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Dear reader, This is the collector’s edition of the 2014 Integrator Awards now under the consolidated banner of ICT Champion Awards, as an initiative from VAR MEA industry. This includes a selection of conversations with several of the winning companies. As an organistion, we are committed to applauding the champion performance of the industry. It is with this intent that we introduced the Integrator Awards last year. Categories have been drawn up to include as many areas that are the current growth areas of the industry. There will be revisions in each year’s edition to retain the relevance of the industry that continues to see breakneck changes.The deserving winners have been decided on basis of online votes and with the consensus of the editorial Board Apart from categories that applaud the best of the vendor performances, there are those that applaud the best of the distributor and systems integrators in various focus areas. We are happy to note that that a very wide cross spectrum of the value industry have come up as winners of the year’s awards. The Gala Awards night for the Integrator ICT Champion Awards 2014 on the June 10th saw a splendid gathering of the who’s who of the ICT industry that focuses on what we popularly call as the value side Business. I am happy to note that The Integrator Brand is now a much recognized media platform for the segment and that respect extends to the awards conferred by The Integrator magazine. I would like to congratulate the winners once again for coming through on top in a year of challenges for the industry and I wish all of the very best in the year ahead.
Contents Overview - 4
NetApp Spearheads new Era in storage - 8 Reimagined Security - 14 D-Link puts on a strong show - 16 Bedrock of Strength - 18 APC’s new Power-play - 20 Laser-Sharp Focus - 24 Fast Track Growth - 26 Whole New Dimension - 30 Fine-Tuned Vision - 32 Full Stack Solutions Base - 34 Event Snapshot - 38
Vivek Sharma Founder & CEO VAR MEA Magazine Publisher: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Assistant Editor: David Ndichu Art Director: Faiz Ahmed
Sales Director: Alishan Zaidi Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Business Development Manager: Mallika Rego Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh
Published by: JNS Media International MFZE
P.O. Box: 121075, Montana Building 404, Zabeel Road, Near GPO, Karama, Dubai-UAE Tel: 04-3705022 Fax: 04-3706639 Disclaimer: While the publishers have made every attempt possible to get accurate information on published content in this handbook they cannot be held liable for any errors herein.
The Integrator ICT Awards Ceremony | Round-up
Winners steal the spotlight The 2nd edition of the Integrator Awards, now under the consolidated banner of the ICT Champion Awards, an initiative from VAR MEA Magazine, were given away to winners selected through online polling at a gala winners ceremony held at the Oberoi in Dubai on the 10th of June The Integrator Awards, now under the banner of the Integrator ICT Champion Awards, was held at the Oberoi hotel, Dubai on the 10th of June at a Gala winners ceremony. The Integrator Awards were launched last year to recognize outstanding achievements in key categories representing the value side of the ICT industry. This is in parallel to the VAR COC Awards that saw its 9th edition held at the Meydan hotel in March. These awards are now
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being consolidated under the common banner of ‘The ICT Champion Awards’.The award winners were chosen through a polling activity of votes during a 3 week long online survey, hosted on www.varonline.com and winners were decided on the basis of maximum votes polled. The vendor nominees were shortlisted initially on the basis of top names in different domains and among them those who
have been active in this region. They were then requested to send in their nominations for relevant categories. Similarly for distributors and integrator categories, the names were shortlisted on basis of announcements of activities /initiatives that have been broadcast over the past year as well as information that the editorial team has been privy to, based on interactions with those companies. Vivek Sharma, CEO and Founder of VAR MEA Magazine and publisher of The Integrator said, “My hearty congratulations to all winners and they richly deserve the honour for their efforts. As a channel centric media and services company, we are committed to lauding the outstand-
The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 winners ing initiatives and achievements of the ICT industry.” He adds, “I am happy to note that the Integrator Awards that recognizes superlative achievements in the value side of the ICT industry is following the path established by our older and much renowned awards ‘The VAR COC Awards’ which applauds achievements of the volume channel. The various Industry awards that we organize, together with our portfolio of value add services inclusive of our Lead Generation program for channel acquisition and sell-out measurements, as well as the channel training program – ‘In Search of a Champion’, complements our various channel publications for the different MEA markets.”
Cloud Computing vendor of the Year
Microsoft
Virtualization Vendor of the Year
VMware
SMB Storage Vendor of the Year
NetApp
Enterprise Storage Vendor of the Year
EMC
SMB Networking Vendor of the Year
D-Link
Enterprise Networking Vendor of the Year
Cisco
Unified Communications Vendor of the Year
Avaya
Video Conferencing Vendor of the Year
Polycom
Data Management & Analytics Vendor of the Year
SAP
Disaster Recovery and Backup Software Vendor of the Year Symantec Client Security Software Vendor of the Year
Kaspersky Lab
Network Security Appliance Vendor of the Year
Dell SonicWALL
WAN Optimisation Vendor of the Year
Riverbed
Power Solutions Vendor of the Year
APC by Schneider Electric
DCIM Solutions Vendor of the Year Enterprise VAD of the Year
Manage Engine Aptec - an Ingram Micro Company
SMB VAD of the Year
Redington Value
Networking VAD of the Year
Westcon Group
Security VAD of the Year
Comguard
UC Infrastructure VAD of the Year
FVC
Storage VAD of the Year
StorIT
Information Security Specialist VAD of the Year
Spire Solutions
KVM solutions VAD of the Year
Wave Tech
Emerging VAD of the Year
FDC Provalue
Visionary VAD of the Year
SNB
Managed Services Provider of the Year
Dimension Data
Networking Integrator of the Year
Alpha Data
Storage Integrator of the Year
CondoProtego
Telecom Integrator of the Year
Prologix
Security Integrator of the Year
Paramount
Software Solutions Integrator of the Year
Finesse
Emerging Integrator of the Year
IBT
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The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 Cloud Computing Vendor of the Year Microsoft Gulf, the winner in the category is a company that has listed cloud as one of its key areas of focus and has an extensive array of cloud versions of its products which are promising to make more money for its partners.
Virtualization Vendor of the year VMware emerged on top not surprisingly in the category for continuing to play a key role in providing customers and partners in the region to reduce costs and enhance agility through Cloud and virtualization solutions.
