ChannelWorld-February 2010 by Sreekanth Sastry

volume 3 issue 14 february 01

Know Your Customer: selling solutions is all about identifying issues & finding ways of addressing them Page 37

2010

ChannelWorld Strategic inSightS for Solution providerS | Cover PriCe rs.50

The Datacenter

Opportunity

Inside SpotLight open source: going mainstream Page 41

The Grill we offer a better portfolio to customers Page 19

Opinion

Linux desktop turns 10; world yawns Page 15 Is microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sharePoint at risk? Page 22 Intel eyes more important threats Page 34

Fast Track successful firms' unique growth strategies

With the Indian market set to double over the next 5 years, a look at what is fueling this growth Page 24

Page 12

Page 18

Page 36

Page 55

WWW.ChannelWorld.in

n Editor’s NotE

TM Arun Kumar Attrition, Competition & A reviving Economy

and hence on margins and profits. Obviously that’s not good. But, simultaneously, this will also mean breaking into new accounts (definitely good) or denying entry into an existing account to a competitor (schaden freude). the success for any organization in the coming years will greatly depend on how it is able to handle these twin (and perhaps more) effects of the resurgent economy. But how does one handle these? Not only are these as dif different as chalk and cheese, they also have a cause and effect relationship. One of the time-tested ways of handling attri-

tion is increments, which has an inverse correlation with attrition – better the increment, lower the attrition. But, it also has a direct correlation with margins and profitability. As increments push up the direct cost of a company, it will have to tweak (invariably increase) its pricing to sustain the margin. however, increasing competition will not allow that to happen, implying the firm will have to sacrifice on its margins to retain an existing client or acquire a new one, which in turn will adversely af affect its profitability. so, you counter one impact successfully only to falter at the other. But, is there a way one can counter attrition without having a negative impact on competitiveness and prof profitability? the answer is yes, but it will be a difficult path to tread on. One will have to make a difficult choice of deciding which employees to hold on to and at what cost. Finding the right balance between the two will be the key to successfully riding the next wave of growth. n

Starting this issue, we bring a new feature that is a guide within itself, dedicated to one subject entirely. The spotlight this issue falls on Open Source starting with its acceptance in the mainstream organizations. It also looks at the hype surrounding cloud computing and turning attention away from Open Source alongside a case study on how Open Source helped ING Life grow and an opinion peice on the viability of Open Source ERP.

tM M Arun Kumar is Executive Editor of ChannelWorld. Contact him at arun_k@ idgindia.com

s the economy perks up and business begins to

look better, the good and the not so good (sometimes referred to as bad) things will come hand in hand. the good things are easy to contemplate and understand. these will typically include more contracts and projects leading to better margins and profits (hopefully). this will also perhaps be the right time to consider expansion of business– be it geographical diversification or forging new partnerships, to add to the existing products and services portfolio. And the people movement among vendor companies, which in the past few months has picked up momentum, may just aid such an initiative, as old relationships can be carried forward. however, while planning for the good things, it will be good if one were to give adequate thought to the not so good things that the reviving economy will also bring along. these will mainly come in the form of increased competition and attrition. And these are ‘not so good‘, instead of plain

bad, because it depends on which side of the fence one is sitting on. take attrition for int stance. every person who is leaving an organization is joining another one and most often a competitor (non-compete clauses notwithstanding). For the firm which has lost the person, the needle points to bad. On the other hand, for the company that this person joins, it indicates good news and is classified as talent acquisition. If anyone has doubts on attrition making a comeback, just wait till April! similarly, with increasing competition, there will be a pressure on pricing

Editor’s pick SPOtlight: OPen SOurce

Page 41

FeBruAry 01, 2010

Editor’s Note.indd 1

iNdiAN ChANNElworld

1/23/2010 3:38:13 PM

For Breaking News, Go to Channelworld.in

Inside Channelworld n fEBRUARY 01, 2010

■ trendLines

■ Fast Track

06 Java’s Future Under Oracle’s Grip | Would the Java

12 Dr Ajay Mian, Founder and

community thrive as well under Oracle’s control as it did under Sun Microsystems’? Vendors of Java products seem split. 08 Chip Makers See Stronger DRAM Prices in 2010 | Nanya

Technology reported its first net profit in three years as DRAM prices rose and demand remained strong in the fourth quarter of last year 08 IBM Mainframe Woes

Continue With Q4 Drop | IBM’s mainframe division finished a disappointing 2009 with a 27 percent Q4 revenue decline, but Big Blue is hoping the next generation of its mainframe will boost sales in 2010 11 Modest Growth in IT Spend in 2010 | Gartner has revised its

CEO of All e Technologies says his firm provides solutions for the ‘extended enterprise’ 18 Jaideep Chakrabarti, Director, Future Netwings, believes that training and upgrading are inevitable investments for business 36 Sudheer Nair, Founder,

eresource Infotech, works on the dictum that customer satisfaction is the key to stay put in business 55 Capt. Ashok B. Shiroor, MD, Mikroz InfoSecurity, says the company’s clients trust it to understand their needs

■ case study 52 Sizing IT Up

An initially small task at Kale Consultants saw MIEL e-Security

outlook for worldwide IT spending this year, predicting the industry will see 4.6 percent growth to $3.4 trillion, up from its previous prediction of 3.3 percent growth

■ The Grill 19 Harnish Patel, Global Vice

President, McAfee Inc talks about the comapany’s plans on the UTM front

overcome challenges and execute a more complex project

■ Feature 37 Know Your Customer

Selling solutions is all about identifying customers’ issues and finding appropriate ways of addressing them

24 ■ Feature

24 The Datacenter Opportunity COVER STORY: With the datacenter market in India set to double over the next 5 years, the rising stress on physical infrastructure and growth is fueling the industry forward

41 Going Mainstream

SPOTLIGHT: Once an outsider, is Open Source set to be king in 2010? Also inside, a case study on how Open Source helped ING Life grow

■ opinion

19 TOC.indd 2

01 Editorial: TM Arun Kumar on the postives and negatives of the reviving economy and how correctly addressing the negatives is vital for organizations

1/23/2010 3:40:25 PM

For Breaking News, Go to Channelworld.in

Inside

indian Channelworld n FEBRUary 01, 2010

ChannelWorld

VP Sales Sudhir Argula

Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India

Sr. Manager Client Marketing Rohan Chandhok

Channelworld.in 15 Steven Vaughan-Nichols: A lack of

marketing and infighting among the opensource faithful have hurt Linux desktop adoption 22 Preston Gralla: An IDC report has found

that 54.2 percent of companies using SharePoint team sites, find managing content on the sites a tremendous challenge 34 Jack Gold: Intel cannot afford to let AMD

go out of business. It needs the competition— to stay “paranoid” enough to make industry-leading chips 40 Bart Perkins: Business cases help clarify

and quantify project requirements and contingency plans, which enhance the chances that the project will be a success

AGM Brands Siddharth Singh Asst. Manager Client Marketing Sukanya Saikia

n MANAGEMENT

Publisher Louis D’Mello

Asst. Manager Brands Disha Gaur

n EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief Vijay Ramachandran Executive Editor TM Arun Kumar Assistant Editor Yogesh Gupta Features Editor Diya Koshy Senior Correspondent Radhika Nallayam Correspondents Sneha Kupekar, Snigdha Karjatkar, Tasneem Balapurwala n CUSTOM

PUBLISHING

Associate Editor Arakali A. Harichandan Copy Editor Kavita Madhusudhan Correspondent Deepti Balani n DESIGN

& PRODUCTION

14 With enterprise security getting hot, leading vendors McAfee and Symantec are clamoring for a slice of the pie

Lead Designers Suresh Nair, Vinoj K.N, Jithesh C.C Senior Designers Unnikrishnan A.V, Jinan K.V, Sani Mani Photography Srivatsa Shandilya Production Manager TK Karunakaran Dy. Production Manager TK Jayadeep

16 Maarten Koster, President & General

n Events

■ face off

■ On Record

Manager, Novell Asia Pacific talks about the company’s aggressive approach in India

■ Leadership Secrets

56 Manu Parpia, the Founder and Vice Chairman of Geometric is a stalwart who has stood

& AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Vice President Rupesh Sreedharan Senior Manager Chetan Acharya Managers Ajay Adhikari, Pooja Chhabra Manager Projects Sachin Arora n MARKETING

(NATIONAL)

GM Sales Parul Singh

AND SALES

President Sudhir Kamath VP Client Marketing Alok Anand

Associate Marketing Dinesh P Ad Sales Co-Ordinators Hema Saravanan, Nadira Hyder n REGIONAL

SALES

Bangalore Ajay S. Chakravarthy, Kumarjeet Bhattacharjee, Manoj D Delhi Aveek Bhose, Mohit Dhingra, Prachi Gupta, Punit Mishra, Rajesh Kumar Sharma Mumbai Dipti Mahendra Modi, Hafeez Shaikh, Pooja Nayak, Rajesh Punjabi n Finance

& Admin

Financial Controller Sivaramakrishnan T.P Deputy Manager Accounts Sasi Kumar V n SALES

contacts

Bangalore IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore 560 027, India. Tel: 080-30530300. Fax: 080-30586065 Delhi IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. 410, Modi Tower 98, Nehru Place, New Delhi 110019. Tel: 011-41674230 Fax: 011-41674233 Mumbai IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. 201, Madhava, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai 400051. Tel: 022-30685000. Fax: 022-30685023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company. Printed and Published by Louis D’Mello on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. Editor: Louis D’Mello, Printed At Manipal Press Ltd, Press Corner, Manipal-576104, Karnataka, India.

Advertisers’ Index

56 humble through the years and believes in the mantra — when treading the journey of life, you should follow your heart.

Amercian Power Conversion (I) Pvt Ltd . . . . . . . . BC

Interface Connectronics Private Limited . . . . . . . . 29

Bharti Airtel Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Lenovo India Pvt Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Dell India Pvt Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC

NEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

D-Link (India) Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC

Netgear Technologies India Pvt Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Epson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Quick Heal Technologies Pvt. Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

HCL Infinet Limited (Toshiba) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Ramco Syustems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

HP Procurve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Sify Technologies Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

India Antivirus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

VM ware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Intel Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions.

