E-Magazine July 2018 Issue

Aruba launches Software-Defined Branch Solution

VOLUME XIX

ISSUE 11 JULY 2018

HyperX announces Predator RGB DDR4 Memory

PRICE Rs. 50

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July 2018

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Fortinet signs agreement with INTERPOL NEC announces establishment of NLI

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Microsoft Inspire 2018

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Is Dell Technologies going public again?

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f media reports are to be believed, Dell Technologies is planning to go public again. This comes five years later Dell had gone private and invested heavily while expanding into hardware, software and data

SUPPORT ONE OLD MAN center services. If this is true, going public will help the company pay most of its debt, but the move would not, however, change Dell's control over VMware (which it took when it bought EMC).

According to the announcement made by the company, Dell would pay US$21.7 billion in cash and stock to buy back shares tied to its interest in a software company VMware. The company further added that the agreement values its equity between US$61.1 billion and US$70.1 billion.

Twitter to validate fake accounts globally

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witter has, over the years, locked accounts when it detected sudden changes in account behaviour. In these situations, the platform reaches out to the owners of the accounts and unless they validate the account and reset their passwords, Twitter keeps them locked with no ability to log in.

This week, Twitter will be removing these locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally.

Most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop.

FOR SOCIETAL UPLIFTMENT

(Society registered under section 25 Company Act 1956)

FOR A NOBLE CAUSE! You worked hard all your life, hoping that someday you could put your feet up on a sunny porch and do nothing more than reading a book. But when that day does arrive, you start missing the frantic pace – feeling left out and without purpose. Most of the Indian families take good care of their elders but unfortunately there are people who treat their parents as liabilities making them feel neglected. We want to provide them the much needed relief and a life of dignity.

Real CSR! You are not the only one who feel this way. Many senior executives in the corporate sector think of how they can bring a smile in one needy Old man’s life. Understanding the need of a Senior citizen on how exactly they feel only help us serve them better. The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubt, while the stupid people are full of confidence. Sometimes grown-ups fail to realize their duty and are so much engrossed in their personal lives that they feel it a burden to keep their parents with them. Hundreds of organizations in the country are working to make life easy for such destitute parents by developing old age homes in India.

SPOI is Registered society under section 12A and all investment, they will get the tax exemption certificate and then 80G certification.

SPOI will empower the existing old age homes for the senior citizens and aged people in places such as Delhi and he NCR region. Our passion is to serve & empower the senior citizen by providing a roof over their heads as we understand that an old age home is a critical need for the elders who are destitute, sick and abandoned by their family.

SPOI INITIATIVES

• Computerization Supporting • Elderly Citizens • Medical Support

• Hygiene Support • Edutainment For more information www.spoindia.org

SOCIO POLITICAL OBSERVER OF INDIA A-84A/3, Rose Apartment, Paryavaran Complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110030 Mob: 9818928406 | Fax: 011 46061809

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July 2018

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HELLO INDIA

The era of the new market is emerging!

The future of retailing will see the coming together of offline and online, where offline business will complement the online business.

A question that arises is what comes first - Innovation, Digitization or Disruption? Whatever may be the answer, one has to disrupt its own innovated technology in order to digitally transform. With the e-commerce audience emerging with the increased user base of internet, the benefits of the internet to small business industries is growing which is in turn giving rise to new retail, new finance and new technology. The C2B supply chain and personalized manufacturing is the future. In the ‘Made in Internet’ era, you can design your products in the U.S., manufacture in Germany, assemble in China and sell them worldwide. This helps SMEs to sell globally, buy globally, pay globally and get products shipped globally.

A recent study has revealed that over 120 million Indian consumers are expected to shop online this year, with an annualised growth of 115 percent, aided by fast-increasing data consumption and improvement in logistics, along with a number of offers presented by e-commerce platforms. India is the fastest growing internet nation in the world. A compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13 percent will take the number of online users to 720 million as compared to 500 million in 2017. With a growth of 25 per cent, the Indian e-commerce industry is expected to cross the $125 billion mark by 2020, growing at the rate of 55%, the highest in the world, attracted by huge deals and discounts offered by the major e-commerce companies led by Flipkart, Amazon India, Paytm Mall, Reliance Digital etc. The capacity of burning money and better manage of supply chain does matter for the growth of the e-commerce industry.

Propelled by rising smartphone penetration, the launch of 4G networks and increasing consumer wealth, the Indian e-commerce market is expected to grow. A humongous number of consumer needs and desired experiences is directly impacting the micro, small & medium enterprises (MSME) and the retail sector in India.

Additionally, the government’s initiative towards Digital India, Make in India, and the Innovation Fund is encouraging more online penetration and e-commerce growth in the country. Recently the Reserve Bank of India has allowed inter-operability for prepaid payment instruments, such as digital wallets, creating room for technological innovation in this area. A question arises whether the Competition Commission of India (CCI) will decide on the anti-dumping of foreign capital and desi capital or not.

The concern is on predatory pricing. The predatory price war - like Jio’s rock-bottom pricing, Flipkart’s buy one get three free and heavy discount on Amazon Prime - is destroying the healthy competitiveness of the market. But surprisingly, the trend of pure e-retail era will soon come to an end.

Global giants like Alibaba has realised the fact and implemented the module of offline market as well. It will be the mix of online and offline markets that will equally exist with support logistics as the new retail mantra.

Recently, Big Basket started its offline retail strategy. The company is looking to transform its core online business to offline centres to store daily moving consumer goods, groceries, fruits and vegetables. This investment comes in at a time when Indian and foreign behemoths are heavily investing into this sector. Recently, Flipkart restarted its grocery business, whereas, Amazon is planning to enter the offline stores in India.

Indeed, time will say what is there in store!

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Windows 10 Pro means business.

“PACKS PLENTY OF OOMPH” - LAPTOP

Forged from carbon fiber the ThinkPad® X1 Carbon is incredibly thin and immensely powerful.

Call us at 1800 3000 9990 or e-mail us at corpsales@lenovo.com

© Lenovo 2017. All rights reserved. Lenovo, the Lenovo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo.

Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries or both.

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June 2018

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CONTENTS

Website: www.varindia.com

Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Deputy Editor: Samrita Baruah Sub - Editor: Aparna Mullick Correspondent: Lopamudra Das Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar Jha Sr. Marketing Manager: Ashok Ranjan Dash Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@varindia.com Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: S. Kamala kar Correspondent: L. G. Swami D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru- 560066 Tel: 080-49530399 | Mobile:09886280836 E-mail: kamlakar@varindia.com Mumbai: Bureau office Regional Manager (West): Anil Kumar Sr. Correspondent: Mamta S. Anurag Residency, 203 - “B” Wing, Plot No-5, Sector-9, Kamothe, Navi Mumbai-410 209 Tel: 022-65561292, Mobile: 08108017479 E-mail: anil@varindia.com, mamta@varindia.com Chennai: Bureau office Branch Manager: K. Parthiban F1, Meadows Green Apartments, 64, Chetty Street 1st Cross, Mel Ayanambakkam, Chennai - 600 095 Cell No. :98400 55626 E-mail: parthibank2006@gmail.com Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: Sunil Kumar Sahu 32-161/3, 202 Neha Paradise, Nr. Maissamma Temple, Venketeswara colony Ramakrishna Puram, Hyderabad - 500056 Telangana, Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08100298033 E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: B Kiran Dutta 123 SDF Building, Block GP Sector V, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700091 Mobile: 08100298033, E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Mobile: 09903088480, E-mail: kiran@varindia.com Printed and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of M/s. Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. Shed No. 203 - 204, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110030, Editor - S Mohini Ratna.

For Subscription queries contact: info@varindia.com Subscription: Rs. 500(12 issues)Rs. 1000 (24 issues)

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

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30pg TALK TO DEEPAK

OPEN YOUR EYES

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26

Balaji Solutions diversifying its business into new areas of growth

FACE TO FACE

CIO OVERVIEW 30

23

SMEs continue to account for a major chunk of Marg ERP’s revenue

51

Microsoft partnership helps ABS to grow from strength to strength

EVENT Microsoft Inspire 2018

28

Cisco to positively impact 50 Million beneficiaries in India by 2025

44

Red Hat Partner Conference focused on Emerging Technologies

VAR SECURITY 50

52

VAR ANALYSIS 40 Hardware: Performance

All

Round

Indian FinTech Industry: At An Inflexion Point

COVER STORY 34

From an IT orchestrator to a boardroom influencer - The ‘Multitasker’ CIO is here

Honeywell consolidating its position in India with Product Innovation

VAR MOBILITY

24

47

Is Noida the new favourite hub for mobile phone manufacturers?

A Strong Partner Program is the key to Business Success

Jivi Mobiles sees opportunities in Rural and Semi-urban market

REGULARS ROUND ABOUT

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CHANNEL CHIEF

10

HOT BYTES

12, 14

ON THE RAMP

16, 18

VOICE N DATA

20

CHANNEL BUZZ

22

MOVERS & SHAKERS

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ROUND ABOUT

War and Peace in Trade Zone Amongst a set of peace-loving people, the word “war” is something like letting loose a cat among pigeons or perhaps a bull in the proverbial china shop. One can imagine what would happen if the pigeons fail to use their inherent strength of taking to wings. Trade war may not be as sinister as a bloody war; yet it can cause insurmountable problems. One has to really fathom the implications of trade war. Does it mean the war is fought in the marketplace? Does it have any rule? Does it mean the winner takes all? Can countries involved in war engage themselves and still fight among themselves? I am not entering into a debate on the nuances of trade war, though I am sure the posterity may well define this phenomenon to decipher what is trade war or what is not.

Reports indicate that the recent trade war is escalating by every passing day. Countries after countries are entering the arena and the war zone is expanding. The ammunition here is only one thing and that is clamping on import duty. How did it originate? It has its origin in the unilateral imposition of additional import duty by the US on goods imported from its trading partners that include China, EU, next-door neighbours Canada and Mexico and, of course, India on two goods – steel and aluminum.

President Trump, during his election campaign in 2016, talked about ending the unfair trade practices which result in large trade deficits with all major partners, e.g. Mexico, Canada, EU, Japan and, of course, China.

US business has shifted the manufacturing base to other countries like China, Mexico, Canada because of lower cost of manufacturing in those countries. The manufacturing products are imported back to the US at no or minimal import duties. The US businesses are making huge profits, while the middle class in the US has disappeared, meaningful jobs have shrinked, and trade deficit has increased, resulting in increasing budget deficits. The candidate Trump vigorously wanted to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, by increasing import duties. President Trump is following what he promised in his campaign.

I can very well understand when a newspaper column says that the present war is fought for scoring brownie points by the Trump administration in the forthcoming November by-elections, where the ruling Republicans want to consolidate its position.

Then, my question is that, if President Trump finds that the “trump card” trade war and America-First fail to muster the required support, will he abandon the well-orchestrated trade war and adopt the peace route for seeking another term when the present term ends? All these are hypothetical narratives. My conjecture is that President Trump will sign the revised trade agreements with each of the trading partners which are beneficial to the US. Through the trade war, the US is addressing only two countries, which can be their potential rivals in trade, technology and geopolitical positioning – China and Russia. China, even to the bitter critic, is a power to reckon with. In the last two decades, the progress that the country made in various avenues, be it economic, military, aerospace, healthcare, technology, IT and what have you, would pale any economy into insignificance. It has a huge market and spreading its might across geographies. Chinese investments in the near and far-off countries are growing along with its clout. Africans consider Yuan, the Chinese currency, is as strong as dollar and they build reserves of that currency along with dollar. Chinese investments have perked up in diverse sectors like ports, roads and highways, IT, technologies, etc, while the US and EU investments have dried up, across geographies of late. From Latin America to Africa to South Asia, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and even India, Chinese investments are pouring in, since they are coming with less conditions and almost nil strings.

There are some big statements that China has made recently. One is relating to its intention to become the most dynamic economy in the world, surpassing the Western economies put together. Secondly, its intention is to become the most technology-savvy economy in the world. To realize, it is evolving many programs and projects, particularly in relation to artificial intelligence, robotics, medicines, aerospace and the list is unending. China knows how to walk the talk. Its commitment to build the most elaborate trade and economic corridor linking Pakistan, Afghanistan, CIS and Russia is the most glaring example. Billions of dollars have already been spent on this project and several billions would follow to complete the project

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in time. It is getting tacit support from countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, etc since those countries also gain considerably from the Chinese grandiose project of one belt one road linking landlocked and island countries with a network of ports, rails and other modes of transport.

The technology leadership of China would not have gone well with the Western countries, especially the US, which was till date glowed as the unstinted technology leader, and China was more known for reverse engineering the technologies originally developed in the West. Many feel that the current trade war is more borne out of a threat perception on the technology domain than in the trade front.

On the positive side, China has an expanding economy unlike in the West, which are saturated. China can still boast of demographic dividend and most of its citizens are in the productive age group and that advantage would accrue for some time. About the liberalized economy, protagonists of China observe that the country is as reformed as any other country.

In the Ease of Doing Business, a World Bank-monitored barometer for measuring business ecosystem, China is way ahead.

Arguments and counterarguments apart, there is a gainsay in telling that China has a long way to go as an open economy, where freedom of expression and human ingenuity are allowed in as liberal way as in the western countries.

What was China during a few decades back and what it is now, there could be a world of difference. Its democracy and rule of law have not transcended the experimental stage. To really catch up with the developed world, it has to build democratic institutions, ensure freedom of expression and a free press. There is no short cut to that. It has to progressively move from a closed society to an open one. There should be qualitative changes in its governance structure. In the process, in many areas it has to come clean by unlearning and learning. Indeed, it is a painstaking process and time consuming.

Coming back to the central point of trade war, it is not the question who wins or who loses. It is for the world superpowers to recognize that war is not a solution for anything. It is negotiations and accommodations that can instill confidence in the system and not the path of war, which puts forth the atavistic instincts in the forefront and not the sublime ones.

I do believe that there will be prolonged negotiations and agreements which will be beneficial to all trading partners, including the US.

Mriganka Goswami | mriganka.goswami@redington.co.in | +91 9508391211

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July 2018

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CHANNEL CHIEF

Channel Partners: Foundational component of CA Technologies’ go-to-market strategy CA Technologies considers it’s Partners as core to its business and a foundation of its go to market strategy. The company is very much focused about its plans regarding channel community.

In a chat with VARINDIA, Ashok Vasan, Vice-President, Partners, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies reveals the importance of channel for the company, its channel plans for 2018-19 and how it is empowering the partners Where does channel stand in CA Technologies' VADs. Our strategy is to ensure that each of our ‘Routes to Market’ have strong partners who excel in that mode so that the customers’ scheme of things?

Partners represent a foundational component of CA’s go-tomarket strategy. It is their expertise combined with our technology, which positions us to meet customer needs as the application economy shifts the way businesses manage and consume information technology.

Organizations are still unable to achieve business agility due to factors such as siloed organization culture, archaic processes, and legacy technologies. Partners play a strategic role to successfully traverse the digital transformation journey for them, which necessitates a holistic approach from organizations and CIOs alike.

Our Modern Software Factory blueprint resonates at all levels, and the traction we have received across segments has been tremendous. We are in a great space and partners are strategic and core to our business. Moreover, the focus will be towards profitable and sustainable growth for both, our partners as well as for us. Along with our partners, it is our focus to deliver higher business value and exceptional customer experience.

What strategic plans do you have in 2018-19 to build on your Channel eco-system?

Our relationships with our partners have grown and matured over last few years. The focus lies towards working with our partners to ensure that customers consider us, prefer us and select us.

Our strategy is quite simple Fewer partners, Greater Focus – we believe that partnerships are about relationships and value proposition. We seek partnerships with organizations that share our technology vision and understand our strategic intent; and are therefore willing to commit to our partnership. Mutual strategic value is our utmost priority and it is bearing good results Align with customers’ buying behaviour and consumption patterns – Today, customers buy and consume technology in many ways. Broadly speaking these map to our ‘Routes to Market’; i.e.

Managed Service Providers (MSP), System Integrators, Resellers/

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journey is smooth Where to Play; How to Win – The core element of our strategy which we jointly establish with our partners based on their strengths and our solution offerings to jointly take to market an offering that is compelling and differentiated. This ensures that there is clarity in the market as well as with the various partners across the region

How CA is empowering its Partners to better serve customers?

Business agility has become crucial and is multi-faceted. It is important that CA’s partners understand the concept of Modern Software Factories and the skills that are required to successfully traverse through the journey of digital transformation.

Our Partners are trained and equipped to help rewire organization’s DNA to achieve greater success. These specialists offer solutions, skills and capabilities to accelerate application delivery, improve quality and deliver better customer experience, while also managing security risks and integrating an organization’s diverse technologies and processes to attain better results. Additionally, our partners gain access to support services including sales, marketing and technical training to help build revenue and customer loyalty. These include: i.

CA has invested in its own enablement series known as CA Partner Momentum, which is a capstone enablement event. However, CA further provides enablement content to our partners in multiple media and formats ranging from online, YouTube, e-books and of course classroom training ii. Opportunity for our partners to leverage our marketing capabilities to get additional demand generation iii. Presales support to assist the partners with proofs of concepts iv. Architecture support on services engagements CA along with its partners make this transformation journey shorter, smoother and more impactful. Our alliances leverage Partner’s thought leadership, strategy development and industry expertise to optimize our market-leading enterprise solutions; further assuring and emphasizing an organisation’s future readiness.n

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July 2018

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HOT BYTES

Kaira becomes an exclusive Retail Distributor for NETGEAR

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ETGEAR has announced tie-up with Kaira, as its exclusive retail distributor.

This will help to serve and expand NETGEAR’s sales channels in India and provide a direct access to the resellers and retailers.

The tie-up aims at providing an elite experience of products from NETGEAR and pan-India distribution.

The company would be channeling through Bangalore and would be directly taking care of the after-sales queries.

Marthesh Nagendra, Country Manager – India & SAARC, NETGEAR,

says, “This partnership will enable us to strengthen our footprint in India. The partnership would help us in effectively and efficiently reaching to our customers.

With Kaira’s efficiency in logistics and its focus on micro distribution, we would be able to connect people and businesses.”

Videonetics enters European market

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ideonetics has announced its entry into the European market by unveiling its first AI and Deep Learning-enabled Visual Computing Platform at IFSEC International that was recently concluded in London.

According to Dr Tinku Acharya, Founder & MD, Videonetics, “This year was our first experience with IFSEC International. We garnered huge response throughout three days with recording

high footfalls ranging from manufacturers, distributors, installers, integrators, consultants to end-users.

IFSEC International provided an excellent opportunity to launch our AI and Deep Learningenabled Visual Computing platform which was well received and appreciated by the consultants, end-users and system integrators.

We were excited to see the response and the keenness shown by them towards our platform.”

Fortinet signs agreement with INTERPOL

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ortinet has formalized its threat sharing with INTERPOL. The goal of the agreement is to proactively combat cybercrime and threats to

privacy globally through the sharing of threat information generated by Fortinet FortiGuard Labs global threat research team.

Fortinet will be involved

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in operational briefings at INTERPOL and vice versa. A threat intelligence expert from Fortinet will be assigned to collaborate with experts at the INTERPOL G l o b a l Complex for Innovation (IGC), helping p r o v i d e a clearer understanding of the current threat landscape, which in turn will help the INTERPOL team and law enforcement use the information to prevent risks to security and privacy.

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Compuage to strengthen its cloud portfolio

Compuage has tied up with 15 cloud brands in the last quarter. These brands cater to the requirements of all small, mid-size and large Enterprise requirements.

Atul H Mehta, Chairman & MD, says, “The cloud is a thriving industry, partners want to be able to offer cloud services out to customers and hence Compuage has made investment in building a cloud strategy by tying up with marketleading cloud technology providers and extending expertise, solutions and enablement programs that empower organizations to configure, provision and manage cloud technologies with confidence and ease.

Compuage is marching towards its strategy of being a one-stop cloud solution provider."

NVIDIA to develop Intelligent Systems

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he Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CEERI) and NVIDIA have announced the CEERI-NVIDIA Centre of Excellence (CNCoE). The CNCoE will house a highthroughput artificial intelligence computing infrastructure that can be leveraged by CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) Laboratories, in collaboration with public and private organizations and industries. The CNCoE is currently powered by five NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputers deep learning development platform based on NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU accelerators. The system gives researchers access to NVIDIA’s new Tensor Core architecture and a complete deep learning stack.

Aujas announces new Security Operations Centre

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ujas Cyber Defense Center, an ISO 27001 certified Global Delivery SOC (Security Operations Center) has gone live in Bangalore. It is designed to extend the capabilities of SIEM (Security Incident and Event Management) solutions and proactively provide threat detection, actionable threat intelligence and endpoint response. This aims to help security professionals hunt and mitigate the increasingly complex and persistent threats of the present and future.

Srinivas Rao, CoFounder and CEO of Aujas, explains, “Today, more than 70% of security incidents are reported by third parties, often as late as 6-9 months after the event. This leaves a window of vulnerability which malicious agents can easily and repeatedly exploit.”

Ozone announces investment into Security and IoT

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zone has announced an investment of over Rs.100 crore in the next two years on diversification in the fast-growing Security & Surveillance and IoT (Internet of Things) industry, primarily on building manufacturing capability for CCTV cameras and other security and surveillance products in India, and promote the “Make-in-India” initiative.

With a diversified presence in Architectural

Hardware, Safes & Vaults, Locks, Fire & Safety Doors and Urban Furniture, the brand is among the Top 3 players in Safes and Locks in the country. Riding on its aggressive growth and diversification plans, the Group is eyeing Rs.1, 000-crore turnover by FY 2021. The company, which primarily is into B2B and B2B2C segments, is all set to multiply this growth by diversifying into B2C segment with these new business lines.

3i Infotech to deliver digital transformation

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iorano Software Technologies has entered into a strategic partnership with 3i Infotech to deliver Business Productivity and Digital Transformation solutions for the enterprise segment.

"This collaboration will enable us to provide more efficient experiences to our customers by reducing complexity, infusing speed, thereby improving their seamless journey in their Digital Transformation program," says Mohua Sengupta, EVP & Global Head of Services, 3i Infotech.

With Fiorano innovative integration and middleware technology added to their end-to-end solutions range, 3i Infotech aims to deliver higher value and the best suitable product and services to increase the competitive advantage of its customers.