Emerging VAD of the Year This award recognizes a company, FDC, that is fast building a strong value add focus though alliances with leading Technology vendors. The company has a strong broadline division but its value division, FDC ProValue is a recent venture that has started off on a strong footing, focusing on key verticals
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SMB Storage Vendor of the Year | NetApp
Please discuss your unified storage approach? As Big Data creates an evergrowing need for storage, efficient storage solutions are required to cater to the exponential market demand. Storage is a key conversation in most businesses regionally, although our strategies differ based on the kind of storage requirements individual companies are looking for. For example, shared-IT enterprise storage requires data management, virtualization and cloud integration capabilities while big data requires high-performance, dedicated storage with data management being performed at the application layer. Fadi Kanafani Regional Director, MENA & Pakistan, NetApp
NetApp emerged as the winner of the category SMB Storage Vendor of the Year. NetApp’s SMB strategy includes partnering to deliver the functionality and value of Enterprise Data Management Solutions which are ideal for missioncritical IT applications to the Mid-Market cost effectively. Fadi Kanafani, Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan at NetApp, accepted the award on behalf of the company. He speaks about the company’s focus areas
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providing greater value for their data center budgets. For example, FlexPod Express (a joint offering by NetApp and Cisco) provides a single, convenient, converged platform to manage the entire SME data infrastructure. It reduces the number of servers and storage capacity required for applications, simplifies overall infrastructure, optimizes architecture and accelerates deployment times, hence letting SMEs streamline their servers and storage to build a cost-effective IT infrastructure. Discuss your strategy towards flash based storage arrays? NetApp believes that flash is more
The storage champ Overall, cloud and flash storage solutions are leading the way; organizations in the region are migrating to cloud solutions and services at an unprecedented rate, while flash technologies are gaining popularity in order to drive better performance and greater consolidation of projects. NetApp is uniquely positioned to provide solutions for both through our varied portfolio, including our Clustered Data ONTAP universal data management platform, the new flash-accelerated FAS8000 series, and wide channel network in the region. Discuss you scalable storage solutions for SMB segment Converged systems are ideal for small and medium-size businesses in need of easy-to-deploy solutions that consolidate application and data requirements, while
than a technology, it’s an agenda. NetApp maximizes the value of flash across the entire compute, network, and storage stack with the industry’s most comprehensive flash portfolio, improving efficiency and accelerating businesscritical application performance. With “no one size fits all” approach to flash, we believe that customers will deploy the technology at every layer in the stack to solve a wide variety of challenges. For customers requiring the high performance and low latency of flash along with the enterprise reliability and extensive data management capabilities of Data ONTAP, all-flash configurations of the FAS8000 are available. For example, all-flash configurations of the FAS8080 EX and FAS8060 provide an ideal solution for desktop virtualization deployments with high IOPS and low latency
requirements or large database workloads. By offering a broad portfolio including both hybrid and all-flash storage offerings, NetApp is enabling IT organizations to optimize the level of performance, efficiency, and scalability to meet their specific needs. Discuss Netapp’s solutions for virtual environments? Virtualized and cloud environments need agile platforms with high availability as well as scalable storage, and converged infrastructure is well suited tothese environments. As converged infrastructure can be optimized for virtualization, cloud, and content storage, CIOs can also use it to support hybrid cloud computing. As data sets become bigger and the time required to access them shorter, converged infrastructure provides a critical edgein the business place. Discuss NetApp’s leadership in cloud integrated storage solutions? Cloud computing is at the forefront of a dramatic shift in IT, and NetApp is leading the way in terms of integrated cloud solutions. Cloud services, particularly those for enterprise applications, require a robust storage infrastructure that is available, efficient, and protected. By using a flexible and efficient data storage and management platform such as clustered Data ONTAP, enterprise organizations and service providers can remove risk and build a cloud storage platform that delivers high-performing, efficient, and scalable cloud services. NetApp Data ONTAP 8 software delivers a unified storage platform that enables unrestricted,
secure data movement across multiple cloud environments and paves the way for SoftwareDefined Data Centers, offering advanced performance, availability, and efficiency. According to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker for Q1, June 2014, NetApp Data ONTAP is used by more organizations globally than any other storage operating system. Benefits of clustered Data ONTAP include non-disruptive operations with upgrades and maintenance performed in the background, proven efficiency and seamless scalability. Do you see all flash arrays replacing hard disk based storage in enterprise data centers eventually or a hybrid approach the best fit solution? For customers who are looking for hybrid flash solutions, NetApp offers a variety of arrays including FAS2500 hybrid arrays that can simplify operations, increase productivity through superior integration with ecosystem, extend system life
and minimize future costs. Organizations can scale operations seamlessly as their needs evolve. What is the company’s channel strategy in the region? On of the key pillars of the NetApp channel strategy is a close cooperation with partners, which is a vital component for us to be successful together. Channel enablement is particularly important for NetApp in the region. We cover a large number of countries across the Middle East, North Africa & Pakistan and partners play a key role in supporting NetApp across these markets. We try to enable partners as much as possible, so that they are able to conduct their business independently if necessary. Our aim is to provide them with the tools to go beyond being ‘box-shippers’ to becoming technical consultants who are trusted advisors for the customers. This provides increased stability for our customer base and helps our partners grow as well.
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The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 Enterprise Networking Vendor of the Year The total enterprise networking market is set to exceed $50 billion, with growth across all categories, by 2017. Even as competition for the SDN space heats up, Cisco, the winner in this category is a company that has seen dominance across several main segments of enterprise networking and still commands close to 75% of the enterprise router market, and about 70% of the enterprise switch market.
Unified Communications Vendor of the Year With benefits outweighing the barriers to adoption, the unified communications (UC) segment continues to see a significant worldwide revenue increase. Avaya, the winner in the category is a company that focuses on productivity solutions that are innovative in the UC space. It focuses on bringing flexible, multimedium communications tools into a single strategic asset for enterprises and SMBs
Disaster Recovery and Backup Software Vendor of the Year While the growing volume of data, and storage capacity to service it, comes as no surprise, designing, deploying and managing backup, recovery and archive solutions for all that new data is driving growth for backup solutions. Symantec continues to effectively offer disaster recovery and backup and designed for both virtual and physical environments and was the deserving winner in this category.
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Data Management & Analytics Vendor of the Year For 2014, the worldwide software market is forecast to grow 5.9% year over year, driven largely by Big Data and analytics and enterprise applications. SAP, the winner of the category, provides a single platform for advanced real-time analytics, data warehousing, visualization and reporting and enterprise applications.
Video Conferencing Vendor of the Year Polycom, the winner in the category is a company that has long been known for its quality hardware products-- conference phones, video endpoints, telepresence systems and so on and is well placed to make further gains through its strategic vendor partnership in the UC space.
