PLUS
Sachin Tendulkar Becomes the face of Kaspersky Lab /18 www.smechannels.com
india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 02
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Juniper: “25% of Our Business Comes from SMEs and is Fastest Growing Business for us
TREND SETTER
/32
Belkin: To Enter into Telecome Retail Market
SME BIZ
/43
Lenovo: Staying Ahead in the SME Game will Solve The Purpose
TABLET TO REPLACE MULTIPLE
DEVICES Ever since Tablet has come to the market, it has created challenge for the traditional PCs and hand phones. Even though the industry is hesitant about accepting its supremacy, various international exhibitions including CES, COMPUTEX, etc. and global industry performance report say the story clearly. /26
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Netgear Brings 10-gigabit Connectivity Smart Switch /08 www.smechannels.com
india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 02
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Dell:“Retail Model Ensures Buying of Dell Products Simple and Easy”
CASE STUDY
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Tally: Polymer Liner Manufacturer gets a Handle on Intelligence with Tally.ERP 9
SECURITY CORNER /42 Kaspersky: It is Always Better Late than Never
MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL
CONTROLLING THE CASH FLOW SANJAY MOHAPATRA editor@smechannels.com
THE GLOBAL market outlook appears to be cautious. The US and European market is almost experiencing another recession. The political leadership in most of the countries including US and European countries appears to be weak which does not allow the policy decision to be positive. The dollar is performing stronger against INR. The FIIs are withdrawing their investment. The industry pundits say the year-on-year trade deficit has moved up by close to 15 percent in August 2011 and, with a weakening global economy, a widening trade deficit is not likely to be bridged by flow of invisibles. In this background, Indian IT market is most likely to suffer. The products that will be imported should be dearer. Even companies have started enhancing the rates of their products. There might be deficit of cash flow or deliberately the Indian customers will reserve their cash. But the positive side is that we have already seen through a big recession in India. So this time it might not affect us. This expression is more for the reason that India has invested huge money on the infrastructure development. And another one trillion is about to be invested in infrastructure. Nevertheless, this is a warning bell that they should be cautious. And the order of the day is to just control the cash flow for some time and invest in right and futuristic technology. From the last quarter people in the IT circle have perceived this global threat and the intelligent people have pulled out their money and kept it as a reserve to invest in their focused area than taking chance in other areas. Today, there seems to be a turnaround in the perception of business in terms of doing business in India or catering to the global market. For last two quarters we would have met at least a dozen such people and they find it better to have a business in India than doing it from overseas market and catering to the global market. They feel Indian entrepreneurs sitting out of Singapore and Hong Kong market are more scared of the situations now than the India entrepreneurs. There are many Indian entrepreneurs who are catering to the global market from an overseas location and they have deliberately kept their India business low key - simply for the reason that it is a low cost and highly competitive market. But it is for sure that their India future is secured. Like global investors have started sucking capital from Indian market, now the time has come that the Indian entrepreneurs should do the same way and make India as their base and operate global business from this soil.
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Belkin Power Pack 4000 TODAY, KEEPING charge in the mobile phones and tablets or even any hand-held device is a great matter of concern because you need to keep yourself connected always. Keeping this in mind, Belkin’s portable charging device Belkin Power Pack is just ideal. Not only does it recharge the mobile phones but also the MP3 players, Bluetooth devices, portable gaming systems and other USB rechargeable electronics. It allows users to charge their phones/tablets on the go even when no charging points are available. This wonder device is smartly designed to facilitate convenience while charging. It is accompanied with a 6” micro USB to USB cable that allows users to use their gadgets even while they are being charged.
SPECIFICATIONS The Power Pack 4000 uses a 4000 mAh battery, can fully charge the Smartphone or rapid charge the Tablet. The Power Pack also has LED indicators that display charge status. FINAL WORDING Priced at Rs. 4799, it comes with 1 year warranty. It is a panacea for travelers. OVERALL RATING
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contents
OCT VOLUME 02 ISSUE 08
2011
ER COV RY STO
india’s first IT magazine for sme business
Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Executive Editor: Smruti Chaudhury Copy Editor: Neil D’Souza Reporter: Neeta Israni Design & Development: Gagandeep Miglani Visualizer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Senior Manager: M Raj Executive- Marketing: Rajat Kumar Circulation and Printing: Panchanan Bhoi SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/101, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 9313891660 E-mail: raj@smechannels.com Bangalore Subrat S NO.661, 10th Main, 5th cross, 4th Block, Koramangala, Behind Old Maharaja, Bangalore-560034 Phone: 9886107294 Mumbai Hemal Shah B/14, Neel Ashish 92, J.P.road, Andheri (West) Mumbai - 400058 info@smechannels.com Kolkata S Subhendu BC-286, Laxmi Apartment, Kestopur Kolkata-700101 Phone: 9674804389
Tablet to replace multiple Devices /26
EDITORIAL OFFICE
Ever since Tablet has come to the market, it has created challenge for the traditional PCs and hand phones. Even though the industry is hesitant about accepting its supremacy, various international exhibitions including CES, COMPUTEX, etc. and global industry performance report say the story clearly.
110016, Phone: 91-11-41055458
Delhi: 6/102, Kaushalya Park, New Delhiinfo@smechannels.com Bangalore 136/ 9, Ground Floor, Eden Crest Apartment, Grape Garden, Ejipura Vivek Nagar PS Bengalore-560047 news@smechannels.com
TREND CHAT Juniper Networks /36 “25 % of Our Business Comes from SMEs and is Fastest Growing Business for us”
Dell India /38 “Retail Model Ensures Buying of Dell Products Simple and Easy”
SME BIZ
Lenovo /43 Staying ahead in the SME Game will Solve The Purpose
Belkin to enter into telecom retail market
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Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas
more inside Editorial~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04 Snippets~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 08 Partner Corners ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 24
TREND SETTER Belkin /32
Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib
Case Study-Tally~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 25 Trendz Tele-mimetics~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 40 Security Corner-Kaspersky~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 42 Guest Talk~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 46 Products~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 48
New Delhi-110016
Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458 Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi 110020, India. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publisher. Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues) All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.
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SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | CONSULTING | SERVICES
for more log on to smechannels.com
End of an Epochal Era Leaving everybody bewildered, Steve Jobs leaves this mortal world at the age of 56. The creator of Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, Jobs was suffering from
pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant. Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 and, with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak,
marketed what was considered the world’s first personal computer, the Apple II. His life spanned from 1955 to 2011. The official website of Apple
says, Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor, Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple. President Barack Obama in a statement paying tribute to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, said, “Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it ,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, said, “I want to express my deepest condolences at the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary. My heart goes out to his family, everyone at Apple and everyone who has been touched by his work.” Bill Gates, says, “I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.”
Netgear Brings 10-gigabit Connectivity Smart Switch Netgear has introduced the industry’s first 10-gigabit smart switch for mid-market networks. The Netgear ProSafe 52-Port Gigabit Stackable Smart Switch is the ideal companion to the rapidly emerging class of 10-gigabit servers, delivering maximum throughput from server to switch for demanding tasks such as data replication and backup, virtualization, video on demand and high-volume transaction processing. At less than half the cost of a managed switch, the ProSafe 52-Port Gigabit Smart Switch provides 48 gigabit ports for connecting devices to the network, along with four 10G SFP+ ports for stacking or uplink to servers. As many as six switches can be stacked for a total of 288 network ports, with full redundancy for maximum reliability. The Netgear ProSafe 52-Port Gigabit Stackable Smart Switch (GS752TXS) will be available with the authorized distributors of Netgear in India at a list price of Rs. 1,19,000/-.
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SNIPPETS
Transcend Ensures Rewards this Diwali On the occasion of Diwali, Transcend is holding a special promotion program this year for their customers. From October 1 through October 31, 2011, the customers need to upload their information to receive exciting prizes. Visiting the Transcend 2011 Diwali webpage, http://in.transcend-info.com/diwali2011 and enter your name, address, serial number (S/N) and part number (P/N), then the customers will have chance to win a brand new Hunk Motorbike and other Transcend products. More than that, one could earn more prizes by sending Diwali greetings to your friends and families with Transcend’s free personalized eCards. The more products bought and eCards sent, the more chances contestants have of winning fantastic prizes from Transcend and making this year’s Diwali celebration all the more special.
Thecus Technology unveils NAS N4200 in Indian market Taiwan headquartered Thecus Technology launches Thecus NAS N4200 in the Indian market. Ideal for NAS for digital lifestyle segment in the home sector, it comes with the new Intel Atom dual-core processor D510 1.66GHz The new NAS N4200 has dual displays. The N4200 is equipped with Dual DOM technology i.e., a Disk on Module (DOM) which contains all of the system’s critical software and O/S. It uses a secondary DOM to reprogram the primary DOM in the event of a failure, and ensures maximum uptime and data availability and also has battery backup module (BBM). N4200 has unique Dual DOM Design for OS Redundancy. Available from MB Solution, the product is available in two models 12TB and TB, the N4200 is priced respectively at INR 84,900/- and INR 54,900/-.
Zipmem 10 GB Pen Drives Launched Om Nanotech has launched Zipmem 10 GB Pen Drives in India. Priced at Rs.550/-, these 10 GB USBs are manufactured in India by Om Nanotech. Atul Khosla, Director, Om Nanotech Pvt. Ltd. said, “We are extremely happy to launch this product in Indian market. With our manufacturing plants present in India, we can make modifications in our products on the basis of consumer specific demands and requirements. This innovation is based on extensive market study and research and we hope to satisfy the requirements of our valued customers. Our endeavor is to always present a bouquet of possibilities for the customer to choose from. ” The stylish Zipmem 10GB USB Drives are sophisticated and convenient tool for storing multimedia contents and also boast of impressive endurance and data retention. Om Nanotech can also customize the drives with options for Password protection, invisible partitions and other security features. The drives are High speed USB 2.0 interface compliant and backward compatible with USB 1.1.
MY POINT
GlacialTech Launches Igloo H46 & H58 Series CPU Coolers GlacialTech launches Igloo H46 & Igloo H58 CPU cooler series. The Igloo 5620 series consists of heat pipe cooler which belong to mainstream level and offers a powerful modular base for your ultimate CPU Cooling solution. It can run at incredibly low noise; thanks to its High Fin Density and its massive fin surface area. Or you can add 92 x 92 x 25 mm fan to boost the air through put and improve its cooling performance even further. Igloo 5620 is a simple name for a promising product, the unique CPU cooler series from GlacialTech. The GlacialTech engineers have created a high-performance product. They focused especially on the optimisation of the air stream conduction inside the heat sink to reach more efficient heat dissipation. The result is a combination of smart innovations that successfully reduce the thermal resistance of the Igloo 5620 - a new milestone in CPU cooler industry. The coolers offer an excellent price-performance ratio and are equipped with a durable and silent fan. Compact, high-performance CPU Cooler maximizes CPU efficiency with aggressive heat dissipation and eliminates noise with expertly engineered fan blades.
ZyXEL Partners with snom for SMEs
“EMC’s laser focus on its customers and partners, combined with its diverse and innovative range of technology portfolio offers a compelling value proposition to customers and partners in the region. “ RAJESH JANEY
PRESIDENT, EMC INDIA & SAARC
ZyXEL has tied up with snom technology to offer comprehensive end-to-end VoIP solution for small and medium-size businesses (SMB). After exhaustive testing, ZyXEL Ethernet switches and snom’s IP communication devices have been certified to interoperate for a reliable and costeffective business VoIP solution. “snom is proud to partner with ZyXEL who is very well regarded in the business networking space,” said Dr Michael Knieling, executive vice president of marketing and sales at snom technology. “ “IP based telephony is a critical business application and ZyXEL recognizes the importance of providing reliable and easy to install integrated VoIP solution,” said Alpha Chen, vice president of Enterprise Solution Business Unit for ZyXEL. “The collaboration with snom has combined the best-of-breed networking expertise and VoIP products for an integrated solution for unified communication.”
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SNIPPETS
MSI’s Special Discount this Diwali MSI is offering a special Diwali scheme for its consumers. Under this scheme, consumers buying MSI Motherboards and Graphic Cards will stand an opportunity to win attractive prizes like Digital cameras, Mobile phones, Silverware, Gaming bags & Pen drives. This scheme would be applicable from October 5 to November 30, 2011.All consumers buying MSI Motherboards and Graphic card in the offer period are liable to get some points depending on the product they buy, and on reimbursement of those points, they would be granted exciting gifts from MSI. This promotional campaign would be done through all authorized distributors and regional dealers of MSI all over India Eric Kuo –Managing Director, MSI India points out that “Considering, that our earlier festive schemes were well received by our consumers, we have initiated this new scheme. Also we wanted to make our consumers, a part of our Diwali celebrations”.
NETGENIE ROUTERS TO BE AVAILABLE FROM SUPERTRON Cyberoam has appointed Supertron Electronics as National Distributor for its newly-launched smart router - NetGenie, a first-of-its-kind offering for home and SOHO users. NetGenie is a small wireless router with family protection for homes and Unified Threat Management appliances for small offices. NetGenie - Home will offer a single-click solution for parents to implement age-wise, easy parental controls ensuring children are protected from harmful Internet content. In addition, small offices can put a complete stop to their employees spending time on non-productive sites using NetGenie’s Internet controls which allow different levels of Internet access. Supertron Electronics will push the smart router through its strong network of 27 branches and 9 satellite offices across the country. Besides, the product would be soon available at Large Format Retail (LFRs) outlets. V.K Bhandari, Chairman and MD, Supertron Electronics Limited, says “Cyberoam security solutions have a global brand pull across enterprise and SME users. I’m sure Cyberoam Net Genie will be much needed product to address the security requirement for home and SOHO segment.”
Kingston to reward Channel Partners
Genius Chooses Abacus
Kingston launches Diwali Offers for channel partners. The scheme will apply to Kingston’s extensive USB drive product line and will give partners a chance to win some fabulous prizes like an iPad and getaways to some beautiful holiday destinations – both domestic and international. Kingston is happy to kick off this special offer in keeping with the spirit of peace, love and prosperity that is synonymous with Diwali. The offer is effective starting October 1st and will continue until November 30th, 2011. Talking about the special offers, Vishal Parekh – Marketing Director for Kingston India, said, “Every year, we like to organize something special at Diwali time for our channel partners. It is our way of spreading happiness and prosperity that the season brings. I believe it is also something that encourages and motivates our partners. This time, we’re offering special holiday packages for our channel partners to create happy memories with their loved ones.”