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July 2018

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HOT BYTES

Plantronics finalizes acquisition of Polycom

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lantronics has completed its acquisition of Polycom.

The acquisition will accelerate and expand Plantronics’ vision and enable it to deliver the broadest portfolio of endpoints in the Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) ecosystem.

Plantronics is focused on voice, video, content, and cloud solutions for every place that technology touches people as they work, share, collaborate, and play. As trends in enterprise communications move toward openwork spaces and flexible

work arrangements, the ecosystem of platforms and devices continues to expand. With the addition of Polycom’s leading portfolio, Plantronics can offer a premium experience regardless of the UCC solutions selected by the customer.

Plantronics acquired Polycom at a $2.0 billion enterprise value with the total consideration consisting of approximately $1.638 billion in cash and 6.352 million Plantronics shares, resulting in Triangle Private Holdings II, LLC, owning approximately 16.0% of Plantronics following the acquisition.

Narayana Group to provide “nSlate” with Iris Global

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arayana Group has chosen Iris Global Services (IGS) as its technology integration partner to provide “nSlate”, an e-Education platform for its chain of schools across India. As a part of the Digital India drive, Narayana Group has pioneered as the first Indian e-learning institute for setting up 128 AVbased Digital Classroom in the academic year 2017-18 and plans for an additional expansion with 86 Digital

Classrooms and 131 Computer labs this 201819.

Iris Global Services is the technology integration arm of Iris Computers, with focus on Mobility, Productivity and Cloud, that has been recently been acquired by its original founder Sanjiv Krishen from Singapore-based Inflexion Point. Since its comeback with revamped vision, it has been showcasing cutting-edge technologies.

IIT-BHU signs MoU with Amazon Internet Services

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he Indian Institute of Technology – Banaras Hindu University (IIT-BHU) and Amazon Internet Services have signed an MoU to develop cloud-ready job skills by providing access to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Educate program, and to help establish an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Cloud Research Lab. Under the MoU agreement, IIT-BHU gains access to the resources in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Educate program and curriculum designed

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for higher education institutions to incorporate in to their courses. This collaboration will help accelerate cloud-related technical expertise for students and boost their readiness as they prepare to undertake the industryrecognized certification.

AWS offers over 125 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics and these features will be available to IITBHU faculty, researchers and students to develop innovative solutions for India.

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Microsoft aiding Progressive Infotech designated Public Sector Amazon EC2 for Windows Server rogressive Infotech to transform P has recently designated Amazon Web digitally Services (AWS) Service

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icrosoft is partnering with the public sector in its digital transformation journey.

Over 100 government departments across India have adopted MSFT cloud in the past 12 months to kick-start their transformation.

According to Manish Prakash, Country General Manager – Public Sector, Education and Healthcare, “Microsoft has been a key partner in India’s digital transformation journey and has worked consistently with the public sector across the country enabling both the state and the union governments to drive measurable societal and economic impact for their citizens."

Alibaba Cloud strengthens its channel eco-system

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libaba Cloud has launched its new distribution channel program at the India Eco Summit in Delhi.

The distribution channel program encourages partners to bring in-depth technical knowledge to customers and builds an open ecosystem among sales, technology and service partners. Under this channel strategy, Alibaba Cloud will also build specialised teams to focus on various market segments and sectors such as start-up and online business, to provide customers with a single alignment to partners in order to promote business growth.

Alibaba Cloud also announced that it will train 1,000 sales and technology personnel in India in the next six months.

Delivery for Amazon EC2 for Windows Server partner. This achievement reflects Progressive Infotech meeting Amazon’s exceptional standards in delivering services for Amazon EC2, managing secure, reliable, and highperformance environments for the deploying of Windows-based applications and workloads.

PrateekGarg,

Founder & CEO, Progressive Infotech, says, “Progressive’s recognition under the AWS Service Delivery Program stands as a strong testament to our experience and expertise towards deploying Windows-based applications and workloads on AWS. This is a result of the accumulated experience and diligence of our cloud practice.”

Delta supports 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia with its UPS Systems

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elta has announced its association with 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia.

Delta has implemented its uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems in five of the 12 football stadiums.

Delta’s UPS systems will ensure uninterrupted sound power supply, emergency lighting, broadcasting and data transmission, as well as security systems in these stadiums. Delta MCIS is now working closely with the Russian government as

well as private organizations to support mission-critical assignments.

Deepak Thakur, Business Head, MCIS, Delta Power Solutions, said, “We are committed to bring innovative power solutions that help in energy efficiency and significantly improve availability of business critical operations.

This has enabled us to power this big international event which is followed by billions of people across the globe, including India."

NEC announces establishment of NLI

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EC has announced the establishment of NEC Laboratories India (NLI), a solutions and technology research and development site in Mumbai, India, aiming for the global expansion of its solutions for society business.

The new laboratories will be established in July 2018 within NEC Technologies India Private Limited (NECTI), where Akihiko Iketani, senior manager, Central Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation, is condemned

to lead operations.

NLI will promote the agile development and commercialization of solutions for India and

other emerging countries in collaboration with NECTI’s Centers of Excellence.

NLI will engage in the creation of new solutions in the fields of public transportation and logistics, public safety, digital government and cashless payment.

www.varindia.com

July 2018

15

ON THE RAMP

TAC Security ViewSonic launches full HD HP Inc. announces its projectors for big-screen experience announces AI- Pavilion Gaming range iew Sonic has P Inc. India based cyber risk V announced two H has unveiled its new Full HD projectors for Pavilion Gaming range management big-screen entertainment targeted at mainstream at home. Developed with gamers along with the reduced input latency and and sleek chassis. With platform ESOF bold new HP OMEN native 1080p resolution, ViewSonic PX700HD delivers smooth image quality for big-screen gaming and entertainment.

Ideal for big-screen home entertainment, the ViewSonic PX700HD projector features 3,500 lumens of brightness and Full HD 1080p native resolution, all housed in a user-friendly design

ViewSonic’s exclusive SuperColor technology, this projector offers a wide colour gamut for intense images in nearly any environment. The PX700HD features a low input latency that delivers faster frame-by-frame action, and a Sports Mode feature offers stunning detail for fast-action content on a big screen.

Belkin launches its compact and fast-charging Power Banks

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elkin has introduced a suite of its most compact and fast-charging portable power banks, enabling consumers to stay connected and charged all day. The all-new Pocket Power comes in 5,000mAh and 10,000mAh available in black. Featuring fastcharging capability and polymer battery cell technology, the new battery packs are lighter, thinner and equipped to charge multiple devices at an affordable price point.

Marco Peters, VicePresident of Product

Management, says, “With the smartphone becoming even more essential in people’s lives, not just as a means of communication, but as a camera, music player, navigation system, and Internet-access device, preventing low battery on-the-go is even more important for consumers. Deep consumer insight studies conducted by our teams allow us to understand what consumers need and encourage us to continue to innovate with new materials and technologies.”

SonicWall protects mid-tier market with new Capture Cloud platform

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onicWall has announced an assertive new focus for protecting mid-tier enterprises from today’s known and unknown cyber-attacks.

Enhanced with 12 new products and solution updates, the SonicWall Capture Cloud Platform — expanded for mid-tier enterprises — now delivers integrated cloud-scale management and true endto-end security that protects networks, email, endpoints, mobile and remote users.

SonicWall is expanding the capabilities of the

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Capture Security Center to deliver the foundation for a unified security governance, compliance and risk management strategy.

With the integration of the Capture ATP verdict database, administrators can query known verdicts for suspicious files on endpoints and servers protected by Capture Client Advanced.

www.varindia.com

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ndia and USA-based TAC Security have announced a new platform ESOF (Enterprise Security on One Framework) for organizations to manage their entire IT security and risk assessment needs in one single platform.

William May, Former Vice-President, IBM, and Subinder Khurana, Former Vice-President, Congnizant, have helped TAC team to build the platform for the past two years. ESOF SaaS model will provide organizations of all sizes and markets the flexibility, scalability, and cost- effectiveness to secure the applications that power their business.

Western Digital announces datacenter innovations

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estern Digital has announced new additions to its datacenter solutions portfolio, giving customers the flexibility to design modern infrastructures and extract greater value from data.

The new solutions include the ActiveScale 5.3 object storage system, extensions to the IntelliFlash N Series family of all-flash arrays, and the new Ultrastar Serv60+8 hybrid storage server platform. This broad portfolio provides the building blocks to rapidly deploy datacenter solutions for better performance, efficiency and TCO. Driven by the volume, velocity and a variety of data, from edge to core, data centers are undergoing a tremendous change as organizations try to find innovative ways to fuel growth while managing flat IT budgets.

15 for performance and enthusiast gamers. The HP Pavilion Gaming provides the ultimate combination of optimum gaming experiences, while the HP OMEN series are more powerful laptops in an even smaller form factor with new must-have gaming accessories, including the world’s first headset with

active earcup cooling technology.

While OMEN by HP line is built for performance and enthusiast gamers, the new HP Pavilion Portfolio is designed to meet the diverse needs of more casual users, who often want a single device to meet all their PC needs.

HyperX announces Predator RGB DDR4 Memory

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yperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology, has announced the launch of its Predator DDR4 RGB Memory modules featuring the industryleading HyperX Infrared Sync technology. This new product is ultra-fast with the performance and upgrade both, the system’s speed and style. These new memory modules are 100-per cent factory tested at speed, and backed by a lifetime warranty. The HyperX Predator RGB

DDR4 Memory modules are available in 8GB (single modules), 16GB (kit of two) and 32GB (kit of four) capacities, with MRPs of Rs.16,000, Rs.20,000 and Rs.31,000, respectively.

The new HyperX Predator DDR4 RGB comes equipped with a LED light bar with fluid RGB lighting effects. The memory is compatible with lighting control software from a range of motherboard vendors, including ASUS Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, etc.

Konica Minolta launches bizhub 658e series in India

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onica Minolta B u s i n e s s Solutions has launched the powerful bizhub 658e/558e/458e black and white multifunction printer in India. The development marks yet another stellar addition to Konica Minolta’s extensive portfolio of office printing solutions in the country and further strengthens its offering in the demanding office work-group MFP segment.

It’s robust design and paper handling capability enables reliable performance at 65 to 45 prints per minute. Equipped

with a large-capacity, highspeed Dual Scan Document Feeder (DSDF), the bizhub 658e_558e_458e ensures the highest document feeding speed (240 ipm – Duplex) and precision in its class of A3 monochrome devices.

This highspeed precision scanning when combined with “collaboration solutions” creates new value to customers in automating their workflows.

Everything you need to know to stop ransomware.

67% of Indian organizations were hit by ransomware in the last year.*

91% were running up-to-

date endpoint security at the time of the attack.*

Protect against Ransomware with CryptoGuard The proven CryptoGuard capabilities in Sophos Intercept X block ransomware as soon as it starts trying to encrypt your files, returning data to its original state.

“Intercept X stopped all ransomware attacks we tested against it in seconds.” - ®ESG Labs “Since deploying Intercept X we’ve had zero ransomware infections.” - ®Flexible Business Systems For more details visit www.sophos.com/intercept-x Tel: +91 79 66216838 Email: indiamarketing@sophos.com *The State of Endpoint Security Today survey was conducted by Vanson Bourne, an independent specialist in market research. This survey interviewed 2,700 IT decision makers in 10 countries out of which, 300 respondents were from India, based in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai.

www.varindia.com www.varindia.com July 2018

17 41

ON THE RAMP

Acer launches New Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop

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cer has announced its all-new refreshed designed Nitro 5 gaming laptop, with improved specifications, designed to satisfy the budding gamers seeking great performance in an attractive laser-textured design. Powered by latest 6 Core high-performance 8th-Generation Intel Core processor with Optane memory or AMD Ryzen 5 processor, the new laptop is targeted at users who enjoy the thrill of gaming with friends and building their own network of likeminded players.

“The new Nitro 5 has been developed keeping the

fact in mind that gamers want powerful specs to enable great experiences on the go at an affordable price point and this product is designed to tackle these needs specifically. The advanced features and the latest hardware with a refreshed striking exterior add to its uniqueness and provide the feeling of intensity to a gamer,” says Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO & Consumer Business Head, Acer India.

Aruba launches SoftwareDefined Branch Solution

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ruba, a Hewlett P a c k a r d Enterprise company, has announced its SoftwareDefined Branch (SDBranch) solution, a new approach designed to help customers modernize branch networks for evolving cloud, IoT and mobility requirements. The integration of new cloudmanaged SD-WAN, wired and wireless networking solutions, secured with context-based policy enforcement, significantly

advances IT professionals’ ability to deliver improved network availability and application performance.

Aruba’s SD-Branch solution integrates new Aruba Branch Gateways with Aruba’s enhanced Aruba Central cloud management platform to provide a single point for SD-WAN, wired and wireless networking and policy enforcement, and to deliver secure, simplified branch connectivity at scale.

BenQ introduces TK800 Sports Projector

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enQ has unveiled their new Home Entertainment TK800 DLP sports projector in a new avatar, celebrating the truest 4K quality bigscreen experience with a live sports match program in a 4K quality. Giving today’s sports fanatics, a heart-pounding 4K quality celebration, BenQ organizes a live match viewing experience on the new TK800.

Featuring true 4K, 3,840 x 2,160 UHD resolution with 8.3-million distinct pixels, the TK800 produces stunningly

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lifelike realism utilizing projector-optimized HDR to enhance brightness and contrast range with onestep image optimization and automatic HDR natural colour rendition.

TK800 comes with an industry-leading lamp life of up to15, 000 hours, a first time ever in any Home entertainment Projector.

It is also supported by a 2 years onsite warranty across India.

www.varindia.com

SUSE helping customers digitally transform

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USE has released the SUSE Linux Enterprise 15, SUSE Manager 3.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 with a focus on helping customers innovate in this era of rapid digital transformation while meeting the needs of multimodal IT. SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 is a modern, modular operating system that helps simplify multimodal IT, makes traditional IT infrastructure more efficient and provides an engaging platform for developers. Customers can easily deploy and transition business-critical workloads across on-premise and public cloud environments.

Jio to roll out VoWi-Fi services

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eliance Jio has announced to launch its voice over Wi-Fi services soon. The service will allow subscribers with no-cellular connectivity to make calls over their network through the use of Wi-Fi. The service will also be useful for people who live in remote locations or are inside a building with thick walls where connectivity issues are commonplace.

Jio will integrate the VoWi-Fi service not only for smartphones but also in its JioPhone. Notably, the JioPhone is a feature phone device by the company which offers 4G VoLTE services. The affordable cost of JioPhone can be a deciding factor in propelling the technology to farther parts of the country. Compared to other telecoms like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India which are still in the testing stages, Reliance Jio has progressed quickly on the technology and has sped through the competition.

Trend Micro rolls out MDR Service with AI capabilities

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rend Micro has announced Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service with multiple new AIpowered capabilities, which are being embedded across the entire portfolio of Trend Micro’s products.

Trend Micro VP – South East Asia and India Nilesh Jain says, “The Trend Micro’s approach combines advanced security capabilities to stop threats with the aid of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to sift through massive

amounts of data. With the goal of reducing risk and automating response, a single ‘API Everywhere’ approach will enable information to easily flow across all layers of the IT stack. These enhancements will reduce analysis time for those performing their own incident response and reduce the burden overall for organizations leveraging the new MDR offering.”

L&T Technology Services launches new NB-IoT Solution

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&T Technology Services has partnered with Cadence Design Systems to launch its new NB-IoT (Narrow Band – Internet of Things) protocol stack nB-on which will be hosted on Cadence’s Tensilica platform. NBIoT is a Low Power Wide Area Network connectivity standard from cellular industry to enable a wide range of devices and services to be connected.

Ashish Khushu, Chief Technology Officer, L&T Technology Services, says,

“We are excited to roll out nB-on, a comprehensive and lightweight 3GPP NBIoT device protocol stack developed by LTTS that is both platform and industry agnostic. Our partnership with Cadence Technologies involves integrating nBon with Cadence’s popular Tensilica platform, which will result in cost effective use cases for a multitude of functions ranging from smart parking management, smart meters to modern fleet and waste management.”

HPE simplifies hybrid IT environment with Edgeline grids.

Capabilities “The

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o help organizations simplify their hybrid IT environment, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced a family of edge-to-cloud solutions enabled by HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems.

By running the same enterprise applications at the edge, in data centers and in the cloud, the solutions allow organizations to more efficiently capitalize on the vast amounts of data created in remote and distributed locations like factories, oil rigs or energy

edge is increasingly becoming a centerpiece of the digital enterprise where things and people generate and act on massive amounts of data,” said Vikram K, Senior Director, Hybrid IT, HPE India. “Our edge-to-cloud solutions help bring enterprise-class IT capabilities from the data center to the edge.

This reduces software and IT administration costs, while accelerating insight and control across the organization and supply chain.”

www.varindia.com

July 2018

19

VOICE-N-DATA

Ericsson sets up CoE and Innovation Lab for 5G in India

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ricsson has established a Centre of Excellence (CoE) and Innovation Lab for 5G in the country at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

This first-of-its-kind 5G innovation Lab, which has been set up by Ericsson for Indian industry and academia to leverage, is dedicated to the nation by the Hon’ble Minister of State for Communications (I/C) and Minister of State for Railways, Shri Manoj Sinha, together with Börje Ekholm, President & CEO, Ericsson, at the IIT Delhi.

Ericsson will conduct India’s first 5G over-

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the-air beam tracking demonstration on 3.5GHz spectrum using a precommercial end-to-end system. The demonstration includes 3GPP 5G NR Multiple-Input MultipleOutput antenna technology with adaptive beamforming and beam-tracking techniques to deliver robust and sustained broadband communications.

Spirent and ETS-Lindgren come together for 5G R&D

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TS-Lindgren and Spirent Communications will pursue a joint research and development on a complete radiated test system to evaluate the over-the-air performance of 5G devices. The test system will evaluate the OTA performance of 5G New Radio user equipment using Spirents’ 5G radio channel emulator, Vertex, to create challenging radio propagation environments.

5G NR brings sophisticated

new radio technologies to the cellular world, such as Massive MIMO (multiple input and output antennas), radio frequency (RF) beamforming, and highfrequency millimetre wave (mmWave) signals at 28 GHz and higher. The test techniques used for 4G are incapable of supporting the chipset and device manufacturers who are developing new 5G devices such as 5G smartphones, IoT devices and data modems.

D-Link extends its Industrial Grade Switches Portfolio

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-Link has introduced an extensive line-up of Industrial-grade Ethernet switches. D-Link has a wide range of Industrial-grade switches with features like Redundant Low Voltage DC power input, Overload current protection, IP-30 enclosure that shall provide users with best-fit solutions.

D-Link’s industrialgrade switches are available in four variants – DGS-F3400, DGS-F3600, DES-F3200, and DGS-F3000. These switches are designed to operate in extreme weather,

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Ruckus brings SmartZone Network Controllers

resist shock/vibration, and surge ratings, thereby offering high redundancy and reliability. Overall, D-Link Industrial switches

can withstand harsh environmental conditions, are suited for controlled and challenging needs of Oil & Gas industry, Mines, Manufacturing Plants, Shipping, etc.

www.varindia.com

uckus Networks, an ARRIS company, has announced availability of SmartZone network controllers – newly-enhanced versions of its SmartZone WLAN controllers – powered by the latest release of its SmartZoneOS software.

“Whether you’re an operator, managed service provider or sophisticated enterprise IT organization, you need the ability to customize your network to meet specific business and technical requirements,” said Greg Beach, Vice-President of Wireless Products, Ruckus Networks. “Ruckus has embraced simplification through an ‘open’ approach to networking."

BSNL appoints NEC to build submarine cable system

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harat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and NEC Technologies India (NECTI) have announced that a purchase order has been placed by BSNL for NECTI to design, engineer, supply, install, test and implement an optical submarine cable system connecting Chennai and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. NEC Corporation, the parent company of NECTI, will manufacture the optical submarine cable and provide technical assistance during the turnkey implementation.

The contract is for a system that includes a segment with repeaters from Chennai to Port Blair and seven segments without repeaters between the islands of Havelock, Little Andaman (Hutbay), Car Nicobar, Kamorta, the Great Nicobar Islands, Long Island and Rangat.

DIGISOL launches DG-WR3001NE 300Mbps Wireless Range Booster DIGISOL Systems has announced the release of its new 300Mbps Wireless Universal Repeater. The DG-WR3001NE enhances Wi-Fi range and improves the signal quality of the existing Wi-Fi network.

Mandar Joshi, Sales Head – Channel Business, DIGISOL Systems Ltd, says, “The ever-growing use of handheld mobile devices is creating a need for uninterrupted wireless connectivity across. Our new product caters to this need and provides

instant high-speed Internet connectivity and extended coverage to professionals on the move or home users. With a compact plug-in design, the device is very handy when you are at location where Wi-Fi coverage is poor.”

Subex wins a multimilliondollar contract from Optus

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ubex has won a multimilliondollar contract with Optus to implement its ROC Network Asset Management solution.

Optus is one of the largest telecom operators in Australia and a fully-owned subsidiary of Singtel. They offer mobile, enterprise and wholesale services and home entertainment, exclusive content including EPL. Subex is selected after successfully demonstrating its strong

domain expertise and unique value proposition while showcasing the superiority of its solution.

As part of the deal, Subex’s ROC Network Asset Management will enable Optus to control all of its existing and new network investments through a well-defined network efficiency framework. This implementation will further help Optus to protect their network investments, improve utilization visibility and provide better financial controls.

Juniper Networks announces EVPNVXLAN Fabric for Campus Networks

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uniper Networks has expanded its campus portfolio, including extending EVPN-VXLAN fabric to the campus, enabling a common architecture for campus and datacenter fabrics. Juniper Networks is providing the building blocks for an enterprise-wide fabric, a key component in building a simple, secure and automated multi cloud.

Juniper has also announced enhancements to its branch portfolio with new capabilities in its Contrail SD-WAN solution, utilizing NFX Series, SRX Series and vSRX

SeriesWAN Edge devices combined with Contrail Service Orchestration.

With Juniper’s new campus architecture, enterprises can build campus networks using the same protocols that are popular in the most stable and efficient data centers that exist today.

Juniper has also expanded its campus portfolio via a resell agreement with a global Wi-Fi leader, Aerohive Networks, and announced the expansion of their strategic partnership to provide a cloud-managed, wired, wireless and WAN solution.

