PLUS
Dell Brings Disaster Recovery Solution for SMB /10
india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 02
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SME CHAT
/40
CES: The Spirit of CES is to Help Grow Innovation
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Huewai: Betting On Enteprrise
SME CHAT
/44
Matrix: Re-Dialling into VoIP
UNTAPPED MARKET AMONGST THE SMBs The CRM market can have increased appeal among SMBs in India, if vendors develop appropriate messaging and position its products to suit the segment. /28
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www.digisol.com
Switching means
DIGISOL DIGISOL switching solutions include world-class high-performance switches ideal for your enterprise requirements. The DIGISOL Stallion Series of Chassis switches, the Mustang Series of L2-L3 Managed switches and Azteca Series of smart Web-managed switches provides best in class switching solutions for all enterprise level and high-end switching needs. They are backed by DIGICARE support and have lifetime warranty.
DIGISOL Chassis Switching Solutions
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Switching | Broadband Routing | Wireless LAN | Converged Communication | IP Surveillance | LAN Communication Helpdesk : 1800-209-3444 (Toll free) | E-mail : helpdesk@digisol.com | Website : www.digisol.com A product of Smartlink Network Systems Ltd.
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Corporate Office: Plot No. 5, Bandra-Kurla Complex, Off CST Road, Santacruz(east), Mumbai- 400 098
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PLUS
Manikchand Migrates To IBM’s Smarter Computing /18 www.smechannels.com
india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 02
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ISSUE 12
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FEBRUARY 2012
CASE STUDY
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/43
Tally: Large Aluminum Packaging Manufacturer runs on Tally.ERP 9
TREND SETTER
/49
Sakri IT: Sakri IT Solutions Synonymous with Success
PARTNER CORNER
/48
WeP: Gaining Momentum on Retail and Energy Sectors
MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL
BEGINNING OF GOOD TIMES! AHEAD… SANJAY MOHAPATRA editor@smechannels.com
IT seems that February is a good month for India as far as IT market is concerned. This month last year also the market had started picking up. This year also the market is quite bullish. The stock market had put up a good performance after a slump for a long time. The feelings that the market is bouncing back is again coming. Today, the dollar fluctuation has been settled down and the import market is looking brighter but for those people who had piled up products during the time of short supply would still be waiting for the time that the price will go up again. Yes! There are cases. Today, again we could see that there is a growth in the footfall in the retail outlets. Even the customers in Nehru Place, SP Road and Lamington Road have started making beelines. Most importantly the IT partners’ run rate business is coming back slowly to the track. People are complaining about the high price of products even the dollar price has come down. This is justfied on their part but in India the business never happens like that the price correction never happens majorly. The projects which were delayed or postponed will remain in the same way for next one month till March. The large scale projects will surely expect tax rebates or reduction of tax rates in the 2012 Union Budget so one cannot hope that this part of the business will bounce back immediately. Actually, market down or market up does not influence one’s profitability if the practice is good. We have seen people earning good profits even when the market was all time low. We also have seen people always yelling about not earning profits even when the market is at the peak. So profitability is equivalent to good practice. Today, people have started understanding this. As an early student, Tally has started a programme called “The Mathematics of Happiness”. It is a programme that is not about business or profitability rather about the values. The senior executives of Tally personaly address each session and talk about everything except business. They talk how to enhance relationship with existing customers and become true consultants to them than chasing the new prospects, which at times become ‘catching wild goose’. So, before I sign off, I wish all the people very best and advise them to adopt good and ethical practices. The time is good and the business will surely bounce back.
VIEWSONIC VIEWPAD 7E VIEWSONIC VIEWPAD 7E is the multimedia entertainment tablet that features the Android 2.3 operating system, 1GHz processor and Full HD 1080p video resolution. Download music, e-magazines, gaming apps and more via Wi-Fi. Equipped with a 4:3 multi-touch panel, the pearl white ViewPad 7e is easy to hold for all ages. It comes with a book-like cover, and is the ideal multimedia tablet for students or businesspeople that enjoy reading books, watching videos and playing games on the go. With Android 2.3 and 1GHz processor, the ViewPad 7e can play Flash 10.3 media and display videos in vivid Full HD 1080p. Builtin Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability allow users to download their favorite YouTube videos, games and music.
SPECIFICATIONS The ViewPad 7e is built with ViewSonic’s exclusive ViewScene 3D interface and available with 4 GB storage which is expandable to 32 GB. FINAL WORDING With Rs. 13000 price point, ViewPad 7e is a great productive tool. OVERALL RATING
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contents
FEB VOLUME 02 ISSUE 12
2012
ER COV RY STO
india’s first IT magazine for sme business
Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Assistant Editor: Karma Negi Executive Editor: Smruti Chaudhury Copy Editor: Neil D’Souza Reporters: Neeta Israni, Aparajita Choudhury Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi 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
Untapped Market Amongst the SMBs
Kolkata S Subhendu BC-286, Laxmi Apartment, Kestopur Kolkata-700101 Phone: 9674804389
/28
The CRM market can have increased appeal among SMBs in India, if vendors develop appropriate messaging and position its products to suit the segment.
EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/102, Kaushalya Park, New Delhi110016, Phone: 91-11-41055458 info@smechannels.com Bangalore 136/ 9, Ground Floor, Eden Crest Apartment, Grape Garden, Ejipura Vivek Nagar PS
SME CHAT CES /40 The Spirit of CES is to Help Grow Innovation
SME BIZ
Bengalore-560047
Huewai /46
news@smechannels.com
Betting On Enteprrise Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib
Matrix /44 Re-Dialling into VoIP
more inside Editorial~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04
TREND SETTER Sakri IT /49 Sakri IT Solutions Synonymous with Success
SECURITY CORNER Fortinet /50 Fortinet to Fortify its Channel Presence
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Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016
Snippets~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 08
Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458
Case Study-IBM~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 24
Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor,
Case Study-SAGE~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 26
Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi
Case Study-Data Systems~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 38
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Partner Corner~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 42
All rights reserved. No part of this publica-
Case Study-Tally~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 43
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Partner Corner - Wep~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 48
written permission from the publisher.
Products~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 52
Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues)
Guest Talk~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 54
All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.
SME CHANNELS FEBRUARY 2012
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SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | CONSULTING | SERVICES
for more log on to smechannels.com
SMBs to Contribute One Third of Domestic IT spend by 2015 Zinnov has released its latest study titled ‘Indian SMB ICT Adoption Insights’ highlighting the current state of IT adoption in the SMB segment in India, and predicting
the likely trends going forward. The study provides a detailed analysis of the different opportunities, challenges and scope related to IT spending and technology adoption
in the sector that may result in SMBs contributing to over one third of the total domestic IT spend by 2015. The study states that while the
overall domestic IT spending is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12% to reach USD 36bn by 2015, SMBs at the same time will grow at a CAGR of 15% contributing USD 15bn by 2015. The Zinnov reports states that the country is home to around 50 million SMBs currently of which 10 million are technology-ready. Transforming itself from the traditional ‘pen & paper’ business culture, SMBs today are increasingly adopting technology for the betterment of their business. Modern SMBs are investing heavily on tools like PCs, internet and website to market themselves and compete in global / domestic markets. Commenting on the study, Kishan Bhat, Engagement Manager, Zinnov, said, “The Indian market is promising and challenging at the same time. We are optimistic about the growth outlook but there are serious concerns which need to be addressed immediately. Majority of SMBs still perceive IT adoption as a time consuming and complex process and therefore, prefer to stick to their existing traditional processes. There needs to be a categorical shift from legacy systems, and some fresh investments made from a long-term growth perspective.”
AMI Study Reveals Growth in Cloud Channel Partners With the increased demand in cloud services among small and medium businesses, there must be healthy growth in the number of channel partners offering cloud solutions as part of their product/services portfolio. The total number of India SMB channel partners has increased by nearly 10% in the past year, whereas the number of cloud channel partners has increased by approximately 35%. This translates to a significant shift in the number of India partners that are gravitating toward offering cloud solutions. While a typical India SMB-focused cloud channel partner has been in business for around 10 years, they have only added cloud solution offerings in the last 2-3 years. AMI’s recently released India Channel Partner study reveals that channel partners offering cloud solutions tend to be optimistic – they are expecting strong revenue growth driven by customer demand for hosted applications and vendor investments in this area. Quality of solutions and post-sales service are the major drivers to accelerate cloud adoption among SMB customers in India.
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Dell Brings Disaster Recovery Solution for SMB Dell has unveiled the Dell DR4000, an advanced disk backup and disaster recovery solution in India which combines the performance and reliability of disk-based backup with innovative deduplication and compression capabilities from Dell’s Ocarina Networks acquisition to meet the growing data needs of small and medium businesses. Commenting on the technology, Bobby Mon, Head-Enterprise Business, SMB, Dell India, said, “Companies of all sizes increasingly struggle with the relentless growth of data they must manage. Essential to the business yet often redundant in nature, data can strain storage and backup processes as administrators strive to ensure its availability and integrity while still meeting capacity and backup window constraints. “
AGC Networks gets Accolade Aspect has recognized AGC Networks as the winner of the ‘2011 Aspect Partner of the Year’ for India, South Asia and the Middle East region. The annual award honors Aspect partners for delivering innovative contact centre and unified communications solutions during the past year that directly address customer challenges. Award winners and finalists, chosen from nominations from India, South Asia and the Middle East, based on business growth, revenue achievement, and general sales performance, were recognized at the Aspect Sales Kickoff held in Orlando, Florida January 6-11. SK Jha, MD and CEO, AGC Networks Limited added, “Channel partners are key to our success in this region and AGC Networks has consistently developed and launched innovative services that leverage the capabilities of Aspect Unified IP 7,” said Rajeev Soni, Country Manager, India, South Asia and Middle East, Aspect.
Huawei Appoints neoteric as its Distributor Huawei Enterprise has tied up with neoteric infomatique. As part of this channel alliance, neoteric will be responsible for promoting and generating demand for the Huawei’s enterprise solution portfolio across technology domains like enterprise LAN, enterprise security, cloud computing, unified communications, video conference and tele presence, video surveillance, VDI, data center solutions etc, and create value for the enterprise segment in India. “We at Huawei firmly believe that channel partners form the backbone for our success in India. We wholeheartedly welcome neoteric as a distributor for Huawei Enterprise and are confident that with our combined efforts we would be able to target the enterprise segment in a better way,” explained, Gaurav Mohan, VP, Channels and Head of Mumbai Region, Huawei. Powered by its new alliance with Huawei Enterprise, neoteric is set to offer its expertise within the domain of networking, video conferencing and security and surveillance solutions, and hence, completing its enterprise offering for the burgeoning SME and SMB sector in India.
MY POINT
Supertron to Distribute DIGILITE
Supertron Electronics has been appointed by Smartlink Network Systems Limited to distribute Digilite motherboards across India. Supertron will address thousands of VARs, resellers partners and SIs across India. V K Bhandari, Chairman and MD, Supertron Electronics Ltd, siad, “Smartlink Network Systems Ltd is one of the key player in the Indian IT market with two decades of experience, and Digilite is one of the fastest selling motherboard brand in India. We are delighted on the appointment as distributor for Digilite motherboards across India. We take it as an opportunity to offer quality motherboard brand to our channel partners and further build on the relationship which we have enjoyed with Smartlink.” Rajan Sharma, VP, Sales, DIGILITE said, “With Supertron’s strong distribution network and excellent channel alignment Digilite will be focusing on exploring as well as developing the unrepresented areas of the Indian motherboard market. Now that we have Supertron onboard, we can further penetrate upcountry markets. Digilite recently reached a whooping milestone of successfully selling 1 lakh motherboards in last quarter, and we are aiming at 15%-20% of over-all motherboard market in next few years. We whole heartedly welcome Supertron onboard and look forward for a long term mutually beneficial relationship.”
Rashi to Service
Plantronics Products
“I can’t underestimate the importance of Gartner’s analysis. Being among the ‘leaders’ in the Magic Quadrant is very important for us” EUGENE KASPERSKY CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF KASPERSKY LAB
Rashi Peripherals has been named as a national service provider for Plantronics Bluetoothenabled products in India from January 2012. With this tie-up, end-customers and partners will now have access to 64 well-equipped service centers in India for Plantronics product replacement. With access to over 64 service centers in India, Rashi has a strong distribution network and channel alignment. Under this service tie-up, if a product needs to be replaced, a customer can simply calls a toll free number and are given a unique order reference number. This unique order number enables the customer to go directly to the service center and quickly obtain a new unit.
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SNIPPETS
Acro Engineering Launches Channel Scheme Acro Engineering Company (AEC) launches channel Incentive program titled ‘Cooler Master Boost Scheme’. Cooler Master Boost Scheme (CMBS) is an exclusive nation-wide sales promotional program divided into multiple slabs namely, Fiery boost, Nitro boost and Ultra boost that will provide better opportunities for Sis & VARs. System Integrators stand to win exciting prizes such as Mobile phones, Gift vouchers etc. Talking about this channel promotional scheme, “Mr. Niranjan Singh” Country Manager Acro Engineering Company said “With the launch of the Cooler Master Boost scheme we expect to help our Partners reach out to their respective second tier and help them earn better margins and maximize their profit.” CMBS is valid for a period of three months, starting 25th January till 25th April 2012.
DIGISOL ORGANIZES TRAINING PROGRAM FOR ITS DISTRIBUTORS Digisol has organized its first edition of ‘Distributor Sales Empowerment Program’ (DSEP) which is aimed at providing complete training about DIGISOL products and solutions for its distributor’s sales and pre-sales personnel. ‘Distributor Sales Empowerment Program’ which started from 2nd of February 2012 will continue till 4th February 2012 and is held in the Smartlink’s Goa facility. The first batch of DSEP consists of 50 sales and pre-sales personnel of the distributors’ from all over India. This training will be scheduled every other month. K R Naik, Executive Chairman- Smartlink Network Systems Ltd said, “The idea behind ‘Distributor Sales Empowerment Program’ is not only to create awareness about DIGISOL range of products but also to provide a complete understanding of the new technologies and trends in the IT networking sector and we believe that today’s leaders can no longer lead solely based on positional power. We feel empowered with the strength of our complete distributor family”.
GIGABYTE Conducts Training Program
Infor launches Support Program
GIGABYTE Technology has completed two phases of a pan-India initiative to train its Value Partners, on the new Intel X79 chipset-based GIGABYTE motherboards that support the 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor family. The training program was jointly conducted by GIGABYTE and Intel personnel for the benefit of GIGABYTE Value Partners, comprising mostly System Integrators (SIs), at more than 30 venues across metro, Tier 2, and also Tier 3 locations. Sunil Grewal, Sales Head - India, GIGABYTE Technology (India), said, “Simplified training programs are the most vital attribute of our channel partner engagement initiatives, essentially because such programs help in enhancing their product knowledge as well as confidence to better manage and support their customers. Our just-concluded country-wide program was attended by over 2,000 resellers who, we believe, have now gained adequate knowledge to leverage the huge market demand for the Intel X79 chipset-based motherboards”.
Infor has launched Xtreme Support, a new support program that features specialized, personalized, and proactive customer support, a consumer-grade support portal and three choices of support plans. Setting a higher standard for vendor support, Infor Xtreme Support helps customers address technical and non-technical matters and keep critical systems running at top speed. Infor Xtreme Support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year through Xtreme Support portal.