Client Security Software Vendor of the Year Kaspersky Lab, the winner of the category is a company whose enterprise security portfolio now includes a new expansion for Virtualization, which brings security technologies to virtual endpoints that were previously difficult to secure without sacrificing network performance.
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The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 DCIM Solutions Vendor of the Year ManageEngine with a portfolio that includes the software tools required to monitor and manage the data centreas well as capacity and performance of corporate WAN links, privileged passwords, and non-IT parameters as well as environmental parameters, was the winner of the category.
Enterprise VAD of the Year APTEC – an Ingram Micro Company emerged as the winner in this category is a true Value Added Distribution pioneer and has continued to lead through very positive and beneficial VAR relationships and is highly regarded by resellers in the region and beyond.
SMB VAD of the Year Redington Gulf polled the most votes in this category to emerge as the SMB VAD of the year. By successfully maintaining a vendor portfolio of brands that are able to offer scalable solutions as these businesses grow, the winner in the category has demonstrated the ability to leverage the capabilities of large international IT vendors with the needs of the local IT business community.
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Network Security Vendor of the Year | Dell SonicWALL
The primacy of redefining network security in a world made borderless by near ubiquitous connectivity and in the era of cloud services cannot be understated. Dell, the winner in the category is a vendor that offers an end to end portfolio from a next-generation to other leading security solutions including Data Protection and Encryption and Security Services, making it a great value proposition for its partners. Shahnawaz Sheikh, Regional Director, Dell SonicWALL Middle East & Turkey speaks about Dell’s security vision
Reimagined Security Please discuss the connected security vision of Dell? What are the various building blocks? In the connected world managing security needs with multiple point products and they operating in silos have fallen short. These approach creates gap forcing the organizations to manage each silo separately, leading to inefficiency and pointless complexities. Instead of reducing management time, cost and risks, they have opposite impact. Dell believes security should be managed differently, our security software solutions gives the organization the power to protect from endpoint to datacenter to cloud. Allowing multiple Dell products to seam-
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lessly correlate with each other to offer better compliance, efficiency and ability to detect and mitigate threats from diverse areas of network that eventually instruments to be an business enabler through rapid adoption of new technologies viz., BYOD, Cloud, end-point and more. Discuss how the various security appliances from SonicWALL are an integral part of that strategy? As a starting point the existing products of Dell SonicWALL are the good examples of basic connected security concept, with Email Security and End-Point Security are technically connected to the next generation Firewalls to
achieve better approach towards Data Leakage Prevention and securing endpoint devices. The future of Next Generation Firewall and Secure Remote Access products will play a much bigger role to simplify the complexities and enhance the efficiency of threat protection with Identity and Access management and endpoint management solutions. The whole gamut of these offerings would make us unique in our offering of multiple solutions but yet remain connected. Discuss about Dell’s secure mobile access solutions? Dell’s secure remote access solutions offer employees and extranet business partners Secure
Sockets Layer virtual private network (SSL VPN) access, delivering two-factor authentication to mission-critical resources from desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets that are corporate managed or personal devices and provide controlled access to applications and network resources by checking the user identity and security profile of the end point. The secure remote access products have become the integral part of BOYD strategies adopted by organizations of all sizes that can allow its users to use the Dell’s mobile connect app on the most common smartphones supporting IOS and Andriod. The same products can be used to achieve the disaster recovery deployments and cloud based access to achieve secured anytime anywhere access. How does this unified strategy to Network security impact engagements with regional customers? Does it impact their procurement of IT security solutions? The unified strategy to Network Security is an added advantage to the existing customers that have already invested in our products and solutions. With the introduction of connected security offering the very same products will start delivering better efficiency and threat prevention capabilities towards sophisticated attacks by an proactive approach by enhancing the functions of multiple products to deliver better security when they are connected. We strongly believe that there will be a positive impact on procurement, Network Architecture and Busi-
ness planning strategies towards acquiring IT security solutions. What have been the latest on the NGFW front? As we have already introduced our Gen 6 Next Gen Firewall hardware that offers hardware enhancement from CPU processing to port enhancements etc., that have replaced the old generation of NGFW, we continue to promote our successful SuperMassive series with 9000 series and 10000 series of products. The NSA 9000 series fill in the space of cost effective high powered and high speed Next Gen Firewalls that meets the needs of ever demanding Datacenters, Distributed Enterprises and Core and Perimeter Networks. We continue to deliver enhancements on all our Next Gen Firewall series of products ensuring that they are built to protect our customer’s networks to combat the latest and the most sophisticated threats on the block. Partners have come together in the dell partner direct program but elaborate trends among the regional partners in terms of extending their security portfolios and also accepting this one-stop network security solutions approach of Dell? For us it is an ongoing process to onboard and enable partners into Dell Partner Direct Program to support our ever growing product demand and business opportunities across the region. We also take this opportunity to understand the current offerings by our partners and find opportunities to create additional avenues that can bring additional revenue that
helps their business growth. So as long as the partner visualizes along with us the market potential of our innovative products and services and sees a strong growth future that paves way for a long term business association, we strategically encourage these partners towards additional competencies and attract them towards Dell software’s primary goal of been a one-stop trusted Network Security player who listens to its customers business needs and strives hard to deliver the best of breed technology and solutions that offers simplicity and affordability, all coming from one trusted name. Elaborate on solutions for securing virtual environments? Customer who wants to safeguard their most business-critical data and applications in virtual and hybrid environments. The Dell Software portfolio of products allows them to quickly capitalize on the cost-efficiency and scalability benefits of virtualization, while working within existing, hybrid environments. Our solutions reach across physical, virtual and cloud environments, providing stability now and in the future. Proven and scalable, these solutions serve as the backbone to protect tens of thousands of businesses worldwide, providing them options of deployments with most of our products fitting the virtual environment. Today our customers can order Email Security, Secure Remote Access, Central Management System and WAN Optimization products for virtual environments.
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SMB Networking Vendor of the Year | D-Link
SMB segment companies, like their enterprise counterparts require faster network speeds and a combination of wired and wireless networking infrastructure. D-Link brings a focus to this segment with its product portfolio and has been consistent in its regional strategies. Sakkeer Hussain, Sales & Marketing Manager D-Link Middle East & Africa discusses the details.
