PLUS
Dell Enhances Focus on SME Market /10 www.smechannels.com
india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 02
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ISSUE 02
SME CHAT
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APRIL 2011
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RS. 20/-
/37
IBM: IBM’s mid-market strategy revolves around triple play
SME CHAT /42 Globus: “Our Core strength Lies in our Manufacturing and Strong R&D“
SME BIZ
/44
APC: Vision is to be Energy Manager to the Customers
CLOUD COMPUTING
OPPORTUNITY
FOR PARTNERS Cloud Computing will enable channel partners to engage more closely with customers and move up the value chain by providing consulting and integration services. /26
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Enterprise
Communication Solutions
Siemens Enterprise Communications has a broad portfolio of infrastructure solutions to help you increase collaboration and productivity. Our Enterprise Communication Solutions include:
Voice Solutions: KTS, EPABX and IP PBX (HiPath Series)
Phones and Clients
We provide voice solutions for Small, Medium and Large enterprises scalable from 8 users to 100,000 users. Explore our voice portfolio that includes HiPath 1100, HiPath 3000, HiPath 4000 and OpenScape Voice
We offer a range of Phones and Clients that deliver the highest levels of functionality and flexibility; and are designed to provide your organization a rich GUI
Secure Wired and Wireless Network
Rich Media Collaboration
Our Enterasys Networking Solutions offer convergence, compliance and connectivity. The portfolio includes comprehensive service-oriented switching, routing and wireless network infrastructure
We offer complete solutions ranging from video conferencing, board room automation and large display walls for control center environment. We also offer a complete suite of professional services ranging from 'network readiness check for video deployment' to 'network audit'
Communication for the open minded Siemens Enterprise Communications www.siemens-enterprise.com
Siemens Enterprise Communications Pvt. Ltd. is a Trademark Licensee of Siemens AG
Head Office: Mr. Asheesh Pandia (130, P. B. Marg, Worli, Mumbai-18. Ph: 022-2498 7230 or email to asheesh.pandia@siemens-enterprise.com)
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PLUS
M.Tech to Distribute Allot Products /14 www.smechannels.com
india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 02
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ISSUE 02
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APRIL 2011
CASE STUDY
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RS. 20/-
/24
Tally: “Tally.ERP 9 has made my dreams come true.”
SME CHAT
/40
Dell:“There is a Great Opportunity for us to work with our Partners”
TREND SETTER
/47
Jamcracker: India has huge potential for cloud computing
MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL
WHAT IS THERE IN THE FUTURE? SANJAY MOHAPATRA editor@smechannels.com
Do you know what is stored in the future for you? As a business community, you must be pinning hopes on each coming day to bring good business to you. Every day will surely bring business to you but you cannot guarantee how good business you will get. There are natural and man-made obstructions to it. As a business partner, you must agree that 10-12 year back the margin was too high though the volume was very low. Now the things are just opposite - volumes are high but margin has gone down. Even your very business is challenged by competition like retail and online sales. You can say Phew! It is not good enough in India! But time is not far that your customers will be seen walking to the large malls and buying from the online stores. Ideally these competitions should be complementing to you. However, everything has a life cycle and channel business is going through its cycle also. It has to evolve from the existing mode. This issue of SME Channels is dedicated to cloud computing and channel profitability. Here, we want to influence people to understand the market dynamics and react to it before it is too late. One: customers are becoming tech savvy; therefore the virtual world is becoming more popular. Properties like YouTube, Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon.com, ebay.com are being visited by people from Indian more than anywhere else. Second: customers – be it enterprises or consumers are trying to find out justification for every rupee they are spending. So the natural recline in terms of on- premise hardware or software cycle is happening but it is not so bad, reason being the geography and customers’ potential is too huge to make this market dry up. But to check the business from being a victim of natural decay and build upon the growth, the entrepreneurs have to accept the future technology trends. Today, disaster in Japan has stopped corporates hailing from that country to spend on marketing. This means for time being you will lose your business advantage and your economics is impacted – remember your operating margin is too low. So the teaching is that, geographic expansion ¬and looking out for alternative business within the IT domain is mandatory. In order to make it happen the entrepreneurs have to invest time in sharpening their knowledge base.
Canon PowerShot S95 BUYING SOMETHING IS always difficult task. Specially, when you are buying consumer electronics and digital entertainment products, it is even worse. But at times you feel good holding it and out of instinct, you buy that. Canon PowerShot S95 falls into that category where you feed good to have it. In fact, in the small form factor, it is a pocket rocket camera. S95 comes with scroll wheels like D-SLR cameras. The S95 takes an average of 2.33 seconds to shoot. The point and shoot camera is a 10MP camera with HD Video capturing option. For social gatherings and functions, you can really take photographs and video, and easily upload to all social sites. S95 offers direct access to a variety of shooting modes from its main dial, from fully automatic to full manual.
SPECIFICATIONS In the compact range, the camera comes with 10MP resolution and 3.75x optical zoom. FINAL WORDING Two things actually enhances its value i.e. HD Video capability and the wheel in the centre of the camera, which gives it a feeling of D-SLR at the small form factor. OVERALL RATING
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contents
APR VOLUME 02 ISSUE 02
2011
ER COV RY STO
india’s first IT magazine for sme business
Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Executive Editor: Smruti Chaudhury Copy Editor: Neil D’Souza Design and Development: Ravi Kumar Visualizer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Senior Manager: M Raj Executive- Marketing: Rajat Kumar Circulation and Printing: Panchanan Bhoi SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/101, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 9313891660 E-mail: raj@smechannels.com Bangalore Subrat S NO.661, 10th Main, 5th cross, 4th Block, Koramangala, Behind Old Maharaja, Bangalore-560034 Phone: 9886107294 Mumbai Hemal Shah B/14, Neel Ashish 92, J.P.road, Andheri (West) Mumbai - 400058 info@smechannels.com Kolkata S Subhendu BC-286, Laxmi Apartment, Kestopur Kolkata-700101 Phone: 9674804389 EDITORIAL OFFICE
Cloud Computing: An Opportunity for Partners
Delhi: 6/102, Kaushalya Park, New Delhi110016, Phone: 91-11-41055458 info@smechannels.com
/26
Bangalore 136/ 9, Ground Floor, Eden Crest Apartment, Grape Garden, Ejipura
Cloud Computing will enable channel partners to engage more closely with customers and move up the value chain by providing consulting and integration services.
Vivek Nagar PS
SME CHAT IBM /37
Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib
“IBM’s mid-market strategy revolves around triple play”
SME BIZ
Bengalore-560047 news@smechannels.com
APC /44
Mohapatra
Vision is to be Energy Manager to the Customers
Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016
Dell /40
“There is a Great Opportunity for us to work with our Partners”
Globus /42
“Our Core strength Lies in our Manufacturing and Strong R&D”
more inside
Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi 110020, India.
Snippets~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 08
All rights reserved. No part of this publica-
Case Study Tally~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 24
tion can be reproduced without the prior
Trend Setter Cisco ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 36
written permission from the publisher.
Products~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 48
Contents.indd 6
Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor,
Editorial~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04
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Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458
Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues) All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.
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SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | PC & LAPTOP | DATA COM
for more log on to smechannels.com
Ajai Chowdhry Awarded Padma Bhushan Ajai Chowdhry, Founder, HCL and Chairman, HCL Infosystems, India’s premier Hardware, Services and ICT System Integration, was
awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian recognition in the country, by The Hon’ble President of India, Smt. Pratibha
Devisingh Patil at the official ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Ajai Chowdhry is one of the six founder members of HCL,
India’s original IT garage start-up founded in 1976, is today a Global Enterprise of over Rs. 24000 crores with a global headcount of 79000 people. Ajai took over the reins of HCL Infosystems, the flagship company of the group, as President and CEO in 1994. He was appointed the Chairman of HCL Infosystems in November 1999. Under Ajai’s stewardship, the company’s turnover has grown to Rs. 12,221 crores from Rs. 400.6 crores in 1994. Employing over 7200 people, it has emerged as the country’s IT powerhouse. He said, “When I got together with my friends 34 years back to start HCL, all we had was a barsati, some money and tons of passion. What we needed were people who will believe in this dream and join hands to take India on the world stage. We have come a long way and I would like to dedicate this recognition to my great country, my family of 79000 colleagues, numerous friends, partners and well-wishers who have stood by me all these years.” HCL Infosystems Chairman Ajai Chowdhry led the list of this year’s awardees named for the government’s civilian ‘Padma Bhushan’ award, among the representatives of trade and industry.
EMC Acquires Netwitness EMC Corporation has acquired Virginia- based NetWitness Corporation – a privately-held, market-leading provider of network security analysis solutions. NetWitness’ technologies provide precise and pervasive network visibility, enabling security teams to detect and remediate advanced threats while automating the incident investigation process. EMC’s acquisition of NetWitness closed on April 1, 2011, and NetWitness will now operate as a part of RSA, The Security Division of EMC. The transaction is not expected to have a material impact to revenue or EPS for the full 2011 fiscal year. NetWitness offers network security monitoring and analysis platform that provides organizations with a complete and actionable understanding of activity happening on their enterprise networks. Leading organizations worldwide have deployed NetWitness solutions to solve a wide range of the most challenging information security problems including insider threats, zero-day exploits and targeted malware, persistent threats, fraud, espionage, data leakage, etc.
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Dell Enhances Focus on SME Market To help the SMEs grow business Dell has enhanced its focus on the SME market and introduced new server, storage and networking solutions tailor made for them. Among the products, Dell offers PowerEdge T110 II and R210 II servers for the entrepreneurs who are contemplating to purchase either their first server or expanding their IT infrastructure with new servers. Similarly in the storage space, the PowerVault NX3500 featuring the Dell Scalable File System, provides affordable scale-up Network Attached Storage (NAS) functionality for smaller scale, high availability deployments. The system works with PowerVault MD32x0i and MD36x0i storage arrays to help provide affordable unified storage with iSCSI, CIFS and NFS access to block and file data. The company offers the PowerVault MD3600i, an Ethernet-based (10GbE) storage device that delivers exceptional storage capacity to small and midsize businesses without sacrificing performance or flexibility. The company also launched new 5500 and 7000 PowerConnect switch families to better enable technology infrastructures where scalability, flexibility and value are key requirements. “One question we understandably get from small and midsize customers when they’re confronting the task of managing their data is whether to keep it on-premise or in the cloud,” said Antonio Julio, Executive Director, Worldwide Small and Medium Business, Dell. “Our teams are here to help customers make the best choice for their business as they consider how to best invest their technology dollars. The products we announced today are ideal for companies laying the foundation for the data they choose to keep onsite.” The company also launches finance service.
NEC Debuts its Focus on Indian SME Market As a part of its commitment to the small and medium enterprise (SME) market in India, NEC India launches a new IP-enabled Communication Server – SL1000, in India. With this solution specially designed for SMEs, NEC aims to increase its presence in the SME sector and garner a domestic market share of 30% by end of 2011. Ravinder Raina, Country Head, Private Network Solutions, NEC India said, “Our products and solutions conform to the highest international quality standards and are known for their outstanding reliability, durability and technical superiority. SL1000 is a key pillar of our SME strategy and will enhance our private network solutions portfolio.” Mr. Raina further added, “Our SME strategy in India revolves around empowering our customers through product innovations such as SL1000, and by strengthening our partner ecosystem by adding five to ten ISVs and taking our dealer base from 350 to 500 by end of 2011. We are positioning our solution as a customized telecommunication system that helps SMEs lower their TCO yet offers efficiency and affordability.”
MY POINT
“The ministry has initiated 10 innovative schemes under National Manufacturing Competitiveness Programme to assist MSMEs in improving their processes, design, technology and market access.” VIRBHADRA SINGH
MINISTER FOR MICRO, SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES, GOVT. OF INDIA
AMD APU Powers Latest Acer Notebookes Acer launches new range of consumer notebooks and netbooks powered by AMD Fusion Family of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), a single die design – that helps users enjoy high-definition (HD) playback content, faster internet access and improved online gaming experience. Acer will now enrich and multiply its offering on its best-selling family of netbooks and notebooks allowing the consumers to choose from a wide range of product portfolio. The new range of netbooks and notebooks are designed to deliver fresh and exciting user experience, enabling the user to create and share smooth HD multimedia and enjoy greater multitasking performance. .
Kobian Offers 3 year Warranty on Mercury Motherboards Kobian announced 3 Years warranty for Mercury Motherboards which is in line with its current offering of 3 years warranty on other Mercury products including LED / LCD Monitors, Memory Modules and Switching Power Supply through their service arm, Kaizen Infoserve. Mercury Motherboards enjoys a sizeable market share in India over last 15 years and the company gives the credit to its channel fraternity which has made Mercury as one of the preferred choices in Computer peripherals. The 3-Year warranty on Motherboards shall be effective from the next generation Intel and AMD platforms’ motherboards. The Current motherboard models will continue with the 2-year warranty package.
WatchGuard Releases Fireware XTM 11.4.1 WatchGuard Fireware XTM and WSM 11.4.1, with several significant enhancements and many bug fixes in various product areas, are now available in the market. Fireware XTM 11.4.1 gives administrators an important new way to safeguard Internet users from objectionable or harmful Web content. The HTTP-Client proxy action now has an option to enforce the safe search filtering included in major search engines to make sure that users, especially children, do not see adult content in their search results.
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For sales query please contact: North: Mayank Singh I Email: mayank.singh@mmd-p.com I Mobile +91-9654455821; East: Nil Bhowmik I Email: nil.bhowmik@ mmd-p.com I Mobile +91- 9831457341; West: Yogesh Mayekar I Email: Yogesh.mayekar@mmd-p.com I Mobile +91- 9820390999; South: Kuldeep Ramaiya I Email: Kuldeep.Ramaiya@mmd-p.com I Mobile +91-9310092727 Customer care Toll free no. : 18004256396 / SMS “PHILIPS” to 56677 / india.callcentre@mmd-p.com
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SNIPPETS
ESET Antivirus for Linux Desktop ESET brings ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 Business Edition for Linux Desktop and ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 for Linux, the company’s new security solutions for corporate workstations and home computers running Linux. ESET NOD32 Antivirus for Linux capitalizes on the awardwinning ThreatSense engine to deliver advanced protection against cyber threats with minimal impact on system performance. “Given the importance of consumer and business usage of Linux, it is essential to equip users with advanced security software to protect against cyber-attacks,” said Richard Marko, CEO of ESET.
UBIQUITI WIFI AP WITH REVOLUTIONARY SOFTWARE CONTROLLER Priced at MRP is 9500/- and available from GoIP Global Services, Ubiquiti UniFi Enterprise WiFi is a scalable enterprise access point solution designed to be easily deployed and managed. The Access Point has a sleek design and can be easily mounted to a ceiling tile or wall using the included mounting hardware. It is powered using the included Power over Ethernet adapter so that you can provide power and data using a single cable. The UniFi Enterprise WiFi System includes the UniFi Controller software. The software installs on any PC within the network and is easily accessible through any standard web browser. Using the UniFi Controller software, an Enterprise WiFi network can be instantly configured and administered without any special training. Real-time status, automatic UniFi device detection, map loading, and advanced security options are all seamlessly integrated.