Nevales Networks Launches Partner Programme Nevales Networks has conducted the Nevales Partnership for Progress Program (NPPP) for its Channel Partners across India. The partner program is designed to engage and encourage their existing partners and also recruit more partners to further expand its channel partner base and strengthen the network. Nevales Networks Pvt. Ltd., a Mumbai based hi-tech Indian firm, aims to address the needs of the very large and diversified customer segment by building a Trusted Service Delivery model. The company’s vision is to be the Trusted Secure Business Cloud of India. “With continuous Internet connectivity becoming the lifeline of any business entity, the exposure to blended threats is always a reality. This is the best opportunity to be a Nevales Partner as in every threat there is always a bigger opportunity. The partner program of Nevales is designed to capitalize on this enormous market potential.” Said Ravishankar, the CEO of Nevales Networks.
Eset Launches “ESET Gold Rush” Scheme Eset has launched “ESET Gold Rush” scheme for its channel partners and resellers across India. Effective from February, 1 till March, 31, 2012 the “ESET Gold Rush” is a reward point based scheme offering partners and resellers all across India an opportunity to earn points by selling ESET retail products. The partners stand to acquire exciting gifts like gold coins, LCD TVs and mobile devices depending on the number of points they earn. The “ESET Gold Rush” scheme is applicable on all ESET products available in retail.
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GlobalOutlook Takes Part in McAfee Partner Focus Program
GARTNER ANNOUNCES 1.4% FALL IN PC SHIPMENTS ON Q4 2011 Gartner has announced that after two quarters of positive growth, worldwide PC shipments totaled 92.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 1.4 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2010. These figures were in line with Gartner’s earlier forecast of a 1 percent decline for the fourth quarter of 2011. “Continuously low consumer PC demand resulted in weak holiday PC shipments,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “While economic uncertainty in Western Europe had an effect on consumer PC shipments, expectations of a healthier economic outlook in North America could not stimulate consumer PC demand in that region. The healthy professional PC market as well as growth in emerging markets could not compensate for the weaknesses in mature markets, with overall growth still negative”. Hard-disk drive (HDD) shortages triggered by the October 2011 floods in Thailand had a limited impact on fourth-quarter PC shipments and prices. However, Gartner analysts said a major impact will be felt, and this is expected to materialize in the first half of 2012, and potentially continue throughout 2012. These shortages will temporarily lower PC shipment growth during 2012.
GlobalOutlook has announced its participation in the McAfee PartnerFocus Program as part of its constantly improving technology platform. GlobalOutlook’s platform provides Microsoft Communication Services, with e-mail being the foremost service. With McAfee SaaS email filtering service integrated with GlobalOutlook’s email service, customers are protected against email-borne threats and get world class email protection and continuity with no hardware or software to buy, no back-ups to run, and no maintenance to perform. “We are excited to collaborate with GlobalOutlook, a leading hosted exchange provider to help their customers address the ever increasingly challenging threat landscape,” said Fernando Quintero, Vice President of North America Channels at McAfee. Raghu Kumar,GlobalOutlook CEO, said, “We are also excited about supporting our users with the option of Business Continuity. It is increasingly important to many of our enterprise users that they can have uninterrupted access to their emails”.
EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT
INDIAN ENTERPRISE IT SPENDING WILL GROW 10.3% IN 2012 INDIAN ENTERPRISE IT SPENDING ACROSS ALL INDUSTRY MARKETS IS FORECAST TO SURPASS $39 BILLION IN 2012, A 10.3 PERCENT INCREASE FROM 2011 SPENDING OF $36 BILLION, ACCORDING TO GARTNER, INC. ENTERPRISE IT SPENDING BY VERTICAL MARKET IN INDIA (BILLIONS OF U.S. DOLLARS)
1
Communications, Media & Services
6.6
Jim Merritt Joins HP as SVP & GM of ESSN. He will report to Dave Donatelli, EVP & GM of ESSN and Technology Services.
Healthcare Providers Insurance
Government Education
1.1
Manufacturing & Natural Resources
1.5 7.3
6.8
Retail
1.9 Banking & Securities
5.6
1.8
Transportation
1.4
Utilities
1.0 2012
2011
AOC Appoints Seema T Bhatnagar as Director for India & SAARC. She will be responsible for the operations of AOC LED & AOC LCD TV.
Wholesale Trade
Sohrab Kakalia Joins Sonata as Chief of Sales. He will drive hyper growth across Sonata enterprise Salesforce.com Appoints Vivek Kundra as EVP. Worked as a CIO of U.S and the author of Cloud-First policy Rajat Sahu Joins Trend Micro as Product Marketing manager for India and SAARC
Source: Gartner (January 2012)
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Cisco UCS Captures 53 Industry Benchmark World Records Cisco Unified Computing System has captured the attention of data center managers and CIOs alike– over 10,000 customers worldwide, including 3,000 in Europe, have deployed UCS. Many industry observers were sceptical that a new computing technology could take hold in this highly competitive market, but the cost and business benefits proved compelling across all industries and all workloads. Since it began shipping in July 2009, UCS has captured 53 industry benchmark performance world records, and garnered a dozen industry awards for innovation. The 2011 Cisco Cloud Index forecasts that cloud computing is transforming business: over 50 percent of computing workloads in data centers are predicted to be cloud-based by 2014, and global cloud traffic will grow over 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes per year – the equivalent of over four days of business-class video for every person on earth. This explosive cloud growth requires the advanced data center capabilities provided by UCS to support end-to-end cloud application delivery.
RUCKUS WIRELESS EXTENDS ITS GEOGRAPHICAL PRESENCE Ruckus Wireless has inaugurated a new R&D centre in Bangalore, India. By tapping into a pool of highly skilled engineering talent in India, Ruckus’s new R&D centre in Bangalore will significantly boost Ruckus’ capabilities to develop new technologies to serve the mobile Internet infrastructure market worldwide. The new Bangalore operations will be the company’s first development centre in India, joining the company’s four other R&D centres in Taiwan (Taipei), China (Shenzhen), Israel (TelAviv), and California (Sunnyvale). “The Mobile Internet is driving fundamental change within the telecom industry,” said Selina Lo, President and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. “Integrating Wi-Fi into cellular networks has become the most popular and cost-effective way to relieve capacity pressures being felt by providers around the world from a deluge of data traffic the likes of which we have never seen before”.
WD Sees Continuous Progress in Q2 Western Digital has reported revenue of $2.0 billion, hard-drive unit shipments of 28.5 million and net income of $145 million, or $0.61 per share, for its second fiscal quarter ended Dec. 30, 2011. Excluding charges and expenses related to the Thailand flooding and the planned acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), non-GAAP net income was $358 million, or $1.51 per share. During the quarter, the company incurred charges and expenses of $199 million related to the flooding and expenses of $14 million associated with the planned acquisition of HGST. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.5 billion, net income of $225 million, or $0.96 per share, and shipped 52.2 million hard drives. The company generated $378 million in cash from operations during the December quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $3.9 billion.
HDS Named as the Best Company to Work For Hitachi Data Systems has been named as one of FORTUNE Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2012. The company premiered on this year’s prestigious annual list at No. 86. Nancy Long, senior vice president and chief human resources officer, Hitachi Data Systems, attributes this honor and company success to every HDS employee: “We’re honored and proud that FORTUNE included Hitachi Data Systems as a 2012 best company to work for, as it reflects the ongoing commitment to our employees who are the foundation of our business and the reason why we are a market leader. HDS strives to be the best place to work – and win – for our employees, and earning a ranking as a top company demonstrates that we are on the right path. We will do our best to continue to earn the confidence of our employees as well as that of the communities that make our success possible.” HDS also received honors from Chief Executive Magazine as part of its annual “40 Best Companies for 2012.
DIGEST GLACIAL LIGHT MAKES MAURITIAN RESORT MORE APPEALING Mauritius Resort has recently complemented their lush tropical settings with the GlacialLight GL-SP07 floodlight’s natural-looking light. Illuminating outdoor common areas and pathways, the 10 watt GL-SP07 is equivalent to a 75 watt mercury lamp. With reduced power consumption GlacialLight GL-SP07 LED floodlights have helped the Mauritian resort to substantially cut their electricity costs. The Heritage Awali Golf & Spa Resort will continue to see these electrical savings for years to come thanks to the GL-SP07’s long life of over 30,000 hours. Additionally, GlacialLight LED lights are a direct replacement for more inefficient traditional lighting which will reduce maintenance cost further for the Mauritian resort.
GOOGLE PAYS TRIBUTE TO WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS Google has organized a Women Entrepreneurs on the Web (WEOW) program in India, as a targeted business diversity program for women entrepreneurs. The Women Entrepreneurs on the Web Program aims to help women-owned businesses grow their online presence. The program will provide women entrepreneurs support on using various web-based technologies in their day to day business while increasing their outreach to their customer base. The program is a 5 circle approach designed specially to cater to women entrepreneurs with varied degrees of online presence and expertise. The program starts with building an online presence and moves towards collaborating effectively, connecting with customers, promoting their organisations to then tracking and optimising their online presence. We believe that entrepreneurs will be at varied stages and can enter this program through any of these circles.
FLUKE CORPORATION TO ACQUIRE TTL TECHNOLOGIES Fluke Corporation has acquired TTL Technologies Pvt. Ltd., for an undisclosed amount. TTL has represented Fluke in India since 2001 as a master distributor. The new business combines TTL’s many years of experience in the Indian test and measurement market, its national distribution network and its renowned customer care and accredited calibration labs with Fluke technological innovation, manufacturing excellence and world class business processes. TTL businesses and employees will be integrated into the Fluke organization.
EDUCOMPONLINE CONDUCTS EDUOLYMPIAD EducompOnline has brought a new platform named EduOlympiad,India’s first-ever technology-enabled academic Olympiad for school students across India. Conducted in over 400 cities across more than 5,000 schools, EduOlympiad is an extensive and inclusive competition for school students with multiple levels to prove their genius at a national level. Open for all students from Classes IV to XII, EduOlympiad is being conducted for two subjects—Science and Mathematics.
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Check Point Positioned as Leader in Magic Quadrant
HP ORGANIZES DEMAND MORE CUSTOMER EVENT IN DELHI
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd has been named in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls With the proliferation of Web 2.0 and mobile computing technologies, the volume and sophistication of Internet threats has risen, making security more difficult for many businesses to manage. Check Point R75 offers organizations comprehensive security by integrating all of the critical software blade protections organizations need to safeguard their business in modern day IT environments, including: Firewall, VPN, Application Control, Intrusion Prevention, Identity Awareness, Data Loss Prevention, and Mobile Access. Check Point R75 reinforces the company’s vision for 3D Security and delivers leading software blade protections that enable businesses to gain greater visibility and control over data, Web 2.0 applications, and mobile access – bringing organizations multi-dimensional security in a single, integrated solution.
Hewlett-Packard India showcased its latest range of LaserJet products and solutions at a special event for its customers in government, SMB and Enterprise segments, and key channel partners. The HP ‘Demand More’ event showcased the latest range of M500 & M600 LaserJet Printer Series, along with the M4555 MFP Series, which bring a new era of efficient and effective printing to government and business customers. The event was attended by more than 500 HP customers, who also witnessed live demonstrations for various HP technologies and applications including HP ePrint, AirPrint, Secure Printing, Color Access Control. Speaking on the occasion, Nitin Hiranandani, Director, LaserJet Enterprise Solutions, HP Imaging & Printing Group said, “Our latest range of enterprise LaserJet solutions embody HP’s commitment to innovation and a deeper understanding of our customers’ needs. The new printing solutions deliver industry-leading reliable performance, unsurpassed print quality and environmentally-friendly features and are designed specifically for government organizations and businesses on a high growth curve”.
Polycom & Airtel Mutually Offers Vaas to SMB
Polycom has detailed its Strategy to enable service providers to offer cloud-delivered, Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) solutions to its customers. As part of the announcement, Polycom is unveilingPolycom RealPresence Cloud, a wholesale, carrier-ready offering to enable service providers to quickly bring to market VaaS offerings.Airtel, a leading service provider in India, is also using theRealPresence Platform to deliver VaaS solutions to SMBs and enterprises throughout India. These solutions provide a differentiated offering for both companies and are helping to drive further adoption of video collaboration throughout China andIndia.RealPresence Cloud solutions are designed specifically for service providers to equip them with the carrier-grade infrastructure, endpoints and services they need to offer businesses of all sizes subscription-based solutions for video collaboration. The new offering for service providers is designed to accelerate the penetration and adoption of Polycom video.
HP Unveils New Pavilion PC HP has expanded its ultraportable consumer notebook PC portfolio with thin and light products that provide the ideal balance of mobility and high performance. With powerful performance in a small package, the HP Pavilion dm4 includes the latest Intel Core processors, Beats Audio and 14-inch (35.56 cm) diagonal high-definition (HD) LED display for a rich multimedia experience. The HP Pavilion dm4 Beats Edition offers an enriched listening experience with Beats Audio and delivers the signature black and red Beats Audio design to suit the style-conscious. “These notebooks are a perfect blend of mobility, entertainment and high performance, a must have for those on the move. We are particularly excited about the exclusive HP Pavilion dm4 Beats Edition and the redesigned HP Mini 210 with Beats Audio, as they effortlessly combine music and technology,” said Vinay Awasthi, Senior Director, Products & Marketing, HP PSG India.
Manikchand Migrates To IBM’s Smarter Computing Manikchand Group has consolidated its entire IT infrastructure on IBM BladeCenter systems. The move, which displaced existing server systems from Hewlett Packard, was designed to help the company, which operates on three continents, to better manage its growth by improving system management, reducing its overall system footprint, and significantly lowering IT costs. Designed with high-powered, efficient, yet small footprint blade servers, the IBM BladeCenter system offers greater energy efficiencies and more floor space than traditional server systems. Also as part of the solution, Manikchand incorporated an IBM virtualization solution that is based on VMware’s VSphere Essential 4.1, to enable faster server deployment.
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SNIPPETS
HCL Learning Initiates IT Programmes for Academia HCL Learning has announced the commencement of the ‘Learning Conclave for Progressive Schools’. The program has begun from December 2011 and will cover numerous schools, colleges and coaching institutes across various cities across the country. The program will be activated as specific events in each city wherein representatives from various educational institutions will congregate and discuss on the usage of IT in the field of education. The Conclave events have been designed to increase the knowledge base in the field of education technology. The events will be held in bigger cities like Mumbai, Jaipur, Mysore and Allahabad and also in places like Kurukshetra, Kota, Bhatinda, Bokaro, Mallapuram and Belgaum, Shillong and many others.
KASPERSKY APPOINTS ANOTHER ND Kaspersky has added a new national distributor for its enterprise range of products in IndiaTechmatrix. Mumbai-based Techmatrix is now one of the four value-added national distributors of Kaspersky Lab B2B products in India. Techmatrix is a 16 year old distribution house specialized in providing security, storage products and services to customers. The company imports more than 125 IT products and has a strong distribution network of more than 3000 dealers across India, backed by a solid clientele. This makes them an ideal partner for Kaspersky Lab and its extensive range of security products for enterprises. Altaf Halde, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab – South Asia, said: “We are delighted to be working with Techmatrix, who is ideally placed to distribute our B2B products in a large and growing market like India. We look forward to working with them and leveraging on their strength for mutual success”.
Zebronics Brings Premium Laptop Bags Skins op Notch Infotronix under the brand ‘ZEBRONICS’ has expanded its range of stylish and functional laptop accessories including premium laptop bags and skins. The two models of laptop bags are the Zebster ZEB-BP5000 backpack-style bag and the Zebster ZEBEB1000 executive style top-loader. Both are made of durable and water resistant material and feature hard outer shell that protects the laptop from shocks, scratches and bumps well. The Zeb-BP5000 backpack has ergonomic contoured padded shoulder straps with extra padded back panels to make it absolutely comfortable and lightweight in carrying, while on move. It holds a small handy pouch for mobile phone, MP3 player etc on the strap and removable twin side compartments for bottles. The ZEB-EB1000 executive laptop bag is available in a hard black-and- white shell design which gives it a professional look. Both bags have smart and elegant finish and are capable of accommodating laptops up to 15.6-inch size.