Strong Show What are your networking solutions for customers in the SMB segment? In general, D-Link is one of the few vendors who can truly offer end-to-end networking solutions, in the sense that the company carries networking products catering to any networking need, starting from “Wireless Routers” to “Structured Cabling Solutions” for consumers, SMB and Enterprise. D-Link’s Switching, Wireless, Security, IP Surveillance, Storage and Management Solutions deliver best-in-class performance in SMB the segment. D-Link offers an impressive suite of business class switches that provide the foundation for a full range of high-value network
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solutions. Built on the strength of these D-Link Network Switches, specific network solutions can help small and medium-sized businesses, hospitals, schools, universities and government agencies meet the challenge of growing demands and shrinking resources. D-Link offers unified wireless networking solutions that enable small and mediumsized businesses to create highly mobile, highlyproductive work environments at a low total cost of ownership. With products that provide excellent value across a wide range of scenarios, D-Link wireless networks are scalable, easy to deploy and manage – delivering reliable, secure connectiv-
ity, in a self-healing solution. Please elaborate the wireless controller’s suite of solutions that D-Link today offers in the region and the demand for such solutions? D-Link carries Unified Management Solutions, both softwareand hardware-based and caters to any networking need, from smaller to larger-sized projects. Management software like “AP Array” and “AP Manager” are bundled with standalone AP solutions - this provides an easy management on the AP’s, saving many hours spent on AP’s configuration. Simultaneously, we carry hardware controllers for wireless network management. Hardware
controller-based solutions offer features like Fast Roaming, Rouge AP Detection, Security Concerns and Bandwidth Management. D-Link also carries a wide array of access points, including Wireless N and 802.11AC solutions. Our access points are designed to meet the vertical segment, such as hospitality and large corporations and come in sleek designs, assuring that customer demands in terms of wireless bandwidth and their networking standards are being met. Discuss your focus on integrated IP surveillance? D-Link is one of the first vendors to introduce cloud-based mydlink IP cameras, which help endcustomers to deploy networking solutions with zero configurations while being able to access mydlink cameras on-the-go anywhere around the world. D-Link carries a wide variety of cameras under the D-Link mydlink series, available for different purposes - fixed, dome, pan/tilt/zoom, wired, wireless - and with higher megapixels. Simultaneously, DLink answers the needs of larger organizations and verticals with a wide assortment of businessrange IP cameras, available as per their requirements in wired/ wireless, with features like color night vision, as Dome, BOX, Fast Dome, Bullet series featuring vari focal, WDR, and DI/ DO supported interfaces. How are your IP Telephony solutions are being positioned? Are they targeting SMB customers? Overall, IP Telephony allows users to make and receive phone calls using the Internet Protocol to
transmit speech and helps to integrate voice and data applications. In the recent years, D-Link’s IP Telephony has been a costeffective solution to facilitate the communication between businesses. In addition, it is easy to implement/ expand up on existing networks, which reduces cost on organizations in deploying/scaling up the solution. D-Link offers many powerful features and capabilities under the Asterisk-based IP-PBX solution, which is license-free, catering to SOHO/SMB and Enterprise project requirements. We provide IP-PBX solutions from 20-user Corporate SMB networks up to 900-user enterprise user networks. We work
delivery and project implementation. Is the cloud solution today available for Business customers? At this moment our Cloud solutions are focused on home users, butin the near future, we will expand our services, so they will become accessible for our SMB customers as well. Do you offer the switches portfolio as well as the KVM solutions in this region? Yes, we do offer all kinds of switches and KVM solutions in the entire Middle East and Africa region.
“Our R&D departments are eagerly researching new trends and technologies, working out plans with higher management, production and suppliers to create innovative products that offer new benefits to our business and consumer networking customers.”
with our trusted partners and offer comprehensive trainings on our PBX platform, which has helped to position ourselves well in the SMB segment in the region. What is your distribution strategy to focus on SMB Business customers? SMB projects are handled through our distributors, partners and system integrators supported by our dedicated in-house SMB pre-sales and technical team. This strategy has proven to be an effective way to streamline services and shorten the time span between order,
Any immediate plans to extend the range of solutions you offer Business customers in the region? We are constantly working on extending our product range and portfolio in line with new market requirements. Our R&D departments are eagerly researching new trends and technologies, and are working out plans with the higher management, production and suppliers to create innovative products that offer new benefits to our business and consumer networking customers.
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WAN Optimization Vendor of the Year | Riverbed
Bedrock of Strength The Award recognizes WAN optimization and the key role this technology plays in securing and protecting company investments in data centre resources. The winner is a company that has unique WAN optimization solutions able to span mobile workers, branch offices, and datacentres, both physical and virtual, allowing the distributed workforce to collaborate in real time. Taj Elkhayat, MD, Riverbed Middle East, Turkey, North, West and Central Africa explains.
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Discuss the evolution of the Riverbed offering and technology in the recent past The last few years have seen a lot of changes. Two years-two years ago we were very focused on the WAN optimization controller business. Although SteelHead remains one of our key products we take to the market, it also ties very well with the new value proposition that we are providing around a technology called the Locationindependent Computing (LiC). LiC provides the ability for users to have access to information and data anywhere from any device but have the same LAN-line experience as if they are accessing applications from their desktops. So when we look at the evolution, the last three years we have been learning a lot from being in
customers’ networks. The beauty of our SteelHeadtechnology is that it sees everything that happens from point to point because it sits between the data centre and the branch-so all the information flowing we get to see. In this case, what are some of the challenges have you noticed with customers? We have noted a lot of challenges on both the sending and receiving side. This includes a lot of challenges that are facing the enterprise such as application performance degradation. There are a lot of friction between network teams and application teams wherever a problem happens in terms of responsibility for the failure, where the actual problem is, etc. At Riverbed, we’ve learned a
lot since we have that visibility and we are working to create a proper platform for our customers to be able to address these challenges in a fast manner. Consequently, we came up with the Application Performance Platform. Since now we have more than one product that looks at the many differentcomponents of the network, we created this Platform and we are trying to make this the foundation that provides the best LiC experience for our customers. Please discuss in brief what Application Performance Platform entails Application Performance Platform basically has the mandate to ensure that the business objectives of customers are met through the ability to have applications be mission-critical and not just a technical burden. LiC for us is also the ability of us to make sure that applications perform as expected at all times. The second thing is that the data that’s required by users anywhere they are is always available. In addition, the ability to predict challenges before they get to the end user and fix them before the end user feels like there’s a problem happening in the network is crucial. To make these three areas happen, we have to work with Application Performance Platform which for us is about analysing, diagnosing and resolving the problem. As virtualization grows, discuss how Riverbed is enabling the virtualization journey for customers SteelApp is our Virtual Application Delivery Controller that is 100% software-based that fits
very well into the whole Software Defined Network strategy. It’s a uniquely strong product as it does provisioning of licensing, of managing load balancing and the provisioning as well to make surethat those organizations that require elasticity for cloud-based load balancing and global load balancing are taken care of. When a customer is tied to an appliance like some of our competitors, they will have to make choices of overbuying higher capacity and hoping one day they will be able to utilize it. With Riverbed SteelApp, you have to provision for what you need right now, a far cost-effective proposition. Our flexible licensing
every division will have to buy a box they may or may not use and they won’t realize their ROI. Discuss some technology partnerships you have in place to provide a more comprehensive solution platform Part of our platform is how we work with our partners with companies such as VMware, EMC, VDI Solutions providers or with Microsoft around Exchange optimization. We have within our organization a professional services team that has the ability to support products and customers in deployment around our complete platform. This includes value
“Our flexible licensing scheme enables organizations to use their throughput purchases for load balancing that can be shared between different departments whereas if they go with the appliancebased application controller, every division will have to buy a box.”
