrastructure from the data center to hybrid cloud to the tablet. Over the last year, HP has been capitalizing on the tectonic shifts taking place in the industry – the transition to what HP defines as a “New Style of IT”. This can be made possible by pursuing growth in four strategic areas: Cloud, Mobility, Big Data and Security. The “New Style of IT” spans devices, infrastructure, software and services to deliver on the promise that customers, partners and employees expect lower cost, greater agility, simplicity and speed. HP offers various solutions across server, storage, networking under its one umbrella of Converged Infrastructure. Some of the most acute concerns of Indian organizations are to reduce upfront investment and running costs on the data center space, enhance power and cooling through built-in thin technology and massive de-duplication while benefiting from industry-leading performance, features and benefits.

HP’s business is driven by its customer’s requirements. HP offers an array of products, technologies, software, solutions and services to large enterprises, SMBs, individual consumers and customers across various verticals in India. During an interaction with

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Pradeep Khemani Director – Channels, Enterprise Group, HP India

Solution

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the VARINDIA team, Pradeep Khemani, Director – Channels, Enterprise Group, HP India, and Faisal Paul, Director, EG Marketing and Solution Alliances, HP India, elaborate more on HP’s successful Channelpartner ecosystem.

Converged solution offerings by HP IDC projects that the market for converged systems will grow three times faster than the growth of spend on traditional infrastructure.

HP ConvergedSystem is a new product line engineered from the ground up based on 21st-century assets and architectures for the New Style of IT. Built using HP Converged Infrastructure’s best-in-class servers, storage, networking, software and services, HP understands what is needed in the data center of the future. It is eliminating IT complexity through its innovations in the new HP ConvergedSystem portfolio – a family of integrated IT systems purpose-built for key workloads such as virtualization, big data and hosted desktops.

The new HP ConvergedSystem products dramatically simplifies IT, enabling clients to go from order to operations in as few as 20 days. With quick deployment, intuitive management and system-level support, IT organizations can shift their focus from system integration to delivering the applications that

power their business.

HP ConvergedSystem builds on the experience HP gained with HP CloudSystem, the company’s purpose-built integrated system for building and managing clouds, which has been delivered to more than 1,000 customers worldwide. HP CloudSystem was recently rated as a top private cloud solution

by Forrester Research.

HP’s distribution network HP is equipping partners to expand pipelines, win deals and help grow their revenue through HP Unison, a framework of infrastructure, programs and processes that help partners advance their business.

New and improved tools and support within HP Unison will enable partners with a streamlined, collaborative, end-toend approach to partnering accessible 24/7 through the new HP Unison Partner Portal.

This portal provides access to all of the eServices that enable partner interactions, including joint business planning, streamlined deal registration and quoting, market development funds management, lead and opportunity management, and enhanced partner compensation visibility.

HP has various programs to integrate the distribution network: • PartnerONE & HP Partnership Web: Reselling, referring, distribution

partners' web site. Information and tools to market, sell and support HP products and solutions for our mutual success.

• Developer & Solution Partner Program (DSPP): DSPP has all the resources needed to develop, deploy, and deliver solutions across HP's computing technologies.

• HP Channel Services Network (HP CSN): Tools and information that power service partner success. Includes service delivery business applications, service offerings and sales resources.

HP’s relationship with VARs HP offers many tools and resources under the PartnerOne Program to help Resellers raise profits and provide the flexibility and expertise our customers deserve. From business development to sales and marketing to support HP recognizes and rewards the most committed and qualified Partners with the tools and resources that meet their needs of being an HP Reseller.

HP recently announced improvements to the PartnerOne framework. Under this framework, channel partners are profiled under a four-tier classification: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Registered with Platinum being the highest profile. The benefits and rewards keep increasing as one moves from registered to Platinum.

A registered reseller can start his journey with HP and move up to a platinum partner as and when he acquires the required specializations around each business by getting their resources certified. In addition, he has to improve his business contribution to HP across the business groups he manages. n satinder@varindia.com

“We have been actively associated with HP since the year 2000. We have been married to HP for a long time. So like every marriage this one also had its ups and downs. But the fact that we are still married says a lot. The able team that we have at Infobahn is our biggest strength to take this business to the next level.”

Message for the Peers in Channel Business: Believe in your strengths and grow your organizations on these strengths.

Anand Karapurkar Director Infobahn Technical Solutions “Orient has been associated with HP since 1998. As HP Platinum Business Partner, we get a lot of training on various products / technologies / solutions. Moreover, our backend incentives are also better than Gold or Silver partners. Orient has grown with HP support in the last 15 years and our incentive value is growing quarter on quarter because our business with HP is growing.

Because of virtualization expertise, we could be able to sell more and more HP Servers and Storage. Nowadays, we are focussing on HP Networking solutions also, whereas HP Services is our bread and butter.”

Message for the peers in the channel business: Kindly keep yourself updated with the latest technologies and solutions across industries by taking training offered

by OEMs and focus on bottom-line business rather than topline.

Ajay Sawant Managing Director, Orient Technologies

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

CyberPower CPS650EI UPS C

yberPower CPS650EI UPS has capacity of 650VA and need a very less time to recharge. It is sleekly designed and is very space saving. This UPS has an input voltage of 100VAC-280VAC and operates on modified sine wave.

Featuring high-efficiency conversion design, the Home UPS supplies long-lasting and reliable power to various appliances and provide longer backup for equipment. The defensive mechanisms of automatic switch-over and overload protection ensure the efficiency of appliances as protection against overload and load shredding is secured.

LED indicators show timely operating status including AC Mode, Battery mode, Fault for monitoring and help users control the machine condition at a safe level. With the compact design for enclosure, it creates more durability and adaptability and therefore a longer life of machine.

Benefits： • High-efficiency DC-to-AC Conversion • Compact, Sleek and Light Weight Design • Automatic Switch-Over • LED Status Indicators • Overload Protection • Built-in Intelligent Charger • Auto-Restart / Auto-Charge

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MARKET WATCH

Mobility is ‘NOT’ posing a ‘BIG, challenge to UPS market…

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n Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is the most important and critical equipment to have, particularly in the Indian context where power outages are very common, especially if running a mail/DNS/ Web server that must be up 24/7. Clients are looking at customized solution rather than just products. It is interesting to find out that the demand for UPS and inverters is today extending beyond the metros and Tier-I and -II towns to Tier-III and -IV towns, driven by economic growth and aided by the government push to ensure banking and ATM services availability in the rural areas. Sushil Virmani, Director – Sales, Eaton Electrical India, says, “In general, there are nine kinds of problems such as voltage variation, blackouts, surges, harmonic which displays an unstable power situation of the country. Therefore, we need 24 x 7 productivity for any equipments which require perfect solution to drive the power.”

The large thrust by the Government on new e-governance initiative and programmes is also driving the demand for UPSs and inverters.

The Indian UPS market was worth $528.5 million in 2010-11 and is estimated to reach $828.2 million by 2017-18. The growing need of e-commerce, the evolution of data centers and the ever-increasing number of servers has all increased the need for having a welladdressed power backup industry. “The Indian UPS industry has reflected a consistent growth rate of 30 per cent over the last five years fuelled by power surges and frequent blackouts in an economy driven by hi-tech industries, in particular the information technology sector. Manufacturing, textile, banking, industries and IT, these are the major verticals that are highly dependent on power backup,” explains Kunwer Sachdev, Founder

& Managing Director, Su-Kam. Factors propelling growth…

The power condition in India is not stable and the quality of power supply is not so good as we see in other parts of the globe.

It is important for customers with critical applications like data centers, banking, ITeS, etc to have an quality, uninterrupted power to run their operations smoothly for which they cannot rely on our grid supply and the UPS is able to meet their requirement. UPS and inverters not only protect the equipment but also ensure uptime and minimize the losses due to power disturbance. Moreover, the Indian economic growth story over the last

UPSs are now coming with larger chargers, external chargers and capability to manage, diagnose and optimize large banks of batteries Suhas Joshi VP, Delta Power Solutions decade, (though not as strong in the last few years), is for sure a key driver for the growth of the UPS category, but there are three other important drivers also contributing to the growth of the UPS category in India.

It is important for customers with critical applications like data centers, banking, ITeS, etc to have a quality, uninterrupted power to run their operations smoothly Olivier Tremouille, MD, Socomec

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First, the demand for energy in India has increased every year over the past 30 years due to economic rise, as a result of which, today, there is a 10-15% gap between power generation and demand. This coupled with ageing transmission and distribution (T&D) systems means that even when power is available, the quality of power is poor. Many parts of the country witness chronic low voltages apart from scheduled and unscheduled power cuts.

Keeping a note of this, Sriram Ramakrishnan, CEO, Consul Consolidated, opines, “In such circumstances, power backup and power conditioning products play a critical role in ensuring uninterrupted operations of business and also ensure minimal loss of revenues due to power cuts and disturbances in both

The Indian UPS industry has reflected a consistent growth rate of 30 per cent over the last five years.