Schneider Electric Acquires DIGILINK Surprising the entire market, the Board of Directors of Smartlink Network Systems Ltd. has granted its approval to the Company to enter into a Business Transfer Agreement (“BTA”) with Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd. (“Schneider”) for the sale of Smartlink’s DIGILINK Business to Schneider for a consideration of Rs. 5,030 million payable in cash (the “Transaction”). K. R. Naik, Executive Chairman of Smartlink said: “We are pleased to enter into this agreement as the Transaction recognizes the value of DIGILINK’s pre-eminent position in the structured cabling business including the strengths of the brand, the strong network, support and dedication of our distributors and last but not least, a well qualified, capable and motivated workforce”.
ASUS Brings the Rampage III Black Edition Mobo ASUS has launched its latest Republic of Gamers motherboard, the Rampage III Black Edition motherboard. Designed to set a new benchmark in the world of gaming motherboards, the Rampage III Black Edition will be a limited edition model based on the Intel X58 Express Chipset and supports the LGA1366 Intel Core i7 Processors with integrated memory controller to support 3-channel (6 DIMMs) DDR3 memory. It also supports Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) with a system bus of up to 6.4 GT/s and a max bandwidth of up to 25.6 GB/s. Vinay Shetty, Country Head, Component Business, ASUS (India), said, “The ROG Rampage III Black Edition motherboard is an evolution of the award-winning Rampage III Extreme, which set new world records in overclocking. Everything that made the Rampage III Extreme so great is back, but with a stylish black-themed design, plus many hardware and software improvements.” With a price of (M.R.P): Rs.39500/- (excluding taxes), the mobo comes with 3 years warranty.
Blue Coat brings a New Cloud Partner Progra Blue Coat has introduced its new cloud partner program to provide a quick and easy path for partners to sell the Blue Coat Cloud Service. The Service is an Internet-based service that leverages proven Blue Coat Web security technology and the collaborative WebPulse community to provide cost-effective Web protection to all users, all the time, anywhere. The Cloud Partner Program includes two new designations: Cloud-Ready and Managed Security Service Provider. The Cloud-Ready designation provides existing Blue Coat partners with the sales and technology training they need to quickly begin selling the new service. The Managed Security Service Provider designation is an advanced designation offering partners the option to white label the Blue Coat Cloud Service and build additional offerings around it.
IBM Enables Ester IBM has signed an agreement with Ester Industries Limited (Ester), a manufacturing company headquartered in Gurgaon, to help scale the company’s hardware infrastructure to address growing customer demands. Under the agreement, IBM will install IBM Blade Center servers running IBM AIX operating system and IBM storage for SAP ERP. Jyothi Satyanathan, Vice President Mid Market and Inside Sales, IBM India / South Asia said, “This implementation is a great example of how IBM helps enhance business productivity through its energy efficient technologies. We are excited to work with Ester in fulfilling their business vision and committed to providing total customer satisfaction with increased technological capabilities.”
Gigabyte AM3+ Black Socket Motherboards Gigabyte has launched a new line of 16 “Black Socket” motherboards . It offers support for AMD’s next generation, 32nm AM3+ CPUs and are based on current generation AMD 800/700 series chipset-based motherboards. Ensuring to take advantage of all the performance enhancements that AMD’s upcoming AM3+ CPUs have to offer, Gigabyte has equipped their entire line of AM3+ CPU ready motherboards with a new black colored socket, making it easy to spot for AM3+ support. In addition, GIGABYTE “Black Socket” series offer full backwards compatibility with AMD’s current generation AM3 socket CPUs, allowing for painless migration to the AM3+ CPUs when they become available.
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CISCO Accelerates Channel Program
M.TECH TO DISTRIBUTE ALLOT PRODUCTS AS INDIA DISTRIBUTOR
To help its global community of channel partners realize the full benefits of networkcentric architectures, Cisco is evolving Channel Partner Program by introducing new architecture specializations for Borderless Networks, Collaboration and Data Center. By taking an architectural approach to networking, channel partners can become more relevant to customers, grow more profitably and differentiate themselves from the competition. To accelerate the transition to architectural skills and capabilities, Cisco is evolving its Learning Partner Program to deliver enhanced architectural training to channel partners and customers through its global network of more than 450 Learning Partners. Edison Peres, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Channels, Cisco, “As the role of the network expands, Cisco and our partners must evolve together to capture market opportunities in borderless networks, video, collaboration and data center. The new Cisco architecture specializations recognize and build on our partners’ network advantage, enabling them to evolve their business, increase profitable growth and become more relevant to their customers.”
Allot has appointed M.Tech Solutions India as a new distributor to reach out vast channel and customer base of M.Tech in Indian market. M.Tech is very rich in channel and enterprise customer base and equally good in providing end to end solutions to SMB segments. Allot and M.Tech are sure that they will double the market share after this tie up. Under the terms of the agreement, M.Tech will recruit and develop resellers, provide high-level support for resellers and customers, and develop new business in India for Allot’. M.Tech India Country Head Mr. Bhavin Bhatt said: “We have added “Allot” into M.Tech portfolio to provide value add to existing / new channel in Indian market. We are committed to provide best technical and sales support to the channel, and consulting / solution design to the end customers. We have purchased good amount of demo equipments to support market need for packet shipping solutions. Our goal for Allot is to make Allot as leader in bandwidth management solutions spectrum during 2011.” This is to rememebr that Allot Communications is a leading provider of intelligent IP service optimization and revenue generation solutions for fixed and mobile service providers and high-end enterprise. Allot’s rich portfolio of solutions transforms broadband pipes into smart networks that can rapidly and efficiently deploy value added Internet services for both the network and the subscriber. M.Tech is a leading regional distributor of IT security, application delivery network and video communication solutions, with operations in 25 cities in 10 countries in APAC. M.Tech is also an authorised training centre for security and network certified courses.
EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT
WORLDWIDE PC SHIPMENTS IN Q1 2011 DECLINES WORLDWIDE PC SHIPMENTS TOTALED 84.3 MILLION UNITS IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2011, A 1.1 PERCENT DECLINE FROM THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2010, ACCORDING TO PRELIMINARY RESULTS GARTNER, INC. PRELIMINARY WORLDWIDE PC UNIT SHIPMENT ESTIMATES FOR 1Q11 (THOUSANDS OF UNITS)
Acer Q1 2010
Dell
Q1 2011
4,821
8,137
Lenovo
5.3% 4,580
9,984
10,210
12,412
HP
10,893
14,797
15,312
-2.2%
6,976
16.6%
-12.2%
Toshiba Growth
Others
Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablet such as the iPad. Source: Gartner (April 2011)
-3.4%
35,615
35,686
-0.2%
Akamai Technologies has appointed David Rich as Vice President, Asia Pacific to lead its rapidly expanding regional team covering Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. CommScope Gets its COO as Crenshaw. He will report to Eddie Edwards, President & CEO of CommScope Atempo has appointed highly qualified and experienced personnel Mr.Sudhanshu Sharma as General Manager Gigabyte Appoints Sunil Grewal as Sales Head – India. Prior to this, Grewal was RM of Gigabyte for North and East India After nine years of his stint at Gigabyte, Rajan Sharma joins SmartLink as VP.
Saviance Technologies appoints Kaushik Bellani as the CEO.
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STRONTIUM LAUNCHES SSD AND COMMITS EXPANSION On the occasion of announcing the lucky winners of its SMS Star contest today, Strontium Technology launched its SSD Matrix Series. Announcing the launch Vivian Singh, Director and Co-Founder of Strontium Technology, said “Based on industry-leading 25nm NAND flash memory, the Strontium SSD Matrix Series delivers more performance and reliability features. It is targeted for corporate IT or PC enthusiasts who would like a substantial performance boost over conventional mechanical hard disk drives.” He added, “The key message of the campaign called ‘Boot up Faster’ is to use Strontium SSD for faster boot up and accelerated application performance.” At the same time, he also announced the expansion of the operations in various other regions including in Bangalore, Calcutta and Mumbai. And expressed that the company is committed to the emerging markets like India, Brazil, Indonesia, China and South Africa.
DIGEST KNOCK-OUT WITH BELKIN Belkin India is all set to “Knock Out” this season with rewards that makes its partners winners of all times. Bowling to a cool “Knock-out”, this unique Channel Promotion brings in a Chance to bring home rewards as per your innings. Every purchase brings channel partners closer to exciting rewards like mobile phones, DVD Players, AC’s, LED TV’s, etc. “This offer has been structured in such a manner that it benefits all our channel members. We wish they participate in this attractive offer so they earn great rewards and enjoy the flavors of this cricketing season”, said Mohit Anand, MD, India Sub Continent, Belkin .
NOVATIUM NAVIGATOR 5.0 Novatium has launched Navigator 5.0 operating environment. The new version makes it simple to use the PC and makes computing a truly convenient and supremely enjoyable experience. Navigator 5.0 offers an advanced user interface
Kaspersky Lab Ranked Among the Top Gartner has ranked Kasperksy Lab as the third largest vendor of consumer IT security software worldwide in its annual “Market Share: Security Software, Worldwide, 2010” report published on March 30, 2011 by Ruggero Contu and Matthew Cheung. According to Gartner, Kaspersky Lab’s share of the global consumer IT security market reached 9% in 2010, a 2% points increase compared to the company’s 2009 results. Kaspersky Lab’s consumer security revenue grew 42% in 2010, compared to the results of previous year. Since 2008, Kaspersky Lab has seen a 7% increase in its share of the consumer IT security market, significantly outperforming the growth rates of its main competitors and in 2010, the company became the third largest vendor of consumer IT security software worldwide. Kaspersky Lab is currently the fifth largest vendor of Enterprise Endpoint Protection, according to Gartner data. The company has demonstrated one of the highest revenue growth rates in 2010 (+30%) and is well-placed to further improve its market position in this sector.
and new features that provide superior experience and allow people to get the most out of their PC. Now a subscriber has the ability to personalize his desktop with a number of widgets such as mails/TV/messenger/To do task list/calendar / Games/ News etc for easy content access.
PORTABLE SMC-ATM ROUTERS SMC Networks introduces ATM Routers. This router connects to 3G networks using your existing USB wireless modem. It also connects with many wireless peripherals and other Wi-Fi devices hence creating a Wi-Fi hotspot from almost anywhere. The Wireless Router is hugely used in ATM’s as well as Mobile ATM’s. It is simple enough to be set up in just minutes. The Router is
Unistal Launches Quick Recovery-Password Recovery Unistal has introduced a new product “Quick Recovery- Password Recovery” in its Quick Recovery range of products. As the name suggests the software can recover lost or forgotten passwords of Outlook Express e-mail account and Internet Explorer e-mail accounts (like Yahoo, Gmail, Rediffmail etc). It instantly provides the list of login password saved by your Internet
Explorer 6/7/8/and Outlook Express. As we are working with multiple e-mail accounts, it is hard to remember all of them. Quick Recovery Password Recovery program automatically displays username and passwords for all login accounts .It reveals all cached information such as Autocomplete Web forms, pre-filled forms login and passwords .
OM Nanotech Strengthens its Products Range Om Nanotech expands its range of Memory Products with the launch of Dolgix products. Dolgix RAM range includes DDR1, DDR2 and DDR3 with capacities from 512 MB to 4GB. The Dolgix USB Pen Drives are available in a wide range varying from 2 GB to 32 GB, while the FLASH cards (Micro SD/SD cards etc.) offer a choice of four different capacities of 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB. With this brand-new product range, general users can easily reach greater performance.
compatible with most modems in the market. It is user friendly and ready-to-use device. It works with number of service providers like Reliance, TATA and many other eminent Teleservices.
ZOTAC EFORCE GTX 580 AMP2! ZOTAC introduces the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP2! Edition – its fastest single-GPU graphics card. The MP2! Edition is designed to amplify cooling performance and gaming at extreme high-definition resolutions. The GPU boosts gaming performance by doubling the video memory of standard ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 graphics card for a total of 3GB.
TECHCOM SSD 7000R Techcom has introduced the SSD 7000R – its latest 5.1 channel multimedia home theatre system. With solid angular looks and a superior Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD), it is sure to be a head turner in the market. With built-in digital FM radio and FM tuner, you get the radio experience bundled with the package. Additionally, it’s Hi-Fi Sound and powerful bass speakers provide you an enriching musical experience. It is available in the market for a price of about Rs 3400 only.
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Seagate Unveils Enterprise-class Solutions Seagate launches its latest enterprise solutions including Pulsar Solid State Drive (SSD) family, two next-generation Savvio 15K and 10K hard disk drives (HDD) and ES.2 HDD for pure capacity-optimized mass storage needs. Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager – India and SAARC, Seagate Technology, says, “Seagate’s new family of enterprise storage solutions meets the diverse storage needs of these high growth application environments, whether it’s fast transactional database servers, bulk storage and archiving, or everything in between.” “When we increase the possibility for storage at any point in the world wide web, we increase the possibility for storage at every point in the world wide web,” said John Monroe, a Research vice president in Gartner’s Data Center Systems group. “Media tablets and other smart handheld devices will serve to generate an even greater need for enormous amounts of both high-capacity and high-speed storage in the cloud, which will in turn require diverse new breeds of storage building blocks to manage this explosive and complex data growth in more efficient, reliable and cost-effective ways.”
Fujitsu Scanner offers Network & Cloud functionality
MEDIUM-SCALE ENTERPRISES ALSO NEED ATTENTION: VIRBHADRA SINGH Medium-scale enterprises also need promotional schemes and an enabling environment like small-scale industries to further augment the overall economic growth, said Mr Virbhadra Singh, Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Govt. of India at a Seminar on “Building a Competitive MSME Segment : Problems and Prospects” organized by PHD Chamber in New Delhi. “To ensure better credit flow to MSMEs by minimizing the risk perception of banks and financial institutions in lending without collateral security, the government is implementing the credit guarantee scheme. The scheme provides guarantee cover of up to 85% on collateral-free credit facility extended by lending institutions to new and existing MSMEs for loan up to Rs 100 lakh,” said Mr Singh. “MSMEs have been recognized as engine of growth. In India, too, MSMEs have played a pivotal role in the development of the country.
Fujitsu launches the ScanSnap N1800 - the first network document scanner of its kind to offer linking features to Cloud services such as Salesforce CRM, Google Docs and Evernote. Combining functionalities with ease of use, users can seamlessly scan and share documents without the need for complicated setup. The ScanSnap N1800 features a wide range of functions, removing the need for different hardware and thereby reducing hardware costs. The one-touch scanning capability allows users to easily digitise their documents and improve access to information within the organisation. It also boasts advanced security features ensuring safe and secure operation among multiple users. The compact ScanSnap N1800, measuring only 300mm by 226mm by 172mm, comes with an onboard Installation Wizard, making it easy to setup in any office.
HP LaserJet Pro CP1025 Gets BEE Label
SOCOMEC Launches Scheme
HP LaserJet Pro CP1025 Colour Printer is amongst the first set of printers to get the much coveted Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) label in India. The announcement was made at BEE’s energy efficiency label program hosted by Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology (MAIT) and comes at a time when HP honored enterprises for their outstanding green initiatives in printing and imaging arena at the recently held HP Eco Solutions Printing Award India 2011. “The recognition from BEE is a testimony to HP’s commitment towards creating products that use energy more efficiently, are eco-friendly and result in significant cost savings for our consumers. We will support the emerging BEE standard for OA and printers”, said Nitin Hiranandani-Director, Managed Enterprise Solutions, Imaging and Printing Group, HP India. Pro CP1025 Colour Printer works on HP’s Auto-Off technology.