Abacus will distribute product range from Genius in India. Expressing his view on this new partnership Umesh Modi, CEO- Abacus Peripherals Pvt. Ltd said, “We’re very glad to have Genius Products in our basket. It very well compliments our current products like ZION Memory and Biostar Motherboards. It falls in line with product expansion plans as well to include peripheral products. It’s a leading brand of computer peripherals and consumer electronics and is committed to providing consumers products of great value.”
RSA Appointed Inflow as VAD RSA, the security division of EMC has appointed Inflow Technologies as a Value Added Distributor for India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives. By partnering with Inflow, RSA benefits from a focused team of business managers, regional managers and pre-sales team. Pre-sales technical support is one of the key value added services offered by Inflow and it has its team present at key locations across SAARC. RSA will also be able to expand into new geographies where Inflow has strong presence, such as Hyderabad, Kochi, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Chandigarh. Apart from this, Inflow also has post-sales service delivery capabilities which can be leveraged by partners until they develop in-house skills. “RSA’s broad offering of market leading enterprise security solutions expands Inflow’s security product offering to the market. Because our security channels partners are tasked with helping their end customers protect corporate assets, they must have a ‘best-of-breed toolkit’ which is what RSA offers to its customers,” said Rajesh Kumar, Business Head, Inflow Technologies. “Inflow’s strong presence in India and SAARC with its well-built network and broad base of channel partners will help RSA meet these demands in a more efficient manner. We are confident that Inflow will help us expand our channel engagement model and better enable our partners to offer RSA solutions,” said Amitabh Jacob, Channel Manager, India & SAARC, RSA.
AMD Creatures Record AMD achieves the Guinness World Record for the “Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor,” by overclocking the upcoming 8-core AMD FX desktop processor. “The record-breaking processor speed that resides in the AMD FX CPU clearly demonstrates performance gains for the new AMD ‘Bulldozer’ multi-core architecture, which will provide x86 computing power for this CPU and future AMD Accelerated Processing Units,” said Chris Cloran, Corporate Vice President and general manager, Client Group at AMD. “Along with world-record frequencies, the AMD FX processor will enable an unrivaled enthusiast PC experience for the money – extreme multidisplay gaming, mega-tasking and HD content creation.”
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Projectors for Home, Office and Edcuation
PRO 8200 Full HD 1080 P 4
For Sales n General Inquiries Contact : Viewsonic India (P) Ltd., Unit No. 2,3,& 4 (GF), Tribhuvan Complex, Ishwar Nagar, Mathura Road, New Delhi-110065. Phone No. 011- 42603195-97
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Our Authorised Partner : Redington (India) Ltd. : Vinayak Shenoy Contact No.:+ 91- 9382999433. email : vinayak.as@redington.co.in Aveco Technologies Pvt.Ltd. : Kanchan Mishra Contact No.:+ 91 - 9866697601 email : kanchan@avecoindia.com
8/23/2011 12:41:06 AM
SNIPPETS
NetApp Ties-up with Sai Infosystem
LG APPOINTS SUPERTRON AS NATIONAL DISTRIBUTOR FOR NOTEBOOKS
NetApp India has collaborated with Sai InfoSystem. Through this affiliation, NetApp will enable Sai InfoSystem to provide a flexible, efficient & secure multi-tenant storage environment. Sai InfoSystem will leverage storage efficiency features like Thin Provisioning, Thin Cloning, Thin Replication, De-duplication and Compression on primary & secondary storage. Sunil Kakkad, CEO Sai InfoSystem, said, “NetApp has a very robust Service Provider program which will help us leverage NetApp’s leading technologies. In addition, access to NetApp sales and reseller community to reach out to a wider audience will help us expand our footprint.” Rajesh Awasthi, Director - Telecom & Cloud Service Provider, NetApp India said, “Storage is foundational to business success and what an organisation decides today will pave the way for future business growth. There is a major shift in the Indian business environment. Organisations are looking at scalable and flexible business models using shared IT infrastructure. CIOs are focussed on delivering IT on Demand and NetApp & Sai InfoSystem would help customers by enabling IT to be an accelerator of the business.”
LG Electronics has tied up with Supertron Electronics for its notebooks distribution across India. This partnership will successfully position LG Laptops in key Indian markets. Tailor-made to suit the diverse lifestyle of the customers, launch of the all new product line up, the 13 SKUs is a perfect blend of technology and style – from the 3D laptop to the slim bezel and design – LG offers it all. LG IT divison plans to grow 15% in revenue terms and targets 1,000 crore revenue by 2012.With Supertron’s appointment, the brand further targets to enhance its distribution network across this category of products. LG laptops are 65% slimmer and 25 % lighter than other leading laptops in the market. Keeping up the growing demand of notebooks, LG’s IT division has aimed a sharp focus on growing its presence and plans to increase its reach across India. Supertron’s strong distribution network and channel alignment has positioned Supertron as a preferred distribution partner to create a distinct channel for these new focus products of LG and push the product line forward. “We are happy about our association with Supertron, that will hep us in strengthening our distribution network across the country. Their expertise in the IT sector will surely add on in building a strong network and extend our business reach,” said Mr. Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Product Group Marketing Head, LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd “We are very optimistic about this tie up and are looking forward to strengthen our relationship with LG, The product line up is very strong and we are expecting that Consumers will definitely like the stylish design and exemplary technology of newly launched notebooks,” Said Mr V.K.Bhandari, Chairman & MD, Supertron Electronics Ltd.
EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT
WORLDWIDE PC SHIPMENTS GREW 3.2% IN Q3 OF 2011 PRELIMINARY WORLDWIDE PC UNIT SHIPMENT ESTIMATES FOR 3Q11 (THOUSANDS OF UNITS)
37,147
35,421
4.9%
HP
Lenovo Q3 2010
Dell
Acer Q3 2011
5,693
18.5% 4,802
12,613 10,676
-1.4% 10,829
12,352
25.2%
9,868
16,232
15,420
5.3%
9,687
-23.2%
Asus Growth
Others
Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablets such as the iPad. Final estimates will be subject to change. Lenovo shipments include NEC shipments, but not Medion’s shipments. Source: Gartner (October 2011)
WORLDWIDE PC SHIPMENTS TOTALED 91.8 MILLION UNITS IN THE THIRD QUARTER OF 2011, A 3.2 PERCENT INCREASE FROM THE THIRD QUARTER OF 2010. THE EMEA REGION CONTRIBUTED TO LOWER-THAN-EXPECTED GROWTH LED BY A WEAK WESTERN EUROPEAN MARKET.
HP has appointed Meg Whitman as president and chief executive officer after Léo Apotheker stepped down Douglas Murray Appointed Senior VP, APAC, Juniper Networks. He will be responsible for all aspects of Juniper’s business activities across the Asia-Pacific Greg Tomb to Head New Global On-Demand Organization at SAP. He will report to Rob Enslin, president of Global Field Operations. Karl Soule Joins Adobe as Business Development Manager. He will be responsible for working with Adobe’s growing customer base of digital video professionals. SafeNet Chooses Steve Messick as SVP of worldwide sales. Before this he has served as CSO for Fishnet Security. Srini Koppolu joins SETU Software Systems as Chairman
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SNIPPETS
DIGILITE TARGETS TO TOUCH 1 LAC MOBOS SALE IN OND Digilite has introduced a new channel incentive scheme-‘DIGILITE Karo Dil Se, 100000 Celebration’ for its channel community. The scheme covers entire range of Digital motherboards purchased from authorized channel partners. The scheme is valid from 1 October, 2011 till 31st December, 2011. Digilite is targeting to reach a whooping milestone of 1 Lac motherboards by this quarter. Under the scheme, on purchase of certain quantity of Digilite Motherboards, the partner will be entitled to win gold ranging from 1 gms to 10 gms. Rajan Sharma, AVP – Sales, Digilite said, “This year is proving to be a landmark year for Digilite. It is a great achievement for us that in such short span, we have reached great heights. Hence, to spread our happiness we have come with ‘Digilite Karo Dil Se’ scheme. The purpose of this scheme is to motivate our channel partners. This is an extension of our constant endeavour to Delight, Satisfy and encourage our partners to over-achieve their targets”.
Symantec Honored Its Partner Symantec felicitated the winners of its 2011 Asia South Region (ASR) Partner Awards at the Symantec Asia South Region Partner Engage 2011 Conference in Hong Kong. Among the awardees, Wipro receives ASR Partner Excellence Award, Accel Frontline Ltd and Futuresoft Solutions Pvt. Ltd. receive the Best Performing Partner of the Year (India) award, Ingram Micro Asia Ltd. Receives the award of the Year, etc. from India. The Awards recognize specialized channel partners that have demonstrated their ability to deliver the highest levels of services and solutions to customers during the past year and acknowledge their dedication and commitment to selling Symantec’s security, storage and systems management solutions. The award winners are selected on criteria such as overall achievement of Specializations, revenue, deal registration, technical and marketing investments, customer service excellence and certifications.
ComGuard Extends Rapport with Kaspersky ComGuard, a Dubai based leading value added distributor for IT security products and solutions in the Middle East and North Africa region has extended its distribution partnership with Kaspersky. Following the successful business relationship between ComGuard and Kaspersky in the Middle East region, ComGuard as the nationwide enterprise distributor for India will now distribute the entire range of Kaspersky Business products. “We are happy to expand our relations with Kaspersky beyond Middle East region.” says Ajay Singh Chauhan, CEO, ComGuard. “We are sure that we will be able to further consolidate our relations with Kaspersky and write a similar success story in India too.” Further, ComGuard has been authorized to distribute the entire range of Business products excluding retail and consumer products from the wide product portfolio of Kaspersky.
Adata to Improve Relationship with resellers ADATA Technology has introduced the channel reward program for its official distributors on purchases of a variety of ADATA products. After an overwhelming response for cricket vouchers scheme and the free trip scheme, ADATA launches another reward scheme to its official partners, exclusively for Ingram Micro, INSPAN Infotech, Rashi Peripherals, Savera Marketing, and Technocrat Infotech. Resellers who buy mixed of Memory Module, SSD, Pen Drives, HDD, Memory Card, Card Readers and accumule points will get rewards. This scheme is valid from October 10th to 22nd 2011 for purchases billed from Ingram Micro, Rashi Peripherals, Technocrat Infotech and INSPAN Infotech.
DIGEST ASUS FORAYS INTO RETAIL ASUS Technology is planning to open its first retail outlet in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The new outlet will feature the entire range of fully working Notebooks and Netbooks that have been launched in India. The setting up of Jaipur store is part of the company’s strategy in providing access to all the upcoming and latest technology to the customers in the Indian market including various small cities and towns.
INSPAN INTRODUCES MONITOR SCHEME FROM VIEWSONIC Valid up to 31st Dec2011 for purchases billed out from Inspan Infotech, this scheme cannot be merged or clubbed with any other scheme that may be running at that time. All standard clauses are applicable on this scheme. ViewSonic reserves the rights of execution, alternation and will entertain all the scheme claims directly from partners. “ViewSonic schemes have always been ‘a true value’ for the sales effort resellers put-in. The rewards from ViewSonic are very attractive and have always motivated the resellers that extra inch to sell the products. The resellers have always benefited from the awards they receive from ViewSonic. This scheme is a treat to the resellers this festive quarter,” said Sudhir S, Managing Director of Inspan Infotech.
BELKIN EXPANDS TO SRI LANKA Belkin India has extended its operations to Sri Lanka.To make available the trendy and stylish Belkin accessories, Belkin appointed Trident Corporation Private Limited as its distributor for Sri Lanka. Belkin’s exciting product range is already available to customers in Sri Lanka, through distributor Brown and Company PLC. These collaborations enable Belkin to deepen its foothold in the Sri Lanka market, with the resilient and widespread networks of the two companies.
SANDISK ANNOUNCES OFFER SanDisk Corporation is offering consumers the opportunity to win cameras with the purchase of SanDisk products featuring a special Diwali promotion sticker and USB flash drives by registering on www.sandisk.in. The campaign will last six weeks to help consumers capture their memorable moments during the festival of lights. SanDisk products will feature a ‘Scratch & Win’ offer that lets consumers SMS a promotion code to 54242 for a chance to win a digital camera.
LG IT PRODUCTS WILL COST MORE LG Electronics has hiked the price of its IT products owing to the rupee depreciation. The company imports majority of components used in IT products especially the panel of monitors from other countries like Korea & China. For some time, the rupee against dollar is weakening and it will impact the price to the extent of 8 to 10%. Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Product Group Head, IT, LGEIL said, “Due to continuous Rupee depreciation, it has become imperative for us to consider the price hike in India. The new prices will be applicable from 27th September, 2011 onwards. ”
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SNIPPETS
Ramco to Focus on Kerala Market Ramco Systems focuses on Kerala market to tap the shipping, logistics, manufacturing, hospitality and real-estate sectors. As per the company, Kerala has to become the 1st state with 100% broadband penetration. Villages in Kerala will have access to high-speed Internet access, making it India’s first state with broadband connectivity (defined as 256 kbps and above) in every village. This initiative is expected to boost the penetration of cloud-based offerings for businesses in Kerala. Ramco has been steadily growing its footprint in the cloud based ERP market in India with its (Ramco) OnDemand ERP. RODE is designed and developed to suit a wide spectrum of growing ERP needs, RODE also provides very powerful Analytics that helps organizations make well-informed business decisions. RODE supports the functionality required for industry verticals such as Discrete Manufacturing (Auto & Auto Component Manufacturers, Electronics & Engineering, Manufacturing Industries), Trading (Wholesale & Distribution), Services, etc.
Microsoft and Samsung Extend Partnership
SACHIN TENDULKAR BECOMES THE FACE OF KASPERSKY LAB Kaspersky Lab has appointed Sachin Tendulkar as the company’s Brand Ambassador beginning October 2011. Sachin will represent the Kaspersky brand in India and other regional markets of Kaspersky Lab around the world. Harry Cheung, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab - AsiaPacific said, “Cricket is like religion in India. The youth of this nation looks up to Sachin Tendulkar as a huge inspiration. We’re naturally excited to be associated with the cricketing maestro. Sachin Tendulkar personifies our core brand truths of Relentless Expertise, Always Ahead, Different, Optimized and Reassuring. We recognized the great synergy between our brand and Sachin Tendulkar, both being leaders and specialists in their own fields. Through this association, Kaspersky Lab aims to strengthen brand recall to meet the company’s ambitious growth plans. We believe that Kaspersky Lab will benefit from the tremendous credibility and influence of brand Sachin.”