scheme enables organizations to use their throughput purchases for load balancing that can be shared between different departments in different divisions. In the case of a university for instance, where registration is at its peak, the institution does not need to go and purchase a dedicated appliance that they will only use twice a year. They can buy throughput they require through a very flexible licensing scheme which they can share throughout the divisions whereas if they go with the appliance-based application controller,
added services all the way up to advanced services like engineers, experts, application designers etc. We have changed from being a mono-product company, dealing in only one optimization controller, by leveraging our experienceon how we can offer Location-independent Computing. We see ourselves as enablers for other technologies to be successfully utilized by enterprises. We are the cure for the challenges a lot of these virtualised applications services end up creatingto enable them perform well.
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Power Solutions Vendor of the Year | APC
Thierry Chamayou ITB VP, MEA, Central & Eastern Europe Schneider Electric
Data centre power solutions continue to evolve together with the rest of the data centre and today the humble PDU represents a true technological marvel. The winner is a company thatoffers solutions to manage thepower and cooling of businesscritical infrastructure and isamong the top three indatacentre infrastructure management. Thierry Chamayou, Vice President - ITB Vice President - Middle East,Africa, Central & Eastern Europe, Schneider Electric explains how the company is powering the next generation of data centres.
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APC’s new Power-play What are your power solutions for the datacentre and for enterprise clients? Our portfolio includes a vast range including UPS systems, rack and cooling solutions, cabling and connectivity products, as well as KVM, PDU and Console Servers and network management software. As a leader in UPS technology and the highest investor in R&D, APC by Schneider Electric is consistently improving the lineup and capability of our UPS devices. For instance intelligent power consumption monitoring is something which our clients have been requested for. Additionally, we have added new features for additional power-monitoring and energy-efficiency.
As a result of these implementations our solutions now offer potential efficiency performance of more than 97 percent, the ability to manage how non-critical loads affect power consumption, alerts that recommend battery replacement dates, and LCD displays for added visualization for monitoring. An additional new feature is the ‘double boost’ and ‘single trim’ Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) that instantly corrects voltage fluctuations. Backed up by APC’s strong after-sales service including free online and phone technical support, all units come with a comprehensive warranty. Do you see the datacentre Business growing in the region?
Yes, most definitely and the data center is taking centre stage as we look for cost-effective solutions, speed and simplicity, complexity of greater heterogeneity and density, IT and facilities convergence, standardization, flexibility, modularity, and smart grid demand response. These fundamentals are fuelling the growth in cloud-computing, co-location and outsourcing, consolidation, density and virtualization. Datacentres are a cornerstone for businesses, and as demand for storage and operation continues to expand. We are seeing enterprise IT trend towards virtualization, which will result in booming demand for costeffective solutions, speed and simplicity, efficiency of scale, and overall energy consciousness. Elaborate how power and cooling solutions are relevant in virtualized data centres with higher server IO throughput? Data centres are big consumers of energy for its cooling and the maintenance costs can sometimes be as much as half the cost of the data centre equipment. However with data center virtualization this cost can be reduced and energy saved by upto 50 per cent of the total consumption of a traditional data centre. Data center virtualization creates dynamic pools of processing, storage and networking resources, which can be applied as needed, when needed, to applications. Energy efficiency is now a crucial element for datacentre operators who are constant revising their operational strategies and fundamental metrics by which they measure the level of operational efficiency. In this
respect we are seeing, and urging the shift toward using Data Centre Usage Effectiveness (DCUE) model instead of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data Centre Infrastructure Efficiency (DCIE) models. In addition developments in cloud computing is driving business for most datacentres in the region who provide colocation, outsourcing and hosted services. It helps enterprises reduce costs on both CapEx and OpEx, which are also high on the agenda. At Schneider Electric our solutions enable savings of up to 10-20 per cent on CapEx and 20-25 per cent on OpEx, whilst
equipped toimplement stateof-the-art BO facility across any verticals. We were able to draw from our vast expertise and experience in the region to choose the right technologies, further complementing these choices in the integration between hardware and software. StruxureWare’s scalability offers peace of mind our clients and are comfortable in the knowledge that future equipment add-ons, moves, and changes can take place relatively seamlessly with little impact on operations. Besides server optimization, StruxureWare offers clients realtime monitoring of server status
“In addition developments in cloud computing is driving business for most datacentres in the region who provide co-location, outsourcing and hosted services. It helps enterprises reduce costs on both CapEx and OpEx, which are also high on the agenda.” delivering service reliability levels of 99.999% Which of the customer verticals are strongly investing in datacentre upgrades in the region? Discuss also your strength in those verticals? Regional governments and public utility services are investing in datacentre upgrades in the region. We have several government deployments over the last few years and these include Khalifa Port Data Centre and Oman Data Park. As an end-to-end solutions provider of data centres we are
for information on utilization, uptime, power consumption, and costs. The detailed information enables instant identification of under-utilized or idle servers ideal for consolidating or retiring servers and virtual machines. Elaborate on any recent product announcements of late? Schneider Electric recently announced at HP Discover that the integration of its Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution, StruxureWare for Data Centres, with HP’s Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB), is complete.
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The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 Storage VAD of the Year The winner of the award for a second year in a row, StorIT Distribution FZCO has allied with leading storage vendors and continues to provide a suite of solutions & services that enable enterprises large and small to store, protect & manage business critical data, and harness the value of information.
KVM Solutions VAD of the Year KVM switches are an integral part of a data center’s infrastructure. The growth of Virtualisation and the rise of mixed environments – physical and virtual is only accentuating the importance of KVM solutions that can managed these mixed environments. The winner of the category is Wave Tech, a distributor of networking products and with a strong portfolio of KVM connectivity solutions.