Cover Illustration by Unnikrishnan A.V

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Trend f i n d m o r e a r t i c l e s at Ch a nnelworld.in

What’s within PAGE 08: Chip Makers See Stronger DRAM Prices in 2010 PAGE 08: IBM Mainframe Woes Continue With Big Q4 Drop PAGE 10: Sunil Sapra, Country Manager- India &SAARC, Astaro Talks About Channel Strategy and India Plans PAGE 11: Modest Growth in IT Spend Expected in 2010: Gartner

software

Java’s Future Under Oracle’s Tight Grip

ould the Java community thrive as well under Oracle’s control as it did under Sun Microsystems’? Vendors of Java products seem split about the question. Mark Little, Red Hat’s chief technologist for middleware and a member of the Java Community Process (JCP) executive committee, raised the concern in an interview recently that, Oracle may handle its stewardship of the Java programming language differently from the way Sun handled it. 6

Because Oracle tends to be focused on monetizing its technology than Sun has been, it could try to maintain tighter control over Java, Little warned. By controlling the language and supporting standards, Sun allowed an ecosystem of Java vendors to thrive. If Oracle were to apply tighter control over Java it might be beneficial to Oracle, but could limit the Java middleware industry. Offering a more sanguine perspective is Rod Johnson, general manager of VMware’s SpringSource division, which offers pro-

duction-ready versions of the spring development framework and Tomcat application server, among others. In either case, Java has become another entry in a growing list of Sun-sponsored technologies, which also numbers OpenOffice and MySQL, whose fate remain uncertain under Oracle rule. An Oracle spokesman declined to comment on Oracle’s plan for the language. In an FAQ that describes ramifications of the deal for Sun customers, Oracle said, “We plan to not only broaden and accelerate our own investment in the Java platform, but also plan to increase the commitment to the community that helps make Java an ubiquitous, innovative platform.” However, Oracle has a thriving Java middleware business, bolstered by its 2008 acquisition of BEA. Red Hat offers a competing application server and software, called the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. “Oracle has a pretty good track record of making a business out of what it acquires,” Little said. He speculated that Oracle could make it onerous for Java middleware competitors, by charging for the use of specifications, or by rejecting that a product is Java-compliant. — Joab Jackson IDG News Service

semiconductor

AMD Back in Green in Q4 2009 Advanced Micro Devices reached profitability for the first time in three years during Q4 2009, benefiting from a legal settlement with Intel and a change in its business model, the company said. Revenue was driven by a

healthy holiday sales period for PCs using its chips and demand for its Radeon graphics cards, AMD said. The $1.25 billion that Intel paid AMD in November to settle a lawsuit also helped. AMD had accused Intel of offering rebates that kept AMD from making deals with PC makers. AMD suffered three years of losses as it failed to launch chips as scheduled and due to lower chip sales during the recession. -IDG News Service

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semiconductor

I l l u s t r at i o n b y U n n i k r i s h n a n A . V

Chip Makers See Stronger DRAM Prices in 2010

aiwan’s biggest

DRAM maker, Nanya Technology reported its first net profit in three years as DRAM prices rose and demand remained strong in the fourth quarter of last year. But the company’s fortunes came at a cost for anyone buying a new PC. The price of mainstream DRAM chips posted a strong rebound last year after hitting multi-year lows, rising 266 percent, according to investment bank Credit Suisse.

DRAM costs are often passed on to consumers and this could become a factor in PC prices this year. Market researchers forecast that DRAM prices will remain stable in the first half of this year and rise in the second half due to a strong PC market. Most DRAM chips go into PCs. The last time Nanya reported a net profit was in Q1 2007. The company’s last profitable quarter was also the last for other DRAM makers as prices plunged in 2007 due to

hardware

IBM Mainframe Woes Continue With Big Q4 Drop

IBM’s mainframe division finished a disappointing 2009 with a 27 percent Q4 revenue decline, but Big Blue is hoping the next generation of its mainframe will boost sales in 2010. The Q4 results of its System z mainframe followed declines of 26 percent in Q3, 39 percent in Q2 and 19 percent in Q1. 8

The mainframe suffered the biggest decline within the company’s systems and technology group, which reported Q4 revenues of $5.2 billion. The systems and technology group also includes storage, x86 servers and Power servers. The System z revenue decline “is consistent with what

over-investment in new factories when loans were easy to get. Companies in the industry paid the price with a two-year DRAM glut that sent chip prices down. Over the same time, PC buyers have become used to getting more for their money with DRAM, a trend likely to slow this year. This year, demand for mainstream DRAM chip, DDR3, is keeping prices up, as is demand for new PCs, said Pai Pei-Lin, Vice President, Nanya Technology. Germany’s Qimonda AG filed for bankruptcy last year and other companies were also forced to mothball some production lines. Market researchers expect that a strong demand for desktops and laptops will spur DRAM prices in the second half of this year, according to DRAMeXchange Technology. DRAMeXchange predicts prices for DDR3 and older DDR2 could pull back 10 or 20 percent in the first quarter, which is normally a slow season for PC demand, and remain subdued in the second quarter. After that, prices will increase. — Dan Nystedt IDG News Service

you would expect at this point in the product cycle,” IBM CFO Mark Loughridge said. IBM unveiled the System z10 mainframe two years ago, leading to a 12.5 percent increase in revenue in 2008. The initial boost in sales caused by a mainframe upgrade is typically followed by a decline, but the revenue drops in 2009 were larger than the gains in 2008. “Later this year we are releasing the next generation of System z,” Loughridge said. IBM has tried to shore up the

Short Takes  Sybase has aligned with

Inflow Technologies as their distributor. “Inflow Technologies is more of a VAD with dedicated teams and a robust roadmap for each product line; than a box pusher distributor. And as Sybase operates in the niche software domain, it needs such an alliance to penetrate deeper and wider across enterprise accounts,” informs Sunil Jose, Managing Director – India Sub – Continent Region, Sybase.  Array Networks has appointed Redington as its national VAD. R Sasikanth, Strategic Business Unit Head - Enterprise SBU, Redington India said “We are delighted to join hands with Array Networks in its mission to provide ‘best of breed’ security solutions in Application Delivery and Remote Access”.  Netgear has announced three wireless network controllers that take some network management features of enterprise products into the SMB market, like centralized configuration and load-balancing, for networks ranging from five to 1,500 users.

mainframe business with special pricing, including on Linux bundles. But shipments as measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second) have declined for three consecutive quarters, including a 19 percent drop in Q4. Gartner analyst Mike Chuba has said that if sales continue to suffer this year as well, IBM may be forced to speed up the release of its newest mainframe to make amends. — Jon Brodkin Network World

Indian Channelworld february 01, 2010

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n trendlines Q&a

Sunil Sapra Country Manager Manager-India & SAARC, Astaro talks about channel strategy astaro is pitted against a dozen plus UtM vendors in the security landscape. Comment the utM market growing at a reasonable rate in India means a large pie share for network security vendors like us. headquartered at uSA and germany, Astaro is positioned as a premium brand for the mid market, a segment between the higher end of SMB and lower end of enterprises. there are not many players in this segment, who offer a ‘feature rich’ product portfolio, which is the uSP of Astaro. what are your key offerings for the indian market? Whether as hardware, software or as a virtual appliance, all deployment methods of Astaro feature the same functionality, have an identical user interface and can be deployed in multiple configurations. Appliance based is the most ‘popular and practical’ amongst enterprises. there are six utM models in the ‘ASg’ series - 120, 220, 320, 425, 525 and 625, which support environments of 10 to 5000 users. the ease of configuration is ideal for organizations with a ‘distributed offices’ network. Astaro’s unique approach includes the integration of ten diverse security applications in a single appliance. the Astaro portfolio is rounded off by powerful management and 10

reporting facilities, which also support the managed services model. highlight partner initiatives to ensure a robust channel ecosystem. We are building an India team of executives for pre-sales and sales to interact with partners and customers. Apart from an exclusive distributor tieup with RAh Infotech, we are engaged with a total of eight system integrators across delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and hyderabad. We recently conducted a three day hands-on training program in gurgaon

Around

with them. these partners have committed in terms of sales targets, demo units and manpower to do focused business with Astaro. After we cover a substantial market through them, we would engage with more partners but definitely not have a large army of partners. Some partners do competitor of offerings too, but they would do 80 percent of utM business with us. which other community of partners do you intend to engage with for better brand visibility? Astaro is not a product for every system integrator. the prime objective is to traverse a different ‘route to market’ through a robust partner alliance ecosystem. We are in close talks with a couple of large national system integrators for wider coverage across

TheWorld

build data warehouses in the hundreds of terabytes, according to Microsoft. — idG news service

sQl server 2008 r2 release set for May f

Microsoft Calls for f Cloud Computing t transparency

Boston-SQL Server 2008 R2, the latest version of Microsoft’s flagship database, will be generally available in May, the company has said. Now in a technology preview, the release features improved server management and data compression, as well as “selfservice” BI capabilities. Microsoft will also offer a pair of premium versions, Datacenter Edition and Parallel Data Warehouse. The first includes CEP (Complex Event Processing) capabilities and the latter allows companies to

Washington- Cloud computing vendors need to band together to create rules on privacy and security or face the prospect of having the U.S. Congress pass regulations, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said last month. Smith called for a new “truth-in-cloud-computing” that would let consumers and businesses know how their information will be accessed by service providers and how it will be stored online. - By Grant Gross - idG news service

India. there are plans to offer MSS (Managed Security Services) form also. We will soon sign a Mou with a large service provider who will offer Astaro security solutions through a SaaS model. what are the realistic opportunities for astaro and its partners in indian market? We have carefully mapped the segment relevant to our product strength. Since we are targeting a large number of mid-market customers through a select set of partners, the business opportunity for partners is huge. Partners would primarily target greenfield projects rather than opportunity based migration accounts. education and government are our key verticals. BFSI, Manufacturing and It/I t teS are t/I our other strong segments. — Yogesh Gupta

Panasonic a adopts l lotus live Collaboration Hong Kong-IBM has said Panasonic will adopt its LotusLive’s suite of collaboration services. Panasonic will use the services for Web conferencing, file sharing, instant messaging and project management. They will also implement LotusLive Connections for business social networking between employees, partners and suppliers to find and share knowledge, IBM added. — Computerworld

indian Channelworld FeBR BRuARy 01, 2010

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trendlines n it sPend

Modest Growth in it spend in 2010: Gartner

ARtneR R h AS revised its outlook for worldwide It spending this year, predicting the industry will see 4.6 percent growth to $3.4 trillion, up from its previous prediction of 3.3 percent growth, according to the latest figures released. gartner revised its forecast upward to account for an expected weakening of the uS dollar. Spending is also ex expected to increase due to the increasing confidence of Ceos and CFos as economic conditions gradually improve, said Richard gordon, Research Vice President with gartner.