Microsoft has signed a definitive agreement with Samsung Electronics to cross-license the patent portfolios of both companies, providing broad coverage for each company’s products. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung’s mobile phones and tablets running the Android mobile platform. In addition, the companies agreed to cooperate in the development and marketing of Windows Phone. “Microsoft and Samsung see the opportunity for dramatic growth in Windows Phone and we’re investing to make that a reality,” said Andy Lees, president, Windows Phone Division, Microsoft. “Microsoft believes in a model where all our partners can grow and profit based on our platform.” “Through the cross-licensing of our respective patent portfolios, Samsung and Microsoft can continue to bring the latest innovations to the mobile industry,” said Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, executive vice president, Samsung.
HP to Deliver Popular Notebooks NTS Launches Sub-Divisions Neoteric Technology Solutions (NTS) is launching two new Sub-Divisions Within Seven Days for Converged Technology Solutions (CTS) and Technology Enabled HP has created an Express delivery program on the most popular business notebooks for customers and partners. Under the ‘Speed’ express delivery program, SMB customers and partners enjoy the freedom to order notebooks through any HP Business partner at special prices and get the product delivered within seven days. The offer is valid across the country and delivery is guaranteed within seven days. The notebooks on offer are high-end, fast-moving and the most popular and come with a maximum warranty of three years. The offer includes the newly designed HP ProBooks and EliteBooks that embody the ‘FORGE’ design framework. ‘FORGE’ stands for ‘Form, Optimized, Richness, Green, Endurance’.
Services (TES). Having entered the solutions space in the year 2008, NTS concentrated more on the hardware solutions, thereby inculcating the concept of solution selling rather than mere box-selling to the partners. Partnerships with various enterprise brands like Alcatel Lucent, Avocent, Belkin, Everfocus, Edimax, Numeric, NEC and Microsoft helped build a considerable enterprise portfolio for neoteric. The focus was to shift away from mere hardware solutions to offering a complete gamut of services right from consulting to post-sales services. Thus was the advent of 2 new divisions CTS & TES which would provide the complete umbrella of services right from consulting and pre-sales, solution designing, training and support to the partners and end-customers.
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Authorised Distributor:- Cinesonic Audio Visual Pvt.Ltd, 10/2, DLF Industrial Area, Shivaji Marg, New Delhi-15 For Dealer Enquiry, Call Vipin Suri:- +91 8800373588; email: vipin@cavpl.com
MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC INDIA PVT. LTD, Building No. 9B,2ND Floor, Cyber City, Phase -III , Gurgaon-122002; www.mitsubishielectric.in
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SNIPPETS
Quick Heal Launches 2012 Range Quick Heal Technologies has unveiled the brand new 2012 series of its security solutions. The new release combines the best of security features and enhanced multi-layered protection. The current threat scenario with relentless advanced attacks requires protection that is a step ahead of cybercriminals. The new version of Quick Heal promises to push the envelope further with its cloud-based security services. Quick Heal 2012 brings new features to address the latest threats and powerful protection to ensure that personal information remains confidential. Cloud-based security provides comprehensive security up-to-the-last-minute. Advanced web security protects personal and financial information from stealth attacks and cybercriminals. The streamlined user interface continues to provide hassle-free user experience.
UNISTAL RELEASES BITDEFENDER 2012 PRODUCTS Unistal Systems launched the news version of Bitdefender range of Products. This latest versions of Bitdefender products will have array of additional features including Social Network Protection feature, Anti-fraud Filter, Scan Dispatcher, Autopilot feature, Virtualized Browser, etc. Social Network Protection feature will allow user to monitor privacy settings on Facebook and Twitter, and blocks any threats that links to social media networks. An Anti-fraud Filter will detect fraudulent websites that are likely to block you from fake banks, escrow and career/ employment websites. Similarly, the rescue mode will reboot your computer in a trusted environment, which is used for cleanup and restoration. Bitdefender’s Autopilot feature will make all the security-related decisions for you. Autopilot – Provides a hassle-free experience by making optimal security-related decisions without any input from the user.
McAfee to Resolve Emerging Mobile Threat McAfee has shared its vision for securing mobile devices in corporate environments. The three-pronged approach for protecting mobile devices, mobile data, and mobile applications, is designed to help businesses and consumers manage their devices securely, as the threat environment quickly evolves. Attacks on smartphones are becoming more common, and according to McAfee Labs, new malware are targeting Android devices jumped
76 per cent in the last quarter. The need to secure mobile devices from attacks has never been more important. IT security operations that were once smooth-running have recently come under intense pressure to adopt new technologies and fully support completely new platforms, operating systems, and architectures. McAfee is developing products and strategies to allow businesses to bring these consumer devices securely into the IT infrastructure.
AVG Internet Security 2012 Launched AVG Technologies has come-up with AVG Internet Security 2012, the latest edition of its market leading internet security software. Adding new protection technologies, computer performance enhancements and content download acceleration, AVG 2012 is lighter, faster and smaller than any previous AVG product. In addition to AVG’s multi-layered protection, utilizing signature-based antivirus, heuristics and behavior-based threats detection, AVG 2012 comes with the all-new AVG Accelerator and AVG Advisor features as well as additional protection technologies. AVG Internet Security 2012 also includes the integrated security firewall and AVG LinkScanner that provides users peace of mind when browsing, shopping and banking. Internet Security 2012 fully integrates with AVG’s ecosystem of security and Internet lifestyle products and applications.
Global Cybercrime Costs $114 billion annually Norton study calculates the cost of global cybercrime: $114 billion annually. Based on the value victims surveyed placed on time lost due to their cybercrime experiences, an additional $274 billion was lost. With 431 million adult victims globally in the past year and at an annual price of $388 billion globally based on financial losses and time lost, cybercrime costs the world significantly more than the global black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined ($288 billion). According to the Norton Cybercrime Report 2011 more than two thirds of online adults (69%) have been a victim of cybercrime in their lifetime. Every second 14 adults become a victim of cybercrime, resulting in more than one million cybercrime victims every day.
Axis Adds two Network Cameras Axis launches two fixed network cameras - AXIS Q1604 and AXIS Q1604-E Network Cameras. These cameras offer ideal solutions for surveillance in highly variable lighting conditions, for instance when light comes through a glass window or entrance creating both dark and bright zones. In these demanding scenarios, AXIS Q1604/-E Network Cameras allow the user to easily and clearly identify both people and objects.
Neoteric Launches UMAX Speakers UMAX launched a new series of speakers. UMAX which is recognized for its value for money products and focused approach, together with its exclusive distributor neoteric infomatique is now focusing on providing a wide range of choice to its customers. The stylish new range of speakers launched by UMAX include UMAX BOOMBASTIC USP 2000, 2800, 2801, which are entry level speakers as well as USP 4200 speakers which are mid to higher level and provide a great experience watching a film, listening to music, and even gaming with the enhanced level of sound and high end features. Commenting on the same Mr. Snehal Shah, Business Manager, neoteric also added, “Our launch of a new series of speakers is a step forward in providing the customer with a wider choice as well as great value for money products.”
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SNIPPETS
Zebronics Launches Gaming Cabinet Zebronics has unveiled its latest flagship gaming cabinetBijli2. The new stylish-design and feature-rich Bijli2 is engineered for optimum cooling of all critical components. It is the completely new and improved version of Bijli chassis with hexacone front panel. It has many new features such as USB 3.0, jet black interiors, bottom PSU mounting, multiple 120mm LED fans etc. Engineered with AirTake front panel, Delta side panel and Hexacone top panel gives the user an innovative experience. For cooling there is 120mm blue LED intake fan on front and side which provides excellent air intake. There is one 120mm blue LED fan on top for exhaust and 120mm fan on the back for proper air circulation as well as silent operation. The PSU is bottom mounted. There are tool less HDD trays to install HDDs and Space for 4x3.5” HDD drives. The transparent Delta side panel has fan and vents on the side which looks excellent as well as provides good cooling performance.
Wacom India brings Bamboo Stylus for iPad
INDIA ANTIVIRUS LAUNCHES WEB SECURE AND REMOTE SUPPORT SOFTWARE India antivirus, the developer and distributor of Net Protector AntiVirus, launches Web Secure and Remote Support software. Priced at Rs.825 for PC or laptop edition and Rs.1950 for server edition, NP Web Security, increases productivity of employees at office environment and filters good sights for the children at homes. It configures rules to block and allow websites, allows only work related sites and blocks all other sites. It offers administrator password to configure the rules and for un-installation of the software. It is very easy to install yet provides very powerful security. It offers to control which applications to be used like Web browser, chat software, email clients, etc. It blocks out unwanted uploads and downloads by viruses / worms in the background. It secures all major web browsers. Last but not the lease, the software generates complete report of which site was visited, when and with the name of the application used. Further, with NP Remote Support (NPRS) Software, you can easily view your customer’s PC or any other PC in the world, which is connected to internet. You can even control mouse and keyboard of customer’s PC, & resolve the customer issues. This is like you are present at the client’s location, solving the issues without traveling, thus saving your time, money & energy. NPRS software is inexpensive and very affordable and suits your budget. Similar products in the market are many times more expensive than NPRS. Further, the pricing is also very affordable as it costs Rs.2000 to Rs.4000 for fixed PC license and Rs.1500 to Rs.3600 for roaming license.
Wacom has unveiled its new range of coloured pens matching Apple’s iPad Smart Covers. Available in white, blue, green, orange and pink, the coloured Bamboo Styluses are a perfect match for all iPad owners seeking the must-have device for content creation. While retaining the premium design and feel of the Bamboo Stylus, users can enjoy using the iPad for note-taking, annotation, drawing, sketching and visual thinking. Bamboo coloured Styluses are priced at Rs. 1,750/- each. With the proven precision nib, which is up to 25 per cent slimmer than its competition, Wacom now also offers exchangeable nibs to suit the usage needs of iPad owners. Beside the soft standard nib, alternatives, such as more solid, robust nibs will soon be available on the market. The pen coating’s shiny, soft-touch finish exudes the premium quality which Wacom is renowned for. While simple, the appealing design continues to express the company’s unmatched heritage in pen input devices.
Logitech Strengthen its Tablet Accessories Portfolio
Microsoft Launches a new range of Hardware Products
Logitech has expanded its range of tablet accessories in India with the launch of Logitech Tablet Keyboard for Android 3.0+ in the country. Lightweight and versatile, the Logitech Tablet Keyboard is designed to travel easily, set up quickly and add a touch of convenience to all the places you use your Android tablet. Logitech Tablet Keyboard for Android 3.0+ is a combination keyboard and stand. Its protective carrying case protects against damages while you are traveling and converts into a sturdy stand for your Android tablet when you are typing. This compact keyboard combines the best of both the traditional and laptop keyboard.
Microsoft has launched a brand new portfolio of hardware offerings ranging from the LifeCam HD 3000 and Wireless Desktop 2000 to the Express Mouse designed to make your computing experience simpler, safer and much more stylish. Announcing the launch Mr. Satish Parreddi, Senior Category Manager Microsoft Hardware India said, “With an exciting array of products lined up and ready for launch, this year will be the biggest for Microsoft Hardware in India. We kicked off this year with the launch of the Arc Touch Mouse which received fantastic response from our consumers and reinforced our belief in the readiness of the Indian market for premium desktop peripherals. We are confident that the great design and utility of these three products will hold great appeal for our Indian customers.”
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PARTNER CORNER
I SALUTE TALLY’S BUSINESS ETHICS The first big opportunity to get a better handle on Tally sales came during Tally’s Param program. BE Solutions never looked back since then.
“Tally has changed not only my life, but the whole team of mine.” BHARATH JYOTHISH, DIRECTOR, B E SOLUTIONS PVT LTD.
M
r. Bharath Jyothish started his career by looking after the hydro turbines factory of his father. But that business did not last long. He then worked withAirtel for some time. Then B E Solutions, Bangalore was commenced as a training center teaching Tally in Ramamoorthy Nagar in Bangalore. Tally packages sale also begun during the same time. The first big opportunity to get a better handle on Tally sales came during Tally’s Param program. BE Solutions never looked back since then. B E Solutions has three divisions. The first is Channel management division which distributes products through the channelas a part of the MTP business. Apart from this, there is a large accounts team for large customers, and one more technical team which caters to the customers’ technical requirement. The company started with 3 people initially. Today total number of people working in B E Solutions is 62. Jyothish says “Tally is a well-known product. There are no major competitors of Tally. Only competition is among MTPs and TPs” Jyothish concentrates on the year-on-year growth. He remembers he started his office in a 10’ X 10’ office. Today his sprawling office is in two floors of about 8000 square feet in a prime location of Bangalore. The package selling has come a long way from about 25 packs to 150 packages per month and upgrading of earlier versions to the latest- of his customers is about 300 per month. The business started with channel distribution.
Slowly the company started concentrating on the large account customers. The confidence of handling large account customers was gained over the years of experience. Karnataka Milk Federation, Karnataka State Police Housing Corporation, National Rural Health Mission, PESIT College, SarvaShikshaAbhiyan (1st Stage), Raja Housing, Brigade, Prestige, Volvo, Broekman Logistics are some of the important customers of B E Solutions. A few verticals like Logistics, School and College, Petrol Bunk have been developed by the company. The present concentration is on APMC (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) and Rice mills. These two have an untapped potential market in B and C class cities. The strategy to tap these markets has started. The company is conducting many events (12-15 till date) in these cities to evince interest to purchase Tally software for effective business. Jyothish came across an interesting phenomenon during the training of MTPs conducted by Tally Solutions during the beginning of 2011. It is known as Elephant and Cheetah. These two animals use different strategies to hunt for their food. B E Solutions carries out the Tally Packages sales business in the Elephant way. Here the market needs to be probed, number of prospects have to be generated. Above all, the market awareness is required. Visibility to close the orders is also needed. Cheetah style is adopted by the large account team. Here getting the order takes a longer time. Concentrated focus is needed to close the order. The company strategizes accordingly by conducting regular interactions with both the teams.
Jyothish eagerly emphasizes, “Tally has changed not only my life, but the whole team of mine.Initially when I started this company, I did not know that I would be able to take care of so many families. There are 60 families who have faith in me. I believe in Tally. I salute the company’s business ethics, because of which I feel Tally is a successful company. Of course,I always carry great respect forTally”. As per Jyothish, “As a product, Tally stands tall for its power of simplicity. The product is very simple. I am basically from mechanical engineering background andwithout the knowledge of accounts. I am able to understand Tally. That is the success of Tally.” As far as company’s turnover is concerned, during 2004 a turnover of 50 lakhs was achieved. Last year the company saw a turnover of 6 crores. There are plans for a growth of 10-12 crore during 2011-12. B E Solutions have already started interacting with its active partners for the arrival of the most innovative Series B of Tally.ERP 9. Few workshops have been held for them on Series B. These partners are capable of promoting series B. Training of these partners has commenced. The personal benefit because of Tally is that he is able to take care of 60 families. He has high aspirations like shifting his office to a bigger establishment. Above all, Jyothish feels that a solution like Tally has changed so many people’s lives. He goes by the principle of the Principal Company – Everyone who touches Tally should be happier.