Kunwer Sachdev, Founder & MD, Su-Kam manufacturing and service industries.”

Second, today more equipment and systems use microprocessors and digital controllers, from cash registers to coffee vending machines to lifts and CNC machines which will see a downtime due to power disturbance and need a backup power source (UPS) to run the equipment smoothly without any interruption. The increasing importance of business continuity has created a situation where businesses wish to avoid the high cost of a break in processes and the resultant loss of productivity.

Third, there is a large pool of installed UPS in the market and there is a large replacement market which contributes to significant volumes on its own.

Significant Verticals…

Looking at the verticals dominating the UPS market, we find that the BFSI, government, ITeS and BPO segments are witnessing a substantial increase in IT spends, thereby causing a significant growth of the UPS category. Apart from these verticals, other segments reflecting good demand are telecom, software, hospitality, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, medical and textiles. Tejas Seth, Director, Asia Powercom, shares, “SME and few government sectors are dominating these verticals. But large developments in automation indicate bright future for this industry.” Agreeing to this, Olivier Tremouille, Managing Director, Socomec, opines, “It is important for customers with critical application like data centers, banking, ITeS, etc to have quality, uninterrupted power to run their operations smoothly for which they cannot rely on our grid supply and the UPS is able to meet their requirement.”

A key vertical that has emerged as one of the major consumers of these systems is the government sector and the demand in this sector is chiefly fuelled by the large portion of IT spending in maintaining and creating critical infrastructure.

Latest trends revolutionizing the UPS market…

The India market is slowly shifting towards the concept of modular UPS which

Modular Scalable UPS systems, High Efficiency UPS Systems at Unity load Power factor (KW=KVA) sales are on the rise Sameer Saxena VP – Marketing, Legrand India meets the demands of end-users in terms of low operational cost, smaller footprints, high availability and scalability. In India, modular UPS systems are gradually gaining prominence among end-users and are slowly replacing conventional UPS systems, primarily due to the hot swapping features and the flexibility they offer in terms of redundancy. The introduction of multi-level redundancies in the UPS system and the increased use of insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) rectifiers are some of the technological innovations which are shaping the UPS industry. The market is also moving towards high efficiency transformer-less UPS systems, especially in the 50 to 200 kVA range and the above-200 kVA range, due to space constraints and also due to the growing trend of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification of buildings. Since there is a demand for high efficiency in all equipments, there is a downward revision in power requirements per equipment. Adding to this, Sameer Saxena, Vice-President – Marketing, Legrand India, comments, “This is leading to increased sales of lower capacity UPS systems with transformer-less technology.

Also, Modular Scalable UPS systems, High Efficiency UPS Systems at Unity load Power

SME and few government sectors are dominating verticals for UPS market Tejas Seth Director Asia Powercom

factor (KW=KVA) sales are on the rise.”

In order to provide a high-performance and cost-effective solution, the inverter industry is focussing on micro inverters, hybrid systems, solar power conditioning units and MPPT solar charge controllers. Solar hybrid inverters are the latest technology trend in the inverter market. These hybrid inverters are now being used substantially for the home market as it is more compact and adaptable. Customization is the major factor driving the inverter market in India as the industry is moving to higher efficiencies and minimal system losses by offering efficient power inverters.

Green quotient and the efficiency of the product are also the key aspects that some customers are demanding. Also, customers are increasingly looking at UPS solutions which are solar enabled to handle larger power outages and also in support of a more sustainable environment.

The market trend is moving towards not just being a “UPS manufacturer”, but a “complete power Solutions Provider”.

The demand is for more and more compact systems and rack solutions to minimize the space solution. As networks are becoming more complex, far-flung and being managed from remote control sites, UPS needs to be equipped with heterogeneous network management protocols, be flexible enough to incorporate diagnostics and predictive failure analysis. Sharing his views, Suhas Joshi, VicePresident, Delta Power Solutions, says, “UPSs are now coming with larger chargers, external chargers and capability to manage, diagnose and optimize large banks of batteries. Service ability of solutions is also a concern so modular UPS systems are decreasing the mean time to recover (MMTR) as availability and uptime are critical to business continuity.”

Is Mobility affecting UPS market growth?

The market has definitely seen a shift from desktop PCs to laptops and now mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. The drop in the sales of new PCs are driving down the numbers for the line-interactive below 1Kva UPS market in the SOHO market over the last couple of years, which is a global trend being replicated in India. But still continued power outages mean that homeowners are buying inverters (Home UPS) for power backup of computers, lights, fans, TVs and refrigerators. There is also an emerging trend of home-owners buying line-interactive UPS to protect high-end electronics like large screen LED/LCD TVs. Still, the overall lineinteractive sub-1kVA UPS has seen a drop in the market size. On the other hand, online UPS for business applications continues to grow especially driven by requirements below 5kVA for ATMs, banking and retail sector.

There are three kinds of UPSs – offline, line-interactive and online. The lowest range of UPSs, i.e. offline and line interactive used in the SOHO segment, have been impacted globally by mobile devices – and India is no exception. There is no specific data available that shows an impact on the UPS business

Power backup and power conditioning products play a critical role in ensuring uninterrupted operations of business and also to ensure minimal loss of revenues due to power cuts Sriram Ramakrishnan, CEO, Consul Consolidated due to the rise in the mobile devices. There are large buyers like the government sector which are still dominated by desktops using offline and line-interactive UPSs. The UPS market in the SOHO segment has, indeed, minimized but not to a large extent.

Looking Ahead…

With the Indian UPS market witnessing an upward graph of growth, industry leaders are working towards raising the bar by capitalizing on current trends and practices.

However, the competitiveness in the market is intensifying, with barriers to the entry of new participants, becoming lesser. The biggest challenges faced by UPS manufacturers are the low-cost imports from China and Taiwan as well as rising raw material prices.

The consumption of power in India has gone up manifolds, whereas there is immense lack of infrastructure to provide uninterrupted power supply, making a large section of the domestic and commercial establishments depend upon the usage of power inverters. n satinder@varindia.com

We need 24 x 7 productivity for any equipments which require perfect solution to drive the power Sushil Virmani Director – Sales, Eaton Electrical India www.varindia.com

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INDUSTRY WATCH

Exploring Open Source!

‘About 90% of Indian firms will use open source software by 2017’ – a report by Gartner last year establishes the fact of how the country’s enterprises are slowly moving towards adoption of open source by replacing legacy applications. But it is not only with enterprises but also with major verticals that open source is seen gaining traction. It is time for everyone to sit up straight and revisit Open Source….

T

he market trend in India is undergoing a rapid change as is seen in almost every part of the globe. Today the smartphone has become just like a virtual desktop with a virtual server, with workplaces quickly catching up with this trend. Just like the user can access his desktop from anywhere so can the source of data and application. NASSCOM expects the Indian software industry to clock in revenues of $84-87 billion through exports alone.

“The penetration of broadband internet and influx of smart phones into the Indian market has given the software industry in India a great spring board unlike anything seen before. The fact that we are an English speaking nation with highly skilled coding expertise is a concept that is widely accepted to be one of the deciding factors for the rise of the software industry,” says Gautam Rege, Co-founder and Managing Director - Josh Software Pvt. Ltd. Cloud further adds flexibility to this by cutting down on cost, energy consumption,

real estate consumption, and making the system grow along with the organization.

Sunando Banerjee, Channel Business Manager, APAC & Middle East, Openbravo foresees a tremendous growth in the adoption of Cloud based software. “With workplaces going virtual, I see a great future for Cloud based software. This will enable a very positive change in the Indian Software Industry.”

Further with a Cloud perspective and taking an instance of ERP adoption in the country, Sunando says, “What was preventing Indian enterprise or to be more specific the adoption of ERP facing some sort of a roadblock in India is because the industry was skeptical on the ROI. Any integrated system adoption needed huge investment in infrastructure and often it was stopping the SME organizations to adopt a system. Cloud computing completely changed this concept. Today we are seeing a rapid growth in adopting ERP thanks to Cloud framework where organizations have the option to pay as they go. It reduces the upfront cost of adopting the solution and flexibility in choosing what exactly you need.”

is companies moving away from enterprise solutions for basic necessities like email, invoicing and adopting flexible open source solutions. While it’s tough to point out the exact composition percentages between open and closed source software in the enterprise market, industry figures state that this segment grew to about $3.92 billion in 2013, a growth of almost 14% over the previous year,” cites Jagjit Singh Arora, Director, Regional Sales, Red Hat India.

“Since in open source the source code is known, it gives flexibility to an enterprise to choose what components of the software or OS it is required to run. You can make an appliance that is so hard coded that it can run only some specific apps. But the platforms we offer are enterprise ready. One can customize it according to one’s need. You are not restricted by the kind of hardware resources that you are using,” explains Venkatesh Swaminathan, Country Head, The Attachmate Group –

Trends in Software industry…

Jagjit Singh Arora Director, Regional Sales Red Hat India

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Enterprise software markets can be broadly classified into two parts – internal facing software and customer facing software.

