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AMD technology powers the leading game consoles.

So that last attack you dodged? We made sure you saw it coming.

Discover all the leading businesses that count on AMD every day.

AMD.com/everywhere

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Fujitsu launches x86 PRIMEQUEST Servers

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The Birth of New-Age Datacenters

38pg

VMware may acquire Arkin Net

VMware has announced its intention to acquire Arkin Net, a software-defined data center security and operations company.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in Q2 2016.

“With VMware NSX combined with Arkin and vRealize, VMware will deliver the security and operations management plane for the SDDC. Over time, Arkin will solidify vRealize Suite’s position as the industry’s most comprehensive Cloud Management Platform that delivers application-focused operations, NSX micro-segmentation at scale and cross-domain visibility and context across physical and logical infrastructure,” said Ajay Singh, Senior Vice-President & General Manager, Cloud Management Business Unit, VMware.

HPE redefines its Helion Cloud Portfolio

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ewlett Packard Enterprise has enhanced its HPE Helion cloud portfolio which includes HPE Helion Cloud Suite, HPE Helion CloudSystem 10, HPE Helion Stackato 4.0, HPE Cloudline 3100 Server and New HPE Technology Services offerings.“Organizations require their own right mix of traditional IT, private, managed and public clouds and the flexibility to support applications spanning different technologies, architectures and delivery models. The HPE Helion portfolio gives customers a simple, powerful set of options,” said Vikram K, Director – Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India.

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HELLO INDIA

Social Media becoming a growing risk ..................... for Corporate Security With technology getting connected to the world in which cyber attacks are growing more persistent and sophisticated by the day, threats are evolving fast too. It is the need of the hour when the academia, industry and government must work together in new bold ways to solve the ever-increasing challenges of cybersecurity. Going forward, as technology keeps on evolving, Internet of Things (IoT) will be the major transformation in the digital world that has the potential to affect everyone and every business.

In a very short time, IoT will have sensing, analytics and visualization tools, which can be accessed by anyone, anytime and anywhere in the world on a personal, community or a national level. However, the real change is not that machines are talking to each other, but that people are talking more and more “through” machines – there could be a deep-rooted security problem with the possibility of impersonation, identity theft, hacking and, in general, cyber-threats.

Moving ahead, India needs a cyber workforce as an enabling national asset to meet domestic as well as global cybersecurity demands. The nation is in dire need for formulation of a framework for creation of a cybersecurity workforce. The simple idea is to Meet the Demand and Create the Supply. No business can afford to ignore cybercrime, which is estimated to cost the global economy around $500 billion a year. Many businesses are already citing downtime or lost productivity as a costly side-effect of some cybercriminal activities. Secondly, the growing potential for cyber attack using social media has created new opportunities for “trolling”, bringing into the real world ethnic division and social unrest. An investigation unearthed hundreds of fake profiles on the professional networking site LinkedIn that had been created by scammers posing as recruitment consultants. The apparent aim of these fake profiles was to infiltrate business networks by making and exploiting connections with reputable executives. Corporates use social media networks for marketing and brand reorganization, all of which make them fertile hunting grounds for cybercriminals. It is also a fact that hackers are also using social media to manipulate customers.

Lastly, going by the data, Facebook has 1.59 billion monthly active users – more people than the population of China. However, the irony of the day is that China has banned Facebook. One of my other concerns is the recent acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft for a sum of $26.2 billion. How will this acquisition help the industry in terms of reducing cyber attacks and protecting corporate security? For Microsoft, surely it will be a good opportunity to mark its presence in the social media, which has been dominated by Facebook and Google.

It is high time the tech biggies of the valley bring out a newer comprehensive security cover for the social media users!

Please talk about your accomplishments users operating smoothly. They can expedite response times and enhance a company's reach. in the industry?

The foundation of Deskera was laid during my IIT Kanpur days when I was working with SMEs and start-ups, writing source codes and helping them use the basic business software.

It was at that time that I realized that the existing ecosystem of enterprise management software was largely focused on serving the needs of multi-national corporations, thereby leaving behind the vast SME and start-up segment, which was untapped, un-deservedly so. It is this realization that made me work towards the segment. Since its inception, Deskera has remained true to its commitment of helping SMEs and start-ups find their feet and go for automation.

At Deskera, being the CEO and Founder of the organization, I enjoy the role of a strategist with a strong focus on research and development of Deskera products. I am an advocate of innovation and optimum customer experience. My passion lies in creating value and delivering technologies that have a positive impact on people’s lives.

What kind of a relationshi p do you enjoy with your stakeholders in the industry?

Partners and distributors play a vital role in keeping the lines between manufacturers and

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Deskera recognizes and treats it partners and distributors as an integral part of its team. We cherish our ties with each of them since they are important pillars of our success. We believe in a symbiotic relationship founded on deep trust and understanding. Our commitment to bring the best of technology to our customers is absolute and that is not possible without our stakeholders.

Where do you see yourself three years from now?

Deskera is growing phenomenally and our future looks promising. Currently, 20% of our revenue comes from India. In the next three years we foresee the organization growing at a healthier rate. We want to reach out to every startup, SME and individual in every city and town of this country. In line with the Indian Government’s vision to boost the SME sector, we want to help these enterprises run their businesses on an integrated Cloudbased platform, thus enhancing productivity and moving one more step in the direction of the Government’s ‘Make in India’ mission.

We have been doing our own bit and want to continue in transforming our nation into a Digital India.

Besides IT,what are your other areas of interests?

Shashank Dixit Founder & CEO - Deskera

Well, IT is something that has always been very close to me. However, two other areas where my interests lie: space technology and artificial intelligence.

Shashank Dixit is a successful entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Deskera. He is the driving force, molding Deskera from a small setup to a multinational corporation. His vision and role as a strategist have been pivotal in making Deskera the success that it is today.

Focused on research and development of Deskera products, he is a strong advocate of innovation and optimum customer experience. He also co-founded Megabucks, an entrepreneurship and business festival organized by the IIT, Kanpur

CONTENTS Website: www.varindia.com

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

The Birth of NewAge Datacenters

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FACE TO FACE

VAR SPEAK

17|

NComputing brings nextgeneration computing with the launch of MX100 Series

19|

Koinca Minolta transforming into a Service Provider

42|

Huawei focuses on the work before “sudden” breakthroughs

44|

Veeam helps customers to achieve Always-on Business

48|

A Two-way Communication Defines Lenovo’s Service Strategy

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure – Redefining IT Deployment

VAR GRIEVANCE 52|

TAIT Addresses Twin issues of Cheque Dishonour and Income/ Direct Tax Rules

MARKET WATCH 26|

38pg

Enabling the e-commerce ecosystem with sales enablement methodologies

23|

Red Hat takes Partner Business to New Heights

VAR CORPORATE 46-47| TPC-E Benchmark Result for System x3650 M5

INDUSTRY EVENT 45|

Bentley Systems’ CONNECTION Events Draw around 400+ Attendees

ISODA CORNER 43|

DigitalTrack Provides Total Storage Solution

EVENT 27|

14th VARINDIA IT Forum 2016 – Helping Build the Digital India Vision

INDUSTRY WATCH 37|

Why Microsoft Acquires LinkedIn for a huge amount of $26.2 bn?

VAR MOBILITY 50|

BlackBerry Enterprise space

Leveraging the Mobility Software

REGULARS Guest Speak

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Round About

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Hot Bytes

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On the Ramp

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Voice N Data

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Channel Buzz

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Product of the Month

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ISODA CORNER

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BY FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 COMPANIES*

* Red Hat client data and Fortune 500 list, 2014 Copyright © 2016 Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat and the Shadowman logoare trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

ROUND ABOUT

Expanding Horizon of Genome: Will the World be the same in Ten Years?

A teacher asked his students in the high school what, according to them, is the frontier technology. Opinions differed. Many said aerospace, thinking that discoveries in the outer space are going to rewrite the human history. A few clung on to the cliché – Information Technology – believing that breakthroughs in this domain will have a far-reaching impact on how people think, communicate and transact businesses. The teacher paused, giving the impression that the answer that he wanted had yet to come. Then a backbencher, who was sluggish in his behaviour, stood up and said that it is genome that is going to rule the roost in the coming years.

The inquisitive teacher, who never expected such an answer, if any, from the pupil, wanted to test him with further queries. The teacher inquired how he did come to such an answer. The boy quipped that he, along with his parents, paid a visit to a doctor the other day to consult him why he was not studious in his studies, as he was always laidback and lazy in even doing the daily routine works. The erudite doctor explained how most of the traits and habits a boy or girl inherits from their forefathers through the genome, which we conveniently call as hereditary. According to him, the behaviour of a child – whether he/ she is intelligent, dull, timid, aggressive and what have you – is decided by his DNA and very little can be done to change those characteristics.

He also said that the doctor has explained how such things can be changed at the embryonic stage by manipulating the DNA. The teacher was aghast at the response of the pupil, from whom he never expected the answer. He thought that none of his more intelligent pupils would ever be able to tell the correct answer.

Why this renewed interest in genome? The word renewed has to be marked since it is not the first time that the scientific world has been discussing about genetics. Many years back, there lived a monk named Gregor Mendel, who spent most of the time in the garden adjoining the monastery studying about the pea plants, their behaviour, and how their characteristics can be altered. After his death when his published works came to the notice of the scientists and botanists, they realized how genius that man was and how profound were his scientific discourse, which had rewritten the available knowledge. He recognized the mathematical patterns of inheritance from one generation to the next.

Genome or Eugenics gradually developed over the years since Darwin and Mendel. Some crude applications of this science were put to use in sex determination, IVF, etc which were fraught with good and bad. Stem technology is also an offshoot of this discipline. Can anyone claim that we have perfected this science? The body of information instructs that this science is far from perfect.

Let me start with the good side. Should you like to have a progeny free from diseases, hardworking, intelligent and can be a real asset to nation building, science and technology can provide you the opportunity to go for one. Now the question is how? After years of research, scientists have mapped a good number of genes that is responsible for various functions, traits and can detect at the embryonic stage itself whether a particular gene or combinations of genes can lead a person to chronic diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, retardation, schizophrenia, etc. Using various techniques developed in the laboratory, scientists can manipulate that gene or combinations of genes and straighten them up to preempt occurrence of these diseases at a later stage. If the DNA combination cannot be altered or manipulated by any chance, the embryo can be destroyed at that stage itself so that one can avoid a situation where a person born with such attributes and subject him or her to severe sufferings at a later stage.

Now the point is whether gene selection can be justified from the equitable perspective. It goes without saying that application of such technologies in the present stage is very costly. It would mean that these perquisites are within the reach of only the rich, who can afford such expenses.

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That inequitable paradigm agitates the minds of many scientists and sociologists. They feel that healthcare, particularly the tertiary segment, where treatment necessitates huge expenses have already gone over the roof and the poor cannot afford to have access to that unless the government or non-government organizations come forward to foot their bills. Against this backdrop, from the perspective of social justice, such random selection of genes will not find favour with the general public.

Bereft of its terse reading and connotations, it dictates that the research on the behaviour of genes and their compositions is far more complicated than can be revealed so far from the extensive research.

There are still various diseases whose exact causes are still not mapped in precise terms. A case in point is the common disease that has afflicted millions and is threatening to engulf many, diabetes. The causes of the disease are not exactly mapped in precise terms. Scientists ponder over many reasons including genetics, life styles and a host of other reasons that debilitate the beta cells that cause imbalances in the secretion of insulin, despite years of research into it. Then, how one can zero in on the genes that cause the disease?

The other reason is the intrinsically unpredictable nature of some genes. Most genes intersect with other triggers – environment, behaviours or even parental or and prenatal exposures to determine organisms form and function and their consequent effect on its future.

Most of these interactions are not systematic and they happen by chance and there is no method to predict them with certainty.

A similar conundrum arises when an embryo is detected with 10% defect and the probability of getting a particular disease is only 10%, should it be treated along with the types that can transmit 100% disease.

Human nature is such that one does not know where to draw the line.

At the end, are we nearing a consensus when and how to apply eugenics? I still think that we are far from reaching a well-considered consensus. It is the most difficult terrain, whatever limit that we set, it can be breached since most of the concepts like a perfect baby or a disease-free body is more in the realm of subjectivity. n

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HOT BYTES

D-Link and Inspira Networking Solutions at DGS&D Rates

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-Link has announced that the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D) has awarded a rate contract agreement for the purchase of D-Link products and services. DGS&D Rate Contract R/C No. SSNETWORKI/IT-1/ RC-71160000/0216/81/ OA612/4790 is valid through April 2017.

Through the rate contract agreement – supported by Inspira, a national D-Link distributor, the company

will offer industry-leading Networking solutions (Routers, Switches, Cable and Racks) and services to Government institutions (both Central & State Government), PSUs and autonomous bodies. As D-Link and Inspira look to target more Government opportunities, the company’s Networking technology and market presence are strongly placed to support national initiatives.

Zebra Technologies ushers in Next Wave of Industrial Age

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ebra Technologies Corporation has shared its vision “Visibility That’s Visionary” as the company moves forward within a growing industry category, Enterprise Asset Intelligence (EAI).

Eighteen months after its acquisition of Motorola Solutions Enterprise business, Zebra has increased businesses’ ability to track critical assets within their operations and know exactly what they are, where they are, and their condition so they can make smarter, faster

decisions that improve their bottom line.

For more than 40 years, Zebra has developed the building blocks of today’s Internet of Things (IoT) technology with its global leadership in the Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) market, including sensors, barcodes, RFID, and wireless networks.

Aligning their solutions to its vision, Zebra is now bringing new gamechanging products, services and partner programs to the Indian market.

Sanovi inks multiple partnerships for its Cloud Migration Solution

S

anovi has signed up multiple global and regional partnerships for its Cloud Migration Manager software.

Sanovi Cloud Migration Manager2.0 (CMM) is a leading-edge enterprise software platform to accelerate deployment of large-scale Cloud transformation projects.

“It is exciting to note that with Sanovi CMM we no longer need to wing it and fly into the Cloud!” said Varun Mathur, AVP & Head Hybrid IT Practice, Zensar Technologies.

“With

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Disaster Recovery Management Software

its structured Lifecycle approach, Sanovi CMM provides the instruments for monitoring and managing the migration SLA and RoI metrics. It provides a complete Cloud Migration flight navigation plan for flying a modern enterprise application into public cloud. The speed of migration with the tool is a compelling case for business nod. We are happy to partner with Sanovi Technologies,” he added.

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Ingram Micro adds Dropbox Business

I

ngram Micro has expanded the availability of Dropbox Business to the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace in India. Through it channel partners can easily purchase, provision, and manage Dropbox Business via a single automated platform.

“The addition of Dropbox Business to our Cloud Marketplace allows us to effectively serve the business needs of our growing channel partner base in India.

The automated Cloud Marketplace presents a significant competitive advantage to our channel partners by offering a streamlined way to introduce proven cloud technologies like Dropbox Business to their customers in real time,” said Jaishankar Krishnan, Sr VP & CEO Ingram Micro India.

Tally Solutions embeds Krishi Kalyan Cess

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ally Solutions has announced that all versions of its flagship product, Tally.

ERP 9 have been enabled to support the newly passed Krishi Kalyan Cess through an update which aims to support Indian businesses in complying seamlessly with the government regulation, effective from 1st June, 2016. Implementing the new cess will be fast and smooth for all businesses that use Tally.ERP 9.

In Tally.ERP 9, the Krishi Kalyan cess is auto calculated in transactions, be it regular sale, reverse charge, sale of service with abatement or sale value which is inclusive of tax. The printed invoice will also display the cess value.

TP-LINK Rolls out “Spain Calling” Scheme

T

P-LINK has announced the launch of its channel reward programme “Spain Calling”. The reward scheme is based on different slabs and on achieving specific target slabs, partners can win a trip to Spain, Samsung 40" UHD TV, iPad Mini2 and Nikon DSLR, etc. This channel-friendly, multitiered scheme has been launched to incentivize and reward the partner community for their significant contribution

to TP-LINK's business.

"We have a broad range of enterprise solutions and technologies that we offer to customers through our channel network. Introduction of 'Spain Calling' scheme is an additional incentive to partners as it is our conscious effort to help partners in achieving the rewards beyond the usual profits through these schemes," said Sanjay Sehgal, Vice-President – SMB, TP-LINK India.

Salesforce announces New Centre of Excellence in Hyderabad

S

alesforce has announced plans to significantly expand its presence in India with a new Centre of Excellence in Hyderabad, located in a new building under construction in the Divyasree Orion Tech Business Park. Salesforce also plans to add over 1,000 jobs in Hyderabad by 2020, tapping into the region’s large community of highly skilled technology talent.

“We are thrilled to be

expanding our presence and deepening our commitment to India, home to some of the best technology talent in the world,” said Parker Harris, Co-Founder, Salesforce.

“Salesforce Hyderabad will provide a centre of excellence in the region and play a crucial role in growing our technology and product teams, as well as our customer success organization, to meet the needs of our customers worldwide.”

EMC All-Flash Storage Solutions accelerate market share globally

E

M C Corporation has announced a series of all-flash storage portfolio as customer and market share milestones solutions which address a multitude of enterprise needs for consolidated and mixed workloads. Between 2014 and 2015, EMC increased its base of flash customers globally by 78%, with revenue for flash offerings increasing by 104% in H2 2015 over H1 2015.

Jeremy Burton, President of Products and Marketing, EMC, said, “EMC has declared 2016 as the year of AllFlash for primary storage.

Built on the amazing success of XtremIO, our comprehensive portfolio now includes VMAX AllFlash, DSSD D5 and the brand new EMC Unity designed to enable the Modern Data Center for today’s global enterprises.

As performance-hungry workloads continue growing in diversity, enterprises can turn to EMC for the portfolio of all-flash storage solutions at price-performance points to match almost any data center use case.”

A price tag that will get you new customers.

Introducing the ThinkServer TS140 for small businesses with big demands.