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TALLY
CASE STUDY
POLYMER LINER MANUFACTURER GETS A HANDLE ON INTELLIGENCE WITH TALLY.ERP 9
K
averi Ultra Polymers (KUP) Private Limited, Bangalore manufactures bulk material handling equipment for the infrastructure industry. It caters to cement plants, power plants, steel plants, mines, mineral beneficiation plants, ferrous & non-ferrous plants, chemical & fertilizer plants, foundry, ports, Railways, etc. KUP has its factory in Bangalore and Sales and Services offices are in Mumbai and Kolkata. In business for more than 35 years, KUP’s customers include cement Industries like ACC, Ambuja, Binani, Birla, Dalmia, Grasim, JK, Jaypee, Zuari etc., Power industries like NTPC, Reliance Power, BSES etc., coal industries like Coal India, steel Industries like Essar, SAIL, Vizag Steel etc., paper industries like ITC, JK Paper, TNPL etc., fertilisers and chemicals like FACT, Coromandel and Godavari. Consultant like TEC, MECON, NTPC etc., KUP depends on Tally.ERP 9 to sync its operations across Bangalore, Kolkata and Mumbai. Business Challenge The company was using a manual accounting system for quite some time. In 1996, they migrated to Tally 4.5, however it continued to use Excel to manage purchase orders. But Excel had its own limitations so the company decided to customise purchase transactions using the latest Tally.ERP 9. This could not be done all at once. Since the daily transactions needed to run in parallel, the company opted for a 3-phased approach. B E Solutions, Master Tally Partner in Bangalore, was commissioned to manage the transition. The solution Mr.Bharath Jyothish of B E Solutions enthuses, “It was a challenge to take up the customisation of purchase in phases
PRADEEP KUMAR GATTANI, GENERAL MANAGER (COMMERCIAL), KAVERI ULTRA POLYMERS
“Tally.ERP 9 has systematized a lot of things in our company. Reliability and accuracy of data has definitely gone up. Usage of MIS has also improved vastly.”
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 • Dependability • Reliability • Powerful business intelligence • Productivity
without hampering the company’s dayto-day operations. But with the total support of staff of Kaveri Ultra Polymers, we could complete two phases without any hiccups.” Mr. Pradeep Kumar Gattani endorses, “B E Solutions designed additional new screens for purchase and new MIS reports. Incremental implementation made it is easier for our staff to understand the nuances before using the functionality.” Out of the various new additions in the form of customisation to Tally.ERP 9 some are enumerated below. Sundry Creditors Ledger Master provision has been made to key-in the stock items which will be supplied by the supplier. Also the Terms & Conditions applicable for that particular supplier are added. Supplier Master: Supplier wise stock items details such as item grade, brand, standard weight and discount - all this information is captured at supplier master level only. In Inventory Vouchers, when the purchase order voucher is generated, after selecting the supplier, the inventory related to that particular supplier (as stored in the supplier master) will be displayed for selection instead of displaying all stock items.
Out of the many MIS Reports, pending purchase order report, based on order number-wise is shown above. Here expiry date, vendor-wise, item-wise and order number-wise reports are provided. Stock item V/s Suppliers’ report is a periodical columnar report, where all stock items will be displayed based on group-wise stock. Names of all the suppliers will be displayed with a facility to filter stock group-wise and stock Item-wise. In Stock item-wise pending purchase order report, stock item-wise pending purchase orders will be displayed. Here expiry date-wise filtration based on the period selected has been provided. Apart from the above, Report screen has been provided to show the supplier position – stock item-wise, Purchase Order Short Closure Report in Order number-wise, Label Printing. Selected Suppliers Address and phone number printing are also customised. Mr. Gattani says, “For whatever customisation done so far, the levels of accuracy and reliability have gone up. In the MIS front also we are generating some new reports. At the end of the day, once these reports are ready they help us make good business decisions. We are able to spend time in analyzing the intelligence rather than compiling the data.”
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COVER STORY
TABLET PC
TABLET TO REPLACE MULTIPLE
DEVICES Believe it or not, ever since Tablet has come to the market, it has created challenge for the traditional PCs and hand phones. BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com
A
s per Wikipedia definition a Tablet computer is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen. It often uses an onscreen virtual keyboard, a passive stylus pen, or a digital pen, rather than a physical keyboard. When it appeared for the first time in the market (Microsoft Tablet PC), the form factor was different. It was almost the size of a notebook with a swiveling monitor with a stylus to help the user to scribble. But today’s tablet is completely different - not only in terms of look and feel but also in terms of application. The original version used to be very heavy and worked as PC, where as today’s tablet is a complete converged device – you can use it as a mobile phone and can run all applications of a PC. Owning to its converged nature and small form factor, Tablets are becoming the mainstream product. People more and more are using it as a mobile phone and a device to run multimedia applications like video and photograph on the move – though its PC functionality yet to be exploited to the fullest extent. It is being posi-
tioned as a consumer product so far but it has a huge application in enterprises. But the situation where cloud computing is becoming more prevailing, Tablets seems to be more relevance for the enterprises. After Microsoft Tablet PC in 2001, it was Apple iPad launched on January 2010 which changed the perception about Tablets in the market. Thanks to Steve Jobs who created this epoch making era and trigged the way PC was being used or access to information was happening. The applications running capacity of the iPad opened the eyes of people that it can change the landscape of ICT by creating a bridge between computing, communications and applications delivery. It was not pricy either, which was why the company started garnering huge consumer endorsement. The situation became so that people waited the whole night in many of the apple stores in the US to buy iPad. The popularity spread like wild fire and consumers all across the world aspired to buy iPad. This popularity of Apple Tablet encouraged other manufacturers in the PC, Mobile Handset, Networking and Display products market to bring out their versions of Tablets. It happened so that, today, all the PC vendors including HP,
Dell, Acer, Lenovo, HCL have Tablets. Most of the handset makers including, RIM, Motorola, HTC, etc. all have tablets, networking and telephony companies like Cisco, Huawei, Reliance, Airtel have Tablet as a product category. Display and component vendors like Samsung, View Sonic, Kobian, Asus, MSI, even India manufacturer and distributor, iBall have Tablet PCs. Of course different vendors are positing Tablets complementing their entire product line. For example Cisco Cius Tablet is positioned more towards unified communication and collaboration in a secure way, Dell Streak and Apple iPad are more on the front of computing. Similarly, Motorola, Huawei, Reliance, Airtel and Samsung Tabs are more loaded and driven from the communications perspective. In fact, Tablet is being considered to be the next big thing in India? It is an indication of technology shift. With 3G and BWA all around, Tablets’ proliferation is a must because your communications - be it personal or business - all depend upon the connectivity. Particularly more and more vendors adopting Android OS, the products will be much cheaper giving common people and small enterprises access to these devices.
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TABLET PC
COVER STORY
THE COMPOUND ANNUAL GROWTH RATE (CAGR) OF TABLET IS EXPECTED TO TOUCH 167.2 MILLION UNITS IN 2015 AT A RATE OF 56%.
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COVER STORY
TABLET PC
“AVAILABILITY OF APPLICATIONS IS ALSO KEY TO THE GROWTH AND ADOPTION OF TABLETS AS IT CATERS TO BOTH ENTERPRISE AND CONSUMER SEGMENT.” SUNIL LALVANI, DIRECTOR, ENTERPRISE SALES, INDIA, RESEARCH IN MOTION (RIM)
Cyber Media Research on the Indian Media Tablet Computer says India’s sales in this category touched 1.58 lakh units in the 9-month period ending June 2011. As per the research organization, the proliferation of 3G networks and launch of BWA (4G / WiMax / LTE) services will lead to new types of data services being demanded and consumed by mobile subscribers. This trend is expected to contribute to a rise in shipments of media tablets in the India market in CY 2011 to touch 2, 75, 000 units. At that point, the total number of vendors is expected to touch 35 with 90 models on offer. An Accenture study says India accounts for second highest penetration of Tablet PCs globally. In terms of pricing, it ranges from Rs. 8,000 per unit going up to Rs. 47,000 per unit. RIM’s Playbook, Apple’s iPad2, Motorola’s Xoom and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7 are some of the notable MNC tablet brands available in the India market in the high end range. On the lowerend range, Reliance Tab, Oliv Pad, iBall Slide, View Pad, etc. are available. Going forward, CyberMedia Research expects a majority of Tablet models to launch in the volume segment at a price band between Rs. 7,000 to Rs. 15,000. Some industry pundits even have called 2011 as the year of the tablets as in the last several months, virtually every major electronics manufacturer has introduced a hopeful competitor to Apple’s iPad, and the aisles at January’s International Consumer Electronics Show were crammed with dozens of variations on the rounded rectangle. In 2010 more than 26 million tablet pc units were shipped. This year, those numbers are on pace to hit 72 million units. In other words the Tablet PC market will more than quadruple in growth and revenue in only 2 short years. It is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 56% to touch 167.2 million units in 2015. As per Angela McIntyre, research director at Gartner, during the next five to 10 years, media
tablets will instigate change in computing form factors; modular designs will enable Tablets to take on new functions, becoming the crossplatform controller and brain for hybrid consumer electronics and computers. Tablets will be substitutes for several of the consumer electronics consumers often carry with them. She goes to the extent to say that one Tablet can replace multiple dedicated electronics devices by connecting with different peripherals. Tablets docked in the dashboards of cars can replace dedicated navigation devices and in-car enter-
“ALONG WITH THE NOTEBOOK PRODUCT PORTFOLIO, THE TABLET PCS ARE ALSO A KEY PRODUCT LINE UP THAT PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN OUR BUSINESS.” SAJI KUMAR, HEAD – PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, ACER INDIA
tainment, and environmental controls. Wirelessly connect a blood pressure cuff, a bathroom scale and an oximeter to a Tablet to create a home health monitor that can plot personal health trends and send the data to a doctor. Mount a Tablet into a projector, and it becomes digital signage in a retail store or a device for streaming media via the Internet. Thus, apart from the consumer applications, it surely has a great potential for the enterprise applications. Rajan Chawla, Country Head for Sales and Operations, India and South West Asia, Mobile Devices, Motorola Mobility, says, “We are already witnessing the mobile computing device take the form of Tablets or ultra-powerful, large-screen smart phones, with ‘go-anywhere’ pocket-ability. These capabilities will get comprehensively interoperable with computing peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, HD monitor or TV, hard disk drive and network.” He adds, “The net effect will be that the mobile phone will emerge to provide true mobility experience with an even more pervasive presence in the home and office. The human aspiration of a single, companion device, takes a leap forward, as do expectations of what it will deliver.” Ranjit Yadav Country Head-Mobile and IT, Samsung Electronics (India), says, “Consumers all over the world are adopting easy to use and powerful smart mobile devices. India presents some of the best growth opportunities for smartphones and tablets, which is why it is one of the first few markets where we are launching and marketing our new, revolutionary products.” But the question is when applications becoming device agnostic why Tablet will have a greater growth rate with a background of cloud computing taking the centre stage? Sunil Lalvani, Director, Enterprise sales, India, Research In Motion (RIM) of opinion that while cloud computing would solve the increasing need for storage of information, the tablet PCs would serve as an ultra mobile device to be able to provide access to information residing on the cloud. Not only that, with tablet PCs like the BlackBerry PlayBook the access to information is not only instantaneous but also secure. They foresee the BlackBerry PlayBook as a device that would enable users to have a secured and uninterrupted cloud experience. With the growth of Tablets in the market, it obviously poses threat to the existence of the conventional PCs and mobile phones. P. Krishnakumar, Executive Director – Marketing, CSMB, Dell India, says, “In India, the demand for high end technology that meets the needs of customers is growing, with factors like greater exposure to the latest technology and a higher purchase power among the young mobile professionals and
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TABLET PC
GenY segments. Today consumers are looking at the convenience of using devices that allow for easy convergence of their digital lives with better portability, connectivity and entertainment features. This further has led to a huge convergence of user devices which enable consumers to easily connect anytime, anywhere.” Having said that he also opined that his company believes Tablets are complementary (+1) devices for enterprise, smalland medium business users and even consumers who seek an ecosystem of devices to consume personal and professional content. At present consumers are using on the Tablets for experiencing the web, viewing photos and videos and using stand alone applications from web but going forward it will have a greater role. Yadav of Samsung believes the Tab consumer is essentially someone who needs full communication network anywhere and at any time. This consumer base prefers a perfect and seamless web content experience, communicate via e-mail, voice and video call, SMS/MMS or social network with the optimized user interface, enjoys diverse range of multi-media content , surf internet and manage business while on the go, watch movies and videos even by downloading through 3G, listen to music and experience gaming. A Tablet is a must have product both from the entertainment
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“WE BELIEVE THE TABLETS WILL GET TRACTION FROM BOTH COMMERCIAL AS WELL AS CONSUMERS SEGMENTS.” UNAEZ QURAISHI, SALES AND DISTRIBUTION DIRECTOR – SYSTEM BUSINESS GROUP, ASUS (INDIA)
COVER STORY
as well as business point of view. Asus identifies tablet as an important product segment for its India operation. In the recent past they have introduced Transformer, a hybrid PC with keyboard connected with it yet the Tablet is detachable. Unaez Quraishi, Sales and Distribution Director – System Business Group, Asus (India), says, “We believe the tablets will get traction from both commercial as well as consumers segments. Information workers and their companies are seeing the clear value of tablets for work-related activities. It will not take long before a smart phone and a tablet are many more workers’ constant companions. Corporate can use the tablets for their sales team; banks can use them to approve multi-million dollar wire transfers. Medical professionals use tablets to view patients’ medical images, health records and access key medical applications. In addition, IT managers can use them to remotely manage and monitor business-critical systems from anywhere. So, the applications can be plenty.” Clearly, segments like Healthcare, Banks, Education, and Information Technology will drive the growth of Tablets. In addition, sales team from different verticals will also drive the growth. Acer has launched the ICONIA range of tablets in May 2011 that comprise different form fac-
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SME CHANNELS 29 OCTOBER 2011
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COVER STORY
TABLET PC
“TODAY CONSUMERS ARE LOOKING AT THE CONVENIENCE OF USING DEVICES THAT ALLOW FOR EASY CONVERGENCE OF THEIR DIGITAL LIVES WITH BETTER PORTABILITY, CONNECTIVITY AND ENTERTAINMENT FEATURES. P. KRISHNAKUMAR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR – MARKETING, CSMB, DELL INDIA
tors and Operating Systems – Acer was the first PC vendor to launch the touch devices on the Android Honeycomb 3.0, first Dual screen notebook and the Windows tablet. Saji Kumar, Head – Product Management, Acer India, say s, “Along with the notebook product portfolio, the tablet PCs are also a key product line up that plays a crucial role in our business. Tablet PCs and notebooks are different product categories that cater to the needs of different consumers.” Dell Steak is one of the popular Tabs in India. Krishnakumar says, “Today, devices are changing according to the needs of the consumers and tablets are the latest trend in the technology wave. There is a huge convergence of user devices which enable consumers to easily connect anytime, anywhere. Consumers are constantly on the look-out for devices which help meet their digital needs, combining entertainment with functionality. Therefore we will continue to work towards offering a host of choices to consumers so they can choose the most relevant and convenient form factor or more than one device based on their needs.” Dell has invested in awareness building campaigns for its Tablet offerings. The company offers one year Advanced Exchange Warranty that assures users of an uncompromising, marketleading service support, with an immediate replacement option if faced with any hardware issues. Kobian Pte., the Singapore based, component and bare bone manufacturer sees the Tablet business very interesting for them. Sushmita Das, Country Manager- India, Kobian Pte Ltd, says, “Tablet business shall be a major vertical in Mercury. We are investing in the R&D and QC of the product, as we believe that there are many me2 products flooding in the market but the brands
which will survive shall be the ones with consistent product quality and service support.” The company is eyeing at B, C, and D class cities for these products. Looking at this opportunity, many companies have launched products ideally priced for these customers’ segment. Richard Brown, International Marketing Vice President, CPU Platform-Sales & Marketing, VIA Technologies says, “There is a huge potential in smaller markets. All the people cannot afford pricy Tabs. They require an alternative with same capability
“A TABLET IS A MUST HAVE PRODUCT BOTH FROM THE ENTERTAINMENT AS WELL AS BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW.” RANJIT YADAV, COUNTRY HEADMOBILE AND IT, SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS (INDIA)
at a lesser price. Therefore, we have tied up with many OEM manufacturers in India to bring out better priced products.” Even some time back, iBall, the IT component distributor and manufacturer had launched a tab known as iBall slide with the Superstar Hrithik Roshan as brand ambassador. The purpose is to tap the market that is aspirant of a Tab with less affordability. When DataWind launched Aakash, the tablet at a price point of Rs.2,250 per unit, they thought education segment has a huge potential. DataWind CEO, Suneet Singh Tuli says, “This is not only a concept that applies to India, but has ignited the imagination of governments around the world. The Aakash is proudly made in India, and is destined to revolutionize computing and internet access for the world.” Recently, adapting to the market dynamics, Lenovo and HCL Info also have forayed into the Tab market. Lenovo focuses market with two models for examples IdeaPad Tablet K1 for consumers and the ThinkPad Tablet for business customers. These tablets are the company’s first mobile internet devices featuring the Android 3.1 platform. Similar, HCL Infosystems’ X1 ME Tablet tailored to suit the needs of the Indian consumers. The ME Tablet also sports a trendy user interface that enables consumers to navigate the Android device smoothly and come power packed with pre-loaded handpicked applications. It is priced at Rs. 10,490 and also enables an exclusive access to the ME App store which has over 10000 applications capturing the latest and the best android apps in the world for the X1 users. Powered by the Android OS 2.3, the light and portable ME Tablet is packed with special local applications, enabling a converged solution for mobile computing and entertainment needs with 34+ ready to use applications. Today, all the vendors are targeting the retail counters to sell Tablets but going forward, it will also be foraying into the channel market as part of the enterprise solutions. Of course companies like Cisco, Avaya are already doing so. The operating systems will be open standard. The look and feel might not remain the same. It will be more on the hybrid side where there might a docking station and keyboard. On the applications front, there will be cloud based application integrated to it so that seamlessly and securely, the user can access to the applications.