SOCOMEC UPS India has announced “Partner Power Play Scheme” for its Channel Partners across India. The scheme is designed to engage and encourage its partners to score more points during this hot cricket season. SOCOMEC also introduced “Distributor Power Play Scheme” for its authorized distributor Redington India. The scheme is aimed to introduce more partners to further expand its channel partner base and strengthen the network. The New partner comes under the eligibility of the present scheme as soon as he gets register with Socomec and Redington. SOCOMEC product category list for the scheme are as follows ITYS, NeTYS RT range from 1kVA to 11kVA. The schemes are effective from 1st April to 30th June 2011 and is open to all SOCOMEC Channel partners can avail this offer by booking the above mentioned product category from Redington India.
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Adobe Introduces new Channel Initiatives Adobe Systems launches a range of new programs designed to help its channel community successfully leverage the launch of its new Creative Suite 5.5 line of products in India. CS5.5 launch will help Adobe’s channel partners effectively address new opportunities arising out of the revolution in mobile communication with content being designed and delivered for a variety of devices. The CS5.5 launch marks a significant milestone to Adobe’s product release strategy for Creative Suite, the industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow across print, video, mobile and online media. This presents tremendous opportunity for Adobe’s channel partners in India and the company is looking to enable them adequately for the same. Adobe’s channel ecosystem consists of two NDs - Redington and Ingram Micro, and more than 120 resellers nationally. Among the several initiatives planned are face to face training opportunities for Adobe’s partners across six metros – Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi and Bangalore. Adobe is expecting to train around 500 sales representatives from channel partner organization. Adobe will also organize a Technical Training Webinar for its managed partners. Special eDM kits (battle cards, soft copy collaterals, etc.) will also be given to enhance the marketing collaterals enabling partners to win new customers.
VIEWSONIC WIDESCREEN MONITOR AVAILABLE THROUGH CHANNEL Rashi unveils the availability of ViewSonic VA 2431wm widescreen LCD monitor in the Indian channel market. ViewSonic VA 2431 wm monitor is an ENERGY STAR 5.0 certified, environment friendly 23.6” widescreen monitor with inbuilt speakers. The 100,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio provides for a better looking detailing and clarity with darker black levels and over screen performance. Priced at MRP of 11,500/-, the LCD monitor comes with 3 years Onsite warranty.
Rashi Concludes Meet for its Sales Champions Rashi Peripherals recently concluded 2 days meet for its all India Sales team at Mumbai. As a part of its training and development process, Rashi Champions Meet (RCM) is organized on an annual basis focusing on all round development of the entire sales & marketing team. Every year RCM is built around a specific theme which provides the roadmap to the sales personnel on the way business has to be done. RCM 2011 revolved around the theme – “WE DID IT…..but Yeh dil maange more” working around achievement and future ambition.
The basic idea behind this theme is to celebrate the success of achieving the set goals for FY 2011 and also to keep working and aiming harder for further growth and development. Last year’s theme focused more on self belief; this year’s theme was a follow on celebrating the victory of self belief. The event culminated with a gala night wherein more than 100 lucky draw prizes were given away including Toshiba LCD TVs, ASUS Eee PC, ViewSonic digital photo frames, SanDisk pen drives, etc.
Sandisk Appoints Inter Foto As Distributor SanDisk Corporation appoints Inter Foto India Pvt Ltd. as authorized distributor for SanDisk imaging products. Inter Foto will make SanDisk products more readily available to Indian consumers, who may enjoy a broader range of services and convenience as a result of SanDisk’s increased distribution capacity. “Indian consumers are growing more passionate about digital photography, and SanDisk memory cards help them do more with their cameras,” said Manisha Sood, Country Manager, India & SAARC, SanDisk. “Working with Inter Foto will expand SanDisk’s reach in this important market and help us teach our customers how to select the right memory cards for their cameras.”
ADATA Partner Visiting Program ADATA is conducting a channel partner visiting program to its official channel partners. With this program, ADATA will personally visit and reward valued partners for all the sincere support and dedication they have for ADATA. Since the opening of ADATA’s India subsidiary in Nov. 2010, there has been unprecedented growth and support to ADATA’s India business. “The ADATA India office bolsters confidence and shows our dedication to our India partners. The channel partner visiting program is a natural extension of this gesture on our part to show our dedication and appreciation” says Chris Chang, Managing Director at ADATA India.
DIGISOL DG-WA3000N DIGISOL has introduced its new wireless Access Point DG-WA3000N. This wireless access point enables communication between wireless and wired notebooks/desktop computers in the network at wireless data transmission rate up to 300Mbps which enhances the sharing of files, photo, audio, video and gaming experience over wireless network. DG-WA3000N complies with IEEE 802.11n standard and is backward compatible with IEEE 802.11b/g standard. The DG-WA3000N wireless Access Point supports WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia) technology, which can enhance the performance by applying QoS for certain network applications like audio/video streaming, VoIP and others. With WMM function, the wireless Access Point assigns priority to different types of data for better throughput.
Acer takes severs to SMB Market To expedite its server business in the SMB market, Acer India has appointment of Cyberstar, as its National Distributor for Server Products. With this partnership, Acer will utilize the extensive partner network of Cyberstar to reach out its wide range of customers more efficiently and effectively. In an effort to create top-of-mind recall for Acer’s Server Products amongst SMBs, Cyberstar will initially appoint 40 dedicated Acer Partners in 8 cities and then gradually extend this program all over India. As part of this program, Cyberstar will aim to educate SMB’s on how Acer’s Server offers the best solution to meet a growing company’s technology requirement.
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SNIPPETS
AMI India achieves ISMS certification American Megatrends India (AMI India)’s Information Security Management System (ISMS) has been assessed and certified as per ISO 27001:2005 standards by Vincotte International India Assessment Services Pvt. Ltd, subsidiary of Vincotte International SA, Belgium. The objective of ISO 27001 is to provide organizations with a standard for maintaining information security and to enable secure sharing of information within organizations. ISMS certification ensures that the certified organization has undertaken a risk assessment and has identified and implemented controls appropriate to the information security needs of the business.
ESCAN ROLLED OUT VERSION 11 OF ESCAN FOR SMBs eScan launches Version 11 of eScan Corporate Edition & Small and Medium Business (SMB) Editions. Some of the new features available in eScan version 11 of the Corporate and SMB Editions include preventing Network Outbreaks, Data theft, Identity theft and Security violation notifications. Some of the additional benefits of deploying eScan 11 in Corporate and SMBs include reduced IT costs with better Integrated Security Management through automatic patching of critical Windows OS vulnerabilities, File Reputation Services, ADS integration and Support for VMware, SYSLOG, SNMP and NAC/NAP. Says Govind Rammurthy, MD & CEO, eScan, “In the Version 11 of the eScan Corporate and SMB Editions, we have factored both the threat vectors and infection methods of current as well as future breeds of Malware and have power packed it with technologies that can effectively counter them.”
Dell Team up with Macquarie to Fund Enterprises Dell launches Dell Financial Services India (DFS), a leasing and financing program for small, medium and large commercial businesses and public organizations in India, to be provided by Macquarie Equipment Finance, the leasing arm of the Sydney-based Macquarie Group, a leading international provider of banking and investment services. The program will help customers preserve capital, maximize IT investments and drive innovation. DFS is the first financing program for Dell in India to address the comprehensive financing needs of our enterprise, public sector and small and medium business customers by providing a dedicated sales team to structure the most effective financing arrangements available in the marketplace. With lease terms from 12-60 months, customers can get the technology they need today and benefit from fixed regular payments. “Our new financial services offering will provide our business customers another tool with which to scale their operations and make use of technology to help them grow,” said Mahesh Bhalla, general manager of Dell’s Consumer & Small-Medium Business in India.
Canon launches 29 new Image Perfect products Canon India launches of 29 consumer digital imaging products in India. In this launch, the company has introduced an array of digital compact cameras, camcorders, lenses and inkjet all-in-one printers to strengthen its portfolio for deepening and widening its technology reach. The highlight of the event was the introduction of seven new entry-level digital cameras variants in the sub – Rs 10,000 category, especially for the Indian market. Canon also unveiled six compact cameras from the PowerShot range, three lifestyle cameras from its IXUS range, six HD Camcorder, two Digital SLR from the EOS range, one Selphy photo printer and four next generation Lenses. Canon India also launched four new inkjet all-in-one and one Single function inkjet printers from the PIXMA series. The event also saw the launch of the latest technologies like the new sensor technology called ‘HS’ system in its cameras. With an in built DIGIC IV processor, the High Sensitivity technology captures clearer and sharper images with enhanced colour reproduction even in low light conditions.
Riverbed Enhances Cloud Steelhead Capability Riverbed Technology has enhanced the capabilities of its Cloud Steelhead wide area network (WAN) optimization solution, adding compatibility with ESX-based public cloud services. Additionally, Riverbed has extended the breadth of partnerships with cloud service providers for Cloud Steelhead, giving customers greater freedom of choice when choosing to migrate data and services to the public cloud. “As our customers explore migrating business-critical IT services to the public cloud, they have turned to Riverbed to ensure that performance will not suffer,” said Apurva Davé, vice president of product marketing at Riverbed. Additionally, Cloud Steelhead is easily installed and provides superior scale in order to help customers accelerate the migration of data to the cloud.
Transcend Ushers into USB 3.0 Era When the entire IT industry is moving towards Feed and speed, the human intensive devices including external HDD, Flash Drives, etc are adapting to the new standard of transfer technology i.e. USB 3.0. USB 3.0 offers much speedier protocol allowing data transfer speed of up to 5.0 Gbits/s, which is about ten times faster than the USB 2.0 protocol. Transcend being a worldwide leader in storage and multimedia products, also ushers into the era of USB3.0 era by strengthens its USB 3.0 Product portfolio with the addition of a number of new products. Today, Transcend’s USB 3.0 products’ portfolio comprises SSD18C3, JetFlash 700 USB flash drive, StoreJet 35T3, StoreJet 25M3, StoreJet 25D3 portable hard drives, Express Card Adapter and Expansion Cards for desktop and laptop computers.
Lite-On Launches 8X External DVD Writers Lite-On launches the new eNAU series External Slim DVD writer that lets users personalize their drive and disc. The beautiful interchangeable top cover inserts included in the drive give the device a stylish twist. Moreover, users can create the cover with their own design or simply use their favorite pictures in the cover. The eNAU series features both LabelTag and LightScribe direct disc labeling technology for their DVD or CDs. The eNAU series are compatible with all common DVD and CD formats including DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R9, DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, and CD-ROM.
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2011 Select MB_19x28_18april2011.pdf
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CASE STUDY
TALLY
“TALLY.ERP 9 HAS MADE MY DREAMS COME TRUE.” It is the Accounting Manager of Jain Super Market
RESULTS OM PRAKASH SANCHETI PROPRIETOR, JAIN SUPER MARKET
“Age and Information technology is no bar for Tally.ERP 9. A person who is old and without the knowledge of computers can also operate Tally.ERP 9 with pleasure and ease”
J
ain Super Market, a super market in Aurangabad, sells the daily needed household items and bakery snacks. The items include household cleaning products, medicine, clothes, cosmetics etc. Started as small general stores in April, 1986, it was modified into a super market in July 2006, with a reputation for the highest quality both
Less Man Power Time and Paper saving Comfortable to Use
CONTACT Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. AMR Tech Park II, No. 23 & 24, Hongasandra, Hosur Main Road, Bangalore – 560 068. India.Tel +91 80 66282559; Fax +91 80 30228775; www. tallysolutions.com
for products and service. It is managed by Mr. Sancheti with the help of seven employees. Jain Super Market makes the customer feel fully satisfied, by taking into consideration the needs and requirements of the customers. There is a minimum 3% discount offer on MRP for each product. The additional advantage given to the customer is that the delivery of items would be free.
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TALLY
Business Challenge Mr. Sancheti, in his sixties has no background of computer knowledge. He had no support from the family. The staff was under educated. This led Mr. Sancheti to handle everything himself. The items delivered directly to the super market have price variations which require verification. The delivery is made to the super market directly since the super market does not have any godowns. The daily bills of the customers are required to be without any mistakes; sales and purchase of each product are needed to be maintained properly. Manual entries were not possible since Mr. Sancheti was handling the accounts alone. Many a times goods were received through delivery challan - after the actual purchase bills came. To track between the time delivery challan and purchase bills arrived became very difficult through manual system. There is price variation of all products as per the market’s ups and downs. So, the daily price update of each product is compulsory. The printing bills for each customer are also necessary to be done. Daily record of the customer and the sold/purchased products are also required to be maintained. It became very difficult to keep all these records and on time. The
proper maintenance of the bills and inventory tracking became major challenges to the super market.
The Solution “To meet all these challenges, The solution was Tally.ERP 9” informs Mr. Binu Mathew of Telly Soft, a Master Tally Partner in Aurangabad. He also states, “There is solution for all these types of problems in Tally.ERP 9. Its power of simplicity and customizability has enabled us to deliver unique solution to the customer’s dayto-day problems. Today Tally.ERP 9 is being used by Jain Super Market for its accounting and inventory”. Once, the Barcoding and invoice customisation was carried out on Tally.ERP 9, the super market began to have many advantages. The paper work was done away with. The price verification was now possible. The time saving became evident, the ease of use of the solution led to updated stock records in real time. Profit and loss, expiry date of the perishable items, date of purchase and sale of the items became a cake walk from an uphill task, thanks to Tally.ERP 9 and the customisation. Mr. Om Prakash Sancheti, who had neither
CASE STUDY
touched a computer nor knew anything about a computer all these years, finds it comfortable to operate Tally.ERP 9. Mr. Sancheti is thankful to staff of Telly Soft who trained him in the operation of Tally.ERP 9 including making of daily entries like bills, sale, purchase etc.,
From past two years Mr. Sancheti is controlling all his market products through Tally.ERP 9. Today his statement is
“Tally.ERP 9 is the Accounting Manager of Jain Super Market”.
With the help of Tally.ERP 9, Mr. Sancheti in maintaining reorder level of the stock, any product’s expiry date is reached, the vendor from whom the product is purchased and which stock item is profit making as compared with some other category of products. Outstanding control of credit limit, bank reconciliation and cheque printing etc., are also being handled by Tally.ERP 9. Mr. Sancheti who is very happy with Tally.ERP 9, says with satisfaction, “Tally.ERP 9 has made my
dreams come true. It has made my life. It made the success possible for me. I would love to learn more about Tally.ERP 9 so that I could use it still more effectively. I am sure I get more spare time to expand my business”.