Networking Integrator of the Year To bring all networking parts together requires some high level of expertise and an integrator that has access to world class hardware and software from a large number of vendors. The winner in this category is Alpha Data, one of the largest multi-disciplined systems integrators in the region and has accreditation with some of the biggest names in this space.
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Information Security Solutions VAD of the Year | Spire Solutions Recognizing the growing eminence of Information Security, this category applauds a domain specialist distributor who is focused only on the Information Security software solutions niche and focuses on solutions that range from SIM to vulnerability management, penetration testing etc. Sanjeev Walia, Director and CEO of winner Spire Solutions discusses how a clear focus is helping the company stay ahead of the competition
Laser-Sharp Focus Discuss Spire’s strengths in the Security Solutions space We are focused entirely on information security solutions and services and provide holistic solutions to the customer who might include the solutions that we carry and other solutions we may not carry. Our focus is to perform as a consultant and partner to our customers and resellers. As an exclusive security solutions company, our unique strength is that we understand what the customer problems are and we’ve been able to position our framework to assist customers in meeting their challenges and requirements around the whole gamut of PoC, pre-sales support and bring it to a level where the customer is ready to buy from the reseller. Discuss the strength of your active partner network and steps to increase the same We are adding a partner almost every 15 days with partners who we have done business with numbering over 125. We have SIs
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in our reseller channel that are focused on information security as well as other system integrators involved in networking and hardwareand licensing. We also have MSSPs(Managed Security Service Providers) as partners in addition to other smaller resellers-so we have the whole range of partners in our eco-system. The MSSP segment is admittedly small at the moment but there’s a huge potential for these services. However there’s a challenge in more widespread adoption of MSSPs in the lack of trained resources. There are organizations investing in very good point solutions but there’s no means to maintain and operationalize it; security is not a solution that you implement and then just walk away-you need to be engaged long after that and also work to improve it. As a value added distributor, what does value mean to Spire We need to add value not just to our customers but also to the technology partners. There are
Sanjeev Walia Director & CEO, Spire Solutions distributors who pride themselves as value-add distributors but then they have 70-80 products in their portfolio. Undoubtedly, they are not able to do justice with any of them and they are reduced to a box-moving operation. We are focused on maximum 6-8 solutions an optimum level with which we can add value to the customer to help our stakeholders as well as our technology partners. One of the things we have been successful at, and much appreciated by customers, has been our closeness to the customer who is aware that there’s somebody who actually knows the product and is close to them. Customers knowthey can get the solution in the region by simply picking up the phone and know that at the other end of the line,they are speaking to an expert. More than a distributor, we are the product and this is where the real value comes in.
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Visionary VAD of the Year | SNB Middle East SNB Middle East, a company that has a dedicated focus in areas including IP surveillance and storage and is fast emerging as a distributor of scale with reach into several markets was chosen as the winner of this category. Abdul Rauf Chougle, Group General Manager discusses the company’s growth and focus.
Fast track growth Please elaborate on the milestones achieved in terms of growth over the year? Last year has been an extremely successful year for SNB. In 201314, our business not only grew by almost 100%, but also helped us grow our market reach and product portfolio. SNB now has an office in Riyadh catering the ever-exciting KSA market with local sales and technical resources. Last year was also very positive in terms of the new tie-ups, namely leading brands like EVault, Extreme Networks, GTB Technologies and Cyberoam coming into our portfolio. Elaborate on the storage portfolio you hold as of now? Do you have solutions to address different requirements from SMB and enterprise segments? SNB’s Data-Storage portfolio comprises of Disk, Tape and Backup & Recovery solutions. We represent Nexsan and Infortrend on Disk, TandbergData on Tape and EVault on Backup & Recovery. All brands we represent have products
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to address SMB and Enterprise requirements. What are the value-add service you provide your partners? SNB has always been a Value-Add distributor along with being an end-to-end solution provider. SNB has a strong technical team to offer pre and post-sales technical support to all our partners. SNB also offers sales and technical trainings to partners and also helps by getting involved in enduser interactions. Besides data storage and recovery solutions as well as networking solutions and IP security, which are the domains that you are looking to extend into? Besides Data-Storage, Security Surveillance and Networking, SNB is now a well-established distributor for IT security solutions. Currently, SNB offers IRM (Information Rights Management), DLP (Data Leakage Prevention) and UTM (Unified Threat Management) solutions in the IT security segment.
Abdul Rauf Chougle Group General Manager, SNB Also, SNB is in the process of expanding into the Cloud Storage Services segment with EVault as the first brand in this segment. Elaborate on the new vendor associations you built up over the past year SNB has been very successful in terms of signing up new vendors in the last one year. SNB signed up with Extreme Networks for its entire range of Networking products, GTB Technologies for DLP (Data Leakage Prevention), Cyberoam for UTM (Unified Threat Management), Evault for Backup and Recovery and Infosec for its range of UPS. Discuss your expansion initiatives such as the Kenya office opened in the past year? Kenya office is so far just a sales office and still depends on the UAE operations for support. The plan is to grow it into a full-fledged branch in 2015.
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The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 Networking VAD of the Year Westcon Group, a value-added distributor of category-leading unified communications, network infrastructure, data center and security solutions emerged as the winners of the Networking VAD of the Year. With a comprehensive stack of solutions from many leading networking vendors,the Westcon Way of recruit, enable & grow methodology lays great emphasis on value add services.
UC Infrastructure VAD of the Year FVC has been for several years now a leader in the UC solutions in the market. It has built on great vendor partnerships and consistent performance. FVC was the winner of this category for offering bringing together a broad communication suite to the market, helping clients to collaborate, enhance productivity and save time.
Security VAD of the Year The category recognizes a generalist Value Added Distributor that has a broad suite of solutions for the Enterprise is bringing both security hardware appliances and software to provide the client with a complete solution. Comguard is the winner of the category.