Finally… This is only the beginning. As Gartner rightly opines during the next five to 10 years …Tablets will be substitutes for several of the consumer electronics consumers often carry with you.
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TREND SETTER
BELKIN
BELKIN TO ENTER INTO
TELECOM RETAIL MARKET Considers consolidation of internal infrastructure, entering new channels, bringing new product categories and consolidation of existing product categories are four pillars of success NEETA ISRANI neeta@smechannels.com
B
elkin as a brand in India is rising in terms of recognition. That is giving them opportunity to close this year with an excess of triple digit crores of turnover. Matching the ambition, the company has laid out two-pronged strategy of expansion- reach and depth of the market. Belkin wants to expand by entering into new channels and go deep with existing partnerships. From the customers’ perspective, they want to focus on creating demand and offer more and more innovative products. In the market, there are levels of uncertainty. We are integrated with the global economy which is influenced by the economy of the US and Europe. We all know that the U.S economy is not doing well. Europe is virtually, except for two or three nations, on the verge of bankruptcy. So these global issues are surely influencing the economy of India. However, Mohit Anand, Managing DirectorIndian Sub Continent, Belkin says, “We are in an extremely good position, and for brands like us the story is different.” Internally, Belkin sees this year as a year of consolidation. Today, in India, Belkin has 7 offices, 70 people, 50 service centres, which they want to consolidate. On the other hand, they want to expand the product lines. For example, in the last 9 to 12 months, the company has launched products in the categories of structured cabling, audiovideo cables, etc. The company has also launched Conserve range. These are mostly environment friendly products. And in months to come, the company is hopeful of bringing more and more
MOHIT ANAND, MANAGING DIRECTORINDIAN SUB CONTINENT, BELKIN
“WE ARE IN AN EXTREMELY GOOD POSITION, AND FOR BRANDS LIKE US THE STORY IS DIFFERENT.” innovative products categories. The third piece of strategy that the company is pursuing is empowering the channel partners. Mohit added, “We need deeper penetration in channel because the far and wider we reach and more and more stores we enter, the better accessibility we can give to the consumers to make an impulse purchase.”
Talking about the fourth strategy, he says, “In our existing product category, we want to consolidate and enter new product categories, enter new channels and consolidate infrastructure internally. So these are our four pillars of success in next 12 months.” All the strategy in place, the company’s performance is already visible. Hardly have they been 12 months in the structure cabling business, Belkin India has already touched 3% market share. Mohit says, “One of the key things that we will definitely do is to enter into telecom retail as a focus area. Although we will have a complete product line, but to give you a perspective, we are the biggest iPhone, iPod, iPad accessory maker in the world. Today, we have a great collection in the iPhone accessory range. It will be a great story of success for us going forward.” The company has also announced new partnerships which are similar to the partnership they have with Apple which are global in nature and executed locally. Mohit adds, “We may have 1- 2 per cent penetration in those stores and that is more by default than design but now with the strategic intent whether it is aligning distribution, aligning channel, aligning our sales team, aligning our marketing activities- all of those pieces will be behind with an objective of entering into that space, just like we did for the multi brand bag stores last November.” Talking about the structure cabling products, Mohit adds, “We have launched entire range of structured cabling products. We started with our copper offering first... did not launch fibre optic then. But now, we have launched our fibre products. So, today, we have end to end solutions both fibre and copper - complete structured cabling range. It is a part of our deliberate strategy.” In fact the company had its seven-city structured cabling meets where they had showcased the entire range. In order to focus on the structure cabling business, the company has also signed up with ExeLAN, the largest structured cabling regional distributor. In the active products range, in the month of June, the company has already announced the complete new range of products.
Finally….. There are lots of things that Belkin is doing right. For example, bringing mobile power solutions for charging hand held devices on the move Being cautious about the market behaviour, Mohit does not want to take much risk. He just want to strengthen his footsteps and take one step at a time.
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ADVERTORIAL
HOW SMART THINKING BY K. R. NAIK HAS TAKEN SMARTLINK FROM ONE SUCCESS TO ANOTHER [Mankind has seen tremendous growth in the last few decades. The growth has happened mostly in terms of how we compute and analyze data and use it to build products and applications. IT Industry is driving this growth in computing, and applications and services are getting converged. All this has happened because of enhancement of networking technology. The rise of India as Global economy is credited to our home grown companies who have excelled in Information and Technology field. Mr. Naik has been contributing in growth of Indian networking for over three decades]
Very
seldom does one hear of a ‘Made in India’ technology brand that’s not only survived against MNC competition, but – so to speak – outsmarted it. Yet this is precisely what self-made entrepreneur K R Naik achieved in the fiercely competitive world of networking. In a domain that is practically owned by global players, Smartlink Network Systems Ltd became a dominant player in India. What does it takes to pull off that kind of feat? Says Naik, “The key is to understand the technology trend with market reality and understand the customer needs, expectations and deliver through a carefully selected trained set of partners. Most importantly, this as a continuous and ongoing process.”
PIONEERING DAYS Having spent a decade in early days of Mainframe Computer Peripherals component development in IBM WTC, he had an opportunity to enter and develop complicated components to maintain various types of machines due to closure of IBM in 1979 in India. He founded MOTCO ( Modern Components and Toolings Company Private Limited). The technology trend brought in Personal Computers (PC) in the market and he entered in manufacturing 8086/80286 Motherboards of early days by importing ‘Hollis’ soldering machine from USA in Mumbai. Further with introduction of Network cards in 1990 he entered in the field of Networking
PRODUCTS LINE. Sensing the high growth in Surface Mount Technology trend in PCB assemblies, he shifted to Goa, a well known tourist place and founded Smartlink Network Systems; one of the first units in electronic assembly by setting up the earliest SMT line for manufacturing Surface Mount PCBs. This led to a joint venture with D-Link Corporation of Taiwan.
GARNERING INVESTOR SUPPORT: GOING PUBLIC Due to its huge success in India and to expand Manufacturing and R&D base, in 2001 Naik launched IPO and got listed on BSE and NSE and was one of the first Networking Company to be listed in India.
ACTIVE NETWORKING As networking began to grow rapidly, more SMT lines were added at Goa in 1999 and 2001, and the Company put together a comprehensive line-up of Active Networking Products – NICs, Hubs, Modems, Routers,
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Switches, etc. – tailored for an array of applications and niche markets. He created a network of Nationwide and area-wise dealerships to achieve pan India penetration. It became a trusted name in everything from Modems to Switches, to Routers and other Networking Products in an era when there were more than 30 networking product companies worldwide, company prevailed in the SOHO and SMB segment of the market – thanks to the combination of high-quality manufacture, support, timely delivery and extensive reach, and grew to No.1 position in networking products for the SMB, SOHO and Consumer segments. To establish presence in the Enterprise segment, the company became one of the first channel distributors for CISCO in India. Subsequently after 5 years Naik entered in high-end Chassis products business from Foundry Networks of USA by co-branding. ‘Active networking’ could also describe Naik’s own style of functioning. He traveled across the country and Globe in order to bring the best in class technology and products for the Indian Market and customers. While doing so he made formidable relationships with vendors and channel partners; and they became his sensors in the field, through which he feels the market’s pulse, and spots new trends and patterns.
PASSIVE NETWORKING: THE DAWN OF DIGILINK In the early 2000, the IT industry was driven by applications which sought increasing network bandwidth needs; Passive products i.e. structured cabling had to follow suit, a trend which company was quick to spot. His interest in the field went back to his early association with AT&T, and Passive Networking products of IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation. Already having an excellent setup for Active Products, he formed a joint venture with M/s Sapphire UK of United Kingdom in 2001 and introduced a range of Passive Products in India by manufacturing. Looking at the high growth potential in passive range he started his own R&D and even got his own patented products and branded this as DIGILINK. Thus was born DIGILINK, a new brand of structured cabling products in India and neighboring countries in 2004. Within four years, DIGILINK grew to become India’s No.1 recognized brand in Passive space.
FLYING SOLO By 2007, DIGILINK (Passive Networking) made up roughly 50% of the Company’s business. Naik’s efforts had been largely responsible for the Company’s strong standing in India. However, it became clear that for the sake of business growth, a demerger was called for. This happened in late 2008 when it was decided to demerge the company by renaming the Company back to ‘Smartlink Network Systems Ltd.’ Company created significant growth in the wealth of investors by issuing free shares to all Smartlink shareholders - a truly smart job. Concurrently, a new D-Link India was founded with Active Products as trading business with none of the products manufactured in India. Smartlink had its proprietary DIGILINK brand, its nationwide coverage, and its manufacturing and R&D assets. What next? Naik felt that it was essential to make use of the knowledge pool, state of the art manufacturing infrastructure, with over two decades of exposure in Active Networking. Thus, Smartlink introduced an Active Networking product line branded as ‘DIGISOL’ to fulfill the ever increasing demand of quality networking products by the customers and channel partners.
SMART DECISION AT THE RIGHT TIME The market for Passive Products had got increasingly crowded; there were more than 10 competing brands, including at least 5 global brands which were struggling to gain market share, in spite of operating for several years in the Indian market. Company felt that going abroad and competing with global giants offered greater scope for DIGILINK brand. It was then that Schneider Electric, a well known Global giant with an existing set up in India wanted to strengthen its presence in Passive Products and was willing to enhance their product portfolio. On 31st March 2010, under Business Transfer Agreement the DIGILINK business was transferred to Schneider Electric for a consideration of Rs. 503 crores.