At Lenovo™ we develop technology to meet the ever-growing demands of small businesses. With that in mind, we have launched the ThinkServer® TS140 in India.

It is powered to take on tough challenges, yet priced attractively.

· Supports enterprise-grade HDDs (Built-in RAID 5) · Whisper-quiet at 26 decibels · Intel® Xeon® E3 series processor · Windows Server® 2012 R2 platform So go on, add this server to your portfolio and keep adding to your customer base.

Contact: 1800 3000 9990 / corpsales@lenovo.com Intel Xeon E3 series processor. ®

®

The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo: Lenovo, the Lenovo logo and ThinkServer. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. ©2016 Lenovo. All rights reserved. †Terms and Conditions apply. The test(s) above are performed on statistical samples.

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HOT BYTES

Dell boosts Digital India Campaign with “Aarambh”

D

ell India has announced Aarambh – a pan-India initiative aimed at spearheading the use of the PC for education.

Through Aarambh, Dell will engage with three key audiences – students, teachers and parents –in a series of activities meant to build their confidence and familiarity with using the PC. The programme aims to enable both parents and teachers to actively aid in the educational development of the child.

The project aims to reach

one million students and 1, 00,000 teachers across 5,000 schools, and 2, 00,000 parents in 75 cities across the country.

In a larger context, PC adoption can enable the nurturing of digital citizens who will serve as the building blocks for a rapidly-developing Digital India.

Cisco turns Jaipur into First Lighthouse City

C

isco has announced the city of Jaipur to be the first Smart+Connected Community “Lighthouse City” in South Asia. Cisco Lighthouse City status credential is assigned to a select list of cities all over the world. With this development, Jaipur will gain access to Cisco’s huge global network and channel programme capabilities; and the city will also benefit from the economic and social transformation set to occur as the country embarks

on the next phase of the Digital India programme.

Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC, said, “We are really proud to announce Jaipur as a Lighthouse City for Cisco globally.

We are also excited to announce an Innovation Centre in the city. Jaipur, as a Lighthouse City, will showcase to the world whatis possible when visionary city leaders and urban planners design and build 21st-century cities connected by a digital infrastructure."

New Intel Initiatives to accelerate Digital India growth

S

u p p o r t i n g Digital India programme, Intel India has announced a series of new initiatives. The announcement includes three projects designed to accelerate digital literacy at the grassroots level by reaching out to the population in non-urban India, upskill citizens in the tier-II cities and beyond, and encourage innovation from the local level. Additionally, as a part of the recently launched “Ek Kadam Unnati Ki Aur” initiative,

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Intel has also inaugurated “Unnati Kendra at Common Service Centre” (UK at CSC) in Haryana to accelerate access to technology in non-urban India. The company is also looking forward to opening several more of these facilities in the state with the aim to serve as one of the common access digital learning centres for people of the state.

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IBM Smart City Solutions deployed in Presidential Estate

I

BM has set up Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) to enhance efficiency of critical infrastructure and utilities at Presidential Estate. Rashtrapati Bhavan has been transformed into a smart township with the deployment of IBM Smart City for the digital transformation.

Spread across 330 acres of land and home to over 5,000 residents, the selfsustained Presidential Estate is adopting IBM’s technology and solutions to become future ready. The Intelligent Operations Center addresses challenges that are inherent to townships – water supply, security, electrical infrastructure and solid waste management.

Wipro makes big data technology adoption simpler

W

ipro has announced that it has open-sourced its big data product, Big Data Ready Enterprise (BDRE), which makes big data technology adoption simpler and faster by optimizing big data workloads under an integrated unified framework.

“Wipro takes pride in being a significant contributor to the opensource community, and the release of BDRE reinforces our commitment towards this ecosystem. BDRE will not only make big data technology adoption simpler and effective, it will also open opportunities across industry verticals that organizations can successfully leverage,” said Bhanumurthy B. M., President & Chief Operating Officer, Wipro

DigitalOcean launches New Datacenter in Bangalore

D

igitalOcean, the developer’s cloud computing platform, has launched its new datacenter in Bangalore, India to support India’s fast-growing developer and start-up ecosystem.

DigitalOcean will continue to offer a single pricing plan across all of its regions worldwide, including Bangalore.

This means SSD-enabled cloud servers starting at US$5 per month, and identical pricing for all additional services like bandwidth, snapshots and

beyond. Bangalore will be DigitalOcean’s eighth region globally, following New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Singapore, London, Frankfurt and Toronto.

Considering the number of software developers throughout India will grow to over 5 million by the year 2018, the region is one of the most important technology markets in the world. DigitalOcean has hired a local team and has also partnered with NASSCOM.

Informatica expands its partnership with Tableau

W

ith the aim to bridge the business as well as IT Divide, Informatica and Tableau Software have entered into partnership.

Together, Tableau’s self-service analytics and Informatica’s clean, trusted data and metadata enable business users to make even faster and smarter decisions.

Both the companies will provide the industry’s end-to-end architecture and framework for agile

business intelligence.

Business users and IT alike are frustrated with data that results from traditional waterfall processes and lengthy cycles. Business users are further aggravated by lack of easy access to key data sources and the inability to easily combine data across sources. Meanwhile, IT is naturally concerned over the use and proliferation of potentially poor quality data.

Avaya reinforces its position with mid-market growth

A

vaya’s position has been strengthened in the first half of 2016 by a strong mid-market showing in global growth regions, registering two-fold growth on the back of a strong push towards digital transformation among small and medium businesses.

A focused solution suite, coupled with a strong partner proposition and a streamlined approach, has resulted in strong growth in Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Russia & CIS, India and SAARC, and China.

“The mid-market

sector continues to present a significant opportunity and remain so even in the face of economic uncertainty.

Avaya

channel partners play a crucial role in this growth with their established knowledge of the customer, ability to create a customized offering, and their expertise with Avaya products,” said Chiradeep Rao, Channels Head – India, Avaya.

FACE TO FACE

NComputing brings next-generation computing with the launch of MX100 Series NComputing is a leader in client virtualization solutions with over 5-million installed base worldwide. Removing the barriers through a unique formula of simplicity, performance and value, NComputing’s integrated solutions serve global enterprise and mid-market companies in the key verticals such as education, manufacturing and government. central host computer using NComputing vSpace desktop virtualization software, customers achieve a high utilization. Up to 70% saving in the total cost of ownership can be achieved compared to an all PCbased set-up,” added Sharma.

NComputing is the fastest-growing desktop virtualization company for education and small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Asia. At the launch of MX100, Manish Sharma, Vice-President – Sales, Asia-Pacific- N Computing, said that its new hybrid 3-user thin-client kit delivers a rich user experience at an affordable price. MX100 combines the best features of the company’s widely popular M-series and X-series which have over 2.5 million seats installation in Asia alone.

MX100 sets a new precedent in affordability standards within the shared computing market, providing customers with savings as much as 65% in purchase cost, 80% in maintenance cost and 90% in energy consumption when compared to an all PC-based solution. For example, 9–10 machines can be configured by using unused power. With this, we are taking affordable computing to the next level.

India Business

Designed based on the input from existing customers, MX100 is available in two models – MX100 Direct (MX100D) and MX100 Standard (MX100S). A single MX100 kit includes three access devices and multiple kits can be connected to the host computer. Available immediately worldwide from NComputing’s authorized distributors, MX100 will be sold in India through the company’s national distributor – Redington India and their 800+ channel partners across the country. Replying to the total number of machines installed, Sharma said, “The company has deployed about 15 lakh machines in India so far. 70% of the business comes from the education segment, those are essentially from the State Government projects (Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, U.P., Bihar and Odisha. Secondly, SME is the growth area which contributes 25% of the business and 5% comes from large enterprises. The core strength of NComputing is providing a warranty of 3 years on registration and after-sales service is provided by 40 support centres in India."

Technology Architecture

While their underlying architecture is identical, the MX100D and MX100S differ in the way they connect to the

Roadmap The key mantra of success is the reference and recommended customers, be it the government, SME or large enterprise segment which help generate business value. There is a great demand which has arisen for the Linux and it seems a newer business opportunity for the company.

NComputing is coming out with the latest version of Linux. The development work is going on in the Chennai (India) office. The company aims to go ahead with Linux for full mobility .

Manish Sharma Vice-President – Sales, AsiaPacific- N Computing, host computer. The MX100D (Direct model) connects through a PCI express card which is bundled with the kit. The power of the host computer is shared with multiple users without the need of a switch or any third-party hardware or software. “It is an enhanced version of NComputing’s popular X-series. The MX100D has been designed based on the input collected from thousands of customers over the last two years and provides a great out-of-the-box experience.

There are significant enhancements to the number of supported users on a single host, and greater distance connectivity providing expanded deployment options,” said Manjunath Revanasiddappa, Product Manager of MX-Series, NComputing.

Growth Area The MX100S (Standard model) is an improved version of NComputing’s M-series which has a strong installed base of over 350,000 in Asia. The MX100S has numerous enhancements over the M-series such as enhanced multimedia performance, superior graphics and support for gigabit networks, while keeping the purchase price low. “The response of our customers on the performance of MX100 has been very positive. As 45 access devices of MX100S model can be served by one

Voice of Partners The announcement has delighted NComputing’s distributors across Asia: from Ingram Micro in Singapore and Synnex in Thailand to Redington in India. Anand Chakravarthy, President, Redington (India) Ltd, shared his views, “We have been very impressed with the pilot projects of MX100. NComputing has certainly reached a new height in delivering quality performance at an affordable price. We plan to position MX100D in education and Tier-II and -III cities, while MX100S would be ideal for government tenders, SMEs and enterprises.”

With over 2.5 million units deployed across Asia including 1.5 million in India, NComputing has been widely successful in both channel sales and government-led education tenders. In Asia, NComputing is being used in the government schools of the Philippines, Cambodia, Nepal and Japan.

In India, the company has been endorsed by several state governments to provide affordable computing to millions of students, especially in the rural and remote areas. It is estimated that computer labs of over 60,000 government schools in India use NComputing’s technology.

Among other customers are recognized universities and large organizations like Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) which uses over 31,000 devices across the nation. n

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June 2016

17

ON THE RAMP

Polycom makes business video meetings easy

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olycom has removed the complexity of connecting multiple video systems from different vendors – the Polycom RealConnect solution for Skype for Business.

“Polycom RealConnect technology has continued to push the innovation curve, and its latest iteration allows for best-in-class Skype for Business collaboration with all other video platforms.

Customers want simple and intuitive technology that works together with

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everything else they use in an economical fashion. With Polycom RealConnect technology, Polycom is simplifying the communications experience by bringing everything, and everyone, together in one easy step,” said Ashan Willy Senior Vice-President, Product Management & Worldwide Systems Engineering.

BlackBerry enhances its security solution for Salesforce

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lackBerry has announced WatchDox by BlackBerry Email Protector, an entirely new offering that provides businesses with the means of automatically controlling and securing files sent through email by embedding file-level DRM protection, even after they leave the organization´s firewall.

WatchDox File Sync and Share integration will be available for Salesforce. com and Microsoft Office Online.

“WatchDox protects

the new borderless enterprise by delivering not only the most secure EFSS File Sync and Share solutions but enhanced integration with Salesforce.com and the new BlackBerry Email Protector. The risk of data loss is significantly minimized by encrypting and enforcing DRM protection at the file-level when users are viewing, editing and annotating synced documents,” said Billy Ho, Executive VP, Enterprise Product and VAS, BlackBerry.

Prysm Introduces 85’’ and 98’’ LCD displays for India

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o enhance the collaboration across the enterprise, Prysm Inc has introduced new 85’’ and 98’’ LCD display. The company demonstrated the display in conjunction with the new Prysm Enterprise solution and Skype for Business integration.

With a stunning screen resolution and a user experience that is immersive and engaging, this larger screen serves a need in the market for larger, fully integrated Visual

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June 2016

BT integrates FortiGate firewalls

Workplace solutions for a new generation of multi-purpose conference rooms. The integrated digital canvas allows users to share, annotate, and edit office docs, web apps, multimedia files, and video from multiple simultaneous sources including laptops and mobile devices.

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T and Fortinet have entered into an agreement that will integrate Fortinet’s FortiGate enterprise firewalls into BT’s global portfolio of managed security services. The agreement confirms BT’s worldwide status as a Fortinet Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) Platinum Partner. BT customers will benefit from the protection provided by Fortinet’s Security Fabric architecture and BT’s global reach and expertise in managed security services.

Mark Hughes, Chief Executive Officer, BT Security, said, “We are committed to support our customers with solutions that can help them stay secure and support their journeys into the digital world."

DataWind Introduces detachable netbook

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ataWind has launched its first detachable devices, the new Droidsurfer Netbooks 7DC+ & 3G7+ in India. The DroidSurfer 7DC+ (2G)&3G7+ (3G) has a 7 inch multi-touch projective capacitive screen, feature 0.3 MP front facing camera and 2 MP rear camera with the Android 4.4.2 operating System running on a dual core Cortex A7 processor.

In addition, they offer upto 32GB of expandable memory with features like Wifi Hotspot, Wifi Direct, Bluetooth and GPS on some models.

Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO DataWind, commented, “The DroidSurfer Netbooks come with a sturdy detachable Bluetooth 2-in-1 keyboard.”

Fujitsu launches x86 PRIMEQUEST Servers

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ujitsu has announced new Server PRIMEQUEST models which provide the highest-ever levels of performance and stability from industry standard servers, targeting demanding enterprise computing environments that have all but eliminated unplanned downtime.

Michael Keegan, SVP & Head of Product Business EMEIA, Fujitsu, comments, “We are building servers that customers can bet their business on. The new-

generation of servers are the highest performance x86 servers ever produced

by Fujitsu – underlining their position as the bedrock on which organizations can build their digitally transformed business. We are seeing more and more customers modernizing their UNIXbased systems.”

Check Point 770 and 790 to deliver security

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heck Point S o f t w a r e Technologies Ltd has announced two new additions to the Check Point 700 Series appliances, both addressing the unique security needs of small businesses. The new Check Point 770 and 790 appliances, together with the 730 and 750, provide advanced threat prevention features such as firewall, VPN, antivirus, anti-bot, application control, URL filtering and email security. In addition, the appliances

deliver optimized network performance of up to 4 Gbps of firewall throughput and up to 330 Mbps when threat prevention functions are activated.

Gabi Reish, VP of Product Management, Check Point, said, “The 770 and 790 extend the capabilities of our 700 Series appliance family, providing the advanced protection necessary to protect small business customer networks from threats and unnecessary exposure.”

NetApp announces ONTAP 9

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etApp has announced the launch of NetApp ONTAP 9 operating system, an enterprise data management software that combines new levels of simplicity and flexibility with powerful capabilities and efficiencies. With ONTAP 9 software, enterprises can quickly integrate the best of traditional and emerging technologies, incorporating flash, the cloud and software-defined architectures to build a Data Fabric foundation across on-premises and cloud resources.

“NetApp’s release of

the industry’s first 15TB flash drive, combined with new storage efficiency technology features in ONTAP 9,

continues to drive that cost down in a flashoptimized, enterpriseclass storage platform that is well suited for the type of dense mixed workload consolidation that customers are increasingly looking to their trusted suppliers to deliver,” said Eric Burgener, Research Director for IDC’s Storage Practice.

FACE TO FACE

Koinca Minolta transforming into a Service Provider In a chat with VARINDIA, V. Balakrishnan, Executive General Manager of Konica Minolta Business Solutions India, speaks about the company’s transformation from a hardware-centric company to a service provider, the response they have received about their new Educo ERP Software and also about their strategy acquisitions but also on the licence renewals.

It is about sustaining the relationship with all the people in the value chain. So that value chain is nurtured and more value is created.

Kindly brief us on Educo ERP software?

Educo ERP is a Cloud-based service and it can be operated with just a browser. This has been developed after years of research keeping in view our users’ requirements.

Typically if you consider education ERP, the stakeholders are the management or administrators of the school or the institution, teachers, students and the parents. Now each of them has a different requirement. It enables them to reduce their workload. It has been designed for a holistic approach to the entire ecosystem, meeting the requirements of all the stakeholders and, most importantly, it is Cloud based. The data is secured on very high secured servers. It is hosted by Amazon service and is accessible from anywhere.

Educo ERP comes in an affordable price for schools, colleges, universities, training centres, online group, institutions, seminaries and e-governance preschools.

It is a new beginning for us and our objective is to spread it as far and wide as possible. Our entire focus in the development of the software was on user experience.

How do you find the Indian market for Educo ERP software?

The Indian market is very positive as we are receiving many enquiries from schools and institutions. Our product has a variety of modules which can cater to all kinds of schools and educational institutions. So, they have appreciated it and the price is also very reasonable and affordable.

We are able to engage because the commercial offerings that we have are scalable. We have received more than 100 queries and people are already using the software, a few of them are also converted.

So they tried, understood, agreed and now they are on the deployment stage. The customers are satisfied with our products, but there are some requests to modify a few parts. This is one of our advantages that we are able to customize the solutions according to their needs.

Why you have shifted your focus on software segment from printing? What is the future of the printing industry?

Minolta to support education.

We have some differential points like price affordability, scalability. We also have pan-India coverage. Most of the competitions cover some areas of the country, but Konica Minolta has the pan-India coverage advantage.

What about the after sales What kind of channel strategy support? are you following?

Many discussions are going on with SIs, but we have our direct Salesforce. We have employed dedicated salespersons and marketing support persons for the products.

Also, as India is a huge country and we are not able to cover it completely, we are collaborating with partners of IT business and SIs who are in the education sector. It is primarily leveraging both our direct presence and Partners associated with education sector. We would have some accounts where our people will be directly present but we will also have people who will support our partners to close their cases.

Why are you focussing on the education sector only? What What kind of opportunities do strategy are you following? your partners have?

The education market is very huge and India has the largest working population. The market itself is growing. We want to support education because we believe that education is one of the most important drivers which boosts the economy of the country. This is in line with the corporate policy of Konica

Konica Minolta is a manufacturing company which produces hardware like printers and MFPs. But we want to transform ourselves from manufacturers to service providers which deal with the challenges of the customers which include printing, document management, information management, etc.