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COVER STORY
CLOUD COMPUTING
AN
CLOUD COMPUTING:
OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTNERS Cloud Computing will enable channel partners to engage more closely with customers and move up the value chain by providing consulting and integration services. BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com
C
loud Computing is the latest buzzword in the technology market today. It has captured the imagination of both service providers and buyers, alike. Like any new technology there is a lot of hype and expectation about this new enabler. But cloud computing is an exception in the sense that it has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in the way businesses deploy technology. It is not likely to replace existing deployments, but will clearly compliment existing technology infrastructure, making it both appealing and potent for businesses. What’s more, cloud’s inherent characteristics—no upfront capital investment and its intuitive nature which makes it easy to deploy—will have far reaching impacts as it will bring many under-served customers into the ambit of the technology market. Market estimates about the size of the cloud computing market vary, but what is pertinent is that the opportunity size is huge, irrespective of the source of the estimate. According to IDC, the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) market for cloud computing services will grow at an average rate
of 40 percent per annum through 2014 to reach US$ 4.9 billion. Gartner believes the overall cloud computing market in India will grow at a CAGR of 63 percent from 2010 to 2014 to touch US$1 billion by 2014. In its study, “Cloud Computing in India: Opportunities & Way Forward,” Zinnov Management Consulting pegs the India market to be US$ 110 million currently, which is expected to reach US$ 1,084 million by 2015. According to a recent report by Ernst & Young, over 72 percent of India’s IT infrastructure companies will adopt cloud computing in a big way over the next two to three years. A recent report by AMI Research estimates that software as a service (SaaS) spending by small and medium businesses in India is anticipated to rise by a sizable 43% in 2011. More than 10% of Internet-owning SMBs in India have shown interest in adopting cloud computing in the next year. This was a key finding in the AMI study, “2010-2011 India SMB state of the cloud market overview,” conducted across major cities and tier two cities. Medium businesses (organizations with 100-999
full-time employees) have displayed significantly higher interest than their smaller counterparts. “Among Indian SMBs that own Internet,” notes Kalyan Banga, Senior Research Analyst at AMIIndia, “almost half have a mobile workforce, and over one fifth provide telecommuting options to their employees. The need for anytime, anywhere data access is a key driver for cloud computing in India.” Indian SMBs have matured over the years and there has been an increased need for customized solutions. According to AMI Partners, currently roughly three in ten channel partners offer customized solutions to specific verticals, with manufacturing and accounting being the top two verticals served by Indian channel partners. However, retail and education are the top verticals that partners plan to target in the next twelve months. Developments in the external environment too is having a huge impact in the uptake of cloud computing. Robust internet connectivity, proliferation of computing devices such as notebooks and smart phones have all created an ecosystem that is geared towards cloud adoption.
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CLOUD COMPUTING
COVER STORY
GARTNER BELIEVES THE OVERALL CLOUD COMPUTING MARKET IN INDIA WILL GROW AT A CAGR OF 63% FROM 2010 TO 2014 TO TOUCH US$1 BILLION BY 2014
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CLOUD COMPUTING
RAJEEV MITTAL GENERAL MANAGER, SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES, MICROSOFT INDIA
“Through the Microsoft Partner Network, we are committed to ensuring that our partners have a prosperous future and growing business in the cloud.”
AKASH SAXENA VICE PRESIDENT, OFFERINGS MANAGEMENT & DEVELOPMENT, GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, IBM INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA
“Business partners are an essential part of the ecosystem and we are working very closely with business partner organizations to empower them.”
The addressable market opportunity Cloud Computing has huge opportunity in the Indian market as technology penetration among Indian enterprises is woefully poor. PC penetration in Indian enterprises varies according to the size of the enterprise. Although large and medium sized enterprises have 100 percent PC penetration, small enterprises and the SOHO segment have PC penetration of below percent. Irrespective of the size of the enterprise, standardized application penetration across enterprises is very poor. The vast majority of existing applications in Indian businesses are custom built and outdated, working in isolation and as stand-alone applications. Since it is difficult and costly to update custom-built applications, enterprise systems are grossly inefficient and unsuitable for the current dynamic business requirements. Therefore, there is a dire need for standardized
SUMIT MUKHIJA NATIONAL SALES MANAGER, DATACENTRE, CISCO INDIA & SAARC
“By offering cloud computing services to their customers, solution providers can help them increase cost efficiency and productivity.”
GAURAV AGRAWAL PRODUCT MANAGER, VAS, SIFY TECHNOLOGIES
ARUMUGAM GANESAN DIRECTOR, PARTNERS, VMWARE INDIA,
“Partners will be able to add a lot of value by helping customers make the right choice for their business and providing them with a one-stopshop solution”
“We think it is a key requirement for our partners to win customer confidence.”
applications that are modern and updated and help in improving processes and increasing transparency. In a globalized and connected business environment, it is important to have systems and processes that integrate with the processes of business partners and help foster growth. A huge draw of cloud computing is that it does not require upfront investments and both users and service providers can maximize on the pay-as-you-go model. This is both efficient and cost-effective as enterprises can quickly scale up and down its IT systems based on business demands. In 2010, India emerged as the third largest user of cloud services—just behind Brazil and Germany and ahead of United States and China. And in the foreseeable future, it will remain one of the top three users of cloud computing services worldwide. The market in India is expected to see double digit growth in the years to come owing to the increased IT spending coupled with the adop-
tion of cloud services amongst large as well as small and medium businesses. These two factors make India the ideal market for cloud offerings as the IT spending in India is one of the fastest in the world. IT spending in India grew from a US$ 100 million to over US$ 50 billion in 2010. Enterprises, especially the small and medium business, are ready to adopt the latest technologies to remain competitive and consumer friendly. The rapid developments in the telecom sector have added to the momentum in the sector. India is the world’s fastest growing mobile market with over 20 million subscribers added every month. The huge investments that companies have made in 3G services showcases the belief large telecom providers have about the potential of data services in the Indian market. Cloud Computing will also help in exponentially expanding the technology market. It will make available sophisticated technology to a category of
AMIT NATH, COUNTRY MANAGER, INDIA AND SAARC, TREND MICRO WHAT KIND OF TREND ARE YOU SEEING AMONG THE PARTNERS TO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY? Vendors are providing good amount of security through Cloud Computing but some of the inherent risks are related to data theft, leakage or destruction due to co-location of data, spread of malicious activities and malware infections to multiple customer environments. However, there is also the risk of choosing a low-grade service due to cost limitations. Since cloud is a utility model, cloud consumers may have the tendency to sacrifice security features and offerings in order to reduce the costs further, putting themselves in jeopardy.
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COVER STORY
CLOUD COMPUTING
clients, comprising primarily the small and medium enterprises (SMBs), that has never deployed applications. It is this characteristic of the cloud computing market that has the capacity to dramatically change the dynamics in the business world. Small enterprises accessing latest technology will become nimble and have the potential to provide serious competition to established players in any field. Channel partners have immense potential to provide cloud computing-based services to clients as the addressable market is huge. Cloud computing as a model is relevant for enterprises across the spectrum. Large and established businesses will seek to leverage the cloud to quickly scale up and down its capabilities, or to expand geographically. But it is especially relevant for small businesses as it will provide access to the latest technology without the pain of huge upfront investment and delayed return on investment. SMBs are careful when it comes to investments that do not directly bring revenue, including people. Most small businesses already outsource their IT needs to a third party, and often complain about the time-shared service. Mid-sized businesses that do own an IT team often complain about the amount of time spent on support and maintenance. Summing up the cloud opportunity among the SMB segment, Anil Raghavan Chief Delivery Officer, Marlabs Software says, “When you outsource to a cloud service provider, routine IT and network management tasks are performed by your provider.”
Opportunities for channel partners Cloud Computing presents new opportunities for channel partners. Broadly, there are three key areas for the channel to take advantage of cloud computing: assessment, transformation and broker. Partners that tackle assessments have an opportunity to engage closely with the client, examine the requirements and suggest the best possible technology solutions. They offer basic education on what the cloud is and where organizations should focus their cloud efforts. Essentially channel partners offering assessments
provide a starting point for the cloud and determine if a client should embrace private clouds, public clouds, or both. “The assessment helps put the channel partner into the decision-making process—rather than find themselves disintermediated and locked out,” wrote Thomas Bittman, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst in a research blog. Further, as the client proceeds with the execution, requirements will change providing opportunities for the partner to move up the value chain. Partners can help clients in the transformation process by identifying processes that need to
In the transformation process, partners will play a key role in developing the right architecture, architecting the security framework, migrating and testing the load, managing the changes in internal processes that will accompany the move from a traditional setup to a cloud setup. Many vendors are already working with their partners to help them provide cloud related services to customers, from assessment, deployment and management. Says Gaurav Agrawal, Product Manager, VAS, Sify Technologies, “We want to enable our system integration partners to offer two key choices to end customers: a dedicated setup
CLOUD COMPUTING AS A MODEL IS RELEVANT FOR ENTERPRISES ACROSS THE SPECTRUM. LARGE AND ESTABLISHED BUSINESSES WILL SEEK TO LEVERAGE THE CLOUD TO QUICKLY SCALE UP AND DOWN ITS CAPABILITIES, OR TO EXPAND GEOGRAPHICALLY. be improved and enabling changes both from the business and technology perspective. Successful cloud strategies require changes at several levels: processes, management, organization, skills, culture and politics. The third opportunity area for channel partners will be to evolve their role from being a trusted advisor to providing integration services, and managing the relationship with cloud service providers. Partners can take on a broker or aggregation role to stay on with clients after assessments and transformations are completed. “Most companies leveraging cloud computing will have several (perhaps many) providers. The channel has the opportunity to aggregate those services, provide value-added integration, and other services that include providing insurance, dealing with failures, monitoring SLAs, and becoming a single point of contact. For private cloud, the channel can smooth the way to hybrid cloud computing, and remain the broker in the equation,” Bittman wrote.
that is owned by the customer, and cloud platform services that will be based on the pay-per-use model. Partners will be able to add a lot of value by helping customers make the right choice for their business and providing them with a one-stopshop solution. We are aware that currently many customers are exploring alternate options of hosting directly on the web. However, given a choice, they would prefer to outsource these services.” Increased SMB sophistication (leading to demand for more complex and customized solutions and services) and higher margins for partners are the primary reasons that a significant proportion of partners are transitioning towards offering more software and services. Says Rothin Bhattacharyya, Executive Vice President, HCL Infosystems, “The primary scope for the partners is high-margin service offerings which they can package as a bundle to their customers to create a sticky and stronger value proposition. As the cloud services market grows,
EZHIL ARASAN BABARAJ, DIRECTOR CSS CORP LABS WHAT KIND OF OPPORTUNITY DO YOU SEE IN THE SME SPACE? Small & medium enterprises are the biggest beneficiaries of this technology. While we are seeing some amount of technology maturity taking place in this space, we believe that the potential is not fully tapped. A recent industry report indicates that India’s cloud computing market will be around USD 1 billion over the next five years. This only goes to say that there will be a lot of avenues open for the same. Hence, we see lot of potential in the SME space, especially from an IT support services standpoint.
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ROTHIN BHATTACHARYYA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, HCL INFOSYSTEMS
MURALI MEENAKSHI SUNDARAM TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT, CSC (INDIA)
RAJESH AWASTHI DIRECTOR, TELCO AND CLOUD BUSINESS, NETAPP INDIA.
SUNIL GUPTA PRESIDENT & CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, NETMAGIC SOLUTIONS
“The margin opportunity is significantly higher than what they get while selling pure computing products. Also, as the income is earned monthly, the services offer partners a continuing revenue stream.”
“This involves adapting to new way of engaging, managing, and operating. There will be a lot more business that will be on the table. One will have to do more to survive in the market”.
“A majority of the VARs want to work with the service providers to offer such services to their customers.”
“it is important for partners to embrace the new technology and equip themselves with the requisite skills.”
we are looking at our partners offering SMBs a complete plug and play business-in-a-box offering, with cloud enabled, preconfigured email/ CRM/ERP systems. The margin opportunity is significantly higher than what they get while selling pure computing products. Also, as the income is earned monthly, the services offer partners a continuing revenue stream.” However there are worries that the channel partner is not yet ready to harvest the opportunities of the new market. In the same research blog, Bittman also expresses his concerns while examining the role of channels in cloud computing. He writes that those partners that don’t reboot and embrace the channels’ critical role in cloud computing, will be left in the dust. In the process, midmarket companies will also not be able to fully embrace the cloud. “Until they are [rebooted], the midmarket, in particular, will leverage cloud computing in a slipshod and hit-or-miss manner,” Bittman wrote. “Likewise, channel partners who don’t reboot and adjust to the new reality that more and more IT capabilities purchased by the midmarket will be coming from the cloud, and not through hardware and software sales won’t survive for long.” Murali Meenakshi Sundaram, Technology Consultant, CSC (India) concurs in that cloud computing is a new paradigm and that the old ways of doing business is changing. The same infrastructure, with new technology and
approach, is likely to serve more customers. “This involves adapting to new way of engaging, managing, and operating. There will be a lot more business that will be on the table. One will have to do more to survive in the market,” adds Sundaram. IT business partners have a great opportunity in helping customers turn IT into a service. From NetApp perspective, the key business drivers for the adoption of cloud computing are converting the technology investment from capex to opex, managing cashflow, lower entry barriers, protection against technology obsolescence, faster time to market, flexibility and elasticity. Partners can participate in the cloud ecosystem by becoming a cloud service provider themselves or by partnering with cloud service providers. Says Rajesh Awasthi, Director, Telco and Cloud Business, NetApp India. “We have seen the first approach been taken up by some large system integrators. A majority of the VARs want to work with the service providers to offer such services to their customers. In this case the investment required by the channel partner is limited to sales and pre-sales skills only as they are leveraging the infrastructure of a service provider. Service providers, on the other hand, have limited experience in selling infrastructure solutions. This, therefore, becomes a win-win strategy for both.” Elaborating on the latent potential in providing services around cloud computing Sunil Gupta, President & Chief Operating Officer, Netmagic
COVER STORY
ARUN NARASIMHAN GENERAL MANAGER, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, RAMCO SYSTEMS LIMITED.
“We expect our channel partners to work with us in further enhancing the lead we have over competition in the SaaS application space.”
Solutions says that it is important for partners to embrace the new technology and equip themselves with the requisite skills. “Depending on how partners perceive the cloud, it can be an opportunity or a threat. There will be a transformation in the partner eco-system, with a need to balance solutions and offerings and realign them around cloud. Both models will exist. In case both options are not available, customers will look at another partner offering the choice. We are working closely with the partner eco-system and are trying to come out with models which can suit the partner community at large for our domestic market. We believe that in the next couple of quarters, partners will be looking at it as more of an opportunity than a threat and will then see a much greater momentum in adoption too.” The cloud computing market evolution presents a tremendous opportunity for partners to differentiate themselves and be seen as a partner in the true sense of the word by enterprises and not just product pushers. The cloud computing journey for an enterprise is a complex one. Today, majority of the Indian CIOs and IT managers are evaluating their approach to the cloud and dabbling with a variety of questions. Partners have an opportunity to understand an enterprise’s business better and guide it on the migration journey by helping them address these questions. This also gives them a big revenue opportunity from consulting and ser-
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vices beyond traditional box sales, which is largely commoditized today. “What is needed for partners is to change their traditional mindset and upskill themselves to be able to tap this market opportunity that will define the future of IT consumption amongst enterprises, globally and in India. Partners that move first will have a tremendous advantage because enterprises currently are also on a learning curve,” says Subroto Das, COO, EMC Corporation.