FortiGate Ranked as the Fastest Firewall Fortinet has brought to light its Fortinet FortiGate-5140B which handled 526 Gbps of blended application traffic and security attacks during recent massive-scale testing. These definitive real-world tests were created using the BreakingPoint FireStorm CTM, the industry’s only product capable of creating stateful application traffic at the massive-scale required to stress today’s high-performance firewalls. During the tests, the BreakingPoint FireStorm CTM was able to push 526 Gbps of real-world traffic from applications such as Facebook, Pandora radio and AOL Instant Messenger, through the FortiGate-5140B. The FortiGate 5140B performed at speeds that were three times faster than any competitor’s published results and maxed out at 559 Gbps of UDP traffic. Putting the performance in context, the FortiGate-5140B can inspect 10,000 downloaded iTunes songs every second or 36 Million songs per hour, or it can inspect 228,000 average size Web pages every second or 821 million pages per hour.
eScan Receives 30th VB100 Award eScan has again achieved VB test lab the prestigious “VB100%” award for its latest eScan internet security version 11 for windows. Govind Rammurthy, CEO & Managing Director, eScan said, “. We won this award consecutively for the 30th time. eScan Internet Security Suite for windows has advanced technologies and is power packed to meet the challenges posed by not only the current generation of malware but also by the next generation ones. This award also showcases the fact that even after having strong detection rates, eScan uses very low resources and does not impact the system performance”.
Trend Micro Strengthen its Mobile Security Solution Trend Micro has launched the latest addition to Trend Micro’s Mobile arsenal, Trend Micro Mobile Security Personal Edition, a solution designed to protect both Android smartphones and tablets that includes a free app scanner, lost device protection and enhanced security to block threats while surfing the Web, calling or texting. “We believe mobile users need to be protected against malicious applications. To help protect as many people as possible and stifle criminal attempts to steal personal and financial information we are offering our anti-malware scanner for free.” said Amit Nath Country Manager India and SAARC Trend Micro.
Stellar to Recover Data Files on Mac Stellar Data Recovery has launched of Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery 5. The all-new version of Stellar Phoenix is updated with advanced scan engine that is 30% faster and is world’s first & only software that can recover original file names of recently deleted files. MacWorld Expo 2012 provided an exclusive opportunity to people to be the first ones to experience new Mac Range of Utilities or WIN our new software. Stellar gave 5 FREE software every day. During the show, Stellar offered a SHOW SPECIAL discount of $20 on ‘Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery 5’ & ‘Stellar Drive ToolBox 2’ and a USER SPECIAL DISCOUNT of $5 on ‘Phoenix Recovery Tools’& ‘Disk Utilities’.
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SNIPPETS
Panduit Enhances Data Centre Offering Panduit launches its Physical Infrastructure Manager (PIM) Software Platform Version 4.4, which extends Panduit’s data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution. Working with PanView iQ (PViQ) System Hardware and industry standard third-party DCIM devices, the PIM Software Platform provides continuous, local, and remote visibility of connectivity, power usage, asset tracking and utilization, and environmental conditions throughout the data center and enterprise. The PIM Software Platform Version 4.4 features the new PIM Advanced Dashboards and Reports Module, which provide deeper visibility into operational metrics that include critical parameters needed to manage a data center – power, space, connectivity, and asset tracking – through a number of pre-defined dashboards and reports. “With this set of enhancements, PIM users are able to define custom dashboards and reports using an extensive array of data visualization components such as gauges, charts, and dials,” said Alex Gordy, Panduit VP-of Intelligent Solutions. “This module filters data in real-time to refine or isolate the data set as needed, allowing data center managers to instantly access, analyze, and drill down through a wealth of information on data center and enterprise IT assets for effective decision-making.”
GIGABYTE Xmas Contest Winner Breaks World Record
ZICOM CONDUCTS ROAD SHOW TO ENHANCE SECURITY SERVICES With the increasing demand in the security solutions, Zicom Electronic Security Systems Limited has brought to the table – Industry expertise due to its experience of 15 years, good quality branded products, complete focus on back-end support, Sales support and Service Support. Aggressively launching itself with renewed focus, the company’s strategic plans are aimed at broadening the base of its product offering by adding to the market superior products and services that best address the end-to-end security needs of its customers. With this initiative of conducting road shows across the country, the brand looks forward to building a strong base to support the offering of its trademark mix of innovative and affordable security solutions, extending its services to secure thousands of homes, offices & establishments across India. “The road show will create an experience zone for the dealers in every city and create awareness of the latest technology in Zicom. Adopting this format gives us an opportunity to interact and engage with our customers and introduce the entire range of exclusive and advanced products and services offered by us”, said Anand Swaminathan, Director of Product and Solution, Zicom Group. “We look forward to building a large number of associations in this region through new channel partnerships during this event”.
GIGABYTE TECHNOLGY has declared the winners of the GIGABYTE ‘Xmas and New Year Contest’, an overclocking contest that was hosted on HWbot.org, with scoring challenges based on AMD Llano APUs. Several world records related to the AMD Llano platform were broken, with contest winner Christian Ney settings three new world records namely, Llano Reference Frequency at 200MHz, Llano Memory Frequency at 1752.8MHz, Llano CPU Frequency at 6067.71MHz The ‘GIGABYTE Xmas and New Year Contest’ was hosted on HWBOT.org, open to members from December 15th 2011 until January 31st 2012.
ZyXEL Launches Media Servers
Digital Waves Launches Tablet
ZyXEL Communications has launched a complete media server product portfolio – the NSA300 Series for users to create a multi-function, high-performance entertainment centre at home. With merely one device, home users can freely store and retrieve massive multimedia contents, such as photos and videos taken with digital devices as well as other high-definition audio and video files, for either personal enjoyment or simultaneous sharing among several family members anytime, anywhere. With the core processor power of up to 1.6GHz and a rich feature set, the new NSA300 Series ensures excellent performance providing high-definition multimedia streaming for individual playback or multiple simultaneous streaming to several individual displays. The HD media quality remains uncompromised even many streaming sessions are active at the same time.
Digital Waves has announced the launch of a new Android 2.3 tablet “tabplus Rio”. With this launch “tabplus Rio” has ventured into newly competitive tablet market. This tablet has been devised perfectly to fulfill its customer’s needs. Tabplus Rio is the perfect personal tablet with 1 GHz Cortex A9 processor, 7” screen, very rich HD quality with 800 x 480 pixels LCD, liquid flow 5 point capacitive touch. It is having weight of 350 grams and measures 203 x 120 x 13 mm. The tablet’s 1 GHz processor also provides high-speed multitasking, making it an ideal mobile tool for work or play The “tabplus Rio” is the best choice in personal tablet that features 1GHz Cortex A9 processor with 7” screen enriched with HD Quality. Designed on Android 2.3, it comes with memory of 512 MB DDR2 and storage up to 32GB via Micro SD.
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Gujarat 9624600030; Maharashtra, Goa & Chhattisgarh 9967718653; Madhya Pradesh 9302780368; New Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh 99100 86976; Punjab 9814599992; Rajasthan 9887502010; Uttarakhand 99353 21222; Uttar Pradesh 99353 21222; Bihar, Jharkhand 90405 06080; North East 98642 30150; Orissa 90405 06080; West Bengal 98319 90308; Andhra Pradesh 9573 117755; Karnataka 96637 79002; Kerala 96334 90015; Tamil Nadu 96637 79002
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CASE STUDY
AUTOMOTIVE AXLES
AUTOMOTIVE AXLES ADOPTS IBM SOLUTION
Always exploring new ways to bring out networking products which satisfies customers’ requirements BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com
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utomotive Axles Limited is a joint venture of Kalyani Group and Meritor Inc., USA (formerly the automotive division of Rockwell International Corporation). Established in 1981 - AAL has developed an impressive domestic OEM clientele in the auto industry including Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors, Asia MotorWorks, Vehicle Factory-Jabalpur, BEML, Man Force Trucks Pvt. Ltd., Mahindra Navistar, Volvo India and SML Isuzu Ltd., VE Commercial Vehicles, Corona Bus Mfrs., and Godrej.
Client challenges Automotive Axles Ltd. required a strong and robust IT infrastructure to run its SAP ERP application. It was looking at enhancing and integrating their processes across production planning, materials & stores, quality, sales & distribution, plant maintenance, finance & costing, statutory requirements and HR department. S. Ramkumar, Chief Financial Officer & Company Secretary, Automotive Axles, said, “We are confident that IBM’s expertise in handling complex deployments, combined with their deep industry knowledge, will ensure that we achieve our business goals.”
Business and Technology Solutions After a thorough evaluation, Automotive Axles decided to implement SAP ERP ECC 6.0
Client benefits A highly scalable platform, the ERP
“THE ENGAGEMENT WITH AUTOMOTIVE AXLES IS AN IMPORTANT STEP IN OUR ENDEAVOR TO PROVIDE WORLD-CLASS TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES DELIVERY TO CLIENTS ACROSS A WIDE SPECTRUM OF SIZE AND GEOGRAPHIC PRESENCE” S. RAMKUMAR, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER & COMPANY SECRETARY, AUTOMOTIVE AXLES
“WE ARE CONFIDENT THAT IBM’S EXPERTISE IN HANDLING COMPLEX DEPLOYMENTS, COMBINED WITH THEIR DEEP INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE, WILL ENSURE THAT WE ACHIEVE OUR BUSINESS GOALS.” S. RAMKUMAR, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER & COMPANY SECRETARY, AUTOMOTIVE AXLES
system will enable Automotive Axles drive its aggressive growth plans. With data visibility and transparency across the company, the tool enabled the company to monitor key performance indicators of the organization on a real-time basis and ensure simpler and faster decision making. The deployment will support Automotive Axles’ aggressive growth plans and the goal of strengthening its leadership position as a rear axle producer in the Indian market. “IBM, with its domain expertise,
is in a unique position to deploy this end-to-end solution at Automotive Axles to streamline and seamlessly integrate their processes across manufacturing, logistics and accounting. The engagement with Automotive Axles is an important step in our endeavor to provide world-class technologies and services delivery to clients across a wide spectrum of size and geographic presence,” said, Sriram Rajan, Vice President - General Business, South Region, IBM India/South Asia.
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CASE STUDY
SAGE CRM
IMPLEMENTATION OF SAGE CRM
DRIVES UP PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY ACROSS SPECTRANET OPERATIONS IN INDIA
The brightest part is the fact that a leading Global OEM vendor from Bengaluru has selected eSupport for automating their inside sales process
S
pectranet (Spectra ISP Networks), a part of the Shyam Telecom Group, is a leading Internet Service Provider in India offering private network convergence services. Established firmly in the Indian market, the company provides corporate and retail broadband Internet, data center, managed optic fiber build out and maintenance, video broadcasting, and conditional access system television services. Also, the company offers breakthrough wireless frequency, prepaid broadband cards, and online billing services. Spectranet boasts of a diverse client base, which includes the likes of Galileo India, Adobe, Abacus, Intellevate (India) Pvt. Ltd., and Competent Software Private Limited and also has strategic alliances with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, Reliance Telecom, Data Access, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, and Tata Telecom. Founded in 1995, Spectranet is headquartered in New Delhi and maintains key offices in Mumbai and Bangalore.
issues and at the same time add value to their processes and operations across India. The basic need that Spectranet specified was the presence of a sales force automation system that would be accompanied with a marketing campaign management system that could then be integrated with other existing systems for comprehensive data flow and avoid duplication of data entry. Another major objective was to have a workflow based system which can provide escalations and notifications based on criterion and time.
Answering the call “WE REALIZED THAT SAGE CRM IS BASICALLY A WEB TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM, WHICH GAVE US THE CONFIDENCE THAT WE CAN NOW ABLE TO HAVE A SINGLE SYSTEM AS THE INTERFACE.”
SUNANDO BHATTACHARYA, HEAD OF MARKETING & BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY, SPECTRANET
The Challenge With a presence spanning across key parts of India, the company’s operations are spread out with their sales and services network via direct offices, infrastructure or through partner networks. Their widespread presence, despite being an advantage, also proved to be a very big challenge for them, which meant consolidating data that was sourced from multiple systems. Not being fully automated, Spectranet’s sales and marketing teams were still using excel sheets, which included personnel in customer support, financial accounting, installation and
activation. Using different applications has resulted in the duplication of data entry at many places and human errors used to go unnoticed. In fact, the company’s MIS department was error prone and very far from accurate. These factors prompted the company to look for a system that can address these
“When we were told about Sage CRM, we thought it was almost made for us,” said Sunando Bhattacharya, Head of Marketing & Business Technology, Spectranet. “We realized that Sage CRM is basically a web technology platform, which provides certain standard functionalities of sales force automation, marketing and customer support as default while the rest can be customized or built on the platform. This is what gave us the confidence that we can now able to have a single system as the interface to majority of our customer facing team and the other specialised applications can be in the back office talking to Sage CRM either to fetch or push data.” WoodApple UnikSolutionz, Sage Software’s implementation partner in India, which maintains its head offices in Bangalore, managed the complete project from deployment to actual live implementation. The very complex project saw the integration of five new back office systems. Also, a 178-user pack of Sage CRM is currently being used for sales force automation, marketing campaign management, customer care and order to billing
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SAGE CRM
cycle. The implementation of the software suite includes key functionalities like leads processing, opportunity progress, campaign management and case logging / management. Also, there are lot of add on solutions available like email marketing and tracking tool, Document Management System etc. “The biggest of challenges during the implementation was the need to articulate the vast requirements into technical and functional terms. It took almost close to three months for finalizing and freezing the first cut requirements, followed by the planning of implementation. If it wasn’t for the plan and meticulous project management by WoodApple it would have been difficult to deploy such a complex system with loads of critical processes,” said Bhattacharya. The implementation process took nine months to complete, which included the need to fine tune the applications and integrations before starting the first trial run. Once the implementation was over, the live roll out was done in phases, starting with sales and marketing and was later followed by customer support. WoodApple trained close to 200 users on the new system through multiple training sessions, which helped a lot in going live with the successful implementation. “It was a real privilege for us to take the lead in implementing and installing Sage CRM across Spectranet’s operations. Sage CRM was able to
answer all of Spectranet’s requirements, but the workflow engine of Sage CRM made the biggest of differences by having defined all of the company’s processes starting from sales to feasibility tracking to installation and order to billing followed by customer support and then changeover and shift over processes,” said Debajit Roy, CEO, WoodApple UnikSolutionz.
Banking on the benefits and advantages According to Spectranet, WoodApple did an excellent job in configuring and customizing the CRM solution to meet their requirements; integrating the company’s system with five external applications for data exchange. Since its installation of Sage CRM, the company has reported an increase in both efficiency and productivity, followed by improved operations as driven in by the key automation of processes. Post project, WoodApple assigned a dedicated team to maintain continuous communication with Spectranet and keep track of the project’s progress. “There are already many visible benefits as we start going deep using the system. One such example is the Daily Call Report (DCR) of our Sales Account Managers, who are now religiously updating the details of the prospects on a daily
CASE STUDY
basis, thereby giving a clear transparency to the management of the business expected in the future and at the same time, tracks the expenses made by an individual sales person on converting a prospect because the travel expense claims now comes out of the CRM system. So, if there’s no update on a prospect then you can’t claim the expenses, which used to be one area without much control from the management,” said Bhattacharya. Also, as a result of the implementation, Spectranet is now looking forward to a very high rate of business growth. In fact, the leading company has expressed security and confidence, further noting that they now not need to worry about leakages of leads and missing out on opportunities. Scalability is also no longer an issue that the company needs to deal with. “We are glad that Spectranet has expressed their satisfaction in using Sage CRM. Now equipped with a world class fully reliable CRM solution, one of India’s leading ISPs has the advantage to keep a more integrated approach in collecting data. We applaud Spectranet’s strategic move in taking a bold step towards automation and we are committed in helping them succeed by leveraging Sage CRM’s broad suite of solutions across their operations,” concluded Dushyant Chaudhry, Regional Sales Manager - North & East, Sage Software India.