The time that manufacturer can satisfy its customers with only hardware is over.

We want to be the supplier and partner of the customers to support all kinds of office work, including printing, data management, document management, etc.

So how do we become more meaningful to our customers is primary and not limiting it to just with the one domain.

The printing industry in India is growing.

It is true that in countries like Japan, USA, the print volume is saturated and not growing.

But India is one of the very few countries where printing business is increasing and I believe this trend will continue for the next ten years.

At the end of the day, it depends on the number of licences they are able to sell. From our perspective, it is a continuing relationship and not just acquiring an account. We would like our partners to be able to strengthen their relationship with their accounts so that the opportunities are not just about initial

We have a support portal. If the user sends a mail to the portal, it automatically generates a ticket and it goes to the agent who will call back and provide support to the customer. The support is a remote service, we also provide a call support, Skype support, TeamViewer support, chat support and over and above if the user wants an onsite support, we also provide it for a small fee.

What is the roadmap of the company?

The existing version will get upgraded later during this year and because it is on servers, all existing customers will be automatically upgraded. As and when our new version is released it is an automatic upgrade to everybody who is using the software. As we will add more elements, those will also be available to them. So, there are some schedules later during the year. n

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June 2016

19

ON THE RAMP

Symantec makes web security service available

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ymantec has announced the availability of Encryption Everywhere, a website security package available t h r o u g h web hosting providers.

With the new web security service, hosting providers can offer a variety of flexible options, including basic website encryption included as part of any hosted service, and a number of premium

security packages with increasingly stronger levels of website validation, protection, and trust seals.

“There are almost a billion websites today, yet only about 3% of those sites are encrypted, which means cybercriminals have been able to make a good living off of the web’s lack of security,” said Roxane Divol, Senior Vice-President & General Manager, Website Security, Symantec.

Juniper Networks extends its product portfolio

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uniper Networks has extended its product portfolio with two new EX Series access switches. The switches are expected to enable secure, simplified management for campus and branch networks, regardless of size and complexity. The EX2300, an entry-level switch, and EX3400, a mid-range switch, offer new options for companies to leverage Juniper Networks Unite for a cloud-enabled enterprise, including Junos Fusion Enterprise and Juniper

Networks Virtual Chassis technology to streamline network provisioning through a single point of management.

The new switches provide SMEs with an easy-to-manage network solution, liberating overextended IT resources to concentrate on highimpact projects. The new access switches also give large enterprises greater flexibility needed to significantly scale operations and implement resource-intensive IT projects.

QNAP Launches Thunderbolt 2 NAS TVS-x82T Series

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NAP Systems has announced the release of its nextgeneration, highperformance Thunderbolt 2 NAS TVS-x82T series.

It is available in three different models TVS1282T, TVS-882T and TVS-682T. “With upgraded hardware and software features, the TVS-x82T series is a huge step above the previous QNAP Thunderbolt 2 NAS and the three different models provide greater choice for a wider range of users,” said David Tsao, Product

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June 2016

Manager, QNAP. “The TVS-x82T provides tiered storage, application-based partitioning, and network traffic distribution to optimize the efficiency of different NAS applications and provides businesses with an ideal storage solution for intensive virtualization, video surveillance storage, highresolution video editing, and much more.”

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Radware Panasonic Introduces MB500 Series anasonic has expands Cloud announced the P launch of its multiSecurity Services functional printer (MFP) MB500 series. The MB500 Portfolio series is the latest product

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o safeguard businesses from evolving cyber threats, Radware has expanded its portfolio of Cloud Security Services to ensure optimal service level for applications in virtual, cloud and softwaredefined data centers.

This new Cloud Security Service offering is an adaptive solution that combines cloud DDoS, volumetric, and application firewall attack protection into a configuration that is unique to the client’s needs, whether that is an always-on, on-demand, or hybrid solution.

GIGABYTE Launches Designare Motherboards

G I G A B Y T E TECHNOLOGY has announced its new X99Designare EX and Z170XDesignare motherboards based on the Intel X99 and Z170 chipsets with support for Intel’s 5th and current, 6th Gen. Core processor, respectively.

The Designare motherboards offer a blend of the latest technologies that will ensure creativity is never placed on hold.

"We understand that the 3D modellers, engineers, and content creators of this world require the most advanced technology they can get their hands on to help create a better world,” commented Henry Kao, Vice President of GIGABYTE Motherboard Business Unit. “With the X99-Designare EX and the Z170X-Designare, we’ve put together a combination of innovative features which results in a product that truly let the creative minds bring their projects to reality.”

in Panasonic’s burgeoning portfolio of products aimed at creating solutions in the enterprise space.

Through MB500 series, Panasonic aims to makes its presence felt in the A3 Printing segment.

The MB500 line of multi-functional printer (MFP) comes with a whole host of features which, apart from including printing size up to A3, also comes with copy size up to Legal and Scan, Fax,

RADF and Wi-Fi are all seamlessly geared towards Enterprise, SME’s, Government, Corporate and Rentals. Considering the diverse range of features, the MFP’s comes at a relative affordable cost with a starting price at Rs. 46,000.

Riverbed enhances SteelCentral

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i v e r b e d Technology has announced new enhancements to SteelCentral that bring major advances to troubleshooting capabilities and improved monitoring across the cloud while simultaneously improving ease-of-use and scalability.

These enhancements continue to support a common theme of improved SteelCentral platform integration while enhancing several critical capabilities.

"This release of SteelCentral delivers

significant enhancements in cloud-based performance monitoring, along with new capabilities that will help accelerate business execution and boost productivity. As more enterprises embrace digital and cloud services, SteelCentral provides the high-definition visibility that is critical to enabling and assuring the success of these transformational initiatives. It truly is the command centre for application performance for the digital enterprise," said Mike Sargent, SVP, General Manager of SteelCentral, Riverbed.

Kingston launches its UV400 SSD in India

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ingston has announced the launch of its affordable UV400 Solid-State Drive in India. The “ultra-value” UV400 SSD allows fast boot times, application loading and file transfers for mainstream users at a great price point. It is powered by a four-channel controller for incredible speeds of up to 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write, and is 10x faster than a 7,200RPM hard-disk drive (HDD). With an MRP of Rs.5,999/- for 120GB capacity and Rs.10,000/-

for 240GB capacity, the UV400 SSD will be available in all the leading Indian retail and e-tail stores in India.

“We are proud to bring UV400 to this market allowing users of all levels to replace their current mechanical hard drives with an SSD and see the benefits of higher performance,” said Nathan Su, Flash Memory Sales Director, APAC Region, Kingston.

VOICE-N-DATA

IoT connected devices to grow iUNIR and Ozone NETGEAR R6400 AC1750 Router annually - Ericsson Mobility Report Wi-Fi join hands to enhance Wi-Fi Speed

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n the latest published Ericsson Mobility Report, the company has revealed that the latest consumer trends and India-specific data points. The report has highlighted that the Internet of Things (IoT) is set to overtake mobile phones as the largest category of connected device by 2018.

Between 2015 and 2021, the number of IoT-connected devices is expected to grow 23 per cent annually, of which cellular IoT is forecast to

have the highest growth rate. Of the 28 billion total devices that will be connected by 2021, closeto 16 billion will be IoT devices.

Western Europe will lead the way in adding IoT connections – the number of IoT devices in this market is projected to grow 400 per cent by 2021. This will principally be driven by regulatory requirements and a growing demand for connected cars, including the EU e-call directive to be implemented in 2018.

Brocade completes acquisition of Ruckus Wireless

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rocade has completed the acquisition of Ruckus Wireless. This represents an important step in Brocade's strategic vision to build a pure-play networking company that supports the rapidlyevolving requirements of the digital transformation era.

"The combined company will be able to deliver superior focus and speed of innovation and best-in-class solutions spanning the full spectrum of networking.

Our

combined world-class portfolio now provides customers with greater flexibility in meeting today's infrastructure requirements, including high-performance, flexible, secure access networks. We are thrilled to welcome the Ruckus team to Brocade and look forward to working together to help our customers transform their networks into an open platform for business innovation," said Lloyd Carney, CEO, Brocade.

Airtel initiates Open Network to serve customers better

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harti Airtel (Airtel) has announced a new initiative – Open Network – under Project Leap, its national network transformation initiative.

Airtel has opened up its entire mobile network information to its customers through an interactive online interface.

The new interface will display Airtel’s mobile network coverage/signal strength across India, in addition to network site deployment status.

Gopal Vittal, MD &

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June 2016

CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel, said, “Open Network is a paradigm shift in the way we engage with our customers. With this initiative, we are establishing complete transparency with regards to our mobile network and opening ourselves to customer scrutiny and feedback. For us, the network experience is paramount and Airtel customers can now take charge of network issues and be a part of the solution."

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iUNIR and Ozone Networks have tied up to provide improved service to business houses and educational institutes.

This alliance will help iUNIR in accomplishing their objective of developing a greener and a more connected society through eco-ride share and Ozone networks shall add by providing free Wi-Fi to all people and communities connected.

At such a crucial juncture, iUNIR has come as a saviour with a unique idea of community pooling. iUNIR and Ozone together are committed boost safe and eco-friendly travel, besides reducing the commute time. Ozone shall provide free WiFi services to businesses opting to work with iUNIR which, in turn, allows a free download option on Ozone Wi-Fi services.

QuadGen with BSNL to bring 5G Wi-Fi in India

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u a d G e n Networks Pvt. Ltd has raised an undisclosed amount, as part of its Series A round of financing. IndusAge Partners led this round of financing. Trinity Mobility also participated in this financing.

C.S Rao, Chairman and Co-Founder of QuadGen said, “Broadband Connectivity is a critical ingredient for the realization of the Digital India Vision.

QuadGen is committed to expanding its network and enabling high speed connectivity through its carrier grade WiFi offering to Government Offices, Courts, Educational institutions, Banks, Rural and Public spaces and thus pave the way for next generation Digital infrastructure."

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ETGEAR has launched its R6400 AC1750 Smart WiFi Router which offers faster internet access. It comes with a new design that includes high power amplifiers, external antennas and Airtime Fairness, combined with implicit and explicit Beamforming, boosts router’s WiFi performance at long range by up to 80 percent over its predecessors. It is also packed with features such as new remote network management via the

NETGEAR genie app and a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port.

With AC1750 Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet speeds, and three high-powered external antennas, the NETGEAR AC1750 (R6400) Smart Wi-Fi Router offers enhanced performance.

RI Networks announces Broadband Services under timbl RI Networks has launched its broadband services in Delhi/ NCR market under brand name timbl. RI Networks holds a national category “A” ISP licences for internet services. The company will initially focus on providing broadband services for Homes, Small Offices and Small Enterprise customers, and also offers Internet Leased Lines and Datacentre Services for Enterprise Customers. In the first phase, the services are being offered in the

Delhi/ NCR market and will gradually be offere. The company is looking at investing over Rs.15 crore in network deployment and brand building during FY 2016-17. The broadband services are affordably priced from Rs.550/month onwards for a 10 Mbps connection. timbl offers super high-speed broadband, at speeds starting with 10 Mbps, with best-inclass services over Fibre to the Neighbourhood networks.

Telenor India completes Largest Commercial Deployment

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elenor has completed the largest commercial deployment of Huawei’s Blade Site wireless basestation solution in India.

Between November 2015 and April 2016, more than 10,000 new sites were installed across Telenor’s six circles with the solution. This is the fastest-ever deployment of the blade site solution.

Telenor India has selected Huawei Blade Site Solution to be future ready and meet the growing demand for improved

voice and data services.

Telenor currently has 52.4 million subscribers.

The new network can support latest mobile technology, including 4G / LTE services.

Tanveer Mohammad, COO, Telenor (India) Communications, said, “Telenor is committed to extend benefits of affordable mobile broadband network to enrich lives of our customers."

VAR SPEAK

Red Hat takes Partner Business to New Heights

We all know that customers spearhead the success of any organisation. It is they and their user experience that are instrumental for the success of any product. But apart from customers and products, the success of any organisation lies in the hands of its partners. Partners indeed play a major role in the growth a company in the market. It is also true that support of the vendor to partners is equally important to make a relationship meaningful, which will eventually result in the success of the products. So every thread is intertwined to achieve success.

Red Hat understands very well that, to develop a technology, it is important to build a community around it. The company follows the same approach while expanding the partner ecosystem by delivering this technology and its value to enterprise customers by building an enabled and engaged partner ecosystem. For partners, the Red Hat Partner Programme shows new avenues of market opportunity. They get access to the major community of open-source solutions.

Red Hat always understands the progressive needs of its partners, which helps in collaboration and success of both partners and the company. Not just a partner-focussed vendor, for Red Hat, partners are very crucial as they are instrumental in capturing new markets and providing coverage to the company. It considers its partners as growth drivers. The company has an ecosystem of 2,500 ISV partners and about 5,000 applications.

The partners who are associated with the company have witnessed growth in their business with a wide array of products from Red Hat. The company’s wide product portfolio includes platform, virtualization, cloud and middleware cover all the customer’s demands. Moreover, it also opens the avenue to provide services to customers as well as partners, and as it is a subscription based business, the renewal of subscrition is another opportunity to extend business. Apart from heavily incentivizing partners, the company also helps them by investing in pre-sales. All these factors together go to prove Red Hat as the most admired vendor to partner with.

Association with Red Hat

“For us, the addition of Red Hat to our portfolio has been a great partnership. It is of more than two years of association with Red Hat so far and our business has been growing ever since we partnered with Red Hat. Today, we firmly believe in Red Hat, its offerings, its technologies and our customers have always been talking to us about what else we can do along with Red Hat. So, this has been an extremely positive relationship having a positive impact, both for us and as well as for our customers,” said Keshav Prakash, Founder & Owner, DEVTOOLS.

Benefits of partnering with Red Hat

“Our relationship with Red Hat started very early when the company came into India and since then we have been working with Red Hat. We are working with the company primarily in three areas – platform where there is server operating systems, virtualization and middleware.”

Red Hat helps both in top and bottom line. If I go with Red Hat, they have full code of services like platform, middleware, virtualization and cloud. On top of that, you can provide your services like in the case of a finance client, where we are maintaining all the Red Hat servers. If there is any development in the platform, since we are a Red Hat partner they prefer to go along with development through us also. There is a very strong deal registration.

Once I register a deal with Red Hat, then the company works very closely with us. They do not go with any other partner and they incentivize very heavily on deals which have a large value propositions. Even Red Hat is ready to invest a lot on pre-sales.

Red Hat is a subscription- and services-based business, so it is a long-term business. So once an organization takes a subscrition, then for 7-8 years they do not require anything and normally services are on the house,” said Mukul Mahajan, Director & Co-Founder, Tetra Information Services.

Revenue and Profitability

“When it is an open-source solution, your cost comes down drastically. For a partner, the opportunity lies immensely on the services. You start riding on that immediately because you know it absolutely fits the budget, it fits the need of the customer from a technology and a solution perspective. Now there is a whole world open for you to offer your services.

That is where you add value. You always thought as an entrepreneur to build which adds value to your customer environment,” said Abhishek Sharma, Vice-President – Strategic Business, Silver Leaf.

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June 2016

23

CHANNEL BUZZ

Axis communications announces winners at Axis Partner Summit 2016

Huawei strengthens its Partner relations at SEA Core Partner Convention

Axis Communications has announced the winners of its annual Axis Channel Partner Summit awards, held in Singapore on May 17-18, 2016. 18 channel partners were felicitated at the award ceremony across six categories.

Axis has around 80,000

Huawei has organized its fourth edition of the SEA “Core Partner Convention 2016”. In the convention, the company demonstrated its focus of putting Quality first while striving towards continuous business excellence and faster delivery, showcasing the importance of its

as Sri Lanka attended the Summit’s keynotes to understand Huawei’s stance on Transparency, Quality, and new initiatives. Huawei also felicitated its partners with gold and silver awards under “Delivery Excellence”, “Best Compliance on EHS & Quality” and “Emerging Partners” categories. As a unique

growing number of partners to do so. As part of the convention, Huawei reiterated its commitment and focus towards partners through its various initiatives and programmes. Huawei Delivery & Services business group covers a huge workforce of key partners with over 1,400 teams across India.

Over 300 delegates comprising of partner’s management from across key centres in India as well

initiative, Huawei also recognized individual on-field heroes.

Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India, said, “Our aim is to create a simple, clear engagement and support structure, through a multi-partner management organization. The SEA core partner convention enables us to offer a more collaborative and stable partnership which will be mutually beneficial for Huawei and our esteemed partners.”

channel partners globally, and channel partnerships have played a key role for the company’s success.

Through various programs and training courses the company supports its partners to ensure that end customers’ security installations are at the

cutting edge of what’s available in the market. Axis channel partners are like an extended team and working closely with them provides valuable insights into the needs and opportunities across individual markets as well as in target end customer segments.

The partner summit is organised every year in order to felicitate and acknowledge the contribution and work done by the channel partners. This year the event was held in Hotel Shangri La, Singapore and the summit addressed partners across the APAC region.

Sophos concludes Discover Sophos 2016 in Bali Sophos has organized Discover Sophos 2016 Conference in Bali from 17th to 20th May. The event brought together key partners from Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ), including 80 of Sophos’ key partners from India.

The APJ Conference in Bali was the final of Sophos’ three annual partner conferences this year.

Sophos’ senior management team including Chief Executive Officer Kris Hagerman, Senior Vice-President – Worldwide Sales Mike Valentine, Chief Marketing Officer Matt Fairbanks, Chief Technology Officer Joe Levy and Vice-President Global Channel Sales Kendra Krause, delivered keynote sessions on Sophos strategy, its partner commitments and the broader future of the IT security industry, in front of over 500 people attending the Sophos partner event.