A key trend seen in the software space is the adoption of open source software within the telecom and financial services markets. The trend also points out to the fact of how most companies are moving away from traditional and large scale setups. This is true even for critical software requirements like those in banks. “A lot of banks are even trying to build a custom solution and open source software is filling that need gap. Another good example

Sunando Banerjee Channel Business Manager, APAC & Middle East, Openbravo

UCX takes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Support UCX at a glance: Next-generation national-level exchange for the Indian derivatives market across all commodity segments—covering precious metals, crude oil and agricultural products Industry and Location Financial Services, India Products and Services SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Challenge UCX had the opportunity to build a highly flexible and reliable trading platform that would allow it to operate more efficiently and at lower cost-per-transaction than its competitors. It wanted an open, scalable, fault-tolerant operating system with strong local support that would enable very fast time-to-market. IT is a critical element for financial exchanges and IT spend may represent up to 30 percent of its revenues. So technology is a really important strategic decision for UCX. Solution To ensure maximum flexibility, UCX avoided deploying a monolithic architecture; Linux was the answer then. Being the only platform that could be used across all different architectures and based on positive experience of SUSE’s support and engineering resources, it chose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Today, UCX is running dozens of instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, both on dedicated physical servers from Dell and IBM, and using the built-in Xen virtualization capabilities.

Results Offering rapid trade settlement is an important benefit for the brokers who use the UCX exchange, helping them to maintain an accurate view of their financial position and to manage margin calls to their clients. With key components of the solution running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, UCX has confidence in the reliability and resilience of its settlement services.

India.

As companies look for the best model and technology to support a successful transition to the cloud and implementation of cloud services, open source seems to be the most viable option. This trend is expected to continue as organizations continue to look towards flexible and open ways to move to the cloud.

While there has been a rise in adoption of open source over proprietary software in the last few years, both of these run parallel to each other. Though this cannot be called a threat, there is a shift in the mindset of customers who are adopting open source. They are getting open to the idea of adopting open source in general. There are several reasons for this, primary being the changes that are happening in other industries.

"Having experienced open source in their set up they are noticing all the ingredients required to run a successful business. To create a successful IT infrastructure for running that business, open source offers a compelling value proposition," says Jagjit.

For many years, open source was a kind of solution used by people who wanted to be out of the crowd. But this perception has changed in the last 10 years. Today leading super computers or high performance computing, Mission critical applications, core banking solutions or even real time analysis seen at the top stock exchanges world over are seen running on Linux. Even ATM machines are seengetting replaced by Linux. It is thus growing to be the backbone of any business.

“It is likely that lot many people are going to use open source for enterprise applications, reason being the benefits that they are getting are far more than what is currently being used, whether it be cost, time & efforts to change, flexibility and usability. Solutions on open source are almost similar to the solutions on proprietary system. Even the decision to change to a newer version is also far easier. We see it as

Jim Zemlin Executive Director Linux Foundation

a big potential and also as an alternative which was not there before but now present,” says Venkatesh. Where UNIX has been declining by 77% and Microsoft going down by 26%, Linux has been steadily growing at 56%.

Gautam prefers to use the term ‘disruptive technology’ rather than threat for open source.

“A game changer like open source software always benefits the industry. It has forced a lot of companies to take notice and change the way they approach software development.

While proprietary software comes with an associated cost, it does have the significant advantage of providing support in the long run.

There are examples of hybrid business models as well which sell enterprise versions of their open source software along with support and hence offer the best of both worlds. Everyone likes to have adaptable software which can be customized as per requirements. Today databases and operating systems are open source and hence software is also open source.

Ruby of Rails really shines out in this scenario because this open source web framework can be used to deploy open web applications on Linux, with a stable, open source stack with can optionally provide support if required which really brings down costs and improves productivity. All this means more choices to the customer and not necessarily a threat to either business model,” compares Gautam between the two.

There are similar trends in the FSI (Financial Services industry) sector as well.

Traditionally if we look at the insurance vertical, it was a closed-source and proprietary software environment. Competing with these proprietary software vendors is the biggest challenge. Moreover, the regulatory environment for insurance in India has gone through tremendous changes because of which the revenue of insurance companies is under tremendous pressure. The sector has become more customer-oriented. They are now forced

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INDUSTRY WATCH

Venkatesh Swaminathan Country Head, The Attachmate Group – India to look at different ways or avenues to reduce cost and as a result are becoming less dependent on proprietary software stacks. Open source can be a big game changer in this regard and can witness a traction.

As Linux and open source software adoption has become mainstream and are being used today to build new technologies, the need for students and professionals to understand Linux and participate in the Linux and open source community is acute. “The latest Linux Jobs Reportshows that nine in 10 hiring managers are looking for Linux talent this year. The demand for this talent is high. Again, if you know Linux, your job opportunities are endless,” recalls Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at Linux Foundation.

“Linux and open source software are the foundations for modern day society. From rail systems and stock exchanges to your phone and car, Linux runs today’s infrastructure. This growth is being met with a shortage of skilled Linux professionals. We hope that our work with EDX and our Linux training program can help build the talent pool of Linux pro’s around the world to propel this growth into the future,” says Jim. Jagjit of Red Hat put up a very exciting scenario that clearly speaks of how the road to Open Source finally opened in India. In 2003, when the government rolled out licenses for telecom providers to come into the market and start providing mobile services, every operator who wanted a license wanted to quickly launch their operations to book their first customers. In that mad rush of creating the infrastructure, they followed something known as the ‘Cut and Paste’ or ‘Copy and Paste’ approach. “They looked at traditionally successful telecoms in the west and replicated the same stack or IT infrastructure in India. So the entire stack was proprietary. But in the last 10 or 11 years of telecom in India, the scenario has become intensely competitive while the average revenue per user proceeded to shrink.

Telecom providers began looking at new avenues of growth for making money. So they entered into Value Added Services and started engaging the customer in order to get more revenue from them. But they soon realized they had the aging infrastructure that was created way back in 2003-2004, and began asking what they could do in terms of pensioning that.

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Now, more of them are looking at open source and in the process, making their systems more open, agile and reliable.”

Organizations are also engaged in cloud sourcing - getting customers tuned away from paper use. Open source software has a dense adoption in terms of the cloud, and some of the most successful clouds are built on open source.

For companies like Openbravo, open source is a boon. “We offer a complete Open Source ERP solution, which is 100% cloud ready. The overall cost of ownership is going down with the availability of Cloud Based ERP, which is only going to help organizations like ours. I see more and more proprietary software also adapting to Cloud Infrastructure. This is a paradigm shift and it is difficult to oppose,” observes Sunando.

If we look at the next-gen cloud environment, app developers are exploring a hybrid environment that allows them to post certain apps outside their environment and onto the cloud. And not every proprietary software vendor has an answer or a clear distinct policy to support this. Open source does have the references and architecture to support most of the applications on cloud.

“We are observing a spectacular growth in our business, which enforce the belief that the market is growing in favor of Open Source Solution. Coming back to Cloud computing, it is benefiting almost every segments of India’s economy including SMEs, Education system and the Government. The Adoption rate of the cloud technology in the Indian public sector is on a fast pace. We are observing some large enterprises also tending towards cloud infrastructure. The benefits are very similar in Open Source and cloud computing - low cost of ownership, quick deployment, pay as you go and lower maintenance,” says Sunando.

experience and functionality. This scenario suits open source developers the best as no one can keep pace with these transformations as a whole community can,” replies Gautam.

Gautam also points out how the progress of proprietary software is way behind the developments happening in the hardware space. “While hardware offerings have kept evolving (think Moore’s Law), how many languages and software are well positioned to truly leverage this hardware advantage? The same applies to distributed computing and cloud computing. Software infrastructure grows fastest in the open source domain.

That’s not to say that proprietary software cannot evolve but with constraints of licenses and Intellectual Property, this progress remains painfully slow.”

What the future holds…

Open Source is one of the most interesting areas of developments today. Languages like C#, Java, PHP, Python and even Ruby are already considered to be traditional languages, with newer languages like Go for example entering the market. The recession in the recent past has necessitated changes throughout the system and that’s when customers are also forced into prioritizing their needs. The end of Support for Windows XP has hampered and raised many challengesto a CIO, CEO and CFO – thetime taken to do this refresh - probably a year and a half, the realigning of finances, resources and ability to migrate to a new platform. Post this, it is likely for them to look for an application which is not specifically dependent on any OS or proprietary system, but is web based and one that works on any platform.

However, notwithstanding the bottlenecks

However…

Though the market is adopting more open source solutions, there are still some areas where customers, especially in India, are taking a cautious approach. They want to know more, look at more references, new cases, and best practices, and really see how they can deploy open source in a way that works for them.