FUTURE! NEXT! As mentioned earlier, Active Products have been very much part of the company’s core competency right from day one. With in-depth knowledge of networking industry and well balanced resources, the company has drawn up ambitious plans for the future. It has its sophisticated manufacturing plants in Goa which is well equiped to manufacture IT products in large scale with best experience of more than two decade, a world class R&D Centre in Bangalore which can add value in future, an all India distribution network and a dedicated team of professionals, all in place. Smartlink has drawn up a road map that will focus on high potential verticals and the company will deploy significant resources to capture opportunities and make strategic investments to improve its competitiveness in the marketplace. Indeed, Smartlink is poised for growth with three distinct businesses: DIGISOL, DIGILITE and DIGICARE. DIGISOL:- The DIGISOL range of Active Networking Products offers end to end solutions with a comprehensive product portfolio spanning Ethernet Switches, Wireless and Broadband Networking, VoIP and Surveillance, etc. Though most of the products were introduced under new brand DIGISOL in the last quarter of the last financial year, in a short period of time, the brand has gained immense popularity and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT brand in India. DIGILITE:- As an Indian company for more than 3 decades of experience in manufacturing Motherboards right from the dates of 8086/80286, Smartlink has introduced a new brand for Motherboards under brand name DIGILITE. Company has a significant competitive edge with its cost effective manufacturing, its brand building expertise and strong distribution. DIGICARE:- The company has been providing service and support to its customers, partners and various brands for the last two decades, in year 2009 DIGICARE was launched as an integrated service brand. Today DIGICARE has a nationwide RMA service network with 64 service centers across the country providing Level I to Level 4 support. The centers are equipped with sophisticated tools backed by the latest technology and quality processes. DIGICARE provides strong logistics support to manage backend delivery. Its technical assistance centre offers 24x7 voice, email and chat based support to many brands of several leading companies in India as well as in the U.S.A. What’s next? SMARTLINK IS NOW WELL POISED TO FOCUS AND FURTHER ENHANCE ITS MARKET SHARE IN ITS EXISTING BUSINESSES, EACH OF WHICH IS ALL SET TO PROVIDE A ROBUST PLATFORM FOR FUTURE GROWTH.
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SME CHAT
ASHISH DHAWAN COUNTRY DIRECTOR, INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA, JUNIPER NETWORKS ENTERPRISE
“25 % OF OUR BUSINESS COMES FROM SMES AND IS FASTEST GROWING BUSINESS FOR US” Juniper is one of the large networking companies known for its solution for services providers and large enterprises but looking at the growth of SME market, company has also changed its strategy. SME Channels spoke to Ashish Dhawan, Country Director, India and South Asia, Juniper Networks Enterprise to know more about their strategy. Excerpts
How Juniper sees SME market and how are you positioned here? Today, SMEs’ concerns are actually three things - building a very decent data centre, building a very decent branch network and building a robust campus network. Juniper started with a huge focus on service providers’ market. When we started 10 years ago, all our equipments were focused on building backbones for the services providers. Now, after some time, we have been captured huge market share in the services providers’ domain. The company realises now that there is a very big market in the enterprise space including SMEs. What is the difference between making equipment for the services providers and the enterprise? The primary difference is the scale though features are the same. Our philosophy of having a single operating system across portfolio has helped us make sure that we adapt our products’ set to the enterprise domain. We had a ground up approach. We understood what the enterprise customers’ needs and adapted our scale of the products to that. So, today we have the products suitable for the SMEs as well. The features that SME products are actually the same compared to the products that are available for the larger enterprises and the
services providers. If you look at our XRS range of products (XRS100 series or XRS 200 series) that is ideally suited for SMEs gives you routing as well as UTM capabilities comes in a single box. There is no other product in the whole market which combines routing, switching and UTM in a single box. This was made keeping SMEs in mind
and the success of this product is because of our grounds up approach of actually understanding what is the SME needs. We have another series of products which is pure switching products known as EX series - so EX 2200, EX 3200 and EX 4200 are actually made keeping the SMEs in mind. This gives tremendous advantages to the SMEs
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who do not want to invest in the large amount of hardware. You can see the same features or same performance using this virtual chassis technology. In India today 25 % of our business comes from SMEs and is fastest growing business for us. Since it is most predictable part of our business, we are very bullish about our performance in SMEs. Which layer of SMEs are you targeting? Although we have products for the SOHO segment, but our focus is on the top and the middle tier of SMEs. The perception is Juniper is only into high- end market? Yes the perception is Juniper is for very high- end market but we are in the process of changing it that Juniper is also for the SMEs. We operate out of 11 cities through channel partners. Our account managers with the channel partners in these cities are very active. Therefore our growth rate for SME products including EX and XRS range of products is very high. We would be beefing-up our channel portfolio and our channel partner eco- system by launching newer programmes almost every quarter. Last quarter, we had a programme called ‘Save to Switch’ which gave us tremendous result. All
across the country, we have got about 200 regular channel partners. You do not seem to have the breadth of products? Each of the EX and XRS range has full range of products. So product wise we are absolutely Apple to Apple. If you look at the typical SMEs, instead of products they require solution, which we have. How do you engage with the channel partners? Juniper is very solution-focused company. There are three solutions the SMEs of today need. They need data centre, good branch network and robust campus network. In these three solution sets what you require is extremely good routers, security and switching. And obviously you have to position the right product for each solution making sure that all these three solutions are propagated by the channel partners in the eleven cities that we are focusing. Therefore, every quarter, we have programme for channel partners. This quarter also, we have very good programme called ‘Safe to Switch’- focus is on two words ¬– ‘safe’ and ‘switch’. It implies that it is important to switch to Juniper in the switching domain. Because it not only gives you the best switching experience but also has
great amount of security in-built. In this programme, we offer very good schemes to our channel partners. These schemes range forms value based incentives to value based and project based discounts. This is a single programme or you keep on refreshing programmes quarter after quarter? Quarter after quarter, we keep on refreshing programmes because at the end of the day, we believe that it is important to refresh the programme depending upon needs of the market. We have very good marketing team and channel marketing team to look at what’s required in the market and structured the plan accordingly for SMEs. Don’t you have any large programme? There are annual programmes obviously available in which along with our distributors we offer various promotions on the products that appeal to the SMEs. These promotions range from already based discounts to value based rebates, etc. There are master programmes also available and we run it through our three large distributors that we have in the country which include Ingram Micro, Avnet and Transition Systems. SME
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SME CHAT
SANJAY YADAV DIRECTOR SALES AND DISTRIBUTION, CSMB DELL INDIA
“RETAIL MODEL ENSURES BUYING OF DELL PRODUCTS SIMPLE AND EASY” Ever since Dell has made its presence felt in the Indian market, the company has made all possible attempts to topple the competition in the market and it has done so in a very quick time. It’s indirect go to market and retail strategy have helped the company to achieve the milestone. SME Channels spoke to Sanjay Yadav - Director Sales and Distribution, CSMB Dell India to know more about its retail focus. Excerpts. What is the state of cloud computing opportunity with SMBs? Small and medium businesses (SMBs) of all sizes are rapidly adopting virtualization and achieving significant benefits in a number of areas. In particular, with virtualization SMBs are reducing the time spent on routine IT administrative tasks, such as adding and managing new server workloads, adding new employees or developing and launching new applications; they are also becoming more responsive to business needs. What purpose Dell retail strategy solves? With increased focus on SMB and consumer segments, Dell recognized the need to offer customers an opportunity to touch and feel the product as well as for greater ground coverage in a country like India. This led to the opening up of the retail and channel in India, as in many other key markets. Our business strategy is to reach out through our hybrid National and regional Distribution model (for the consumer segment), where we have appointed dedicated regional partners to drive distribution to channel and retail. The retail segment has been a very effective medium to reach out to customers and showcase our products. The 2 tier distribution system also ensures that Dell can partner more closely with the retail channel and is quicker to respond to
customer needs. Dell also has an affiliate program wherein the agents of Dell directly interact with the end customers and sell the products. Currently our consumer products are available at about 53 Dell exclusive stores in India, large format stores like Croma and Staples and a few thousand resellers and sales affiliates spread across tier 1/ 2 and 3 towns and cities. Dell has continually expanded its retail presence in order to reach out to an increasing number of customers across India. We will continue to invest in our marketing efforts and retail infrastructure. The retail model ensures to make buying Dell products simple and easy. The availability of customized products at retail showrooms like Croma & Staples: Consumers can browse, touch, feel the products yet customize and order a Dell product to be delivered home within a week. What is your marketing strategy? Our sales representatives from both the direct and indirect business are trained to help customer identify products to meet their needs. To make things easier for consumers, we have created customized product solutions designed for the needs of specific customer segments like Families with kids, students, gamers and mobile professionals to find the system that best suits their needs. The
breadth and focus of our product line is primarily because our customers’ needs and wants are changing: The Inspiron line of notebooks and desktops is primarily targeted at families and students, while the new XPS brand answers the needs of mobile professionals and the Alienware brand is for gamers and users of extremely high performance machines. Which products come under your retail strategy? Dell’s unique distribution model, comprising of direct and indirect channels, wrapped with the service standards ensures availability of all products from the Inspirion, XPS laptops, Desktops, All in ones to our phones and Tablets. Our hybrid National and regional Distribution model, comprises of dedicated partners to drive distribution to channel and retail. The 2 tier distribution system ensures that we can partner more closely with the retail channel and are quicker to respond to customer needs. How different the strategy is within Dell go to market? At Dell we constantly listen to customer feedback and found that, to effectively reach out to a wider customer audience, the retail channel was an important avenue to ensure physical presence, penetration and visibility of the brand and the
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SME CHAT
product. The idea is to offer convenience and the touch and feel experience to Indian customers who are looking at buying Dell machines. Our business strategy is to reach out through our hybrid national and regional Distribution model (for the consumer segment), where we have appointed dedicated partners to drive distribution to channel and retail. The retail segment has been a very effective medium to reach out to customers and showcase our products. The 2 tier distribution system also ensures that Dell can partner more closely with the retail channel and is quicker to respond to customer needs. Dell also has an affiliate program wherein the agents of Dell directly interact with the end customers and sell the products. Currently our consumer products are available at about 53 Dell exclusive stores in India, large format stores like Croma and Staples and a few thousand resellers and sales affiliates spread across tier 1/ 2 and 3 towns and cities. We aim at providing our retail customers with an unmatched experience by making available to them expert advice on the right Dell products that can be customized as per their requirements. We will continue to optimize our retail reach by launching more Dell exclusive stores and ‘Shop in Shops’ in India. Dell has continually expanded its retail presence in order to reach out to an increasing number of customers across India. We will continue to invest in our marketing efforts and retail infrastructure. How do You empower partners? We believe in providing our channel community with the choice of what to buy as per consumer demand. This has been in keeping with Dell’s intentions of creating a simple and robust channel program that does away with the complexity and helps the channel partners’ progress. Furthermore we have the Sales Affiliates program – This program enables smaller partners who cannot invest heavily in inventory to sell Dell products directly. This has played an important role in enhancing the confidence we enjoy with the retail and channel community. SME
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TRENDZ
ASHEESH PANDIA BRAND MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT
TELE-MIMETICS, TELETRENDS AND FOCUS FOR INSPIRATION! On a global level too, most telecom markets remain overall pulsating with focus on higher speeds, better interactivity and customer experience. OVER THE LAST quarter I had been very fortunate to interview and discuss one-on-one with some of the ‘who’s who’ of Canadian Telecom Industry. What’s most interesting behind the success of many of these leaders and their organizations’ outstanding performance was the extremely simple but fundamentally a profound marketing wisdom. I could easily compare their thoughtpatterns with the likes of Al Ries and Jack Trout, the marketing Gurus and founders of positioning theory. Most of these interviews were remarkably insightful not only in terms of where the Canadian or Global Telecom Industry is headed to but also in that how just about any geography could relate to the other from the cause and effect perspective of micro & mega trends and eventually, in one way or the other, can possibly utilize the end takeaways towards their collaborative industrial betterment. From marketing standpoint this at first seems tough to assimilate though, let alone to be compared any further. More so, because we speak of one of the most dynamic and particularly now, evermore stirred-up industrial segments and also when the diversity is hugely evident, among widely different geographies. However, if we refer from the standpoint of ‘inspiration’, similar to a Case-study, and not simply ‘adaptation’ because that would be unfair indeed; theories suddenly start making practical sense. In a way, it’s more like cross-industrial learning, redevelopment and collaboration or rather Biognosis and ‘Biomimetics’. Some may want to research those terms in entirety to get greater insight. The biggest challenges that Canada had faced since inception were essentially the huge geography, weather conditions and the diversely growing consumer demography, for instance. As a result, the network infrastructure maintenance investments went beyond and out of proportion and hence, the anatomy of basic mar-
keting strategies today seems starkly different. And then there remain similarities too in terms of trends especially in the Social Media era. According to Mr. Gautam Nath, one of the best Canadian marketing knowledge-banks today, who I had the opportunity to meet recently, “Multi-Cultural marketing dynamics is the most sought-after horizon here in Canada at the moment” . I feel essentially the rise in Multi-Cultural Marketing shares a similar pattern to that of the ongoing ‘Rural Penetration pursuit’ in India. And yet again, considering that Canada wants the largest pipelines at the lowest cost which definitely would demand more funds, access to global capital market through more relaxed and free competition and more incumbents is desirable not much unlike how it had always been in India regardless of the competition because population and the market size is awesome. On a global level too, most telecom markets remain overall pulsating with focus on higher speeds, better interactivity and customer experience. Realistically, it is easy to understand that the Churn Management is definitely a very important issue still for the most part because acquiring a new customer is much more pricey and unpredictable than retaining the existing customer base. The latter, however, could also be equally demanding and complex but more often than not cost-effective to both the consumer and the service provider. The new generation of consumers is definitely not as loyal as it used to be in the Wireline-only era. Moreover, ‘Brand Loyalty’ itself cannot be compared at any given moment among a telecom service provider and a financial institution, in the case of the former; it could be far more casual for the consumer to be flirtatious and shop around. Another common challenge across economies is to maintain & strive to increase the dirt-cheap margins and that’s where the oppor-
tunities for telecom consulting and marketing organizations and analysts lie. Subscriber base might have been sustained or grown but the revenues seem to dip gradually. With respect to the extremely low-margins, it’s not difficult to gauge the situation when you find analysts use PriceEarnings (P/E) and Price-to-Sales (Price/Sales) Ratios as measures of valuation; for some companies have little or no profits to speak of unfortunately, especially at this time. And now, all of a sudden, inadequate Spectrum poses another big challenge in India which DoT, the telecom regulatory body, proposes to address with Refarming the 900 megahertz (MHz) spectrum when operators’ licenses come up for renewal between 2014 and 2025 by including it in the Spectrum Bill in its recommendation. Telecom providers are of course not equally fond of such a recommendation by DoT because there are reasons to believe that it would not be appropriate at this point when you have to be moving all the subscribers to a brand new network as a consequence while they are on a fully functional one, already. Let alone the obvious interruption in current service and big investments that will be needed to carry out this change in any case, at any given point in time. Still, we cannot deny the relative growth prospects that sound paradoxical after summing up all the above challenges but they are true for sure. I am going to mention the exploding Mobile Broadband Traffic below and the figures are mind-blowing. Whatever be the reason for this increase in traffic, in the end, telecom service providers have both the responsibility and the opportunity to serve the consumer well and make money. There is also no denying of the fact that there is a huge potential for the current generation of consultants in cross-economy trend-spotting as well as for telecom service providers to bootstrap
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TRENDS
themselves. Most of all, ‘to find their best identity in the value chain’ and ‘to be able to innovate lightening fast’ have been the top priorities of the best players so far and again trend-watching gives the best food for thought in terms of both innovation and the correct ‘Brand Positioning’. For the most part, Indian telecom has been doing really well relatively barring the Spectrum Refarming struggle cited above; but the option of taking a look at the external and distant trends could also guarantee significant betterment for the ‘highly innovative’ kinds. The face of telecom is changing by the hour and it is not the same simple voice domain anymore rather a more holistic and all-embracing one – with the rising Mobile Broadband Traffic, dominant Consumer Electronics and a skyrocketing Ultra-Viral Social Media. Mobile Applications market for instance is the most astonishing at this moment . Back in March of 2009, about 2,300 applications were available on the Android Market, according to T-Mobile CTO Cole Brodman. And in May, 2011 alone, during the Google I/O, Google announced that Android Market listed 200,000 applications and had already clocked 4.5 Billion installed applications. By July, the figure had crossed the 250,000 milestone. Distimo and Germany-based research2guidance forecast that the number of apps on Android
Market would surpass Apple by the third quarter of 2011, with some 425,000 apps. Similarly in terms of Consumer Electronics and Mobile Broadband Traffic, iSuppli reckons global SmartPhone shipments will double by 2015 and account for more than half of all mobile phones sold. At the same time, mobile broadband traffic volumes will see a 2600% increase in the next five years, say Nokia Siemens Networks’ own figures. The Nokia Siemens numbers are astounding — a 1000-fold mobile data traffic increase by the year 2020. To consumer, mobility is not a privilege anymore; it’s simply an ‘extension of access to information’ and telecom providers only need the ‘super value creation’ attitude besides the competent technology to win the game. Lack of mobility is rather a polite way of saying ‘denial-of-service’ in today’s competition. Take m-Commerce, for example, which has been considered as the gamechanger especially in the developing economies. Even in the developed ones, it is not yet ubiquitous maybe because of the security-related, technological and psychological challenges but once the ice is broken and it is made easily accessible, there’s no dearth of the wonders that efficiently run m-Commerce could do. So for the winners, it must not just be the ‘Next Thing’. It rather ought to be a current service provisioning mandate top
on their priority list to keep ahead of the rat-race. Coming back to the trends and patterns that Indian telecom providers can bank upon. First of all, focusing on that One Particular ‘Differentiating’ Brand Identity, that makes any brand unique – it is just too important. What we see around today is everyone doing everything, everyone selling everything but the biggest brands in the world are the ones that do ‘only their thing’ that reflects them directly and uniquely; when you talk about a particular product or service, it’s only that brand that comes to the consumer’s mind and vice-versa. Many of the top executives and telecom professionals advocate restricting the number of players to 4 to 6 and the reason behind that is both intelligent and plausible. However, from the perspective of brand management and positioning, more intellectual bandwidth should be targeted on their main focus and ‘focus’ is the key to positioning. The Narrower and Unique it is, the better for any brand. Forget about the competition for a moment, let’s first understand what we want to achieve, get clarity, prioritize our things and then jump in the warfare fully armed. This is one of the key findings you instantly get a feel of when you look at a market such as Canada’s. Each brand has an identity and a ‘unique personality’ and that’s where the learning is. And in abundance!