TALK WITH DEEPAK

Balaji Solutions diversifying its business into new areas of growth In talk with Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher – VARINDIA, Rajendra Saksaria, MD – Balaji Solutions speaks about his brand FOXIN and the volume of business the company aims to do through both its distribution and FOXIN product line another Rs. 11 Crore in our business.

What is the distribution scenario for Balaji Solutions today?

Currently, Balaji Solutions is associated with seven brands apart from our own proprietary brand Foxin and this totally has contributed to our Sales of Rs. 665 Crore in FY 17-18. Our top of line business is Toshiba, whom we represent for India operations for its external and internal Hard Drives. We are doing approximately 55,000 hard drive units every month which contributes to our revenue of Rs.15-16 Crore every month. For Samsung, we are a National Distributor for its Flash Cards and SSD Hard Drives contributing to Rs. 8-9 crore to our monthly revenue. We are also the regional distributors for Dell in Rajasthan and the in North-Eastern states for its Inspiron category. We represent Lenovo accessories nationally and are regional distributors in West Bengal for its Laptop and Desktop products. We distribute HP Pen Drives and ADATA for its entire DRAM & Power Bank business nationally. We also do the online business for all the brands that we represent today.

In the last seven months, we have also started with mobile distribution and are associated with Brand Oppo.

We are doing exclusive distribution for Oppo in Faridabad, West Delhi, Bikaner and Bhatinda. This contributes to

Could you also brief us about your brand, Foxin?

Speaking of our own brand Foxin, this year we will be growing by 50%. Last year too we had seen 80% growth with the brand. We are continuously adding new items to our portfolio. In the last three months we added mobile accessories also to our product line.

We have just started and have launched thirty models of our own power banks. Foxin has heavily invested on power banks, because we believe that there is a huge market for it and we should have at least 5% market share. We have also launched thirty models of earphones. The mobility accessory industry in India is currently $3 billion yearly. It might also be more since there are many unorganized players across the country, but this industry is going through a lot of transformation. This month end, we will be launching our USB adapters and cables too. Post this, we are planning to introduce some more items.

The entire mobile accessory business will be our major focus in future. I hope to see at least Rs. 100 Crore business next year only with mobility accessories.

Besides this, in the IT peripheral portfolio, we keep on adding to our existing product line with new models of Cabinet, Mouse, Speaker etc. We have a very strong presence in many of the geographies, but we are weak in some pockets. Particularly, in West and North India, we are in the process of expansion to have a stronger footprint in the coming quarters.

Which geographies are you present in currently?

Geographically in India, we have offices in 38 locations spread across 24 States & Union Territories of India. UP, being the highest populated state, we have three offices there (Ghaziabad, Lucknow and Varanasi) and I believe that is our largest consumer market too. Maharashtra is another major market for us and we have offices in Pune, Nagpur and Bhiwandi; we are addressing the Tamil Nadu market through Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore. In West Bengal, we have offices in Kolkata and Siliguri. So there are a couple of states where we have multiple offices. We have our master warehouses in Chennai, Kolkata and Bhiwandi. We are also moving in to our new office, a 1, 25,000 sq. ft space.

What are your plans for manufacturing?

We have created a 70,000 sq. ft infrastructure for manufacturing. With government backing and their pro-activeness shown in bringing manufacturing to India, there is ample scope in this space for manufacturing Power Banks and other IT consumables. India has become very viable in terms of manufacturing.

What are your thoughts on GST? I am very happy with the reforms that GST has brought about. There was a lack of knowledge initially but I would still say it to be a revolution, since it is not easy to implement it in a country of 1.3 billion people. The government has the guts and dared to implement it and that is the most appreciable thing. The only concern however is the profitability part.

www.varindia.com

July 2018

21

CHANNEL BUZZ

TP-Link organizes a trip to Thailand for its partners TP-Link India has organized an invitational trip to Thailand for its esteemed partners from all over India. A total of 33 partners

qualified for the trip and were taken to Thailand as a token of appreciation for their sales achievement and their commitment towards TP-Link. The beautiful

trip embarked on the 13th of June, 2018.

TP-Link Employees along with the partners visited several tourist attractions like Buddha Temple and Coral Island, where all the partners had a gala time. The partners praised the sheer efforts put in

by TP-Link and are eagerly waiting for the next trip. TP-Link regularly rewards its partners with schemes and trips for their hard work and cooperation.

Bijoy Alaylo, General Manager, SoHo, says, “Reliably Smart is what we stand for and we are building the same in the Indian market. Ensuring the same to be passed on time to time to our deserving partners.”

Dahua Technology organizes road shows in five cities in India Dahua Technology has organized a series of road shows in five cities, namely Rajkot, Calicut, Surat, Pune and Vijayawada across four states in India. These road shows were successfully organized

by Dahua along with its national partner Aditya Infotech.

The purpose of these road shows was to spread Dahua’s message and brand value in an effort to increase brand awareness and product knowledge. They brought customers, prospects, and partners together for thought leadership, product demonstrations, and networking.

Robbin Shen, Managing Director, Dahua Technology India Pvt. Ltd, said, “Dahua is always committed to making the world a safe and secure place to live in.

Road shows are the best ways to reach out to the people and prospective clients who are the

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ultimate end-users of our products.

Our recent road shows displayed a variety of innovative products and cutting-edge security solutions across verticals in five fast-growing cities in India."

The events were hosted in top-class hotels in each city. After formal registration, lighting of traditional lamp and welcome address by a Dahua Official, presentations featuring Dahua Technology and its state-of-theart security products and latest technologies followed. Then, there was a lively question-and-answer session in which many participated and got useful information. Lucky Draw was held in each venue and the winners received fabulous gifts from Dahua representatives.

The customers were excited and thrilled to get hands-on experience while using Dahua products.

Dahua Officials freely interacted with customers and responded to all their queries. The day wound up with a grand closing ceremony during which Dahua Official thanked their partners and brand lovers for making the event a great success. The roadshows in these five cities resulted in enlarging the circle of the Dahua brand lovers.

www.varindia.com

ITAO holds its 13th Annual General meeting The IT Association of Odisha [ITAO] held its 13th Annual General meeting (AGM) in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. ITAO members from all over Odisha attended the meeting and participated in the election of new office-bearers and Executive Body with much enthusiasm.

There were four special points for the meeting – Annual Accounts presentation, New EB Committee to be elected for 20182020 session, discussion of new challenges in the IT industry and adding more members into ITAO. There is a growing interest within the IT industry in Cloud Storage and Integrated Solution Provider. Members urged to provide specialized capabilities for organizing, training, analyzing and visualizing information into such sectors.

Members reviewed the performances and agreed that

the activities of ITAO need to be more proactive and diverse. In a highly interactive session, several suggestions on how ITAO can evolve to meet the challenges were

discussed by Ansuman Patnaik and Pritish Gupta.

The members also discussed ITAO's involvement in different annual activities and national level Association activities. Outgoing Office-bearers thanked all the members and assured support for all events of ITAO. President Srinibash Tripathy thanked all the members for the responsibility given to him and he assured to take ITAO to greater heights.

NSE 8 Certification facilitating Partner Success

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ustomers are facing a threat landscape that continues to grow in both complexity and frequency. For today’s businesses, regardless of their industry, it’s more important than ever to ensure that IT professionals are equipped with the latest cybersecurity solutions and capabilities to address the sophisticated threats they are being targeted with.

Regardless of these challenges,

By participating in Fortinet’s Network Security Expert (NSE) program, partners are able to better assist their customers by expanding on their existing network security skills, as well as their knowledge of Fortinet technologies, while also staying up-to-date on the latest trends across the threat landscape.

And for those partners who wish to demonstrate complete mastery of network security, they can

your customers still need to ensure they are minimally impacted by the next cyberattack. In spite of resource limitations, they need the capability to effectively mitigate against modern cyber threats while simultaneously remaining alert to new and evolving attack vectors and methods. To assist them with this, security partners need to be able to help facilitate successful cybersecurity by recognizing the network security problems they face and connecting them with the vital security solutions and implementation they need.

complete the NSE 8 certification, an industry-recognized certification that certifies expert knowledge in the complexities of both modern cybersecurity as well as the industryleading Fortinet security solutions.

To date, there are only about 150 NSE 8 engineers worldwide that have gone through the necessary steps to earn the distinction of this advanced certification. Completing this certification establishes both the engineers and the organizations they represent as being among the most elite security professionals in the industry.

FACE TO FACE

SMEs continue to account for a major chunk of Marg ERP’s revenue Marg ERP is today amongst the top brands in the market when it comes to serving IT vendors, CAs, accountants and top industries across India in the accounting and inventory space. Sudhir Singh, CoFounder and Managing Director - Marg ERP speaks to VARINDIA on how the company has been a reckoning force for the small business customers in India and helping them in doing business with its accounting, ERP and POS solutions -

Way back when MARG started its journey and computer brand, to bring small businesses Could you trace the journey of in accounting and inventory industry, Thakur attractive offers of GST-compliant accounting, Marg ERP? It was the start of the 1990’s when the world was seeing a growing and thriving World Wide Web industry. A brilliant inquisitive mind, Anoop Singh, CMD - Marg ERP Ltd, then a MCA graduate was looking to develop a software application which could make work easier and more organized and soon developed the first ever software of his lifein 1992 which could manage the accounting of the company with great ease. During those days he also realized that the MSME and SME market in India lacks the basic infrastructure and software which could manage their business easily which ultimately led to the birth of Marg software in 2001.

Anoop Singh knew that small and medium enterprise is the engine/backbone of our Indian economy and needed the desired infrastructure and technology which could contribute to industrial, economic and technological development. Hence the focus of the company remained SMEs and continues to account for a major chunk of the company’s revenue.

Marg is serving more than 21different industrial segments today and ranks No 1 when it comes to pharma or retail industry related software. More than 9 lakh customer base who are using our software but we also have products which suffices different market segments like Jewellery, ERP, FMCG, Payroll , SFA, etc.

ERP and POSsolutions. We have also joined hands with LG Electronics India to provide an attractive package deal of ERP solutions that comes with LG PC on Monitor. It provides them with easy access to user-friendly software and them to choose from attractive offers of GST-compliant accounting, ERP and POS solutions. In association with LG, MARG ERP is providing a 6-months free subscription worth Rs 7500, of its full suite of ERP on LG PC on Monitor. After six month, the product can be registered on a discount of 20% of the original price. This is proving to be a big boon for SMEs & MSMEs.

GST has been a revolutionary tax reform since independence and has been equally beneficial to us. SMEs have been trying to be GST compliant and needed a software which was user friendly and available at affordable rate which we as a brand were able to fulfill with much ease. Our software is especially suited or GST requirements and all our customers are extremely satisfied after purchase of our product.

We have actively given them all guidance related to GST.

accounting in ERP solutions. We will expand further in the country. We are aggressively looking at exports market and have already started selling our software solutions to Sri Lanka. We will also start exporting to other countries in the SAARC region very soon. In addition to this, we are starting training on GST in our education academies. This is a 3 month course and is already in high demand among the youth.

What are your future growth How does GST prove to be and expansion plans in India and We have set up a robust network of 800 a revolution for your products, abroad? sales and support centres. We continually keep especially for your SME clients?

We will keep coming up with the latest in upgrading our software and give active and timely support to all our customers. All this has led to a very respectable customer base of 9 lack plus customers.

Which are the verticals you are focusing on?

The verticals which we are focusing on now include ERP, HRxpert, setting up of educational academies across India and focusing on E products which enhances business visibility. Our software is widely used in pharmaceutical chains, jewelry stores, salons, garments stores, footwear industry and many more.

How big is the SME vertical for you?

We are also in the process of setting up

Have you also tied up with any a nationwide chain of colleges to train rural PC vendor? youth in software. Many of the colleges, as Yes. We have a tie up with two major PC vendors. We have tied up with Lenovo, the well-known multinational technology company

part of the national chain, have already been established in Gujarat, Bihar, Jharkhand and other states.

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July 2018

23

EVENT

Microsoft Inspire 2018 Microsoft's Inspire 2018 conference kicked off in Las Vegas, giving the world a peek at what the company has planned for its partners.

Microsoft Inspire, (formerly the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, and previously abbreviated WPC), is a conference held annually by Microsoft Corporation for its partner community. At Inspire, partners are taught about Microsoft’s roadmap for the upcoming year, network and build connections, share best practices, experience the latest product innovations, and learn new skills and techniques. There are also keynote addresses from Microsoft executives, featured speakers, business-track specific offerings, and hundreds of sessions.

Below are a few excerpts from the three-day convention Satya Nadella Chief Executive Officer - Microsoft “Growing up I always dreamt of this day. Walking up on stage on a Wednesday morning, right after 18,000 people have had a singalong -- and do a tech speech.

I am going to live that dream.

Look, today is a momentous milestone for us, bringing together these two communities, Inspire and Ready, because that's how our customers see us, as one. And to be able to kick off our fiscal year is something that I think is going to really mark a real difference in how we as this tech community are going to serve our customers going forward.

There's no community like this. And I was thinking about it, the scale, and what I am told 17 million people are employed by people in this room across the ecosystem. I mean, that's a tremendous scale.

We have had an amazing year. The success that this ecosystem has had is just enormous. And I first want to start by saying a big thank you, really a sincere, heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you, your organizations, your teams back home, because without that none of this would be possible. So thank you so very much.

But what binds us together, though, is not our success, it's the success that our customers achieve, because that's what makes us as a community, as a tech ecosystem, unique, different.

And to me, as we look forward, the opportunities for us to serve our customers in this new era of the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge is far greater. I have sort of lived through the client-server, the web, mobile, cloud, but what we are going to see going forward is going to be even more profound.

And the reason for that is perhaps best captured in this quote by Mark Weiser who used to work at Xerox PARC in the late-'80s. And he said something which I think really captures what's happening in 2018 - "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they're indistinguishable from it."

If you look at it, there's computing in every home, in every office, every stadium, every factory, every industry - whether it's oil and gas, whether it's retail, or whether it's agriculture or financial services and everything, whether it's that self-driving car, it's that connected refrigerator, any engine, all of it has computing. It's just part of the fabric of life, the fabric of our society.

And you see it in the numbers, too. By the way, we are lucky to be in the tech industry. As a percentage of world GDP, tech spend today is at around 5 percent. It is expected to double by 2030. Now the real question is what about the other 95 percent, that other 90 percent, because all of the COGS of the world, all of the operating expense of the world is going to be powered by digital technology. Our job is not just to celebrate our own growth, because it's going to happen, it's secular, but really to stay grounded on how we are helping the rest of the economy get the dividend because of digital technology. That's what this ecosystem's job number one, two and three is.

I always say this to any student who is joining Microsoft or looking to join Microsoft. I say to them, look, if you want to be cool go look for someplace else. But if you want to join a company that is committed to making others cool, join Microsoft."

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Today is a momentous milestone for us, bringing together these two communities, Inspire and Ready, because that's how our customers see us, as one. And to be able to kick off our fiscal year is something that I think is going to really mark a real difference in how we as this tech community are going to serve our customers going forward.

Partner Inspiration Microsoft merged its Windows and Azure teams in March and since then, the combination has been creating synergies for Microsoft, which is also benefiting the channel. The Redmond, Wash.-based IT giant hasn't been shy during this year's Inspire partner conference about its focus on co-selling alongside its channel community. Jason Zander, executive vice president - Azure and Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Office 365 Marketing, took to the stage to share specific updates from Azure and Microsoft 365.

Zander and Markezich talked new products and business momentum, and what partners should focus on during the upcoming fiscal year Jason Zander Executive vice president Azure

Ron Markezich Corporate vice president Office 365 Marketing

“If we look at our stated earnings out there, we had 100 percent year-over-year Azure consumed revenue growth. We had 122 percent year-over-year Azure Premium Services growth. Which really tells me that the cloud wave is in full swing. And we're working hard to keep that momentum going.

What I really want to tell you is, "Thank you." On behalf of the entire team, thank you. We are a partner-led company, and we really work with you constantly, and we really need your help. At 2:00 a.m., one of our customers has got an issue and they want some help from us. That is the job that we wind up doing, and really the momentum that we have seen, the business results we've seen is a testament to the hard work and partnership that you have put in On behalf of the entire place.

Now, we also want to invest team, thank you. We are a in your success, and Azure is a partner-led company, and consumption business. And so, we are tightly aligned with you. we really work with you Now, when you look across the constantly, and we really broader ecosystem to see how the business is doing, we see that for need your help. At 2:00 every $1 of Azure consumption a.m., one of our customers that we get, it drives $5 of partner has got an issue and they business.

Now, our field is aligned on want some help from us. that consumption and that growth, That is the job that we and I want to take a look at a few examples of us working with wind up doing. partners and how that has actually led to great business.

I want to start off with SAP. SAP, of course, is a market leader in the enterprise applications software. If you look at the workload of SAP running on top of Azure and in the cloud, we have over 1,000 deals in the pipeline, and that includes 300 new customer wins just this year. That's 635 percent year-over-year growth.

Now, when you look at those, 64 percent of those were led with partners. And, again, here's another awesome way in which this helps us drive business. For every $1 of SAP earned on Azure, partners get 2X on infrastructure services, and 7X on transformation services.

So, really, we believe that this demonstrates the unique and differentiated investment that we have made for these workloads, and we think they are paying off. And I will tell you that even with all of that awesome growth, there are still 50,000 SAP ERP systems out there today. And so, we are also doubling the number of black belts that we have in the field to help us with that growth. And so, if you're working in this business, we want to be there, we want to support you.

The next example I want to give is Rackspace. Rackspace serves over half of the Fortune 100 as a trusted service provider.

Today, Rackspace is the top MSP adding new customers onto the platform. They have experienced a 425 percent year-over-year growth with CSP. Now, CSP allows us flexibility. You can set the price, the terms, and the direct billing relationship with the customer. You can provision, own, and manage subscriptions. You can be a first point of contact for customer support, and that really means there's nothing in between you and your customer."

“The workplace is such a ripe opportunity to grow your business because it is evolving so rapidly. Business leaders are looking to shape culture and empower their employees.

Employees have a new set of expectations for technology at work, and IT is supporting this digital transformation while also looking to stay ahead of their compliance and security obligations.

What we can do together is help our customers with Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 brings together Windows 10, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Office 365 into one fully integrated suite. And also with your services, Microsoft 365 will provide a complete, intelligent, secure solution to empower employees.

What we are seeing is Microsoft 365 can unlock creativity to bring out the ingenuity of everyone. It's built for teamwork to ensure teams can work seamlessly together around the world, across cultures, across languages.

And Microsoft 365 is integrated for simplicity, to provide a complete management environment for our customers.

Microsoft 365 has intelligent Cummins uses security, to provide the highest level of security and compliance for our Microsoft 365 to connect customers. But most importantly, their global workforce that we' have seen high-scale growth in speaks over 19 languages, Microsoft 365, and the base that it's so they can work on continues to get higher scale.

But we have also seen seamlessly together. They Microsoft 365 catch fire over the store their manufacturing last year, growing at triple-digit seats percentage-wise over the last plans in Microsoft 365, 12 months, thanks to the work that protect those with EMS, you're doing. And what we are most and use it to innovate more thrilled about are the customer quickly and accelerate transformations that are happening time to market. every day with Microsoft 365.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Cummins uses Microsoft 365 to connect their global workforce that speaks over 19 languages, so they can work seamlessly together. They store their manufacturing plans in Microsoft 365, protect those with EMS, and use it to innovate more quickly and accelerate time to market.

Qantas Airlines uses Microsoft 365 to stitch together all of the teams that it takes to purchase an airplane. There are dozens of teams that have to work together for that single airplane purchase.

They also use Microsoft 365 to crowdsource customer issues as they're traveling to improve the traveler experience. None of this would be possible without all of you, and I really would love to thank you for your work, your partnership, and the solutions that you are building around Microsoft 365 to help our customers.

We surveyed many of you to understand how your business has changed with Microsoft 365. And what we have found are those partners that have created Microsoft 365 practices have higher revenues, higher margins, and better customer satisfaction. We always called that "the hat trick" when I was running the services business.

What we also found from talking to all of you as well as our customers, a number of areas of opportunity to help to grow your businesses and serve our customers."

www.varindia.com

July 2018

25

OPEN YOUR EYES

Is Noida the new favourite hub for mobile phone manufacturers?

Noida is fast becoming a hub for phone makers for manufacturing phones and accessories. Close to 30 per cent of the 70 mobile phone makers that have opened shops in the last two years in India have a presence in Noida Noida is back into the limelight with the opening of the new manufacturing hub by Samsung which also happens to be the largest in the world for the company. The region has been projected and promoted of late as an electronics manufacturing hub and the new facility set up by the South Korean giant further bolsters this claim.

Going by the latest trends, Noida is fast becoming a hub for phone makers for manufacturing phones and accessories. Close to30 per cent of the 70 mobile phone makers that have opened shops in the last two years in India have a presence in Noida.

The reasons could be many. First is Noida’s proximity to Delhi, which makes the place easily accessible from the capital city for manufacturers to fly in their imported components. Second, seven out of ten companies have their head offices in Delhi NCR which becomes an added advantage for the vendors for transit, distribution and warehousing. Third, the region boasts of skilled manpower, which is another plus for manufacturing vendors. Fourth, because of big vendors like LG, Samsung and Nokia having opened their shops already, Noida has a strong component ecosystem in place.

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The region thus has the potential to grow according to manufacturers, with a lot of localisation taking place in future.

According to Aruna Sundararajan, secretary, ministry of electronics and information and technology, mobile manufacturing today takes place in three to four places in the country Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Noida and Greater Noida.

India – an emerging manufacturing hub‌ Besides being the fastest growing smartphone market in the world (it is expected to be the largest by 2020), India also enjoys the privilege of becoming the second largest mobile phone producer globally.

Bureau of Statistics and Vietnam General Statistics Office), around 225 million mobile phones have been produced in the country as of 2017 with a value of Rs 1.32 trillion. This feat has thus placed India in the second position, replacing Vietnam in 2017. The rise in mobile phone production also led to the decrease in the imports of the devices into the country by less than half in 2017-18.

The rough 70 units that have started assembling handsets in the country in the last two years have generated 36,700 jobs both directly and indirectly, according to official data.

This brings the cumulative capacity of these units to about 20 million phones per month.