There are major transformations happening in open source and this journey will not be complete without the hardware ecosystem partners. The hardware ecosystem plays a very important and pivotal role because hardware developers have to provide reliable hardware with all the capabilities to really run the open source platform.

“Hardware vendors are probably going to have to adjust to these transformations.

The buzzword today is “Internet of Things” integrated devices and not individual hardware.

Consumers are shifting seamlessly across devices – not just interoperating between phones, tablets and computers but also between devices like watches, bands (FitBit, Nike Fuel, Jawnone etc.), music devices, intelligent refrigerators, smart homes and even spectacles (Google Glass). Companies are going back to the drawing board to redesign how hardware and software merge to provide the best

Gautam Rege Co-founder and Managing Director Josh Software Pvt. Ltd. and the strengths ofopen source and proprietary, both these models give each a set of unique challenges. The key challenge for all software developers is to stay relevant to the ever evolving needs of their consumers. “This requires a tremendous amount of foresight coupled with strong talent to reach your vision in the shortest possible time. Compared to closed software, we can definitely use more skilled talent in the open source domain than what the current supply provides at present,” sums up Gautam. n samrita@varindia.com

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April 2014

41

COVER STORY

Big Data ushers a new era of Business analytics D

ata has always been around. As we progress further in the digital world, the volume of data collected from various transactions and interactions are increasing at a rapid pace. In the early part of the digital revolution it was realized that to make sense of data it needs to be “structured” and stored in a way which highlights its “relationships” with other pieces of data. Once the data was stored in a relational format, it spawned the analysis of this data for competitive advantage and gave birth to the business intelligence revolution.

The business intelligence applications slowly grew in their analytical capabilities and now are powerful enough to look at large sets of relational data. But a strange new thing has happened, a lot of new kind of data which does not fit into the relational paradigm is now being generated at a breathtaking speed – e.g. social media free text data, videos, audios,

Jyothi Satyanathan Director, Mid-market and Inside Sales, IBM India South Asia blogs, machine data, sensor data, telematics data, photographs, etc. These kinds of data were earlier ignored as the computing power available was not able to make sense of this data.

But now as computing power has increased and corporates realize that there is a lot of meaning hidden in the deluge of data, a new revolution has started which wants to look at this new age data and dig out insights for furthering business goals. The analytics tools and processes required to understand this data is still getting evolved and people are looking for newer and better tools. This whole new area of interest has been termed “Big Data Analytics” which is basically a thinking which proposes that an organization look at all the data they collect and generate and use it for generating business insights. It

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This rise of big data applications puts unprecedented pressure on storage strategies and technologies

Anil Batra Managing Director Riverbed India requires a mindset of “discovery” because it’s like finding a needle in a haystack!

The growing use of technologies such as Big Data analytics, cloud, social and mobile among small and medium businesses are opening up new opportunities, identifying new markets while leveling the playing field to compete with larger competitors

The growing use of technologies such as Big Data analytics, cloud, social and mobile among small and medium businesses are opening up new opportunities, identifying new markets while leveling the playing field to compete with larger competitors

Analytics and "Internet of Things"

According to the Gartner’s recent Magic Quadrant for BI & Analytics Platforms, the last 10 years of analytics was driven primarily by customer-oriented companies or the "Internet of People." The next 10 years will be driven by investments in applications that use the "Internet of Things" – the rapidly growing global network of connected devices.

“The increasingly connected and alwayson world means that data is being generated all the time. Businesses and consumers who equip themselves with the right technology can benefit substantially from the advanced insights provided by this quantity of data,” says James Richardson, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Qlik.

According to James, old fashioned business intelligence tools will soon be displaced

Srinivas Tadigadapa Director – Enterprise Sales, Intel – South Asia

Meetul B. Patel General Manager - SMS&P, Microsoft India by a new generation providing users with insightful and genuinely impactful analytics.

He says, “Increasingly easy-to-use and intuitive technology will provide the average employee or consumer with access to the world of data discovery by encouraging the natural analyst within all of us.”

Qlik, a leader in user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), is one of the fastest growing software companies. A disruptive force in the BI industry, Qlik is working with 31,000 organizations around the world. In India, companies such as Mahindra & Mahindra and HDFC Life are using the QlikView Business Discovery platform to make better decisions for their business.

Traditionally, data was considered to be a lot more finite and organized than what it is today. In simple terms, unstructured or voluminous data can be termed as Big DATA. According to Anil Batra, Managing Director, Riverbed India, Big data drives public cloud storage. In 2014, Big Data gets even bigger with the additional information being created by the “Internet of Things”.

In 2014, companies will have evolved their people, process, and technology enough to yield significant business value from Big Data investments. This rise of big data applications puts unprecedented pressure on storage strategies and technologies. In 2014 expect two things: 1) in house, companies need to find a combination of robust storage hardware and software that allow for quick access to

Old fashioned business intelligence tools will soon be displaced by a new generation providing users with insightful and genuinely impactful analytics

The advent of mobility, cloud services, social collaboration, and business intelligence is changing what partners need to sell, who they can sell to, and how they need to go to market relevant information; and 2) as data storage needs increase, more companies will turn to cheaper and more available public storage cloud services to offset spiraling costs.

“The IT market is changing dramatically.

The advent of mobility, cloud services, social collaboration, and business intelligence is

Big Data presents many possibilities for enterprises and today’s CIOs understand this and consider Big Data and Business Analytics a top priority. changing what partners need to sell, who they can sell to, and how they need to go to market,” says Meetul B. Patel, General Manager - SMS&P, Microsoft India.

“The IoT offers businesses the opportunity to develop new services, enhance productivity

James Richardson Senior Director, Product Marketing Qlik

and efficiency, improve real-time decision making, solve critical problems, and develop new consumer experiences,” says Srinivas Tadigadapa, Director – Enterprise Sales, Intel – South Asia, The Intel Quark technology will help extend Intel’s reach to rapidly growing areas, from the Internet of Things to wearable computing in the future. With Intel Quark technologies, Intel is extending the flexibility and scalability of the x 86 ecosystems which encompasses more than 40 years of compute innovation and standards into new markets.

This trend is being driven by increasingly connected devices, seamless connectivity from sensors to the datacentre, cloud economics for compute and data and the acceleration of big data analytics to extract value from data.

Big Data Analytics:

The way relational data analytics was driven was by having a set question in your mind and then attacking the data for answers e.g. How much sales happened across the northern region B class cities in the last month. In case of BIG data you are not sure

Rajesh Rege Senior VP, Data Center, Virtualisation and Cloud Cisco India & SAARC about the question! You have to start off with an hypothesis and then see if the huge data set in front of you has any insight to throw to you. E.g. Is there a particular path of clicks that people prefer over other paths when they choose to buy a particular product and actually buy it? So, the basic paradigm of the analytics is different.

In yesteryears, there were only a few sources from which data originated. However, new age technology disruptions have led to a massive explosion in data – with new channels of generating data – mobile devices, meters, Social Media, Web logs to name a few. The rate at which voluminous and different forms of data is being generated is phenomenal.

“Analytics and data will drive the industry forward in the coming year,” says Debasis Chatterji, CEO, Netxcell Limited.

According to IBM, there are three major drivers for Big Data:

Big Data Analytics:

IBM Big Data analytics offerings are

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COVER STORY

Abhay Koranne AVP, Information Management and Big Data Practice, Brillio designed and affordable putting advanced capabilities once available only to large enterprises now within reach for SMBs to help them generate insights throughout the business where executives can now anticipate, predict and shape business outcomes. Some offerings include IBM Cognos Express, IBM Cognos Insight and IBM SPSS Modeler.

The traditional BI tools have to be augmented with new-gen analytics tools. The decision to have cloud based analytics services versus on premise BI will have to be taken based on the specific priorities of each enterprise

algorithms, gives some sense of reasoning to a particular behavior, profile, ontology or circumstance.

Strangely, it is the individual and their personal preferences and patterns, complemented by multiple channels of interaction, be it the internet, social or the mobile combines with various personal,

Cloud: Private and Public

• IBM's cloud offerings are helping SMB clients reduce their IT costs while providing greater IT and flexibility with the same levels of reliability and security that clients have been receiving "on premise".

• These includes private cloud solutions such as SmartCloud Entry while public cloud SaaS offerings include SmartCloud for Social Business to better integrate and share data across remote locations and improve collaboration between employees, customers and partners. In addition, the hybrid cloud offering IBM Cast Iron Cloud Integration enable the safe and secure movement of data between cloud environments.

Mobile

• IBM offerings enable SMBs to take advantage of the new opportunities and transformational capabilities of mobile. Using the recently announced IBM MobileFirst solutions, small businesses can now streamline everything from the management of employee mobile devices, to the creation of a new mobile commerce app that will transform their entire business model.

• SMBs that want to develop their own applications can use IBM Mobile First Platform, or use IBM Mobile First Development Services if they don't have the skills in-house. IBM MobileFirst Security can enable advanced security and compliance for web and mobile.