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COVER STORY
CRM MARKET
UNTAPPED
MARKET AMONGST THE SMBs
The CRM market can have increased appeal among SMBs in India, if vendors develop appropriate messaging and position their products to suit the segment. BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA
sanjay@smechannels.com
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ustomer relationship management or commonly known as CRM is an overused concept. The concept has become mainstream in terms of usage, but curiously enough it has lagged behind in terms of deployment, implementation and manifestation. There is no standardization in CRM approaches. Consequently, even the most basic initiative such as organizing customers’ database is dubbed as a CRM deployment. Ideally, CRM should enable the organization to have a comprehensive view of the customer during all its interactions, so that the organization can understand the customer’s requirements and pain points and pre-empt solutions. Organizations that have evolved their CRM strategy call this customer experience management. Therefore, CRM is not a deployment but a strategy, which is ongoing and pervasive across the organization. While there is a certain level of understanding and maturity among large organizations but small enterprises are still a very underpenetrated segment as far as CRM is concerned. “There is only
limited awareness and understanding. Most SMEs think of CRM as a software that manages users, leads, pipelines, conversion and post sales communication but only a few know that it is much more than that. They are not technically advanced enough to understand fully and make the most of CRM,” says Asheesh Pandia, Brand Management and Corporate Communications Consultant. Adoption rate is not very high as well. SMEs generally have limited budget and their IT infrastructure is very basic and as a result, CRM is usually placed on very low priority. Adoption is more likely as they grow, although they still prefer costeffective options. The lack of awareness and low adoption rate can be curbed with more aggressive training and education initiatives. For this segment, CRM is still a concept that is not considered to be particularly relevant in achieving short-term business goals. Sometimes SMBs deploy CRM to aid small tasks such as organizing customer database, help boost sales effort, reach out to customers for cold calls or email campaigns. In sum, small enterprise users have still not fully realized the benefits that a stra-
tegic roll out of a CRM deployment can have on its business. This is because SMBs are short of resources and preoccupied with the short-term goals such as managing operations, delivery issues, attracting manpower and retaining customers. Research has found that CRM adoption in India is mostly restricted to larger enterprises with adoption rates slipping as the size of the enterprise becomes smaller. However, CRM can have a significant impact on the business models of SMBs if they are able to align CRM strategically with business goals. For example, if the CRM deployment links the SMBs customer database with service delivery and has visibility across all team members serving customers, it will provide data and insights into the customer’s problem, how the customer is being served, how the problem was resolved and preempt offerings and solutions that will not only increase customer satisfaction but also provide opportunities to up sell and cross sell. The challenging economic environment has however made SMBs more open and sensitive
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CRM MARKET
COVER STORY
THE INDIA CRM SOLUTIONS MARKET IS FORECASTED TO BE US$ 321.1 MILLION IN CY2012 TO US$ 531.2 MILLION IN CY 2015. SOURCE: IDC
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COVER STORY
CRM MARKET
“MOST SMES THINK OF CRM AS A SOFTWARE THAT MANAGES USERS, LEADS, PIPELINES, CONVERSION AND POST SALES COMMUNICATION BUT ONLY A FEW KNOW THAT IT IS MUCH MORE THAN THAT.” ASHEESH PANDIA, BRAND MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT
about the benefits of CRM. SMBs have realized the importance of thinking strategically about customer acquisition and retention. The business impact of having happy customers is not lost on SMBs, as the segment has learnt the value of viral marketing. SMBs also understand the long term impacts of building an enduring brand. Keeping all customers happy at all times is a hugely challenging task, and can be achieved only with the aid of appropriate technology tools. SMBs understand the challenges associated with building an efficient customer service system as well as adopting CRM tools that will help build visibility and enhance its brand. The SMB segment in India is a significant contributor to the Indian economy. According to government estimates there are about 13 million SMBs in India. Yet, technology vendors tend to ignore this segment and do not develop solutions that are appropriate for this segment. More importantly, the positioning and messaging of technology solutions for SMBs, specifically in the case of CRM, need to be very different from larger enterprises. Vendors need to focus the messaging on what problems a CRM solution is likely to solve for the SMB, instead of positioning it as helping to build customer relationships. For instance, a CRM deployment will likely to help an SMB manage its resources better while serving customers as improved internal processes will significantly enhance employee productivity.
The Market The momentum in the CRM market is evident in the upbeat sentiments of market forecasts by analysts and vendors, which is based on customer responses and adoption rates. Large companies already have a CRM strategy and have deployed systems and aligned internal processes to maximize those deployments. With increasing globalization, customers have become savvy and
demanding and businesses have become hard pressed to streamline their operations in order to make the customer experience more fulfilling. Gartner says that the Indian CRM market size is the second largest market in Asia Pacific region after Australia, comprising about 15 percent of the overall APAC market. According to a recent Gartner report, the CRM market in India is forecasted to experience a growth rate of 17.4 percent between 2011-14. The market which stood at US$ 111 million in 2011 is expected to become US$ 179 million by 2014. Gartner also forecasts that 8 percent of all CRM spending in 2011 was in social CRM reflecting the maturity in CRM adoption trends. The on demand CRM market is also expected to maintain healthy growth rates. Gartner estimates that on demand CRM which comprised 24 percent of the market in 2009 is likely to touch 32 percent by 2015. According to IDC Asia Pacific Semi Annual Software Tracker Report, the India CRM solutions market is forecasted to be US$ 321.1 million in CY2012 to US$ 531.2 million in CY 2015. Between 2008 and 2013, CRM in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12 percent. According to Frost & Sullivan the CRM market is expected to experience a CAGR of 16–19 percent between 2008 and 2014. “Organizations today consider their customers to be assets, and this has become a major focus area amongst companies. Organizations are investing heavily in enhancing customer satisfaction and building relationships with customers. This is true among SMBs as well, which is definitely a growth driver in the Indian economy. The segment that was hitherto restrained by lack of access to technology, exposure to geographies is looking at technology as an enabler like never before. What is interesting is the way many SMBs are engaged in preparing a comprehensive technology roadmap for the future complete with
“WHAT IS INTERESTING IS THE WAY MANY SMBS ARE ENGAGED IN PREPARING A COMPREHENSIVE TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP FOR THE FUTURE COMPLETE WITH ‘MUST HAVE’ TECHNOLOGIES, PLATFORMS AND IT INFRASTRUCTURE.” RAJ MRUTHYUNJAYAPPA, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT & MANAGING DIRECTOR, APAC & EUROPE, TALISMA CORPORATION ‘must have’ technologies, platforms and IT infrastructure,” says Raj Mruthyunjayappa, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, APAC & Europe, Talisma Corporation. The major areas of investment for CRM include online channels, SaaS-based deployments and technologies that enable customer loyalty management as well as focused levels of customer services. Also, expenditures related to social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes are expected to exceed $1 billion worldwide by 2013, according to Gartner. The demand for CRM will come from both the large enterprises and SMEs. Adoption has mostly been amongst organizations in tier one cities but the next phase of growth is likely to witness adoption in tier two cities as well. Most CRM companies are deploying traditional and new media to reach out to the market. Vendors are also deploying new marketing channels such as online semi-
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COVER STORY
CRM MARKET
nars, online demos and blogs to drive the volume of inquiries and leads. “We see a lot of growth coming from verticals such as engineering, financial services, construction & operations, manufacturing, retail and automotive. We are also extremely focused on the SME segment in India offering solutions packages like Business ByDesign, RDS CRM and Business All-In-One, which have CRM functionalities incorporated into them,” says Neeraj Athalye, Head, Cloud Business, SAP India. Sales management and tracking is the key trigger for CRM adoption among the SMEs. Customer support is not yet as big a driver. This is because SMBs are experiencing very high growth and require effective tools that will help them manage enquiries and track them. Says Debajit Roy, CEO, WoodApple UnikSolutionz, a solution and implementation partner of Sage Software, “SMEs are adopting CRM very fast. They have realized the importance of managing sales and support professionally, which can do wonders for their business vis-a-vis competition. Basic tools such as an excel sheet becomes impossible to manage a high-growth scenario. Also there is the fact SMBs have to deal with a high rate of attrition that it leads to a lot of confusion and productivity and business loss if there are no proper systems in place. Often when a sales person leaves, sales leads also get lost.” The CRM market is also fast maturing with an increasing number of deployments across all businesses looking to integrate the sales team with the leads management system. Earlier, the focus of CRM deployments was restricted to managing the steady flow of emails, phone interactions, and contact points from customers/prospects generated by the customer support call centers. “The Indian SME market is on the lookout for integrating the best-of-breed end-to-end solutions like CRM with ERP. This, in turn helps the
various teams in an organization work together to effectively manage their customers, orders, receivables/payments and inventories. This improves the information flow and reduces lead times thereby powerfully transforming the way organizations function,” says Anamika Sharma, Regional Head—Ramco on demand ERP, Ramco Systems. “CRM will prove to be the next biggest growth factor for businesses in India. The market is expected to grow from $266M to $531M by the end of 2015. Business applications customers are looking at integration, cost, availability and flexible deployment,” says Subhomoy Sengupta, Group Director of Microsoft Dynamics India. The key drivers for adoption of CRM in India include promotion of customer retention practices that enhance the customer experience and a focus on collaborative technologies across customer communities and social media. Also, streamlining the sales process, driving business decisions based on analytics, visibility into sales performance and making sales-force more effective and efficient are the other determining factors to drive further demands. “We have seen momentum across industries in both enterprise and SME customers. We have already had Microsoft Dynamics CRM available in the country as on premise, online or partner hosted and we have had significant customers on these, some of which include, Godrej & Boyce, Indian Oil, AEGON Religare Life Insurance, Lavasa, STEL, HIRCO, Quatrro, Wipro, Cybage, Hexaware, Indiabulls Real Estate etc.,” continues Sengupta of Microsoft. SAP is upbeat about the market potential in India. Says SAP’s Athalye, “We see a lot of growth coming from verticals like engineering, financial services, construction and operations, manufacturing, retail and automotive. We are also extremely focused on the SME segment in India, with solutions packages like Business ByDesign,
“WE ARE ALSO EXTREMELY FOCUSED ON THE SME SEGMENT IN INDIA OFFERING SOLUTIONS PACKAGES LIKE BUSINESS BYDESIGN, RDS CRM AND BUSINESS ALLIN-ONE, WHICH HAVE CRM FUNCTIONALITIES INCORPORATED INTO THEM.” NEERAJ ATHALYE, HEAD, CLOUD BUSINESS, SAP INDIA
“SMES ARE ADOPTING CRM VERY FAST. THEY HAVE REALIZED THE IMPORTANCE OF MANAGING SALES AND SUPPORT PROFESSIONALLY, WHICH CAN DO WONDERS FOR THEIR BUSINESS VIS-AVIS COMPETITION.” DEBAJIT ROY, CEO, WOODAPPLE UNIKSOLUTIONZ, A SOLUTION AND IMPLEMENTATION PARTNER OF SAGE SOFTWARE RDS CRM and Business All-In-One, which have CRM functionalities incorporated into them.”
Market Overview The CRM market continues to be dominated by the large software players like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Sage, Talisma. According to a survey by Zinnov Consulting, SAP was leading in brand recall and awareness in the CRM market amongst both adopters and non adopters followed by Microsoft and Oracle. Amongst adopters, SAP, Microsoft and Oracle had equal mindshare. However, overall, non adopters do not have any particular preference for brands. This presents a huge opportunity for all vendors as there is an immense marketing opportunity. Most vendors have localized the messaging for the Indian market. Microsoft and Oracle have websites that build awareness around CRM solutions and value propositions. The Zinnov Consulting Report that was published in December 2010 and based on a survey of more than 400 respondents finds that digital and online marketing is less effective amongst the SMBs due to low
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“CRM WILL PROVE TO BE THE NEXT BIGGEST GROWTH FACTOR FOR BUSINESSES IN INDIA. THE MARKET IS EXPECTED TO GROW FROM $266M TO $531M BY THE END OF 2015.” SUBHOMOY SENGUPTA, GROUP DIRECTOR OF MICROSOFT DYNAMICS INDIA
Internet penetration. However, word-of-mouth and peer references are highly effective in this segment of customers. However, leading companies are not taking chances and have worked steadily to build their presence in the social media on platforms such as Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube and Twitter. Globally and even in India there is a lot of focus on CRM solutions, especially CRM on Cloud. SAP has launched—Sales OnDemand—a solution to strengthen the CRM process. Customers are delighted that cloud based CRM lowers their total cost of ownership and provides a flexible payment model. It also enables ease of use and the functionality of sales on demand. Additionally, SAP offers SAP Sales on demand, Business byDesign CRM, SAP CRM 7.0. SAP CRM packages are available across different platforms like mobile, social media and other online collaborative tools. SAP offers CRM solutions in various formats such as RDS CRM, on demand and on premise CRM and social CRM. The logic for providing all the formats is to provide choice and cover all the customer’s requirements. For instance, RDS CRM is a fixed-price, predefined software for companies to address business priorities and gain time-to-value quickly, while also paving a flexible path toward future growth. The RDS CRM solution can be deployed in as little as 6 to 8 weeks. The On Premise and On-Demand/SaaS model has been designed to enable customers to benefit from a coherent, integrated approach of having end-to-end processes and applications, while taking advantage of the pros and cons of either deployment model. This will effectively lead to an environment of “hybrid” software landscapes that need to be integrated. Social CRM incorporates social tools such as wikis, blogs, social networks and web 2.0 applications to pave the way for an integrated modus operandi, to address customers’ expectations
of access, transparency, honesty and collaboration with SAP. SAP says another thrust area if to make available SAP’s CRM solutions on mobile (iPhone, iPad, Blackberry). The Microsoft Dynamic suite is its flagship product and has solid penetration in the Indian market. It is available as on premise, online or partner hosted. Microsoft is committed to sustaining the “Power of Choice” and the ability to transition between cloud-based and on-premises delivery of CRM as a key point of customer value and flexibility. “This is because cloud computing has changed the nature of how to effectively deploy business application software. Some businesses demand software delivered as a service and acquired on a subscription basis; others demand the increased control and flexibility of software owned and deployed on their premises. Thus Microsoft offers enterprises a choice of deployment model for optimal flexibility, performance and productivity, allowing them to maximize flexibility and access while minimizing cost and management overhead,” says Microsoft’s Sengupta. Microsoft offers hosted CRM through Net4India to help businesses across segments and verticals increase customer loyalty and streamline customer relationship management to drive cost optimization, critical in the current economic environment. Talisma offers SMBs unique solutions configured to their unique business needs. Says Talisma’s Mruthyunjayappa, “We have spent considerable amount of time in understanding the segment, and are now well positioned to offer products that fit their business and growth models.” Talisma has been helping its customers migrate to a customer experience management (CEM) regime. The company has pioneered a range of solutions that help tier-one customers in segments such as banking, insurance, and retail,
among others adopt a comprehensive CEM framework in all their customer and employeefacing initiatives. Talisma’s CEM-enabling suite includes solutions that help businesses fine tune their service delivery approach in line with changing customer preferences, integrate front- and back-office processes and gain intuitive insights into customer preference. Talisma offers enterprise CRM offering for SMEs that seek to deliver an exceptional customer experience. The CRM solution is fine tuned to the unique needs of SMEs and helps them manage their customer and prospect experience across touchpoints such as SMS, phone, email and social media. Talisma has developed unique packages depending on the size, domain, customer base and technology needs of SMEs. “SMEs are looking at turning into customer-centric organizations and our solution can help SMEs streamline their internal and customer-facing processes to deliver a seamless experience across channels to customers,” adds Mruthyunjayappa. Sage offers CRM solutions from entry level to enterprise level. The first time users and expert users can both be offered solutions from the Sage kitty. Also another advantage is the integrated ERP-CRM enterprise suite offering, which is unique in this segment visa-vis-competition. The Ramco OnDemand CRM is an end-toend CRM solution that caters to every aspect of an organization’s customer management cycle. By integrating information across pre-sales, field teams and other marketing segments, the solution provides a 360 degree analysis of customers. The comprehensive customer information helps to record and analyze information on market trends, evaluate performance through scorecards and analyze the source of leads through lead analysis. Performing analyses on opportunities won and lost help the management in decision making. The built-in dashboard gives a complete picture of the business. Based on analysis, one can raise issues and send alerts for taking corrective action.