According to data shared by the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), India is now the second largest mobile phone producer in the world after China. This has been further corroborated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech he gave during the opening of the Samsung facility in Noida.

The fast track task Force, a body formed under the Ministry of Electronics and IT that has members from the industry and government,has set the target to achieve around 500 million mobile phone production in India by 2019, with value estimated to be around USD 46 billion.It has also set forththe target to create component manufacturing worth USD 8 billion and in the process create 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs by the same year.

According to the data (that was available from market research firm IHS, China's National

Thus India has two years in hand to meet the ambitious target, having reached the 225 million

mark already.

So what is it that is boosting this sudden spurt in mobile manufacturing?

Manufacturers claim that the ‘Make in India’ as also the Digital India initiatives have given a major boost to the manufacturing eco-system in the country.

The Make in India line-up is long and impressive, led by the big names in the international mobile devices industry • Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn has committed Rs 326.46 billion in a mega unit in Maharashtra • Wistron is mulling a Rs 65.29 billion investment to set up a plant in Bengaluru • Xiaomi is investing Rs 32.64 billion and has just roped in over 50 vendors who could bring in over Rs 163.23 billion to the table in a few years • Oppo too has a multi-billion plan for a second plant • Gionee wants to kick-start manufacturing with an ambitious investment • Samsung has announced mega investments, too, besides the one in Noida • Domestic players such as Spice and Lava are also chipping in to support the Make in India scheme.

In a nutshell, some 120-odd mobile devices and component manufacturers have committed over Rs 450-billion investments to manufacture in India.

According to ICA, the total capital investment by device and component players by the end of 2018 under the phased manufacturing programme (PMP) is expected to hit Rs 57 billion, with a bulk of it likely to come this year.

As of 2017, their total investment was around Rs 21 billion.

However, since many manufacturers are planning only to shift their equipment and lines from China and South Korea, and there would beno new machinery put in, the investments

entailed will not be that high. At present, investments have been made to primarily set up assembly lines and components, including battery packs, chargers, wired headsets or keypads. Manufacturers have also put in an additional Rs 50 billion as working capital, mainly to buy components for assembling phones.

The government, on its part has promised to support the manufacturers through its PMP – Phased Manufacturing Programmethat kicked off in 2015.The Phased Manufacturing Programme notified by government includes the roadmap for duty or tax intervention for locally-produced components that are used in mobile devices in a phased manner. The move is in line with the government's target to have zero import of electronics by 2020 under its Digital India programme.

As per ICA, manufacturers have committed to meeting their yearly target for net value addition in mobile devices which was earmarked under the government’s PMP. In smartphones, the current net value addition in the industry is 11 per cent, against the 2017 target of 14.7 per cent. Mobile players are expecting the value addition in smartphones to rise dramatically to at least 18 per cent this year.The total net value addition targeted for smartphones is around 40 per cent by 2020. The story is similar in feature phones too — net value addition is at 21 per cent, though the target was over 25 per cent.

Going ahead…

Although the critical components are still flown in from China and Taiwan, the assembling of the devices and meeting the net value addition can still be seen as a significant start for the industry. The PMP strategy has further helped in pushing companies to at least move towards manufacturing from direct imports. In 2014-15, imports as a percentage of domestic production were at 78 per cent, but they have dropped to 18 per cent in 2017-18. PMP as well as a hike in import duties on mobile devices have contributed to this, analysts said.

However the need of the hour is to develop

Manufacturing in Noida • Brand Intex has three manufacturing units in Noida, and the fourth one in Greater Noida.Together, they produce 30 million phones a year out of which 35 per cent are smartphones. It generatesan employment of 5,000 indirect jobs.

• Dixon's subsidiary Padget invested Rs 30 crore to set up a mobile manufacturing unit where they assemble components of Chinese brand Gionee and Japan's Panasonic. The production capacity is 800,000 – 1 million and the size of the unit is 60, 000 sq ft. It generates 15, 00 indirect jobs, including 500 in manufacturing.

• Lava has 2 units in Noida that has a production capacity of 3 million phones per month. It gives employment to 10,000 indirect jobs, including 4,000 employees in manufacturing operations. The brandis investing over Rs 2,600 crore in its manufacturing units to reach a production capacity of 21.6 crore units in next five years, as part of its ambitious plan to capture 40 per cent share in the sub-Rs 12,000 segment.

• Companies like Bingo Mobiles Tech, Labanyo Electronics, Vivo Mobile, GTN, Dixon Technologies, MCM (Million Club Manufacturing) are mulling huge investments in the units they have set up in Noida. a component ecosystem for India to become a mobile manufacturing hub. This also means that there should be more design centres built in the country in order to attract component makers like Qualcomm.

Mobile handset manufacturers are also taking steps to scale up their manufacturing operations either on their own or with contract manufacturers in the country. Nokia, for instance, has already started manufacturing smartphones in India. It produces about 12 models in the country. According to an official in Nokia, the company is already in talks with Foxconn to manufacture device components in India.

IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in support of manufacturing said that more initiatives are in the pipeline to boost the Electronics manufacturing in the country. Electronic manufacturing is also a major focus of the government as part of the `Make in India' initiative. n Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com

www.varindia.com

July 2018

27

EVENT

Cisco to positively impact 50 Milli

The fifth edition of the CISCO India Summit held in Goa was the CISCO’s intuitive, intent based technology will influence the f Speaking at the two-day Cisco India Summit 2018, in his key note address, Sameer Garde, President- India & SAARC - CISCO India focused on how digital transformation of

to protect an organisation’s people, data, and infrastructure. CISCO has committed for end to end security solutions and about 1000 people in India are working on its R&D to strengthen the security and invested billions of dollar into strengthening security. "Our researchers, data scientists, and engineers collect information about existing and developing threats. We then deliver protection against attacks and malware,” he said.

“With our 3 Datacenters across India which hosts CISCO Routers & Switches etc.,network devices deployed in DC deliver network services to our all Branches and ATMs,” he further

Security running across the core fabrics of Cisco…

V.C. Gopalratnam senior vice president, IT and Chief Information Officer (CIO) - Cisco Systems India's banking system has brought high risk to the industry. “CISCO created and reinvented the network; India is facing 20 billion cyber threats per day and the Banking and Financial Services Industry (BSFI) is facing 24% of it. Indian banks face heavy threats across the country, as 800 million accounts are linked and we are giving end-to end solutions to contain it.Through the Talos engine we are blocking 20 billion threats a day,” said Sameer Garde, President- India & SAARC-CISCO India while speaking about

Security is the foundation of the Network.

With malware attack growing exponentially, globally cybercrime will cost 6 trillion annually by 2021. The attack is mainly targeted to the BFSI industry. As a No.1 security vendor, CISCO leads the partner eco-system into security.

Vishak Raman, Director, Security – Cisco told the audience at the 5th CISCO India Summit in Goa that Security is running across its core fabrics and that it bringsa unique integrated and orchestration approach to fast detect the attack.

Vishakfurther said on how they integrated the technology into four critical components like Alerts, Events, Threat Intelligence and Broadcast.

The fundamental principle is to detect once and protect everywhere. “As a security and network security leader, it is important to understand of how fast we are able to detect vulnerability. To complement this, with our CISCO’s Talo labs,300 dedicated persons are working 24/7 for detecting actual threats, Threat Intelligence work for enhancing security, while learning from internet activity to automatically identify attacker infrastructure staged for current and emergent threats.

Sameer Garde President- India & SAARC CISCO India added.

NSE selects CISCO for enhanced customer service…

The National Stock Exchange (NSE), India’s largest stock exchange and the world’s fourth largest in terms of daily turnover and number of trades, is leveraging Cisco’s world-class, ultra-low-latency trading architecture to deliver high-performance trading experiences, greater

HDFC Bank, Cisco working together…

Vishak Raman Director, Security Cisco India the digital transformation journey and how the Network is core to digital transformation.

Garde said that Cisco has built the Talos team

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“Organisations should have digital objectives as part of their business and not having such objectives does not make organisations digital. There are many digital objectives for organisations and it can be achieved in multiple ways like creating new products or values using digital technologies,” said Munish Mittal, Chief Information Officer & Group Head Information Technology, HDFC Bankduring his keynote address.

With the Digital Transformation and Mobility Banking (DTMB) team at the forefront, HDFC Bank has launched a host of highly successful digital banking products. “These include 30-minute paper-less Auto Loans using Biometric technology, 10-second Personal Loan on NetBanking, PayZapp, Chillr, LITE App, Missed Call Recharge, Instant loans at ATM and the recently introduced Robotic Assistant (IRA) at HDFC Bank branches,” Munish Mittal said.

Amit Malik M.D., Public Sector & Services, Cisco India & SAARC control, and visibility to its members. Cisco has also completely automated NSE’s datacenter, helping it reduce app deployment time from

ion beneficiaries in India by 2025

emed “The Future Reimagine”. The 2 day summit focused on how future,starting from Autonomous cars to blockchain and AI. weeks to hours. Optimising NSE’s network with Cisco ACI has allowed it to reduce overall efforts by 15-18%. NSE is also leveraging Cisco’s AppDynamics platform to monitor

Rajesh Shetty Managing Director & Country Head Enterprise Sales, Cisco India the performance of core applications and get real-time analytics for business performance to deliver superior end-user experience.

Sankarson Banerjee, Chief Technology Officer, National Stock Exchange said, “Our vision is to adopt the latest technologies to deliver greater value to our customers and employees as well as build trust and investor confidence. Digital Innovations in technology are going to transform the financial services sector as we know them. Institutions that are quick to embrace innovation and adopt new

technologies will have immense opportunities to improve the way they deliver services."

33% revenue of CISCO coming from recurring revenue…

Services & subscription is more relevant to CISCO than ever, as services is the 2nd largest revenue after Infrastructure Platforms - Amit Malik, MD, Public Sector & Services, Cisco India & SAARC, who is responsible for the sale of Cisco products and services to the Central and State Governments and Defence in India, as well as leading Cisco Services in India and South Asia saidthis at the CISCO India Summit.

“CISCO strongly believes that services is all about giving customers a fantastic experience.

With this we are simplifying the complex world to a simplified world. Globally, 33% revenue of CISCO is coming from Recurring Revenue and in India 40% recurring revenue, 23% is from our services division and 26% revenue is from our services and at the Global level,” Amit said.

CISCO looks closely at Indian start-ups…

Cisco Systems has been working on securing and connecting digital networks across the globe and is looking closely at a digital transformation and changing its core strategy.

From a focus on hardware, CISCO is keenly looking at software and its use cases across industries. Speaking about the war for talent and the growing need for people to skill themselves, V.C. Gopalratnam, senior vice president, IT and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Cisco Systems in his inaugural address spoke about the importance of skilling oneself faster than

ever before.

According to him, Cisco is in a war for talent.

“Changes are happening every day around us and our strong belief on the technologies we are

Daisy Chittilapilly Managing Director, Partner Organisation - Cisco India & SAARC working on such as networking, collaboration, security, we are shaping the industry trends. But it is hard to attract and retain the best talent.

There are a few things we do, and the triedand-tested method is education. We, therefore, invest in training and skilling, but that can only take you to a certain extent. The second thing is we have started to work in dynamic teams, where people can report to somebody, and at the same time work for somebody else in the organisation. This helps broaden perspectives,” he said.

www.varindia.com

July 2018

29

CIO OVERVIEW

The role of a CIO is increasingly transforming industries, seeping into every part of the business and escalating as a corporate priority. There is no surprise then that the role of the CIO is also transforming and increasing in importance, so much so that he or she is expected not only to own and drive technology initiatives, but also to understand Digital, Industry 4.0 and other new-age technologies It is a proven fact today that the role of a CIO has changed from a technology leader to that of a business transformation leader. While previously a CIO was primarily concerned with building and delivering technology, they are today seen as someone who would influence the purchase of a range of technologies, and nurture talent and innovation across the business. Top CIOs today have responsibility for businesses outside traditional IT -the most common being innovation and transformation.

A few years back, the CIO had to worryabout things like the mainframe computer and available issues as at that time technology did not see much of an advancement. But times have changed now.

Advancements in technology have changed

Dr. Vijay Choudhary Chief Technology Officer HRH Group of Hotels

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the way CIOs look at deployments today, eventually bringing a big change to theirrole.

Says Parveen Kumar Sharma, CTO & Consultant – IT, The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, “Businesses in most of the organisations are currently undergoing some kind of digital transformation as they focus on improving the delivery and scope of their latest products and services. As a result, the role of CIOs is changing fast.”

of Digital transformation has created lot of expectation from a CIO. Their Roles will be crucial to successfully articulating customerfacing solutions, developing new revenue opportunities, creating capabilities for global representation and fostering innovation within their organization.”

In other words, a CIO is expected to contribute to strategy more than just maintaining technological platform,” says Dr. Vijay Choudhary, Chief Technology Officer - HRH Group of Hotels. “The new waves

Not only is he or she expected to own and drive technology initiatives, a CIO is supposed to understand Digital, Industry 4.0 and other new-age technologies, and explain the implications and possibilities of such technologies to business leaders.

“For example, Artificial Intelligence can fundamentally transform end-consumer experiences. But the CIO needs to be able to articulate the benefits of AI in a way that business leaders can rally around,” says

Manish Sinha Head –IT, Vectus Industries

Dr. Rajeev Papneja COO & EVP, ESDS Software Solution

Amit Jaokar EVP – IT, Choice International

Sanjeev Kumar Director & CIO, Apon India

Amitabh Mishra, Chief Digital Officer – Vedanta Resources.

of innovation while accommodating digital initiatives. The IT function is now integrated into all aspects of anorganization and is expected to operate as a business-within-a business. Overseeing these changes is the CIO, a role that is constantly evolving to meet the new world of Technology,” he continues.

Ravinder Arora, Head – Information Security, IRIS Software feels that due to the reliance on technology to grow and succeed, the CIO has become a fundamental part of the business and business also rely heavily on CIO for success of any projects. “Rather than being the controller of technology spending, a CIO has to today orchestrate the availability of modern IT services that the business needs to meet its goals, compete effectively and respond to the demands of the market,” he says.

“Few years ago, CIOs were normally “IT people” who had qualifications in areas such as Bachelors of IT or engineering,” says Amit Jaokar, EVP – IT, Choice International.

“However, nowadays, the CIO’s skill has required an increasing amount of domain knowledge of the industry they are in and to top it business knowledge.”

He further continues, “Of late, it’s become conjoint for CIOs to not only have significant technological credentials but also to have acquired advanced grades in business (e.g., MBAs). This shift is revealing of a larger trend in which CIOs arerelied upon to lead their companies' digital advancements by creating an IT strategy that sets the course

Bipradas Bandyopadhyay Head of IT Zuari Infraworld India

According to Bipradas Bandyopadhyay, Head of IT - Zuari Infraworld India, the role of a CIO has now got expanded to become a revenue-earning role for the organization.

Taking cognizance of the digital age, a capable CIO would create distinct competitive advantage for the business through use of technology in the fields of marketing, sales and delivery of product and/ services and generate excellent top-line values for the business. “Digital transformation that ensures that the organization stays ahead of the curve has now become the primary responsibility of a CIO, thereby taking him/her out of the comfort zone of IT Infra management,” he reiterates. “Example of such expansion is the CIO also becoming CDO (Chief Digital Officer) where s/he takes care of implementation of digital initiatives inside and outside the organization with the help of latest technology.”

Ravinder Arora Head – Information Security, IRIS Software hands.

Earlier technology depth of the CIO was more important as most Hardware/ Software/Network used to be managed by the internal ICT team of the organization and every setup required expertize.But now with automation, the scope or requirement of technical intervention in the setup or management has become much less, as pointed out by Shiv Shankar Datta, Head – Information & Communication Technology, FCA India Automobiles. “Moreover the outsourcing option availability has made the job much simpler,” he explains.

This while expanding the role of a CIO also provides assurance to a business that both information and technology are in safe

According to him, the CIO’s main responsibility includes • Managing the Top Management • Setting & Managing the overall user expectation • Managing the ICT team such that they always feel relevant & get engaged with what they do Giving them freedom of operation and guiding them to the growth path • Managing the Vendor to get the best of the technical service & support & reasonable cost • Occasionally disrupting the way the business is done by Innovating ideas & areas where the technology can make difference in the business process

Amitabh Mishra Chief Digital Officer – Vedanta Resources

Sourabh Tiwari CIO/IT - Head, Overseas Infrastructure Alliance (India)

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CIO OVERVIEW this responsibility of IoT or Cloud centric IT management. “IT has become a major business differentiator in almost all the areas of business, be it product creation, customer service, supply chain, quality, vendor management etc and in almost all the functions It is needed to have superior IT implementation. The Digital divide between the CIO and Business Heads is vanishing,” he says.

Vinod Pandey Head-IT, GHCL Limited (Chemicals)

The increased responsibilities and burdens that have beset the CIO have also increased their power and influence within an organization too. However, this also means that CIOs are being forced to look beyond simply “IT matters” and to also consider changing business regulations and laws to ensure that their infrastructures meet the responsibilities of the business. As such a CIO must look beyond whether the company’s servers are provided by Dell or HP and instead examine the overall capabilities of a network to support a business.

Technology adoption – a big game changer for a CIO… It is understood that the CIO’s role is changing with the evolution of technology and more automation. But along with this change, a CIO also needs to change him/ herself to adapt to the change, else they run a risk of getting side-lined in the organization.

Sanjeev Kumar, Director & CIO, Apon India agrees that upgrades and fast innovation & growth in technology is not only having a profound impact on our lives and businesses, but it is also impacting the role of a CIO immensely. “From a CIO perspective, I would say that the right technology orchestration skills with business strategy skills supported by leadership qualities have tremendous value.

Most of the highly skilled confident people say CIOs/CTOs/CISOs as we see trends in US and Europe, they prefer working as freelancers or as consulting partners to many organization. They do not prefer to operate on nine to five job needs in one company.

These professionals feel that their Strategic and Innovative thinking ability better work when they are into minimum occupational noise that for obvious reasons routine job creates.”

According to him, the ‘orthodox IT Head and CIO’ role will vanish soon in many organizations with deluge of technology, innovation, automation, cloud, agile apps, outsourcing taking place with fast pace and other developments like business heads are other functions head taking up

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Technology has been a key player toward CIO reformations with technologies like big data, analytics, AI/IOT, Robotics etc. playing key roles towards it. These technologies are creating big disruptions in the business world and a CIO can't just say no to it. With IT gaining such big prominence, the role of a CIO has come to provide key and actionable information on a near real time basis using best-in-class technology available.

“Technology, by definition, is always going to change. A few years ago you heard a lot of noise around SMAC. Now, that has gone and the focus has shifted to Digital, Industry 4.0 and AI. Change is constant in the technology space. Accordingly, the role of the CIO continues to evolve. Unlike other supporting functions such as Finance or HR, where change occurs far more slowly, in Technology the pace of change is quite fast.

While that keeps the CIO’s life interesting, it also places a certain amount of stress and burden on the CIO’s mind. Not only does the CIO need to keep the lights on, he or she also needs to ensure technological opportunities are proactively utilized,” says Amitabh.

With more and more organizations now entrusting their IT resources and processing to the cloud, the cloud trend is likely to grow in the coming years. To illustrate, Gartner

With more and more organizations now entrusting their IT resources and processing to the cloud, the cloud trend is likely to grow in the coming years. To illustrate, Gartner predicts that cloud datacenters will process 92 percent of workloads by 2020.

Cloud workloads are expected to increase 3.2 times in that same span of time, Cisco forecasts.

Shiv Shankar Datta Head – Information & Communication Technology, FCA India Automobiles predicts that cloud datacenters will process 92 percent of workloads by 2020. Cloud workloads are expected to increase 3.2 times in that same span of time, Cisco forecasts.

“The cloud has grown in popularity in recent years. Bringing freedom from hardware constraints, to agility and always-current functionality, it’s hard to deny its benefits.

Besides accessibility, there are a number of other things that need to be considered when deciding.

Software ownership, cost of ownership, software updates and additional services, such as support and implementation,” says Parveen.

In the early days of cloud, there was always a perception that cloud, especially the public cloud has security as a flaw. However, CIOs are realizing that the cloud is as secure as, if not more secure than, their on-premise infrastructure.

“Once you move past this consideration of whether the cloud is secured or not, you will need to ask yourself if the price is right.

That is a harder question to answer than security, because the total cost of ownership is difficult to figure out. Finally, there is the question of need. Should certain critical systems be on the premises? For example, if an IoT network is compromised, can it cripple the operations in an industrial company? If so, does it make sense to keep ‘connected’ equipment off the cloud?” says Amitabh.

Dr. Rajeev Papneja, COO & EVP, ESDS Software Solutionpoints out that for various reason, cloud has become a synonym to “Public Cloud”, whereas it is not so. “We can always have Private Cloud deployed OnPrem. We should not be choosing one over the other as both have their own advantages,” he says. “Both have been co-existing and will continue to co-exist. A Hybrid Cloud model, I believe is the right approach. A CIO needs to decide the right mix of workloads that remain On-premise versus the ones that move on public cloud. This is a continuous effort, as the workloads on public cloud having matured at some point might make more sense to be migrated On-premise for various

The 2018 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey confirms the changing role of the CIO At the 2017 Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Gartner analysts presented the survey findings of The 2018 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey. The survey gathered data from a record number of 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $13 trillion in revenue/public sector budgets and $277 billion in IT spending. For the purposes of the survey, respondents were categorized as top, typical and trailing performers in digitalization.

Parveen Kumar Sharma CTO & Consultant – IT, The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India reasons. While public cloud gives flexibility & cost advantage for short term usage, Onpremise provides with granular control over security, data & its privacy, compliance & regulations and control at architecture level to meet demands of specific applications.”

Manish Sinha, Head – IT, Vectus Industries also thinks that an organization has to adopt a hybrid model, which could be 50:50, 60:40, 80:20 on premise versus cloud or vice versa.

But it all depends upon the business scenarios and it’s on ground requirement. “For e.g. if we have our Invoicing on cloud and if we get disconnected by any chance from Application Cloud Provider or OEM then complete business would be stopped during that outage. But at the same time if we have this on premise (Private Cloud) where all sites are connected via ILL or MPLS then still there is a chance of business continuity. We have seen these outages with different cloud application providers where organizations have suffered losses due to non-availability of communication data such as emails for 2-3 days,” he says.