Trendlines_7_14.indd 11

emerging markets will see the strongest gains. gartner predicts that spending will increase 9.3 percent in latin America, 7.7 percent in the Middle east ast and Af Africa and 7 percent in APAC. due to the recession, the uS is expected to post only 2.5 percent growth, with Japan, a second, at 1.8 percent. the recovery from the recession will take between 12 to 18 months. the availability of credit should increase and companies may look to make more hardware investments during the second half of this year, gordon said. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Jeremy Kirk IDG News Service

Views & V iCes How do Mergers and Acquisitions among vendor companies affect the working relationship with the channel partners? Partners of the buyer have an edge over partners of the company being acquired. Also, there is uncertainty as an M&A translates into a change in partner policy and two companies rarely work with the same business model. satish Bathija, CEO, Mx Information Systems Larger partners with an interest in enterprises are most affected as product alignments change and they have to gear their business for a new vendor. However, some lucky partners manage to expand their portfolio as in the case of the Oracle-Sun merger. suresh Mishra, Director, Wizertech Informatics M&Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s are not in the best interest for partners because the reason a vendor goes in for an M&A is consolidation. This essentially means reducing the number of partners a vendor works with. rajiv Mehta, CEO, Innovative Enterprise

1/23/2010 3:45:42 PM

n Fast Track

All E Technologies

Snapshot

All E Technologies Founded: 2000 Headquarters: Noida Branches: Mumbai Number of Employees: 200 Key Executive: Dr. Ajay Mian, Founder and CEO Revenue 2008-2009: Rs 13.9 Crore Revenue 2009-2010: Rs 23.2 Crore Key Verticals: Automotive Components, Distribution and e-Businesses Principals: Microsoft Key business activities: Enterprise Solutions – ERP, CRM, SCM, BI Website: www.alletec.com

Dr Ajay Mian, Founder and CEO

says All e Technologies provides solutions for ‘extended enterprise’

or Dr Ajay Mian, Founder

and CEO, All e Technologies (Alletec), entrepreneurship seemed the next logical step in a 17-year career that spanned being part of the faculty at Delhi University to working at Tata Unisys and Burroughs. Recalling his 9-year journey with Alletec, he recalls, “We started with one employee and today have 200 certified staff. The journey has been full of challenges from our first deal with a Swiss company, but we have taken it in our stride and learnt from challenges. When you are starting out, it’s a spark that you are trying to 12

turn into a fire and that drives you.” While admitting that solution providing is a dicey situation, Dr. Mian believes that the challenge lies in maintaining optimum strength that allows you to grow while managing

Dr. Mian believes the challenge lies in maintaining optimum strength that allows you to grow while managing costs. “Our inventory is the time & effort of our people,” he maintains.

costs. Our inventory is the time of our people, he says. While attrition is a challenge for the IT industry, Alletec believes in training and motivating staff. “It would be counterproductive to say that training will give people more skills, and they will have a higher market value and leave. If you aren’t training them, you are not leveraging them well,” says Dr. Mian. Alletec believes in providing solutions for the ‘extended enterprise’ or the ecosystem of stakeholders surrounding an enterprise. Alletec set up an offshore development and service center at the time of inception to meet these requirements, and continues to retain the center as an STPI unit. “We provide our clients with solutions that improve operational efficiencies, impact the balance sheet and give 100 percent satisfaction. We want to provide solutions for the core and then surround it with needbased solutions,” says Dr. Mian. It’s full steam ahead in 2010 as Alletec makes a foray into the government sector while increasing its focus on MNCs with special product offerings. With a couple of JV plans also in the pipeline, Dr. Mian believes 2010 may well be the year of All e Technologies.  — Sneha Kupekar

Indian Channelworld february 01, 2010

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n Face oFF

KartIK shahanI, Regional Director – India, McAfee

McAfee

Vs. SyMAntec

VIshal Dhupar, Managing Director, Symantec India

Integrated Defense attack a With enterprise security getting hot, leading vendors are clamoring for a slice of the pie

t’S nOt easy to keep an enterprise successful and

secure. the challenge is balancing business needs to create and support opportunities while improving the security of the enterprise. companies need integrated defense across networks, systems, data, risk management, compliance solutions and a single, open platform to centrally manage security. mcafee is positioned to support this as the world’s largest dedicated security vendor with solutions used by 77% of Fortune Global 2000, 83% of the Fortune Global 100 and more than 125 million users in 120 countries. most organizations deploy security products that do not interact with products sold by the same vendor. this increases operational costs and increases errors and risk. Optimized security can make the cSO or cIO’s job easier and protection that spans the entire It infrastructure, automated compliance, reduced costs, and improved operational efficiency through integrated, centralized management. throughout 2009, mcafee continued to strengthen its position as the largest dedicated security vendor. mcafee has been recognized as a leader in security by industry analysts, such as Forrester, nSS, and Gartner. We continued to expand our portfolio in 2009 by acquiring Solidcore Systems and mX Logic. these acquisitions reinforce mcafee’s strategy around integration and proving value to customers. mcafee helps transform security from an obstacle into a supportive enabler. agility increases because It can deliver without constraint. Stakeholders can access data to conduct business and do so securely. 14

InDIan channelworlD FeBruary 01, 2010

t Symantec, our research shows that today, the focus is on data breaches that are driven by a combination of organized criminals and well-meaning or malicious insiders. these threats come from a multitude of sources and enterprises have to reduce risk and ensure data is protected at all times. Our strategy is to help companies protect infrastructure and information, develop and enforce It policies, and manage systems. We help enterprise customers ensure that critical assets are protected, allowing them to focus on running businesses. We have been securing and managing the information of 99% of the Fortune 500 and 1000 companies. We are making a big investment in integrated security management, which will let customers analyze outbreaks and breaches and make security information and reports actionable. Our approach is proactive and informationcentric to help customers develop and enforce It policies and automate compliance processes. By prioritizing risks and defining policies that span across locations, customers can enforce policies through built-in automation and identify risks and remediate incidents as they occur. With Symantec solutions, enterprises can secure and manage against risks at more points efficiently. customers can now come to a global leader who delivers more security knowledge, coverage, and technology for less cost and with less complexity. Our strategy is about helping customers work in heterogeneous and complex environments, through the breadth of our portfolio.

n Opinion

Steven Vaughan-Nichols

Linux Desktop Turns 10; World Yawns

began using Linux as a desktop operating system

around 1993, two years after Linux was created. But at that point, it wasn’t what most people would recognize as a desktop OS. The credit for creating and marketing the first Linux desktop designed for ordinary users goes to Corel Corp., which launched Corel Linux OS 10 years ago, in November 1999. Corel was then a Windows software company, but its founder, Michael Cowpland, wanted to do bigger, better things. Corel had already had some success in 1998 with its Linux-powered NetWinder small office/home office server appliance and its WordPerfect word processor on Linux. Besides WordPerfect and the usual Linux applications, it also included alpha versions of the company’s Quattro Pro spreadsheet and CorelDraw graphics programs for Linux. It managed to run all this on PCs that were less powerful than the smartphone in your pocket. The desktop could run on PCs with 100-MHz Pentium CPUs with 24MB of RAM and 500MB hard drives. Of course, Corel wasn’t the only Linux vendor exploring the desktop at the time, but it was the first to try for a mass market. Alas, after Corel experienced some brief success, its efforts came to little.

Facing strong opposition from Microsoft and financially ravished, Corel quickly found itself in hot water. By the end of 2000, Corel had changed management and partnered up with Microsoft. Needless to say, that deal spelled the end of Corel’s Linux experiments, but Corel’s Linux OS lives on to this very day. The Corel Linux desktop was sold off in 2001 and became the foundation for Xandros’ Linux desktop and its Presto instant-on desktop. Corel, while a pathbreaker, never became

n A lack of marketing, an unfriendly environment, and infighting among the Open Source faithful have hurt Linux desktop adoption

the Linux desktop leader. In a way, that’s been the story of the Linux desktop ever since. No single company or distribution has ever become the obvious market leader for a long period of time. True, Ubuntu is very popular; in 2007 it was the first Linux to be preinstalled on computers from a major PC manufacturer (Dell). But Ubuntu is hardly a household name. And for every step forward, often there’s a step backward, such as when Lenovo stopped offering SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) as a standard option on its ThinkPad laptop line. In addition, Microsoft has continued to do its powerhouse best to keep users from ever seeing a Linux desktop. The most recent example of this: when Microsoft brought Windows XP Home back from the dead and prac-

tically gave it away to netbook makers to stop what had been the explosive growth of Linux on netbooks. Linux vendors also haven’t made it easy for the Linux desktop. A lack of marketing and advertising, and infighting among the open-source faithful have also hurt Linux desktop adoption. So today, while there are many excellent Linux desktops available, including Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and SLED, the Linux desktop remains a niche player. That may still change. For example, the asyet-unreleased Google Chrome OS, which is based on Linux, will have the backing of one of the few companies big enough to go toe-to-toe with Microsoft. In addition, new low-power, lowcost netbooks based on ARM processors with Linux OSs, such as Android, may yet retrieve the netbook marketfor Linux. But without better support from PC makers and its own vendors, it’s hard to see Linux ever blossoming into a prime-time desktop player, as Corel dreamed it would a decade ago.  Steven J Vaughan-Nichols has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was cuttingedge and 300bit/sec. was a fast Internet connection — and we liked it!

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INDIAN Channelworld

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n On Record | Maarten Koster

We run independent business lines layered around collaboration, virtualization and compliance beyond NetWare and Linux. It’s not entirely Open Source and is more interoperable in nature.