“Sophos builds solutions to address the challenges of small and mid-market enterprises which make a sizeable contribution to the regional economy. Our solutions are simple to deploy, maintain and manage and provide

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comprehensive protection to such organizations. Sophos has a channel first strategy and our partners play a crucial role in the success of our company. Sophos Discover 2016 gave us a platform to celebrate our success and plan the way forward into FY 17,” said Sunil Sharma, Vice-President – Sales, India and SAARC, Sophos.

Acknowledging partner’s significant contribution to business in India, Sophos has awarded Technoware Systems the Top Performer of the Year award and Spark Technologies the Sub-Distributor of the Year award for demonstrating strong commitment and dedication towards selling Sophos.

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Gates to conduct 2nd ICT Reseller Channel Summit in Bengaluru GATES APAC has announced the second edition of the India ICT Reseller Channel Summit 2016 to be held between 4th - 6th of October this year in Bangalore. Following its successful launch edition early in Feb 2016, the summit will provide a robust platform for the ICT ecosystem and present an excellent opportunity to expand business in a continuously disrupted industry.

The Summit shall aim to set the stage for many vendors and channel partners from all over India to complete the present financial year business and also to plan for the upcoming business fiscal year. Totally aimed at business expansion through a combination of knowledge sharing, networking, and fruitful business discussions, the Summit will emerge as one of the crucial events for the ICT & Mobility diaspora in India.

Ashish Kapahi, CEO at GATES APAC said, “The first edition of the ICT Summit was a tremendous success and truly appreciated by the industry.

It gave us the strength to hold

another summit in this year itself.

The summit’s uniqueness in its format was well received by the vendors as well as the channel community. Continuing our commitment to the industry, the Bengaluru Summit will accelerate the business activity during the vital quarter Q4 for the ICT ecosystem.”

The first edition of the event was attended by over 250 top executives from 60 plus cities in India representing 178 companies; The Summit attracted players beyond just ICT industry.

More than 800 pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings facilitated many new business agreements resulting in vendors being able to tap into untapped potential in the country.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

LG’s CM9960 - X BOOM Pro Speaker With LG’s latest X Boom Pro Speaker – CM9960, you can be your own DJ and let the party going with X Boom Pro’s DJ effect and DJ Mixer options. Enjoy music and sing along with the Voice Cancellation option. Let your creativity flow with the X Boom Pro, grooving into the night, bringing music to life. LG X Boom Pro Speaker features a CD player for you to spin your favorite playlists as well as enjoy the tracks on the discs your friends bring over. It comes with multi connectivity option that gives you the freedom to connect almost any music device, whether it’s your laptop, smartphone or your tablet. Just plug in and enjoy the music. With the X Boom Pro speaker, you can connect up to three devices wirelessly. It supports 2 Mic In, Portable In, 2 Aux In, H/P Out and 2 USB. CM9960 - X Boom Pro has an impressive 4800 Wattage RMS output which delivers powerful sound with excellent audio clarity. The LG X-Boom CM9960 uses Bluetooth to play music wirelessly, making it by far the most popular option for wireless speakers. Generally, Bluetooth streams audio at a lower quality and over less distance than Wi-Fibased technologies. The X-Boom CM9960 can receive audio from its 3.5mm (AUX) port, in addition to its wireless capabilities. You can wirelessly stream music directly from your Smartphone or other compatible device for a seamless listening experience.

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MARKET WATCH

Enabling the e-commerce ecosystem with sales enablement methodologies Enough has been spoken about the e-commerce boom in India. Albeit the recent roadblocks, the Indian e-commerce sector is expected to cross the 100 million mark by the end of 2016.As per eMarketer, a market research firm, globally the ecommerce sales will reach a $3.5 trillion within the next five years. It is the technology platform which will provide 12.4% of global retail sales by 2019. Indian economy which is one of the fastest growing economies in the world indeed has a major share to contribute in the mentioned statistics. Thus it becomes inevitable for the e-commerce platforms to widen their market, increase the trade flow and enable their sales.

Sales enablement, through a combination of sales methodologies and processes, then plays a vital role in enabling e-commerce companies by helping get trade closer to them and widening the marketplace. The issues faced by the Indian ecommerce giants can be sorted out ably if only the right sales enablement solutions are applied.

These enablement methodologies range frompartner/ merchant acquisition to customer relationship management; from skilling the ecosystem to customer adoption.

Let us understand these sales enablement methodologies individually in context of the e-commerce sector.

Partner/ merchant acquisition: To accelerate consumer activity e-commerce companies are always on the lookout for on-boarding merchants/retailers on their platform. The important measure here is coverage and volume of merchants/retailers on-boarded within a specific time period.

In a diverse geography like India this is not an easy job. It requires consistent reach and evangelizing effort. Some relevant sales enablement methodologies to drive this are: • Feet-On-Street - This essentially entails driving touch points and experience.A strong sales force on feet who are the deal pioneers in a sense will drive the sales vision.

Unless you have got deal pioneers, your e-commerce venture will be miss opening doors.

• Telesales - This is specifically for the products which are largely virtual experience or technology- driven.The approach of the telesales agent is the most crucial and yet most reliable part of your e-commerce ecosystem.

• Digital marketing–As they say, there's no point talking #shawarma to a #vegan. It is about exploiting what's in demand and understand partner interests and behaviour. Digital marketing campaigns can drive partner acquisition strategies in the most effective and targeted manner.

• Marketing activations – This broadly involves driving engagement in partner

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Snehashish Bhattacharjee Global CEO & CoFounder - Denave hubs.It is about creating touch-points and marketing activations are effective in that sense.

Customer registration: The next area where sale enablement can play an important role is in helping drive customer registrations. This is the first step towards building a large prospective customer base.

Leveraging sales enablement can help in reaching out and understanding the customer and attracting them to the platform. It gives favorable environment to the e-commerce retailers to tweak their database basis the client/ customer’s perspective and preferences. It makes the experience for the customer smoother which in turn serves as an attractive proposition. The common sales enablement methodologies involved here are those of telesales, BTL activities and digital marketing.

• Telesales-Telesales providesa quicker response, higher ROIs and greater geographical reach. This is especially effective in a B2B e-commerce scenario.

• Marketing activation- Customer registrations for e-commerce portals can be effectively driven by marketing activations.

With effective customer engagement, it has the potential to provide quicker returns.

This works in both B2B and B2C focused e-commerce platforms.

• Digital marketing- With pointed campaigns, customer registrations for e-commerce platforms can be increased.

This is most effective in a B2C e-commerce platform.

Customer adoption: Once the customer registration happens, the bigger challenge is to drive adoption and loyalty for the e-commerce platform. One of the toughest

challenges faced by the sales and marketing team is to get higher traffic on their portals.

It all boils down to generating awareness and powerful information dissemination driven byengaging sales enablement methods such as: • FOS–Driving adoption is about regular engagement and customer nurturing.

Showcasing the value and the relevance of the products/ services in the platform can be done effective by the feet-on-street soldiers.

• Telesales- Talking about engagement, tele based methods are also effective sales enablement implementation methodology to create that one-on-one connect with the customer across geographies.

Skilling the ecosystem/ partner readiness: In this new ecosystem, partners need to be aligned with the new ways of doing things.

This is about improving the ecosystem preparedness for selling in the e-commerce ecosystem. Readiness programs including communication engine, readiness engine and engagement engine is of prime importance here. Sales enablement aids this by providing sales training. As a powerful means of developing the sales force and sales managers, it builds critical skills and knowledge for long-term success. The objective of training is to impart a simple message, ensure its consistency, and track the impact.

Training can be deployed through various methodologies - classroom training, remote training, on-the-job training, e-learning, etc.

– and each method equips the sales force to perform better.

• E-learning platforms- Truly a sales initiator, e-learning platform provides a cost effective solution for the partners.

• Face-to-face training methods like on-the-job training- Though the advantages of digital and e-platforms cannot be denied, we need to remember that interaction (faceto-face in particular) is crucial. This involves on-the-job training for sales. This works best when the ecosystem is in clusters and physical coverage is not difficult.

• Remote training-Tele-led training, webinars, pod casts, simulations, audio- video broadcasts, online testing and feedbacks etc. are various methods of remote training which keep the representative abreast with latest innovation and developments which come in handy for enabling the e-commerce ecosystem.

In view of the above, enabling the e-commerce ecosystem via sales enablement then is a simple and direct approach and yet complex in terms of their implementation if the understanding is not correct. E-commerce companies can take their success story to the next level by applying right sales enablement methodologies. n

14th VARINDIA IT Forum 2016 :

Helping Build the Digital India Vision

[From L-R : Mr. Ravi S. Pani, Vice President-SPO INDIA, Ms. S. Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA, Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA, Mr. R. K Bhatnagar, Director General – TEPC, Mr. Rudra Murthy K.G, CISO, Digital India programme, Ministry of Home – GOI, Mr. Vipin Tyagi, ED, C-Dot, Mr. Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director of Sales, Physical Access Control, India and SAARC, HID Global, Mr Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Labour and Employment, Government of India, Mr. Arvind Saxena, Group Marketing Head – Sify Technologies Limited, Mr. Sanjeev Sehgal, M.D. - Samridhi Automations and Mr. Gaurav Agarwal, Operations Director, Public Sector – Cisco Systems]

Mr. Kiran Karnik, Former President, NASSCOM “When the CSR law first came into force, many of my friends in the industry regarded it as being useless. They are of the opinion that CSR is something that comes out of profit and should be left to us whether we want to do anything for the society or not.

The govt. should not be putting any mandates on this. But members from the community service organizations feel that companies make lots of profit and don’t do anything for the community. Many saw it as a good opportunity for flowing money into NGOs and the CSO sector, which was always starved of funds. But there are still issues that need to be sorted out in terms of putting the law into place.”

A day full of Technical keynote sessions, corporate presentations, discourses on issues impacting the technology landscape, business networking have what turned 14th VARINDIA IT Forum 2016 into a grand success. It served as a platform for the convergence of the who’s who of the ICT industry, Corporates, IT consultants and various government agencies and PSUs. The Annual Forum this year was divided into three sessions – CSR & Sustainability Summit which formed the morning session and the Information Technology Forum which consisted of both the afternoon and the evening sessions. The evening session also saw the unveiling of the 5th edition of the Brand Book.

The day-long event kick-started with the morning session titled “CSR & Sustainability Summit” that had the active participation from corporates, social foundations, NGOs and different government bodies.

The Summit reinforced the fact that CSR has, indeed, come a long way in India and that Information Technology is a primary catalyst that is driving this unprecedented growth.

Mr. Kiran Karnik, Former President, NASSCOM, was a Special Guest joining the session along with Mr. Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation who wooed the

Mr. Shrikant Sinha, CEO - NASSCOM Foundation “What is important to understand today is that even after 69 years of independence, the scenario has not changed much; we still have 1 NGO for 535 people. I think it is time to look for things differently, look at how corporates can play a role in CSR by bringing their policies and processes and ensure that the beneficiaries who are there on the ground actually benefit out of it. And that is the crux of Section 135 that has helped us not only to get things in perspective, but now we are looking at philanthropy by getting meaningful activities done. Today there is a challenge and to address it people need to get associated with technology. This is where NASSCOM Foundation does it part by working with the Government of India in the National Digital Literacy Mission.”

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EVENT audience with his remarkable presentation on what NASSCOM Foundation has been doing to promote a sustainable society in the country.

Other dignitaries who graced the occasion were Mr. Chharudutta Panigrahi, President, FIDR; Ms. Meenu Bhambhani, VP & Head – CSR, Mphasis; Mr. Mahantesh G K, Founder, Samarthanam Trust; Mr. Anup K. Srivastava, CEO, Skills Council for Persons with Disabilities; Mr. Santosh Abraham, AVP, NASSCOM Foundation; Ms. Manju Dhasmana, CSR Head, Microsoft; Mr. Anurag Pratap, CSR Head, Capgemini; Mr. Deepak Maheshwari, Director, Government Affairs, India and ASEAN, Symantec; Ms. Meenakshi Batra, CEO, Charities Aid Foundation and Mr. Ravi S. Pani, Vice-President, SPO India.

Mr Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, VARINDIA, while giving is inaugural address

Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher and President, SPO India, in his welcome speech talked about how the total CSR spend has increased by 27% in 2015, and India has now the highest CSR reporting rate worldwide. “It is a good thing that the disclosure of CSR activities has been made compulsory. A report says that the performance of Indian origin companies is far ahead compared to foreign-based companies operating in India. According to the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, a minimum of 6,000 Indian companies will be required to undertake CSR projects in order to comply with the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013, with many of the companies undertaking these initiatives for the first time.”

Session - 1 “Employability-driven Skills for Persons with Disabilities”

From L-R: Ms. Meenu Bhambhani, VP and Head CSR, Mphasis, Mr. Mahantesh G K, Founder, Samarthanam Trust, Mr. Chharudutta Panigrahi, President, FIDR and Mr. Anup K Srivastava, CEO, Skills Council for Persons with Disabilities] The first discussion was modelled around “Employability-driven Skills for Persons with Disabilities” that was moderated by Mr. Chharudutta Panigrahi, President, FIDR, and the panel was joined in by Ms. Meenu Bhambhani, VP & Head – CSR, Mphasis; Mr. Mahantesh G K, Founder, Samarthanam Trust and Mr. Anup K. Srivastava, CEO, Skills Council for Persons with Disabilities.

India has more than 1 crore people with disabilities who are either non-working or are marginal workers. There is a huge demand for them to be mainstream. The discussion was an attempt to address the different initiatives taken by the govt. and how companies have started inducting people with disabilities in their workforce. Mr. Chharudutta Panigrahi, President, FIDR started off the discussion saying that after the coming of CSR to the fold of national development, there have been three arms – the govt., civil society and now the strong focus of CSR. He also emphasized that when talking about CSR as an added advantage, it also clears the picture of the preparedness of the companies and the industry in general to work with people with disabilities.

Ms. Meenu Bhambhani, VP & Head – CSR, Mphasis discussed at length the investments her company made into different disability related programs and how it took a very different emphasis as a key strategic focus of CSR. The broad focus being technology driven community development, inclusion and livelihood – which are also the 3 sectors within which the company has included disability. The key take-away from her speech was why disability was relegated to diversity.

Mr Mahantesh G K, Founder, Samarthanam Trust introduced his organization to be close to 20 years old. Initially it started promoting cricket and higher education for visually impaired, but later as a founder he has realized that unless self employment is promoted, every rehabilitation programs, schemes will go in vain.

Mr. Anup K. Srivastava, CEO, Skills Council for Persons with Disabilities on the other hand said that there are disabilities in both physical and mental form and the percentage varies. He stressed on the fact that we all are born with some disabilities; while it is true that it is visible in some and not visible in the rest. It has to be kept in mind while going forward that we all are same.

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[From L-R : Ms. Meenakshi Batra, CEO, Charities Aid Foundation, Mr. Santosh Abraham, AVP, NASSCOM Foundation, Mr. Anurag Pratap, CSR Head, Capgemini and Ms. Manju Dhasmana, CSR Head, Microsoft]

Session - 2 “CSR Models – Managing for Impact” The second discussion “CSR Models – Managing for Impact” was chaired by Mr. Santosh Abraham, AVP, NASSCOM Foundation, and the speakers who were called in to take the discussion forward were Ms. Manju Dhasmana, CSR Head, Microsoft; Mr. Anurag Pratap, CSR Head, Capgemini and Ms. Meenakshi Batra, CEO, Charities Aid Foundation.

Mr. Santosh Abraham, AVP, NASSCOM Foundation opened the discussion by citing the statistics that more than 8000+ crores are coming into the CSR domain, with almost 70% of the companies are already spending 2% of their profits in CSR. Ms. Manju Dhasmana, CSR Head, Microsoft pointed out that the most common challenge that is faced at Microsoft is how to look at sustainable impact at scale. At Microsoft there are 2 principles followed when it comes to CSR – technology can empower every person and organization to do more, and secondly keeping a track and complementing of what is the government doing and the country heading to in this direction. Mr. Anurag Pratap, CSR Head, Capgemini said that they as a company are working on 3 areas where they put in their resources called as 3 Es – Education, Employability and Environment. Capgemini is looking at NGOs that have the potential of up scaling the work that they are doing and also look for models that have the potential of being replicated. Thirdly it also looks at NGOs that are created by people who come from the same school of thought. Ms. Meenakshi Batra, CEO, Charities Aid Foundation stressed on her organization’s two-fold focus – to promote the culture of giving, which could be money, skills, technology and secondly increasing the flow of resources that can be in multiple terms towards the NGO sector, and with this focus it works with a number of people who want to engage with it in the social development sector. Charities Aid Foundation has been working with 300 corporates by giving them advisory support in terms of what and how to do, who to partner with.

The Afternoon Session - “Digital India Empowering Nation by connecting all Dots.. ” was a power packed session of technical presentations, discussions and saw the involvement of the some of the most sought after technocrats from the world of ICT. Mr. Savitur Prasad, Principal Financial Advisor, Indian Army, was a Special Guest who attended the session along with the presence of other high-profile guests from the ICT industry that included Mr. Sanjay Jaju, IAS, Director (Admn & Finance), National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd; Mr. Anurag Kuthiala, Sr Director, Pre-Sales – India, SAARC & Europe, Sanovi; Mr. Vitaly Kamluk, Director, Global Research & Analysis Team, APAC, Kaspersky Lab; Mr. Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation; Mr B. M. Baveja, Sr Director, DeitY; Mr. Rajan S. Mathews, DG, COAI; Mr. R K Bahuguna, CMD- RAILTEL Corporation Of India Ltd.; Mr. Sanjay Mann, Exec. Sr. Vice President- Reliance ADA; Mr. R. K. Bhatnagar, Director General, TEPC; Mr.

“Talking about Digital India, it is a confluence of factors that determine how you create a digital ecosystem for the nation. I have propounded a framework which leads us to have an easy understanding of what it takes to create a digital ecosystem. I call it the 6 I framework – Infrastructure, Instruments, Instrumentality (e-governance applications can be seen as major driver), Involvement, Institutions and Investments. Internet penetration is deepening in the country and more and more people are getting access to it. For an economy which is in a developing stage, affordability and value for money is going to play a big role in driving the telcos and competitiveness.”