Just like the cloud, from organizations perspective, virtual IT infrastructure is also good. Over a time period it becomes economical too. Any organization that is having a digital dream is seriously embarking on the journey of Cloud and virtual IT Infra.

“I would like to make it clearer and simpler that Virtual infrastructure is same whether you deploy it on premise or on cloud,” says Vinod Pandey, Head-IT, GHCL Limited (Chemicals).

“And it has tremendous advantage over the non-virtualized infrastructure. Now there are few businesses who are having very dynamic processes and are mainly located within major cities/locations. For such organizations, cloud is always better option. But, there are few organizations, mainly Manufacturing, those who are located in remote areas and are still struggling to have better connectivity.

For such companies, on-premise virtualized solution is much better over cloud solution.”

Says Sourabh Tiwari, CIO/IT - Head, Overseas Infrastructure Alliance (India),

The survey results show that 95 percent of CIOs expect their jobs to change or be remixed due to digitalization. While world-class IT delivery management is a given, it will take up less and less of the CIO's time. Respondents believe that the two biggest transformations in the CIO role will be becoming a change leader, followed by assuming increased and broader responsibilities and capabilities. Inevitably, the job of CIO will extend beyond the traditional delivery roles to other areas of the business, such as innovation management and talent development.

The survey showed that a majority of CIOs say that technology trends, specifically cyber security and artificial intelligence (AI), will significantly change how they do their jobs in the near future. Cyber security continues to threaten the global landscape in 2018, and 95 percent of CIOs surveyed said they expect cyber security threats to increase and impact their organization.

CIOs surveyed rank AI, followed by digital security and the Internet of Things (IoT), as the most problematic technologies to implement. Survey respondents agree that the most common pain point is the fact that these technologies, particularly AI, demand new skills, some of which can be hard to find.

“Hybrid VPC-HCI solution helps business to support critical/non S critical areas. Also, this helps in migration towards a modernized infrastructure set-up faster than the old traditional architecture.”

States Amit, “I have been using virtualization since 2010 and delivered many success stories using virtualization -

The increased responsibilities and burdens that have beset the CIO have also increased their power and influence within an organization too. However, this also means that CIOs are being forced to look beyond simply “IT matters” and to also consider changing business regulations and laws to ensure that their infrastructures meet the responsibilities of the business.

projects which delivered Enhanced Quality, Business Continuity & Immenselysuperior END Customer experience. These solutions have greatlyimproved the efficiency of our IT resources and applications and has been asignificant return on our investment in terms of future needs.It is totally a GO GREEN approach with plenty of Cost savings in terms of DC space,Power, Racks, Servers, Network Equipment’s, Cooling etc.It has also helped us to enhance our operations not just from a ComputeManagement perspective, but also from a Business Continuity perspective aswell.”

And so…

Indeed, the role of a CIO has been ever changing. But this time it is happening at an even faster pace than ever before. The role of the CIO is today disrupted by what is known as the “Digital Disruption”.

While many CIOs have started with the digital transformation journey in their respective organizations, there are many who have not yet taken the front seat or are not able to lead the transformation journey. With businesses aiming to be competitive and agile enough for the sustainable growth, it has become a must and also necessary for them to adopt high level of Technology features.

And in this, it is the CIO who has a very key and important role in growing the Business and optimizing it through Technology use.

Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com

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COVER STORY

A Strong Partner Program is the key to Business Success Channel Partners always play a pivotal role in the success story of a vendor. They are very crucial for a company when it comes to the go to market strategy. Partners form the backbone of the company as they represent a vendor to the customers and through them a company expands its reach in the market. Partners are the face of the company and they are the influencer to convert a potential customer into a permanent one. The whole responsibility of taking a company through the path of success lies on their shoulder.

But to achieve success a happy partner is of outmost importance and for that a vendor needs to understand its channel partner’s requirements which are the key to reach the pinnacle and fight competition. Understanding the requirements is a necessesity to design a good and successful Partner Program. Good rebates, deal registration, lead generation, account management and front-end discounts are few aspects of a good partner program. Apart from these there are few other pieces that need consideration such as partner training, skill development, service support, simplification of onboarding process, providing the right sales and marketing material, priming sales lead pipeline to measure and report progress.

A partner’s compatibility with the vendor and competency of a partner are also important to make any partner program a success. So to indentify the important factors that lead to a successful Partner Program we have garnered some insights from the industry which we have put together for our readers.

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Sriram Viswanathan Director – Channels & Alliances, Array Networks

“Partners are the extension of our companies and the only Go to market route for us. In view of that, the partner program has to be well structured, highly rewarding and continues to invest in the skilling of the channel. The program needs to be dynamic as well to respond to changing market needs and channel aspirations.

We look at each specific country, its business climate, potential to grow and the adaptability of our products into the existing or upcoming ecosystem. Our intent is clearly to grow business from the partners and ensure they are profitable to sustain in the long run. The profitability of partners is important for them to reinvest in employee development, skills upgradation that would help them in putting up a strong case with their prospects.

We look at the areas of operation by the partner’s region wise and product wise and industry wise. It helps to have partners who operate in a specific vertical or business need today to have a concerted Go to Market Strategy.”

"Partner is the center key of our operations, and the purpose we hold strongly to a partner profitable program is Ease of doing business for the partner. Our billing, credit, and marketing has created such an ease for any partner that it sets an example for the channel industry.

Everything we do along with our partners, we have wonderful partner program wherein partners have consistent growth opportunity. Our partner program is so receptive that a huge number of channel partners have joined us till date. Some of the Partner programs which are running successfully include the Milaap program, the Vistaar Program, including many another partner specific programs that help in creating the right channel partners who have the market knowledge, sales expertise and who are able to develop strong relationships with their vendors to successfully sell Marg ERP products and services. The partner should gain credibility in his business and capitalize on Marg ERP as a brand. The partner should be able to strengthen and extend his market reach. The partner program should make the partner feel that he has collaborated with a company that will work closely with him to gain more customers with much ease."

Raghuram Krishnan Director – Partner, Citrix India

“In an evolving technology landscape where digitization is a front runner across organizations, IT vendors stand at a vantage point to work closely with their channel network and cover a wider spectrum of untapped markets with a potential to grow. Having said that, vendors must put together a well-designed partner program ensuring mutual growth and an upward growth trajectory for their partners.

In addition, once the partner program has been set in place, it is also vital to evaluate the success of the program at periodic intervals to guarantee continued progress and value delivery. To take stock of the functioning of the current program, we at Citrix conduct quarterly reviews to assess whether the program continues to benefit both partner and vendor and how it can be taken to the next level to achieve the benchmarks set in place.

In my opinion, the success of a partner program depends on three factors – the clarity of its offerings and the market to be addressed, the most active channel in that segment of the market and thirdly, the value that the channel brings to the table that also complements the vendor. The achievement of these factors is crucial for the satisfaction of the customer.”

“CommScope believes that a strong partner program forms a mutually beneficial relationship for both companies and our customers.

Our partners provide a voice for the customer that leads into our ever-growing innovation pipeline. That is why CommScope’s PartnerPRO Network is designed to help the channel find new opportunities in today's competitive and challenging market.

CommScope believes that strong collaboration between Partner, CommScope and customer—sharing the goal of solving a problem, is the best way to bring CommScope solutions to market. With that in mind, CommScope offers its partners training and certification through its market leading CommScope Infrastructure Academy, among other benefits.

CommScope helps our partners to be successful through giving them the best tools and support to serve their customers. For instance, we believe education should never stop and that is why we developed the CommScope Infrastructure Academy app for members of the PartnerPRO Network.”

Sanjeev Kumar, National Head - Channel, Alliances & Govt Business, ESDS Software Solution

Pritesh Prabhakar Patil Country Head Marg ERP

Gavin Milton-White, Vice President, Enterprise, Asia Pacific, CommScope

“The channel ecosystem in India is a very fragmented one with more than 31 thousand IT partners.

Without a defined partner program there is no way that we can address the market. It is critical for the growth of channel as it enables the partner to create visibility to his various lines of business which in turn delivers the right kind of results for him. AT ESDS today, we are creating a Partner Programme in such a way that we can act as an extended arm of the partner and be a add value to Partner’s Bottom line.

The most important factor to make a partner profitable is to move him up the value chain. So while designing a program, we need to ensure there are 3 factors - Training, portfolio management and market addressability. Training program is designed in a way that our Partners get empowered to create value addition for their customer. They can help to find out a solution for customer’s pain point. Every enterprise will be leveraging a portfolio of public and private clouds – whether by strategy or circumstance.

The key factor to a successful Partner program is Training followed by ability of partners to address frontend discounts by having a better portfolio management. Deal registration is very important considering the fragmented market today.”

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COVER STORY “Forcepoint is a 100% partner-driven organization and our success is defined by our engagement with partners. Forcepoint’s partner ecosystem in India is evolving in size, partner types and the roles they can play to best deliver customer business outcomes.

The Partner program helps us support the growth of the channel partners and expand their capabilities to address new emerging market opportunities. The partner program is in pace with all the positive developments and has become an integral part of our ecosystem.

We believe in empowering our partners to move up the value chain and become a solutions provider in their own right. We ensure the partner not only makes a profit but is also able to retain the team in consistent and predictable manner to keep up with the business, revenue and the growth.”

Surendra Singh Country Director – India & SAARC, Forcepoint “We are a 100% channel driven company and Fortinet has always been focused on driving business with our partners. We have a mature partner program and it delivers value to our partners and their business beyond just what we sell. Fortinet is constantly working to increase the value of our partners so we can become more important to their business and enable them to expand with the Fortinet Security Fabric.

Fortinet will also look to help partners improve their profit margins, while the Security Fabric will help partners provide new services that build on Fortinet products. We are also looking at ways to help more partners move from a one-time sale relationship with their customers to one that creates long-term relationships. The breadth and value of the Security Fabric solutions makes it a very simple proposition for new partners transitioning to security services. From small channel partners to large managed security services providers, Fortinet partners can easily build offerings and train their staff around a foundational security architecture, while also having the capabilities and support needed to layer on additional valueadded services and third-party security solutions."

Ashish P. Dhakan MD & CEO, Prama Hikvision India

“The effective Partner Program spurs growth of the channel so it remains the most important part of channel expansion strategy. A meticulous planning and execution of Partner Program certainly help to create the conditions for success. It presents partner an opportunity to grow the business and expand profitability. At Hikvision, we value the Partner Program immensely as it provides the best strategy for growth. It further helps in maintaining opportunities in legacy products while opening new revenue streams in emerging technologies.

There are some key factors to keep in mind before designing a top performing partner program Understand the needs of rapidly changing partner eco-structure, Build a data driven channel organization, Create a better partner experience, Develop a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) infrastructure, Choose a good channel account management team.

First and foremost, it’s important to identify the ideal partner type as per requirement. The partner profile should complement the business model and goals. If the partner profile is vetted by well-defined parameters then it is easy to know the perfect match."

“At HPE Aruba partners have a huge value to add; we work closely with our partners and have a consistent partner investment program. Our partner programs can be subdivided into Capability Enhancement Programs and Business Development Programs.

Capability Enhancement Programs: These programs are targeted to build technical and techno commercial skills within the partner workforce.

Business Development Programs: BD programs are rewards and recognitions which are packaged in an effective way to deliver better results for OEM and partner business through sales motivation.

Following are key points that we check while selecting a partner - Partner’s expertise in handling similar line of business, Partner’s financial stability & current turnover, Market credibility standing with the distributor, Presence in number of cities, Interest to invest in new business, Work force Strength and continuity, Current certifications and accreditations, Market connect with customers and specific industry verticals.

Unless greater than 70 percent score is achieved on the above, OEM’s will not be comfortable to enroll the partner."

Ashish Dhawan Vice President Sales, APAC, Juniper Networks

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Jitendra Ghughal Director Channels, India & SAARC, Fortinet

Santanu Ghose Director Aruba India

“The Partner Program focuses on developing the specializations that we feel are crucial for the growth of our partner’s business. Based on the specializations they develop and the business they generate, we have built very attractive rewards and rebates for our partners in the program.

Rebates, deal registration, lead generation, account management and front-end discounts are all important ingredients of a partner program. We also add some incentives for new businesses which our partners find very rewarding.

Partner profitability is directly linked to the partner’s abilities to deliver high value services along with Juniper’s products. Our Juniper Partner Advantage program is designed to help our partners address current and upcoming industry trends, including specializations on Data Center, Security and Cloud, while developing their capabilities in doing the same.

We focus on partners that build long term relationships with their customers and deliver a very good user experience. For this, they need to invest in skills and resources so that they have a sustainable and profitable business. Juniper works to develop a strong partnership with such entities.”

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Anand Shringi Head of Channels, Kaspersky Lab (South Asia)

“Channel Partners have been Kaspersky Lab’s strength from the very beginning. We believe in the growth of the company and the growth of the channel partners in our ecosystem. We focus a lot on our partner programs as that is what helps our partners and helps us in the long run. Our recent partner programmes include the Sales and Support Army campaign.

We are what we are because of our partners and consumers, hence our main focus in designing our partner programmes is to draw as many benefits as we can for our partners. Our recent Sales and Support Army campaign is a perfect example of how we want our partner growth programmes to be rewarding as well as result oriented.

Kaspersky Lab follows a philosophy of putting the customer first and we have uncompromising service standards, the same values must be shared by a partner to fit into our business model. Rebates, deal registration, lead generation, account management and front-end discounts are very important for us and our considered in our process of decision making in terms of partner programs. We plan our programs that satisfy these points in order to achieve a win-win situation for all.”

“At Lenovo, we enable our partners with various initiatives, products, services and financing to help them succeed. It is imperative to set the right objectives for each partner program and define prioritization of rebates, deal registration, lead generation, account management and front-end discounts for the partners.

Our uniquely curated Partner programs are categorized as per customer segments (distribution, retail, corporate). The program aims to provide our partners with the right mix of opportunities in product, average selling price, premium category and volumes that will help them achieve maximum growth in their segments. We evaluate the success of our programs periodically through mid-quarter, quarter and post quarter reviews. This helps us strengthen our programs and make the necessary changes.”

Ashish Sikka Director, SMB, Lenovo India

Wendy Koh VP - Pathways, Alliances and Strategy, Asia Pacific, NetApp

“Channel Partners are a critical piece of our go to market strategy. We want to make sure that our channel partners are enabled from skillset and capabilities perspective, they are well trained to represent us in the market place and to be very confident in positioning and having a conversation with the customers to sell the solutions. So from go to market strategy perspective we focus on three key areas – Flash Storage, HCI (Hyper Converged Infrastructure) and Cloud Data Services.

The second important piece is we want to deliberately leverage our channel partners to grow in the commercial segment. There is a space where we see a continuous opportunity for us to jointly grow. The intention is very clear, we want to leverage our partner skillset and capabilities, their relationship with the customers, their coverage to help us to address and acquire new customers, to have presence in the market or cities where we may not have presence today and to leverage the solutions, new technologies, IT imperative to help the customers to address their business requirements.”

“A well-structured partner program which is transparent in word and spirit goes a long way to establish the trust of channel partners. NVIDIA Partner Network (NPN), our framework to engage with partners, is aimed at giving them the freedom to choose the membership and competencies that is best for their business. The program presents opportunities to our partners to grow regardless of the level of commitment of their company, thereby giving them unique benefits and requirements to help drive sales.

The most important parameter of a partner program should be its simplicity and transparency.

Incentives are an important factor that make a program attractive and enables partners to sell their solutions in a simplified manner. We are working with our customers and partners to tackle the most challenging problems—from cancer research to quantum physics to robotics. Considering this, partners who have technology and innovation as a key differentiator and are willing to dive early into next-generation technologies to solve problems are the best fit for us.

The NVIDIA Partner Network is a framework which has multiple programs suited for different partner profiles.”

Charles Woodall Area VP, Partner, Sales, Channels & Alliances, APAC , Salesforce

Shridhar Garge Head – Channels & Alliances, NVIDIA South Asia

“Salesforce's world-class Partner ecosystem is crucial to the success of our business. The ecosystem includes global and regional consulting partners, digital agencies, ISVs, system integrators and resellers focused on accelerating customer success. By amplifying and extending our platform and industry capabilities, and tailoring approaches that meet customers' unique needs partners accelerate the time to value and return on investment. Through a combination of business, technology and marketing benefits and leveraging the world’s leading enterprise cloud marketplace – the Salesforce AppExchange– the Salesforce Partner Program enables partners of all sizes and industries to build successful businesses.

Salesforce is maniacally focused on customer success so it’s important to identify the ideal partner type who is going to service our customers' specific business needs. Salesforce tiers our partners based on competency so our customers can see who has invested in building a practice, creating complimentary assets and has broader cross-cloud skills aligned to their requirements. As the platform expands and there is an increase in offerings, an increasing number of our partners have specialised based on industry's such as healthcare, financial services, retail, banking, manufacturing and FMCG."

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COVER STORY

Debasish Mukherjee Country Director , India & SAARC, SonicWall

“SonicWall prides itself as a channel-driven organization, and would be unable to scale as quickly and effectively without our dedicated partners. With over 25,000 registrants, the SecureFirst Partner Program is vital in ensuring that we not only recruit the best partners but, provide them with a positive end-to-end experience.

SonicWall delivers world-class enablement, highly competitive margins and deal registration protection along with marketing support through the company’s overdrive marketing engine.

Partner profitability is of utmost importance, making SonicWall is very cognizant of the fact that they are also investing their time and resources in upskilling their business. The SecureFirst Partner Program provides attractive upfront discounting based on a tiered structure, as well as additional back-end rebates and promotions to incentivize and reward partners on achievement of growth numbers.

We welcome all partners to join our Sonicwall Secure First partner program, and based on their commitment to grow their business with Sonicwall, we will work jointly with them on long-term planning. SonicWall also recently launched the MSSP Program that offers training, enablement, support and financial benefits designed to help SecureFirst Partners grow their managed security business."

“Being a ‘channel first’ and ‘channel only’ organization our efforts are focused on empowering the channel by providing the best in class pre and post-sales support, training and certification programs, access to our world class marketing communications via our partner portal and of course competitive margins. Our 100% channel-focused sales model means that our partners come first and are key to our success.

This year we are introducing a three-pronged approach to enable our channel to perform better Simplification, a core Sophos value and mission that we are extending to support our partner initiatives by making it easier for our partners to understand what our channel program incorporates and how they can join the program, what are the benefits, how they can leverage the tools and the systems and the programs that we have across Asia Pacific and India.

Empowering partners with knowledge and resources with regards to their strengths whether it’s endpoint, next-gen firewall, encryption, synchronized security or any other solution will improve their chances of meeting the customer requirements effectively."

Rajarshi Bhattacharyya Country Head, SUSE

“We believe that apart from a regular partner program, we should have a specific and thought of program which will not only benefit organization and partners but also build a great customer relationship.

At SUSE, we have a tier based partner program and our partners can choose among them according to their skill sets and technical know-how. We are 100 percent channel-driven company and our partners are the key to our success.

We work with an ecosystem of partners and communities to innovate, adapt and secure open source enterprise technologies. Our partner program makes it easier for these preferred channel partners to address the key needs of their customers with training and certification pathways along with incentive structures that recognize and reward partners' engagement with SUSE. These programs support SUSE's software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions and focus on specific solution areas for channel partners: enterprise Linux, software-defined storage, OpenStack cloud and systems management.

Our partners recognize our leadership in business and technology and use advanced SUSE technologies to enhance their offerings. This brings our joint customers the highest quality, best engineered, bestsupported offerings in the industry.”

“In the beginning of our financial year, in July 2017, we created an organization called One Commercial Partner (OCP). In Microsoft there were a lot of teams that used to work with partners. We had 16-17 different teams in different parts of the organization. It was very tough and complex for a partner to work with Microsoft. So what we did was we brought all these together into one organization called OCP. In that way we have one team now that looks after the interests of our channel partners. Our mission is to work with our partners and make everything easy. So this creation of one organization was a very big step that Microsoft took.

This organization comprises of three very distinct team. The first team is the “Build with” team, which means we partner with these channel partners who are of four types – who build applications on our platform, services projects on Microsoft platform, managed services providers and companies that resell our products. Second is the “Go to Market with” team; once the product and solution is ready, you need to take that to the market. Third is “Selling”, where we partner with the Partner’s sales team and take the solution to market."

Neeraj Bhatia Director – Partner, Alliances & Commercial sales - Red Hat, India and South Asia

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Sunil Sharma Managing Director Sales, Sophos India & SAARC

Rajiv Sodhi General Manager, Partner Ecosystem - Microsoft

“Our Partner program basically focuses on partners who can develop and have services offering around our platform. We have recently launched OpenShift Practice Builder program where we have signed up with identified partners who have sales, pre-sales and advanced delivery skills to deliver solutions on top of openshift for their customers in the Enterprise space. So the key focus is, the partners build their services, we bring the technology and jointly they take it to the market as their offering to their customers. We are a partner led business and therefore partner profitability is a critical aspect for us and ensure that they make money and invest back in skills for our technology.

For a vibrant profitable partner program, the things that we look at are how we can help our partners to take advantage of revenue opportunities. We have a Cloud Provider program that focuses on helping companies move workload from on-premise to the cloud, System Integrator Program and OpenShift Practice Builder Program that we have launched recently which is primarily targeted at SIs and it focuses more on helping partners modernise applications or build modern cloud applications."

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Joyce Ray India Business Head, Tally Solutions

“The importance of a Partner Program for a business like Tally is very high, considering we service SMEs, who are currently around the 10 million mark in numbers (As per the data available in public domain from GST registrations). The 3 important criteria that we keep in mind while attempting to service these many businesses are reach, quality of service and the ability to stay connected with the customer over the usage of the product. For the last 30 years, our connect with customers has been established by our partners who have consistently stayed linked to our customer base.

In order to devise a successful Partner Program we are dependent on 2 critical factors: 1. Those which cannot be compromised, and 2. Those which are led by the context of our business. The former essentially encapsulates our business philosophy which is to serve businesses and make them more efficient by motivating them to adopt automation and digital means of doing business. We also ensure that there is absolutely no compromise on a good customer experience – this means the customer should be satisfied with the usage and still have the ability to run his business the way he would like to. The contextual side of running a vibrant Partner Program no doubt requires selection of the right partner with the correct attitude, temperament and aspiration of growth, good network of business, friends and acquaintances who are willing to digitize.”