Market Drivers The most significant driver for CRM adoption is customer acquisition and retention. “Getting new customers is a problem and retaining them is even more difficult,” says Microsoft’s Sengupta. With increasing competitiveness, and tough economic conditions having a telling impact on organization’s bottomlines, there is a need for companies to optimize marketing spend and deliver offerings in a more defined manner. Sensing this market need, vendors have also tailored the offerings. Most packaged applications today offer solutions that address the specific industry needs with robust analytics allowing for end-to-end cus-
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tomer management. Brand loyalty is at the top of the executive agenda as companies seek increased visibility of market shifts, campaign effectiveness, buyer preferences and behaviour. Another driver for CRM adoption is the availability of cloud-based CRM applications. Companies that operate in a fast growth environment require fast and efficient deployments and cloudbased CRM applications are provided just that value proposition. For example, Pebs Pennar, a Microsoft customer, is subsidiary of Hyderabad-based manufacturing solutions provider Pennar Industries. Incorporated in January 2010, the company grew to a size of Rs 170 crore in revenue the next year from just Rs 30 crore previous year. In order to facilitate the growth, the company wanted to deploy cloud-based software solutions to manage customer feedback, order management, procurement and project management. The company has a distributed sales network spread across 12 different cities in India. Pebs Pennar is in the advanced stages of phase one of deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM online. The deployment has already covered sales and customer relations and order management. The next phase will include project management, which will be a much more holistic implementation. Above all the CRM market itself have become mature and many of its offerings and solutions have proven benefits that organizations find it hard to ignore. The eco system and the enabling infrastructure has evolved considerably facilitating CRM adoption. The IT Infrastructure barriers that were hitherto hindering businesses from realizing the full value of their CRM investments are going or gone, specifically with the increasing robustness of the Internet and popularity of cloud-based service models. CRM is helping companies to compete and streamline their customer management strategies. It helps organizations go global and stay competitively relevant. “The key drivers for CRM adoption in India include promotion of customer retention practices that enhance the customer experience and a focus on collaborative technologies across customer communities and social media. Also, streamlining the sales process, driving business decisions based on analytics, visibility into sales performance and making the sales force more effective and efficient are other determining factors to drive demands,” says Athalye of SAP. CRM is helping businesses evolve. “A large part of the CRM market is because of organizations’ focus on investments that promote customer
“THE INDIAN SME MARKET IS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR INTEGRATING THE BEST-OFBREED END-TO-END SOLUTIONS LIKE CRM WITH ERP.” ANAMIKA SHARMA, REGIONAL HEAD—RAMCO ON DEMAND ERP, RAMCO SYSTEMS
retention and offer an enhanced customer experience. Today customer experience is not just about sales but, there is a definitive shift towards identifying parameters that can be used to measure depth of customer involvement, and chances of the customer returning to your store in the near future,” Mruthyunjayappa, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, APAC & Europe, Talisma. Customer Experience Management is another area which is attracting attention of businesses. “Everyone is looking at ways to deepen customer engagement and get more value out of their existing customer relationships. This could mean a fresh look at transactions, behavior at points of sale, online interactions and interaction with service representatives. CRM has helped enterprises delve deeper into reasons for customer interest in products, highlight and predict buying cycles, and also identify areas for deploying marketing resources and experience,” adds Mruthyunjayappa. The social media is proving to be a new competitive arena for targeting prospective customers. Says Microsoft’s Subhomoy Sengupta, “Business applications customers are looking at integration, cost, availability and flexible deployment. Various business applications including ERP, HR and CRM are gaining popularity in India as SMBs
have already realized the benefit of leveraging the opex model via cloud services rather than upfront capex spending. Over the next three years, social CRM will continue its exponential rise as software as a service (SaaS) will become routine.” Market drivers and challenges for CRM remain similar globally. One might be tempted to think that there will be vast differences in the drivers and challenges for the large and small enterprises. However, the fact remains that if a SME is adopting a standards-based approach towards customer experience, then it becomes clear that the approach will remain more or less the same. The initial investments may vary and SMEs may adopt a more cautious phased approach towards customer experience compared to a larger enterprise that may go for a big bang approach. While the drivers and challenges are usually the same, it is just the scale and complexity that differ. “The difference between SMEs and large enterprises in CRM adaptation is usually in its scale and complexities”, says Athalye of SAP. Large enterprises usually have more varied CRM processes, large number of diversified products and customers, more channels and go-to-market strategies. However, the basic core that includes account management, sales force automation, analytics, planning & forecasting, sales order management, customer interaction history, etc remains the same.
Cloud CRM Market The appeal and popularity of cloud-based CRM is growing as customers understand the benefits of the model. The increasing maturity of the enabling infrastructure has also contributed to the expansion of this model. Salesforce.com was the pioneer in this segment and has a huge customer base in India. The company’s leading offering sales force automation is well accepted and used by companies of all sizes. Salesforce.com also offers Chatter, a cloud-based social CRM. The solution helps companies track conversations about the brand in the cloud and filters the relevant information via an analytics engine, making the information relevant to the user. Most CRM vendors today offer some variation of the cloud based model. Leading software vendors such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle were initially unsure how to approach the cloud based model as it clashed with their basic model of providing license-based software. However, now all vendors have developed a cloud strategy and have integrated both the business models. It is true that for large scale and complex deployments, a hybrid model is more efficient and appropriate. An onpremise application has its virtues such as helping the organization imple-
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COVER STORY
SAP HANA TO DELIVER VALUE TO CUSTOMERS PROVIDES FASTER TIME TO VALUE BY ELIMINATING TRADITIONAL IMPLEMENTATION AND MAINTENANCE FOR SOLUTIONS…
Opportunities for organizations, big or small, lie in the ability to capture, manage and analyze the data which is going to provide the competitive advantage to businesses. Every organization needs to make better decisions faster not only on real-time data, but also on data which keeps growing, in an exponential rate, from different sources. SAP’s High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA) is a modern platform for real-time business. It is a combination of hardware and software specifically made to process massive real time data using In-Memory computing. In addition to real-time analytics, SAP is also delivering real-time applications, powered by SAP HANA. The HANA platform can be deployed as an appliance. This helps companies to realize the promise of real-time computing, enables them to re-think business challenges and tackle the new ones. With an integrated and scalable business analytics platform, SAP is bringing realtime analytics of SAP HANA to enable complex analysis, plans and simulations on realtime data. With its in-memory computing technology, SAP HANA provides faster time to value by eliminating traditional implementation and maintenance for solutions. As customers’ data grows, they can continue to add more reporting scenarios easily without significant investment in IT. In the days to come SAP will be making available a lot of application solutions based on HANA to deliver value to customers. Some of the solutions already available are Cost and Profitability Analysis and reporting framework and the strategic workforce planning solution. SAP is also building on its collaboration with technology partners like Google to help customers take more-informed decisions. The plan is to enhance the business analytics software with location-based data capabilities, allowing people to interact with real-time information via applications like Google Maps. SAP and Google are working together to pair enterprise applications with the kinds of consumer tools that enrich millions of people’s lives every day, such as Google Maps and Google Earth™.
MANEESH SHARMA
HEAD-BUSINESS ANALYTICS AND TECHNOLOGY, SAP INDIA
SAP has been driving a convergence of enterprise and consumer software, giving an increasing number of people the ability to make important business decisions through the lens of mobile and social technologies while navigating the complexity of “big data,” or the growing volume, variety and increased velocity of information.
ment stringent security standards and customize its applications. At the same time, a cloud-based model provides a much more efficient deployment model and helps a fast-growing organization roll out its operations within no time. Microsoft offers its CRM Dynamic suite both as an on premise and hosted model to suit the varying requirements of its customers. Similarly SAP has various offerings in the cloud model such as its Business One offering and Business byDesign. Ramco on demand, the ERP solution also offers its CRM modules in the cloud.
The Road Ahead There is strong demand for CRM applications in the market both among large and small enterprises. The imperative for CRM adoption among
small enterprises is more as the challenges for customer attraction and retention is more pronounced in this segment. While it was difficult to find a suitable CRM product for the SMB segment, today vendors have become sensitive to the requirements and are increasingly designing solutions that address the segment’s specific requirements. This has made a huge difference in the adoption momentum among SMBs. The arrival and maturity of the cloud model is another factor that is aiding the growth among SMBs. However challenges to CRM adoption remain. Vendors need to develop messaging more appropriate to the challenges faced by the segment and spend more on market building activities among this segment as lack of awareness and understanding about the deployment benefits
continues to be a major challenge. CRM applications are also seeing adoption amongst the SMBs because it has helped them to organize internal systems and processes. CRM is a fairly new concept in India, specifically among SMBs. CRM vendors design and develop solutions based on the best practices of a wide variety of customers. Therefore CRM adoption has offered SMB customers an opportunity to reengineer business processes. The emphasis on social media as a tool in CRM activities has increased its appeal as it has helped address a new dimension in the sales and marketing efforts of organizations. Over the next five years, the CRM market will continue on its growth path, specifically among SMB customers.
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CASE STUDY
DATA SYSTEMS
INNOVATION IS PART OF CUSTOMER CENTRIC APPROACH Always exploring new ways to bring out networking products which satisfies customers’ requirements BY KARMA NEGI karma@smechannels.com
D
ata Systems has been in the business of distribution of networking, security and surveillance products in AP since 1990. Marching ahead with the vision to devise and implement networking solutions that enhance scalability, reliability, and availability to optimize business processes, it saw a turnover of Rs.45 crore (2011) last fiscal. The company provides a whole range of services: Structure cabling solutions: Solutions for copper base (Cat5, Cat6) and fiber base (Multi mode, Single Mode) connectivity; wireless networking solutions: Providing wireless environment to organizations according to their requirements; LAN/WAN solutions: Providing switching/routing solutions to facilitate the inter-departmental communications and data transmissions; network security solutions: Providing gateway level security solutions through unified thread management firewalls for superior network protection from hackers, virus and spam; Surveillance Solutions: providing IP cameras for organizational surveillance security; Storage solutions: Providing SAN and NAS solutions for reliable network data storage; IP telephony solutions: Providing gateway level VoIP and IP phones to facilitate voice based communications; and enclosure solutions: Providing the LAN/ WAN/server cabinets, telecom racks, open racks and wall mount enclosures according to precise client requirements. Rakesh Mishra, MD, Data Systems, said, “At Data Systems, innovation is a part of its customer centric approach. Be it custom solutions, support and services, it
“IT IS A GOOD CRM, NOT ONLY USER FRIENDLY BUT ALSO VERY AFFORDABLY PRICED.” RAKESH MISHRA, MD, DATA SYSTEMS
is always exploring new ways to bring out such networking products which satisfies the customers’ requirements.” Its mission is to extend networking technology as a potent tool in corporate business strategy and empower organizations to enhance productivity and efficiency. “We believe in giving only the best. Therefore, Data Systems constantly trains its dedicated staff on cutting edge industry technologies and enhance their skill set. Our domain experts deliver professional and uncompromising services that help clients enhance their business efficiency,”
informed Mishra. The company sees challenges not as obstacles but as something which provides them with opportunities to stretch its technology limits and extract the best in them. To have maximum coverage of clients the company has strategic tie-ups with SIs, dealers and resellers across the state. To guarantee customer satisfaction it follows a strict quality policy which includes: in-house training facilities to staff to deliver cutting-edge networking solutions for maximum customer satisfaction; dependable services delivery responding to changing market needs; create work-environment that disseminates professionalism and pride in achieving desired goals and objectives. Today, CRM is a very important tool for all organizations, which no one can afford to ignore if it wants to understand its clients, reduce costs of marketing and client service, and increase profitability. Data Systems too has adopted CRM “for monitoring and recording performance of sales, support, and service teams”. eSupport, developed by Gowra Bits and Bytes, launched last year on a pilot basis has received good reviews from the market. Data Systems after evaluating a couple of its products is using eSupport to give its customers maximum satisfaction. “It is a good CRM, not only user friendly but also very affordably priced,” Mishra informed. He considers that the strength of eSupport lies in managing leads, service ticket, product warranty, quotations, and tenders. As of now it is quite satisfied with its implementation of the eSupport, and
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has not faced any shortcomings till date. The major issue faced by most of the organizations is about adopting technology standards when they implement the networking equipment into the organization. And changing a technology platform is not an easy task. “Most organizations suffer when it comes to inter-operability between applications, databases and operating systems; which is due to short term fixes that most applications and technologies provide and hence easier to implement and adopt. The problem magnifies when the organization grows and so does the requirements. Networking has become the key enabler for decision making but the required data is not available in the form and format that helps in easier decision making. What was a boon a few years earlier has now become an albatross around the neck for the organizations. This is where Data Systems helps organizations to develop a long term plan which can eliminate these issues and help in a continuous smooth deployment of the networking technology. We could help in making your networking a key strategic differentiator for the organiza-
“WE BELIEVE IN GIVING ONLY THE BEST. THEREFORE, DATA SYSTEMS CONSTANTLY TRAINS ITS DEDICATED STAFF ON CUTTING EDGE INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGIES AND ENHANCE THEIR SKILL SET.” RAKESH MISHRA, MD, DATA SYSTEMS
tion,” explained Mishra. Data Systems has done marketing of advanced networking, broadband, digital, voice and data communications solutions. It continually meets the networking and connectivity needs of SMBs and corporates, and does its business mainly through SIs, dealers and resellers. The work does not end with just providing the services; the main challenge is providing an equally efficient support. Data Systems has a dedicated support staff to analyse and deliver solutions to overcome any migration challenge. They are responsible for receiving, diagnosing,
CASE STUDY
and managing any service request from the first instance of contact. They help to minimize downtime and maximize networking efficiency that positively impacts the productivity of the organizations. The company, with 25 years of experience in networking, has designed and executed complex IT solution based on Ethernet, fast Ethernet, and gigabit Ethernet running on UTP, STP and FIBER structured cabling. With expertise in the domain space, the company has devised procedures that ensure an efficient turnaround to any clients’ requirements. This will also guarantee efficient and cost-effective handling of service request.
Finally… “Today, we are known in the industry for our competitive pricing policy, customer centric approach and professionalism. With the right equipment and specialized workforce Data Systems promises exceptional support to all its clients. Proficient in the latest technologies the support staff ensures accurate assessments of your requirements,” Mishra concluded.