Pankaj Khurana, Partner, Government & Public Sector, PWC; Mr. Shekhar Agrawal, Sr. Vice President- Vodafone India Limited; Mr. Rajat Chand, M.D.- CSDC India; Mr. Tarun Pathak, Sr. Analyst, Counterpoint Research; Mr. Altaf Halde, Managing Director, Kaspersky Labs – SA; Mr. Eric Loit, Chief Systems Architect, RAN

International; Mr. Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director – South Asia, HID Global; Mr. Amitabh Nag, Country Manager – Public Sector, HP Inc.; Mr. Rudra Murthy K.G, CISO, Digital India programme, Ministry of Home – GOI; Mr. Rajeev Mishra, Sr. communication expert-India and Mr. Sanjeev Sehgal, M.D.- Samridhi Automations.

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(From L-R) : Mr. Rajeev Gupta, Chief Technologist- Airone, Mr R. K. Bhatnagar, Director General, TEPC, Mr Amitabh Nag, Country Manager – Public Sector, HP Inc., Mr. Rajat Chand, MD, CSDC India and Mr. Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation

Session - 3 “Digital India – Smart IT and Communications” The first session of the afternoon slot was moderated by Mr. Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation. Discussing about Digital Literacy in the country, Mr Rajat Chand, MD, CSDC India shared that he considers it to be the Spinal Cord of the body. With the world getting diversified, Digital Literacy is something that is becoming very instrumental for getting things done really fast. The only way to meet the challenge is by joining the dots and get it going. Adding the seventh ‘I’ Incentivization to what Mr Sanjay Jaju has earlier mentioned, Mr. Rajeev Gupta, Chief Technologist- Airone said that CIOs indeed need to be the bridge between the Corporate and the Government because they know the practical aspect of IT. But there should be a different way of incentivization planned by the Government, which will ensure to speed up things and make it smoother. Pointing out at the National Telecom Policy, Mr R. K. Bhatnagar, Director General, TEPC said that it can be considered as the Bible of the Telecom sector and while getting formulated in 2012 the policy had set a target till year 2020 of which we are already in the halfway stage. Very ambitious broadband targets have been assigned and if the same are achieved there is a huge change for GDP to rise to 5%. Discussing the impediments to digitization, Mr Amitabh Nag, Country Manager – Public Sector, HP Inc said that no one was taught how to use a mobile phone and there have been innovative cases of missed call that India innovated. One of the best way to improve digital literacy is to make technology available.

(From L-R ) Mr R. K. Bhatnagar, Director General, TEPC, Mr. Shekhar Agrawal, Sr. Vice President- Vodafone India Limited, HP Inc., Mr. Sanjay Mann, Exec. Sr. Vice President- Reliance ADA and Mr Rajan S. Mathews, DG, COAI

Session - 4 “Technology is the backbone of ICT: Telcos to shape ICT” Mr Rajan S. Mathews, DG, COAI, took the floor as the moderator and called in speakers to join the discussion. Through this discussion, the audience got an idea of where does the key opportunities lie in the telecom sector, how can Digital Divide be bridged and how users can get access to the Internet anytime, anywhere and everywhere. Speaking on the Ambani Brothers joining hands, Mr. Sanjay Mann, Exec. Sr. Vice President- Reliance ADA confirmed that both RCom and RIL are indeed sharing networks and towers but the biggest impact going to happen when they combined together are able to cover 90% of the landmass of the country. Mr. Shekhar Agrawal, Sr. Vice President- Vodafone India Limited addressed the issue of availability which is a big challenge for a country like India; but nonetheless Vodafone has been partnering itself with the Government in its various initiatives of delivering citizen-based services. Giving his views on the call drop problem in India, Mr. R. K Bhatnagar, Director General – TEPC pointed out that call drop is not confined to India alone but happening in other countries as well because of connectivity issues, though here the frequency is on a higher side. There are solutions to it and the same are being applied to resolve this issue.

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[From L-R : Mr. Sanjeev Sehgal, M.D.- Samridhi Automations, Mr. Rudra Murthy K.G, CISO, Digital India programme, Ministry of Home – GOI , Mr Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director of Sales, Physical Access Control, India and SAARC, HID Global , Mr. Rajeev Mishra, Sr. communication expert-India and Mr. Chetan Hingu, Country Manager, Workstations - DSO and Attach- HP Inc. ]

Session - 5 “Securing India & make in India: Building Solutions for IoT, Smart Cities and Digital Economy”

The Panel discussion was moderated by Mr. Chetan Hingu, Country Manager, Workstations - DSO and Attach- HP Inc. Mr Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director of Sales, Physical Access Control, India and SAARC, HID Global said that the primary building block of a smart city is Smart Building, as because the more the infrastructure gets smarter, the more the city gets smarter. Talking about the last mile connectivity issue, Mr. Rajeev Mishra, Sr. communication expert-India said that the line of sight has got to do much with the break in the connectivity link and this is one of the reasons why 4G launch is being delayed. Speaking on developing Smart Cities, Mr. Rudra Murthy K.G, CISO, Digital India programme, Ministry of Home – GOI reminded that it is indeed a critical task as it involves collection of data that depends on the kinds of sensors and devices used, processing it and taking necessary action on it. The idea afterall is to give a trusted platform and a solution to the user. Mr. Sanjeev Sehgal, M.D.- Samridhi Automations said that most of the departments are talking individually about their solutions, whether it be automation, security or solar power while developing a Smart City. But the need now is to integrate these systems on a single platform, in absence of which the purpose would not get solved.

Mr. B. M. Baveja Sr Director, DeitY “Digital India is the key flagship program of the govt. of India and it aims to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Talking of Digital Connectivity, in the Fixed Broadband subscription parameter, India is still lowly ranked, which is 131 while in mobile broadband subscription, the rank is 155. 94% of rural internet connectivity is through wireless. Rural Tele-density is 50%, while rural broadband coverage is 2.7%. With huge data requirements, operators are not able manage the voice+data traffic. Internet users in India have risen to about 400 million, while the number of smartphones sold is 100 million.”

Vitaly Kamluk Director, Global Research & Analysis Team, APAC, Kaspersky Lab “Ransomware propagates through infected websites that are compromised, injection of malicious content that can be placed in legitimate websites, the most popular method also includes e-mail propagation and social networking. There are a few common ways through which ransomware can be propagated and 95% of the users fall prey to tricks used by these cyber criminals. They will pose as law enforcement agents most of the time, making it feel that they are genuine. They will also urge you to take action as fast as possible, leading you in the process to pay a huge ransom. There has been an incident reported from Maharashtra in the last few days where the Government network was attacked by ransomware and 150 PCs were affected.”

Anurag Kuthiala Sr Director, Pre-Sales – India, SAARC & Europe, Sanovi “Sanovi has built its market presence in Asia Pacific, Middle East and North America and we hope to expand to other regions as well. We do a tremendous amount of work in incident and disaster management both from an IT and non-IT perspective. There are a few typical challenges when you try to react to a disaster. There are also a lot of infrastructural and operational issues which impact response or recovery from any disaster, which possibly can be power outrages, lack of skilled manpower for Disaster Recovery, total Business dependence on IT infrastructure, natural calamities, to name a few. Every IT DR application needs to be provisioned according to DR best practices, monitored to ensure it is meeting RPO, RTO and should be regularly tested.”

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Mr. Tarun Pathak Sr. Analyst, Counterpoint Research “If we look at Q1 16 that has just surpassed, there have been a couple of interesting things that happened quarter on quarter. For the first time we have seen Apple’s growth came to a halt after 35 successive quarters. The number of entrants was less than the number of exits in the mobile phone industry. And the third important trend that was seen was the decline of the global smartphone industry by 2% since the inception of this segment. India was the lone bright spot in terms of the growth of the Indian smartphone industry by 23% YoY in Q1 2016. A lot of low-end players have been coming to India to understand this market and to find out the next level of growth.”

Mr. Eric Loit Chief Systems Architect RAN International “Smart Grid is one of the integral pieces that help a Smart City. Some people interchange Smart Grid with Smart Meter or an automatic meter reading. But they are just a small part of the overall Smart Grid. If we break down what Smart is, in context it means some form of processing or analysis that happens to the data that is collected in real time and that demands some kind of action. The three important components that make a Smart Grid system start off with data collection. This can be in the form of Smart Meters and other data acquisition devices.

This data can also be collected from historical archives.”

Mr. Vishwanath Kulkarni Director – South Asia, HID Global “We are the pioneers in access control and secured and trusted identity management system. 5 years back we used to talk about access control, today we talk about secured and trusted identity because we are moving to the digital mode. As part of IoT it is very important to ensure that not only humans but also assets are secured and trusted. We contribute close to 80% of the enterprise market in terms of solution offerings. We are into digitization of Government ID, besides being into RFID technology. Our offerings are not restricted to mobile phones alone but wearables also and it finds application in Healthcare, security industry and many more.”

The evening session was, however the most-awaited part of the event, as it saw the launch of the much-awaited Annual Brand Book. Carving a niche of its own, the Brand Book, now in its fifth year, has attracted attention of thousands of technology brands who have used it as a reference book to reach the ecosystem.

Supporting the Prime Minister’s vision to make India a digitally literate country, Mr Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA, set the tone for the evening with his opening address. “The fast-growing technology sector in India, from being merely a technology adapter or importer, is now becoming a creator of technology- enabled disruptive solutions. Digital India is one of the most exciting initiatives in the country that uses technology as a great leveller for the citizens of India. Today, government leaders understand that while the end goal is to offer better services, foster innovation and generate more jobs, the critical enabler is going to be technology and the foundation to a digital nation will be laying a pan-India network.”

The unveiling of the Brand Book was done in the presence of Mr Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Labour and Employment, Government of India; Shri Savitur Prasad, Principal Integrated Financial Adviser

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During the Lamp Lighting Session: (From L to R) - Ms S. Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA; Mr Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Labour and Employment, Government of India; Mr. Vipin Tyagi, ED, C-Dot and Mr Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA (Army), Government of India; Mr. Vipin Tyagi, ED, C-Dot; Mr Eric Loit, Chief Systems Architect, RAN International; Mr. R. K Bhatnagar, Director General – TEPC; Ms S. Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA; Mr. Rudra Murthy K.G, CISO, Digital India programme, Ministry of Home - GOI and Mr Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA.

But the launch of the Brand Book was not the only attraction in the evening, as 14th IT Forum also had top companies receiving Brand of Excellence, Most Trusted Company and Made in Brand awards. The awards were based on the votes cast on the VARINDIA website where respondents voted for their favourite companies. The Lucky Draw contest

by VARINDIA generated great interest from the audience, with six lucky winners walking away with iPads and iPhones.

Mr. Savitur Prasad Principal Financial Army

Advisor,

Indian

“India is showing great progress today in the digitization area and there are early signs of the nation picking up fast some of the digital trends seen globally. But I will still harp on the simple fact that unless Electronic manufacturing is promoted in the country, this new found success would be of no use to us and I would term it simply as a lop-sided situation. While on one hand we have made huge developments on electronics front, import of electronic hardware goods has not yet reduced. Nevertheless there is a big opportunity for the manufacturing sector to come up in the country and the ongoing Make In India mission is a big testimony to it.”

Mr Shankar Aggarwal Secretary, Labour and Employment, Government of India “In 1947 when we gained independence, the biggest challenge then was the form of governance that needs to be adopted. People seemed very apprehensive when we finally adopted Democracy, with the view that this institution may not succeed in the country.

Democracy flourishes only in those countries that are relatively prosperous. But today we are not only the largest democracy in the world but also the most thriving and vibrant. There were also challenges of security, scarcity of foodgrains and economic growth before us but very soon we pulled up our socks to address them as well.

But in spite of so much developments seen, 1/3rd of the Indian population still lives under the poverty line, which means that growth has not been inclusive and development has not reached every corners.”

Mr. Vipin Tyagi ED - C-Dot “C-Dot has got the National IPR Award this year, which means that patents have been filed in India by youngsters. The youngsters of this country are a brilliant set of people and if they can be groomed well, they can work wonders. There have been numerous IPRs filed and ideas, innovations and products created at C-DOT, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We are moving into a totally new era of Make In India. We also wanted to do something in IoT and M2M, and so I had to write the first architecture of the M2M communication, complying with the oneM2M standards. As a matter of fact, India has built the world’s first oneM2M compliant platform which we have built it and launched it.”

Mr. Amit Singh PwC, Director, Advisory “Smart cities can be seen as small initiatives or innovations taken by various cities. But at the end of the day, it should be kept in isolation. It should be viewed as a catalyst which would actually put the juggernaut rolling in terms of the eventual Smart City conceptualization across all the cities in the country. Smart City mission not only has a big opportunity for ICT service providers but also other players. There are 4-5 key parameters which need to be addressed to leverage the opportunity while formulating the IT strategy – the product has to innovative, they should be simple and adaptable before offered to the citizen, should comply to open standards and should be secured.”

Unveiling of the 5th Edition of the Brand Book 2016 Pic L to R: [From L-R : Mr. Vipin Tyagi, ED, C-Dot, Mr. Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Labour and Employment, Government of India, Mr. Rudra Murthy K.G, CISO, Digital India programme, Ministry of Home – GOI, Mr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA, Mr. R. K Bhatnagar, Director General – TEPC, Shri Savitur Prasad, Principal Integrated Financial Adviser (Army), Government of India, Mr. Eric Loit, Chief Systemswww.varindia.com Architect, RAN International June 2016 and 35 Ms. S. Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA]

EVENT

Award Winners at the Event

MOST TRUSTED COMPANY

BRAND OF EXCELLENCE

EMC - Intelligent Storage

HP Inc. - Printer

VMware - Virtualization

SAP - Cloud Solution

Cisco - Networking Solution

Canon - Digitization

Dell - Technology Solutions

WD - Hard Disk

Quick Heal - Anti Virus

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MAKE IN INDIA BRAND

June 2016

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C-DOT - Telecommunication

Tally - ERP Company

INDUSTRY WATCH

Why Microsoft Acquires LinkedIn for a huge amount of $26.2 bn? ............ And the Answer is Expansion of Market Opportunities Microsoft shakes hand with LinkedIn Corp (world's largest online network for professionals) for a $26.2 billion acquisition deal to reach out to professionals on social network. Despite both the companies struggling, the deal is expected to have a newer horizon for Microsoft’s Office suite as well as for LinkedIn. Satya Nadella is optimistic about this deal as this is the biggest acquisition by Microsoft ever and is nearly three times as large as the deal to acquire Skype five years ago. The acquisition will help Microsoft mark its presence in social media, which is dominated by Facebook and Google.

This is the biggest acquisition in the world of Internet Company, not to forget the acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014 by Facebook for about $22 billion. “Microsoft is working very hard to become an enterprise solutions company.

The acquisition will help Microsoft extend its CRM environment and move towards the enterprise solutions fulfilment in terms of getting leads from LinkedIn and to address today’s work split, such as Microsoft’s Office programs, and professional networks that connect workers,” Satya Nadella said in a statement.

Nadella further hinted at aims to weave these two pieces together. Going forward, LinkedIn will retain its flagship brand, culture and independence. Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of LinkedIn, reporting to Nadella. The acquisition will help to enhance our strong focus Microsoft’s cloud business portfolio and will be a strong entry into the world of enterprise social networking and also accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics services (CRM) Software package. Likewise LinkedIn’s analytics will help power data tools for Microsoft’s Dynamics, which competes with Salesforce in helping companies manage relationships with their customers. Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant could provide users with information pulled from LinkedIn about participants in upcoming meetings.

Supporting this transaction, Co-founder and chairman, LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman said, “Today is a re-founding moment for LinkedIn,” Hoffman said. In a statement made by CEO Weiner, he said that combination of Microsoft’s cloud business

and LinkedIn’s network “gives us a chance to also change the way the world works”.

Currently, LinkedIn has more than 9,700 full-time employees and is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has offices in 30 cities across the world.

Questions with the Current members in LinkedIn

Nadella focuses on appealing to business

customers with cloud-based services and productivity tools rather than regular customers. Going by the numbers, Microsoft has over 1.2 billion users of Office, over 300 million active devices are running on Windows 10, there are around 70 million monthly active users of Office 365 and eight million paid Dynamics seats.

In comparison, LinkedIn taps into a pool of 433 million members, of which 105 million are active monthly and two million are paid subscribers, accessing over seven million active job listings, nine million company pages and over 50,000 university pages.

For Nadella, by connecting the professional Cloud and network of both Microsoft and LinkedIn, the combined entity has the potential to accelerate the realisation of the global economy.

Microsoft has made several big acquisitions over recent years under previous CEO Steve Ballmer, though many of them have not panned out as hoped. The other some of the biggest acquisitions by Microsoft in past are that of SKYPE for $8.5 Billion, Nokia Mobile Phone Unit for $7.2 Billion, AQUANTIVE for $ 6 Billion, MOJANG for $2.5 Billion and YAMMER for $1.2 Billion. Microsoft has largely written off its

$9.5 Billion purchase of Nokia Corp’s mobile phone business, Skype hasn’t matched the promise of integrating into other products after the $8.5 billion deal in 2011, and Yammer has been a mixed bag after the corporate social-network operator was bought in 2012. Nadella’s 2014 purchase of Mojang AB, the maker of the Minecraft video game, however has been a bright spot in terms of expanding business opportunity.

Speaking about the financial health, LinkedIn has about 433 million registered users and has annual revenue of almost $3 billion.

Its trailing 12-month earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was $842 million as of 31 March 2016. It shows the deal price is about 31 times the trailing 12-month EBITDA of LinkedIn. The deal price would be 26-27 times LinkedIn’s EBITDA guidance for FY16. Microsoft said it will raise fresh debt to pay for the deal. The transaction has been approved by both boards and is likely to close within this year.

The offer of $196 per share represents a premium of 49.5 per cent to LinkedIn's Friday closing price.