“Trend Micro is channel-sales driven — all sales go through partners. Our offerings address critical and growing business requirements.

We provide organizations with everything they need to grow their business and help better protect customers from the ever-evolving IT threat landscape.

We have been growing very Nilesh Jain fast and the last year has been Vice President—South East one of the fastest growing year Asia and India, Trend Micro for us. Most of the growth came from across our product line, whether it was Endpoint security, Cloud security or Network defense security. We wanted to recognize the fact, that this growth would not have been possible without the support from our channel/partner ecosystem. They were there when we wanted to bridge the solution with customer, during deployment & servicing, as well as during postsupport instances.

We are selective in terms of choosing our partners and design our partner programs based on certain parameters. Partners with good technical capability to deploy and service their customers are some of the parameters that we consider.

We recently rolled out a very comprehensive channel program, one which will ‘reward partners’ called TrendSetter Channel Rewards Program.”

Khalid Wani Director, Channel Sales India, Western Digital

“We have a healthy relation with our partners. How we structure it is that we have distributors and solution providers. We have got partners from different geo locations and we annually connect with partners. We have a pretty structured partners program called VMware Partner Program.

Sundar Balasubramanian, We have different levels of Sr. Director General Business partnerships depending on the (Commercial Sales and competence of the partners. We partners), VMware have three categories of partners: Official, Enterprise and Premium Partners. We also invested in the partner teams and have almost 20 Partner Managers across the country. The partner programs that we have are focused on keeping the lights on and the business going.

We have a disproportionate investment in the geo markets. We have invested in the partners outside the top six networks and the way we run is – there are two parts to partner management, one is the partner rewards that partner gets by referring VMware while the other part is our disproportionate focus is on the business solution lines with the partners. We really enable our partners to go up and build services both pre and post-sale as the post-sale impacts the planning and deploying our products in the market.”

“Western Digital markets and sells products under the G-Technology, HGST, SanDisk and WD brands. Each of our brands have earned the trust of communities of customers, ranging from mainstream consumers to CIOs and storage architects at some of the largest data center companies. We sell across e-tail, large format retail and channel distribution models. Our recent acquisitions have brought an improved, wider channel for selling the products. The channel ecosystem also brings together the products, giving the customers a much larger product portfolio to choose from.

We believe that it is crucial to educate our channel partners in the right manner to ensure that the right products are catered to the customers’ requirements. We provide education programs and workshops for our partners spread across various media - in-person, online, and even mobile apps. We also have a strong backend process, through which our sellers find it attractive to take the products to consumers, allowing small retailers to big stores to achieve their targets.

Such an elaborately empowered ecosystem that we maintain for our channel partners has led for the company to be known as a channel-friendly organization.”

Sandeep Bhambure Managing Director, India and SAARC, Veeam “Veeam’s vision is to be the most trusted provider of Intelligent Data Management solutions that deliver demands for Hyper-Availability of data. To achieve this, our partners play a pivotal role in delivering an AlwaysOn business for our customers. We are committed to design programmes for our partners that drive higher market share and profitability through strategic initiatives. Additionally, we support our partners by providing access to the tools and resources necessary to differentiate their business for continued growth.”

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VAR ANALYSIS

Hardware:

All Round Performance 2017

2016 Growth(%)

Defying the speculation that GST and demonetization would adversely affect, Q1 215.6 191.1 12.8 the Indian hardware industry demonstrated a splendid growth across segments

Q2 304.6 190.4 The industry was apprehensive about the 2017 owing to Q3 that implementation 300.83 199.05 speculations of GST, demonetization and a call for industrial digitalization would slow down the sales of hardware Q4 However, the result was 371.4 products. the exact opposite193.1 and the reasons Total 1192.43 773.65

60 51.1 92.4 54.1

are the exact same. While digitalization calls for more software than hardware, industry bought more servers and PCs during the year.

When GST was believed to impact the sales of hardware products, a drop in tax slab for printers spiked the sales in the last quarter of

India Server Market 2017($Mn) 1400

92.4%

1192

1200 60%

1000

773.65

800 600

51.1% 12%

400 200 0

215.6 215.6

Q1 215.6 191.1

40

54.1%

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371.4

300.83

304.6 190.4

199.05

Q2 304.6 190.4

Q3 300.83 199.05

2017

2016

193.1

Q4 371.4 193.1

Total 1192 773.65 Source: IDC

the year, and then the server market also registered record sales as enterprises looked towards cloud and outsourced solutions as their next business strategy.

All in all, these three primary hardware segments brought a momentous year for the Indian hardware industry.

Server market in India Servers are the key component of enterprise computing infrastructure. If we look at the last few years, the market was impacted by recessionary trends. Only last year, the market began to pick up because of the trends such as digital and cloud. As we take an audit of the year went by, the x86 servers saw aggressive growth.

The overall server market in India witnessed a year-over-year (YOY) increase of 92.4% in terms of revenue to reach $371.4 million in Q4 2017 versus $193.1 million in Q4 2016, according to the latest IDC Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) Quarterly Server Tracker, Q4 2017. The x86 server market accounted for 86.7% of the overall server revenue during Q4 2017, with growth being majorly driven by spending from professional services, government, telcos, and banks.

The Q4 2017 quarter has been record-breaking for both non-x86 and x86 server product categories. Non-x86 platform remains at the top of mind for many end-users looking for data workloads such as databases, data warehouses, transaction processing, and highperformance computing. Banks are the primary buyers in this category and high availability with minimum downtime, maximum uptime are key considerations.

The non-x86 server market grew by 115.6% YOY in terms of revenue to reach $49.6 million in Q4 2017. In terms of revenue, IBM leads the market, accounting for 47.8% of market share, followed closely by HPE with its share of 44.7% during Q4 2017. In the non-x86 server market, the banking industry continues to dominate and accounts for 55.9% of the revenue, followed by government with 21.1% and manufacturing with 7.4%.

The x86 server market in terms of revenue witnessed a YOY growth of 89.3% to reach $321.9 million in Q4 2017, up from $170.1 million during Q4 2016. The growth was majorly driven by professional services, government, banking and telecommunications, while manufacturing continues to witness growth for the straight third quarter. Blade and rack optimized servers together accounted for 75.1% of the overall x86 server market by revenues during Q4 2017.

In the x86 product category, 99.7% were Intel-based processors sold in the volume, mid-range and small server segment.

In the Indian x86 market, HPE leads the Indian server market with 32.8% in Q4 2017. The major deals for HPE came from telecommunications and professional services verticals. Dell successfully increased its market share to 19.4% during Q4 2017, while Cisco accounted for 6.6% of market share winning deals across different verticals. Cray successfully closed the deal with Central Government on supercomputer project and grabbed the market share of 9.3%, whereas ODM direct market share declined to 21.2% in Q4 2017.

“Traditional three tier architectures are still at the mainstream of India enterprise infra market. We have seen professional services, and telcos as early adopters and innovators towards adoption of virtualization and using HCI approach for their DC strategy. Newage workloads such as IoT, big data analytics, and AI are still at a

India PC Market Share 2017(Brands, %) Category 2016 2017 Commercial Desktop 2.4 2.4 Commercial notebook 1.8 2.5 Consumer Desktop 1 0.9 Consumer Notebook 3.3 3.7 Workstation 0.1 0.1 Total 8.6 9.6 Source: IDC

Source: IDC

nascent stage and requires significant efforts from vendors and OEM ecosystem towards educating the end-users and its business outcomes,” says Harshal Udatewar, Server Market Analyst, IDC India.

PC market in India The overall India’s traditional PC shipments for 2017 stood at 9.56 million units, with an 11.4% year-on-year growth, as per IDC. This growth was primarily driven by the increase in the quantum of large projects and surge in shipments post the introduction of GST reforms.

The PC market in the first half of the year declined by 5.2% compared to H1 2016, owing to sluggish consumer demand due to demonetization and uncertainty surrounding GST implementation.

However, early kick-start of festival offers by e-trailers, incremental consumer spillover demand post GST implementation and large stateowned special projects drove the PC market in the second half of the year.

The overall consumer PC market registered 48.0% shipment share in 2017, the consumer category also recorded a growth of 8.5% in unit shipments compared to last year. “Consumers were somewhat hesitant during the GST implementation phase in H1 2017. However, upbeat demand towards discretionary spending on the back of seasonality and re-building of inventories post festive season drove growth in H2 2017,” says Manish Yadav, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India.

The overall commercial PC market recorded 52.0% shipment share in CY2017, where the category grew by 14.1% in unit terms year-on-year. “Commercial spending seems to be leaving the GSTrelated glitches behind with increased demand across segments like SMB and enterprise,” adds Yadav.

HP maintained its leadership position in the overall Indian traditional PC market with 29.9% share in CY 2017 and recorded an overall growth of 17.4% year-on-year in CY 2017. The vendor remained dominant in the overall consumer PC business with 29.2% share and an 18.0% year-on-year growth in CY 2017 owing to its growing brand image and depth penetration via its growing partner base. The vendor also led the commercial segment in the last two years by clinching volumes in special projects such as ELCOT and strong presence in enterprise accounts, which assisted HP Inc. in recording a 30.6% market share along with a growth of 16.9% yearon-year in CY 2017.

Dell took the second spot, with a 22.4% share in the overall India traditional PC market in CY 2017. The vendor got impacted

by GST and BIS certification in CY 2017. However, with increased shipment and differentiated channel programs, the vendor bounced back with 7.3% growth year-on-year in overall traditional PC market in CY 2017. Dell continues to dominate the growing categories like gaming notebook with 26.8% year-on-year growth. The vendor also recorded 22.1% shipment share in CY 2017 in overall commercial PC business with increasing investments in channel, supported by both distribution and partner-led GTMs. Also, its growth in verticals like BFSI and government in H2 2017 is a welcome sign of increasing customer base for the vendor.

Lenovo holds on to third spot, gaining 2.6 percentage points yearon-year to record a market share of 20.2% in CY 2017 in the overall Indian traditional PC market. In the overall consumer category, the vendor recorded 16.7% market share in CY 2017 on the back

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VAR ANALYSIS India External Storage Market 2017 Others, 12.50% Dell, 26.10%

HDS, 9.20%

IBM, 14.40% HPE, 21.30% NetApp, 16.50% Dell HPE

NetApp

IBM

HDS

Others

Source: IDC

of growing online presence, innovative products and new efforts on providing improved after- sales service via new channels, made the vendor stand out from their competitors. Additionally, with the execution of state-owned manifesto projects, gradually bringing back the confidence in enterprise accounts by offering bundle services along with new products, assisted the vendor in a strong growth of 40.1% year-on-year with a market share of 23.4% in the overall traditional commercial PC market in CY 2017.

India External Storage Market India’s external storage market reached $280 million by end of March 2017 telecommunications and banking being the major growth verticals.

Multimillion-dollar deal in telecommunication vertical drove this growth in the external storage market. Banking, telecom, professional services, manufacturing and government continued to be the key contributors in Q1 2017. In addition to the major verticals, significant growth is witnessed in verticals such as Securities, Transportation and Insurance during this period. This led to India’s external storage market witness a growth of 13.8 percent year on year(YoY) and stood at $ 74.6 million in Q1 2017.

High-end storage segment witnessed a strong YoY growth in Q1 2017 due to large deployments from telecommunications, banking and government verticals. Entry-level storage saw a marginal growth while mid-range external storage saw a marginal YoY decline in market share during Q1 2017.

Witnessed significant uptake of All flash Arrays (AFA) among telecom, BFSI, IT/ITeS, government and manufacturing units in Q1 2017.Acceptance of AFA is increased as it offers better performance at an affordable price. Also, witnessed increased acceptance of Hybrid Flash arrays (HFA) as this offers both capacity and performance with a single array.

In Q2 significant spending from banking and telecommunication verticals drove incremental growth in the external storage market.

Banking, professional services, telecommunications, manufacturing and government continue to be the key contributors in Q2 2017.

Increased acceptance of third platform technologies are pushing organisations to deploy new age storage solutions to address dynamic storage demands. This led revenue touched $70 million in Q2.

High-end storage segment witnessed a high double-digit YoY growth in Q2 2017 due to large deployments from banking and telecommunication verticals. Mid-range storage and entry-level external storage segment saw a marginal de-growth YoY in Q2 2017.

Increased uptake of All Flash Arrays(AFA), Hyper converged infrastructure and Software defined Storage are the key technology trends witnessed in the market. In addition, all the global cloud providers and 3rd party datacenter players are investing heavily to tap the increased uptake of cloud solutions.

However, in Q3, India’s External Storage Market witnessed marginal 0.4 percent growth YoY (by vendor revenue) and stood at $66.4 million in Q3 2017 according to IDC’sQuarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, Q3 2017. The growth was majorly driven

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by banking, professional services, manufacturing and government verticals in Q3 2017. Optimization drive for storage infrastructure across organizations stood out to be the leading reason for greater demand for hyper converged infrastructure, software defined storage and cloud technologies. In Q4 the market touched $64 million.

At the end of the fiscal Dell emerged as the market leader with a 26.1 percent market share by vendor revenue, however witnessed a YoY decline in Q3 2017. Hewlett Packard Enterprise gave tough competition to Dell Inc, narrowing the gap in terms of vendor revenue and stood at second position with 21.3%. IBM and HDS witnessed double-digit YoY decline while Huawei and NetApp saw a significant YoY growth in 2017.

The Printer Market in India With businesses becoming digital, the printer market began to show a steady decline in the last couple of years. However, it was a great year for the overall printer market in India in 2017. Implementation of GST and a sharp cut in the taxation policy drove the market to new heights.

While the Indian HCP (hard copy peripherals) market sold around 3 million printers in 2016, it plummeted to 4 million in 2017 with inkjet printers continue to dominate the demand.

“The growth in the last quarter of the year was driven by GST implementation in the country continuing its momentum from the previous quarter. Government lowered the tax slab on Multi-Function Printers from 28% to 18% effective November 15, leading to increase in preference for MFPs post the slab change. From a YoY perspective, 2017Q4 performed significantly better than the demonetization affected 2016Q4. In the Inkjet market, ink tank printers continue to dominate the market with all the leading vendors focusing on the home and SMB segment to drive the shipments. Laser printer market witnessed a strong growth in the copier segment which saw high demand from BFSI sector, followed by Government,” says Bani Johri, Market Analyst, IPDS, IDC India.

In Q4, 2017, the Indian HCP market saw 877,945 unit shipments, showing a 19% year-on- year growth. Japanese brands have strengthened their position in the Indian market. Three out of top five performers are Japanese companies, capturing almost half of the Indian market (48.6%). US-based brand(s) followed with 41.4% market share, a slight dip from 41.9% in 2017 Q3.

Inkjet shipments grew by 19.3% YoY with overall shipments of

Source: IDC

415,135 units while laser printers including copiers also had a similar YoY growth of 19% with overall shipments touching 408,891 units.

Indian laser market was the second-best market in the entire AsiaPacific region, unit wise.

The previous quarter was even more momentous. The HCP market in India had a record high quarter crossing 1.1 million unit shipments in a single quarter. The market grew by 24.2% year-on-year (YoY) and 57.2% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) growth, as per the latest IDC Asia-Pacific Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals Tracker, 2017Q3. Inkjet shipments crossed 500,000 units for the first time ever in India with overall shipments touching roughly 579,371 units, a stellar growth of 25.5% YoY, while laser printers market including copiers also had its best quarter since 2014 registering total shipments of 486,947 units with 24.8% YoY growth.

Q3 2017 was anticipated to be better versus Q2 2017 because

of the Diwali festive season. Despite a higher tax slab of 28% on multifunction printers, accounting governance created by the Government of India which requires businesses to maintain copies of electronic invoices to claim GST refund, largely contributed to the market growth. Several rounds of online festivals and sales by etailers in the months of August and September also played a part in the robust growth in the consumer demand in the printer category.

HP Inc. remained the overall market leader in HCP with a share of 41.4% and an 11.8% YoY growth. The Laser HCP (Printer-based) market, similar to 2017 Q3, remains dominated by HP with a 54.2% unit market share. It maintained its second position from Q3 in the inkjet market with a market share of 37.6%.

As per IDC India Monthly City-Level Printer Tracker, Laser HCP (Printer-based), demand from West Zone outpaced demand from East and South Zones. HP comfortably leads the way with 15.6% demand coming from West Zone. Delhi was second only to Maharashtra in terms of demand for Laser HCP (Printer-based) printers, overtaking the likes of West Bengal, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, etc.

Epson retained its first position in Inkjet with a unit share of 45.1% and unit shipments, totalling 187,019 units. It also witnessed a 28.3% YoY growth in Inkjet shipments, primarily due to the growth of its M-series models. Epson’s deep channel penetration and focus on the home segment are the key factors contributing to its market leadership in the Inkjet category.

Addition of new channel partners in Mumbai and Pune and deep penetration in smaller cities such as Pune, where demand for ink tank printers outpaced that of some big cities like Chennai and Bangalore also helped them propel to the first spot in the Inkjet market.

Canon too had a good quarter with an overall growth of 25.3% YoY. Laser printers lead the way clocking a YoY growth of 18.8% on the back of a strong push by Canon in the copier market, especially in the colour segment. It retained its number-one position in the copier market with 33.4% unit market share as a result of its strong sales through its direct channel to large enterprises. In the Inkjet market, Canon saw one of the best YoY growth of 36.8% compared to other vendors largely due to strong channel and market push. n

‘As a brand we will continue to pioneer visual technology innovations’ ViewSonic firmly believes in constant innovation in its products and has a strong Research and Development team in place.Throwing some more light on the products that it offers,Eric Wei, Senior Sales Director - Asia Pacific, ViewSonic tells VARINDIA of its current focus and strategies ViewSonic’s mission is to be one of the leading and most preferred technology brands across the categories of LED Projectors, Professional and Gaming Monitors. It wants to create a substantial mark across the categories of corporate, education and home entertainment.

“Our focus for the coming couple of years will be to manufacture state-of-the-art displaycentric offering that includes Projectors, LED monitors, touch displays and virtual desktops.

As a brand we will continue to pioneer visual technology innovations to meet the growing needs of a digital future,” asserts Eric Wei, Senior Sales Director - Asia Pacific, ViewSonic.

The company firmly believes in constant innovation and has a strong Research and Development team. Recently, the companylaunched one of its kind ultra-portable LED projector- M1 with built-in dual Harman Kardon speakers. It is a portable, 360 degree rotatable projector which offers essentially convenient entertainment at home or while traveling with multiple connectivity options.

It is an extremely lightweight projector which delivers amazing picture quality and sound.

“In the first quarter of 2018 we have already launched a range of exciting and innovative products like 4K High Brightness Projectors, IFP (Interactive Flat Panel)Displays, M1 Portable Projectors and our gaming projectors- PX700HD. We also plan to launch a revolutionary range of monitors and projectors with key focus being on the education sector,” says Eric. “We currently have significant presence across key business hubs, secondary cities or hubs which have an intrinsic need for

innovative quality and the right demand drivers in place.”

ViewSonic focuseson building the right partners and building and connecting with the right partners that offer its products to its customers. “Our success in USA is something we learn from a lot but since the market behaviour and trend is quite different, replicating or emulating the same strategy is not fully possible.

But, increasing our channel partners is one key initiative we focus on and has been helping us in the long run,” he explains.

Gaming – a growing business…

Gaming industry is definitely picking up pace in India, and brands see a spurt in this segment. ViewSonic believes that gaming and technology go hand in hand, and so it tries to innovate and bring unmatched products with competitive pricing for its gaming enthusiasts.

“A true gamer completely immerses in the

game and enjoys larger than life experience,” says Eric. “The Gaming monitor segment is a large chunk of our product offering and we have recently launched four gaming monitors in our XG series, they offer. Our XG series gaming monitors offers 1ms response time and true 144Hz refresh rate for maximum competitive experience. Recently we have also launched the gaming projector PX700 HD that delivers exceptionally fast frame by frame action with great picture quality. We do have a varied range of product launches in the pipeline for professional photographers and gamers. Later, in 2018, you can expect an array of innovative products including a gaming projector, most trusted and secured products in the interactive flat panel product line.”

Going forward, ViewSonic will continue to focus on visual display, desktop display and projector. Its vision is to position itself as a leader in consumer-friendly technology products across different segments across corporates, gaming enthusiasts, professionals or individuals.

With the increase in purchasing power of the Indian audience and with the digitization of education,the company foresees an increase in the demand for projectors in the entertainment and education segment.

“India is a price sensitive market and at the same time our target audience is aware of the latest innovations in the technology sector. We at ViewSonic are driven to meet this challenge by constantly investing in research and development and delivering an unparalleled product line,” Eric concludes. n

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EVENT

Red Hat Partner Conference focused on Emerging Technologies Red Hat APAC Partner Conference focused on how open source is gaining ground by upholding partner success and updates on emerging technologies. Red Hat, the leading provider of open-source solutions organized a two-day partner conference at the Westin Resort Nusa Dua, Bali (Indonesia) from 10th to 12th July, 2018 drawing more than 300 of Red Hat’s partners, distributors, system integrators, ISVs, OEMs and solution providers to the popular tourist destination.

Red Hat uses community-powered approach to provide reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. With a global presence in 90+ offices in 35 countries, Red Hat has a strong footprint.

The event kicked off with keynote presentations by Red Hat executives, including Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Red Hat Asia Pacific; Arun Oberoi, Executive Vice-President for Global Sales & Services; and Mark Enzweiler, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Sales and Alliances, Red Hat. Other eminent speakers included Sandra Ng, Group VicePresident of IDC’s Asia-Pacific Practice Group, Saul Caganoff, Principal & CTO, Platform Engineering, Deloitte Consulting and David

sought after by convention bureaus keen to grow their corporate events sector, who gave insights into the partner landscape and market opportunities in the region. The conference provided a platform for partners to exchange ideas, spark meaningful discussions and network directly with Red Hat leaders and the partner ecosystem.

“Our customers’ success is our success”

As digital transformation continues to be the top of business priorities in Asia Pacific with more enterprises leveraging platform technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data and social, coupled with organizational innovation to create new ways of doing business business environments are becoming volatile.

Organizations will have to ensure that their IT is agile enough to configure for change without necessarily knowing what the change will be.

This is the golden age for open source to unlock the full potential of digital transformation to achieve sustainable growth and profitability, while achieving agility and flexibility in innovation.