Market Dynamics Vendors are targeting the market aggressively with many specific programs. Educating the market, building awareness about the technology, and working closely with partners are strategic areas in which vendors are working aggressively to grow the market. Vendors understand the critical role partners play in the cloud computing market. Vendors like Ramco depend heavily on channel partners and its channel development managers work closely with channel partners to help them achieve their business goals and build successful business leveraging the power of cloud computing. “We expect our channel partners to work with us in further enhancing the lead we have over competition in the SaaS application space. Since it is a volumes game, partners are the only way to take the product to the market. With their local knowledge and contacts, they play a vital role both in sales and implementation. Partners form a key piece of our business as they provide presales, sales, implementation and support services,” says Arun Narasimhan, General Manager, Business Development, Ramco Systems Limited. Microsoft believes that the industry and customers are at an inflection point and this represents a tremendous business opportunity for partners. Partners are core to everything that Microsoft does, and the company’s commitment to cloud computing includes ensuring that its partners have a steady and predictable future
based on emerging services around cloud computing. Rajeev Mittal, General Manager, small and medium enterprises, Microsoft India, says, “As we all move to the cloud, there is significant opportunity for our partners. Through the Microsoft Partner Network, we are committed to ensuring that our partners have a prosperous future and growing business in the cloud. We are laser focused on helping the partner community capitalize on new areas of growth. We want to equip our partners with skills that enable them to leverage cloud computing opportunities through
services that combines Cisco intellectual capital, engineering expertise, and service automation to help partners profitably expand or build new professional services practices. The Cisco Cloud Partner Program (CPP) has three tracks that provide partners with the flexibility to choose the role they want to play in the market: Cloud Builder, Cloud Provider and Cloud Services Reseller. The Cloud Builder and Cloud Provider tracks include branding, as well as reference architecture support, financing, market development funding and access to channel part-
THERE ARE WORRIES THAT THE CHANNEL PARTNER IS NOT YET READY TO HARVEST THE OPPORTUNITIES OF THE NEW MARKET. IN THE SAME RESEARCH BLOG, BITTMAN ALSO EXPRESSES HIS CONCERNS WHILE EXAMINING THE ROLE OF CHANNELS IN CLOUD COMPUTING. innovation, provide the relevant information and the resources that partners need to seize the opportunity.” Further Mittal adds, “Our partnerships and the cloud go hand-in-hand. This is a fundamental industry transformation underway, and this creates a huge addressable market of customers who want the software they have come to depend on, delivered through the cloud.” Cisco is helping its channel partners to accelerate their growth and evolve. It has introduced a new cloud partner program to help choose their role in the cloud and evolve their business models to capitalize on the multi-billion cloud market opportunity. To help partners enhance their professional services capabilities and accelerate their evolution to selling end-to-end communications and IT solutions or ‘architectures,’ Cisco also unveiled its smart services innovation, Cisco Collaborative Professional Services—a portfolio of
ners as a route to the market. These benefits are in addition to those the partners already receive from Cisco. To reduce incremental costs to partners, CPP builds upon partners’ existing certifications in Cisco and its ecosystem of partners. Elaborating on Cisco’s cloud strategy, Sumit Mukhija, National Sales Manager, Datacentre, Cisco India & SAARC says “We are building technologies to enable customers to easily extend content and applications to their mobile employees and integrate communications more closely with business processes, ensuring that information reaches recipients every time and everywhere. By offering cloud computing services to their customers, solution providers can help them increase cost efficiency and productivity. For example, Cisco Unified Service Delivery uses the power of the network to unify separate datacenters to act as one, resulting in more efficient and capable service delivery engine. Data-center services will
S SRIRAM, CEO, IVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS PVT LTD WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE FOR THE PARTNERS IN THE CLOUD COMPUTING? Revenue from sales of hardware, software and application will reduce over time. Revenue around implementation and support will also reduce along with the above. Since there are enough area’s to add value even in cloud era in area’s like helping customer identifying right area’s to move to cloud, choosing the right vendor under Cloud, helping customer with right SLA, planning and migrating without disruption to business, customization post migration, building DR/BC, ensuring compliance and security in the cloud model, periodic audits and assessments, training the internal team to transition to cloud model, etc. As one can see the earning potential is much higher for such qualitative work for service providers who are willing to move up the value chain.
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ANIL RAGHAVAN, CHIEF DELIVERY OFFICER, MARLABS SOFTWARE PVT. LTD. HOW THE CHALLENGES CAN BE OVERTHROWN? Organizations need to change to adapt cloud computing. This cannot be done instantaneously, but has to occur in a step by step way. You need to prioritize your cloud related investments, and should have a risk adjusted strategy. We enable our customers to come up with a proper roadmap and architecture, and assist them in developing their cloud computing strategy. This is combined with our Application Portfolio Rationalization services. Start with some applications that are not that critical or time sensitive, i.e. email for certain group of users that are less dependent on this (i.e. factory workers) It is important that your cloud strategy is aligned with the overall technology roadmap of your organization. So, if you can identify the integration points of the cloud with your internal systems early enough, that’ll ensure proper alignment of your cloud strategy with your existing internal systems. When migrating towards cloud services from a multitenant cloud provider, it is ideal if you could migrate at your own pace. Not having to redirect all your traffic towards the internet directly, but connect the way you prefer at the time you want.
move from being delivered “over the top” of the SP networks to “with” the network, resulting in a better and secure user experience.” HCL’s cloud computing services are currently being delivered on a direct basis for large enterprises and through channels for the SMB segment. HCL currently offers a comprehensive human resources management solutions that is tailor made for both large enterprises and SMBs on the SaaS mode. In addition, the company also provides hosted enterprise email services for both SMBs and large enterprises, providing advanced features such as business systems integration and mobile access systems. On the Infrastructure as a service offerings, HCL offers virtual servers (O3 IaaS) and backup (O3 Backup). The company also plans to roll out ERP, CRM and HMIS offerings soon. Cloud is a top area of focus for IBM’s channel partners. IBM has been working closely with its partners to help ensure joint success in the marketplace. Through cloud computing opportunities, IBM has helped partners retain and grow revenue with current customers as well as grow revenue from new customers. Says Akash Saxena, Vice President, Offerings Management & Development, Global Technology Services, IBM India and South Asia, “Cloud Computing is a very important IBM initiative. Business partners are an essential part of the ecosystem and we are working very closely with business partner organizations to empower them. We work continually to develop and deepen competencies and partner skills to meet clients’ business challenges.” IBM has launched several new skills development in marketing, technical and sales programs to help business partners capture the growing
market opportunities in cloud computing and business analytics. In support of the growing cloud computing opportunity IBM recently announced SmartCloud, an enterprise cloud delivery platform. This new IBM business partner initiative creates a single program to develop the IT industry’s broadest ecosystem of companies working together to provide a wide range of cloud computing services and technologies for clients of all sizes and industries. The IBM Cloud Computing Specialty will support five types of business partners that demonstrate their expertise and customer success in cloud computing: cloud application providers, cloud builders, cloud infrastructure providers, cloud services solution providers, and cloud technology service provider. As cloud services are being adopted steadily by both enterprise customers, who are moving some of their non-critical applications to the cloud, and also by the SMB customer, NetApp, along with its eco-system of technology partners (like VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Cisco, Brocade, BMC, CA, Oracle and SAP etc) and system integration partners (like Wipro, TCS, HCL Tech, HCL Info, Accenture, Datacraft etc.) is sizing the opportunity and launching specific programs to exploit the market opportunity. With its alliances and elaborate plans, NetApp is positioning to take advantage of this major shift in the market by providing storage and data management solutions that are ideal for the cloud. More importantly, the company wants to serve as the technology partner of choice to guide enterprises in their journey of deploying a cloud infrastructure. NetApp’s Cloud Service Provider program con-
nects cloud service providers with its ecosystem of partners. The NetApp Partner Program for service providers enables service providers to leverage NetApp and its extended ecosystem of technology partners, resellers, and system integrators to develop and drive revenue for cloud services. Says NetApp’s Awasthi, “Channels play a prominent role in the cloud-based delivery model of NetApp. Unlike other technology players who focus on selling their own services, our strategy is to deliver services through partners. We ensure that partners build the competence and infrastructure to deliver world class support. NetApp backs up partners through a seamless integration model and an extensive network of spares depots.” In addition to cloud based offerings, vendors are also launching solutions that help integrate cloud application into the existing technology infrastructure. CSC recently announced its ACE Suite of transformational services to accelerate the migration of applications to the cloud. It comprises the transformation component of CSC’s Application Portfolio Management lifecycle services, which spans the dimensions of transformation: planning, building and then running workloads and applications in modern service delivery vectors like cloud. Through ACE, CSC is combining best of breed technologies from VMware and VCE, (the Virtual Computing Environment Company), with standard processes from CSC to quicken and streamline application migration. ACE is a global offering that will be available first in North America, followed by Europe and other regions in the summer of 2011. A key differentiator in Virtual Computing Environment (VCE is a company, formed by leaders in the industry—Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel) from other
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ANIL BATRA MANAGING DIRECTOR, RIVERBED TECHNOLOGY INDIA
“Riverbed sells its products entirely through channels which include distribution, global resellers, VARs, system integrators and service providers.”
SUBROTO DAS COO, EMC CORPORATION
“Partners that move first will have a tremendous advantage because enterprises currently are also on a learning curve.”
“partnerships” in the industry is that it delivers seamless support through a single company where all resources are cross trained on EMC, Cisco and VMware technologies (more than 10,000 hrs of cross training), resulting in faster resolution for the customer. Cloud service providers have invested heavily in developing the capabilities of its partners. Says Arumugam Ganesan, Director, Partners, VMware India, “The technology is at a nascent stage in India but it has started witnessing the momentum in adoption. We think it is a key requirement for our partners to win customer confidence. The customers should be able to look at them as a trusted third party. We have a very strong partner enablement program in place. While that will continue, we will try and add more technical training programs. This will equip our partners with the necessary technical expertise.” Further, Ganesan adds, “We have various training programmes for our channel partners and we also conduct various sales and technical training programs. In the last quarter we had business acceleration training for our partners wherein we covered topics on the cloud.” Says Awasthi of NetApp, “We have a variety of initiatives for our channel partners in the coming months and these will also include initiatives on cloud computing. We work closely with partners to help assess, design, implement, and optimize the data management infrastructure and maximize the value for their customers that will empower them with the knowledge they need on cloud computing.” Challenges related to cloud deployment include system optimization and monitoring. Riverbed Technologies offers complete WAN optimization
VINEET SOOD HEAD, CHANNELS AND ALLIANCES, SYMANTEC
“The new technological development has brought in changes in partners’ business model as well.”
solution to accelerate cloud services and add a layer of intelligence to ensure that consolidated, virtualized applications and services are accessed by end-users everywhere. Riverbed has an extensive channel partner program which is designed to ensure that its business partners are continually trained, product certified and incented to service its customer base. Speaking about its delivery strategy, Anil Batra, Managing Director, Riverbed Technology India emphasizes the role of partners, “Riverbed sells its products entirely though channels which include distribution, global resellers, VARs, system integrators and service providers. The company focuses on expanding its coverage and reach via its channel network.” Enterprises plan to use cloud computing much more intensively than they do today. And yet even as momentum for cloud computing builds, doubts about the security of cloud computing persist— increased security risk, loss of control over end users, increased risks of non-compliance and data breaches. A point of potential concern is that most organizations use conventional security tools to protect information in the cloud, even though some of those tools do not work in cloud environments. These issues can be overcome by opting for a credible vendor and setting the expectations right with them. Symantec offers consulting services and SaaS solutions that incorporate a cloud computing model into an organization’s environment, in the manner that is most appropriate for their business and technical needs. Enterprise inhibitions and concerns regarding cloud adoption can be overcome with the help of the right guidance and information. For the vast majority of organizations, the
transition to the cloud will not be a clean break, but rather a gradual movement of applications, services, and supporting infrastructure into the cloud. Symantec enables customers at all stages of this transition. “The new technological development has brought in changes in partners’ business model as well. Today, partners are becoming solution and market specialists rather than technology generalists for their customers. They are moving into consulting services, delivering business value and technology solutions. In short, they are focusing on delivering value-added services to their customers and not just reselling hardware and software,” says Vineet Sood, head, Channels and Alliances, Symantec. Symantec is positioned to support a number of cloud-based customer initiatives across multiple IT disciplines. By taking an information-centric approach, Symantec secures and manages critical information and thereby enables that information to securely move in the cloud, and making it available independent of device or system. Thus, partners can become solution specialists who can further guide their customers around these services to reduce risk, and avoid common mistakes and pitfalls.
The way forward Cloud computing is here to stay with adoption being led by companies that are in the highgrowth sector such as retail, telecom, technology, education, infrastructure and manufacturing. Demand from the public sector will also add to the overall market momentum. With increased globalization, and competitive market scenario, businesses have no choice but to adopt technology. Yet enterprises will not be constrained by heavy upfront investments as cloud computing’s pay-as-you go model will make it a very relevant model for today’s resource-conscious enterprises. External market conditions such as robust connectivity, ecosystem of service providers, knowledgeable consultants, proliferation of hand held devices, and maturity in the learning curve are factors that will continue to propel the cloud computing market forward. In addition, the dynamic market conditions that have provided huge growth opportunities for Indian businesses as well as the imperative and the need to work in a connected environment will require faster adoption of technology, which is increasing the business case for cloud adoption within enterprises. The bottomline is that cloud computing is a paradigm shift that has thrown up plenty of opportunities for all stakeholders—vendors, partners, and customers—making it a win-win scenario for all.
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CISCO
CISCO BORDERLESS
PROFITHON STRATEGY CREATING MAGIC
When industry pundits had downplayed Cisco’s focus on the SMEs, the company became vocal by bringing the coveted Borderless Profithon program. BY NEIL D’SOUZA info@smechannels.com
I
t all started with Cisco’s launch of Borderless Networks that proposed to enable customers to extend their business from one end to another from any device. It was obvious to follow with a channel programme (Borderless Profithon) to enable the channel partners and their account managers to take keen interest in Cisco business. But, good thing is that the programme has clicked and people at Cisco are pretty excited about it so also the partners. Avinash Purwar, Senior Vice President, Borderless Networks, Cisco, said, “It is a programme for the channel partners. The objective of the programme is to accelerate the borderless technology in the commercial market including the SMBs. It encompasses products like routing, switching and wireless, etc.” In the mid of November, Borderless Profithon was actually rolled out. The objective of Cisco behind rolling out this programme are many. One obviously is to accelerate the borderless network business in the commercial market because the company strongly believes that there is a very large market in the SME and commercial space. The company wants to make such an offering that Cisco becomes a natural part of their networks. Second objective of this programme is to motivate its partners’ account managers who have been very consistent in their go to market with Cisco offerings. He adds, “We wanted to make sure that we go deeper and wider in the country. Under this programme we have reached out to 30 cities which fall under tier-2 and tier-3 categories.” “We strongly believe that customers in this market are very technology savvy and they want to buy the
AVINASH PURWAR, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, BORDERLESS NETWORKS, CISCO
“THE OBJECTIVE OF THE PROGRAMME IS TO ACCELERATE THE BORDERLESS TECHNOLOGY IN THE COMMERCIAL MARKET INCLUDING THE SMBS.” latest and greatest of the products. Under Cisco Borderless Profithon Programme, we are offering the latest and greatest products,” says Avinash. Overall, Cisco brings products as well as services to the customers. The services include energy efficient networks, video ready networks, etc.