‘Cost Effectiveness is Key for Open Source’ Maarten Koster, President & General Manager, Novell Asia Pacific talks about the company’s aggressive approach in India CW : What opportunities are there for you and your partners in India? Koster: The recession of 2009 made it clear that the APAC region is a growth engine led by India and China. This resulted in Novell accelerating investment here. A few years ago, Novell used a direct model to establish ‘light house’ accounts across the region. We started the first phase in India two 16

years ago, with a view to leveraging our innovative technology through partners. Infact, our marketing budget for India has quadrupled since last year. CW : Are there still challenges to convince endcustomers to adopt Open Source over proprietary software? What is your value proposition? Koster: A lot of customers and partners still recog-

nize us as a vendor with NetWare and Suse Linux. However, we have an entire stack of product offerings layered around these two fundamental blocks, which interests the partners and customers. We run independent business lines around collaboration, data centre business, virtualization, identity management, compliance and security to name a few. We empower partners to play across the entire stack depending on their expertise. It’s not entirely Open Source and is more interoperable in nature, which drives partners to deliver value added solutions. Thus, the customer has a mixed or heterogeneous environ-

ment. We enable a Windows stack and a Linux stack wherein they speak to each other in a customer-driven environment. CW : Highlight your partner strategy for the Indian market. Koster: Novell encompasses an extensive partner ecosystem through a multi-pronged ‘Go to Market’ model in India. Apart from 25 plus Tier I partners, we engage with Value Added Distributors and their Tier II network. In addition to large SIs, we partner with ISVs and hosting providers. With our extended product portfolio, we are increasing the partner base with a sales mindset. We are pursuing measures to shift to a more indirect model including comprehensive partner programs, more training, and lots of incentives. CW : Is cost-saving still the biggest factor that woos the

Indian Channelworld february 01, 2010

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Maarten Koster | On Record n potential customers to Open Source solutions? Koster: Yes. The key drivers for Open Source are cost effectiveness, and ‘not being locked in’ over time. Historically, Novell has been strong in government and BFSI. Other verticals have more specific offerings. For example, in the manufacturing segment, deployments on SAP are moving to Suse Linux. CW : Do you have a distinct SMB strategy? What are company plans to increase channel ecosystem? Koster: It’s more of a channel-led strategy. Through VADs Tier II network, we cater to mid market and SMBs across B and C class cities through easily deployable solutions which are more shrink wrap with high availabil-

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map for Virtualization for partners? Koster: We have different roles for partners around our virtualization offering – PlateSpin workload management solutions. After a hypervisor implementation, for issues like capac-

We are shrinking our partner base worldwide to stay highly relevant to a focused set of niche partners ity planning, migration (from physical to virtual) can be managed from a single console through PlateSpin. For virtualization, we are in a sweet spot as we complement major virtualization vendors. We are pursuing a focused approach with an independent set of partners (competent SIs) with

co-marketing activities around it. CW : Which trends, especially from the Open Source perspective, should solution providers focus on? Koster: An accelerating trend is adoption of Linux in mission critical environments like airspace control, hospitals, stock market floors, which was limited to mainframes. Linux on desktop is a new trend. In India, most enterprises have a homogenous roll out of desktop infrastructure for basic tasks. One need not buy an expensive MS suite, some functionalities of which are never used. With Linux, enterprises are now shifting the cost saved on product to ‘services’, thus increasing revenues for partners.  — By Yogesh Gupta

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n Fast Track

Future Netwings

Snapshot

Future Netwings Founded: 1997 Head Office: Kolkata Key Executives: Jaideep Chakrabarti, Director Revenue 2007-08: Rs 4.5 Crore Revenue 2008-09: Rs 10 Crore Principals: Cisco,EMC,Systimax,Tyco Key Technologies: Networking Solutions,IT Security,Managed Services Web Site: www.futurenetwings.com

Jaideep Chakrabarti, believes that

training and upgrading are inevitable investments for business

ith a growth

rate of more than 100 percent in one year, Kolkatabased Future Netwings’ figures are impressive. “As a team, we were always confident we would scale great heights and all we needed to achieve that goal was good working capital. Future group showed interest and provided us with the financial support we were looking for. We knew we would outperform expectations and our turnover proved us right,” says Jaideep Chakrabarti, Director, Future Netwings.

Once the company was formed, there was no looking back. Their turnover speaks volumes about their achievements in a short span of time with sheer dedication, determination and hardwork. The task of perform-

vertical Split n Education

10% 10% 5% 20% 15% 10%

n MNC 30% 50%

5% 10%

15% 5%5%10%

n Manufacturing n Banking n Defense n Pharma n Government

S o u rc e : Fu t u r e N e t w i n g s

ing extraordinarily was obviously quite daunting. Chakrabarti explains, “We were bullish about the slowdown and took it in our stride. We have always been early adopters of technology and leveraged it to turn the tables for us. We adopt things when nobody else does.” The customer is always on the lookout for excellent quality. Future Netwings is extremely proud of its skilled manpower and shares the credit for their success with them. Chakrabarti says, “Our quality of support is the reason customers come to us and trust us. Our skilled manpower is supreme and matchless. We make efforts to maintain standards and hence training and upgrading are inevitable investments.” The ISO-certified company operates in major cities like Mumbai, Pune, Guwahati, Raipur, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Bhubaneswar and Gurgaon, and is looking to expand its reach further. Chakrabarti says, “Apart from having a presence across India, we are also looking at acquiring customers in other countries like Bangladesh and Thailand. We seriously believe clients reach out and trust you if you have a high level of knowledge of your field.” “We want to become a 100 crore company and bag the numero uno spot in the networking space,” says Chakrabarti.  — Snigdha Karjatkar

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Dossier Name: Harnish Patel Designation: VP-Network Gateway Solutions Organization: McAfee Present role: Responsible globally for the sales and marketing of McAfee Network Gateway solutions into the MidMarket segment. Career graph: Executive level sales; Relationship & Marketing experience gained from his career at IBM, Sun Microsystems, Nuance Communications, SurfControl PLC and Secure Computing Corp. He is also a member of the Association of Certified Accountants and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing

for this market is to have a two-tier distribution model. Earlier, we had a set of resellers for McAfee brands. When we acquired Secure Computing, we had resellers who were focused on network solutions. Now we are trying to cross work across both channels.

n The Grill

Harnish Patel

Global Vice President, McAfee Inc, talks about the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plans on the UTM front Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been a strategic year for the IT industry. What is the latest from McAfee? Patel: Till 18 months ago, antivirus accounted for 95 % of our business. Today we have broadened our portfolio and AV makes up for 70-75% of the business. We have been defocusing from being an AV company to being an

end-to-end provider of security solutions. So a relatively small company like McAfee now has to precondition the market and create awareness before we take our products there. So, our channel partners are a critical part for our go-to-market plan, especially the mid-market. Our strategy

Did you include all the secure computing partners and did you make them qualify all over again? Patel: We did include most of them. We took them through a transition plan which meant that there were some requirements for accreditation. I want to highlight that it is an evolution. Another important aspect is recognition of the right partners. Partners who have been specializing in providing firewall solutions etc now also have an opportunity to sell network DLP solutions. So, we are able to offer a better portfolio to both customers and partners. We have made investments in partner programs and come up with awards to recognize partners. Have you revamped partner programs? Patel: We have revamped it and we are in the process of further investing and broadening our partner program. Continued on page 20

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n The Grill | Harnish Patel How important is India as a market for you, especially for your UTM offerings? Patel: From a Unified Threat Management (UTM) perspective, it’s very important. SMBs in India are open to new technologies. It’s very affordable too. So, UTM fits well. We have an upper hand because all the technologies we provide are our intellectual property.

We offer a better portfolio to customers and partners. We have made investments and come up with awards to recognize partners. Continued from page 19 In the next 18 months, our plan is to have more focus on the mid market and on the channels. We have recently recruited a new leader for our partnersAlex Thurber joined us from Cisco, a company whose partner program is considered to be the benchmark in the industry. He is now putting in place a program for the channels. So, we are working on coming out with something more innovative and something which gives us the leadership position. 20

Grill.indd 20

Everybody is talking about UTM. Why would a VAR or an SI in India look forward to working with McAfee? Patel: We offer a broad set of solutions at an affordable price. A customer or a partner does not have to work with multiple vendors. Besides, we offer value for money. We also offer a platform which provides a single interface (ePO interface and console) to manage multiple solutions and we encourage our partners to complement that. UTM is perceived to be a ‘jack of all trades but master of none’ product. Many experts say it’s less revolutionary and more evolutionary. Comment. Patel: This technology is ideal for small to medium-sized companies. In India, with umpteen entrepreneurs, such a technology makes a lot of sense. Globally, this market is growing at 22 % and this is expected to continue till 2012, according to research forms. Today, our product can support up to 500 users if it’s used only as a firewall. But if you switch all the functions on, it can support a couple of hundred users. So we are working on releasing an x86 based UTM appliance by middle of this year. We are also looking to deliver our cloud based services for our UTM portfolio. Do you think cloud security service is great idea, especially when users show reluctance in accepting it? Patel: I started selling cloud security services more than three years ago with my previous company. Within

nine months, we doubled our customer base. Today, more and more users are demanding utility computing. Customers are asking why they should go buy hardware and software, manage them and still pay shocking prices for upgrades and support cost. Customers want IT to be like a tap. So, cloud will see more takers in the coming days. You seem to be agreeing with Gartner. It has a different name for UTMs– SMB multifunction firewalls. Does this mean an enterprise-class UTM is a myth? Patel: Today we have enterprise customers who have distributed branches. We have in fact had significant success in the enterprise segment today. So, I would say enterprises use UTM in a different way than SMBs do. It’s not a mission critical piece in their IT. On the other hand, firewall and intrusion prevention solutions in an enterprise are now pushed to have a UTM-like capability. For example, the firewall we have for enterprises offers Web filtering as well. So, UTM for enterprises is slightly different concept. Before launching your UTM products, McAfee revealed that it will not cash in on new business from existing clients but go on the offensive to secure business from competitiors. How much have you succeeded? Patel: We have been consistently witnessing double digit growth. In the APAC region, the UTM market is about $268 million. We are not the leader but we are definitely in the top 5 and our objective is to be in the top 3 in the next 18 months. So, we want a bigger slice of the pie. We are investing either on acquiring new technology or in talent to grow the company. It indicates that we have been successful. What is the biggest hurdle in front of McAfee now? Patel: Let’s be very honest and direct. Customers and resellers still think of McAfee as an AV company. That still remains the hurdle. So we have to change our projection. The investment we are making in terms of branding and market conditioning is helping us on changing that perception of McAfee as a company.  Radhika Nallayam

Indian Channelworld february 01, 2010

1/23/2010 3:56:01 PM

CHANNEL DIRECTIONS

A Case for Hosted Solutions in Data Centers Faced with the steep costs of building and maintaining their own data centers, SMBs may prefer to seek hosted solutions. The value-added services from the hosted solutions provider are another attraction. Sify Technologies provides its partners with incentives to acquire and retain customers that continue to use its hosted data center solutions. ANIL PANT Vice President, Channel Sales, Sify Pant is responsible for both design and go to market strategy. A staunch believer in ethical business practices, He has been pivotal in designing the strategy that enabled partners to start selling connectivity solutions through the partner community.