Big Data Changes the approach to Analytics

Big Data is a large collection of disparate information sets from a variety of sources which when interpreted and processed through a series of multiple complex

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Raj Neravati Chief Operating Officer at Cigniti Technologies public and enterprise applications that create a humungous amount of discrete data elements that each could represent a pattern through which unique behaviors of the individual specifically, or a combined view of similar individuals can be logically simulated.

“These in-turn could be used by business,

The increase of smart devices giving rise to data usage from multiple application and social media proliferation will see the increase in demand for big data. Management of this data and more importantly big data analytics present a huge opportunity for us

social or political entities to reach out to the respective community or the specific individual in a more exclusive manner. Need of such organizations to be most effective to their target audience makes Big Data the holy grail through which more accurate relevance could be achieved,” says Babla Sharan, Senior Vice President, Global Operations, Regalix.

“The advent of Big Data has ushered a new era of analytics as traditional business intelligence that revolves around data warehousing, enterprise information management etc. will not suffice. With volume, velocity and variety of datasets, Big Data analytics calls for an interdisciplinary approach of business, applied math, technology, design thinking and behavioural sciences fused together to address critical business challenge,” says Deepinder Singh Dhingra, Head of Products and Strategy, Mu Sigma.

Big data is going to change the course of traditional BI as we know it. The future of Big Data analytics will see some newer trends like Intelligent Systems that can be distilled into integrating data and analytics capability into a machine to optimize its usage pattern. And also Advanced Data Visualization and analytics tools, that goes beyond the traditional BI dash boarding and reporting view to a more sophisticated yet intuitive ‘cockpit’ view, by utilizing advanced visualization frameworks and tools that empower better analytics consumption.

None of the traditional BI tools have the ability to work with unstructured data or large volumes. Hence, the landscape is undergoing a sea change. Big data requires the ability to not only process faster, but process a wide variety of data – both structured and unstructured and also the ability to store huge volumes of data. New tools are fast emerging to address these challenges.

The capture, integration, aggregation, storage and analysis processes of an IT organization have to change due to Big Data.

The traditional BI tools have to be augmented with new-gen analytics tools. The decision to have cloud based analytics services versus on premise BI will have to be taken based on the specific priorities of each enterprise.

With the huge amount of data at their disposal, companies are realising the wealth

Mohammad Salman Sr. Vice President HCL Services Ltd

Deepinder Singh Dhingra Head of Products and Strategy Mu Sigma of information that they can mine to gain insights into their customers, business processes etc., leading to greater demand for Business Intelligence and analytics services.

“Organizations will have the ability to not only harness data of all types as part of making proactive business decisions but also obtain more useful information for business insights, improve the fidelity of existing information through the process of validation, and improve time to decision making. Big Data presents many possibilities for enterprises and today’s CIOs understand this and consider Big Data and Business Analytics a top priority,” says Rajesh Rege, Senior Vice President, Data Center, Virtualisation and Cloud Cisco India & SAARC. “The increase of smart devices giving rise to data usage from multiple application and social media proliferation will see the increase in demand for big data. Management of this data and more importantly big data analytics present a huge opportunity for us,” says Mohammad Salman – Sr. Vice President – HCL Services Ltd. Big data is becoming increasingly main stream as businesses realize its benefits, including improved operation efficiency, better customer experience, and more accurate predictions. However, companies are often challenged by the complexities of traditional server solutions. Big data solutions must enable high performance and scale as the business demands.

To meet these requirements, IT organizations should consider an architectural approach which integrates compute, storage, and network and can scale as the business demands. Cisco and its partners understand the importance of effective big data infrastructure, and are working with the leading big data to offer solutions that meet their demands.

The approach and the changes that Big Data brings in can be defined by associating with what matters to the line of business you are in.

Conventional analytics have given away to segmented, powerful, targeted, vertical specific tools that you can leverage through Big Data. Analytics can be broadly looked up in 4 categories- Descriptive Analytics, Diagnostic Analytics, Prescriptive Analytics and Predictive Analytics.

From a simple text, numbers driven data analytics to as complex as Spatial Data Management, Machine Learning, Operations Management, Speech Recognition, DNA Analysis, today’s business demands extremely deep analysis.

“Data analytics today is a powerful tool that can be exploited by every company provided they have the right approach.

The key is to focus on the big decisions for which if you have better data, you have better analytics leading to predictability, optimization, growth & profits,” says Raj Neravati Chief Operating Officer at Cigniti Technologies.

Market players would allocate more time and funds towards devising enterprise mobile strategies that are more attuned to gauging emerging consumer needs rather than utilize the conventional reactionary approach. “This will entail investments in big data analytics tools and systems that can navigate through the complex architecture of the digital world • Google processes 24 petabytes of data per day ( that’s 24,000,000 GB) • In 1993, total internet traffic was 100TB for the year • AT&T transfers 19 petabytes of data on its network each day • 20 years of Hubble space telescope has amassed about 45 TB of data • The Hippocampus region of the brain, about an inch long, can store 2.4 petabytes of binary data equivalent • The movie Avatar took up 1 petabytes of local storage for rendering of the 3D images • In 2009, the 3D animated movie Monsters vs Aliens used 100TB of storage. and utilize advanced algorithms to intelligently decipher critical information about consumers and the marketplace,” says Faisal Husain, Founder and CEO, Synechron.

Traditional analytics look at interpretation of data in logical blocks and executing certain pre-determined patterns to present either a report or a recommendation. Big Data, however, changes the paradigm and looks at devising new question and hypothesis to

Debasis Chatterji CEO Netxcell Limited.

Babla Sharan Senior Vice President, Global Operations, Regalix arrive at various what if scenarios that can then be looked at as different perspectives to a problem and then interpreted accordingly.

Your Big Data strategy has to have a clear BI strategy, be it in-house analysis of all the data generated across all touch points or an external agency based strategy. You need to have one now. The competition is heating up and almost all major banks, Telcos, automotive, utility firms are engaged in deep product assessments and proof of concept.

They have already started to see a lot of value by analyzing such data and are linking the insights developed via BIG data to their traditional relational data based insights. The two together bring up even more interesting possibilities and it is imperative to have a unified data strategy which has traditional analytics and BIG data analytics as the two supporting pillars.

Leading BI and Big Data Technologies Provider Saxon Global has recently acquired Bangalore-based company - ‘Wit Innovation’, a high-growth mobility and Solutions specialist.

Wit Innovation has a world-class delivery centre in Bangalore with a resource base of talented and skilled mobility engineers.

With widely diversified industry portfolio of Financial Services, Health Care, Media, Hospitality & Entertainment sector, this acquisition expands Saxon Global’s worldwide technology portfolio with a key focus on enterprise mobility, Cloud & Business Intelligence.

Gopi Kandukuri – Founder and CEO, Saxon Global says, “Saxon Global is a highperforming ITSolutions Company, our commitment to unleash the power of technology certainly means that we are always looking for opportunities to bring the best resources, expertise and inventive service offerings to our clients globally.”

He added, “With the acquisition of Ideas Software and Consulting Pvt. Ltd (ISAC Global) in December 2012, our aim was to boost Saxon’s expertise in big data analytics and web intelligence and complement its business intelligence and data warehousing solutions offering. Now, with Wit Innovation, we continue to strengthen our core offerings with the addition of high-performance mobile development centers, skilled engineering

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COVER STORY talent and deep vertical market expertise.”

“We at Wit Innovation have always kept our customers first. As a lot of our long time customers started to demand several services in emerging technologies like BI and Cloud apart from enterprise mobility, we thought it may be best to merge with a company which can help fulfill our customers need and we found a perfect match in Saxon Global. With these added services, size and presence across the globe, we are looking forward to provide even more value to our existing customers and add new customers.“ said Sachin Garg – CEO & Co-Founder of Wit Innovation.

‘Wit Innovation’ was started in 2006 and specializes in building products on Smartphone’s and Tablets for its global clientele. They have worked with clients across 16 countries during the last 7 years and have built products and expertise working on platforms ranging from iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phones among others.

“With over 7 years of experience in the field of Enterprise Mobility, the next logical step for Wit Innovation was to integrate with evolving companies in Cloud & BI. Saxon Global was a perfect fit for us. This integration will facilitate larger customer base to offer integrated services. With this development, Wit Innovation has become a dominant Enterprise Mobility Solutions Provider. We see tremendous growth opportunities for us, as we reach our next level of customer base and delivery, said Vibhor Gupta, COO & Co-Founder of Wit Innovation.

The deal also adds an impressive list of clients to Saxon Global’s client portfolio, as well as the opportunity to expand client relationships in high growth market sectors such as Financial Services, Health Care, Media, and Hospitality& Entertainment.