As Cisco wants to motive the partners who want to look at this programme from a long term perspective, Profithon Programme helps partners to drive profit from it and rewards to the account managers in the partner organizations.” As per him, the programme will remain live from mid of November till April 29, 2011 and within these six months Cisco will organize road shows in around 30 cities across India, which they have already done. The company has been talking to the partners in these cities about the rewards and incentives involved in the programme. The company has been encouraging the partners to register in the programme and also is undertaking partner enablement in the road shows so that whatever products being included in the programme, the partner understands in terms of technology superiority and its market positioning. The company is also undertaking multiple sessions of WebEx with the partners to explain the programme. Cisco has today more than thousand channel partners in the country and the company expects all of them come on board to embrace this programme. From the products’ perspective, this programme encompasses nearly 28-30 products. From the perspective of rewarding the account managers, Avinash says, “As they sell Cisco products in the market, they start accumulating points. Later on they can redeem their points against fabulous prizes from Cisco. Considering the programme is for six months, it gives larger window to the partners to sell and accumulate points for larger rewards and incentives.” Every company gives a target to the partners and they have to achieve the target to claim the back-end rebate and rewards and Cisco is not an exception. It incentivizes partners through its regular programmes but Borderless Profithon actually incentivizes the individuals within the partner organizations who are responsible for Cisco Business. One more benefit within the programme is that Cisco offers the latest products at an affordable price point as the customers buy it as basket. The company is also not stepping back from handholding the partners or stopping from listening to them in terms of making the demo products available to them for customer’s evaluation or even creating a spcialized campaign.
Finally… By launching Borderless Profithon, Cisco is not only eyeing at strengthening its position in the SME space but also creating a strong relationship based on mutual benefits for both -channel partners and the company itrself.
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IBM
SME CHAT
JYOTHI SATYANATHAN VICE PRESIDENT, IBM.COM -INSIDE SALES ORGANISATION, IBM INDIA /SOUTH ASIA
IBM’S MID-MARKET STRATEGY REVOLVES AROUND TRIPLE PLAY IBM is a company which provides end to end solutions as far as any business is concerned. The entire industry knows that IBM is always ready with solutions as far as large enterprises are concerned. But the growth in the SME market has also brought IBM under its spell. SME Channels spoke to Jyothi Satyanathan, Vice President, IBM.com -Inside Sales Organisation, IBM India /South Asia to know about its strategy. Excerpt:
What kind of potential or opportunity IBM sees in the Indian SME market? Mid Sized Businesses are the engines of growth. Mid Sized businesses are responsible for 75% of the GDP globally and employ 90% of the workforce globally. This presents great opportunity in a small world. Irrespective of the size, there are challenges and potential. However Mid Sized businesses have unique challenges, market factors, technological and macroeconomic factors affect them in increasing order. As the environment is perceived volatile and uncertain, we find businesses on a high growth encountering challenges on process, technology and risk. The climate, as stated above, presents opportunity and risk. The question is not about growth but whether we can handle them productively and profitability, without compromising and under leveraging factors that contribute to growth. l With the internet and globalization, the world continues to get smaller, flatter and smarter, which creates enormous opportunity for SMBs. It’s easier for smaller, nimble companies to collaborate, innovate, scale to meet demand, and reach new markets and buyers. You can literally go global overnight.
l Once reserved for larger firms with big budgets, powerful technologies -- from predictive analytics software to the latest processors -- are more affordable, available, and easier to use than ever. IT is leveling the playing field for SMBs. l They have access to highly skilled, specialized, local partners to help evaluate, purchase and implement technology solutions. They want to work with a trusted partner with expertise, industry expertise and staying power. You don’t need IT expertise, just trusted partners who can deliver business outcomes instead of piece parts SMBs that embrace IT and the possibilities of today’s smarter planet are making tremendous leaps in productivity and growth. They don’t need to understand technology as a core expertise, but those that put IT in the center of their business are able to level the playing field and drive innovation. SMBs used to be defined by the size of their company, but today it’s the size of their ideas that matters.
It says that 32 million MSMEs are there, are you focusing this number or you have your own calculation and target? IBM has internal “market Insights” function and
we do extensive research on the size / quality of local markets where ever we operate. Of course we leverage the published reports from analysts and media and market forces etc and always evaluate potential areas of focus combining the findings from external as well as IBM internal studies. I am unable to comment on this size of MSMEs…but we certainly are focused on penetrating into the SMB segment as a whole. In IBM, we define SMs as organization with less than 1000 employees but sometimes on case to case basis, depending upon industry type, we relax this definition and address the client needs more from their need perspective. Do you have any programme for the SMEs, which could including technology acquisition and financing as well? IBM has done a lot of software acquisitions in last 2 yrs many of which are pretty suitable to SMB client’s size. We are leveraging those as packaged solutions. We are focused heavily on – Training/skilling business partners and resellers across India to help them articulate the business value of IBM offerings to clients.
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IBM
We have host of HW, SW, and services offerings off the block and can offer them in any size depending upon client need. We are leveraging our global experts to deliver best solution to clients anywhere. Our focus is on solutions, services and our coverage model is aligned and integrated to rally around our strategy to address customer IT priorities and pain points around Smarter Business Infrastructure, People and Process Productivity, Business Transformation, Security & Resiliency, Information and Analytics. Our key centerpiece in coverage model is to work with thousands of smaller customers who are content with getting information about our offerings on the internet. In order to build channel capacity, IBM has upped its investment in partner training. In 2010, we have trained and retrained 1,100 partner representatives across 600 partner organizations in 41 cities-including 250 partner reps trained for IBM software-through various advanced training programs and product-related training. With partners being so critical to mid-market success, it is important to ensure that they speak the language IBM to their customers. IBM has also pooled in its Global Financing arm in order to drive the mid-market GTM. At a time when financial institutions continue to be wary of lending to mid-market customers, the financing from IBM has greatly helped the mid-market initiative. Last year, we announced products targeted at the mid-market to help customers invest in IT without locking their capital up-front thus making the ROI case even more compelling. We saw a 75 percent increase in mid-market disbursals, compared to 2009. While we usually offer finance for a minimum deal size of $25,000, in keeping with the focus on geo locations we financed many deals as small as $5,000. The uniqueness of IBM Global financing is that it even finances deals that only have 20 percent of IBM component. The rest could include network, PCs and other related infrastructure products from different brands. In addition we also finance services. IGF provides customizable lease and loan offerings to 90 per cent of the Fortune100, as well as to small and medium business. The offerings are designed to enable IT organizations to operate in a new economy and mindset that demands high value, transparency, and proof of return on investment. IGF has been a stable, proven partner that has been in the IT financing business more than 28 years providing an unrivalled combination of expertise, technology focus and breadth of solutions. IBM Financing Advantage provides credit-qualified clients with financing solutions that can improve cash flow and return on investment as well as reduce large up-front costs and total cost of ownership
IBM HAS ALSO POOLED IN ITS GLOBAL FINANCING ARM IN ORDER TO DRIVE THE MID-MARKET GTM. What about your product portfolio, are they by design ready for SMEs or the same products you push to the market? Our products / services can be offered readily to SMB clients as a pre-packaged solution or tailormade depending upon client specifications. We have clients as small as Cooperative banks with 3 -4 branches to largest brands in India like Bharati Airtel and Reliance. In SMB segment, our clients are in manufacturing, banking, retail, general industries etc. Our strategy is not to push IBM products but approach clients as an IT consultant and service provider. We understand client organization, needs and potential business challenges then recommend the best fit offerings which can be just hardware or software or a combination of software and services…or simply networking and security solution. How differently do you engage channel partners for the SME segment? IBM’s mid-market strategy revolves around three key elements-triple play, geo expansion and leveraging the partner ecosystem. Mid-market cus-
tomers are companies that often don’t have a large IT budget, aren’t as attuned to vendor brands, and have little internal technology expertise. Hence, it is important to offer them services-led solutions. That’s where IBM strengths of triple play-software, systems and services-can be leveraged. According to IBM, tier-2 and tier-3 cities are largely underserved, as most vendors have been so far focused on servicing mid-market customers in large cities. The mid-market segment in smaller cities is fragmented and disparate. Hence, a closer customer interface is required. We have lined up significant investments to expand our reach from existing 22 cities to 47 cities by 2013, which will increase our market coverage from 135 cities to 300 plus cities. The cities for setting up branch locations have been chosen based on our customer mapping. Simultaneously, the vendor has launched a unique initiative called Virtual Branch Office (VBO) to drive deeper engagement with partners and customers in branch as well as non-branch locations. VBOs are a step toward creating deep local presence in key geographic locations. They leverage city-specific Websites that are equipped with features like live chats, product selection guides, and local sales and support contacts to help customers and resellers
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IBM
interact at will with IBM. The most crucial element is the channel. Following its exercise of mapping customers in white spaces, the vendor undertook an in-depth gap analysis of its existing channel capacity and that required targeting the 40,000 customers mapped in geo locations. And has put in place a comprehensive plan to build channel capacity over the next three years to target this $2.5 billion opportunity. The plan includes developing both the channel breadth and depth. While we want to enroll more partners in the intended geo locations, we want our existing partners to build skills to cross-sell the entire portfolio of systems, software and services. What is your strategy to take IBM brand closer to comfort zone of the SME customers? We are expanding our presence and reach into more markets within country. Setting up offices and local presence in tier 3 cities and non-metro locations so that clients can be reached faster, better. Our strategy involves l Coverage Accelerate sales coverage by launching more branch offices into satellite towns and leverage local partner ecosystem
l
Marketing - Focus on market conditioning and market awareness activities in branches - Deliver on a consistent brand experience in all local interactions - Theme based programs to drive differentiation - Reducing cost, managing risk, insights for growth l Partner Development - Recruit and enable a critical mass of BPs per Branch to service local clients. - Deepen relationships with local ISV / SI / resellers l Solution Readiness - Offer focused, high volume, packaged offerings for local needs - Midrange Bundles for ERP / Enterprise Solutions (including Middleware, Applications, Infra Services) clothed with IGF Financing. - Address all kinds of customer segments – family businesses, Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) industry clusters and state governments l Develop key clients - Focus on key client segments and reach to them. People are talking about Cloud applications for the SMEs, what is your take on that because you have
SME CHAT
both products and services? Cloud computing has been gaining increasing attention from businesses of all sizes as a way to obtain secure access to advanced technology that is not necessarily owned or hosted by the user. Midsize companies, can benefit from the cost savings of accessing applications such as collaboration and email via the cloud for just a few dollars per month. Two examples of cloud offerings that help our partners provide tremendous value for midsize companies are: LotusLive, for example, delivers integrated email, web conferencing, social networking, calendars and collaboration services for just $3 per user/per month. SMBs can also take advantage of cloud based managed services such as the Information Protection Service Data Backup offering which is a secure, continuous, online backup solution for $2.95 per month. Do you have regional specific marketing strategy or vertical specific marketing strategy, what are you following? We have both models in practice. Our marketing team is aligned by brands / products as well as we can regional teams located in key branches to handle customers at very niche levels and cover all function horizontally.
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SME Chat-Jyothi Satyanathan of IBM.indd 39
4/23/2011 1:29:55 PM
SME CHAT
PRADEEP DEVRAJ COUNTRY LEAD, GLOBAL COMMERCIAL CHANNELS AT DELL INDIA
“THERE IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR US TO WORK WITH OUR PARTNERS” Some time back, Dell announced a consolidated go-to-market channel strategy for its commercial channel partners to increase partner convenience, profitability and growth. Under the new initiative, Dell’s PartnerDirect program is led by a separate Global Commercial Channel (GCC) team. SME Channels wanted to delve deep into it and spoke to Pradeep Devraj, Country Lead, Global Commercial Channels at Dell India. Excerpts
How has been your channel engagement last year? Our channel program is focused on ensuring that the customers get access to the right technology that meets their needs and helps them grow and thrive while making sure that our partners remain profitable. We are determined to support the channel in whatever way possible for us including investing in marketing to generate customer awareness on products and best value customer solutions. 2010 has been a commendable year for us. What about your reach in India? The primary objective of our channel program is to deepen our engagement with commercial partners. Our PartnerDirect program and channel strategy ensures reach to SMBs in 200 cities across India. PartnerDirect had 2300 registered partners in India. Today our strategy remains unchanged—providing essential contributions to accelerated growth of targeted partner base through high yield campaigns and programs and opportunities for growth their business by introducing new solutions to and through the channel. The right statement here would be that
we have enhanced our channel strategy in accordance with what works best for our partners. Under the Global Commercial Channel structure (GCC), partners will address all of commercial segments – large enterprise, public, small and medium businesses. Being a single point of contact for channel partners, this structure saves time and effort and opens a larger playing field for channel. It also highlights the fact that Dell takes feedback seriously –addressing pain points raised by channel partners. • More focus on indirect • Dell has one face for channel partners • Better channel support • More aggressive programs for channel Since GCC will be a horizontal structure, we expect to see better reach into the market. We are confident that the new consolidated structure would help in increasing our breadth in our End user customer base. Currently the plan is to develop our current set of partners so they see long term benefits and profitability. Over time we might gradually look at increasing our presence in the T2 partner base as well.
What kind of new products/ solutions and services you have launched? With dedicated SMB specific offerings, not just for products and solutions but also for the service and support, Dell remains committed to offering simplified IT solutions that free up time and money to foster growth and innovation in the SMB segment. We believe our legacy qualifies us specially to help SMBs expand their businesses; our offerings meet their special requirements - be it the Vostro range of desktops and laptops, be it the way we simplify their datacenter with our hyper-V embedded servers or our iSCSI storage networks or our recently launched printers. Dell is committed to helping our customers be more efficient, productive, and make the most of their IT and that includes printing. We always evaluate the best time to bring in new products based on customer requirements and an ability to offer optimal value. With that in mind, in the last couple of months we’ve launched a new laptop from the Vostro range – the Vostro V130. Designed with the needs and wants of on-the-go entrepreneurs in mind, the Vostro V130 com-
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SME CHAT
“THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE OF OUR CHANNEL PROGRAM IS TO DEEPEN OUR ENGAGEMENT WITH COMMERCIAL PARTNERS.” bines head-turning style with best-of-breed durability and security. How these products have helped partners to increase the stickiness? With our solutions-centric approach, we offer customers not just boxes but complete end-to-end solutions. We have seen spurring growth in India and we are currently the No. 2 player in the SMB segment. We now offer more than just hardware, with a robust portfolio of products and services we’ve crafted through acquisitions, re-energized partnerships and a renewed emphasis on our own brainpower. We’re remaking our supply chain to build and deliver the right technology for any marketplace. With this approach, we aim to see continued growth. Dell is committed to design and sell solutions that are open, capable and affordable and are geared to help customers grow and thrive. We have our strongest ever product and services portfolio and have acquired significant new skills and capabilities. Because we believe our customers should not have to compromise, we work with our partners to deliver open, standards-based
products that let them integrate new technologies without sacrificing performance or their existing IT investments. Our approach is technology intensive vs people intensive, this has definitely worked towards increasing the stickiness in the market. How do you want to take this forward to 2011? We believe in “Simplifying IT” for our consumers and focus on making IT work for them and their business. We listened to our customers and felt the need to develop more ways of reaching out to them. Our channel initiatives are designed to provide customers with more choice, flexibility and value when investing in Dell Solutions. We want to be the vendor of choice for our channel partners and are investing in tools to make it easy and efficient for partners to register deals, make purchases and obtain certifications as making it easier to do business with us allows partners to focus on growing their business. The Indian IT market is an under-penetrated one and we believe there is a great opportunity for us to work with our partners to offer differentiated solutions, even more in the SMB
segment that will have a significant channel play. With things such as this in mind, Dell constantly engages with channel partners through various initiatives, which are focused on their empowerment. We plan to reach more customers and more markets by working in sync with our partners. We understand that our channel partners need to understand customer pain points, be educated about product or solution offerings and their suitability – to assure greater customer satisfaction and expand reach towards more customers – and all efforts and initiative would be to this end. The PartnerDirect programme has been a major success in multiple ways. It helped us create value for resellers to reach out to more customers. It also helped us make the Dell brand available to the SMB segment which does a significant part of its business through the channel. Our recently consolidated go-tomarket channel strategy, GCC for our commercial channel partners aims to increase partner convenience, profitability and growth. Under this new initiative, our PartnerDirect program will now be led by a separate GCC team, which will serve as a single point of contact for channel partners across the company’s different commercial business segments - Large Enterprise, Public and Medium Business. The new GCC structure, with its single point of contact for partners, will lead to higher productivity and improved time cycles and enable more customized programs to support the partners in the market. The new structure will protect partner profitability by bringing consistent pricing across different Dell commercial businesses and offer the partners increased growth opportunities with solution centric offerings and a broader end customer base. Dell constantly engages with channel partners through various initiatives, which are focused on the empowerment of our partners. Apart from this we have taken many initiatives to boost the bottom-line of our partners, starting from proper training on our products to enhancing their rebates and incentive programs. Have you taken feedbacks from the channel partners? Dell recognizes channel as an important growth engine to gain greater coverage and customer access in a market like India, especially in the highly-distributed medium business segment. As we continue to engage with our partners, their feedback has helped us evolve a more robust goto-market strategy for our indirect business. We constantly listen to feedback from our partners and the single point of contact under the GCC team is a result of this feedback.