The cost of hosting 4-5 racks with a level 3 IDC would be significantly lower than even the running cost for a customer. Add to this the Value added services that they can get from an IDC the fact that they should actually host instead of building a DC becomes a no brainer.â&#x20AC;?

What are the most important Data Center trends you see today? The main trend that one sees is that customers are moving up from pure space and power collocation to a lot of value added services like, server virtualization, cloud, managed services, managed storage etc thereby moving from what was till now a predominantly capex-based model to an opex-based model. How is Sify positioned to help customers address these trends? Sify is a leading player in each of the areas that are mentioned with a whole lot of expertise built in each of the value added services that I talked about . Which Sify services and products are gaining a lot of traction with your customers? Why? Today, customers, especially in the SMB space have realized the futility of building a datacenter of their own. Typically a data centre of 200 sq ft capable of hosting 4-5 racks would involve a capital expenditure of around 60 lakhs INR. The associated annual costs on power, depreciation, amc, cost of the capital invested and manpower which would be associated with running the datacenter would cross 50 lakhs INR per annum. The cost of hosting 4-5 racks with a level 3 IDC would be significantly lower than even the running cost for a customer. Add to this the Value added services that they can get from an IDC the fact that

they should actually host instead of building a DC becomes a no brainer. What is your strategy in expanding the scope of business for these solutions in 2010? We have been creating a lot of services around the Data Centre keeping in mind the special needs of SMBâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. One of our recent launches is the Storage on Demand service that we have launched. This has been a big hit in the SMB space and we are seeing extremely high traction here. What is the role you envisage for your channel partners in your goto-market strategy for 2010? The channel partner has a large role in this entire strategy as he is the fulcrum upon which the reach to the end customer is based. We have a very attractive recurring incentive model for the partner. Hence as long as a customer hosts with us the partner will continue to earn incentives. It also enables the partner to move up the value chain when he is able to show a huge cost saving to customers from the perspective of building a data centre vis-a-vis hosting.

ChannelWorld

CUSTOM PUBLISHING

n Opinion

Preston Gralla

Is Microsoft’s SharePoint at risk?

n several years of mostly gloomy news coming out

of Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, there has been one bright spot for the company: The enterprise portal and collaboration tool SharePoint. While Windows sales have lagged, and the company’s Internet business is still heavily in the red, SharePoint is thriving and showing the kind of market growth that even a start-up would envy. But the good times may not stay around forever, particularly if

Google ever makes serious inroads into the enterprise. Let’s start off with the good news for Microsoft. In late October, the company held its annual SharePoint conference, and it drew 8,000 attendees, up from 1,300 for the inaugural conference in 2006. Back then, Microsoft said it had 75 million licensed SharePoint users. In 2008, Microsoft reported more than 100 million users, and total SharePoint sales of more than $1 billion. In 2009, Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for SharePoint, estimated that sales would be over $1.3 billion, for a growth rate of more than 20%. Given that SharePoint was first launched in 2000, when it was called Office Server Extensions, those are pretty impressive figures — from zero to more than $1.3 billion in less than a decade. Steve Ballmer has even called SharePoint “Microsoft’s 22

next big operating system.” In addition, an IDC report issued in October found that 53.4% of IT professionals in its survey said their companies have already deployed SharePoint, 62.2% have already deployed it or plan to deploy it, and 70.6% have already deployed it, are committed to deploying it or will consider deploying it. Given all that, what could be wrong? To begin with, the IDC report found that only 22% of employees in the companies surveyed were actually using SharePoint. That might mean

n An IDC report found that 54.2% of companies using SharePoint team sites find managing content on the sites a tremendous challenge

that it might be “shelfware” -- software purchased but not used. If that’s the case, growth might be a thing of the past. The IDC report also found that companies that use SharePoint team sites for collaboration have a difficult time managing content on the sites — 54.2% say that doing so is a tremendous challenge. That means that if simpler alternatives were available, SharePoint could be at risk. Then, of course, there’s Google, which continues to target the enterprise. Although Google Docs doesn’t do nearly what SharePoint does, it still allows for basic collaboration. And Google has released a very early version of a more sophisticated tool, Google Wave , which is clearly aimed at workgroup, departmental and longdistance collaboration. There is some evidence that Google is making

some headway. Google claims that Google Apps is being used at 2 million companies, with 20 million active users . This isn’t to say that SharePoint faces an imminent threat. Google Docs is still a crude collaboration tool compared to SharePoint. Google Wave may be innovative, but it doesn’t offer nearly all of the kinds of collaboration that SharePoint does. And Google, despite some headway, still hasn’t seriously cracked the enterprise market. As for a simpler collaboration tool, no serious competitor has yet materialized. So for now it’s full speed ahead for SharePoint. Microsoft is expanding its use, pushing the company’s Business Productivity Online Suite by lowering its price and introducing it into 15 more countries -and SharePoint is included in that suite. But Microsoft knows that market dominance can quickly fade. There was a time, when WordPerfect was the dominant word processor, and Netscape the most popular browser. So Microsoft would do well to hold off on the champagne. If Google Docs and Google Wave take off, SharePoint could eventually be at risk.  Preston Gralla is the contributing editor for Computerworld.com and the author of more than 35 books, including How the Internet Works

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CHANNEL DIRECTIONS

Airtel Sees its Partners as Business Enablers Airtel wants its channel partners to get into the heart of its end users’ businesses – playing an integral role in their enterprises and becoming business enablers through technology interventions SAM ELANGALLOOR Chief Executive Officer, West Hub, Airtel Telemedia Services. Elangalloor, previously the chief operating officer of Airtel Mobile Services in Andhra Pradesh, has experience including consumer durables. He was also the national marketing head for Godrej-GE Appliances. What trends do you see in the SMB sector’s usage of your services? Technology adoption - The need within the SMB sector for technology on a “here and now” basis is very high. With data connectivity and ICT services, for instance, we are seeing a large number of SMB/SME customers using the Internet and VPN services for business applications. They are migrating from broadband services to SLA-backed, enterprise class Internet

tel has tied up with the leaders in their respective technologies, for example Cisco. 3. Distribution: Airtel is leveraging its strength in deploying nationwide mobile, broadband and fixed line networks by appointing channel partners and system integrator partners to reach out to SMB customers. Airtel will rely 100 percent on its partners in this initiative. 4. Service Support: Airtel, with its technology partners, has ensured that products and services are offered more as

“We expect our partners to value-add as an extended Airtel within the customer organization and as ‘customer representatives’ within Airtel.” Leased Line services. A number of them are going for more complex solutions like MPLS VPN. With no baggage of legacy IT investment, they are more open to managed services and shared services like Data Center Hosting, Shared hosting, application services. How is Airtel positioned to help SMB customers address these trends? Airtel has taken a holistic view of the SMB/SME needs. Airtel has addressed the needs of the SMB/ SME segment on four counts: Product and Services: Airtel has rolled out specific products and services built with best-inclass technology and made them available in a canned, easy-to-buy, easy-to–deployand-use manner. 2. Technology Tie-ups: To provide the best products and services, Air-

“managed services.” Most of the products are plug-and-play or self configurable. There is a strong E-NOC team that will ensure management of the services for the customer in a seamless manner. What is your strategy in expanding the scope of this business and what role do you envisage for your partners? We have a two-pronged attack: one, strengthen the channel network and most importantly align the channel partners to the Airtel value proposition so that we engage with the customers in the right manner; two, we will reach out to end customers directly so that they become more aware of the products and services and business enablement offered by Airtel. Channel partners are the most important part of our go-to-market strategy. In fact

to put it simply the GTM is 100% through channel partners. We have a complete channel program in place. We expect our partners to value-add as an extended Airtel within the customer organisation and interface as `customer representatives’ within Airtel. Channel partners will play a crucial role in taking Airtel value proposition to the customers and integrating the same with customers business needs. They will play an active role in managing the relationship throughout life cycle. We expect the Channel partners to keep getting the customer feedback into the system that will work as inputs for feature enhancement in existing products and also in rolling out new products. We see channel partners getting closer to the customers’ core business and really getting to the role of business enablers through technology interventions. Their role will shift from transactional interactions with customers to really being an integral part of the customers business.