With the theme “Stronger Together”, the 2018 Red Hat Partner Conference Asia-

“Our strong base of partners has helped Red Hat to reach $2.9 billion in revenue. We hope to continue to grow while supporting our partners to grow and succeed with us.” - Mark Enzweiler, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Sales and Alliances, Red Hat

Robinson, Chief Technology Officer, STT Connect. The event attracted partners from across the Asia-Pacific region and was highly

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Pacific aimed to not only connect the partner ecosystem, but also provided the knowledge and expertise to better grow their business with Red Hat.

USPs of Red Hat · Great Infrastructure Provider of Linux OS, Cloud OS · Friendly application development tools · User-friendly technology helps to manage the hybrid cloud and automate.

For 25 years, Red Hat has provided open source solutions to solve complex problems across industries –including financial services, telcos and governments – by bringing people together to collaborate. Red Hat celebrated these 25 years and acknowledged the role of its partners, who played a key role in the company’s success story. Partners have been an important multiplier for Red Hat and are important for the company’s future. Partners such as Deloitte, Intel, STT Connect and Microsoft talked about the growth of open source across the globe and how they developed a winning business strategy with Red Hat solutions.

At the conference, it was shared that ISVs such as BoCloud, UEC Group Ltd, Yusys Technologies, EAB Systems, Monoplus and Biqmind are now offering solutions based on Red Hat OpenShift to help companies in the Financial Services, IT and Oil & Gas sectors to accelerate their innovation journey. The ISVs showcased an increasing adoption of Red Hat OpenShift, which was built on open-source innovation and standards including Kubernetes, the container orchestration engine, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is trusted by many companies around the world. It provided a more secure and stable platform for containerbased deployments without sacrificing current investments, enabling mission-critical, traditional

Josep Garcia Vice-President, Channel Partners & Alliances, Red Hat Asia-Pacific applications to coexist alongside new, cloudnative and container-based applications.

Mark Enzweiler, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Sales and Alliances, Red Hat, says, “Our partners solve customer challenges with innovative and supportive IT solutions from Red Hat. Partners with their own technologies test and certify their offerings on the Red Hat portfolio of products. Furthermore, we host programs like Red Hat Online Partner Enablement Network (OPEN) to help them succeed.”

“Also, it is important to talk about our partners when we talk about Red Hat because they have helped us become the world’s leading provider of open-source solutions. In June, we announced our first quarter earnings for FY19, and we’ve had 65 consecutive quarters of revenue growth. For FY18, we attributed 72 percent of our bookings through the channel.”

Red Hat aims to build OpenShift “Practice Builder” Program

Red Hat launched the OpenShift Practice Builder Program in the Asia Pacific region, describing it as a new initiative designed specifically for system integrators (SIs). The program aims to help SIs to build and monetise a modern cloud-native application development and delivery practice using Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat JBoss Middleware.

“System integrators are the key to helping Asia-Pacific companies innovate through the development of new cloud and containerenabled applications, as well as modernising existing applications,” says Josep Garcia, VP, Asia-Pacific Partners and Alliances, Red Hat Asia-Pacific. He added, “The next big wave of opportunity with Red Hat is moving to application-based solutions like Ansible, OpenShift and OpenStack Platform. OpenShift provides a single platform for customers to manage and automate containers across environments, supported by a cloud migration strategy.”

Sandra Ng, group vice president, Practice Group, IDC Asia Pacificsaid, “Customers are looking for ideas, co-creation capabilities and new technology skills to develop new business models and to transform processes. The

ecosystem partnerships that can overcome the digital transformation deadlocks of silos of innovation, lack of digital expertise and tactical plans for customers will perform well. In the digital transformation economy, partnerships are a key element to innovate, compete and grow.”

Global systems integrators including Accenture, Atos, DXC, HCL and Wipro have already built skills and solutions on Red Hat’s technology to address their customer’s needs and nowthe Red Hat OpenShift Practice Builder Program aims to help SIs in the Asia Pacific region to more quickly build expertise on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes container application platform.

The new OpenShift Practice Builder Program was developed by Red Hat in conjunction with the company’s System Integrator community, with several Asia-Pacific SIs, including NTT Data in Japan, Wipro in India, Sino-Bridge in China and Integral and ANATAS in Australia, all involved in building the program.

When Red Hat acquires companies and if they are not on open source it stands committed to open-sourcing their technology. For example, CoreOS a recent acquisition has most of its offerings already on open source today and now Red Hat plans to open source the rest. CoreOS’s mission is “to improve the security and reliability of the Internet” by enabling “companies to run their applications securely and reliably in hybrid and multi-cloud environments and help IT organizations to support cloudnative applications through the deployment of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platformas-a-Service (PaaS) clouds, Agile application development through the DevOps practice.

Neeraj Bhatia, Director – Channel and Partner Alliances – Red Hat, India and South Asia, says, “In today’s technology era, organizations are upgrading their IT infrastructure and implementing virtualization and cloud computing solutions to improve business agility and cost efficiency. Open source is one of the only enterprise software technology platforms that offers true choice and integrated technology to embrace the ever evolving digital economy. The data says, three out of one server imported is into open source. Very soon, it is

Neeraj Bhatia Director – Partner, Alliances & Commercial sales – Red Hat, India and South Asia going to be a 50:50 ratio.”

Owing to the several benefits it offers, the open environment is in demand and every single enterprise has seen the ways of doing business to bring innovation faster to market. The key sectors that are driving the growth of open data centers are BFSI, telecom, IT, social media and e-governance initiatives. The primary advantage that open-source technologies bring to data centers is standardization.

Open source has now become the key driver in the design, implementation and management of new generation data centers. It also helps in increasing interoperability and ensure smooth, agile and efficient service delivery. With the increased use of cloud-based infrastructure, there is even more demand for standardized applications and operating environments which are open source in nature.

With the government’s open-source policies for initiatives such as Digital India, Make in India and other various important projects being run on open source, massive amount of data is being generated which needs proper data center solutions.

Red Hat’s business partners play an important role in educating customers and guiding them through this transformation to be a truly digital era business.

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EVENT

Principles of Digital Transformation

Partner Testimony Varad Gupta

Manojkummar Garg

CTO, Keen & ABLE Computers: “Red Hat follows open-source principle. There are many companies which claim that they are open source but when you use their products you see an enterprise version which is priced differently. Red Hat does not do this. All of Red Hat’s products are available on open source as enterprise or non enterprise.

Today, Red Hat as a leader in open source is quite an accepted brand. The only challenge the company faces is that on the application development front, where availability of skilled resources is a limitation.This is where Red Hat works closely with its partners under Red Hat Partner Connect Program to skill and upskill.

But on the infrastructure front, cloud or container the battle is won.

The Red Hat support is 24/7 but the differentiating factor is the not just case base support but also the break/fix support.

Based on Red Hat’s support, customers can now ask “I am planning to do this and this is how I am planning to design my solution, so will this work? Red Hat provides feedback to such questions and clarifications and this offers a lot more value than the traditional break/fix support. Under the Red Hat support umbrella, a customer can upload these kinds of questions on Red Hat Global Support Services (GSS) which is more of asking for a design guideline.”

COO, Taashee Linux Services “We have been associated with Red Hat for the last ten years. We not only have core competency on the services front but also on the entire stack of Red Hat from server to the cloud. Also, we sell a lot of Red Hat subscriptions. In the first year, we sold around 1,000K but in a span of 10 years we have grown and are selling around 8 million of Red Hat subscriptions. So we are growing by leaps and bounds. With the sale of subscriptions, services will come by default.

As we sell the subscriptions, we get a back-end support by Red Hat on the onsite implementation or any first level support we handle. We are always backed by the Red Hat GSS support.

Every year, 95% of our customer licences get renewed.Year-on-year growth of our company is almost 50%, and last year we did a business of Rs 100 crore.

Telcos, data centers, manufacturing, BFSI are the verticals where we are witnessing the pull.

We are growing with new emerging products as earlier Red Hat was only about OS (Operating System). Then it introduced Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Server and added on new products. So the opportunity is vast.”

Concluding the APAC Partner Conference, Red Hat has embarked on a slew of reinforcements to strengthen their commitment to their partner ecosystem and provide them with knowledge and expertise to better grow their business with Red Hat. Partners will now be able to better advise their customers on the solutions that are necessary to accelerate their digital transformation and thrive in a complex business environment.

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VAR ANALYSIS

Indian FinTech Industry:

At An Inflexion Point

RBI has been instrumental in enabling the development of fintech sector and is espousing a cautious approach in addressing concerns around consumer protection and law enforcement FinTech or financial technologies is one of the fastest-growing areas in banking and financial services and also one of the fastest-growing sectors in the country. It may be defined as technology-driven financial businesses that compete against as well as complement the traditional financial institutions. FinTech is making the experience of banking and finance more intuitive, personalized and empowering. .

According to a Deloitte study, the Indian fintech industry is among the top five markets in India in terms of value of capital funding and investments. The industry grew from nearly $270 million of funding in 2016 to $2.4 billion in 2017. Viewed in the context of 2016 global figures where USA managed to get $6.2 billion in 2016 and $11.3 billion in 2017, India’s jump shows the confidence that India has managed to get the VCs in its side. There are more than 1,200 fintech companies operating in the country currently. According to EY Fintech Adoption Index, India has the second-highest fintech adoption rate of 59%, significantly higher than global average of 33%. The global fintech software and services sector is expected to boom as a $45-billion opportunity by 2020, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.1% – as per NASSCOM, while the Indian fintech software market is forecasted to touch $2.4 billion by 2020 from a current $1.2 billion.

India remains one of the largest markets where the structural enablers to set up and incubate fintech have come together strongly and at an apt time. Combination of steady economic growth with low penetration of financial services and availability of supporting infrastructure such as internet data access, smartphones along with utility infrastructure including Aadhaar-based authentication are likely to provide the required impetus to India’s fintech sector.

The year 2015 was a formative year for the Indian fintech sector, which saw the emergence of numerous fintech startups, incubators and investments from public and private investors. It was clearly reflected that a right mix of technical skills, capital investments, government policies, regulatory framework and entrepreneurial and innovative mindset could be the driving force to establish fintech as a key enabler for financial services in India.

Some of the sectors within the fintech space such as next-generation payments and financial inclusion are quite mature in India in terms of fintech startup ecosystems, government regulations and steps taken by the incumbent market participants. While P2P lending, robo advisory, Bank in a Box, security and biometrics are striding fast towards mass market implementation, blockchain has just marked its entry with a promising future in the financial services arena.

The traditionally cash-driven Indian economy has responded well to the fintech opportunity, primarily triggered by a surge in e-commerce, and smartphone penetration. A report titled “Digital Payments 2020”

by BCG and Google predicts that digital transaction in India will exceed $100 billion in 2020, up from $40 billion in 2016.

Growth Drivers

It is always the government that plays the most crucial role in the growth of any country’s financial industry. The Government of India, along with regulators such as SEBI and RBI, is aggressively supporting the ambition of the Indian economy to become a cashless digital economy and emerge as a strong fintech ecosystem via both funding and promotional initiatives.

Some the government initiatives like Start-Up India and Jan Dhan Yojana which have added over 200 million unbanked individuals into the banking sector and Aadhaar for easy and secure KYC are the key enabling factors.

RBI has also been instrumental in enabling the development of fintech sector and espousing a cautious approach in addressing concerns around consumer protection and law enforcement. Fintech enablement in India has been seen primarily across payments, lending, security / biometrics and wealth management.

Some of the initiatives from the central bank like introduction of “Unified Payment Interface” with NPCI, approval to 11 entities for setting up Payments Bank and approval to 10 entities for setting up Small Finance Banks that can significantly run in favour of the cause for Financial Inclusion.

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VAR ANALYSIS

Another important factor in fast adoption of digital transactions in particular and fintech in general has been the launch of 4G services by Reliance Industries under the brand name Jio. Jio disrupted the market and within a year of its launch it pushed India from the bottom of the pyramid to amongst the top in terms of internet penetration. Data prices are at the lowest across players and speeds have gone up drastically (though still very low compared to developed economies).

Besides, one of the major developments that propelled the adoption of digital transactions in India was demonetization. During the end of 2016, the Prime Minister announced that the large denomination currency notes, i.e. Rs.1,000 and Rs.500, will no more be considered as legal tenders, means these notes are banned. In the subsequent months, Indians faced hardships in doing cash transactions which led to mass adoption of mobile wallets like Paytm, FreeCharge and MobiKwik.

Segment Wise Growth Story

Indian fintech industry is empowered by multiple technology-driven payment and transaction solutions. These segments are at different stages of growth and maturity within India and across the world. Here is a look at how different segments are poised as on date.

Mobile Wallets

The mobile payment industry in India was valued at about $1.15 billion in 2016, growing from US$86 million in 2011, clocking at CAGR of 68%. But demonetization of high-value notes in India in late 2016 propelled the industry clock to unprecedented numbers. A month after demonetization, daily transaction volume from digital wallets – such as Oxigen, Paytm and MobiKwik – went up by 271%, from 1.7 million to 6.3 million. And while those adoption figures have fluctuated up and down a bit over the last 18 months, the trend has been towards growth.

Entry of global players into India’s digital payment space is expected to grow the segment by about five-fold to US$1 trillion by 2023, investment banking firm Credit Suisse said in a report. The report also said that, unlike China, mobile payments in India are being built on public infrastructure like UPI and Aadhaar that allow open-architecture and an interoperable payment system to evolve.

The Credit Suisse report said that there is also no loss of customers for the banks even as they transact on the platforms of these aggregators, and the banks would gain access to customer data. As of December 2017, transactions worth Rs.12,568 crore ($1.93 billion) were carried out on e-wallets, according to RBI – a nearly fourfold increase from the Rs.3,385 crore in October 2016, before demonetization kicked off. If that growth remains consistent, estimates put the total value of India’s digital payments at US$500 billion in just two years – or roughly 15% of India’s GDP.

UPI

Unified Payments Interface (UPI), launched in August 2016, has been a game-changer. It has seen quick market adoption and almost all banks have already adopted this new protocol and even players like WhatsApp, the most widely used messaging app in the country, has recently started rolling out a UPI-based payments feature.

Other global giants, too, are zeroing in on this space. For instance, Google has already launched its payments app Google Tez, and in just four months of launch it is already processing the same number

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of digital transactions as Axis Bank (fourth-largest among banks in India). Samsung has launched Samsung Pay and Amazon has introduced Amazon Pay. While both Google Tez and Samsung Pay have been UPIenabled for the past few months, Amazon Pay introduced the UPI feature earlier this week. Apple, too, is looking to introduce Apple Pay in the country in the near future.

Microsoft is also planning to launch its own digital payment service which will be integrated with its enterprise social network platform Kaizala. The integration will take care of payments from wallet to wallet, bank to bank, credit card to bank and vice versa.

Meanwhile homegrown digital payment firms like Paytm, PhonePe, MobiKwik and FreeCharge (all are UPI-enabled) are strengthening their arsenal. Paytm, India’s largest online payments and mobile wallet company, has invested Rs.5,000 crore ($786 million) in mobile payments, to date. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has earmarked another Rs.5,000 crore for the next three years.

PhonePe, the digital payment arm of India’s leading e-tailer Flipkart, is planning to invest $500 million to scale up its technology platform and expand its merchant network and consumer base.

Many other startups have entered the space to simplify mobile money transfer, such as Chillr application, which provides peer-to-peer money transfer without using bank account details. Some of the leading Indian banks are leveraging the Chillr platform for P2P payments.

Several leading banks are launching their own digital wallets leveraging NPCI’s Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) platform. These digital wallets are integrated with social media features. Few examples are Buddy by SBI and LIME by Axis. Similarly, few banks are going for payment solutions enabling money transfer, P2P transfer, etc for smartphone users, such as PingPay and PayZ app.

Google Pay

After years of experimenting in the payment space with products like Android Pay and the now rebranded Google Wallet, Google this week announced the launch of its latest all-in-one payment platform: Google Pay. The new product, which has begun rollout around the world, replaces Android Pay and allows users to make Point of Sale (PoS) purchases of goods and services – as well as transit payments in select cities – using NFC (Near Field Communication).

Apple Pay

First unveiled at the iPhone 6 launch in September 2016, Apple Pay was among the first payment platforms to digitise the ubiquitousness of credit and debit cards. Developed through a collaboration with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, Apple’s payment service can be used with any of the tech brand’s compatible mobile devices or Watch wearables, and makes use of NFC to make contactless payments at PoS systems.

Samsung Pay

Samsung’s mobile payment and digital wallet service, Samsung Pay, differs from those offered by Apple and Google in one key aspect: the use of magnetic secure transmission (MST) in addition to NFC. What this means is that, unlike Google Pay or Apple Pay which can only be used at NFC-enabled PoS devices, Samsung Pay can be used even at payment terminals that only support traditional magnetic stripe cards.It is supported by a wide range of Samsung smartphones as well as most of its smartwatches.

AliPay

The Alibaba Group, a Chinese conglomerate which is today among the world’s most valuable companies, also owns the world’s largest online and mobile payments platform: Alipay Launched way back in 2004, the platform today features every payment service imaginable – P2P payments, online purchasing, bank account management, ticket purchases, etc., – and recently incorporated the Ripple network into its backend in a bid to speed up its payment processes.

Facebook payments (Messenger and WhatsApp)

Facebook first entered the online payments space in 2015 with the introduction of a peer-to-peer payment services within its Messenger app. The company was initially slow in rolling out the platform to markets outside the US, with several countries

still awaiting the availability of the feature. Facebook’s entry into the Indian digital payments sector came through its subsidiary WhatsApp, by far the most used messaging service in the country.

The 250-million-user strong platform recently launched its own UPIenabled payments service.

PayPal

PayPal is world’s first online payments companies and has established has a strong global presence over the years. The company – which allows users to send, receive, and hold funds – operates in 202 markets supporting 25 currencies (as of 2017. The key factor in PayPal’s success is Venmo, a P2P mobile payments service that, despite operating solely in the US, handled $6.8 billion in transactions in the first quarter of 2017. The company has also created a payments processing system called PayPal Payments Pro which is widely used by online businesses and enterprises for large transacti

“According to the EY FinTech Adoption Index 2017, money transfer and payments as a sub-domain has the highest consumer adoption rate globally at 50%, with India leading the way at an impressive 72%.” credit card.

Airtel Payments Bank, India Post Payments Bank, Vodafone M-Pesa Payments Bank, Reliance Jio Payments Bank, etc are some of the examples of this new-age banking solutions offered by entities that are traditionally not into banking services.

Emerging Areas

Paytm

Launched in 2010 in India as a service for online payments and a digital wallet, Paytm is today a diverse company offering a variety of services. Paytm(part of One97 communications) is arguably the largest digital service used for merchant payments in India, in large part due to the demonetisation of 2016. Many of the country’s service-based startups have incorporated Paytm as a payment option, and the app itself can be used for everything from prepaid recharges to bill and loan payments, ticket purchases to P2P money transfers, and even donations to religious foundations.

The Alibaba Group and its subsidiary Ant Financial are key investors in One97 communications and hold 62 percent stake in the firm.

MobiKwik

MobiKwik is an Indian company founded in 2009 that provides a mobile phone based payment system and digital wallet.Customers add money to an online wallet that can be used for payments.

MobiKwik claims as the most convenient, and safest mobile wallet for Shopping, Mobile recharge, DTH recharge, Money transfers and Bill payments. 25 million users base across the across the country.

BBPS

Another important thing to have happened in 2017 was the launch of Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) which nearly doubled the number of bills paid through the platform in December 2017 to 19 million transactions from 10 million in April, when the pilot was launched, KPMG in its report on BBPS has highlighted. BBPS, is touted to become a one-stop bill payment solution for Indian consumers, the initial achievements of the platform and its potential given that it has already integrated 60 billers.

The value of bills paid on the platform jumped about 46% to Rs.2,690 crore in December 2017 from Rs.1,843 crore in April. This was, however, still a very small share of the overall bill payments market, which is projected to grow to Rs.9.4 lakh crore by 2020 from Rs.5.8 lakh crore in 2016.

The Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”) has given in-principle approval to 33 entities, which had applied for operating as a Bharat Bill Payment Operating Unit (“BBPOU”) under the Bharat Bill Payment System (“BBPS”). BBPS is an integrated bill payment system which would offer interoperable bill payment service to customers online as well as through a network of agents on the ground.

The future of payment is undergoing a transformation, as new entrants are enabling the market with new technologies such as contactless payment, NFC-enabled smartphones, cloud-based PoS and digital wallets.

Payments Bank

One more financial service that was introduced by the government was Payments Banks. In 2014, the RBI gave in-principle approval to 11 entities to offer payments bank services and the first licence offered was to Bharti Airtel. What a payments bank does is it offers small- ticket financial services, including opening of savings bank accounts, money transfer, make bill payments using that savings account and earn interest on the deposited money. Its like any other bank with only exception that the payments banks are not allowed to offer credit services like loans or

Robo-advisory

Robo advisory, a kind of artificial intelligence-driven financial service, is an emerging area of wealth advisory services. These services help customers take informed and comparatively wiser financial decisions. Robo Advisors are basically AI-based solutions. Their advice is data-driven and free from personal biases, their fees are reasonable, and they’re always available to provide clients with real-time access to solutions and reports in just a few clicks.

FundsIndia is one of the most successful robo-advisory startups and early adopters of this technology. Its AUM (asset under management) has risen from Rs.187 crore in 2012 to Rs.3,000 crore ($460 million) in 2016. Further, it is expected to reach Rs.10,000 crore ($1.5 billion) within the next 18 months. Many new entrants and traditional broking firms have launched robo advisory services in India such as Aditya Birla Money’s MyUniverse, BigDecision, ScripBox, Arthayantra, FundsIndia and 5nance

P2P Lending

The global market for P2P lending is expected to grow at a CAGR of 60% to US$1 trillion by 2025 from US$9 billion in 2014, with the U.S., the U.K., Australia and China being the largest P2P lending markets. According to a recent report by PwC, India has around 30 online lending platforms with a loan book pegged at $25 million. In the next five years, India is expected to grow by 160 times to reach the $4-billion mark. But this is nothing when compared to China, which currently stands at a $100-billion mark.

In India, the P2P lenders broadly focus their portfolio under the categories of micro finance, consumer loans and commercial loans.