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SECURITY CORNER
ALTAF HALDE, HEAD - SOUTH ASIA OPERATIONS, KASPERSKY LAB.
“IT IS ALWAYS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER” Kasperksy anti-virus or internet security is very well known among the consumers. Now the company has forayed into the enterprise space where they find challenges and opportunity to grow.
I
ndian market for technology products offers a great opportunity today because of its high volt economic growth. That is precisely the reason why most of the global vendors have opened their shops here. Even they have changed their strategy to adapt to the Indian conditions. With this broad background, security is a big business in the country. Indian enterprises have shown the world that they can be globally competitive. They have started investing in technology and looked at high margin business. At the same time, they are also complying with all security audits. This has given rise to huge upsurge of security market. Kasperksy, the popular anti-virus or internet security brand for consumers, have looked at Indian enterprise market as well. Of course there are challenges for them for being late mover but still there are huge green field markets and Kasperksy has a strong pull in the consumer space. Altaf Halde, Head - South Asia Operations, Kaspersky Lab., who have been roped in purposely to take care of Kaspersky India’s enterprise business during April 2011, says, “Our financial year is from January to December and we see this arm is picking up ever since we started in India. In order to make it sustainable, we will pursue a lot of activities for next six months.” The company has finished its first round of activities including appointing four distributors (iValue, Ecaps, SEA Infotech, ComGuard) and enabling them in terms of training. Now they are spending time in meeting their partners on the
field understanding their customers’ needs. He adds, “Basically, our enablement process has been done but it is a lengthy process and we will keep on doing it. The first phase has gone off smoothly. This quarter, we have taken it to the next level where we have spoken to the tier-2 city partners and their customers.” Altaf says, “We are a little late because whenever we talked to the customers they said that Kaspersky is being used in the home environment... it is not the product to be used in the enterprises… this is a biggest challenge to negate the perception. Now we are trying to use that to our advantage. The customers who are using our products at home they are at least aware of this. We are telling them to use our products at offices as well as they will get good support from our partners.It is going in the right direction but I will surely agree with you that we are quite late in the market but ‘it is always better late than never’.” If one looks at the global statistics of Kaspersky’s business, in the matured markets, including Europe and US, the contribution of enterprise solution is arround 34-35% of the total turnover, but in the South East Asia region, the contribution is in one digit. Today, every customer in the enterprises needs a security at the end point. Therefore the company is working on the strengthening the partners’ base. The fact is that Kaspersky had enterprise products for a long time but they did not have a person to drive this business and with Altaf Halde comming on board, they have adopted a new strategy.
The company is now looking up the resellers with software solutions selling background than the boxes. On the customers’ side, the company is focusing on the SMEs than the large enterprises. The company has already bagged decently good accounts for example Financial Technologies, Alok Industries, IIM, Ahmedabad, etc. to its credential. In terms of products, Kaspersky enterprise solutions comprise four products to address client, server, e-mail and web-gateway security There are a lot of features with Kaspersky enterprise solutions . It can be integrated with Cisco NAC and they have DLP based engine as part of the end-point offering. Altaf says “The mission statement is to be number one across the board – be it consumers or enterprises by 2014. Though in realistic scenario, it is very difficult but we want to establish ourselves as a very strong player.” At Rs.1200 per license, the products are very aggressively priced and the company’s channel structure is pretty simple as on the top there are three distributors and below them are the platinum partners and under them there are several silver partners. Finally… They have already appointed 40 platinum partners and launched products in major cities . They are eyeing at aggressively on IT, ITeS and BSFI verticals this year and Govt., PSUs and Education verticals next year to drive to a respective position.
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LENOVO
SME BIZ
STAYING AHEAD IN THE SME
GAME
WILL SOLVE THE PURPOSE Lenovo is bullish about the SME market as SMEs begin to invest in IT with a vengeance to remain competitive. BY NEIL D’SOUZA info@smechannels.com
FACTS ABOUT Year of Operation in India
:
2005
Turnover in 2010-11
:
US $781.7 mn (Overall Sales revenue)
India Headquarters
:
Bangalore
Direct Presence in India
:
Yes
Key People
:
Amar babu, Managing Director - Lenovo India
Key products
:
Desktops, Notebooks, Netbooks, All-in-ones, Workstations, Softwares & Peripherals
Website
:
www.lenovo.com
T
he SME segment is becoming a hot favourite among technology vendors for a number of reasons. The segment is getting increasingly getting mature about the benefits of technology. Globalization, and the prospect of reaching a larger audience via the digital media are other factors that are driving IT adoption. Most significantly, proliferation of IT and maturity in technology itself have helped push down prices, triggering adoption. The business environment in which SMEs operate is also rapidly changing. The increased use of Internet and reliable connectivity has enabled SMEs to work with global customers and compete with large companies at a lower cost. While this presents an opportunity, it is also challenging to keep pace with larger competitors who have deeper pockets. The only way out for SMEs is to streamline operations and become more efficient. This can be achieved by investing in technology to support operations, achieve greater transparency and reduce headcount—all of which will enable the SME to focus on core competencies. Today SMEs are widely acknowledged as the growth engine in the Indian economy as the segment contributes approximately 8% of India’s GDP, 45% of India’s manufactured output and about 40% to India’s exports. The government recognizes this segment as critical to India’s growth story and have initiated several measures
to aid and abate its growth. Key amongst these initiatives are the ones related to promoting technology adoption, specifically IT adoption. Consequently, a steady shift is being witnessed in the adoption of IT by Indian SMEs as the segment increasingly understands the significance of IT as a tool to boost productivity. To achieve this, SMEs are increasingly investing in basic IT acquisitions such as desktops and laptops, making this market segment vibrant and attractive to vendors. Needless to say, most IT companies are queuing up to offer end-to-end IT solutions to SMEs and address the IT requirements from a long-term perspective. Market forecasts are upbeat, adding to vendors’ excitement. IDC forecasts the SME laptop market to grow by more than 20% annually between 2010 to 2014. SMEs are also likely to spend more than $125 billion in 2011. There are around eight million SMEs in India and of these, 1.7 million have PCs. The SME sector offers enormous opportunities and is considered an essential employmentgenerating sector in any country. The SME segment currently comprises 10% of Lenovo’s revenue has become a very key focus for Lenovo. The company aims to grow at three times the rate of the market and double its SME marketshare by 2012. Rajiv Rao, Director, SMB Segment, Lenovo India emphasizes this aspect to explain the company’s increased thrust in the SMB sector. Says Rao, “SME is certainly a high-growth seg-
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SME BIZ
LENOVO
LENOVO THINKPAD EDGE E420S Targeted towards SMEs, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420s is a premium laptop offering business-class performance, sophisticated design, superior mobility and a richer set of features. It helps the most discerning SMB users to sharpen their business edge. Equipped with Enhanced Experience 2.0, E420s is faster and more optimized for businesses, delivering faster boot-up and shutdown times, enabling SMBs to improve the productivity of their PCs. It projects elegance and style while allowing increased focus on work. The soft touch finish resists fingerprints and dirt and is extremely comfortable to touch. It is the thinnest 14” ThinkPad offering upto 7 hours of battery and powered by Intel’s 2nd generation processor. With Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading, this laptop is responsive, fast and powerful enough to keep the pace with your most aggressive young entrepeneurs. The CPU is 20 percent faster and handles multitasking with ease. Understanding the real work situation, the notebook comes with a Spill Resistant Keyboard, Active Protection System and Rescue and Recovery. The notebook is also optimized for VoIP and Video Conferencing. It offers Premium Dolby Audio output and comes with HDMI1.4 interface. Besides, with memory and storage — up to 8GB DDR3, 320GB HDD and 80GB 128GB SSD OR Hybrid 80GB (optional) — this machine can handle the most rugged work. And it is priced only Rs.55200/- onwards.
ment for Lenovo, and we have outlined a specific strategy to address multiple market segments within SMEs with our wide range of solutions. We are bullish on this segment in India. In fact, SMEs and Small office/home office (SOHOs) lie at the heart of our retail strategy and we are making a clear segregation between our consumer products and SME products. Our increased focus on the SMEs has enabled us to increase our business returns, which has led to positive growth over the last few quarters.” In line with this strategy, Lenovo has recently launched an entire range of new ThinkPad Edge Series to specifically address the needs of SME customers. The company further says it is extensively focusing on developing innovative products for SMEs in the coming months. Recent trends indicate that notebooks are increasingly available at a competitive price points, making them the preferred form factor among SMEs across in all countries. IDC projects the form factor will surpass desktops in smaller offices, with 4.7 million SMEs expected to be using notebooks by 2015. Currently, desktops and notebooks contribute to the majority of the IT spending followed by networking and servers. Server deployment is another growth area among midsize firms. This is expected to accelerate further as prices of entrylevel hardware decline, and virtualization technology become more commonplace.
Lenovo’s SME Strategy During 2011 Lenovo adopted a strategy to ‘protect and attack’ which has helped the company to
attain 10.8% market share in the overall market during the AMJ quarter of 2011, while the company’s SME marketshare grew to 5.1% from 3.8% for the same period in 2011. Lenovo is pursuing an aggressive strategy to achieve hyper growth in the SME market during 2011. This includes a multi-pronged strategy in marketing, product development, and retail and channel strategy to ensure deeper penetration. With a studied intent to expand its presence in this segment, Lenovo has outlined a clear strategy for growth. The company has not shied away from making substantial investment in key areas such as product development, brand enhancement, channel strategy, services and retail penetration in key secondary towns and cities. In fact, having achieved optimum penetration in tier 1 and 2 cities, the company is now gunning for growth in the tier 3-5 markets. This demonstrates the company’s commitment to this market segment, as this is where a bulk of the SMEs exists and thrives. At the same, Lenovo is complementing these efforts by focusing on the channel/ partnership mix right for mutual growth and sustenance for specific product lines. Lenovo is deploying a 360 degree approach to market with the objective of making a decisive impact in the high-growth SME segment. In order to cater to diverse computing needs of Indian SMEs, Lenovo has unveiled an entire range of laptops, desktops and all-in-ones, exclusively designed for the requirements of the segment. The EDGE series, part of the acclaimed ‘Think’ family, combines the reliability of the ThinkPad with features of style and entertainment that an
SME seeks. Other recently launched products include ThinkCentre Edge 91z, ThinkCentre Edge 71z, ThinkCentre Edge 71, ThinkPad Edge E420s(SSD), ThinkPad Edge E420, ThinkPad Edge E420s (HDD). Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 91z is a powerful all-in-one (AIO) desktop with a premium offering designed for emerging entrepreneurs, small businesses and students. Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71z is the company’s first mainstream all-in-one (AIO) with spectacular features for performance, productivity and space saving and Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71 is a complete package of essential software and tools enabling the user to work fast and grow faster. Both are equipped with the new Intel® Core i CPUs up to Quad-Core i7 and Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 for Windows® 7. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420s is a premium SME laptop offering business-class performance, sophisticated design, superior mobility and a richer set of features to help discerning SME users to sharpen their business edge. More significantly, the company plans to maintain visibility and commitment to the market segment by rolling out a steady stream of products on an ongoing basis for this target segment.