LinkedIn's shares jumped 48 per cent to $194.28 before the opening bell on Monday. Microsoft's shares were down 3.3 per cent. Microsoft said it would issue new debt to fund the deal. After the deal, LinkedIn will become part of Microsoft's productivity and business processes unit.

LinkedIn has long been valued for having the potential viral growth of a social professional network group with the recurring revenues of a software-as-aservice business. But recently, growth has started to slow down and it’s been more difficult to get people to return to the site and pay for services. The company has been rethinking its strategy, redesigning its suite of mobile applications to make the product more user-friendly. By associating with Microsoft it would give LinkedIn a boost in newer business opportunity, enterprise cloud friendly and making it more useful if people are sharing updates more frequently.

With this, there are newer deals that can be expected from four biggies in the world, which are Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon that will bring a newer dimension to the cloud and social media era.

But going forward, a question that will arise with the think tank is if whether the next time one logs in to LinkedIn, one would be asked to upgrade to Windows 10 first? This remains to be seen. n

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COVER STORY

The Birth of New-Age Datacenters The data center growth story is further getting accentuated with the need to transform data center infrastructure and build it from a long-term standpoint. With the help of a bimodal IT strategy, new architectures such as software-defined data center, flash storage will transform infrastructure planning and deployment for increased agility of a data center – The technology landscape globally is changing rapidly, with Cloud Computing taking the centre stage. Growth of Cloud services adoption represents a transformative technology for data centers, offering a route to access data on any type of internetconnected device.

The Cloud services market continues to grow rapidly in India too, with Cloud spending anticipated to reach almost $2 billion by the end of the decade. The market, though evolving, is still at a very nascent stage in India as opposed to globally. One of the main concerns why enterprises are a little skeptical with Cloud adoption in India is the point of security. “Customers and enterprises are still not comfortable while sharing business critical data on Cloud for lack of security policies and technologies

Debmalya Dey Roy Vice-President Sales & Marketing Pi Datacenters

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which can safeguard their data. Currently, we are witnessing Cloud adoption mainly for non-business/critical applications,” shares Shrirang Deshpande, Country Head – Data Center Business, Emerson Network Power, India.

Nevertheless, there are great opportunities for growth of Cloud in India, especially as the government continues to invest in improved infrastructure and as internet access expands to more consumers through smartphone. Cloud computing is one of the key technologies in Government’s Digital India initiative as it desires to provide citizen-centric services based on Aadhaar authentication to every Indian.

“Intel has been contributing to achieving this larger vision by improving efficiency within Cloud environments that are being

Rajesh Dhar Senior Director, Technology Services, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India

actively deployed by the Government. We are working with the leading enterprises, cloud service providers, and a broad range of solutions partners to identify requirements and enable solutions to address challenges in cloud adoption,” says Srinivas Tadigadapa, Director, Intel South Asia.

Cloud technology has matured to a point today where it is a strategic choice for customers to compete in their respective industry for higher market share, versus in time gone by when it used to be just an option to choose. The Cloud technology solutions today with high inbuilt security are fast becoming the choice of customers for parking their data. “Enterprises are turning to cloud to improve business agility, reduce expenses and accelerate business innovation. Furthermore, Mobile, Internet

Sunder Krishnan Advisor, ISACA

COVER STORY

George Chacko Principal Systems Engineer & Lead Technical Consultant, Brocade India of Things (IoT) and Big Data which are expected to grow exponentially in the next 20 years, will drive Cloud usage to a large extent,” says Rajesh Dhar, Senior Director, Technology Services, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India.

“The IT industry is observing a paradigm shift in the technology space today. The cloud phenomenon, which enables an automated and optimized performance, is majorly driving the shift. The growing cloud market in India with an estimated CAGR of 32% over the years 2013-18 stands as a proof for the same. Gartner’s Cloud Adoption Survey in January 2015 revealed 53% of organizations were already using Cloud services and another 43% in the same survey indicated planned adoption by the end of the year. It also states that by 2018 public Cloud spending in India will reach nearly $2 billion, from $638 million in 2014,” explains Debmalya Dey Roy, Vice-President – Sales & Marketing, Pi Datacenters.

Ashok Shenoy, Director, Datacenter Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, observes, “Indian enterprises are now harnessing the Cloud for better agility and integration with global supply chains and markets.

The Cisco Global Cloud Index projects that 83% of the global data- center traffic would move through Cloud services with yearly traffic amounting to 10.4 zettabytes by 2019. Industry trends point to increased infrastructure spends that would have an impact on new technologies, products, operations, organizational cultures and markets. The arrival of mobility and big data has further increased India’s appetite for Cloud. With digitization of businesses and processes, we expect Cloud adoption in India would continue to grow. Businesses are also looking for smart data centers that deliver virtualization, storage, automation, visibility and lower energy footprints to ensure flexibility and cost- effectiveness.”

Data Center Planning & Modernization

CIOs and organizations today are constantly looking at building data centers from a long- term standpoint. This can sometimes become challenging for a

Jim Simon Senior Director – Marketing, Asia-Pacific, Quantum

Indian enterprises are now harnessing the Cloud for better agility and integration with global supply chains and markets.

The Cisco Global Cloud Index projects that 83% of the global data- center traffic would move through Cloud services with yearly traffic amounting to 10.4 zettabytes by 2019. Industry trends point to increased infrastructure spends that would have an impact on new technologies, products, operations, organizational cultures and markets. The arrival of mobility and big data has further increased India’s appetite for Cloud.

With digitization of businesses and processes, we expect Cloud adoption in India would continue to grow. Businesses are also looking for smart data centers that deliver virtualization, storage, automation, visibility and lower energy footprints to ensure flexibility and cost- effectiveness.

Rakesh Kumar Singh Tech Lead, Datacenter Technologies, Juniper Networks – India & SAARC CIO, considering business pressures and technology viabilities can end up exerting pressure on the IT Infrastructure of an organization. “A majority of organizations today are looking at scalable and modular data center solutions. Scalable and modular data centers are an option a lot of organizations today looking at as they can be built and customized according to requirements,” says Shrirang.

Srinivas, on his part, suggests a few points that should be assessed while planning for a basic data center blueprint – Power planning: Efficient optimization of power usage is of vital importance while planning for a data center. While monitoring the consumption of power by a data center, one also needs to consider the cooling infrastructure in which the system operates.

Adaptability: Data centers should be adaptable to absorb technological changes and act as enablers in providing faster processing result.

Space optimization: Opting for a modular design facilitates simplicity and flexibility, allowing enterprise IT architects to add or remove building blocks, as needed.

Enterprises are also opting for converged data center infrastructure where one can have computing and storage functions in one appliance, thus improving scalability without additional expenditure on hardware, etc.

Security: With cyber-attacks and threats becoming a hot topic in the connected devices space, data centers need to focus on security.

Going hybrid: A mix of both public and private Cloud can be adopted, the former providing resource sharing over multiple users and the latter allow more control over of security, performance and service-level agreements offer best of both worlds.

George states that organizations should embrace software-defined data centers (SDDCs) which are the next step in the evolution of virtualization and Cloud computing as it provides a solution to support both legacy enterprise applications and new Cloud computing services.

“Software is what implements incredibly

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COVER STORY

Shrirang Deshpande Country Head – Data Center Business, Emerson Network Power, India

fast, low-latency networks on top of commodity processors. Intelligent software is what enables storage vendors to eschew expensive ‘enterprise’ solid-state disks in favour of inexpensive consumer-grade drives and still achieve high reliability and performance.”

As companies scale out their operations, it is likely that investments into data center infrastructure will focus heavily on the clientfacing and analytical workload aspects, to enhance the competitive advantages of their organization. “With the rapid pace of cloud adoption forcing the implementation of new network infrastructures, the integration of functions such as building management and information management systems are

Cloud Opportunities in India

With demand coming from various sectors and the big players globalizing their operation, the future of the data center market in India seems to be on the rise.

Indian enterprises will be focussing on building intelligent data centers that will be optimizing existing hardware assets by using additional software capabilities. “The current adoption will lead to increased attention to newer trends such as public cloud, and integrated systems. With increasing numbers of users coming online and the government’s “Make in India” initiative, we believe that offering data center operators the agility to respond to change with innovative solutions and cost, as well as energyefficient DC infrastructure will drive the growth engine for most players in this segment in 2016,” points out Abhijit Potnis, Director – Technology Solution, India and SAARC, EMC.

“The Indian data center market is buoyed by positive sentiments in the economy and the strong resurgence of growth-related projects across verticals such as banking, insurance, retail, manufacturing, telecom and government projects such as Digital India, Make in India and Smart Cities. Even emerging verticals like education, hospitality, healthcare and communications and media need customized data center solutions.

Market opportunity for data centers in India continues to mature with the growing prevalence of 4G, broadband connectivity and emergence of disruptive technologies like cloud and virtualization,” says George Chacko, Principal Systems Engineer & Lead Technical Consultant, Brocade India.

Some of the opportunities as Srinivas points it out for data center in India are – • Digital Infrastructure Build Out: The ongoing rollout of 4G and broadband build out will be a huge contributor to Cloud services. With over 300 million internet users and India becoming the second-largest country by internet users, India will see tremendous growth in Cloud services propelled by the connectivity of people and things and with growing need for data to reside inside the country and security.

Cloud is integral to the massive digital infrastructure build out in India with online citizen services delivery for a 1.2B + billion citizens, Aadhaar-based services, GSTN, Smart Cities, national supercomputing mission, security and surveillance.

Abhijit Potnis Director – Technology Solution, India and SAARC, EMC increasingly the key in the realignment of existing operational models within organizations. The ‘smarter’ data centers will now incorporate servers, storage, racks, power systems and other networking equipment all within a converged network framework – with software-defined infrastructure in particular allowing agile mitigation of challenges and orchestration of resources,” contends Rakesh Kumar Singh, Tech Lead, Datacenter Technologies, Juniper Networks – India & SAARC. “Data center modernization entails many aspects ranging from security to performance, to lowering power consumption. By moving unstructured data off of primary storage, performance is increased and power consumption is decreased, especially when the unstructured data is stored in an active tape archive. To IT’s customers, the data is exactly where they expect it to be. But behind the scenes the data resides on a low-cost archive whether it is active tape, object storage, or even the Cloud,” says Jim Simon, Senior Director – Marketing, AsiaPacific, Quantum.

“With data growth showing no signs of slowing down, IT managers are realizing that too much of their budget is going toward primary storage and backup software.

A New Archive Workflow can save IT managers substantial costs while allowing them to save even more,” Jim further says.

“We know that the data center industry is very dynamic in nature and so is its growth pattern. Any modernization in

• Rising emphasis on High-Performance Computing: The combination of highperformance computing tools, rapidly-falling costs of storing data and the wealth of data generated empowers a transformation of business operations. India now has 11 supercomputers on the Top 500 list which stands a testimony to the rapid growth in data centers here, and the opportunity the HPC segments hold for future research in the geography.

• Emergence of Small- and Medium-Scale Businesses: SMEs are poised for healthy growth of Indian data center market as it provides them the flexibility for deploying software- driven networks and scalability along with automated networks. Migration to the cloud, taking advantage of its operational and cost-efficiencies and improving data security are empowering opportunities available to SMEs. • Growth of E-Commerce: With the proliferation of e-commerce and India being the nerve centre for major IT activities, the demand for high storage will continue, resulting in phenomenal growth of data centers in the country.

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Ashok Shenoy Director, Datacenter Sales Cisco India & SAARC

COVER STORY this space invariably brings paradigm structural and component level shift.

This holds good for both captive and service provider data centers. The DC modernization would typically touch upon aspects like consolidation, virtualization, cloud computing, outsourcing/offshoring.

This would have significant impact on the size, types and location of data centers. As a result, we are seeing software-defined cloud data centers are taking the centre stage, elbowing out the traditional brick-andmortar facilities. The result is that there is an impact on the overall energy demand of data centers,” asserts Debmalya.

Furthermore, Rajesh Dhar points out that compression technology and virtualization is enabling companies to do more with their technology assets. This means that the companies are able to deploy and use heavy applications, thereby increasing data center demand. Services like virtualization, Cloud computing, disaster recovery and even data center extensions are evolving and moving more organizations to data center model.

However, the modernization of data centers could also pose big threats, the primary being Cloud Security Threats and Virtualization Security Threats. “These issues and threats could be mitigated by performing a Detailed Risk Assessment,

The Data Center market going ahead

Srinivas Tadigadapa Director, Intel South Asia identifying gaps in design, in processes and skill-level gaps, reviewing the Architecture, suggesting a working (interim) and target architecture, drawing a road map – plan and monitoring incidents closely during the journey,” cautions Sunder Krishnan, Advisor, ISACA. He further says that fixing security breaches and design gaps later becomes a costly exercise. Therefore, data security needs to be planned well in advance, when organizations are looking at reducing their IT operational costs considerably.

In the coming years, Indian enterprises will be focussing on building intelligent data centers that focus on optimizing existing hardware assets by adding additional software capabilities. Several factors such as physical location, types of applications supported, power and cooling, downtime, floor area will help determine an organizations’ tech investment plan. The other aspect of the data center market that will see change – Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) space, where both infrastructure and business models are flexible and are based on usage. This shift will reduce operating cost and increase utilization of data center capacity.

An estimated $1.6 billion worth of investment is on the cards from multiple players, for upcoming data center capacity during the period 2015-18. Also as trends show, the demand for third-party DCs has taken a steep rise over the years from a meagre 15–20% in 2012 to 35-40% in 2015 and is expected to grow 25% CAGR YoY pertaining to the high opportunity cost of reliable power supply and real estate, they provide. Virtualization being another key feature of today’s DCs, the slash in operational costs it brings in, attracts more enterprises towards it.

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FACE TO FACE

Huawei focuses on the work before “sudden” breakthroughs BEHIND THE SCENES: Huawei’s Chenlifang explains what a fishman casting a net, a high-energy particle collider and the world’s fastest woman have in common, and what the brand is trying to communicate in its’ recent campaign.

A Congolese fisherman;a particle supercollider; the world’s fastest woman. What’s the connection between the images in Huawei’s latest brand campaign?

Appearing in airports and online, the adsconsist of three panels, each capturing a breakthrough moment when focus, perseverance, and preparation yield extraordinary results.

What you don’t see in these images are the steps leading up to each breakthrough.

Yet it is those steps that hold the key to understanding both the campaign and Huawei itself, the culture and the values that have led the company to where it is now.

When it comes to ICT (information communications technology), one can point to many factors that drive success: smarter people, more R&D, heavier ad spending, first-mover advantage, superior customer service. But whatever its ingredients, success is nearly always depicted in its most dramatic form: the champion hoisting the trophy, theentrepreneur clinching the big contract, the Eureka moment where a light bulbswitches on to illuminate the darkness.

By their very nature, breakthroughs seem to come from nowhere. But what lies behind these moments of sudden brilliance?

The answer, usually, is years of painstaking

effort. People who work in R&D know that innovation is an output: an end result that everyone can see. What remains hidden to most people are the inputs: focus, patient investment of time and money, and dedication to a long-term goal.

Those are the themes of the Huawei brand campaign. We felt it was important to show them because, as we go from being a B2B seller of Internet switching equipment to a

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global brand, we no longer have the luxury of merely selling gear. Instead, we must help people understand who Huawei is, and what it stands for.

The “Huawei Breakthrough” campaign is a first step in that direction. Each of its three images shows a separate phase of success. The first captures the moment when a Congolese fisherman lunges forward with his massive net to snare a fish in the raging waters of the Lualaba River. He choosesthe right spot, stays focused amid the turbulent water, and at the vital moment catches his prey, all the while maintaining his footing to avoid being swept awayby the current.

The second visual shows the world’s biggest particle collider.

Scientists at CERN spent several decades and more than US $9b to build a machine sophisticated enough to detect the Higgs Boson, a sub-atomic particle so critical to our understanding of the universe that it’s popularly known as the God Particle. The quest began in the 1960s. CERN did not announce its discovery of the God Particle until 2012, when decades of patient investment produced one of the greatest breakthroughs of modern physics.

The third image shows Florence GriffithJoyner, the world record holder for the woman’s 100-meter dash, crossing the finish

line, her arms raised in triumph. While the picture captures a moment of victory, what remains invisible are the years of dedication that led up to it.

Unlike our past ads, oralmost any advertising by a Chinese company, the campaign reflects Huawei’s 28-year history:our lean years and false starts as well as our technical achievements and growth. The ads are based on a Chinese aphorism, which means “to rise suddenly through accumulated effort.” Those characters tell a simple but powerful story about picking your goals, sticking with them over time, and eventually reaping the rewards.

The explosive growth of Huawei’s mobile phone business is a perfect example of focus, perseverance, and seemingly sudden breakthrough. Investments in ICT can stretch out over long periods. For example, a decade can separate the successive generations of mobile phone technology (2G, 3G, 4G).

This time lag requires companies to adopt a long-term vision and avoid being distracted by peripheral opportunities. If focus lays the foundation of breakthroughs, perseverance serves as its catalyst. The time needed to reach those breakthroughs – whether months, year, or decades – makes the eventual moment of victory all the sweeter.

Chen Lifang is a corporate senior vice president at Huawei Technologies and a director of the company’s board. She oversees Huawei’s global public affairs functions.

ISODA CORNER

Best practices for digital marketing

Rajesh Singh, AVP, Channel and Alliances, Web Werks India shares the best practices his company employs for digital marketing We have found tremendous success with our digital marketing initiatives started a year back. Being a managed services and cloud services provider, we have a robust infrastructure with 3 datacenters in Mumbai and Pune and 2 datacenters in US. Our marketing objective is to generate awareness about our services, lead generation for new customer acquisition, and upsell and cross-sell among existing customers.

For this, we have formed a team of three content marketing professionals. We have a large annual marketing budget, of which 70 percent goes into events and exhibitions, and the rest is for digital marketing. Our digital marketing strategy consists of Google AdWords, Social Media, EDMs, blogging and content seeding with spending of Rs 6-8 lakhs per month.