ChannelWorld

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Special RepORt n

r e t n e c a t a D e h T y t i n u t r o O pp the next er ov le ub do to t se dia In in t ke ar m er nt ce With the data d growth an re tu uc str ra inf l ica ys ph on s es str ing ris 5 years, the is fueling the industry forward By Snigdha Karjatkar Illustration by Unnikrishan A V

atacenters were once exclusively the domain of select tech players. today as large enterprises have moved beyond these complexities, datacenters have entered a more mass arena. “every small businessman wants to have a datacenter today, and we are often asked for quotes. the size of the datacenter might be really

small, but they want to own one,” says amit rastogi, a ranchi-based solution provider. while large enterprises continue to generate opportunities with their upgrade demands, sMes are just waking up to the datacenter culture. the small and medium sized enterprises are now embracing these technologies faster than ever before, bringing good news for partners.

the datacenter market in India is growing apace and some vendors believe it is expected to double in the next 5 years. the rising stress on physical infrastructure and growth has also fueled the industry. smrutiranjan Das, Product Manager– racks, emerson India confirms, “we think the market for datacenters in India is mostly third party, followed by corporate datacenters. the

february 01, 2010

iNDiaN chaNNelwORlD

n Special Report datacenter space in India is currently in its growth phase. The per- rack density in India is currently between 5-7 KW and this is expected to rise to 12 KW over the next three years. Also, an increased focus in the areas of cooling, power and other monitoring solutions for future datacenters is in focus.” Rajeev Krishnaswamy, Director, Infobahn technology concurs, “The big datacenters are already set up by the large enterprises in the Indian market. But there are plenty of opportunities in the SME market segment.” Compliance is one of the key driving factors compelling customers to start a datacenter. The clauses of the Indian IT Act stipulate maintaining records for seven years and messages for five years. Also, most customers prefer to have ISO certification done which also requires a transparent record base, which is another vital trigger in promoting datacenters. And last but not least; company growth demands better technological support for the organization with money being available in the market. Shaishav Singh, CEO of Dotcad, who is also an HP partner, agrees with his peers. At the same time, he points out, “The current demand for datacenters is coming from the SME market. In reality, the SME’s are still waking up to the importance of the datacenter. The challenge with SME datacenters does not lie with the technology but with convincing the customer. The challenges are not as formidable compared to the complexities of large datacenters.” Symantec’s ‘State of the Data Center’ study reflects interesting trends in the market. The study found that mid-sized enterprises (2,000 to 9,999 employees) are more likely to adopt cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing, de-duplication, replication, storage virtualization, and continuous data protection than small or large enterprises, to reduce IT costs and manage increasing complexity. Further, midsized enterprise datacenters show more activity, with more IT managers predicting major changes to the datacenter and new applications in 2010. Mid-sized enterprises also 26

Virtualization: Best practices and unanticipated consequences

irtualization is a new tool in the datacenter efficiency tool box. When used properly, the virtualization tool rewards the datacenter owner with reduced costs and efficient data center operations. If the tool is used improperly, unanticipated consequences can occur. Like all tools, virtualization comes with a warning sticker and like most warning stickers, individuals rarely take the time to read or understand it. If this is ignored, the IT operational penalty can be steep. Once a company’s IT hardware is virtualized, and Capex and Opex gains begin to accrue, the virtualization story doesn’t end. The datacenter can, in fact, become more unstable and costly as a direct result of virtualization. Data power and cooling infrastructure, if not managed properly in a virtualized environment, become the wild card. When a critical power system is engineered for a datacenter, it is designed to

place a higher importance on staffing and training than their small or large enterprise counterparts. A large number of partners still believe that even if there is a market of SME customers for them, the key challenge is convincing the customer. For them, the setting up of the datacenter is easy, but making customers accept the datacenter concept is still a time-consuming exercise.

I have seen that it is only those with hardware beyond refresh cycles who opt for virtualization to avoid tampering with their setups” Rajeev Krishnaswamy, Director, Infobahn Technology

support a maximum load. Any load applied above that design limit will result in the tripping of protective devices such as circuit breakers and fuses. Most datacenter operation managers do not recognize that Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems (legacy UPS systems in particular) are also designed to support both maximum and minimum load limits. If virtualization drives the load below this lower limit, bad things begin to happen. The UPS can initiate unwanted shut downs, lose the ability to parallel and switch to battery an excessive amount of times thereby draining the batteries and reducing overall battery runtime. Virtualization best practice dictates that unused servers be removed from the data center. Removal of servers can create a very unbalanced load on the UPS distribution system. The amperage loads on each of the three phases, or legs, of the UPS distribution system need to be closely monitored.

Some also narrate experiences where the customer is still unclear about the difference between a server room and datacenter. Rastogi explains, “The giant-sized datacenter can still be afforded only by large enterprises and the government. The humongous infrastructure demands a lot of investment and mid-size businesses do not believe in investing and spending that kind of money on IT. At the same time, that doesn’t create a hurdle in actually having a datacenter. Perhaps owning one is a luxury, but actually getting a third party hosting it for him solves all his problems.” Gurprit Gulati, Director of Momentum–Infocare, also shares the same opinion. He narrates his own experience saying, “The bigger opportunities are with the mid –sized organizations which are now in the processes of setting up their own datacenters. It is not very challenging to set up their datacenter as per their own specific needs, but it is challenging to convince them that they need a datacenter.”

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n Special Report Mid-sized enterprises are more aggressive and pioneering than either small or large enterprises. They are adopting new technology initiatives such as cloud computing, replication, and de-duplication at 10-15 % higher rates than small or large enterprises. Large enterprises do provide some place for the partners, but at the same time it is the SMEs that are getting ahead in the game. Storage and data backup applications are some of the components that are in demand. But at the same time, it is the customer with some basic understanding of technology who demands a datacenter. For instance, the demand is from the customers who already have an ERP running on the server. L Partheeban, Director– Ecaps explains, “When we go to a customer, they already have a couple of servers for their main applications and intend to deploy more for storage. So it’s very rare for a company to start off owning a datacenter.” Most partners believe that setting up a datacenter for any SME does not pose much of a challenge. But again, there are some who believe otherwise. Deepak Dhar, Director, Industry Standard Servers, Hewlett Packard India Sales says, “The challenges for setting up the datacenter would remain the same irrespective of the size of the datacenter. And the reason is that the components and applications that are to be deployed remain the same.” At the same time, even if the SMEs are grabbing all the focus and attention, large enterprises are still not out of the race. The upgrading cycle does generate a steady demand of components, given that the lifecycle of the technology is around three years. The partners believe there are different reasons for the demand of components from the large enterprises. Partheeban points out, “It is the large enterprises who want to deploy the latest technologies as they can afford it while the smaller companies have to wait till their ROI is through.” Nareshchandra Singh, Principal Research Analyst with Gartner, notes, “The opportunities with large enterprises still exist as the need to upgrade is inevitable. The need to use 28

Only large enterprises and the government can afford a giant datacenter. Mid-size businesses do not believe in investing and spending that much on IT.”

The indemand components of the datacenter are storage and virtualization. There aren’t many players in access management and power management.

Amit Rastogi, CEO, Computer Valley

Gurprit Gulati, Director, Momentum Infocare

the latest technology forces enterprises to evaluate adopting it. Partners can definitely be positive about some business coming from this segment of the market.” But some of them have a contrary opinion. Singh from Dotcad believes, “Not many enterprises like to hamper their current datacenter setup. In fact, `

The Main Components Of Datacenters v Compute: This essentially comprises of digital computing on the servers. This component has undergone a revolution with more compact form factors increasing efficiency. v Networking: One of the silent pillars of server farms, networking is the backbone of the entire eco-system. v Storage: Storage, one of the significant components of the datacenter, is also the most added component. v Power: A very crucial aspect of the datacenter considering the current power efficiency crisis. This is surely undergoing lot of evolution as the need of supreme power efficiency is the need of the hour.

they want to keep it running as it is for longer periods of time. It is only when the storage demands surge, that the customers adds it to the setup.” New facility components are expensive, but the real problem is in integrating new products in an existing building and with existing components. Companies focus on the technical problems of integrating new facility components into an existing building, as well as evaluating whether it’s possible to keep the datacenter in action while the renovation is being carried out. Krishnaswamy says, “No customer agrees readily to upgrade. More than the refresh cycles, it is the return on the investment of the company that is the priority. But the other crucial factor that generates and drives the demand is when their growth and expansion brings in addition of more storage and applications.” For varied reasons, partners feel that there is still some demand generated by the large enterprises. Components - the gold mine Logically, any one who knows the basics believes that storage is one component which would have continual demand. But there are a few surprises. While storage is definitely in demand, so is the application of consolidation and virtualization along with power-efficiency tools. Gulati asserts, “Storage and virtualization are more in-demand components of the datacenter. But at the same time, there aren’t many

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n Special Report players in access management and power management. The demand is increasing for storage as ever growing amounts of data have to be maintained for the organization for compliance and internal requirements. Partheeban says, “Storage is something that is consistently in demand.” The well-informed customer today wants smart options. Virtualization is also one of the most sought after technology today, but it comes with its own baggage. Partners agree that almost every customer inquires about virtualization technology but very few adopt it. There are multiple reasons for the slow adoption rate, but overall partners believe that if the issues are resolved, virtualization will be more than just a buzzword. Krishnaswamy points out, “Yes, there is a lot of demand on the storage and virtualization front as the demand for consolidation on storage and server. But at the same time, not everyone is vying for the consolidation. In fact, I have been observing it is only those who have hardware beyond refresh cycles who opt for the virtualization as most customers are wary of tampering with their setups.” Also there is a belief amongst partners that other components such as compute, storage, cooling and power still have a healthy demand. He adds, “Today we do have a steady demand on components other than storage such as compute, cooling and power and of course networking. Also, all those in the application business have to keep updating the latest versions and more modules in case of an ERP system.” The upgrading of the systems is inevitable such as an addition of a module in CRM or an upgrade of the version. This definitely brings in some more value added business with healthy margins. Even Singh agrees that there is a lot to be done for virtualization. He says, “Consolidation and virtualization is indeed building some traction in the market. But the small catch is that although a lot has been talked about in the market, there are very few customers to date who have adopted virtualization.” 30

Innovative Methods of Small Enterprises

ecessity is the mother of invention goes the old adage. Small enterprises have smartly adopted this principle in their deployment of IT in their enterprises. Third party hosting has become increasingly popular in the smaller towns where it’s luxurious to own an IT system leave alone think of datacenter. The enterprises are now forming business clusters and outsourcing the datacenter management to local System integrator. The local system integrator typically who has housed his datacenter (read couple of servers) in the local regions works on monthly rental basis. The cluster of business operates on closed groups who unanimously select a single SI to host the data center. This definitely gives them a better position to bargain. This model is becoming increasingly popular among the smaller enterprises in C- class towns as it gets rid of the technical as well physical maintenance of the system. It also allows the customer to access the latest technology tools at reasonable price along with an assurance of security with hassle free management of the entire system.