For example, 30% of Faircent’s loans are taken by micro and SME sectors, boutique firms and mom-and-pop stores. The rest are taken by individuals for private purposes such as weddings, medical and home.

Some of the other leading P2P lenders in India are i2ifunding, Loanmeet, i-lend, LendenClub, Milaap, MicroGraam, InstaPaisa, Vote4Cash, etc.

The growth potential of the market in India is huge as there are about 57.7 million small businesses in the country. Currently, in the absence of a regulatory framework, Indian P2P startups are registered under the Companies Act and abide by the Negotiable Instruments Act. RBI recently released a consultation paper on P2P lending business model where companies need to be registered as a special category NBFC and spoke about six prime areas including permitted activity, reporting, prudential and governance requirements, business continuity planning and customer interface, thereby providing an approach to curtail the risk in this sector. The idea is to bring the P2P lending platforms within the scope of NBFC governance.

Moving forward, we believe that technology convergence is likely to make P2P lending safer and faster. UPI and blockchain are two big technology revolutions that are projected to have a favourable impact on the expansion of P2P lending business in India. The two big mobile wallet firms – Paytm and MobiKwik – are also planning to start their P2P lending platforms, and the former has already sought a licence from the RBI for the same.n

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Honeywell consolidating its position in India with Product Innovation Manager, Honeywell Technology Solutions.

India as an opportunity

In a chat with VARINDIA, Dr Akshay Bellare, VicePresident & General Manager, Honeywell Technology Solutions, talks about Indian market, the opportunities it offers, product innovation and R&D With the gradual advancement of electronic security equipment towards integrated security solutions, an unparallel growth is being witnessed in the Indian security market. This shift has been instrumental in integrating multiple systems which include video, intrusion, video analytics, fire, access control, etc.

“The Indian security market is experiencing an unprecedented boom with growing demand and awareness about security solutions in the retail and enterprise segment. The electronic security equipment market is heading towards integrated security solutions, created by bundling multiple systems, including video, intrusion, video analytics, fire, access control, HVAC, chemical and biological sensors, etc.

Such systems would offer actionable intelligence and decision support to the organization,” says Dr Akshay Bellare, Vice- President & General

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India holds immense opportunities as it is an emerging market with multiple factors like increase in FDI, purchasing power parity, improved economic and social conditions and also government projects like Make in India, Digital India, Start-up India, etc which are further triggering it.

“India is among one of the emerging markets.It will probably see billions of middleincome consumers reach the marketplace in the next 15-20 years. India’s GDP is expected to grow approximately 7% amid global economic headwinds. It is the third-largest economy in the world with steady increase in purchasing power parity (PPP), expecting $15 trillion by 2025. Increase in FDI, increasing purchasing power parity, improved economic and social conditions, and the progressive steps being taken by the government, including Make in India, Digital India, Start-up India, Skill India, 100 Smart Cities are fuelling the technological innovation of the country,” explains Dr Akshay.

Further elaborating on it, Dr Akshay says, “It is interesting to see how some of the national agendas like Smart Cities are contributing towards a better India. It is important to have smart homes and buildings to make a smarter city. The concept of smart building technologies is evolving and being adopted across commercial and residential spaces in India. Buildings everywhere are becoming greener, safer, and more productive, thanks to smart technology.

One billion connected parts in lighting, HVAC and other systems are predicted to be deployed in commercial buildings in 2018."

Innovation

Considering India as a critical market for the company, it is investing regularly to fortify its position in the country. Honeywell is strategically leveraging its global knowhow and customizing products for specific verticals to gaining grounds in the market.

“Honeywell is consistently investing in product innovation to grow and consolidate its global leadership position and local business intelligence in the Indian security market, leveraging global knowhow and customizing products for the Indian market. The approach is to devise products for specific verticals and design solutions that aim to serve specific customer needs. As an industry pioneer, Honeywell has developed many groundbreaking advances that have shaped today’s residential

and commercial security systems. Honeywell security portfolio caters to all electronic security needs for industrial, government, defence, transportation, commercial, retail, hotel, hospital, corporate buildings, IT/ITeS, banking and the residential market,” reveals Dr Akshay.

Honeywell is working with the government and apex bodies in some major smart city projects to make it a reality. Elaborating on it, Dr Akshay says, “Importantly, we are partnering with state governments and local authorities to implement our IoT-enabled citywide security and surveillance systems, including closed-circuit televisions (CCTVs), emergency response solutions, automatic number plate reading system (ANPR), and intelligent traffic management technologies in key smart cities.

Our sensors capture data, analyze it, and turn it into information that enables better situational awareness for the decision makers. We are already working on similar successful smart city initiatives, including city surveillance projects in Aurangabad in Maharashtra state, an 11city project in Madhya Pradesh state, including a successful Ujjain Simhastha Kumbh event requiring security management in a gathering of 70 million devotees, and in Bhubaneswar, in Orissa state.”

R&D

The engineering arm of Honeywell, HTS, works to make world safer, effective, comfortable and productive by overcoming the toughest challenges. It aims to improve the life of the people across globe. The HTS Bengaluru develops state-of-the-art technologies catering to different verticals.

“Honeywell Technology Solutions (HTS), an integrated technology development and engineering arm of Honeywell in Bengaluru, creates technologies that improve quality of life for people around the globe – generating clean energy, increasing our safety and security, enabling people to connect, and collaborate, and equipping our customers with technologies that enable higher productivity. The 4,000 engineering workforce in HTS Bengaluru delivers cuttingedge technologies that serve many industries, such as homes and buildings, aviation, defence and space, oil & gas, and chemicals. HTS works on all aspects of Honeywell’s products to tackle some of the world’s toughest challenges.

Honeywell’s engineering organization makes the world safer, more effective, more comfortable and more productive,” explains Dr Akshay. n

FACE TO FACE

Microsoft partnership helps ABS to grow from strength to strength In a chat with VARINDIA, Srikant Rao, Founder Director, Affordable Business Solutions (ABS), discusses the company’s association with Microsoft, how they have scaled up, their differentiating factor and the growth trajectory Focusing on the SMC market, ABS started its journey in 2005 offering solutions based on hosted subscription model, which has been hugely supported by Microsoft. The partnership has helped ABS to sustain in the difficult times and emerge into a matured business as well.

“ABS entered into a business relationship with Microsoft in 2005. As first-generation entrepreneurs, we had just started our operations then with a vision of addressing the Indian SMC (small, medium and corporate) market with business solutions offered on a hosted subscription model.”

For over a decade, we have effectively pioneered a Cloud Computing business addressing the SME (small and medium enterprises) market segment in India. Microsoft has been, and continues to be, the mainstay of our entire business. Our partnership with Microsoft has enabled us to survive several cycles of economic growth and downturns and has resulted in us becoming a very mature business entity with a platform that is all set for significant growth,” recollects Srikant Rao, Founder Director, Affordable Business Solutions.

In the initial days, the Microsoft team has extended its support to ABS as a principal vendor to offer ERP solutions to the Indian SME community. Microsoft has always prioritized the requirements of SMC customers.

“When we started ABS with a vision of offering ERP solutions on what is now called the Cloud, to Indian SME customers, Microsoft was the one principal who shared and supported these plans. The Microsoft team has always been extremely responsive to the requirements of our SMC customer base.

“The product ‘stack’ – that includes D365 ERP+CRM, Power BI, Office 365, SharePoint Portal and Azure – that Microsoft offers enables us to offer comprehensive industry vertical solutions that are extremely user-friendly and easy to adopt,” explains Rao.

team, right from Ravi Venkatesan who was at that point of time the Chairman of Microsoft India.

The Microsoft India team continues to work closely with us to understand and meet the expectations of the SMC customers in India that we have been targeting,” says Rao. Differentiating Factor Leveraging the experience of more than a decade, ABS builds their solutions to meet the requirements of Indian SMC segment.

Explaining this, Rao says, “Our solutions have been built based on our learning from over a decade and a half of addressing over 100+ customers in the Indian SMC segment. We also provide business process and analytics consulting as we have senior people with domain and business expertise and experience in these segments.

Microsoft helping partners to scale up business Microsoft appointed ABS as its first Microsoft Service Provider Licence Agreement (SPLA) partner for Microsoft Dynamics in India way back in 2005. Taking it further, Microsoft has also supported the company in training, marketing, sales, solution creation and customer support. Moreover, ABS was also involved in some of Microsoft’s projects like Project Vikas, which was Microsoft’s pioneering attempt to build and offer solutions to Tirupur’s garment industry on a SaaS model.

“Although we were relatively a very small partner in terms of revenue, we were privileged to have very cordial and supportive relationships with all the senior members of Microsoft’s India

Products & Solutions ABS offers a suite of solutions – branded ABS Baadal – that address the following industry verticals: • FMCG/ Distribution/ Retail • Component Manufacturers • Equipment Manufacturers • Professional Services • NGOs and Non-Profit • Agro and Food Processing Microsoft helped us move our entire suite of solutions onto Azure in order to provide a safe, secure, scalable and easily manageable cloud infrastructure. Microsoft also helps us by referring us to prospective customers – enterprise and SMC / SME – which are looking for reliable partners with proven solutions in the segments that we target.

With pre-configured solutions that have already been proven across multiple customers, ABS Baadal enables us to offer what we called “Rapid Activation” (rather than the traditional long-drawn implementation cycles) to enable customers to go live in days rather than months.

Our latest implementation was done in a record of 32 days.”

Growth In spite of economic slowdowns, ABS has been witnessing a double-digit growth across the last decade. The company is now preparing itself to offer ABS Baadal, a suite of industry vertical solutions on Microsoft D365 on Azure.

“We are aligned with Microsoft’s sales organizations that reach out to customers through the Enterprise, SMC and SME sales teams and have completely aligned this approach with our own business strategy. Microsoft’s new One Commercial Partner (OCP) Channel Support model is also proving to be extremely productive as we now have a single partner support organization enabling partners like us across the entire stack of products, and also mentoring and guiding us to work with the rest of the organization.

We have successfully proven that we can work with and deliver solutions to large, enterprise customers with both nation-wide and global implementations.

“We anticipate that our suite of industry vertical solutions ABS Baadal, along with our ‘Rapid Activation’ model, should help us double our business every 2–3 years,” concludes Rao. n

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Jivi Mobiles sees opportunities in Rural and Semi-urban market In a chat with VARINDIA, Harsh Vardhan, Marketing Head, Jivi Mobiles, discusses about India market opportunities, strategy of the company, service support and R&D India as a mobile market holds a lot of opportunities as a large portion of the rural and semi- urban parts of the country still remain untapped. Triggered by the technology development and lesser changeover time for the customers, the demand in the market will be ever increasing.

“It’s an ever-growing market and most lucrative amongst the mobile markets in the world. There is a large chunk of untapped customer base available in the rural and semi-urban parts of India. Also, due to fast development in technology, the aspiration to get updated makes lesser changeover time for the customers. Nowadays, people tend to change their handsets within one year. Hence, demand will always remain in this sector,” feels Harsh Vardhan, Marketing Head, Jivi Mobiles.

While comparing India market with the rest of the South Asian countries, he says, “We are working in most of the South Asian countries and relatively the scenario and demand are more or less similar to India market. The ecosystem in India is more developed in comparison with markets like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, etc, but the developments are pacing up.”

Strategy To beat competition in a competitive market like India, Jivi Mobiles believes that innovation and understanding consumer needs are imperative for a company.

“Innovation and understanding of consumer requirements is the key. With strength in R&D and access to large ODMs, we are keen to develop handsets with innovative features,” says Harsh.

Offering a device at an affordable price is a challenge for a handset makers and Jivi Mobiles has been relentlessly working on the needs and utility of the consumers so that it can enable their life keeping cost under check. The prime reason behind Jivi Mobiles offering affordable devices is that its handsets are manufactured in India.

“It’s a challenge for the brand to offer devices at affordable prices. We have been working on the actual needs and utility of the masses which can make their life comfortable and at the same time keep the cost under check. Also, we have been closely working with telecom operators to bundle our phones with aggressive offers for voice & data.”

All of our handsets are being manufactured in our own manufacturing set-up in Delhi which allows us to keep the check on the cost and we are coming up with another unit in Maharashtra in this fiscal year,” reveals Harsh.

Jivi Mobiles focuses on channel sales and its 90% business comes from it, but the company is planning to launch few exclusive models through online channel. Harsh further explains, “We are largely focused on our channel/retail sales. About 90% of our total business has been contributed by Channel. Going forward, we have plans to launch a

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Harsh Vardhan Marketing Head, Jivi Mobiles couple of exclusive models through e-commerce during the upcoming festive season.”

Service Support Jivi Mobiles has gained ground in the rural and semiurban parts of the country. The company is getting good feedback from its customers as it is providing value for money to them.

“Jivi has become a household name in the rural and semi-urban parts of the country. We have been witnessing the encouraging response from these belts. Over the years, Jivi Mobiles has earned trust and loyalty of its customers.

We are providing our customers value for their money which is helping in repeat buying and strong word of mouth,” boasts Harsh.

Further, he adds, “Now we are entering into lowand mid-range smartphones segment and we are keen to open new markets where our equity is not that great in the urban market, we will remain focused on expanding in the urban market and even in South India market. Initially, we will remain focused on our BTL plans and once the placement is done then we have a plan to leverage on Irrfan Khan for ATL during the festive season.” n Aparna Mullick aparna@varindia.com

VAR MOBILITY

Infinix Mobile launches HOT 6 Pro with superior video viewing experience

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nfinix Mobile has launched HOT 6 Pro. With a promise to provide an ultimate video watching experience, HOT 6 Pro is designed to match on-thego streaming lifestyle of millennials.

Priced at Rs.7,999, HOT 6 Pro is a dual Rear camera smartphone that flaunts a 5.99-inch HD+ screen with 18:9 full view display, 83.4% screen-tobody ratio and packed with 4,000mAh battery. The smartphone will be exclusively available on Flipkart in three trendy colours of Bordeaux Red, Sandstone Black and Magic Gold.

The phone is equipped with a 5.99-inch HD+ Full View display with 18:9

aspect ratio, perfect for watching videos, reading, and browsing. HOT 6 Pro has an exceptionally high category defining 500 nits screen brightness and 1000:1 Contrast ratio.

ASUS launches ZenFone5Z in India

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SUS has launched the all-new ZenFone5Z, in the presence of ASUS CEO Jerry Shen.

An exciting next-generation e x t r e m e - p e r f o r m a n c e, ZenFone 5Z features a 6.2-inch SuperIPS FHD+

6.2-inch display with a 90% screen-to-body ratio in an all-metal, glass-covered body that's as small and compact as most standard 5.5-inch phones.

Equipped with the latest Qualcomm

display, dual-cameras that harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and features superb audio performance with loud stereo sound.

ZenFone 5Z has a strikingly beautiful ultra slim-bezel, all-screen design, featuring a stunning

Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform, ZenFone 5Z includes a full suite of AI-enhanced features powered by the Qualcomm Artificial Intelligence Engine (AIE). It has up to 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS 2.1 Internal storage.

M-tech launches Motorola expands its e5 two new feature family with e5 plus and e5 oto has With a reflective wave phones – Raga M expanded its e pattern and the curved back series portfolio with the design, the all- new moto introduction of e5 plus and e5 plus packs a 6" Max and V10

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-tech has introduced two new feature phone models – Raga and V10. With a slim and stylish design, both the models are equipped with a powerful 1,600mAh battery that offer 9 hours talk-time and 400 hours standby time.

The dual-SIM Raga and V10 come with a 2.4” [6.1cm] QQVGA display, and while the Raga is equipped with a dual digital camera that is perfect for taking selfies, the V10 comes with a digital camera for capturing beautiful moments.

Offering one of the best-in-class multimedia experience, the feature phones make listening to FM radio, audio and watching video a treat with its clear and powerful audio. The M-tech Raga and V10 come with a 32GB expandable memory and pack a host of useful features like MP3 player, video player [3GP, MP4], wireless FM radio, Bluetooth, audio/ video recording, auto call recording, mobile tracker and a torch.

Goutam Kumar Jain, Co-Founder, M-tech Informatics, says, "Our latest offering, the Raga and V10 will further reinforce our leadership in the feature phone segment.

Both the models pack every useful feature that a customer needs powerful battery backup, superior multimedia experience, slim and compact design and extremely affordable pricing, the models have it all covered."

While the Raga is priced at Rs.1,250 and comes in three stunning colours – Silver, Blue and Golden, the V10 is priced at Rs.1,199 and comes in four vibrant colour options – Blue, Black, Golden and Grey.

e5. The devices come with

Vision screen and comes

the biggest and the brightest displays ever shipped in the e series. Whether it is relishing memories or browsing your favourite media content, everything looks better on the vibrant Max Vision display of these smartphones. Moreover, with a battery as big as 5,000mAh, users can enjoy seamless entertainment for hours without worrying about running out of battery.

with a – massive 5,000mAh battery that gives the power to enjoy up to 18 hours of video playback, 200+ hours of music playback or 20+ hours of non-stop web surfing. moto e5 plus will be available exclusively on Amazon.in and at 600+ Moto Hub stores across various states in India. It will be available in two colour variants – Fine Gold and Black.

iVOOMi launches powerpacked i2 Lite

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VOOMi has announced the launch of its new flagship smartphone – i2 Lite with the tagline #StayUninterr upted.

The device brings a

2018.

The curved design of the smartphone accentuates the 5.45-inch HD+ Full View display with 18:9 ratio that provides an uninterrupted viewing

combination of features that allow one to have an uninterrupted experience.

Sporting a vertical dual camera setup on the back, the feature-rich smartphone is incredulously priced at Rs.6, 499 and is available for purchase exclusively on Flipkart starting 4th July,

experience to the users.

The 1440*720p resolution is bright and offers great colour reproduction. As for its optics, the i2 Lite sports a 13MP + 2MP dual rear camera with soft flash featuring a Sony Sensor with 5P Largan Lens and an 8MP selfie camera with 4P Samsung Largan Lens.

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Movers & Shakers

Srikanth Doranadula may head Oracle's servers and storage business

As per a news report, Srikanth Doranadula of Oracle who was responsible for driving the alliances and channels in India for the organization will now lead the server and storage business.

His new capacity, he will help Oracle’s customers to take advantage of its enterprise-grade cloud-ready infrastructure and make a seamless transition to the cloud.

He will also be responsible for maintaining and encouraging growth and customer relationship for the company’s servers and storage business.

Neelam Dhawan joins Ecosystm as Board Advisor

Muralikrishnan B joins Xiaomi India

The Indian smartphone market has enough growth potential and is witnessing a high rate of growth in the market. With the increasing penetration of 4G, which has further propelled this growth, there seems to be a big potential in the feature phone market for conversions. To address this segment even more extensively, Xiaomi has recently appointed Muralikrishnan B as its India chief operating officer(COO), who will report to its Global VP, Manu Jain.

Muralikrishnan has previously worked with eBay.in as their head and later joined Jabong as the COO. Prior to joining Jabong in February 2016, Murlikrishnanhas worked as the COO of online real estate portal, India Property.

NETGEAR ropes in Brad Maiorino to Board of Directors

Ecosystm has announced the appointment of accomplished IT industry veteran Neelam Dhawan as Board Advisor. Globally recognised as one of the Most Powerful Women in Business by titles including Fortune, Forbes and Business Today, Neelam has played an instrumental role in shaping the IT industry in India.

In an illustrious career spanning 35 years, Neelam has held various senior executive roles within technology giants including Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and IBM. Neelam has been instrumental in shaping the Indian technology market during her tenures as Managing Director for Hewlett Packard, leading one of the largest markets for the company. Prior to Hewlett Packard, she was the Managing Director for Microsoft in India.

NETGEAR has welcomed Brad Maiorino to the company’s Board of Directors. Currently, a senior executive at Booz Allen Hamilton, Maiorino is a noted expert in managing cyber, governance, risk and compliance issues. Over the course of a 25-year career, he has held the role of Chief Information Security Officer with Fortune 50 companies such as Target, General Electric and General Motors.

Maiorino joined General Electric (GE) in 2001 and held various roles in technology leadership throughout the company, ultimately rising to the position of chief information security officer. In 2012, he moved into a similar role with General Motors (GM), holding global accountability for the GM information security and risk vision, strategy and program.

DigitalOcean names Mark Templeton as its new CEO

Rajul Rana joins Ness as Chief Solutions Officer

DigitalOcean has appointed Mark Templeton as its Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1. He will also join the company’s board of directors.

As the former President & CEO of Citrix Systems, Templeton helped grow the business from a $15-million organization with one product, one customer segment and one go-to-market path, to a global industry leader with more than 100 million users and annual revenue of over $3 billion. Templeton joined the company prior to its initial public offering and served in a leadership capacity throughout his 20-plus years with the organization. Over that time, he created a design-centric culture based on the values of respect, integrity and humility.

Ness Digital Engineering has announced that Rajul Rana has joined the organization as Chief Solutions Officer. In his new role, Rana will lead the evolution of Ness’ solutions approach, ensuring that Ness continues to leverage core and emerging technologies to deliver the innovative digital platforms Ness’ customers use to achieve competitive advantage.

Rana’s role will include management of the Solution Architecture team and development of new solutions and accelerators that take advantage of the latest technologies. He will also manage a team of consultants who provide subject-matter expertise and technical guidance to Ness’ customers in the early stages of their digital transformation journey.

Lenovo DCG appoints Ashish Taneja as Channel Head in India

Infor designates Wesley Kowalski as Head of ASEAN Region

Lenovo Data Center Group (DCG) has announced the appointment of Ashish Taneja as Channel Head, India, effective immediately. New Delhi-based Ashish will report to the Managing Director India, Vivek Sharma.

As the new India Channel lead, Ashish will be responsible for driving the company’s channel strategy and partner ecosystem growth across the country. He will work closely with the partners, distributors and system integrators to accelerate the adoption of Lenovo DCG innovations and drive relevance for channel ecosystem.

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Infor has announced the appointment of Wesley Kowalski as Head of ASEAN. Based in the company's regional hub in Singapore, Kowalski will be responsible for Infor's operations in the region, including sales and distribution of Infor's product offerings and services.

Wesley has extensive experience in leading large, complex business transformation programmes across Energy & Utilities, Financial Services, Telecommunications industry in Asia-Pacific and globally. Prior to Infor, Wesley headed sales and marketing in Australian IT start-up, Fusion Professionals.

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RNI - NO 72399/1999 Printing Date 18 & 19

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