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Managed Services Provider of the Year | Dimension Data
Youssef Fawaz Managing Director, Dimension Data ME
Dimension Data, the winner in this category is a company that offers an extensive managed services portfolio includes several globally standardised managed services products in specific technology domains – including networks, data centres, security, visual communications, unified communications and collaboration and contact centres. Youssef Fawaz, Managing Director, Dimension Data Middle East discusses the company’s focus
Whole New Dimension Discuss portfolio of Managed services that Dimension Data provides globally and in the region? Dimension Data’s support, managed, and IT outsourcing lines of services are closely interrelated. We use the same platforms, systems, processes and delivery teams to deliver all three service types. Our lines of service portfolios include both standard (‘productised’) services and customised services. Dimension Data’s services portfolio is replicated globally, which is a unique offer for our clients spanning not just locally, but also globally. Dimension Data’s support, managed and IT outsourcing services portfolio includes IT Outsourcing spanning Transition and transformation, service aggregation & cross functional services across the network communications tower, the data centre tower, the end user compute tower, the contact centre tower & BPO. Managed Services include IT service management, assessments and consulting, across
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enterprise networks, security infrastructure, Cisco unified communications, Microsoft Lync, Data Centre, Contact Centre and Custom services per client. Support Services, include IT support, assessments and consulting for Uptime Maintenance, Uptime Support, Insite predictive support and Insite pre-emptive support. Dimension Data also includes multi vendor service management and contract aggregation on behalf of our clients. What is the demand scenario for various Managed services that you provide regionally? The demand varies from country to country. In response to the UAE, Dimension Data sees much demand for support services, that is, for the support of technology devices. The requirement for Managed Services, that is, for the management of process outcomesis still not in high demand locally. A focus on moving from a pure support contract to a managed services contract could add significant value to a clients’ business.
You offer standardized services in 6 domains while also giving the option for custom services. Discuss if customers regionally prefer the standard modules or whether they opt for custom ones? Our experience in the local market is that clients are opting in for standard support services, mainly focused on SLA management and commitment, and not exploring the benefits attributed to custom services or managed services. Currently, the requirements most clients have are focused on support services for the support of technology devices. Most clients usually predefine this. Dimension Data is able to further extract benefits to the IT estate for our clients through custom services, or through offering our managed services portfolio. What are the Managed services you provide for datacenters in this region? Does it cover both large and smaller sized datacenters? Dimension Data focuses on small, medium and large data centres
source engagement, spanning all domains, with regional client engagements.
for our clients – as long as the benefit to the business is realized. Locally, Dimension Data includes the management of the physical data centre infrastructure as part of the managed services offered in the Data Centre Space. Dimension Data’s managed services within the data centre includes the management of infrastructure such as servers, messaging, print & file servers, storage management, legacy/mid range servers, identity management and SQL database services. Dimension Data also offers managed virtual infrastructure services to our clients. In addition to this, Dimension Data’s Managed Cloud Platform offers our client expertise in deploying fully managed cloud platforms including private, hybrid and public cloud services. Are enterprise customers comfortable with the idea of outsourcing such services? Which verticals do you find most proactive in the region in terms of adopting such services? There is a demand for these services across multiple verticals. By adopting these services our clients benefit by extracting benefits that include the exploitation
of the data centre infrastructure – to the strategic advantage of their business, the realisation of the return on investment expected from a data centre technology environments, more efficient deployment of IT staff; access to the best skills in the market, providing a clear path to the cloud, a single point of contact, a proactive approach to service delivery, a consistent service delivery due to alignment of all services to the IT Instrastructure Library (ITIL) and flexible service levels that enable our clients to choose the service level that their budget and business requirements matches. Are there customers regionally who you offer services across all the 6 domains that you focus on? There are no current clients locally that procure services from Dimension Data across all the six domains. Many of our clients explore support service engagements with Dimension Data in the Enterprise network, security and unified communications space. As the market moves to the need for commercial outcomes and transformation, we expect to see more IT out-
Discuss any recent or expected announcements around Managed Services from Dimension Data? Dimension Data announced that it will launch Enterprise Mobilityas-a-Service (EMaaS), signalling its intent to provide a suite of cloud-based end-user computing services on a global basis. EMaaS establishes the platform for the group’s future initiatives that will see Dimension Data announce increased functionality and feature sets that assist enterprise clients to deal with their rapidly changing end user computing requirements. Dimension Data’s EMaaS offering is an integrated enterprise mobility management service that provides organisations with the ability to deliver comprehensive policy-based, deviceindependent, mobile device management, mobile expense management, integration to the enterprise and underpinned by true cloud principles of automation and consumption-based commercials. The service, which utilises a cloud-based consumption model, enables organisations to rapidly scale deployments while easily managing the complex environment of mobile devices, data access and expense management. Due to the complex nature of mobility deployments, the EMaaS offering is complemented by Dimension Data’s Systems Integration and Professional Services competencies and addresses the full spectrum of an organisation’s enterprise mobility needs.
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Software Solutions Integrator of the Year | Finesse
Fine-Tuned Vision The award category recognizes excellence in the domain of software and applications integration. Finesse, the winner is a global IT system integration company providing Analytics, Big Data, Cloud, Mobile & Social Media solutions and has been a Red Herring Top 100 Asia Winner as well. The company provides Technology Solutions and services to Banking, Education, Energy, Healthcare, Hospitality and Retail segments. Sunil Paul, Co-Founder & COO of Finesse shares the details.
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Discuss your verticals of focus We primarily are in 5 verticals; BFSI, Education, Energy, Healthcare & Hospitality, out of which Energy & Hospitality are quite new initiatives. However 70% of our business today comes from BFSI domain where we started from. After achieving a clear lead in the BFSI domain, we have expanded to other sectors as well. We have identified that Technology enhancements can bring in tremendous efficiency, cost savings and customer satisfaction into these domains and we could play a significant role there. We have also noticed that investments in these sectors could help us to meet our global growth aspirations.