On the other hand, there has been a steep rise in customers wanting to set up their disaster recovery sites. Partheeban feels, “Storage, data backup applications are components that have seen a regular demand from the customers. But today, there is a huge emphasis on the DR site building by the customers.” Cisco sees a market transition as a result of virtualization. “Virtualization architectures today are very much “assembly required” islands/ silos where the burden of system integration is on the customer, increasing costs and deployment times while decreasing efficiency. Cisco sees a market opportunity to eliminate the manual integration in favor of an integrated architecture that breaks

down the silos between compute, storage, virtualization, and network platforms,” says Sumit Makhija, National Sales Manager- Data Centre, Cisco India and SAARC Rastogi who has a customer base from D-class town begs to differ, “We have customers who insists on virtualization upfront. The reason being they want to maximize the investment they make in the systems.”

Lack of skilled manpower

One of the reasons people are hesitant to adopt virtualization is the lack of availability of skilled manpower. The complex technology still does not have adequate numbers of trained manpower. Krishnaswamy says, “The availability of a qualified administrator is an extremely difficult challenge. Today, there is a severe crunch of well-trained engineers in the industry. This is one of the main reasons the customer is inhibited in adopting complex technologies such as virtualization.” The non-availability of manpower has always been a challenge for this industry. Partheeban echoes the same sentiment. He says, “Currently, there are very few customers who actually adopt virtualization even though that’s what they need the most. The simple reason is the lack of technical expertise available in market to manage such complex systems.” The dearth of the expertise directly affects the cost of maintaining the systems. The lack of human resources translates directly into more expensive hiring. Dhar strongly believes there is a reliable solution to this problem the industry is facing. He explains, “We now believe that automation of systems can bail partners and customers out of this perennial quagmire. We are now insisting customers go for automation tools that reduce their dependency on manpower.” To reinstate his point, he cites an example where they had quoted a price for automation and the customer happily took it. He cites, “We had suggested that the customer pay ‘X’ amount for an automation

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Special Report n tool and he readily accepted it. The reason was that the manpower inventory was equivalent to the automation package.” Manpower shortage is a critical issue for both partners as well as the customers. The partners cannot deliver what they promised while customers hesitate to adopt new complex technology. People still form the single largest cost element for most data centers, sometimes as much as 40 % of overall costs. One of the vital highlights of Symantec’s study was that staffing and budgets remains tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat/extremely understaffed. Finding budget and qualified applicants are the biggest recruiting issues. Nearly 79% of enterprises have the same or more job requisitions open this year.

Real opportunity

Despite all the challenges on the ground level, the partners are optimistic about the growth story of the datacenter. There is plenty of scope for setting up the datacenters itself. The physical infrastructure offers plenty of scope for the partners. The architectural shift taking place in the datacenter marks an IT market transition that will allow us, together with our

Cisco sees an opportunity to eliminate manual integration for an integrated setup breaking down the silos between storage, virtualization and network platforms”

Most enterprises want to keep their datacenter setup running as it is for longer periods of time. It is only when the storage demands surge, that customers add it to the setup.”

Sumit Mukhija National Sales Manager- Data Centre, Cisco India

Shaishav Singh, CEO Dotcad

channel partners, to drive the benefits of virtualization to an entirely new level. Further, as storage, network and virtualisation platforms continue to converge, architectures will blend and merge, creating technology disruption, but enabling business challenges the customer will face to be solved in new innovative ways. Unified Computing is an architectural opportunity, requiring partners to have more than technology, product or even solutions expertise. To capture the Unified Computing opportunity, Cisco believes the market requires a new breed of Unified Com-

Factors Impacting Datacenters Positives

Negatives

R ise of savvy SME customers eying IT to speed their growth story

6L ack of basic infrastructure such

U pgrade cycles in the existing datacenters

6L ack of Energy efficient systems

N eed to maintain the increasing data that comes with organizational growth

6S evere dearth of skilled manpower

C ompliance driving the need to maintain historical records and encouraging data storage

6 Inadequate support system

I nternal standardization leading to transparent and organized systems

6 Less matured market conditions

S cope to bridge the gap between large and small players

6L ack of technical awareness levels

as space

among customers

puting VAR – combining Compute, Virtualization, Networking, Storage and Service practices into a single, integrated data center practice. Partners are a key element in penetrating and reaching this untapped segment. The consistent growth of infrastructure and economy along with IT and telecom industry on the whole has resulted in ample opportunities for partners in the current business scenario. “The integrated solution for datacenter business is one of the key contributors in business; which was catered to by SIs across India. Emerson has provided partners a solution which is called OptimizeIT. a one point solution in which a rack is positioned as a datacenter in a rack solution,” says Das. Currently there is no single point of contact for the customers while syncing the various technologies and components of the datacenters. Singh firmly believes, “There is a huge unexplored opportunity where partners can be a single point of contact for all the vendors for the customers. This will not only help them maintain customer relations but will also serve as good business model.” Gulati who also sees this as an opportunity believes that this concept of a single point of contact would definitely help align business growth more positively making margins healthy. There is also a belief amongst partners that this would also help them in cutting down reduce the problems they face while setting up

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n Special Report the datacenter. Some of the largest datacenters today offer healthy prospects in the management and monitoring of datacenters. Access control in a datacenter is still a nascent technology which could work wonders if used at the right time. All those who aspire and dream big have a chance to strike gold if they can play their cards right. Large customers with huge datacenter capacities have to choose from four or five large partners. There exists a huge gap between large and small customers. If the partners use their financial resources smartly, the next couple of years will see the emergence of new players in the market. Gulati points out, “As far as huge datacenters are concerned, there are barely four to five players. But in the coming couple of years, we feel there will be an emergence of new players. Partners are gearing up to own their datacenters. The only hurdle could

scaling and encashing that prospect.”

It is the large enterprises who want to deploy the latest technologies as they can afford it while the smaller companies have to wait till their ROI is through.” L Partheeban, Director, Ecaps

be quality of bandwidth. There will be immense chances for the partners.” Singh also reiterates there not many mature players in that segment. Datacenter hosting is currently dominated by barely a few players. He agrees, “That market is definitely addressable and partners can think of

‘Too many applications’ hamper staff productivity: Symantec study

op datacenter concerns include increased complexity and too many applications, according to a study conducted by Symantec. Most enterprises, according to the study, have 10 or more datacenter initiatives rated as somewhat or absolutely important and 50% expect “significant” changes to their datacenters in 2010. The study adds that half of all the enterprises say applications are growing somewhat quickly and half of them are finding it difficult and costly to meet service level agreements (SLAs). One-third of all enterprises say staff productivity is hampered by too many applications. Adding to the complexity is the continued increase in data causing 52 percent of organizations to consider data reduction technologies such as de-duplication. Controlling storage growth, as per the study, is also one of the major datacenter objectives for Indian mid-sized enterprises for 2010. Forty six percent of enterprises consider that controlling storage growth 32

is an absolute requirement while another 32 percent think it is somewhat important for 2010. Datacenter administrators need to manage storage across heterogeneous server and storage environments in a way that enables them to stop buying storage by leveraging new technology adoption such as storage resource management, thin provisioning, de-duplication, storage virtualization and continuous data protection and recovery. Organizations leveraging a holistic approach to storage management can control storage budget growth and often postpone storage purchases. There continues to be room for improvement in disaster recovery (DR), according to the study. One-third of disaster recovery plans are undocumented or need work and important IT components, such as cloud computing, remote office and virtual servers are often not included. Compounding the issue, almost one-third of enterprises haven’t re-evaluated their disaster recovery plan in the last 12 months.

Roadblocks

The datacenters in India need to address the energy efficiency issues right from start since power and cooling contribute to 48% of the energy bill cost — a global trend. Indian DCs need to focus on adoption of an adaptive architecture for Low TCO, Flexibility in operations and Scalability of solutions and processes. The energy, space and technology problems currently facing datacenter managers are set to worsen in 2010, according to Gartner. “Energy costs are the fastest-rising cost element in the datacenter portfolio, and yet datacenter managers are still not paying sufficient attention to the process of measuring, monitoring and modeling energy use in data centers,” said Rakesh Kumar, research vicepresident at Gartner. Partners agree that energy management can be effective only through advanced monitoring, modeling and measuring techniques and processes. Metrics form the bedrock for internal costs and efficiency programs. IT firms should make this area a high priority, which will be essential for the adoption of new technologies and adherence to government policies. Also while scaling up to a bigger level, partners require adequate support from the vendor and infrastructure in the country. The analyst at Gartner points to the immediate improvement in the availability of the basic infrastructure of power and space in the Indian region. The downside of which hurts, partners even today, the long term call doesn’t seem to be pleasant for the Indian market. He adds that the already unstable political situation marred by terrorism in certain regions could be the reason why datacenters are moving out of the country. It is probably too early to cement the possibility, but given the progress one cannot ignore competitive countries. Partners agree completely and are focusing on plugging the loopholes so that datacenter opportunities do not just remain on the white boards but see the light of day. 

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n Opinion

Jack Gold

Intel Eyes More Important Threats

n November last year, Intel and AMD announced

that they were dropping all existing litigation between them — AMD’s persistent attacks on what it called Intel’s predatory sales practices and Intel’s counterclaims of AMD’s unlawful appropriation of Intel intellectual property transferred to GlobalFoundries when AMD divested its fabs to this joint venture. The legal wrangling had been an obsession for AMD and a diversion for Intel for several years, and neither could afford to further engage in such maneuvers. The settlement is a win for both, although it may not have much effect on Intel’s continuing governmental antitrust investigations around the world, and the win-win may be a little different than most analysis has indicated. Intel’s payment to AMD of $1.25 billion may be seen by some as an admission of guilt that it indeed was behaving badly, as AMD claimed. However, I see this differently. Intel is offering AMD a badly needed cash infusion. Strategically, Intel cannot afford to let AMD go out of business. It needs the competition — both to make sure it stays “paranoid” enough to manufacture industry-leading chips (look at what happened to Intel the last time AMD was not competitive), and also to avoid the reality of 34

complete monopolization of the PC market and all the additional scrutiny it would entail (yes, even more than Intel is already receiving ). AMD gets much-needed cash with which it can complete its transition to a fabless semiconductor company and to complete designs of its next-generation processor and graphics chips to make it more competitive. So this is a win-win for both companies. Intel also gets to focus on its real long-term threat — ARM Holdings and all of the licensees of the ARM chip designs (e.g.,

n Intel cannot afford to let AMD go out of business. It needs them for the competition to stay “paranoid” enough to make industry-leading chips

Qualcomm, TI, Freescale, Nvidia, Samsung, Marvel). While PC and server chips are its bread and butter, Intel understands that the sheer number of personal and consumer intelligent computing devices that will be built over the next several years will far outnumber what is sold in the traditional PC marketplace. These devices — smartphones, netbooks, home entertainment, smart appliances etc., all connected to the Internet — are not currently the domain of Intel and its i86 architecture. There are a variety of processor chips employed in these markets, but the biggest share of smartphone and MID-class devices is being captured by the ARM architecture. This poses a long-term threat to Intel. So Intel must compete in this space to stay healthy long term. That’s why Atom and its derivatives are critical to its future.