Big Data Challenges for SMbs

One myth regarding BIG data is that the technologies available are expensive and they

actually don’t give any results. That usually happens as people start looking at working with open source technologies without actually understanding how to use them and then get frustrated. What the SMB’s actually

April 2014

to look at having a clear Big Data strategy are: 1. If you don’t do it someone else will 2. You can’t run away from it as with all the fancy spends on sensors and other technology, the deluge of data is coming your way. Would you like to be caught in a kayak or have a battle ship ready to meet it?

3. The Big data strategy clearly needs three important pillars – one is a really good way of collecting the data cheaply, a fast and effective way to process the data and thirdly a way of discovering the insight hidden in the data through a hypothesis driven approach 4. Operationalizing the big data insights is as important as discovering the insight, this would require a faster way to sieve large quantities of data and find the right patterns that interest you…really fast. need is a platform which they are comfortable working with in terms of technical knowhow and yet gives them the power of analyzing BIG data and generate insights which give them competitive advantages like – fraud management, cost reduction, churn reduction, predictive analytics, etc.

SMB’s can also look at financial strategies to reduce Capex in their initiatives through leasing or cloud based models. But more important than that is the investment they must now make in developing the right skillsets for handling the analytical and

Investments in big data analytics tools and systems can navigate through the complex architecture of the digital world and utilize advanced algorithms to intelligently decipher critical information about consumers and the marketplace

Faisal Husain Founder and CEO, Synechron

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The key drivers for an organization

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“discovery” based requirements of analyzing BIG data. So, with a proper strategy in place together with a business case and financial model in place along with the right skill sets SMB’s are poised to gain a lot from BIG data

Gopi Kandukuri Founder and CEO, Saxon Global analytics.

Big data might not be a matter of immediate concern for many SMBs, though there could be a few exceptions. For some, the traditional data store and BI tools would do. However, the power that the new-gen tools bring in from a processing and storage perspective can be harnessed by SMBs to further their business objectives. An SMB should start with a well thought out Big Data strategy, investing in on-premise storage or BI tools at the beginning and evaluate how things go. They can use cloud based storage and BI services as well. One other aspect that an SMB needs to focus on is to manage the data better.

IBM is helping SMBs drive a paradigm shift in which problems are anticipated and resolved proactively rather than simply by reacting,” says Jyothi Satyanathan, Director, Mid-market and Inside Sales, IBM India South Asia. The growing use of technologies such as Big Data analytics, cloud, social and mobile among small and medium businesses are opening up new opportunities, identifying new markets while leveling the playing field to compete with larger competitors. Many SMBs have struggled to adopt big data and private cloud solutions due to lack of in-house skills and expertise to design and maintain commodity hardware-based systems. IBM is addressing these issues with new Power Systems that don’t require specialized skills and offer the latest advances in virtualization and automation to speed private and hybrid cloud creation. IBM's Power Systems for SMBs come optimized with IBM Big Data analytics leveraging the same technology used in the Watson Jeopardy Challenge – bring that level of advanced technology to SMBs at a price point consumable for them.

SMBs are no different than large enterprises as long as they are catering to a large set of end consumers - especially in a B2C environment, only that they would need to combine their enterprise data with a lot of publicly available information and co-relate the same for relevance to their particular industry.

“Key issue will be cost of such services, hence service providers on the cloud who can offer solutions on a transaction-based or packagebased model will be more effective,” says Babla Sharan of Regalix. n edit@varindia.com

PICK OF THE MONTH

AXIS P5415-E PTZ DOME NETWORK CAMERA A

esthetically designed to blend in with a building, AXIS P5415-E PTZ Dome Network Camera is outdoor-ready, wall-mounted pan/tilt/zoom camera. HDTV 1080p PTZ dome with 18x optical zoom also has a direct drive pan/tilt system for unsurpassed mechanical endurance. The attractively priced camera is ideal for use in city and perimeter surveillance, parking houses and school yards. A reliable, low-maintenance PTZ camera, AXIS P5415-E PTZ Dome Network Camera is directly attached to the drive shaft of two motors—one for panning and another for tilting the camera. It has an integrated sunshield that is designed for easy removal, allowing customers to repaint it to match the wall color. The sunshield’s sloping form also helps the camera resist attempts by vandals to pull it down.

The camera has a hidden junction box that supports two-way audio, four configurable inputs/outputs to external devices, a memory card slot, and the option for customers to use either 24 V DC or Power over Ethernet Plus (IEEE 802.3at).

KEY FEATURES • Support for H.264 Main Profile for efficient compression of video that maintains image quality while at the same time minimizing bandwidth use and storage space. Other supported compression formats are H.264 Baseline Profile and Motion JPEG. • Day/night functionality, which involves an automatically removable infrared-cut filter for delivering color video during day time, and high-quality black and white video in low-light conditions.

• Intelligent video functionalities such as video motion detection, Advanced Gatekeeper and audio detection, as well as support for additional applications through AXIS Camera Application Platform.

• Outdoor-ready with IP66 and NEMA 4X ratings that ensure protection against dust, rain, snow and corrosion.

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D-Link bets on Cloud as the future in Surveillance The surveillance market in India is on a growth trajectory. New trends in surveillance technology have given rise to new opportunities and prospects and this, in turn, has encouraged brands like D-Link to foresee a future of surging demand coming in for surveillance solutions. Sanjay Sehgal, Vice-President – Sales, D-Link (India) Limited, shares with VARINDIA of what he feels the current surveillance market in India is like and the prospects for D-Link in this space.

T

he surveillance market is a growing segment in India. The demand for tailor-made surveillance solutions has evolved over a period of time in response to the alarming rise in the crime rate, recent reports of untoward incidences in public along with growing awareness. Further, the growth of shopping malls, open plan offices and bank branches as well as other retail segments has increased the need for surveillance not only for larger issues of security like terrorist attacks but for petty shop thefts and irregularities of clients and staff. Besides, small and medium enterprises, shops and residential complexes as well as large enterprises with an aim to secure their premises are looking for reliable and cost-effective surveillance solutions. Hence,

Cloud Computing is another factor that has transformed the entire IT industry in the recent past and a similar pattern will be seen in the surveillance space as well.

today surveillance has become a necessity rather than luxury.

Talking about the Indian security and surveillance market in terms of size, it comprises of about 30 per cent of the entire security industry and is still growing at a rapid pace.

Transition in Technology – from analogue to digital…

When seen from a global standpoint, the Indian market is, more or less, on the same platform when it comes to adoption of technology in the surveillance space. While the industry is primarily concentrated with CCTV surveillance solutions, IP Surveillance is slowly

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gaining significant ground over conventional analog closed circuit television security camera, for reasons of performance. Customers today are knowledgeable and understand the benefits that an IP Surveillance solution delivers vis-àvis an analog solution. However, due to lowcost offerings on the analog front, customers do offer a stiff resistance to the acceptance of a digital surveillance solution on the price front.

But with time even this mindset will change.

With the increase in volume and reduction in the price gap between digital and analog solutions, the acceptance of IP Surveillance will grow. Also, going ahead, it will be important for the customer to remember that it is not only price but long-term support, customization, features, cabling, power, etc that must be taken into consideration in totality while evaluating a solution.

Digital solutions are the future of the surveillance industry as both resource and money continue to be deployed for its betterment. Analog solution is an old technology. Additionally, Cloud Computing is another factor that has transformed the entire IT industry in the recent past and a similar pattern will be seen in the surveillance space as well.

D-Link and Surveillance…

Keeping in view the current trends in the IP Surveillance domain, D-Link has been in the forefront and is the first to offer Video Surveillance on the cloud platform with its mydlink cloud service. The mydlink platform is a secure cloud-based solution that records and presents images, footages and information from remotely connected cameras onto connected devices that can be monitored by customers from anywhere in the world using Internet-enabled devices like smartphones,

Sanjay Sehgal Vice-President – Sales D-Link (India) Limited tablets, or PCs. “We provide not just part of the solution but complete offering in the form of IP Cameras, Storage, Software, Switches, Routers, and Cabling. D-Link has also partnered with the leading internet service providers to take the mydlink Vsaas platform to larger audience present across the length and breadth of the country. The next step in mydlink offering to customers will be storage facilities on mydlink cloud,” says jubilant Sanjay Sehgal, VicePresident – Sales, D-Link (India) Limited.

Finally…

With Surveillance steadily emerging, it is creating a whole new market for networking resellers and integrators, besides growing as a compelling investment area. “With the advent and large- scale acceptance of IP Surveillance solutions, Security which till recently had a separate owner in an organization is now being brought under the umbrella of Network team,” opines Sehgal. “Also, with the transition from analog to IP Surveillance technology, many organizations are looking at IT channel to help install and provide services around the next-generation devices, rather than going with the traditional physical security providers."