We have received tremendous traction from Google AdWords with large number of qualified leads. We are also doing SEO with around 45 relevant keywords, which have enabled us improve our ranking. Our ranking on Google has also improved with our push on blogging.

This year, we have plans to expand customer base to Pune and Delhi, where we will actively target channel partners as well through our digital marketing initiatives.

Opportunities in Smart City and Digital India programs

Pranav Pandya, Co-Founder and Chairman, Dev IT, shares his views on how his company is tapping ICT opportunities from flagship government projects Smart City initiative of the central government has opened opportunities in advanced network monitoring and management technologies. This is one of our key domain expertizes with an in-house NOC and multitechnology proficient team working 24x7.

We have more than two decades of experience in development o f portals, enterprise applications, digital identity solutions and collaboration platforms. Further, we see opportunities for BI and analytics with heaps of data that would be generated in smart cities.

Apart from this, we have an early-mover advantage as we forayed into e-Governance projects in 1999. This has enabled us to attain a main league IT player status in Gujarat. In addition, we have merged software development unit of a well-known overseas ITeS provider, last fiscal. The merger has enabled us to cater to opportunities in SMAC and IoT incubation centers.

In fact, we were part of a large project under Smart City initiative to create GIS-based facility for citizens by which they can know land status under town planning activities. Under the Digital India initiative, for ease of doing business we provided web portal solution to streamline MSME applications and approvals tracking processes.

CASE STUDY DigitalTrack Provides Total Storage Solution

Total Environment is an architect-led real estate design, development and construction firm. The company has developed several prestigious projects—that range from residential apartments to educational campuses—across Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ooty and Mysore. The company had a huge storage requirement—real-time storage for operational and project management data, and archival for 2D and 3D designs of its real estate projects.

Challenges The company’s existing primary storage was old, non-scalable and well-past support period. The company’s data backup on tapes was not reliable and lacked DR. Human intervention was required in managing data backup and recovery. In a nut-shell, the company required a scalable, flexible and futuristic storage solution.

The solution Chennai-based DigitalTrack was selected as a partner for providing the storage solution due to the partner’s unique consultative approach. DigitalTrack analyzed the customer’s current challenges and future needs to suggest a solution which included Dell Storage NX3230, a capacity-dense, dedicated network-attached storage (NAS) solution integrated with advanced file-sharing software designed especially for small- to medium-sized organizations.

Benefits The solution has automated the backup thus reducing the effort in backup procedure. It also provided significant savings on backup software and hardware. Overall access to large size files (>200MB) has decreased significantly. Reliability of the backup has increased as recovery is almost guaranteed and time to recover lost files has reduced drastically. Efficiency of the storage system has increased due to thin provisioning. Overall time to recover files has reduced drastically. The out-of-the-box de-duplication feature has improved storage utilization and performance.

Enjay becomes preferred partner of SugarCRM

Enjay IT Solutions has officially become the preferred India partner for open source CRM vendor, SugarCRM. The partnership will enable Enjay to pitch SugarCRM to large enterprises.

“We have been a prolific ISV and solutions provider for SugarCRM and have developed several unique plug-ins. Our contribution to SugarCRM has been recognized with this formal partnership,” said Limesh Parekh, CEO, Enjay IT Solutions.

Enjay’s CRM customers span the healthcare, IT &ITeS, manufacturing, telecom, real estate, and professional services segments. Some of them include Wysetek, Insight Business Machines, Mahima Group, Jariwala Labs, Global Hospitals, Phoenix Medical, Omnex International and Navaida Solutions.

Mitul Shah, Director, Rajesh Paper Mills also vouched for Enjay. “They understood the CRM process required for a growing organization like us and provided us a customized solution which has grown our revenues by 30 percent,” he said.

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FACE TO FACE

Veeam helps customers to achieve Always-on Business In a chat with VARINDIA, Omar Akhtar, Regional Manager, Channels, Middle East & SAARC, Veeam Software, has discussed about different opportunities in India, target verticals and USPs of the solutions

Please brief about Veeam.

Founded in 2006, Veeam Software has developed its core product V Power, which enables us to boot and run a virtual machine directly for backup plans. It gives the end-users a restore time of 15 minutes. The customers have been virtualizing many applications aggressively, but they can do it in 25–30 minutes. When these virtual backups fail, the customers have the legacy backup system. These backup solutions have been written in the physical word and these backups are trying to retrofit the products to address virtualization.

They have to wait for hours to restore these virtual services, which is a big challenge.

For Veeam, India is a very strategic country. It is a very big investment region for us. We are looking to lead the availability space within the Indian market.

How do you see the Indian market?

The opportunities from the partner’s point of view are of multimillion dollars and VMware being active in this market it is a very big opportunity for us. Veeam is very well positioned to capitalize on that opportunity. We try to be very competitive about the total cost of ownership and return on investment.

In a short period of time, we have been very disruptive about technology, changing customer’s way from legacy backup to availability for their modern data center. Jet Airways, Indigo Airlines, Himalaya, Hero Honda, PwC, etc are some of our prestigious customers.

Which are your target verticals in India?

Veeam mainly focusses on virtualization. Any customer using VMware or Hyper V is a prime candidate for Veeam. We do not just deal with one particular vertical. Virtualization touches all verticals like BFSI, IT/ITeS, manufacturing, education, oil & gas, etc. So, these verticals are prime candidates for adopting Veeam for availability of modern data center.

We help customers adopt virtualization in server level and have extended it to the desktop level. We also have free product backup for endpoint. With this free product, one can take backup of desktops and laptops as well. We are moving forward from servers to the desktops and extending it further to the Cloud. We can offer existing Veeam customers services such as backup-as-a-service, disaster recovery-asa-service.

How do you see data center business as an opportunity?

In terms of the journey to the cloud, whether you are adopting private cloud or you want to take services in cloud hosted in Azure or Amazon, it is a big opportunity for Veeam. Veeam’s technology which we have has been built for specific virtualization within the data center and represents big opportunity for us. The big storage vendors like HP, NetApp and EMC are in customer’s data center today for production storage. Veeam integrates directly with these major storage players within the customer’s data center.

What is the dependency level with Cloud backup?

There are two ways to help the customers to get backup-as-aservice. Many customers in India are working with Microsoft Azure.

Leveraging Veeam, we can back up the virtual machine and can send the copy directly into the Microsoft Azure cloud. With our new

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feature, in the event of a failure one can restore the virtual machine directly from the Azure Cloud. This is one way to help the customers with Cloud adoption.

The other way is working with network partners. With the Cloud Connect feature, we can select our local partner in any metro and can send the copy of backup to the partner. The service provider then can host a copy of that backup.

Who is your major distributor in India?

Veeam as an organization is 100% channel-focussed and our success in any country is due to our partners. We truly rely on our partners and we want them to be true extension to the Veeam community.

We are working with Ingram Micro and Redington. They give us good coverage across many partners in the Indian market.

In India we have around 200 channel partners which include traditional value-added resellers, solution providers and system integrators.

What are the USPs of Veeam?

The unique selling point of Veeam is recoverability. There is no point in taking a backup if you cannot guarantee that you can restore from it. So with Veeam we have a patented technological backup which enables us to copy the backup from any virtual machine and we boot the copy in an isolated land. Then what we do is a verification process. We make sure that the operating system is not corrupted, there is no corruption in the application whether the data to the application is consistent, the virtual machine is healthy.

We then send an email report to the customer. That is a big unique selling point here in the Indian market.

Secondly, it is the recovery time, how quickly we can restore the data in the event of failure. In India, we are working in the area of always-on business. So if they rely on legacy backup tools and use these tools to restore virtual services which, if unsuccessful, is not going to help them to achieve the aim of always-on business. With Veeam, we first market the technology called Instant VM Recovery.

So if there are any failures, then Veeam can restore any virtual machine in 15 minutes. We can help customers in India to achieve always-on business. n

INDUSTRY EVENT

Bentley Systems’ CONNECTION Events Draw around 400+ Attendees Bentley Systems, Incorporated held its CONNECTION Events in Delhi & Hyderabad on 3rd & 5th May respectively and drew over 400 infrastructure professionals from the regions. Attendees learned about the CONNECT Edition, Bentley’s common environment to comprehensively support the delivery of infrastructure projects. The

common environment unifies work across the entire project ecosystem and over the full lifecycle of the project. The result is improved performance, with infrastructure projects being delivered on time, on budget, and with less risk.

The CONNECT Edition comprises a comprehensive modeling environment, common performance environment, and common data environment, while leveraging the Microsoft Azure cloud service and supporting a hybrid environment that includes on-premise servers, desktop applications and mobile apps.

By the end of this information-rich, oneday event, attendees were able to return to their respective organizations with an in-depth understanding of how this next generation of infrastructure engineering

software provides a purposefully connected environment to improve the performance of infrastructure projects and assets from design through construction and operations.

Keynote: Advancing Infrastructure

Kaushik Chakraborty, Vice President & Regional Executive, Asia South at Bentley Systems, delivered the keynote address Advancing Infrastructure. The presentation included a brief overviewof the company’s 30 years of cumulative BIM advancements that have enabled its users to more comprehensively deliver their projects, as well as to enhance the performance of the assets being designed, built, and operated. In discussing the CONNECT Edition, Chakraborty explained how the CONNECT Edition enables organizations and enterprises, including the supply chain beyond your organizational firewalls, to “connect” their projects to a greater degree than was ever possible.

The keynote address continued with a roundup of enhancements to its existing software and key acquisitions and advancements that expand Bentley’s capabilities. With the new releases, Bentley has made a major advancement into construction modeling, which progresses the design model with construction sequencing, craft assignments, and materials procurement status – improving project performance, reliability, and safety.

Chakraborty ended the keynote saying, “The common data environment represents our strategy to help you further advance infrastructure. And the core value of this connectivity is the ability to leverage digital engineering models throughout the infrastructure lifecycle –from design and engineering, through construction, and into operations – for better performing projects and assets.”

Advancing Project Delivery

In the final presentation of the morning, Amit Shrivastava, Technical Director, Platform & Mobility, provided an update on technology and capability advancements for specific Bentley software applications.

He reinforced the message of “convergence”

emphasized in the keynote and expanded on how Bentley Could Services enables increased depth of information modeling and increased breadth of information mobility.

Shrivastava walked conference attendees through Bentley advancements fordesign modeling, analytical modeling, construction modeling, reality modeling, and asset

performance modeling, citing along the way key acquisitions that brought new capabilities to each of these. Notable concepts discussed were engineering content management, advanced work packaging, optioneering, and scenario services.

In the afternoon, attendees participated in product-focused seminars where Bentley subject matter experts and application engineers demonstrated the benefits of some of Bentley’s most popular software applications, discussing local industry trends and highlighting best practices and the latest technologies to improve your project delivery and information management.

In Delhi and Hyderabad, the featured topics were: Structural Analysis, Civil Design, Reality Modeling, Geospatial, and Pipe Stress & Vessel Analysis.

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VAR CORPORATE

Growing Together with Lenovo Girijesh Singh Thakur, Managing Director - Bluecom Technologies tells VARINDIA of how his company has grown from being a mere 30 lakhs company with support from Lenovo -

Tell us about your association with Lenovo. How has been the journey?

We have been associated with Lenovo ever since the time the company first came to India in 2005, when they took over IBM’s PC division and we are with the company for more than 11 years now.

The journey has been the most memorable one. In 2005, we were just an Rs 30 Lakh Turnover Company and now we have grown to Rs 30 crore. 90% of our business comes from Lenovo; whether it is desktops, laptops, workstations, storage, server etc. Our bread and butter is plainly Lenovo.

How has Lenovo been instrumental in shaping your business?

We have grown together with Lenovo and this growth is expected to continue in the coming years too.

Do you have any suggestions for Lenovo in terms of its channel enablement programs?

Every year we have our assessments and meetings which is held out of India, which is indeed a good thing. At the national level too, in every six months Lenovo should organize meetings which will enhance our interaction even more. In terms of Partner program, Lenovo fulfils its promises and introduces good programs from time to time.

How did you help Lenovo grow?

Together we have helped to retain our clients. We have ensured never to run away from a critical situation, but we have always tried finding a solution to it. If there is some product failure, customers will first approach us since we are the partner, and then we go to the company. A client like a Media Company will not wait for 3-4 weeks to get their products replaced as it works 24/7. In that case we give our replacement and invest it from our pocket. Such is the level of belief that we restore in our customers and the brand.

Any Message to partners in the industry that you would like to give.

If you are dedicated to one particular brand, then definitely both the partner and the brand will grow. The partner happens to get more respect from the brand. Even the customers to whom we have been supplying Lenovo products for the last 10 years have become devoted to the brand.

We have this kind of a relationship with both Lenovo and its customers. If anyone wants to join Lenovo as a Partner they have to be dedicated. If you sell too many brands, then the partner gets tagged as a super market and a brand do not prefer a super market.

We have seen manifold growth working with Lenovo Vikash Didwania of Computer Exchange speaks to VARINDIA of why he thinks Lenovo is the best company to work with and how the company has lived up to its expectations -

For how long you have been associated with Lenovo?

Computer Exchange first started its association with Lenovo in the year 2005, ever since Lenovo set foot in the country. We came up with one of Lenovo’s first retail outlet in the country, here in Kolkata and we are doing pretty well in terms of getting good deals and customers.

How has been your journey with Lenovo in terms of support and new business initiatives?

Lenovo is a wonderful vendor to work with. They know our pain points and they try to support us as much as possible with favourable policies. This is one of the reasons why Lenovo has got a good customer and partner retention record.

How instrumental has been the role of Lenovo in shaping your business?

The association has seemed very beneficial for both of us, both from a business and brand building perspective. We have grown manifold; almost around 5% plunge in growth that we have seen after having started to work with Lenovo.

What are the initiatives taken towards developing the partner welfare programme that you like the most?

Lenovo has got good back-end schemes. Topping it are its various training programs that it organizes from time to time and they become good grooming sessions. Worth mentioning are its product demonstration policies that we find it really good.

How do you foresee your business growth with the wide range of products from Lenovo?

We expect this growth momentum to continue in future as well. With favourable market conditions and good times ahead, we believe to take our relationship with Lenovo to the next level.

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VAR CORPORATE

TPC-E Benchmark Result

for System x3650 M5

The TPC-E benchmark is designed to enable customers to objectively measure and compare the performance and price of various On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) and database systems.

Lenovo has published the world’s best two-processor (2P) performance result on the TPC-E benchmark. This new 2P result has been achieved on the powerful Lenovo System x3650 M5 2U rack server and joins Lenovo’s current #1 4P (1) and #1 overall/8P (2) performance. It will result in solidifying Lenovo’s dominance of the TPC-E benchmark and On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) performance.

The TPC-E benchmark is designed to enable customers to objectively measure and compare the performance and price of various On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) and database systems.

The System x3650 M5 server achieved the score of 4,938.14 tpsE (transactions per second E) @ $117.91 USD / tpsE. This score is the best two-processor performance in the industry, 30% faster- and with 9% better price/ performance- than the Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX2540 M1.

The Lenovo Storage E1012 and E1024 Disk Expansion Enclosures offer universal storage expansion capabilities. They are designed to provide simplicity, speed, scalability, security, and high availability for small to large businesses. The E1012 and E1024 deliver enterprise-class storage technology in a cost-effective solution with flexible drive

configurations and RAID or JBOD (nonRAID) host connectivity or Lenovo storage area network (SAN) array expansion.

Lenovo XClarity, a best-in-class enterprise tool, helps simplify and centralize discovery, monitoring, configuration, alert handling and other management functionality over the servers’ lifecycle.

The x3650 M5 achieved this record level of OLTP performance using Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition.

The x3650 M5 was configured with two Intel Xeon E5-2699 v4 processors at 2.20 GHz (2 processors/44 cores/88 threads) and 512GB of TruDDR4 memory.

This result also relied on the new Lenovo Storage E1024 DAS enclosures. Six E1024 storage enclosures and over 50 SAS SSDs were used in the benchmark configuration, attached directly to ServeRAID M5225-2GB SAS/SATA controllers running RAID-5.

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FACE TO FACE

A Two-way Communication Defines Lenovo’s Service Strategy Yu Jie, Vice President of AP Services, Lenovo and Sudipto Ghosh, Executive Director -Services, Lenovo India speak to VARINDIA on how the Service Support arm of Lenovo has been doing wonders in terms of delivering the best of customer experience India is in a pioneering position, with a huge transformation in the digital services space and in providing exclusive services to customers.

From the digital services perspective, Lenovo has social media platforms like Facebook to leverage and its other initiatives. It also reaches out to the millennials through Twitter and YouTube. “We have best in class self-help technical videos with voice-overs on YouTube which assists the customers to self-diagnose the issues they face. Some of our customers share their experiences, write on what issues they are facing, give feedback and also provide solution through these platforms,” says Yu Jie, Vice President of AP Services, Lenovo.

Customers can leverage Lenovo’s services anytime, anywhere. Earlier, it was through a call or a visit to the service centers. However, now Lenovo has added a feature-‘call back’ to assist them further. With this feature in place, there is ease in the communication now. One does not have to go through the trouble of writing or reading long mails, but one can use the phone and follow the steps.

“Our website journey and experience is user friendly and customer centric. Customers also find navigating easy and convenient to get the required information’s and downloads,” she says.

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Lenovo has also built an applicationLenCare, an android app, which can be downloaded on smartphones and other devices. Thorough this the user can easily raise a complaint, ask questions, reach out to the tech team and track the progress on real time basis. This is also where escalations are being handled. “We would also like to leverage real-time interaction with our customer and leverage multiple channels to offer them the best possible solutions,” Yu Jie adds.

An extensively built Service Network…

Lenovo established its exclusive service centers across the country with a few set objectives in mind with regards to Lenovo flagship offerings and deliverables. With the launch of Exclusive service centres it tries its new initiatives and time test its benefits on its customers and set it as a new bench mark.