Channel strategy Considering that the SME segment is spread across the country, a sound channel strategy is very critical. Lenovo’s focus on channels is driven by the need to develop a core channel partner ecosystem in India, along the lines of its highly successful model in China. Lenovo considers
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LENOVO
SME BIZ
FINAL QUESTION
RAJIV RAO, DIRECTOR, SMB SEGMENT, LENOVO INDIA
HOW YOUR CHANNEL STRATEGY IS DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS? Lenovo’s go-to market strategy is designed to have product wise exclusive distributors. We will continue to strengthen our channel network to enable market expansion into key markets. To tap and optimize maximum room in the diverse SME market and move closer to its target audience at both ends of the SME spectrum, Lenovo is creating an unprecedented reach of close to 500 retail touch points over the next fiscal year, which includes over 300 retail outlets and close to 200 resellers and VARs. In line with this objective, Lenovo is instituting an SME focused partner training programs and tele-sales set-up to ensure real time support to the channel community.
channel partners as natural partners in profit, and works towards fortifying its relationships and nurturing those into long-lasting and mutually beneficial bonds. Lenovo’s channel structure has channel partners and distributors which include SME Regional Distributors (SRD), VARs (Value Added Resellers) and retail. Lenovo’s go-to market strategy has exclusive distributors according to products. The company has adopted a consistent focus on its channels to strengthen the network and enable market expansion into key markets. Lenovo is creating an unprecedented reach of close to 500 retail touch points over the next fiscal year, which includes over 300 retail outlets and close to 200 resellers and VARs. In line with this objective, Lenovo is instituting an SME-focused partner training programs and tele-sales set-up to ensure real time support to the channel community. Lenovo plans to continue its aggressive retail expansion to capitalize on the fast growing PC market in India. It currently has more than 500 exclusive retail stores and aims to expand it to 1000 by March 2012. As of now, Lenovo has
adopted the exclusive retail store approach only in India and China. Consistent with its ‘Getting closer to customers’ strategy and to achieve deeper retail penetration across India, Lenovo has increased its focus on tier 3-5 cities/ towns by launching LES Lite stores in October 2010. LES Lites are significant growth engines in Lenovo’s channel strategy to reach all consumers. LES Lite is a smaller version of Lenovo Exclusive Stores (LES), typically around 150-200 square feet in size. These stores offer a perfect blend of brand display, information, guidance, touch and feel of products in tier 3-5 cities, and will also provide customers an end-to-end brand experience. These stores bring a quality retail experience to consumers in non-metros where customers can get a touch and feel of Lenovo’s wide range of consumer products under one roof. The walkins, customer awareness and preferences have increased in the smaller towns and cities. Lenovo seeks to further this model and expand its reach further. In July this year, Lenovo achieved a milestone
by inaugurating its 400th LES Lites, which amply indicates the company’s commitment to this model. Commenting on the occasion, Amar Babu, MD, Lenovo India, said, “With PC penetration still in single digits in most parts of India, there is a huge opportunity for us to drive the industry growth in India’s hinterland. We expect a significant increase in PC purchases from consumers in tier 3-5 cities/towns and are focusing on retail penetration as a key growth driver. This 400th LES Lite is a significant milestone in our ambitious retail expansion, which is in sync with our overall retail strategy to have 1000 Lenovo exclusive outlets across India by March 2012.” Quality of service is another key thrust in Lenovo’s strategy, and it is no different for its SME strategy. The company is focused on ensuring better turnaround time and customer delight score which will ultimately result in customer satisfaction. Lenovo’s engineers are trained and certified and are completely conversant with technology, specifically with Lenovo’s own products. Lenovo has now started taking its service delivery to next level by providing more of “remote take over support” for all its customers. Lencare (Lenovo care) is a dedicated support team that manages its non technical escalations to help customers.
Ground reality Lenovo has embarked on its SME strategy in line with market demand and momentum. It has demonstrated commitment to this segment by focusing on developing its product line that caters exclusively to the needs of this segment. At the same it has focused on ensuring reach and providing after-sales services which are key elements in building a lasting impact amongst customers. Since the company already has brand recognition via its association with IBM, Lenovo is well positioned to make steady progress and attain leadership position among SME customers in India.
Finally… The global figure shows that for the first time, Lenovo has jumped to the second position in Q3 2011 Worldwide PC Shipments. Of course there are various factors responsible for it including HP’s announcement of moving away from PC business, Lenovo’s acquisition of Medion and merger of NEC’s PC division but genuinely market is like this. Secondly, in the US and Europe market, Lenovo is not a big player and as such these two markets are not doing well from over all perspective. It is Asian market which is dominating the global market in terms of sales and will remain for next five years at least and if Lenovo has come to the 2nd spot after HP, it has every chance to be the market leader in a couple of years.
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GUEST TALK
STAYING RELEVANT WITH EMERGING TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR PARTNERS?
A channel partner who is often the first point of contact for guidance on technology adoption needs to be updated on all the latest solutions available in the market.
AJAY GOEL Managing Director, India & SAARC, Symantec
BRIEF PROFILE Mr. Goel is responsible for driving the company’s business strategy development and sales operations in the Indian market. He brings over 25 years’ engineering and sales leadership experience with some of the world’s leading multinationals, including Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems and Asea Brown Boveri. At Cisco Systems Goel was the senior vice president for the Industry Business, Strategy and Operations for India and SAARC, and also led Cisco’s Industry Business Council. At Sun Microsystems he was country director for India Business Operations. Mr. Goel holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering, and is an alumnus of Stanford Graduate School of Business.
TECHNOLOGY DRIVES business today. The pace at which emerging technologies are vying for the attention of organizations is very dynamic. Advanced technology is no longer exclusive to large enterprises alone and is now within reach of small and medium businesses as well. In this context, a channel partner who is often the first point of contact for guidance on technology adoption needs to be updated on all the latest solutions available in the market. They are expected to be aware, updated and tuned into market trends to be competitive, as well as to be trusted advisors to customers. Emerging trends like virtualization, cloud etc. is continuously attracting customer attention, making them turn to their channel partner for information. They also expect them to be aware of what will suit their particular need and how to go about implementing the same. It is now imperative for channel partners to consider increasing their knowledge and awareness as its directly related to new business opportunities and better customer satisfaction. According to the Symantec 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey, about 57 per cent Indian firms have adopted server virtualization as against 45 per cent globally, while one-third of the 200 Indian firms surveyed, are discussing or are at a planning stage for private and hybrid cloud deployments. Thus, as awareness about these technologies increase, their viability and cost effectiveness will be crucial factors contributing to their adoption. The growing awareness however does not answer the doubts and suspicions they will have prior to adopting the technologies. Customers who are considering adopting cloud and virtualization require expert advice on its deployment and will look up to partners for technical advice and support. Enterprises are also now looking at social media platforms for business networking purposes as they increasingly recognize its huge potential and virtually cost free usage. According to the findings of Symantec’s Enterprise Security Survey, 2010, official use of consumer technology such as social networking,
instant messaging and blogs has become prevalent in Indian enterprises. However, enterprises are not adequately protected. The study reveals that 82 percent of Indian enterprises use Facebook, while 54 percent officially use web-based consumer email and 62 percent use blogs. Additionally, 46 percent of Indian enterprises use micro blogging tools, 69 percent use Google Talk and 61 percent use Yahoo Messenger. The widespread usage of these platforms serves as an attraction to cyber criminals who are always on the lookout to exploit any vulnerability they find in user’s networks. This means there is a need to protect and archive all this information for future reference. Relevant data protection technologies like archiving and eDiscovery become relevant here. In this scenario, as enterprises seek information and clarity on these emerging technology trends, the channel partner needs to be equipped, and trained to be an expert. In case, the customers do not get the answers they are looking for, they will consider shifting loyalties to someone who can help them. Partners play a very important role throughout the sales cycle of acquisition, installation, setup, maintenance & also customization where necessary. Thus, it’s very important that they are updated on new technology trends so, when their customers approach them with their specific and unique needs, they are in a position to address them adequately. In terms of increasing their business potential, with newer technologies being adopted, they will have additional business avenues. Channel partners are responsible for ensuring that there is trust between the vendors and the end customer. They also need to be a role model towards building bridges in making the customer familiar with the latest technology solutions being provided by the vendors. Specializing in new technologies will help them stay relevant to the market demands. This goes a long way in building customer relationships, as well as increasing business opportunity.
46 SME CHANNELS OCTOBER 2011
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PRODUCT
REVIEW
IOMEGA USB 3.0 PRESTIGE DESKTOP HARD DRIVE 1TB
DIGISOL 24 PORT GIGA ETHERNET WEB MANAGED SWITCH BY MANAS RANJAN info@smechannels.com
DIGISOL DG-GS1526 is a web smart Gigabit Ethernet switch featuring 24 gigabit Ethernet ports with 2 Gigabit Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) slots. The SFP ports add the flexibility of fiber uplink to the switch. DG-GS1526 enables networks of all sizes to introduce Gigabit Ethernet with management features targeted to meet the needs of the SMB network. It provides a flexible web based management interface that simplifies the configuration of switch features such as port settings, security, QoS, link aggregation and VLANs. It’s a great entry level managed switch with 52Gbps switching capacity. Wire-speed switching performance helps to take full advantage of existing high-performance on PCs and laptops by significantly improving the responsiveness of applications and file transfer times. These features can increase throughput and flexibility. In order to meet next generation security requirements, DG-GS1526 comes with added security features.
FEATURES n Enhanced Security n Comprehensive QoS n Continuous Availability n Simplified Management n Performance and Scalability
PRICE Rs.14,999+taxes
WARRANTY Lifetime
CONTACT Toll free number- 1800-209-3444 and email- helpdesk@digisol.com
OVERALL RATING
IOMEGA USB 3.0 Prestige Desktop Hard Drive 1TB is a real fast external drive with affordable value proposition. Priced lesser than most of other brands in the same capacity, the drive comes in black aluminum finish. You can carry it to home or keep it at office as it is very safe with AES 256-bit hardware encryption. Owning to the growth of digicams with ever increasing image sizes, you tend to take photographs at each and every occasion and you save all these photographs in your PCs. Now with Prestige external HDD, you need not have to worry about storage of these photographs. Secondly, all your music and videos can be saved in this drive. Even it can be used for taking regular back up of your PC. Because of USB3.0 interface, you can get great speed of up to 5 Gbit/s. It comes with an attractive glossy black retail package. Once you connect the drive to your PC, you get pop up messages where you are asked to install driver and save files directly in the device. The advantage of installing the driver is that you need not have to store files manually. The software takes care of storing files in organized manner. As given on the packing, it is useful for both PC and Mac. It comes with iomega protection suite, which you need to download to get service of Trend Micro Internet Security for 1 year subscription, Iomega QuikProtect and MozyHome Online Backup service (2GB free). If you are travelling abroad, you can also carry this drive as it comes with the international power adapter kit. n Price: Rs. 4,000 (1TB), Warranty: 3 years of limited Contact: Iomega Corporation. Phone: 18001802237, Email: indiasales@iomega.com
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PRODUCT
NEW ARRIVALS
D LINK
DGS-6604 XSTACK CHASSIS SWITCH
VIEWSONIC PRO8400 is an advanced high brightness and HD DLP multimedia projector which includes BrilliantColor technology to produce more vibrant colours. The Pro8400 delivers 4000 lumens with a 1920x1080 (1080p) superb image resolution, allowing it to shine in virtually any lighting situation. The Pro8400 provides maximum mounting flexibility with a wide 1.5X optical zoom adjustment and a multitude of connectivity options including Network Display, USB, and WiFi. The filter-less design and long life lamp provide for easy maintenance and low total cost of ownership. Pro 8400 come with a dual HDMI, component, and S-video inputs for advanced connectivity. With its Wi Fi facility, present up to 8 projectors at the same time or allow up to 4 presenters to connect to a single projector over wireless or RJ45 network. Towards ViewSonic’s commitment for Greener eco system, the Pro 8400 Use the Eco-mode to achieve lower power consumption, reduce overall noise and extend lamp life. Filter less design saves costs and maintenance.
D LINK DGS-6604 xStack chassis switch delivers superior performance, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) aggregation, and Power Over Ethernet (PoE) support with the flexibility of D Link’s standards based architectures. This new cost effective switch enables businesses to future proof their networks with field proven IPv6 capabilities, high availability for mission critical applications, enhanced security, and simplified management. D-Link DGS 6604 goes beyond IPv6 certification. Beyond passing the IPv6 Ready Logo Phase II test criteria – which expands the “core IPv6 protocols” test coverage to approximately 450 tests including new test categories, and verification of optimum compliance – D Link already has multiple customers running production IPv6 networks. D Link IPv6 support includes IPv6 Tunnel, ICMPv6, IPv6 Neighbor Discovery, DHCPv6, RIPng, and OSPFv3. Further, The switch is ideal for environments that require high availability of network applications. Its flexible modular architecture enables simple, cost effective future expansion based on a high speed switch fabric with capacity of up to 576 Gbps and system performance of up to 428 Mpps.
n Price: Rs. 1,25,000/- in India, Warranty: 2 years, , Lamp Warranty: 1 year, Contact: ViewSonic Technologies India, Deepak Deveshwar Phone: 09654996312, Email: deepak.deveshwar@in.viewsonic.com
n Price: On request, Warranty: 1 year, Contact: Divya Shetty, D- Link (India), Phone: +91-9004672817, +91-2229215765, Email: divya.shetty@dlink.co.in
VIEWSONIC
VIEWSONIC PRO 8400
QNAP
QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP is a 12-bay model Turbo NAS line of SMB and datacenter storage unit. It offers 36TB storage capacity and utilizes both 2.5” SSDs or 3.5” hard drives using 6GB/s SATA. Powered by Quad-core Intel Xeon CPU, it features multiple Gigabit Ethernet interfaces that are upgradable to 10Gb Ethernet and support RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 5 + hot spare, 10 + hot spare, JBOD, and a universal hot spare mode that allows a hot spare to be used to rebuild any defined RAID volume on the unit. Ideal for high-end SMB and data center environments it supports both IP-SAN (iSCSI) and NAS implementations. Compliant with VMware, Citrix XenServer and Windows Hyper-V, it operates in virtualization environment and its 4GB ECC RAM further enhances system reliability. Further, in terms of back up and file sharing, it supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX operating systems in private cloud storage, and HPC applications such as high definition video editing, etc. n Price: Price: on request, Warranty: 3 year warranty, Contact: Acro Engineering Company/ Arihant Info Solutions, Phone: +91-1140525645/ +91-22-2382 2424
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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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