Surveillance has witnessed steady growth in verticals like enterprises, educational institutes, hospitality industry, retail and government sector with big opportunities still lying untapped. Additionally, the growth potential for Video Surveillance-asa-Service (Vsaas) in the Indian context also looks huge. n samrita@varindia.com

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MAXX believes “Feature Phone” segment holds huge potential T

he Indian smartphone segment is growing at a phenomenal rate of more than 150 per cent today. There are various segments in the smartphone market catering to different customers. One of the domestic handset-makers, Maxx has focussed on the low- and mid-end of smartphone market in the price range of Rs.3,000 – Rs.7,000. It believes that this segment holds huge potential in India, as a large number of feature phone users are upgrading to smartphones. Elaborating more on the company’s policy, latest mobility trends and channel initiatives, Ajay Agarwal, Chairman & Managing Director of the MAXX Group, shared his views during an exclusive interaction with VARINDIA. Excerpts…

More than 80% of the phones sold in India are feature phones. We are extremely strong in this category and offer the largest number of models and the best price value equation to the customers. We have launched more than 80 new feature phone models this financial year.

We have successfully tapped major distributors of feature phones, to ensure that our product is available across the country.

Is the Phablet concept picking up among Indian customers? Will

Yes, the market for phablets is growing and accounts for almost 40 per cent of the market. However, we believe that there will market for both. Phablets or large screen size (5’ – 6.9’) smartphones offer better experience of clicking and viewing photographs, watching videos, reading documents, etc. Smaller screen smartphones (3’ – 5’) are easier and more convenient to carry in your pocket and also more convenient for making calls. So though the phablet share is likely to increase, but there will be market for both, depending on the individual consumer’s needs and preferences.

The low-cost tablet market is Ajay Agarwal on the rise in India. What do you Chairman & Managing have to say to this sudden surge Director of the MAXX Group and what are your plans for this cutting-edge amidst hundreds of particular market? other home-grown Indian brands?

Tablets sales have grown by more than 50 per cent in 2013, fuelled largely by low-cost tablets. Tablets are seeing a good demand from newer sectors like education, financial services for KYC documents, healthcare services, etc.

However, the growth rate has slowed down in the second half of the year, largely due to BIS certification being made mandatory by the government, which has reduced the number of new tablet model launches. The rising popularity of phablets is another factor responsible for the slowing down of growth rates. We shall have several new models with latest features to cater to the demand of the low-cost tablet segment.

How much of your sales come from the Channel, Retail and e-commerce media? Which one is flourishing for you at present?

Currently, our maximum sales come from channel. We will be increasing our focus on e-commerce and modern retail in the next year.

What is your strategy around support?

Phablets substitute smartphones in the near future in your opinion?

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We have about 1,000 service centres to provide world-class customer service. We will continue our focus to provide a delightful experience to the customer.

How do you try to be at the

Our focus is on providing the best product quality, latest technology, widest product range, best prices and best customer service to distinguish ourselves from other brands.

You must be well aware of the Indian consumer psyche by now. What are the most common features that they aspire to have in their phones?

The Indian market is large and heterogeneous, with different consumer segments seeking different features. The mass market consumer of feature phones looks for features like good cameras, long-battery life and good multimedia capability. Local language capability is something which the Indian consumer wants. We are the only Indian company offering up to four languages in feature phones and up to 15 languages in smartphones. WhatsApp is another feature which is being used by the masses as well as the high-end customers alike. In fact, several feature phone users are upgrading to smartphones, lured primarily by WhatsApp.

What are your future plans for the Indian mobile device market?

We want MAXX to be a significantly large player in the domestic market and the most sought-after brand in terms of product quality and customer experience. n satinder@varindia.com

VAR MOBILITY

Gionee ELIFE S5.5 The Gionee Elife S5.5 feature a 5.55mm slim body. The S5.5 is equipped with a stunning 5.0 inch Full HD Super AMOLED plus screen, a true Octa-core 1.7GHz processor, a 13 megapixel rear camera and the world’s first 95 degree ultra-wide angle 5 megapixel front camera. With the 95 degree wide angle front camera, taking self-group shots or full body selfies is made possible and easier than ever before. It comes with AMOGO OS that is Android based.

It has been customized specifically for the ELIFE S5.5.

As for the camera software, it is similar to the ELIFE E7 which consists of two shooting modes, the professional and normal camera settings, as well as the availability of the “Charm Camera” which includes auto make-up mode, footprint mode and meeting memo mode features which were only available to the flagship model ELIFE E7. With the ELIFE S5.5, the battery is just as good as the flagship model ELIFE E7. The highest capacity density ratio allows S5.5’s battery to reach 2300mAh. And with the next upgrade, battery capacity can be reach up to 2450mAh. The ELIFE S5.5 supports HSPA＋42 Mbps with up to 6 different band sets, which allows it to function in most 3G WCDMA coverage areas as well as enabling global 3G roaming.

Maxx MSD7 3G The Maxx MSD7 3G (AX46) comes with a mid-range specifications and feature set for its affordable pricing. MSD7 3G (AX46) is a dual sim. Its dual SIM handset support 3G and 3G data connectivity in GSM+WCDMA network. It is a black coloured phone powered by Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.There is a 1.3 GHz dual-core MediaTek MT6572Wi processor that is coupled with 512 MB of RAM. Considering that budget smartphones arrive with quad-core processor and 1 GB of RAM, this handset may not be able to handle multi-tasking. There is a 1,300 mAh battery that delivers sufficient backup to the smartphone. However, the battery is quite annoying considering the connectivity needs of the users. It features a 3.2 camera sensor at the rear with LED flash and a VGA frontfacing camera enabling users to make video calls. It features a 3.2 camera sensor at the rear with LED flash and a VGA front-facing camera enabling users to make video calls.

It has an internal memory of 4GB, 512MB RAM and expandable memory up to 32GB. Besides MSD7 3G (AX46) is complete with other features such as Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, GPS etc. Kindly find below its specifications for your reference.

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VAR MOBILITY

I

t seems the smartphone market has become a guerrilla warfare, yielding cool new devices and amazing mobile apps for consumers almost every day. While biggies like Apple (iPhone) , Samsung (Galaxy Series), LG (G Series), HTC (One Series) and Sony (Xperia Range) are dominating the smartphone land with their flagship devices, at the same time other smartphone makers are like ragtag group of insurgents, which keeps on raiding and probing in the hope of finding some suitable space for them.

The race for this year’s phone of the year is expected to be much hotter than the last year. While iPhone 5S and Galaxy S5 are now available in the Indian market, we will soon see the HTC M8, Sony Xperia Z2 and LG G3 entering the market. Avid smartphone users must be in a dilemma to choose a suitable device for them as every other device seems innovative enough in capturing user’s attention.

Let us try to explore some exclusive features available in these devices, intending to help consumers for selecting the most suitable device for them: iPhone 5S: The iPhone 5S is likely to be one of the biggest premium smartphones

of 2014. It is like the superstar smartphone of the world. It is a delicate handset designed for ergonomic ease-of-use, to be perfectly curated. The most exciting feature of iPhone 5S is its new Home button, which has inbuilt fingerprint, allows users to unlock the phone in an instant by touching it. Power-packed with Proprietary A7 (64-bit) with M7 motion processor and 1GB RAM the most powerful mobile smartphone running iOS 7, upgradable to iOS 7.1, to date. The quicker A7 chip makes the 5S, simply a joy to use.

The iPhone 5 (running iOS 7) boasts of two cameras – a front-facing FaceTime camera and a rear-facing camera known as an iSight camera. The FaceTime Camera takes 1.2MP photos at a resolution of 1280x960, and offers 720p HD video recording. As far as the battery is concerned, it equips 2,800mAh battery, which disappoints users looking for better battery backup.

The iPhone 5S comes in three colours – space gray, silver and gold.

Samsung Galaxy S5: With the launch of Samsung’s new Galaxy S5, the smartphone war has once again got fiercer. The newly launched Samsung Galaxy S5 has a 5.1-inch screen and equips a full HD screen with the Super AMOLED panel. With regard to the screen, Samsung hasn’t done anything extraordinary that can excite users. Galaxy S5 is powered with a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core SoC with 2GB RAM. Most of the people were expecting Samsung to launch the new Exynos processor with 3GB RAM, which again has disappointed the customers. However, users find the 16MP camera with improved menu and user interface quite interesting. Yet another fascinating feature is its ability to record 4K video. Samsung S5 also equips a

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heartrate

monitor under the camera module.

Also, the all-new S Health 3.0 offered in the Galaxy S5 has personal fitness tracker tools such as pedometer, diet and exercise.

With respect to battery, Samsung S5 can also impress its users as it is packed with a 2,800mAh battery with a talk-time of 21 hours. A new feature, Ultra Power Saving mode claims to give users an extra 24-hour battery even when the phone shows the battery capacity of 10 per cent. Moreover, the Galaxy S5 also has the ability to record video in slow motion, at 120 frames per second.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 comes in two colours – black and white, while copper and blue colours will see a limited release.

Besides these devices, there are some more smartphones, which are likely to see dawn in India very soon. This list includes HTC One M8, Sony Xperia Z2 and LG G3.