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SME CHAT
GLOBUS
MS. KIRANDEEP VICE-PRESIDENT, MARKETING, GLOBUS INFOCOM LTD.
“OUR CORE STRENGTH LIES IN OUR OWN MANUFACTURING AND STRONG IN-HOUSE R&D“ Globus infocom Ltd. Is one of the leading education technology companies in India. The company vouches for its innovative solutions that enable class rooms and labs in schools, colleges and universities. SME Channels spokes to Kirandeep - Vice-President, Marketing, Globus Infocom Ltd. to know about its strategy in market. Excerpts
Brief about Globus Infocom Limited Globus Infocom Limited is an education technology company that continues to be at the forefront with its path breaking innovations. The company was established in 2001 and has been able to successfully capture the hearts as well as the presentation rooms of the most reputed and esteemed companies all across the nation in every vertical i.e. Education, Govt., Corporate and Defense. Innovative products are at the heart of its operations. It offers a wide choice to its customers consisting of standalone products and integrated solutions in order to meet the emerging needs of the customers. The product portfolio of Globus includes projectors, Visualizers, Boards, pads, panel, kiosk etc. and latest innovative solutions like Magic Studio. Globus is an innovative company that stresses on quality service as well as offering attractive schemes for its channel partners. With strength in software customization, Globus believes its products will have a huge demand as its solutions offer great value to customers. It has entered into various contractual agreements with the central and state govt. for its products in order to ensure that the customers have the privilege as well as convenience to buy reliable products at contractual rates. It confidently delivers Innovation, Quality, Timely service and Customer Delight to our customers.
With a passion for challenging frontiers, the word impossible is a non entity for Globus. What are the solutions you offer? As an Education Technology Company focusing in the education space and designing our innovative product is “Magic Studio” which is an integrated device comprising of a computer, projector, DVD player, amplifier and speakers. It forms a part of a comprehensive solution which has the following applications:a) School/colleges which are investing in ICT for the first time . b) Interactive classroom and Virtual Classrooms. c) Modern Science lab:- This offering is first of its kind in India and it greatly enhances the impact of teaching and makes an everlasting and memorable experience in the minds of learners. Apart from this, we have launched solutions for Virtual Classrooms, Distance Education, Center of Excellence, Interactive Classroom for Technical / Higher Educational Colleges. What is your core strength? Our core strength lies in our own Manufacturing and strong in-house R&D set up, clubbed with exclusive software customization, owing to which we are able to innovate products which would be the channel’s “Real Desire” in the times to come. These products have a huge
demand in the market and they are one of a kind, exclusive products which nobody else in the market has to offer to the channel partners. Also, our service network is widely and strongly spread all across India and we are indeed proud to state that we have service representatives even in the remotest locations in India. This has greatly helped us in strengthening our relations with our customers as we deliver timely attendance to them. How are you different from your competitors? We are the only company in India in Education space, which has the capability as well as capacity to manufacture innovative, quality, rugged and user friendly solutions which no other company in this line can offer. Our path breaking innovation Magic Studio is the live example to this. None of the competitor has complete and unique solutions to offer. We are proud to state that our business model is quite different from the IT industry. All processes are system driven and not individual driven at all. The model basically focuses on channel partners whose earning potential is defined by their efforts. The quality of customers they bring, defines the margins of the channel partners. We are our biggest competitor and we always work towards making our solutions better each day and adding more unique and user friendly features to
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GLOBUS
SME CHAT
“WE ARE THE ONLY COMPANY IN INDIA IN EDUCATION SPACE, WHICH HAS THE CAPABILITY AS WELL AS CAPACITY TO MANUFACTURE INNOVATIVE, QUALITY, RUGGED AND USER FRIENDLY SOLUTIONS. them which are of the latest technology but yet Simple to use. How many partners you have? We have 30 active channel partners till date but we have an aggressive plan in 2011 to sign up with new channel partners specifically in B- and C- Class cities for our latest innovation, Magic Studio. This is an out of the box solution with huge earning potential for the channel partners. They would be able to earn multiple folds as compared to when they sell a normal projector or a computer. In 2011 we again would be supporting the channel partners completely in terms of strong and innovative product line, greater margins, better and improved services and a strong protection in terms of key accounts by Globus. This would help us expand our partner eco-system and also strengthening it further. Also we plan to move the market to a next level by offering our innovative and attractive schemes to the channel partners. So, we plan to offer lot of growth opportunities to the channel partners and at the same time acknowledges their valuable contribution towards our growth. So, on the whole the Product Basket, Solution Mix and Reach these all would increase which would be highly motivational for every channel partner.
How relevant is channel market for you? Owing to a lot of aggression in the market, channel partners are now the key growth providers. They also play a pivotal role in taking technological innovations to the customers. If they tap the right set of customers, it becomes beneficial for both of us. We strongly believe that ‘it is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.’ We have always been receptive to their suggestions /inputs with an open mind because we believe there is always a scope for improvement. By listening to them patiently, we would be able to offer better, richer and faster growth opportunities to them. Channel Partners also want a strong support extension by the company, which has always been our topmost priority. Do you have any channel incentive programmes? In 2010, we had offered two schemes which were “Diwali Bonanza Scheme” and “New Year Promotional Scheme which had lot of gifts/holiday packages for outstanding performers. In 2011, apart from this, we would expand our reach tremendously in every B&C Class city. A Lot of product launches would happen. Training progammes would be organized at multiple locations all across the country which would be for product training as well as for general motivation to all the
existing and new partners as well. We plan to perform road shows in order to create awareness for our product specifically in B & C class cities. We would offer attractive promotional schemes every quarter i.e. 4 schemes in a year. Our solution bag would expand prolifically as we would be entering in professional display solutions/security CCTV Solution/Computer training labs. Which sectors you are working with aggressively? We are aggressively working in the Education Sector, which includes schools, colleges, universities, professional colleges etc. Also we are focusing on SME’s/ SMB’s. How relevant is SME market for you? Our solutions find applications in a small meeting room to a big conference room or auditoriums, hence SME market is extremely critical to us in the times to come. We have also designed special programmes to address to them. What is your turnover and growth? Globus turnover was Rs.28 crores in the financial year 2010-11. We are expecting to achieving Rs.60 crores in this financial year and we are prepared, poised as well as confident of achieving it! SME
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SME BIZ
APC
VISION IS TO BECOME
ENERGY
MANAGER TO THE CUSTOMERS Indian market is from the power management stand point is very attractive one and growing probably by 12 -15% YoY till next 2-3 years. Already the UPS market in India has touched a stature of US$1.5 billion. There is a huge opportunity for the future. BY NEIL D’SOUZA info@smechannels.com
FACTS ABOUT Year of Operation in India
:
1997
India Headquarters
:
Bangalore
Key people
:
Shrinivas Chebbi, CGM & VP - India; Gaurav Burman, Director – Transaction Business; G.B. Ravichandra, Director, Enterprise Business; Sridhar Laxman, Director – Strategic Marketing, APC
Direct presence in India
:
290+ locations through ASPs
Products
:
UPS, Data centre Management Software, Professional Services Audit and Assessment, Management Services, Transformative Service, Remote Infrastructure Management
Website
:
http://www.apc.com/in
I
ndia’s power market is one of the fastest growing sectors in the country. Simply because when the overall economic growth the country is scripting and the pundits are forecasting for next five years, how can it happen without good power supply? For every, activity, one requires good Power and every one across the industries knows how bad the Indian power condition is and every one also knows how bad the Indian grids are. So power management is one of the key to the effective and optimal use of power. Therefore, the figure often pops out these days US$1.5 billion in terms of its market size in India. The industry and the vendors call this market as power management or power continuity market alternative, which features products like UPS and NCPI (Network-Critical Physical Infrastructure), Precision Air-Conditioning, Inverter and Battery, Surge Protectors, Enclosures, etc. From the market stand point, perhaps there is no player left out in the power solutions space, which is not present in the country. They are either making acquisitions or divesting some of their shares to other companies in order to be present in
India. At the same time the industry is also going through a consolidation phase. A lot of acquisition and mergers are happening. The companies having out of the building products including switch gear and MCBs, trying to go inside building by acquiring companies who are experts in UPS and inverters. Even vendors having both are trying to enhance capability by adding on components including enclosures, connecters, passive products, etc. So it is very interesting phase now. Given this back drop, the industry leader APC, which is known now as APC by Schneider, is also changing. Gaurav Burman, Director – Transaction Sales, APC, says, “APC was acquired about 4 years ago by Schneider Electric worldwide. And today we are the 100% subsidiary of the company known as IT BU (IT business unit).” In fact there are five business units of Schneider Electric and APC is one of them. Over the time, there has been close integration across the organizations. The strength of both the organizations has come together and the vision of the organization has emerged to be “the energy manager to the customers”. Earlier, Schneider used to be present
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APC
FINAL QUESTION
GAURAV BURMAN, DIRECTOR – TRANSACTION SALES, APC
WHY OTHER COMPANIES ARE NOT AS SUCCESSFUL AS APC? A lot of the companies are coming in but they are not successful, the reason for them not to find immediate success is that the market is highly service intensive. India has vast geography and the access is not better. Even though the things are becoming better now but if one wants to move products from Bangalore to north east states, it takes at least 12 days. So service has to follow where products go. You need to have local alliances. You need to have people present right where the customers are. Service, scale and reach are some of the points where the newer organizations falling short. Until they crack the reach and service aspect it will be very difficult to survive in India. You cannot bring products and ship them outside India to be repaired and fly them back. The economics will never allow them to do so. You need to have test and repair centres. You need to have localized tie ups with the companies which can ship your space parts across the country. You need to have local warehouses at least in 15-16 states in the country. Those are the challenges organizations have been dealing with.
WHAT COULD BE THE TENTATIVE BREAKUP OF THE US$1.5 BILLION POWER SOLUTION MARKET? Out of US$1.5 billion, the single phase UPS market will be around US$400 million and the three phase UPS - above 40kVA - will be of US$250 million. The precision airconditioning will be around US$60-70 million. Then you add the inverter and battery market, it will be around US$600-700 million.