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SME CHAT
CEA
GARY SHAPIRO PRESIDENT & CEO, CEA
“THE SPIRIT OF CES IS TO HELP GROW INNOVATION“ With more than four decades of success, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive. This time, in 2012 edition, SME Channels’ Sanjib Mohapatra visited CES to take astock of the event. He also spoke to Garry Shapiro, President & CEO, CEA, about the growth of the show. Excerpts
What are the growth factors of CES? First of all every show reflects on an industry and CES is very fortunate to be associated with a growing industry. Secondly, is the economic growth of the country or the world, which further affects growth of the shows. So there is no reason to have a show if it is not something different and have some innovation. We have certainly worked hard to position this show around innovation - making it a valuable experience for everyone who comes here. We are trying to keep the prices very reasonable and making high returns for anyone taking the pain of getting on an airplane and investing their time to come to this show. We are trying to provide a lot of education. We have 25 Tech shows in this show and each of this Tech shows traction has a partnership and focused on a new category. Some shows in certain countries focus on just on their country rather than external things and that is a great challenge to gain benefit from. The US is one of the large economies and to me Las Vegas is one of the most beautiful cities to host the show. There are a lot more hotel rooms in this city. Somebody told me that there are 16-19 largest hotels in this city besides it has the major international airport, infrastructure of convention centers, hotels, entertainment, and skilled workforce, etc. This exhibition set up has been built in three days, imagine how skilled they are. So these are so many factors which make this show a successful venue but the major challenge
for us is for the next year where we do not have enough space for expansion. The global economic condition is not very good. What is your judgment on the fate of the show? We are projecting about 1 trillion USD in terms of global consumer electronics sales in 2012. The United States will share 20 % of that, which will be around $200 billion. That means, we are projecting a growth of 3.9% and that is very strong considering the behavior of the economy and it will be replicated around the world. The reason is that the consumer electronics products offer great value against its price. Buying of these products for many people will become very essential for the simple reason of communications with work force and to maintain relationships with the family so the prospect for the consumer electronics industry is positive and there are also positive signs as they allow people to become entrepreneurs and create jobs inexpensively. For the first time, in human history, you are having an internet device with broadband connection. You can start a worldwide global business with a little investment. So it is a great equalizer of a product. People recognize it around the world. Obviously wireless technologies are driving tremendous growth and it is very important for the world. I am very comfortable in saying that even against another economic challenges, the consumer electronics industry is very positive in terms of products
are very valuable as well as inexpensive. We are projecting that the growth in the Television will dip this year whereas Tablet market will surge. It has become a very attractive one. In fact, Tablet has become a preferred product not only for the home `segments but also for the government organizations. In fact, government organizations are buying a huge number of tablets to enable the burgeoning mobile workforce. The CIO of Govt. of United States in a press conference also talked about how the US Govt.’s strategy has completely changed by some of the products in the market place. Tablets are really transformational products along with wireless, telephones; etc.it is catching up very fast. Interestingly Tablet was first introduced by Microsoft at CES few years ago but it did not catch on but with Apple and other companies introducing Tabs it is phenomenon now. How is the Scope of CES growing? The future is bright for technologies as it totally changes the world. Because of the technology revolution, we are able to maintain our freedom. The companies are introducing new products and can drive the industry in different directions. As far as CES is concerned we have a single goal that anyone with an idea can expose it. People like you can make a brake a product. So 80% of the companies have small businesses and have exposed their innovations here and grown phenomenally. That is the spirit of the show that we want to maintain.
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important because it is an independent verification. The other thing is that Europe has a different culture than United States. We do not count the foot prints whereas IFA counts the footprints. We only count exhibit space but not the IO space. Obviously we have a very good relationship with each other as we go there and they also come here. Why Apple is not here? Apple is actually here. There are several hundred of people from Apple here. About 300 different Apple exhibitors have taken part in this show. Apple as a corporate are not exhibiting their phone. Why they are not here? It is there freedom of decision not to be presence here. Apple is a phenomenally successful consumer electronics company in the world. It has great innovative products and are member of this association. We engage with them all the time. We will welcome them and listen to them but without Apple being present as the comapny they still are present here in many different ways.
“AS AN ORGANIZATION WE ARE ARGUING WITH GOVERNMENTS NOT TO SET ARTIFICIAL STANDARDS.” If you talk to our employees they are working with a mission that they want to do good for the entrepreneurs, good for society and good for taking technology innovations out to the market, etc. What is the symbol of the CES 2012? Tablets had a very large presence last year and also this year. This time 3000 exhibitors have taken part and have introduced many things. There is no symbol as such for this year. In terms of video games, there are many different ways to partnerships with many platform providers. Three top vendors including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are present here. So video games have been given a warm welcome because the content of videogame helps drive some of the products. Video games are wonderful for the audiences and it is shifting its role to be a positive force in education and I can see a great future in it. But we are way beyond video games in terms of international CES.
How do you compare with IFAGermany vis-à-vis CES and is it a right time to run CES? IFA is a show in Germany. Stated since 1924, it is an excellent show and open to the public. The difference between IFA & CES show is that CES is positioned much broader covering many different categories and CES opens only to the trade and not the public. In terms of timing of CES, it is very viable after the holidays because it is very important for those who are selling products and gather plans for the year together with producers. It is phenomenally viable in terms of records and attendance as per our survey and size, which is obviously much bigger and any other definition from IFA. Another difference between two shows is that as per the independent audits we are able to verify as to how many people come to this show and how many spaces are available in the show. Shows normally do not audit. So audits are very
Do you think software will play important part in this show in future? Software and the cloud, services are obviously growing. A lot of services are becoming embedded in the hardware. So to me the difference between software, firmware and hardware is not that great. The software world is changing rapidly because 10 years ago, there were media, we were exchanging data using media but in last few years, we are using web for that purpose and now it is cloud for the same purpose. So I think software is important because there is a lot of transformation occuring and it happens very quickly. But how that can be visible, I cannot really predict very honestly. That is a difficult one to answer. Do you have an expo outside US also? There is also a show in China called China CES, which is very a successful show in a very beautiful city in China called Qingdao. We are open to organizing its shows around the world as this year it invited press and very selected exhibitors to present their products. How Consumer Electronics can be Greener? There are three different ways to make electronic devices greener. First is less use of chemicals in the manufacturing process of electronics. Secondly, the optimal energy use of the product. We are working with government of US to convey the message of energy usage of TV. And, thirdly the product life cycle and recycling. SME
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PARTNER CORNER
TALLY IS LIFE CHANGER AND GAME CHANGER “My future plan is to have 20 Crores Turnover company within span of 3 years down the line.” MR.DHAVAL MEHTA- MASTER TALLY PARTNER – GLOBAL SOFTWARE
E
ver since Tally started, it has influenced many people’s life and it has turned many people to entrepreneurs. One of these success stories is Mr. Dhaval Mehta, the Master Tally Partner and creator of Global Software. A commerce graduate from Ahmedabad, Mr. Dhaval was working in same city, during 1991 under a chartered account named as Mr. Bharat Shah. During that time, he was engaged partially with the branch office of Peutronics Pvt. Ltd. The tenure was so interesting that Dhaval thought of getting into Tally business directly. He says, “I have seen Tally from its Version 3.12 time. I was working with CA, Bharat M. Shah where Tally 3.12 was installed by Mr. Ajay Garg, the Ahmedabad branch manager of Peutronics. Since I knew about Tally, Mr. Garg had partially employed me for installation, training and other liaison jobs of Tally.” During his work with Tally for 4 years, he started liking the ideology of Tally and in 1995, he thought of becoming an entrepreneur around Tally and tried to become a Tally dealer but unfortunately that did not happen he ended up taking
TallyAcademy. But a twist came in his life during 2002, he got Tally dealership for bronze. Today, he is a successful Tally Partner having developed strengths and domain knowledge around the areas of solutions, customization and services. This has helped him carrying successful projects of Tally implementations in all kinds of industries. Asked about his initial years with Tally, he says, “Since I was dealing with good products I was sure about the outcome of any single marketing attempt, one significant change I have observed that earlier we were able to sell one product in a month, and now we are in phase to observe 10 numbers minimum in a day including TNS (Tally Net Subscription).” In fact, his major breakthrough came when Tally launched Parakarm and Param and other significant enhancements at the time of implementation of VAT across India. From the clients’ perspective, his major breakthrough came when he implemented solutions in all Nagarpalikas of Gujarat State. It was the beginning of his Govt. business. Now he has good presence in many departments thereafter. Even if Dhaval is a successful Tally partner
today, he never makes himself complacent about it. He owes his success to his motto that is customer satisfaction and the principal company that is Tally. “We cannot define in few words about Tally as a company, but one thing I would like to say that Tally has changed the life of mine and as a company that has given me essence of facets of life,” Dhaval says, “Growth that I foresee is tremendous and very much fruitful and beneficial for us.” Tally has changed his life upside down. Dhaval admits that besides the business, the company’s core values have taught him the simplicity in life. It has taught many things - precisely the way of Life. In the end… A rupees two core company today, Global Software expects to touch Rs.20 Crores Turnover within span of next three years. Tally is really life changer and game changer for many of its channel partners and surely for Global Software. Dhaval concludes: “Tally is mother tongue of Accountants and like many other people, it is also life changer for me.”
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TALLY
CASE STUDY
LARGE ALUMINUM PACKAGING MANUFACTURER RUNS ON TALLY.ERP 9
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ased out of Ahmedabad, Print-N-pack Pvt. Ltd. is a leading manufacturer of aluminum foil cone sleeves, flexible packaging of BOPP (Candy cover and wrappers), duplex board cartons for icecream packaging. They are the supplier to Amul ice-cream, Vadilal ice-cream – even exporting to Dubai and Africa. They have presence in two places including Kolol and Ahmedabad having two factories. Started its operations in 1982, the company is now an ISO 9001:2000 certified leading manufacturer of packaging in India and have touched a turnover of Rs.20 crore last year and expecting 20% growth this year. Being a leading manufacturer of icecream cones, Print-N-Pack is today at the forefront of the industry. Progressive up-gradation and technical innovation continues to drive its exponential growth. Rapid expansion of its installed capacity ensures that the company is able to meet the demands of all its customers across the country as well as the continent with professional and exacting standards. As the company was growing fast internally and externally, they wanted some solution which could take care of resources and give a real time view of what is happening. And they wanted the reports to be remotely accessible also. In this backdrop, the company found that Tally as a solution can meet their requirements. Of course they had tried many similar enterprise solutions including SAGE FAS but found that Tally is the most popular product and available everywhere. On top of it, the software has a good reporting system. So in 2003-04, the company implemented Tally. Mr. Vandan Gandhi, Director, PrintN-Pack Pvt. Ltd. says, “The basis of Tally ERP is user friendliness and ease of
“Tally is omnipresent in the market. Most of my known people were using Tally. I got reference from one of my friends about Tally so also of Mr.Dhaval Mehta of Global Software.”
VANDAN GANDHI DIRECTOR, PRINT-N-PACK PVT. LTD.
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
BENEFITS l Ease to Use and
Ease to Manage l You can add on as you grow
manageability. Of course today’s version Tally.ERP 9 is much more developed and advanced from the earlier ones.” Regarding his experience, he adds, “Tally is omnipresent in the market. Most of my known people were using Tally. I got reference from one of my friends about Tally and implemented the solution but I was not happy with the supplier. In the meantime, I got the reference of Mr. Dhaval Mehta of Global Software and invited him to my office to have a look at my requirements. He complied with my request and offered solution. Today in hindsight I feel I had taken the right decision. ” Since Print-N-Pack Pvt. Ltd. had the basic needs of accounts they started it from accounts then moved to the inventory control and then added manufacturing process to Tally.ERP 9. Mr. Dhaval Mehta, Master Tally Partner, Global Software, says, “I have been working with Print-N-Pack since 2001.
At that point of time they also had Tally in their systems but had some service issues from the partner, which I fixed with my personalized approach. Since then they are my customer.” He added, “Even though Mr. Vandan Gandhi was taking keen interest in trouble shooting yet nobody knew about the full features of Tally. Even though there were certain features available in Tally by default, they would be using different local software for that purpose. So we had given them insights of what they can do with Tally and there after they started using Tally fully.” Finally… It took one month only for Print-N-Pack accounts departments to get trained on Tally solution and after the training was over, they had taken one more month to transition their entire data to the system and use it. Today, Mr. Gandhi is a happy and relaxed man because of Tally.
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SME CHAT
MATRIX COMSEC
VINIT MAHULKAR NATIONAL SALES MANAGER (VOIP- IT/NETWORKING SEGMENT), MATRIX COMSEC
“RE-DIALLING INTO VOIP” Even after a decade of its existence VoIP failed to take off in a big way as expected. But with companies looking at more economical ways to cut costs without hurting their businesses, they are slowly becoming aware of the advantages of VoIP. SME Channels spoke to Vinit Mahulkar, National Sales Manager, (VoIP—IT/networking segment), Matrix Comsec Pvt. Ltd, to know about the Indian VoIP industry and the role Matrix will play in this market. Excerpts:
Tell us about the technology adoption trend in the market The adoption trend of technology is not uniform everywhere, nor is the evolution of many telecom standards, it varies from region to region. We introduce new products considering the specific requirements of various markets. This helps us match the very specific requirements of end customers. That’s the ideal path we are following and it has delivered us results in the form of good business. VoIP as a technology is not taking off, what is the present status of VoIP market in India? After a decade of VoIP technology introduction, VoIP market is now growing slowly in India. Organizations are now understanding the benefits of IP and showing inclination towards IP as an alternative to their existing telecom infrastructure for more optimum and efficient utilization of their resources. VoIP in India is growing gradually, and possesses great future prospects. Low call-rates as compared to conventional telephony and increasing Internet penetration are set to drive growth of the VoIP-based services in India. The VoIP market is expected to change the dynamics of the
Indian telecom industry once the necessary regulatory changes are in place. How Matrix is positioned in the VoIP market? Matrix Comsec is a leading manufacturer of VoIP products for business communication, including a range of VoIP ATAs, VoIP Gateways, IP Phones, IP-PBX etc. We are the only Indian telecom company to manufacture all products in India itself. Matrix’s position in VoIP market is proved by the continuous growth in its IP products portfolio and its growing market share in VoIP market. The major share of Matrix customer base is shared by SMBs and SMEs in manufacturing units, financial institutions, SOHO, retail stores, call centers, educational institutes, government offices and utility sectors. In addition, Matrix is also established as the preferred supplier for small and large sized hotels. What kind of advantages the Matrix offers over the competition and established brands? Matrix has a wide range of VoIP products for business communication, including a range of IP-PBX, IP phones, VoIP gateways and ATAs. We have always thought beyond following competi-
tors and have researched and worked in introducing products as per end-user’s needs. Our products offer quality and reliability, comparable with all well established players in the market. All Matrix solutions are ‘more in a box’ solution with no hidden cost and high customer value for money. With wide spread network of channel partners, strong marketing team and qualified technical support, we offer cost-effective and quick pre/post-sales support. With continuous technological advancement in our product portfolio and incorporating latest features and functionalities, we provide solutions to our customers that can help them to optimize their business processes and strengthen them to compete in the global market. Being an Indian brand what are the positive points of Matrix? Being an Indian based company, we understand the exact market requirement of India. Our products and features are designed to meet the requirements of Indian customers. Customers get opportunity for direct communication and grievance redressing opportunities with manufacturer itself. We, at Matrix Comsec are always focused on providing world class communication solutions to Indian enterprises, to help them compete at the
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MATRIX COMSEC
SME CHAT
availability, which in turn ensures on time delivery to customers. Special schemes for service provider business and government business are also offered to motivate the channels.