HTC One M8: Another candidate for the superior smartphone race is HTC One M8. It is an Android 4.4 KitKat smartphone packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801

Z2 offers a 20.7-mega pixel primary camera with autofocus and LED flash, with a pixel resolution of 5248 х 3936 pixels at the rear end.

There is also a 2.2-mega pixel camera at the front.

Another significant feature, which can compel users to lay their hands on Sony Xperia Z2, is its battery backup. It comes with a massive 3,200mAh battery which allows users to stay away from their chargers for a longer time.

2.3GHz quad-core processor, has 2GB of RAM, and offers either 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage with up to 128GB expandable microSD card storage. LTE is supported, of course, and there is Bluetooth 3.0, NFC, 802.11ac Wi-Fi (that is rare for a smartphone) and an IR blaster. The display is a 5-inch, 1080 screen, and the primary rear camera has HTC’s UltraPixel module with 2.0 um pixels and a 1/3-inch sensor, shooting at f/2.0 with a 28mm lens.

The battery has 2,600mAh capacity.

The company claims that it is good for up to 20 hours of 3G talk-time, or up to 496 hours of standby on a 3G network connection. One of the interesting things of the HTC One is its case.

The device has been designed with a Dot View case that uses the Motion Launch gestures to give essential information at a glance. The HTC One (M8) comes in three colours – gray, silver and rose gold.

Sony Xperia Z2: A pretty big device having dimensions 146.80 x 73.30 x 8.20, the Sony Xperia Z2 comes with a 5.2-inch IPS LCD capacitive display having resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, and weighs 163 grams. In terms of power, the Xperia Z2 equips a 2.3 GHz quadcore processor with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset the same as Samsung Galaxy S5 has. The Xperia Z2 goes a step further in terms of RAM, inasmuch as it is equipped with 3GB RAM which makes multitasking quite fast.

For capturing the merry moments of life, the Sony Xperia

LG G3: Although there is very less information available regarding LG G3 features, but it is speculated that the Korean manufacturer will give other smartphones available in the market with similar specifications a run for its money with their flagship LG G3 smartphone. LG G3 is supposed to be one of the highest resolution phones, which is expected to be power-packed with Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 quad-

core at 2.5 GHz and 2GB or 3GB of RAM. Other astounding features which are likely to be a part of the device are a fingerprint sensor/ scanner and a dustand water-proof body.

Moreover, LG may even offer a better battery than 3,000 mAh. Conclusion: All the smartphones discussed here look pretty similar in specifications, except that Samsung has jazzed up the S5 with a heart-rate monitor. The smartphone market leaders Apple and Samsung have their own loyal fan following. So they must be expecting an upward sales reports. However, at the same time smartphone makers like Sony, LG and HTC are slowly but steadily gaining ground, so we can look for a good competition between these manufacturers.

Since iPhone 5S and Galaxy S5 are now available in the market, for consumers it would be wise to wait a month or so to ascertain if the rumours about HTC One M8, Sony Xperia Z2 and LG G3's dominating specifications and exciting features are true before opting for iPhone 5S or Galaxy S5.

Eventually, the deciding factor is likely to be pricing, unless you simply “must have” the features on your next smartphone buy. n satinder@varindia.com

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VAR MOBILITY

Spice comes up with 3G Android Stellar Mettle

S

pice Retail has launched Spice Stellar Mettle Icon Mi-506 smartphone. Packed with 1.3 GHz Dual-Core Processor, the new smartphone comes in metal body. Mettle Icon is aided

with superlative features which will enhance the smartphone experience – Intelligent answer, Flip to Mute, 3G Video calling,

HTC unveils HTC One (M8) free 2GB Free storage on Spice Cloud, G Sensors, 3.5mm jack, etc and brilliant quality earphones that take your audio experience notches above.

T. M. Ramakrishnan, CEO – Devices, Spice Retail Limited, said,“Spice has been the enabler for its consumers to dream big.

Taking the idea forward is this new product from the Spice stable that gives its consumers the sheer visual pleasure of watching media content and internet browsing on a large 5-inch screen, the most desired upgradable screen size for today’s consumers.”

Spice Stellar Mettle Icon has an inbuilt memory of 4GB ROM + 512MB RAM which can further be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card. It features a 5-inch FWVGA capacitive touchscreen at 854 x 480 Pixels resolution.

This Android 4.2 smartphone offers an 8-mega pixel rear camera with LED flash and a front-facing 1.3MP camera. The 1800mAh battery gives a talk-time of more than 11 hours (2G) and five-anda-half hours (3G) hours and up to 227 hours standby ensuring a strong battery backup.

Samsung presents Galaxy S5 and Wearable Series

E

nhancing its flagship product series “Galaxy” in India, Samsung Electronics has introduced Galaxy S5. The new Galaxy S5 offers consumers a refined experience with innovation of essential features for day-to-day use.

“The Galaxy S5 is yet another great proof point of peopleinspired innovation. Designed to be both effortlessly smart and intuitively simple, Galaxy S5 has been created to maximize consumer benefits by integrating

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superior hardware with enhanced smartphone usability and an iconic design,” said Vineet Taneja, Country Head, IT & Mobile Division, Samsung India.

The Galaxy S5 combines an advanced camera, the fast network connectivity, dedicated fitness tools and enhanced device protection features as consumers stay fit and connected in style.

These devices will be available across India through Samsung’s retail stores and e-commerce sites from April 11, 2014.

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H

TC has unveiled the highly anticipated new HTC One (M8). It boasts a highquality metal unibody with a Smart Sensor Hub. New Duo Camera technology delivers photos with amazing effects, and HTC BoomSound again sets new standards for audio quality on a smartphone.

Peter Chou, CEO, HTC, said, “In 2013, we introduced the best smartphone in the world, but we never stopped challenging ourselves and the status quo in this category. As pioneers in mobile innovation, we continue to design and build devices that will dazzle, inspire and transform the smartphone industry. Today, I am proud to launch the most stunning, intuitive and advanced handset that the industry has seen to date, the new HTC One (M8).”

It possesses a 5-inch, full

HD (1080p) display, tapering to thinner edges, with softer curves for a smooth, and a more natural grip.

Supported by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with 2.5 GHz quad-core Krait CPUs and fully integrated 4G LTE, and running Android 4.4, KitKat, the latest version of the Android OS, the new HTC One (M8) features the all-new HTC Sense 6, available on the device and as an upgrade from the Google Play store. Completely redesigned with a cleaner, more striking visual style, HTC Sense 6 features bold, customizable colour themes and delivers a more intuitive, personalized user experience

LAVA unveils Iris 450 Colour

L

AVA International has unveiled Iris 450 Colour.

The smartphone has a stylish design and will give the consumers an option to go for different colour combinations. There will be six gorgeous colorful back panels on offer in different sets with black or white. These are Blue, Tan Brown, Raspberry Pink, Violet, Ivory White and Pro Black.

Lava Iris 450 Colour comes with a powerful 1.3 GHz Dual-Core processor along with Mali 400 Graphics unit. It sports a stunning 4.5-inch FWVGA (854x480 pixels) IPS display with 16.7 million colours that provide a rich viewing and browsing experience.

The smartphone comes with a 5MP Fixed Focus back camera with LED flash and 0.3MP front camera. For travellers, it offers Assisted GPS to reduce start-up

time of GPS and ensure faster location and positioning services.

Hari Om Rai, Chairman & MD, LAVA International, said, “Smartphones today are not just a companion but a reflection of one’s personality. Today’s vibrant youth wants to look colorful and carry things that match their personality. Iris 450 Colour offers

just that with a range of colorful accessories in the form of back panels and headphones so that the youth can enjoy an all-new and fresh look of their smartphone that matches their taste.”

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All on one. And one for all.

One-Time Passwords

Mobile Authentication

Centralized Management

Secure Access to Cloud Apps

Extend value of door-access card investment.

Only HID Global can provide your company with a complete, end-to-end solution for physical access and identity assurance.

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the Power of One. In a business world where authenticating and managing secure identities is becoming increasingly complicated, HID Global has a simple solution â&#x20AC;&#x201C; One. We have the capability to provide each of your XVHUV ZLWK D VLQJOH LGHQWLW\ FUHGHQWLDO WKDW FDQ EH YHUL´HG DFURVV PXOWLSOH DFFHVV SRLQWV DQG GHYLFHV from networks to doors, from PC log-on to remote users with notebooks and smart phones.

One identity. One audit trail. One trusted security source. Only from HID Global. The Power of One. Contact: hidindia@hidglobal.com | +91 98867 10117 For more information, visit hidglobal.com

Š 2013 HID Global Corporation/ASSA ABLOY AB. All rights reserved. HID, HID Global, the HID Blue Brick logo and the Chain Design are trademarks or registered trademarks of HID Global or its licensor(s)/supplier(s) in the US and other countries and may not be used without permission. All other trademarks, service marks, and product or service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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