What has been the strengths of Finesse since its inception? Since inception, we have been always a boutique company providing unique solutions & system integration services in our domains. We have been instrumental in bringing in quite innovative solutions into this region including Big Data Analytics, Social Media Monitoring, Customer Experience Management among others. Our technical expertise combined with excellent domain knowledge has been considered as our strength by our clients against our competitors. Discuss your focus on cloud enabling some of the solutions you deliver? We are always at the forefront
of offering our solutions on cloud. Most of our solutions are available on cloud model and we continuously run a campaign called ‘Pay By use’. Our ‘Pay By Use’ solutions include for BI & Analytics, Enterprise Content Management, Governance Risk & Compliance.. etc. We have also launched a solution which can seamlessly migrate conventional on-premises applications into cloud model. What are the social media and mobile focus in solutions you provide? We have a range of solutions for the social media starting from social media enablement, social media monitoring, social media real time analytics etc. We also can set up and manage social media command centers for large institutions & enterprises. Our mobility solutions run across various platforms and include for Mobile Banking, Personal Finance Manager, Digital concierge etc.. We also help organizations to enable their business applications onto mobile platforms. We have recently launched state of the art BYOD solutions which will ensure a consistent user experience across all the customers’ channels. Which have been the strong growth areas/ verticals for you in the region? We see tremendous growth in the areas of BI & Analytics, Enterprise Content Management and GRC ( Governance, Risk & Compliance areas ). BFSI, Education & Healthcare sectors are always being growth sectors for us..however with Expo 2020 around the corner, we see
lot of technology enhancement projects coming from Hospitality sector as well. Besides the Middle East, which are the other markets you have operations and focus upon? Our India operations have started picking up. We already have a few banking and other clients there. We have started our Canada operations an year ago and have received our first few deals. We have recently opened an office in Singapore and started functioning. We are hoping to launch our Africa operations also very soon. What is the focus on predictive
and dislikes, the idea of using this data for consumer insights is becoming increasingly enticing to marketers. We offer a wide range of sentiment and content analysis tools, predictive models as well as dashboards and reporting features for analyzing the growing stream of social media data. What are the managed services you provide and among which verticals do you have most focus and customer base? We offer a range of managed services to our clients and this some times go beyond the boundaries of pure IT services as well as we focus on the overall process
“We also help organizations to enable their business applications onto mobile platforms. We have recently launched state of the art BYOD solutions which will ensure a consistent user experience across all the customers’ channels.”
and social Media analytics- discuss trends of actual deployments in region? As social activation is soaring, organizations are eagerly listening to what is being said about them and their brands and searching for ways to take advantage of all this BIG data. While there have been several successful cases across the globe, region is just started up with their initial deployments and that’s where we see our opportunities and there by our focus is. As more people offer up posts and tweets about their likes
improvement and cost effectiveness. We have engaged with most of the financial institutions in the regioin providing them managed services in several functional areas. These include Post Dated Cheques Management, Processing Cheques through ICCS, Physical Cheques Reconcilliation, Nostro / GL / ATM / Cards Reconciliation, Cash Management Unit Processes, Factoring Department Processes, Credit Analysis & Processing Services, Treasury Back Office Services, Data Cleansing & Data Integrity Management Services etc.
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Storage Integrator of the Year | Condo Protego
Full stack storage solutions Condo Protego is the leading regional ‘consultative solutions provider’. From enterprise to SME-sized customers, Condo Protego focuses on data storage, virtualization, security, and data protection. Savitha Bhaskar, General Manager, Condo Protego speaks about the company’s strengths.
Storage is your biggest focus as an SI – what are the end to end offerings around storage integration? We at Condo Protego focus on the full Data stack with solutions like Data Storage Platforms, Data Protection, Data Archival, Data Security, High Availablility and Disaster Recovery. Condo Protego stands out in the market with a unique approach, discussing issues and objectives with customers before coming up with a design-led solution and complementing it with the best post-implementation support around.
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Do you see more customers focusing on storage consolidation/virtualisation? Storage consolidation and Virtualization is an ongoing effort, and there is never a final setup as such. As datacenter changes in terms of applications and Servers, so too does the Storage Layer. Are datacenters focusing on storage virtualisation in their upgrade efforts? What percentage on an average do you see Virtualisation of storage in Datacentres – is that on the way up? Yes definitely this is a busy area.
As mentioned above in our view Storage consolidation is a never-ending process. Everyone understands and sees the benefits like simplification and ease of operational management andcost reduction through better utilization that consolidation and virtualization brings and it is an easy story to tell. Elaborate on your services around Security and Data protection? While we have had a strong base of customers using security solutions from us for a number of
years we have not really focused on this. However from Q2 of 2013 we set up a focused Security Practice and are now looking to build this to same levels of strength and capability as our availability business, fully self-sufficient and able to work with customers to design, deliver, implement and provide local support for the solutions that we offer, thus proving the customer a true local solutions partner, not simply a product reseller. We believe that we must be doing something right as in Q2 2014, just a year later, we took some key orders for a range of security solutions from all three of our key suppliers, including an RSA SIEM solution at a major financial institution, a large Websense web solution from a key government account, a Symantec DLP solution and a new Symantec Protection Suite win both in Abu Dhabi. Discuss some of the key verticals of focus over the years? Any major client wins that you would be willing to discuss in the past year as highlights? We have customers across all verticals and each of these continues to grow. Naturally our core Enterprise base of customers in verticals such as finance, energy, education and local group companies continue to be our key verticals as by definition these larger organisations have the greater needs for the storage and protection of their data.
What are the strengths of the company in the domains you address? Our objective remains unchanged, so whilst we work closely with our vendor partners we are completely self-sufficient in our technical capability to be able to work with customers to design, deliver, implement and provide local support for
have consciously not chosen to expand outside this market as we do not wish to dilute our focus and dilute our value to our customers. Instead we would rather do more within this market. We however have aflourishing Consulting Practice and we do consulting engagements all over the region including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other gulf countries
“whilst we work closely with our vendor partners we are completely self-sufficient in our technical capability to be able to work with customers to design, deliver, implement and provide local support for the solutions that we offer.�
the solutions that we offer, thus providing the customers, a true local solutions partner, not simply a product reseller. What is the scale of operations of the company in UAE and other markets you address? What is the team strength in terms of consultants and others? We are the key Enterprise partner for our two major suppliers in UAE, this has come from the setup we have in place for both technical delivery and Account management. UAE has been and is our primary market. We
and are not looking to expand this to Africa. While EMC and Symantec are among the key vendors you are allied with, please discuss some other brands you have partnered with in the current year? There has been no new addition. We believe we already have the best and most appropriate alliances, but the focus includes Quantum for tape libraries for a complete storage solution and with the sharper focus on security we are working more closely with Websense and RSA.
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The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 Telecom Integrator of the Year The Winner, Prologix, is a company that offers service capabilities for the telecom vertical and works closely with a number of major telcos in the region which include test equipment rentals to benchmarking, in-building solutions, EMF testing, transmission planning, professional trainings, IT managed services and many more
Security Integrator of the Year The award category recognizes an SI who has a focused practice around providing a comprehensive suite of security solutions and services to customers and is allied with leading vendors. Paramount Computer Systems, the winner in the category is a regional provider of Technology and Services for securing the Information Assets of Enterprises and has won several industry accolades over the years for excellence.
Emerging System Integrator of the Year This award goes to Intelligent Business Technologies,a young company that has swiftly grown its portfolio of services over the past few years and has customers across the region. It today provides turnkey solutions and expertise in domains including infrastructure solutions, cloud computing deployments, telephony, BPO etc.
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The Integrator ICT Awards 2014 | Event Snapshot
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