“OUR PRODUCTS AND FEATURES ARE DESIGNED TO MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF INDIAN CUSTOMERS.” global platform. Matrix has already placed itself as a strong player of business communication systems for SMBs and SMEs, holding a significant share in domestic market. Now, we are focusing on creating a strong channel base under IT and Networking, for promoting our IP and GSM range of gateways. With trust and reputation already created by world class business communication systems, Matrix finds it easy to penetrate into the Indian Market. What is your present practice in terms of channel engagement? Matrix already has a strong and well established network of 550 and above channel partners across the globe. We believe in quality relationship with our channel partners for progressive growth of company. Further, to focus on the market opportunity offered by booming VoIP technology, Matrix has diversified its channel base into a separate vertical of IT and Networking. We are engaging IT networking partners, SIs, IT consultants etc., to work
more closely with us in the new vertical. All our certified channel partners are offered simplified access to various resources, marketing programs and sales and technical training programs. They get various marketing and pre/ post-sales support from Matrix to enhance their product knowledge, which in turn, brings development, profitability and brand visibility to Matrix. How are you empowering and incentivizing the partners? Channel partners play a crucial role between Matrix and end-customers. It is important to build a quality relationship with them to bring profitable, encouraging and progressive results. We provide various benefits and incentives for an inimitable partnership, flexible enough to match their business plans. We offer various performance based incentives, monthly sales incentives, quarterly consistency incentives as rewards for their progressive growth. Additional incentives on Early Order Placement are also offered to ensure timely material
What kind of growth are you seeing in the SME adoption of VoIP technology? Small and medium enterprises play a vital role in the sustainable growth of Indian economy. Indian SME sector has evolved as the largest customer pool for global companies forcing them to come up with specialized products for SMEs. We have examples of global brands launching specialized SMB product for India in recent time. All these market dynamics point towards the tremendous growth opportunities present for SMBs and SMEs in India. As the trend is towards hosted PBX services, distributed office architecture and teleworking is increasing, the requirement of VoIP among SMEs for business purpose is also expected to accelerate. Matrix with a wide range of VoIP products for business communication, including range of VoIP ATA, VoIP gateways, IP phones, IP-PBX etc., is well positioned to acquire the major chunk of these markets. What kind of business traction are you seeing in your VoIP business? Projection of VoIP growth is optimistic. Enormous cost advantages and feature flexibility of VoIP are set to bring tremendous growth in India’s VoIP market. With continuous increment in VoIP adaption rate, VoIP businesses are expected to change the dynamics of telecom industry. With wide range of IP products blended with latest technological features and functions, Matrix is geared up to suffice the growing need of VoIP based business communication requirements. What kind of engagement you have with the service providers? We have tie-ups with leading Indian service providers like Airtel, Tata, MTS and others, to offer ISDN PRI trunking solutions across the country, and meet their customer requirements. With various schemes and special prices, we enjoy around 30% -40% of revenue share from this segment. For promoting various IP products ranging from terminals, VoIP ATAs, gateways to IP-PBX in service provider segment, we are continuously involved in interoperability testing with various SIP trunking solution partners world-wide. This ensures end-users with complete compatibility and broad set of choices while deploying Matrix IP products.
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SME BIZ
HUAWEI
BETTING
HIGH ON ENTEPRISE
With the cloud computing becoming the buzz word Huawei sees itself well positioned to cater to this burgeoning market. BY KARMA NEGI
karma@smechannels.com
FACTS ABOUT Headquarter
:
Gurgaon
Key Executives
:
Eric Yu, President, Huawei Enterprise; Daniel Jianqingsong, VP, Huawei Enterprise
Headcount
:
6,500
Contact detail
:
91-9953591484 PartnerIndia@huawei.com
Key products
:
Enterprise network product line, cloud computing, data center solution, unified communication & collaboration, surveillance solutions, smart grid solutions
Website
:
www.huawei.com/enterprise and www.enterprise.huawei. com/en
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rom a small sales agent selling PBX switches to foraying into cloud computing Huawei has indeed, come a long way. One of the leading ICT solutions provider, it provides end-to-end solutions in telecom networks, devices and cloud computing. The company has been a telecom service provider for the last 22 years. Founded in 1987 in Shenzhen, China, its core activities are building telecommunication networks, manufacturing communication devices for the consumers and providing operational and consulting services and equipments to enterprises. It started its operations in India in 1998 with its R&D centre in Bangalore and then in the year 2001-02 it setup its sales and marketing office in Gurgaon. Eyeing a big chunk of the Indian ICT market, Huawei has implemented some changes, and has divided the business into four divisions— Carrier business group, Enterprise business group, Consumer business group and the other business group. In Carrier Business Group, the customers are telecom operators and the Enterprise Group includes every enterprise and organization (government and other Industries), except the telecom operators. Consumer Business Group is focused
on the consumer business like tablet or handset. So it has divided the groups not only by solutions but also by different category of customers. Eric Yu, President, Enterprise Business, Huawei Telecommunications, said, “Enterprise market or ICT Enterprise market is a very big market globally. And India being a big country with an equally big population has lots of enterprises (including government), so the business scope is undoubtedly large. If we look at the top ten SIs and OEMs in India last year, the revenues totalled at US $10 billion. Out of this 10 billion, Huawei can command a share of 80 to 90 percent.” Yu said that Huawei has the largest product portfolio and the service portfolio in the world in ICT Industry. The company’s network solution includes LAN switch, transmission and all kinds of equipment. Its IT solution includes server, storage, cloud computing and Data centre. Unified communication, collaboration is the kind of solution that the company offers, which unifies the communication system and some kind of surveillance system too. The company also has call centres under the UC solution. “The main advantage of Huawei is that it respects the strong players in the market like Cisco. The fundamental reason why Huawei came to enterprise is that it can create a value for ICT
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HUAWEI
ERIC YU, PRESIDENT, ENTERPRISE BUSINESS, HUAWEI TELECOMMUNICATIONS
requirement in enterprise industry. None of the company can provide such as end –to- end ICT solution like Huawei does. As it provides endto- end solutions to the enterprise customers they enjoy three benefits—first, less integration in operational issues; second, efficiency is improved and third, maintenance becomes manageable because it is easier to control the behaviour. This end-to-end solution is a unique point of Huawei,” said Yu. The size of India’s enterprise market is pegged at US $ 10 billion out of which Huawei has a share of approximately $ 1 billion. It reasoned that it has not been able to touch the 1 billion mark because even though the marker is big but it lack resources. “We have resources which cover only the 1 billion market; but later our target is to cover 20 percent of this 1 billion to reach 200 million,” Yu added. The company manufactures most of its products in China though it has manufacturing units for products like transmission equipments and optical transmission, based out of Chennai. Yu said that the possibility of manufacturing more in India will depend on the market situations. Huawei provides warranty support through its local repair centres. The turnaround time from customers to factory and back depends upon the requirement or the service needed by the
customer. Depending on the level of service the turnaround time may fluctuate between three to 10 days. The company holds that its products are more affordable and cost effective compared to its competitors because of better quality and good branding. Last year it witnessed 28 billion in terms of revenue and 34 billion in orders. And today, it is rated among the Fortune 500 companies. In terms of marketing and branding, this fortune 500 company has adopted some aggressive moves. As Yu said, “Till six months back very few people knew about how we did our pricing. But now, according to analysts 80 percent of the market knows Huawei’s pricing.” It has adopted a three pronged approach towards increasing the company visibility in the market: first, marketing activities like advertisements, establishing exhibition in Delhi and Mumbai airports. In the words of Yu, “We want the enterprises to know how good we are. We want them to first experience and then believe.” Second, transferring knowledge by educating the partners and distributors about its solutions and where it will be advantageous. “They will in turn pass the messages to their clients who have more people than us,” Yu explained. Third is servicing. Yu believes that enabling
SME BIZ
the partner to guarantee a better experience to the customers will in turn translate into good publicity as a satisfied customer will talk about his experience and this in turn will lead to good marketing. The top 100 partners in India cover 70 percent of the business. Out of this 10 SI have signed an agreement to become Huawei partners, which it plans to double by next year. Huawei doesn’t believe in having too many partners and is happy to have a select few. Today, Huawei has presence in all the major parts of the country with a headcount of 200 people in the enterprise segment. To make its presence even stronger it is going along with lots of marketing activities. Apart from its presence in magazines and newspapers, it has participated in some major events and plans to roll out exhibitions in the coming days. “We want to help our partners to know how Huawei is branded,” said Yu. In the SME market Huawei depends on their premium resellers and tier- two partners in each state. Their strategy is to have a different approach for different customers. Yu informed that 90 to 95 percent of its business will come from their value added partners and premium distributors. With the market moving from physical products to Cloud computing how can Huawei be left far behind? According to Yu, Huawei, has perhaps, the largest R&D team for cloud computing. A team of 3000 is involved in identifying, analysing, and studying the fundamentals of the science of cloud. Apart from this another 2000 people are occupied with developing software applications for the cloud. Yu is confident that their understanding of a cloud market will hold them at a better position and they may emerge as the ‘cloud leader’. Huawei also had to face its share of challenges while treading the Indian market. Apart from the stiff competition it faced from its competitors, it also realized that the people were not only price conscious but also demanded customized products. Today, the company claimed, has 60 percent understanding of the Indian market. This year the company will focus on routers, LAN switches and transmission products; servers, data centres and unification of the communication. In the customer side the focus will be on garment, transport, power and energy. “And in the SMB sector the company will have in place 50 people to not only understand the market but also to make sure that the market understands us,” Yu concluded. By the end of 2012 Huawei aims to achieve a target of 200 million and increase it to 1 billion by 2015.
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PARTNER CORNER
GOPALKRISHNAN P K, CEO, WEP PERIPHERALS
GAINING MOMENTUM ON RETAIL AND ENERGY SECTORS Wep strongly believes that services and innovations will help them in the current market. BY KARMA NEGI
karma@smechannels.com
T ‘
o be consistently proactive, and perform with integrity and speed at the cutting edge of technology and innovation to deliver the consumer’s tech fantasy’ is the promise that WeP makes towards its consumers. It follows a vision to be India’s most valuable tech fantasy product solutions and services enterprise. Today, known mostly for its traditional business (impact printers, high speed printers and line matrix printers), it boasts of a wide and strong portfolio not only in printing but also as varied as power and retail solutions. In the last couple of years, the company was missing from action in the channel space, but now it wants to bring it out of the backburner and is planning to come out with proactive steps to strengthen its position in the channel space. Gopalkrishnan P K, CEO, WeP Peripherals Ltd, said, “The company is continuously refining its policies to be more and more channels friendly. In a market like this, special focus are on services and innovations of products. Going forward, the company is becoming more channels friendly and is planning to design policies for channel, but of course, we too demand high performance from the channels.” The company prides itself on its strong ethics and sense of fair practices. Gopalkrishnan stressed, “The partners can trust the company because of its strong belief in ethics and sense of fair practices. And as the company brings out new products every year partners can expect a very transparent way of working for us. “We will be fair
in dealing with the channels,” he emphasized. The company has planned to bring out innovative products in the market. Although at the entry level, the products may be very limited, and the advantage may be between three to six points; but Gopalkrishnan assured that the company will be continuously investing on R&D to bring out innovative products. In the service network, the company has service centers in 17 locations, and 150 service partners which provides home delivery services. Apart from this they also have 8 am to 8 pm call centers and help desk, and have spare stocking in these 17 locations. “Though there is scope for improvement but we still believe that our SLA’s are better than that of the competitors,” he said with conviction. For the last two -three years the company has faced challenges in the DMP market, which has been more or less stagnant. But some major steps were taken at the right time to diversify—like foraying into retail and energy section-- which to so some extent compensated the company with high growth that can happen in these sectors. Many distributors and channel partners quit this business as they saw the segment breathing its last. Government, PSUs, banks and the Indian Railways are currently the only large customers for DMPs, while most corporate users are migrating to other emerging technologies. “The company need’s to grow but at the same time we have to make sure that in the process the margins are not sacrificed. There is a long chain between the end customers and producers as
there are intermediaries, who too have to make margins in order to survive and grow. So the company needs to show value to the end customers and get higher and higher realization correspondent to the value that the company offers which is the reason why they get into the solution in a big way,” he explained. The company does not see itself as a retail hardware player but as a retail solution player. He sees a challenge in getting the right talent for the IT peripherals company, who are not only extremely motivated but also determined to win against a backdrop of software companies who have an upper-hand when it comes to attracting the retail talent. Gopalkrishnan opined that the industry is not innovating enough, and sometimes fails to understand the customers’ needs - what products or solution will satisfy them in IT preference. So the challenge is really to anticipate the customers’ needs, their buying trends, the needs that will arise tomorrow, and then try to design a product that will fulfill the requirements. In printing, WeP have very strong collaborations with a couple of companies in China. And plan to further consolidate these relationships.
Finally… This year the company, apart from becoming proactive in the channel space, is also eyeing the retail space and energy solution space in a big way. Several initiatives have been planned for this sector, with an aggressive, integrated approach and solution.
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SAKRI
TREND SETTER
SAKRI IT SOLUTIONS
SYNONYMOUS WITH SUCCESS From being ND for Kaspersky retail products to distribute Airtel, Appotech and Moai products, the journey has been really sweet and quick.
RAVI LAKSHMAN, CEO, SAKRI IT SOLUTIONS
BY: TEAM SME
info@smechannels.com
S
akri Solutions, within a short span of its establishment - in the year 2009, has become a name to reckon with, in the space of IT and communications solutions. Sakri being the national distributor for Kaspersky Retail products in India has earned a name of repute. The fact that Sakri has grown from a modest six-member sales team into a community of 30 sales people (total of 100 plus employees) speaks of its commitment to excel each passing day with focus on customer solutions and support. Having already solidified its position in South and West of India, Sakri is now aiming to spread its operations in the North with its Delhi branch and in the East with its Kolkata branches. With added services to its portfolio, Sakri is today the Airtel distributor in Maharashtra for ILP, MPLS and NLD. The company also has expanded into the electronics and peripherals markets, having allied itself with strategic partners like APPOTECH (Hong Kong) and MOAI (Taiwan).
The Kaspersky Tech Support office at Pune.
Speaking of the strengths of Sakri, it is a Cisco certified company with a special focus on the SMB market and also a CRISIL SME 2 rated company thus indexing its financial strength. The company has a full-fledged 30 seater technical support centre at Pune having well-trained customer support group for supporting Kaspersky retail products. The centre handles over 1000 calls a day. To keep pace with the increasing inbound calls, Sakri will expand to 50 seats, soon. By the end of the year Sakri envisages a growth to a 200 plus employees to augment its expanding and diversifying business. In the context of motivating and keeping alive the team spirit, Ravi Lakshman, CEO of Sakri, said, “We had recently organized a sales review meet at Pune and followed it up with a holiday for the entire sales team at Mahabaleswar which also served as an exercise for team building. We believe in working hard and we like to work as a team. We keep conducting such getaways as a means to not only help unwind our team but to also help our company in growing strategically.”
“WE KEEP CONDUCTING SUCH GETAWAYS AS A MEANS TO NOT ONLY HELP UNWIND OUR TEAM BUT IT ALSO HELPS OUR COMPANY TO GROW STRATEGICALLY.” Satish Mantri, VP - Marketing, Sakri IT added, “We are planning to provide training to the sales and service engineers at the regional level by organizing meets in B and C class cities which will also help improve the support locally.” All poised to grow internationally Sakri, spells a success story, which stands as a testimony to hard work and passion.
The sales team during the recently concluded sales review meeting at Pune.
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SECURITY CORNER
VISHAK RAMAN, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, FORTINET INDIA AND SAARC
“FORTINET TO FORTIFY ITS CHANNEL PRESENCE”
Known more as the enterprise darling, Fortinet sees fatal attraction from Indian SMEs. Therefore fulfilling their needs through channel partners appears to be imminent.