After evaluating the performance and benefits, Lenovo then rolls these best practices to all other service centres of Lenovo. “We now have a total of 650 service centers in India. We have evolved with the latest state of art process and tools, to make it easier and efficient for our customers,” Yu Jie beams with pride.

Lenovo has also introduced the token management system (TMS) that gives a unique user experience from the time a customer walks into its service centre, thereby improving services quality. “Some customers like configurations, some buy accessories, some wants more personalization. We are here to assist them according to their needs and queries. We want to enable the customers to experience Lenovo differently. We have experienced engineers who can comment and address the issues of our customers and there are a lot of digital models that we are using for that. With such services, our customer engagement has increased to about 20 % undoubtedly,” she asserts.

“We are heading towards a direction where we aspire to sell a differential experience for our customers and offer best in class service.

Our engagement in social media stands out, and we are the pioneer on this. Customers face numerous problems and often try to escalate them on social media and post their grievances using platforms like Facebook and Twitter. As an organization Lenovo, believes in the manta of the 3S - Serve, Solve and Satisfy and is very sensitive to feedback.

We believe in providing real-time solutions,

Yu Jie Vice President of AP Services, Lenovo something which has led and encouraged positive feedbacks from our customers,” concedes Sudipto Ghosh, Executive Director -Services, Lenovo India.

He further cites that Lenovo today has its customers on social media and online chats, emails, websites and other channels. It has become a very useful tool for the company to understand both consumer insights and concerns. “We use tools like data mine, which is new in the industry to understand our customers’ needs, interests and issues in real times. These tools are instrumental in identifying from the tones and key words of the customers and relatively recommend the right solution. This is another milestone in the digital service transformation. This practice will not only tell us about the customer being unhappy about a service but also help us in engaging more with them,” he explains.

And so…

The Indian market is growing exponentially and people have a window into the international market and standard of things. The Lenovo team here In India, according to Yu Jie is great and they have been working really hard to become number 1 in services. Lenovo has been undoubtedly number 1 from products and technology perspective, making it the global leader. However, in the services front, India market does need a faster transition with better and improved models. With the kind of capabilities Lenovo is bringing in, it expects the country to soon become an AP hub for services. n

FACE TO FACE

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure – Redefining IT Deployment The converged infrastructure market has witnessed notable traction in India over the last few years. Organizations across verticals are moving from the traditional “build-it-yourself” infrastructure to converged “ready-to-use” infrastructure that is simple, scalable, secure and cost-efficient. Throwing more light on this market, Rajesh Ramnani, Regional Director, VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment Company, shares about EMC’s new VxRail Appliance family that is a hyper-converged infrastructure appliances for VMware environment –

H

yper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is hot right now, promising to dramatically shift the way infrastructure is procured, deployed and managed. The market potential in India for hyper-converged solutions can exceed US$15 million in FY 2016 itself, of which 50% will be in midmarket and the rest will be in large enterprises and corporates.

“Hyper-converged infrastructure is one of the most rapidlygrowing methods for deploying IT in the data center, as IT departments seek ways to adjust to their new role in business and new responsibilities entrusted on them. This market is growing at 60% YoY, as per analysts expected to touch US$4 billion+ by 2020.

According to Gartner, the market is expected to become a $5-billion market by 2019, thereby becoming the category leader by revenue in pre-integrated full-stack infrastructure products,” explains Rajesh Ramnani, Regional Director, VCE, Virtual Computing Environment Company.

Converged infrastructure is being widely adopted by all organizations, considering “Buying” ready solutions rather than “Building” their own. “On the hyper-converged front, we have seen increased traction from IT/ITeS, telecom organizations and service providers creating their public cloud platforms as well as midmarket enterprises which want hassle-free simple to use and deploy infrastructure,” he asserts.

VCE VxRail Appliance – What is it all about?

The VxRail Appliance family is the only integrated and jointly engineered hyper-converged infrastructure appliances (HCIA) for VMware environments. It brings together the best of EMC and VMware including EMC’s rich data services and leading systems management capabilities with VMware’s leading hyper-converged software that includes VMware vSphere, vCenter Server and Virtual SAN, the simple, powerful, efficient software-defined storage natively integrated with vSphere – all in a single product family with one point of support.

“VxRail Appliances provide a simple, cost-effective hyperconverged infrastructure solution for a wide variety of applications and workloads. The jointly engineered VxRail Appliances tightly integrate virtualization, compute, storage and data protection in one system with a single point of support. With VxRail Appliances, IT organizations can start small and easily scale capacity and performance by non-disruptively adding appliances to the cluster without the investment or upfront planning required with traditional infrastructure. The appliances are fully loaded with integrated EMC mission-critical data services, including replication, backup and cloud tiering at no additional charge. VxRail Appliances integrate seamlessly into the VCE racks – blocks – appliances continuum to simplify scale across the enterprise,” explains Ramnani.

VxRail Appliances are managed through a single pane of glass provided by VxRailManager software, which incorporates vCenter Server and vRealize Log Insight that support ESRS and other serviceability capabilities. Additionally, the VxRailAppliances are discoverable and visible in VCE Vision Intelligent Operations software.

Rajesh Ramnani Regional Director, VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment Company

Big opportunities for partners…

The launch of VxRail broadens the scope of opportunity for partners. In India, EMC has five certified partners in every region.

They will play a significant role to ensure appropriate reach and support for this technology across India and associated geographies.

“Hyper-converged industry is a space which will continue to grow and partners now have an opportunity to work with EMC and VMware and redefine this market and establish themselves as leaders in this space,” he adds.

The product being extremely easy to deploy and install, there is no formal training for the partners. However, EMC conducted three city trainings on messaging and product positioning, starting during the product launch and continuing till April.

With VxRail Appliances, EMC wishes to target sectors like IT/ITeS, BFSI, telecom and federal organizations for large hyperconverged systems. “The purpose-built hyper-converged systems are a good fit in large enterprises, public sector and manufacturing units. For low to mid-range hyper-converged systems target markets include enterprise select customers and remote/branch offices of large corporates,” Ramnani sums up.

VxRail Appliances is already available in India from early March. n

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BlackBerry Leveraging the Enterprise Mobility Software space BlackBerry stands for one of the most secure means of communication on a mobile device. In the past, BlackBerry 10 or BlackBerry OS has been quite successful in securing communications end-to-end on the BlackBerry device. Keeping this legacy in mind, Narendra Nayak, MD – BlackBerry India shareswith VARINDIA of how being innovative has helped the company remain competitive innovations run across BlackBerry products.

While it continues to make devices with the BlackBerry operating system it has also come up with anAndroid phone, the BlackBerry PRIV. The PRIV has been addressing a market that is concerned about security while gaining access to the Android ecosystem.

Today, if we look at BlackBerryEnterprise Service 12 (BES12) or the current version BES 12.4, it has the same level of security and superior functionality over legacy BES 5, but it supports and manages iOS, Android, Windows devices, as well asBlackBerry OS or BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry has been striving to become a more open platform company, while bringing the value of security in all its vision while also focussing on enterprise mobility management to offer enhanced mobile services to its customers.

Enterprises are beginning to increase the productivity of the services in their companies and BlackBerry is helping its customers to ensure they can do this in a secure manner.

It has in the last few quartersmade several acquisitions that serve this purpose; for instance it acquired WatchDox which is in the enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) space and secures shared documents on mobile.

The other company which it has acquired is AtHoc, which is in the secure communications and messaging space. GOOD Technology was another acquisition made in September 2015. GOOD has one of the best levels of certification in the industry for securing applications. Another company which BlackBerry acquired is Encription that is in the security consulting and services space.

Technically, BlackBerry today is in three different spaces- Enterprise Software, Devices and the third is what it calls BlackBerry Technology Solutions.

BlackBerry Technology Solutions is essentially in the embedded software and IoT space and some of its products that it has includes QNX, an operating system, CERTICOM and Paratek.

“We will continue to push towards making the Android phone as secure as our BB10 and BBOS phones, because if we can do that then there is a brand pull in the first place,” Nayak points out.

Narendra Nayak MD BlackBerry India

Large universities and federal governments have been using AtHoc which allow users to send messages to multiple end points, whether it is a desk phone, a mobile phone, SMS, a call, etc. By taking these steps, the company has become a truly cross-platform enterprise software management company and helpedorganisations drive productivity through mobility in a secured manner.

Android and iOS becoming popular, people still wanted to use our software (to manage non Blackberry devices) because it is one of the most secure solutions available. As a result, we have completely repositioned ourselves as a software company that also makes devices,” states Narendra Nayak, MD – BlackBerry India.

In the past, BlackBerry used to be known only as a devices company that made software that managed these devices. “In spite of

BlackBerry has one of the strongest patent portfolios and has started monetizing on that.

On the software side it has become a truly open platform company;hence all software

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The Future ahead...

BlackBerry wants to reposition itself as an enterprise software management companyand this happens to be its primary strategy in India as well as globally. “Every large enterprise, legal firm, financial company, everybody who started with E-mail was a BlackBerry customer. They still use BlackBerry but in addition to that, they probably went ahead and brought in other solutions as well. I think the opportunity for us is to now go back and win some of those customers back,” Nayak says.

In addition to that,BlackBerry has been rebuilding its distribution system which is geared towards its enterprise customers, along with bringing in more people with software knowledge and software support sales skills.

BlackBerry will indeed establish itself as the leading enterprise player in this market very soon. n

VAR MOBILITY

Lenovo rolls out Vibe K5 Smartphone

Lenovo has launched Vibe K5. It comes powerpacked with a 64-Bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 Octacore CPU combined with a 12.7cm (5) high-definition display.

The vibrant 12.7cm (5) HD display with 720x1280

pixel resolution, gives crisp content streaming and viewing experience. This display along with two high-performance stereo speakers produces the best multimedia experience in this price segment. The Dolby Atmos- enabled speakers help minimize noise and voice distortion when playing voice clips

and songs, automatically fine-tuning any audio experience for listeners.

With the beautiful display and power packed entertainment consumers can have an experience like never before.

Crafted for maximum

comfort with tapered edges to fit the palm, Vibe K5 is not only the most stylish but also the only smartphone in its price segment to have robust metal construction.

Equipped with a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP selfie camera, Vibe K5 is your perfect companion whenever you feel like capturing moments.

LG unveils Modular Smartphone G5 LG Electronics has unveiled its modular smartphone G5, which is also accompanied with devices like LG CAM Plus, LG 360 CAM and

LG 360 VR in the Indian market at Rs.52,990. This modular smartphone comes with a sleek metal uni-body featuring a Slide-out battery and a Modular Type design for better user experience.

LG’s innovative Modular Type design gives the LG G5 the ability

to transform into a digital camera. LG G5 has two cameras on the rear: one with a standard 78-degree lens and another with a 135-degree wide angle lens,

the widest available in any smartphone. The LG G5 features a collection of powerful photo effects including Pop-out Picture, Film Effect and Auto Shot. The 5.3-inch Quad HD IPS Quantum display on the LG G5 offers an Always-on feature.

Lava rolls out ASUS Launches the Zenfone Go X81 Smartphone 4.5 2nd Generation Phone

LAVA International has announced the launch of Lava X81, a smartphone with a combination of impressive design and technology.

The new device offers an exceptional package of good looks, ultra-fast internet, un-interrupted calling and smooth video playback. It is a perfect gadget for those who love flaunting their smartphones in their social circles as well as look for reliability and performance from their personal device. Priced at Rs.11,500/-, Lava X81 will be available in Space Grey colours across all the national retail stores and multi-brand outlets and exclusively on Flipkart from June 13, 2016 onwards. The smartphone will also be available in Gold from the next month onwards.

Gaurav Nigam, Head of Product, Lava International, said, “It is an immense delight for us to announce Lava X81, a smartphone with a powerful combination of design and technology.

It is not just a complex maze of components put together – it is, in the truest sense, a device that has a style quotient and flaunt value of its own.

Through X81, we aspire to offer a device which is stylish and reliable, and at the same time enhances the overall smartphone experience of our consumers through its technological excellence.”

Lava X81 is the smartest and the fastest smartphone which is powered by a 64-bit 1.3GHz MediaTek QuadCore processor along with 3GB DDR3 RAM. It also offers an onboard storage of 16GB ROM, which is further expandable up to 64 GB, providing the consumers with ample storage for music, videos, pictures, applications and other data.

ASUS has launched the Zenfone Go 4.5 2nd generation – ZB452KG, a 3G- enabled smartphone with 4.5 inch display in India. Suited for the

strength, and is available in two different camera specifications – 0.3 MP + 5 MP (front + rear) priced at Rs. 5,299 and 2 MP + 8 MP (front + rear) priced

budget segment, the phone will be available on Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, PayTM, Shopclues and in ASUS Exclusive Stores and all other offline stores.

Sporting a stunning look, the Zenfone Go 2nd generation offers a unique balance of beauty and

at Rs. 5,699 The phone comes with an 854×480 (FWVGA) resolution for reproducing bright and vivid colors.

The device will be available in 6 colors to suit different user personalities – Glamour Red, Ceramic White, Yellow, Silver Blue, Gold and Silver.

Micromax extends its product portfolio Micromax has launched two new selfie smartphones – Bolt Selfie and Canvas Selfie 4.

Shubhajit Sen, Chief Marketing O f f i c e r , Micromax, said, “Our Bolt Selfie has been designed to keep the new and young smartphone users especially women in the tier-II & -III cities which have limited options and avenues to shop, are very price-conscious and yet desire a perfect selfie experience. While with the Canvas Selfie 4 and its tap sensor, we are upgrading the selfie experience of our young hyper-social youngsters who are looking for a perfect integration of innovation, style and performance with an excellent selfie experience.”

Bolt Selfie offers users with an exciting selfie experience. It is intended to break through the wallet-heavy selfie smartphones, making the trend easily available and accessible to a larger cross section of users and first time smartphone users.

It produces perfect selfies wherever, whenever with a 5MP camera, both front and rear. The 4G enabled smartphone is packed with a 1GHz Quad-Core processor and 1GB RAM and 8 ROM, expandable to 32GB.

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VAR GRIEVANCE

TAIT Addresses Twin issues of Cheque Dishonour and Income/Direct Tax Rules According to the 'Society for Fast Justice', there are more than 3 lakh cheque bounce cases pending with the courts, with the litigation running for anywhere between one year to ten years in Mumbai alone. While the law related to incidents of

cheque dishonour says that cases should be disposed of within six months, the courts themselves don't aide by this guideline.

As a result, common citizens and small business owners face a lot of harassment at the hands of petty officials.

Also, Maharashtra is the only state in India that charges 2% court fee from the petitioner to file a cheque dishonour case in a court of law. Therefore, it has been estimated that an amount of more than Rs. 25,000 crore is involved in cheque dishonor disputes in Maharashtra alone. As a result, the court fee collected is estimated to be of the order of Rs. 500 crore.

To address this issue related to disputes arising out of dishonour of cheques, and Income Tax issues faced by their members at length, Mumbai-based Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) has conducted its Knowledge Series workshop at Mumbai. The workshop session was addressed by Vijay Agarwal, Founder of Bounced Cheque Victims Forum and Vimal Punmiya, CA and Vice Chairman of All India Business Council. Both speakers talked about the need for members to put up a united front against the prevailing sloth in the judicial system, especially in cheque dishonour cases and disputes related to the Income Tax Act and Direct Taxes.

The 'Society For Fast Justice' was formed with an objective to provide speedy, affordable justice to citizens through the courts. It takes up local common issues affecting citizens, non-response from public agencies and direct or indirect issues affecting citizens. The forum has filed three PILs (public interest litigations) in the Bombay High Court and provides free legal advice to citizens on various issues.

Insisting on the need to protest and

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fight collectively against delays and imposition of unnecessary penalties by the judiciary in cheque dishonour cases, Vijay Agarwal, Founder of Bounced Cheque Victims Forum said, "The business community is being made to suffer in terms of wasted man days, and opportunity loss, due to inefficient functioning of the judicial system. In fact, the Government of Maharashtra is penalising any petitioner who wishes to seek justice through the courts by imposing a 2% court fee on the amount of the cheque returned unpaid. No other state in India charges such a fee from the petitioner."

Agarwal also added that despite having collected hundreds of crores of rupees by way of court fee, the judiciary in Maharashtra has not been able to build necessary quality infrastructure or fill vacancies in courts.

He appealed to the business community to join 'Society for Fast Justice' which has decided to file an appeal with the courts for justice to be meted out to cheque dishonour

petitioners.

Vimal Punmiya, CA and Vice Chairman of All India Business Council addressed the members on the issue of recent reforms made in the Income Tax Act and various benefits available to the business community. He enlightened members on

105 members attend proceedings, resolve to issue joint appeal to the concerned authorities to speedily resolve 3 lakh pending cases between 1-10 years old, accounting for over Rs. 25,000 crore of blocked capital

the voluntary disclosure of undisclosed Income Tax scheme and the Direct Taxes disputes resolution scheme.

Punmiya said, "The recent amendments made to the Income Tax Act relate to withdrawal of appeals category in scrutiny

proceedings, various reliefs, rebates and exemptions given to the assessee in recent editions of the Union Budget, changes in compliance procedures and the presumptive taxation scheme." He also discussed the benefits available to business organisations and the rights and duties of the assessee during income tax proceedings.

Rajendra J. Thacker, President, Society For Fast Justice said, "Delay in justice is the root cause of all illegal activities. Lack of deterrent punishment to culprits is another cause for all undesired activities taking place in the society. This laxity on the part of the government and the courts has encouraged the unscrupulous and the wrongdoers to carry on their illegal activities with impunity."

Rushabh Shah, President, TAIT said,

"We select topics for our workshops wisely so that our members can derive maximum benefit for their time. It gives us immense pleasure to receive such an overwhelming response, with 105 members having attended the workshop."

Several TAIT members appreciated the sessions. n

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GWAW16000796_VAR India Mag_34h x 24w cm_June.indd 1

56 pages including cover

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