SME BIZ
up to the exterior of the building with the MCBs, switchgears, etc., but with the acquisition of APC the company now has entered into the building with UPS and precision air-conditioning, etc. Gaurav adds, “Neither we generate power nor do we make the devices that use power or applications. We are in-between the layers and operate between the transmission, distribution and the applications. With the acquisition of APC, Schneider has added an important component within the entire chain.” With APC, Schneider could now offer a suite of solutions to the customers. This has also helped APC to enter into various geographies. For example, in North America, APC was very strong, where Schneider could push their products. Similarly, in Europe Schneider was very strong, now APC products are getting pushed in that geography. In India as well, the group is also influencing the market for both APC and Schneider products. Gaurav maintained, “We have commitment to the customers that we are the energy manager to the customers across the product lines whether that goes from APC or from Schneider. We are committing people a cut of 30% of their energy bill.” He adds, “Moving to the home segment, where, so far, it has been the APC UPS and inverters, we are now able to give Schneider switches, mood lighting, LED lights, etc.” As far as India is concerned, it is a very high focussed geo for Schneider Electric. India’s poor quality grids impel the company to be more focussed on the country. The gap between supply and demand is around 13.7%. The transmissions and distribution losses are very big so there is a tremendous scope for an organization like Schneider which helps customers to do more with less. Whatever the customers are paying for the energy they can save on that. At the same time, there are a lot of new applications coming in. There is an emergence of middle class, huge amount of automation waiting to happen in the manufacturing and services sector. So also there is a huge emergence in rural market and lower middle class society where a lot of technology deployment happening. Looking at this situation, Gaurav, says, “We as an organization have made a lot of significant investment. At the moment, with the acquisitions in India, we have approximately 10, 000 people in the country. We are looking at increasing our presence in India. As an organization we would have R&D, manufacturing, IT back office, sales force and services teams to be present in India.” But the present situation is that APC has fairly significant presence all across. The company has sales presence in 290 cities with resellers exceed-
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APC
ing 7100. The company has service capabilities in 156 cities which they would like to grow to 200 cities by the end of this year. The company also has warehouses in about 16 cities to cover these locations. APC banks on eight manufacturing facilities across India, two of which are present in Uttaranchal and six in Bangalore. With these capabilities in place the company is expecting to double the industry growth and targets market verticals like home, SMB, IT & ITeS and Govt. to be drivers of their business this year. APC does not look at the products from mere hardware perspective rather from the point of services, advance follow up, after sale support, etc. Gaurav says, “On the efficiency front, we are higher than Emerson, Microtek or Luminous etc.” He explains, “Efficiency means, for X amount of output, you need Y amount of input, which means if you require 100 watts on the output side, APC UPS will probably pull in 101 or 102 watts. On the other hand, Emerson will be 93%-95% efficient where as the local brands will bring 80% efficiency. What it means to the customers is that for X amount of electricity they require for the applications, they might end up paying 10% to 20% higher.” And, if it is a large customer, then the repercussion will be even more as the heat dissipation will be more and they will have to invest in cooling the data centre and server room. In this case your cooling bills will be again higher. All of this adds up to the energy bill but in the case of APC it is savings for the customers. Gaurav maintains, “Largely we drive this by virtue of the engineering and designing of the product and the way which the heat is managed and the way we manage the topology of the products and transformer efficiency, etc.” Today, UPS is no longer a dumb device with battery and charger inside. It is much more than that. The customers want the UPS should be smarter and intelligent and be able to remotely log in. The UPS should give alerts to the customers to fix the problem or see the status remotely. He says, “While everybody says their UPS is manageable. All these manageability is delivered to the customers in the form of management cards available at the back of the UPS. We offer around 11-12 various cards within the systems, which allow the customers different kinds of options including temperature and humidity control, SNMP management, telephonic management, capability to remotely short down the UPS, building management system via RS235 protocol, etc. But the competition organizations would offer 2 to 3 cards or 5 to 6 cards in case of Emerson at the max, which allows a certain amount of flexibility but not the range that we offer.” “In fact the
software we use is called the PowerChute and the advanced version called ISX Central. The kind of flexibility and scale these software offer is available with platforms offered by IBMs or HPs, or any server or networking company,” he added. To the customers, the company surely gives so much of capability, but at the same time the company commands premium – at least 5 % to 20% in some of higher end solution. Gaurav clarifies that if one looks at the sheer ruggedness of the products and power consumption bill over 2-5 years, the customers realize that they actually end up paying lesser for APC products that the others. In the simple case most of the competition products have fuse, which melts in case of surges. While the fuse is very low-cost equipment, every time it fails you spend 5 -10 rupees to replace it and takes some time for restoration whereas all APC products has resettable circuit breaker. Although the circuit breaker is an expensive thing but the
SMB organizations find it as a big problem. Therefore we have talks with various banking and microfinance organisations to come up with some finance options for the SME customers. The other pain points include training. Many of them need training and tech initiatives. We are communicated about what is the latest technology trend and how to go about it in terms of adoption.” The company is now endeavouring to garner as much knowledge as possible and at the same time through its partners trying to mitigate the problems of the SMEs. The company has created a partner online destination (POD) and allowing the partners to register with it in order to be enabled about the SME business. So far almost 7000 resellers have already registered in this initiative. Coming to the channel engagement initiative, APC is one of the most channel friendly companies. Gaurav says that APC does a lot of
UNTIL THEY CRACK THE REACH AND SERVICE ASPECT, IT WILL BE VERY DIFFICULT TO SURVIVE IN INDIA. customer needs to press the button and gets the unit to reset without expense and down time. APC focuses on most of the industry verticals equally. They have identified many verticals but mostly there are high-volt 6 verticals that the company believes to drive the business the maximum including Govt. BFSI, Telecom, Services, SMBs, Home. Especially within the SMB segment, the company is focusing on healthcare, services, auto ancillaries, etc. In terms of SME and Home space, Gaurav claims that APC is the number one player in these two segments. As we are present in 297 cities; probably large enterprise market would be in less than 20 cities. In remaining markets, we are obviously catering to the home and SME space where we have built up our own infrastructure and our channel base.” From the marketing perspective, the company believes that from March till next four months it will be exciting time therefore the company is rolling out a new marketing initiative and training programme for the partners. The training programme encompasses messaging about how to assuage the customers’ pain points. As per Gaurav, the company has done a research around the SMB customers, competition and the partners to understand the pain points. Gaurav says, “Easy finance is something which large corporate never face as a problem but the
programmes to ensure partner loyalty for a long time. Apart from giving away foreign trips, cars, white goods, etc, APC organizes seminars with its HR team to train the partners to retain their employees which is one of partners’ pain points. The company also organizes finance training for its key partners on basic book keeping and accounting etc, which the first generation of entrepreneurs does not find it easy. APC is also actively reaching out to the partners in their locations unlike others who call the selective partners to a location in top 3 or 5 cities and have some entertainment. Gaurav says, “In keeping our believe that the market is moving toward the upcountry, about a year ago, we organized our channel partner programme (CPP) approximately in 40 cities across country touching 3000 partners. In these places, their achievements were recognized and new partners were signed up.”
Finally… In fact, the acquisition of APC by Schneider has worked very well and the company is looking forward to increasing its presence globally in a much greater manner. In India particularly the ambition of the company is to grow more than 20%, when the market is growing at 11-12%. And, the company expects that the verticals like home, SMB, IT & ITeS and Govt. segment to drive their business this year.
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GUEST IN TOWN
INDIA HAS HUGE POTENTIAL FOR CLOUD COMPUTING According to Gartner, “By 2015, Cloud Service Brokerages will represent the single-largest category of growth in cloud computing, moving from a sub-$1 billion market in 2010 to a composite market counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”
K. B. CHANDRASEKHAR CEO and Chairman, Jamcracker Inc
BRIEF PROFILE K. B. Chandrasekhar (“Chandra”), CEO and Chairman, Jamcracker Inc., is also co-founder and Chairman of e4e Inc., a global business process outsourcing company. He has also been serving on the Board of Directors for Aztec Software and Technology Services Limited since 1998. Chandra was appointed Chairman in 2004. He is actively involved in assisting entrepreneurs and is currently associated with more than 20 projects in which he has invested. Chandra started his first entrepreneurial venture in 1992 with Fouress, Inc., a network software design and development firm with clients including Sun Microsystems, Adaptec, Toshiba, and Lockheed. Within two years, Fouress was a highly profitable company with sales of $1 million per year. Later in the mid-1990 he founded Exodus Communications, which he led to become the leading provider of enterprise hosting services. In 1999, Chandra founded Jamcracker- a cloud brokerage company.
JAMCRACKER, the Cloud Computing Brokerage Company, started long back in 1999 to enable the end-customers to consume services of the partners. The purpose of the company is to help customers not to own the infrastructure but to take that as service. It is also to upgrade the customers’ skill sets with a very small cost. Speaking about the early stage of cloud computing, K. B. Chandrasekhar (“Chandra”), CEO and Chairman, Jamcracker Inc. said, “I started cloud 1.0 back in 1994 with my company called Exodus communications. Exodus allowed people to bring in servers on demand and run in the network. It was a big deal that time as people wanted scalable bandwidth.” He later found that there is so much of content coming in that there is requirement of an agency to facilitate it and created Jamcracker. Soon after he started the company the famous dot.com bust happened but it became a boon for them. When nothing went right for the industry, Jamcracker continued to build its platform and enabled the telecoms and SMEs. As per Chandra, SME customers do not have bandwidth and muscle to get the best possible solution. Cloud brokerage allows bringing together certified partners including the VARs, SME customers and engage in a trusted bidding process by knowing the track record of the VAR and what others have to say about them and whether he is getting the best solution at the best possible price point. He is also able to track the entire progress, which typically is the luxury of large enterprises. Otherwise, SMEs always remain under the mercy of 1-2 VARs. He says, “We also bring in the element of rating people how their experience is. As per Chandra, India is on their mind as the top market for cloud solutions. It is not the replacement market but the green field projects very likely to adopt cloud. There are various case studies which show that the SMEs are gaining productivity of cloud adoption. In fact, TCS, HCL, Sify have already launched their cloud strategy for the SMEs.
All telcos are lining up to provide cloud solutions in India. Chandra adds, “In the past nine months, our phones are ringing nonstop. Suddenly, we are thrown in to the mainstream adoption. From being sleepy at our pleasure, suddenly we are pushed to run at 100 miles per hour. The best part is that we are not competition to the VARs. We work with distributors to complement the VARs.” Today, the micro organizations are using technology effectively for their server, storage and security needs. Zero legacy, propensity and availability are clearly driving the growth of this market. The technology vendors are evangelizing the cloud computing. Jamcracker has engaged with channel partners and resellers, which is paying them big way for last 6-9 months. He adds, “Now we can understand that the resellers’ hesitance is gone as they are aggressively going into the cloud space.” Jamcracker already have resellers across the country. The company has spent a lot in engaging channel partners in terms of enabling them. As per him the glamorous sectors of the market are not taking up the cloud. It is the schools, fleet management company, etc. are taking up cloud computing. These benefits are enabling Jamcracker to grow fast and as a result, the company is being appreciated in several countries including Australia, Ireland, US, India, etc. Today, the company has 400 partners including Telestra, AB&T, Telus, and several other tier -2 & - 3 partners. These customers are servising 6 digit customers base across the world. Chandra concludes “India is the next super power. My job is to create enterprises in India and develop market. We have 200 people plus here. We have big research centre in Chennai. Also, we have incubator centres in Chennai and Bangalore, where there are six new start-ups coming through. Today, there are about 32 lakh MSMEs in India and 99% are the potential for cloud. It is a huge potential for cloud computing and for Jamcracker.
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PRODUCT
REVIEW
LINKSYS WUSB600 DUAL-BAND WIRELESS-N USB ADAPTER
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2011
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IOMEGA SKIN BY MANAS RANJAN info@smechannels.com
WITH 4.9 inches long, 3.3 inches wide, and 0.7inches thickness, iOmega Skin is one of the small form factor external hard drives that is available in the country. With 500 GB capacity, you keep all your data for the highest kind of mobility although there are drives available in up to TBs. You can use it as your data backup device synching regularly with your PC. It is easy to carry your data around with you. The enclosure by itself impressed me. It feels solid in your hands and it’s not heavy. With 2.5-inch footprint you can easily slips to your pocket and does not give you feeling of carrying something. The Iomega Skin hard drive has that Iomega quality, so you can rely on it. At least Drop Guard protects up to 51 inches; three-year warranty can ensure you that your data is in safe hands. The device comes with a USB adapter which not only becomes your data transfer interface but also the source of power. The adapter with two USB heads ensures that if a PC does not have enough power to be given to the drive then one can insert two USB heads. It is really easy to carry in your pocket and with USB2 standard; it can transfer data at a speed of 480MB/s. It is designed to support both MAC and PC. In terms of price, it looks little higher side but for the quality and design it’s worth paying an extra amount.
FEATURES n Uses Iomega’s “Drop Guard” to protect
from dropping up to 51 inches. n Includes Iomega’s backup software, via
download. n Works with PC or Mac. n Bus powered n Small size, build quality feels good n Offers an alternative to the plain old
box design
PRICE `3,499/-
WARRANTY 3 Years
CONTACT Annamalai Ar, Iomega Corporation, Phone: 18001802237, Email: indiasales@iomega.com, Website: http:// go.iomega.com/en/?partner=4750
OVERALL RATING
The Linksys Dual-Band Wireless-N USB Network Adapter might be a tiny device but it can turn your PCs wireless in some minutes. It helps you making the system out of the messy wires. Just plug it into your computer’s USB port and enjoy incredible high-speed wireless network access. Of course it takes step-by-step to process to setup but once you are done, you are really wireless. The product comes with 256 encryption that helps your communications and information private. Weighing only 50 grams, it looks very attractive in black sleek design. Wireless-N’s MIMO technology multiplies the effective data rate unlike other wireless networking technologies that are confused by signal reflections. MIMO uses these reflections to increase the range and reduce “dead spots” in the wireless coverage area. Dual-band wireless networks operate in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz radio bands at the same time, effectively doubling the available wireless bandwidth. The USB Network Adapter allows you to connect using whichever band works the best for your situation. As far as features are concerned it has 2 internal antennas and compliant with IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Draft IEEE 802.11n standards and comes with Security Features: WEP, WPA, and WPA2.
n Indian Price: Approximately Rs.2, 999, Warranty: 1 Year; Contact: CISCO Consumer Products, E-mail Address: consumersales-india@cisco.com, Phone: +1 800-419-5797, Website: http://www.linksysbycisco.com/APAC/ en/home
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PRODUCT
NEW ARRIVALS
BIZ SECURE LABS
NET PROTECTOR 2011 NET PROTECTOR 2011 launched by India Antivirus incorporates Anti-Virus and Internet Security. It also comes with OS Firewall to protect from the Hackers. Scans at the Startup, it checks memory on Startup and dis-infects PC automatically. Its Zero-Virus Shield stops the viruses in real-time before they reach your PC giving your PC a rock solid & reliable protection. It also solves all Internet Browsing Problems ensuring smooth & Fast Internet connection & surfing. It also reduces unwanted Traffic. Its Powerful Zero-V Scanning Engine cleans and protects from all Virus types including File Viruses, Boot Sector & Partition Table, Macro Viruses, Worms, Trojans, Dialers, Downloaders, Backdoors, Malwares, Spywares. Net Protector detects Adware, Spyware, Riskware, Downloaders, Trojans, Internet Dialers & other potentially unwanted applications. It also detects and stops intrusion of new & unknown worms into your computer. It stops False ‘Critical Error’ Security Warnings & Unwanted Pop-Ups. IT Managers can monitor health of all PCs on the corporate network from a single PC. The Worm Trapper detects and stops intrusion of new / unknown worms into your OS. It also offers E-Mail Protection and saves your valuable time and leaves you free to concentrate on work mails. Net Protector lets you use Right click on any selected folder within Explorer to start a scan. It offers protection from all Sources-- Disk Files, Floppies, CDs, Network Shares, LAN, E-mail, Internet, Messenger, Zip Drives, Pen Drives, MP3 Players, Digital Cameras, Mobile Phones and Digital Media. n Price: on request, Subscription mode: 1 Year and 3 Years, Contact: Sales Dept., Biz Secure Labs Pvt. Ltd, Phone: 09272707050, Toll Free:-1800-2095550 Email: sales@indiantivirus.com, Web Site:- www.indiaantivirus.com
NETGEAR
WIRELESS RANGE EXTENDER-NETGEAR THE NETGEAR UNIVERSAL WiFi Range Extender allows you to keep your current wireless equipment and improve coverage to eliminate “dead zones”, giving you the freedom to roam anywhere in the house and access Internet without worrying about coverage. It is compatible with wireless b/g/n routers, gateways and Internet service provider’s devices. Four Ethernet ports enable you to connect to gaming consoles, Internet TVs, and Blu-ray players. Compatible with any wireless b/g/n router or gateway from NETGEAR and other brands, the Range Extender pushes ‘N’ Connect using Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) connects computers to the Extender quickly and securely. The Real-time link-rate LED locates the best placement spot to provide optimal wireless coverage. It’s step-by-step, graphical Installation Guide makes installation easy. No need to insert a CD or plug in Ethernet cables! n Price: Rs 3835, Warranty: 2 Year, Contact: NETGEAR Technologies, Phone: 011- 41207446, Email: sales.india@netgear.com, Website: www. netgear.com
SILICON POWER
SILICON POWER USB3.0 EXPRESS CARD SILICON POWER USB3.0 is the external adapter that makes your PC and notebooks USB 3.0 compatible. This express card has two USB3.0 ports for users to fast transfer high volumes. Just push the card into its slot available in the notebooks and you are ready to transfer data at the speed of up to 5Gb/ sec. With this card your PC becomes 10 times faster than the existing USB2.0. It supports all OS including Window 7 and comes with a 2-year warranty. It is also backward compatible with USB2.0 and USB1.1 standards. Weighing only 32grams, this adapter gets invisible inside the notebook. With the dimension of 115mm (L) × 40mm (W) × 13mm (H), this device is plug-n-play and hot swappable. n Price: On request, Warranty: 2 Years, Contact: Lianne Mai, Silicon Power, Email: lianne_mai@silicon-power.com, MSN: lianne_mai@ hotmail.com Skype: lianne.mai
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RNI No.: DEL ENG / 2010 / 3192
Data of Posting: 22 & 23 of Every Month
Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4145/10-12
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