I
t is believed that the Indian UTM market is about 100 million US$ by 2012 and going by the growth of SMEs, it is well estimated how this segment can impact the entire market. Looking at the unlimited potential of SME market, Fortinet has carved an ambitious plan to tap the segment. They are already the leader in the Indian UTM market, having very large share in enterprise and service provider market. However, Vishak Raman, Regional Director, Fortinet India and SAARC, is not happy with the notion that market carries about their positioning. He says, “As per IDC, we are market leader in terms of revenue and units for last many quarters which people are not aware of.” However, as per the strategy, Fortient is expanding its footprints to tier 2 and 3 cities by expanding their channel base. The number of resellers in India and SAARC region has touched 200 today, but their objective is to scale up this number to 300 by the next year. Fortinet has adopted very good channel practice. Unlike the competitions, the company does not believe in stock & sell model. Therefore, they do not dump products at the partners’ place. The company wants real product movement in the market. Towards achieving this, Fortient, invests in channel education programme and customers’ pool mechanism. Fortinet never believes in expanding channel base for the sake of having more partners. Rather they try to take channel partners on board who are really serious and understand this business. These partners’ are
really taken care of and given adequate tools to grow. Complementing the partner’s expansion, Fortinet offers FortiPartner Program (FPP), based on three tiers − namely gold, silver and bronze, aims at driving value and commitment for Fortinet’s distributors and resellers by focusing on channel profitability, technology leadership and a strong certification program, through the recruitment of Authorized Training Centers locally. Through the FPP, Fortinet offers partners an attractive program which includes reward programs for both resellers’ sales and technical team members; strong support through interactive and regular hands-on training; a strong services renewal model; dedicated technical support for partners; and a comprehensive range of marketing and sales tools. Also, Fortinet has expanded its sales and presales teams across regions to provide adequate support in line with channel expansion. In particular, Fortinet has invested in dedicated skilled resources for Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Kochi. Vishak says, “The channel expansion program is a cornerstone of Fortinet’s broader plan to capture a larger share of the fast-growing Indian network security market, which, according to Frost & Sullivan, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.3 percent between 2011 and 2017.” In terms of products, Fortinet offers FortiGate 20C, FortiGate-40C, FortiGate-50B/51B, FortiGate-60C, FortiGate-80C/CM and FortiGate110C/111C. These products deliver unmatched
performance and protection while simplifying the network. Especially for the very small customers in the SMB segment the company offers FortiGate 20C. This product, with 20 Mbps performance, delivers fast throughput, multi-threat protection lets the users deploy a wide range of Fortinet’s UTM inspection capabilities, including firewall, IPS, application control, VPN, and web filtering all at a single low price. Plus, one WAN interface and four internal switch ports offer two security zones for policy enforcement at remote sites. The unlimited user licensing minimizes operating costs and ensures that changes in the number of users do not interfere with network availability. The FortiExplorer provides easy to follow instructions for initial deployment and configuration. Similarly, FortiGuard’s Subscription Services deliver automated, real-time, up-to-date protection against security threats and exploits. The company had a real problem in reaching out to the customers earlier but now that has been mitigated by opening multiple offices. “Fortinet is pursuing its aggressive growth plan and we cannot be successful without the support of a strong channel network, composed of highvalue and dedicated partners,” said Vishak Raman, regional director of Fortinet India and SAARC. Finally… To dispel the notion that Fortinet is meant for the large enterprises, the solutions are quite there even for the lowest end of the SMBs and are scalable also. Besides, once you embrace Fortinet solution, you should think that you are on safe hands.
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PRODUCT
REVIEW
KINGSTON DATATRAVELER 109
DELL 1250C
KINGSTON’S DATATRAVELER 109 8 GB Dmakes portable storage fashionable. This USB Flash drive makes it fun to connect
BY MANAS RANJAN / SATYA SAGAR SINHA
and share photos, music, videos and more with
info@smechannels.com
friends and family. Its small, cap less design easily attaches to a lanyard or key ring. It’s
DELL 1250C Color LED Laser-Class Printer is one of the very good printers as far as color performance is concerned. It is amazingly small that fits into the ever cramping space of the modern offices. It claims to yield 10 color ppm though the print speed varies with use. When we put this printer on the test bed, we found that the first page comes in 20 seconds, the second page comes on 15 seconds and subsequent pages coming in 10 seconds. It is taking 3 seconds to pick a paper and 7 seconds to print a page. It requires 4 seconds to burn the lamp and has 4 cartridges i.e. YMCK. It has a digital chip for ink for quality level and a splitter for cartridge ink jam cleaner. There is a back cover for paper jam. A single drum takes 1200 printout in clour mode. The paper comes with a auto feed paper carriage tray of 250 pages and there is a cross button for reset. It can print from B5 to A4 to 11” type papers. The company has used laser heater with Teflon with pressure roller technology. The drum is fixed inside not with the cartridge. The printer uses magnetic ink powder and LED quality image formatted on drum. Look wise, it is very stylish compact in size and even a lay man can easily handle it. The demerit of the printer is that in order to open the drum, you have to open the entire machine. There is no Wi-Fi therefore it cannot be used as OfficeJet rather a Deskjet machine. Therefore it is ideal for personal use and studios where there is no requirement of sharing the printer.
FEATURES n Innovative Dell ClearView LED Print-
ing Technology
a great accessory for slim notebooks and tablets. DataTraveler 109 comes preloaded with urDrive4 software that gives you a new
n Amazing Colour with Color by Dell technology
and exciting way to look at your data. It helps
n Industrial Leading Eco-Toner Design
and more. Easy to use, it includes an inbuilt
n Space efficient with Ultra Compact
Photo Viewer and MP3 player plus an online
size n Easy to maintain with only toner
organize all of your files, photos, videos, music
backup account to keep your important files
cartridge needed
secure in the cloud.
n Colour Speed fast to 10 ppm
When we tested this product in our lab we
n Ships with Colour & Black Cartridge
found that it is really a nice product compared
PRICE Rs 17000
to its look and feel. This portable storage product is a USB 2.0 device. The housing encompasses a small chip that is everything
WARRANTY
of the drive. It offers reading speed of24MB/s
1 Year limited warranty
and writing speed of 10MB/s. It does not
CONTACT
require any drive as the driver is automatic.
Dell India, Phone: 080 25068025, Email: pujan_chadha@dell.com, Website: http://www.dell.co.in/
There is inbuilt software also for safe removal
OVERALL RATING
of the drive. In media test we found that bit wise it supports 32bit and NTFS. It is OK with DOS 16 bit with bootable system. The demerit of the drive is that with extensive usage, the drive is not ok as the casings gives in but it is the lightest pen drive in the world.
n Price: Rs. 600, Warranty: 5 years Contact: Sales_india@kingston.com Tel: 022 42230300
52 SME CHANNELS FEBRUARY 2012
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NEW ARRIVALS
PRODUCT
DIGILITE
DIGILITE DL-G41MXE
PORTRONICS
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PORTRONICS POR 315 PICO PROJECTOR
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PORTRONICS POR 315 nPico projector is one of the India’s brightest battery-powered Pico projectors. The Palm-sized POR 315 Pico projector enables one to live the High definition lifestyle with additional HDMI input, resolution supporting 1024X600. The Light weighted POR 315 is both a true pocket projector and a powerful mobile computing platform. It has SD card slot which allows for memory expansion featuring in-built lithium ion battery of 3000 mAh, providing back up of two hours on a single charge. The portable projector is convenient to use as it provides direct projection from the USB drive. Additional features include composite video input, VGA input, and 1 watt on board speaker. The POR 315 Pico projector comes with a dazzling 45 lumen optical engine powered by LCOS Combined with vibrant colours the POR 315 features long-life 20,000 hour LEDs and can deliver a brilliant colourful image up to 80�. Full assortment of I/O ports, including USB, VGA, HDMI and video, allows for easy connection to most analogue or digital devices. n Price: INR23,000/-, Warranty: 1 year on-site limited warranty Contact: Jasmeet Singh Sethi, Tel: +91 9818966600, Email: sales@ portronics.com
SDIGILITE motherboard - model DL-G41MXE with G41 Express Chipset is a dual-core processor motherboard. DLG41MXE along with Intel G41 Express Chipset brings out new technologies and innovative capabilities for home consumers. DLG41MXE enhances the video quality, graphics, responsiveness, and scalability for daily computing making it hi-definitioncum-complete solution for home computing. DL-G41MXE comprise of Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500 which takes your video playing to the next level without the need of add-in video card or decoder. It has 1 IDE port in it which ensures compatibility with PATA HDD. DL-G41MXE supports Intel Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual-Core processors, Socket T (LGA775) and have suited configuration with ideal 2PCI, 1PCI & 1PCIx16. It has also and 4 SATA ports and 8 USB 2.0 ports. The USP of the mobo is that it comes with burnt warranty and undergoes salt analysis to avoid rusting. This motherboard model consists of Japanese solid capacitors at CPU VRM area. n Price: INR2699 Warranty: Three-year Contact: Digisol sales support, Tel: 1800-209-3444 (Toll Free) & 022-30616666 , Email: sales@digisol.com or helpdesk@ digisol.com
al
FOXCONN
bit
ive ok
pen
FOXCONN H77 MOTHERBOARD FOXCONNnext generation motherboards, the H77 series, are positioned to provide the best audio and visual experience possible. The H77 series supports the latest 22nm Intel Ivy Bridge processors and compatible with Sandy Bridge CPU. With Intel HD Graphics performance, Intel Smart Response Technology and Intel Rapid Start Technology, H77 is designed to give users the fastest and most realistic game play experience ever. Directx 11 is also supported for maximized graphics performance. As an added bonus, all the capacitors used on H77 series motherboard are a solid design from a famous Japanese capacitor provider, ensuring the highest stability. Further the boards are equipped with 100% solid capacitors developed by the leading Japanese manufacturers. And its 7.1 Channel HD is capable of delivering support and sound quality for up to eight channels at 192 kHz/32-bit quality providing an extremely realistic audio experience. n Price: On request/-, Warranty: 1 Year Contact: Samson Fernandez, Manager - Product & Marketing, Foxconn -Middle East-IndiaAfrica, email: sam@foxconn.ae
SME CHANNELS 53 FEBRUARY 2012
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GUEST TALK
LEADERSHIP THE DRIVER; TALENT MANAGEMENT ITS NAVIGATOR
In the backdrop of this talent challenge, there are three levers that organizations can turn to for solutions, namely, talent strategy, leadership capacity and CEO time. MOHINISH SINHA Leadership & Talent Practice Leader, Hay Group SAPA (South & South East Asia, Pacific & Africa geographies)
BRIEF PROFILE Mohinish’s core expertise is in Organization Transformation, Leadership Development and Coaching & Setting up and Assessing learning functions. He works with clients to identify and address their needs for organizational transformations, change, learning by helping turn their business strategies into the results they desire. He is also a leadership coach and has coached and facilitated hundreds of senior and top management executives within India and outside. Mohinish works with a variety of clients in sectors of Education, Oil & Gas, Banking and Financial Services and IT. He has also worked extensively with the government, public sector and UN organizations as well as with multinationals and Indian family owned business. Worked significantly with start ups also. Mohinish holds an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur and a graduate degree in Physics from Delhi University.
WHILE IT IS oft-quoted that ‘human resource is the most precious resource’, there are many who set out with noble intentions to invest in their HR practice, only to be faced with the challenges of an ever-changing business scenario. This is especially true in the thriving Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector in India. Since the country achieved economic independence, there has been a special status accorded to SMEs in terms of the benefits and reservations. Though this approach has evolved in alignment with the national policy, SMEs continue to remain prominent, currently contributing 40 per cent to Indian exports, per a 2010 study by ASSOCHAM. While the definition of an SME continues to evolve, there are tangible and intangible characteristics that set SMEs in India apart, per Hay Group research. SMEs usually focus on leveraging one or two core competencies as opposed to a diversified business, leading to revenue between INR 100 to 400 crores. Their customers can be very small (for example, retail) or very large (for example, institutional), adding another shade of complexity. The bottom line is that they are expected to contribute 22 per cent to India’s GDP by 2012 (ASSOCHAM data), confirming their standing in the economy. However, here is where the irony of the intangible lies. While most SMEs owe their growth to individual talent – star performers who consistently exceed expectations –unfortunately, the organization does not know how to proliferate and nurture this talent. Hay Group research has found that, in the backdrop of this talent challenge, there are three levers that organizations can turn to for solutions, namely, talent strategy, leadership capacity and CEO time. The first, talent strategy, helps to tackle issues relating to formalization of systems and processes, and creating avenues for talent management. Second, given that the complexity of managerial challenges increases as one moves up the ladder, there is a need to train each employee with the skills most relevant to them. This points to the second lever, leadership capacity,
highlighting the responsibility of the SME’s leader. Research by Hay Group has conclusively proved that the dominant leadership style in an organization sets the tone for the organization’s climate. This indicator in turn, is responsible for the creation of a culture, be it high-performing or demotivating. For example, a culture dominated by the ‘directive’ style of leadership causes a dip in major organizational climate factors, such as, flexibility, team commitment, and rewards; as a result fostering creating a ‘demotivating’ environment. So what do the most effective leaders do? Do they berate, cajole and plead? Do they collude, or do they simply lead by example? Neither. The most effective leaders use a collection of distinct leadership styles – each in the right measure, at just the right time. It is also imperative that CEOs recognise the urgent need in most SMEs to ensure a future supply of leaders by investing in the leadership bench strength. For this, talent management processes, such as recruitment, performance management, career development, and succession planning, need to be institutionalized. The more the transparency, the greater the employees’ buy-in. The third and final lever is CEO time, for CEOs to reflect on how they can best deploy themselves. They need to think about the answers to questions like: • What do I focus on, on a day-to-day basis? • Short -term vs. long-term goals? • Who do I pay attention to and who do I ignore? • What do I deal with directly and what do I delegate? Why? Though an oft-ignored facet of a CEO’s job, investing just some time on this activity regularly will bring clarity on whether or not the organization is on track to the vision envisaged. As the bearers of India’s torch for economic development, leaders of Indian SMEs have evidently ran the long distance to bring SMEs today to a bend in the path. India Inc. now looks to them for greater learning as they embark on the next passage to talent management and creating the leaders of tomorrow.
54 SME CHANNELS FEBRUARY 2012
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NetKey ™ ...Provides a complete, cost effective range of copper and fibre infrastructure solution for voice, data and video applications. The NetKey™ Flexible Networking System, based on the universal keystone opening, covers all your copper and fibre infrastructure communication needs from the telecommunications room to the work area with the proven quality and reliability you depend on from Panduit. NetKey™ Copper RJ45 Modules, Cable, and Patch Cords NetKey™ Fibre Modules and Patch Cords Media Distribution System NetKey™ Fibre Trays NetKey™ Audio/Video Modules NetKey Modular Patch Panels ™
NetKey™ Faceplates and Surface Mount Boxes
NetKey™ Copper Cable ■ Category 6 and 5e ■ LSZH and PVC Flame Rating
NetKey™ Termination Tool ■ Fast termination ■ Available from Fluke Networks
Warranty available through PCI Programme.
Visit us at www.panduit.com/ Jayakanthi Kanthraj email: ind-jk@panduit.com Tel No : +91 80 49122106 Bangalore Office: 3rd Floor, Onyx Center # 5, Museum Road Bangalore – 560001 Karnataka. India Tel No : +91 80 49122106 Fax No : +91 80 41464155
Advts.indd 4
Chennai Office: #400, Hot Desk, 3rd Floor, Apeejay Business Centre, Apeejay House. 39/12 Haddows Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai – 600006. India Tel No: +91 44 28238662 / +91 44 28224949 Fax No: +91 44 28262447
Delhi Office: Office No 103, U&I Centre F 41, N. D. South Extension 1, Ring Road, New Delhi -110049. India Tel No : +91 11 40167060 Fax No : +91 11 40167059
Mumbai Office: 312/313, Dynasty Business Park, J.B. Nagar, Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri East, Mumbai - 400059. India Tel No : +91 22 40917106 Fax No : +91 22 40054746
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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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