Intel also wins by licensing its intellectual property to the GlobalFoundries as it now constitutes another fab it can access should production needs require it to do so (and TSMC can’t adequately provide for Intel’s requirements). While we don’t expect immediate use by Intel of this channel, it does represent a needed “overflow capacity” should demand for Atom suddenly exceed planned uptake, which could happen if the next generation of chips really do provide the competitive position against ARM that the current Atom version can’t. So this is both a win for Intel and a potential win for GlobalFoundries as well (which has been struggling to fill its fabs). Bottom line: This settlement is a win for Intel on a number of fronts, and a win for AMD as well. Ultimately, it will mean better devices and a new competitive environment that will help the consumer and keep prices competitive. But it will also help Intel remain a dominant player in all aspects of the computer chip market in both current and future devices. Viewed in this way, the $1.25 billion payment to AMD from Intel is an expense well spent.  Jack Gold is the founder and principal analyst at J.Gold Associates , an information technology analyst firm based in Northborough, Mass.

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CHANNEL DIRECTIONS

VMware Seeks Partners to Evangelize Virtualization VMware expects its channel partners to play a critical role in taking its solutions to its end customers as virtualization gets mass appeal. GANESAN ARUMUGAM Director, Partners, VMware India Arumugam, a specialist in channel management, has over 15 years of experience in direct sales, channel and global partner management. He has previously worked at global enterprises including Hitachi Data Systems, Symantec and IBM.

Give us an overview of the major Virtualization trends you see? A prominent trend this year will be virtualization getting mass appeal. It will be adopted by not just the big business houses but mid-size and small businesses. As far as the tools for virtualization go even disk fragmentation tools are now virtualization aware. Consolidation is a big driver for virtualization followed by Business continuity, Disaster recovery and Utility which

VMware is committed to offering worldclass partner programs to meet the needs of every member of its partner ecosystem. We make it easy to do business with us and become more profitable by incorporating proven virtualization solutions into their business models.Business benefits such as increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness, server consolidation and infrastructure optimization are good selling points for them. We see enormous potential for

``Our channel partners now play a key role in spreading and evangelizing our message. They take on the role of becoming educatorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x2122; are new growth engines. In India, virtualization is expected to influence the end-toend infrastructure of an enterprise such as the server, storage, network, application and desktop. Server virtualization preludes adoption of virtualization as it offers visible benefits of consolidation like reduced operating expenditure and also has less effect on user operations. What programs do you have in place to better equip your partners? Our channel partners play a key role in taking our message to our customers. They become a part of a global movement for conservation of energy and imbibe and learn global best practices. VMware has an extensive Partner program, which consists of training each of its partners to deliver the best possible service to clients.

our partners in India. Virtualization is affecting most organizations in one form or the other today across the country. What outcomes are you aiming to achieve this year? VMware Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initiative is to recognize the partner eco-system for achievements in delivering the best possible service to customers. We equip partners with the tools and knowledge they would need to stand behind our customers and gain long-term competitive advantage in their virtualization practice. VMware will continue to focus on partner engagement programs during 2010. We plan to expand the System Integrators (SI) partner space and identify key partners who are committed and skilled on VMware products and solutions. Our channel partners now play a

key role in spreading and evangelizing our message. They take on the role of becoming educators on virtualization. Which market segments would you want your partners to drive sales in? Small businesses face many of the same IT challenges as larger businesses, trying to accommodate increasing demand for new IT capabilities and services. As the global leader in virtualization, VMware partners can provide a complete range of robust, reliable and cost-effective solutions, from free virtualization tools to start experiencing the benefits of virtualization today, to comprehensive platforms that can be deployed as building blocks in a flexible and configurable way to scale as the business grows. As our customers continue to grow their VMware deployments, our channel partners should take this opportunity by helping customers simplify and automate important IT management processes. If the first wave of the virtualization revolution was about reducing capital expenditures, the next wave is innovative virtualization management capabilities that allow IT to extricate itself from mundane tasks, become more productive, and reduce IT operating costs.

ChannelWorld

CUSTOM PUBLISHING

n Fast Track

eresource Infotech

Snapshot

eresource Infotech Founded: 2003 Headquarters: Mumbai Number of Employees: 64 Key Executives: Sudheer Nair, Founder & CEO; Vivek Jungadi, Director- Marketing; Renuka Somarajan, Head- Finance Revenue 2007–08: Rs 3.5 Crore Revenue 2008–09: Rs 7.8 Crore Key Principals: Microsoft, Intel Key Verticals: Manufacturing, Fleet Industry, Chemicals & Pharma, Infrastructure & Construction Key Technologies: ERP, CRM, CRP, MRP Website: www.eresourceerp.com

Vivek & Sudheer work on the

dictum that customer satisfaction is the key to stay put in business

ince its inception in 2003, eresource Infotech, had the established goal of setting out to be an ERP solution provider to be reckoned with. By 2006, it had also achieved the milestone of being India’s first web-based ERP company. Sudheer Nair, Founder & CEO, who started the company from a one bedroom apartment, believed that every company needs a system in place that helps in decision making and delivers on time, target and location and was hence drawn to ERP. He also realized the potential in web-based ERP instead of the client 36

server ERP and moved in that direction within three years of starting out, earning the company its repute and awards that range from Udyog Rattan Award to the Business Leadership Award by the Institute of In-

vertical Split nL ogistics (Fleet 20%

25%

30%

Industry) nM anufacturing

(Automobiles, Industries) n Chemical & Pharma n Infra & Construction

S o u rc e : e r e s o u rc e I n fot ec h

dustrial Development, New Delhi. “Our first implementation was for a manufacturing company that was working on a limited budget. They used our system on a trial basis and realized their dependence on its efficiency and agreed to buy it. There has been no looking back since and we are on our 109th implementation now,” says Nair. Nair believes that the reason eresource has achieved its standing is due to the guarantee of operational implementation coupled with RoI. This has brought back customers who believe in its capacity to carry out a deployment as promised. The ideology of the company is to stay respected in customer circles, and constantly innovate. “We have the policy of pre-implementing solutions in a POC center since each customer has specifics and the ‘one shoe fits all’ policy does not hold true. I believe that an organization needs to be disciplined, innovative and process driven to stay ahead,” he adds. The company has set the goal of growing to 17 cities across the country in the coming quarters. There is no thought of diversifying though, as Nair believes the road ahead lies in establishing themselves in the niche area of Web- based ERP.  — Tasneem Balapurwala

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Know Your Selling solutions is about identifying issues, and finding appropriate ways to address them By Trevor Clarke Illustration by Unnikrishnan AV

he scenario: There is a

200-seat company that needs help with its IT infrastructure. A solution provider has been eyeing them for a while and waiting for the right opportunity. So he decides to take a gamble and makes an appointment to

meet with an employee in its IT department. He is a friend of a friend, so the provider feels comfortable talking to him. He also knows that his competitor, who has pretty much the same offering as him, is scheduling a similar meeting next week. He doesn’t know

with whom, but he got in there first, so he is happy. He’s a bit nervous because it’s a completely new vertical, but, hey, a customer is a customer and he is ready to conquer the whole market so why not start now? Armed to the teeth with technical information about how good the of-

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n FEATURE | Solution Sales ferings his solution are, he goes in and gives a well-rehearsed presentation highlighting technical prowess and the knowledge of his team. The message: His products are as good as anybody’s, he is promising to do pretty much anything, and his team is top notch too, so the company should sign on the dotted line. Satisfied, he waits for a call from the IT department rep he met confirming that the company will meet his expectations and buy boxes from him. The call never comes. Why? Three reasons: The wrong person, the wrong conversation, and the wrong focus.

What went wrong? The first mistake our hypothetical protagonist made in this not altogether unrealistic example above, was speaking to the wrong person. Approaching a representative of the IT department, or even the IT manager, is starting off too low in the food chain. At a time when companies are watching costs closely, any new IT initiative is going to need the buy-in of the CIO for it to get off the ground. “If it is a small reseller, they should be talking to GMs and directors,” CEO of sales training organisation Salient Communication, Elliot Epstein, said. “But they end up primarily talking to an IT manager and going through an extended sales cycle – a straightforward solution sale ends up taking nine months when it shouldn’t have if they had gone to the right level early.” But even if this is realized and the reseller goes to the right people, they need to have the right conversation. According to research firm, IDC, the biggest mistake companies make when talking to CIOs is not knowing the target company’s business well enough. They should be spending 75 per cent of the initial contact period listening and asking questions, not pitching. Our hapless partner spent all his time focusing on the technologies, promising the world, and highlighting his team’s skills. In short, he took the ‘here is what I want to sell you’ route. Instead, he should have focused on learning the customer’s business and then tailored a solution that helps the client improve and achieve better 38

SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR SOLUTION PROVIDERS Do

Don’t

Speak to the right person. When companies are watching costs, any new IT initiative is going to need the buy-in of the CIO to get it started.

Promise the world, and highlight your team’s skills and technologies and take the ‘here is what I want to sell you’ route, without understanding what your client wants.

Have the right conversation. According to research firm, IDC, the biggest mistake companies make is not knowing the target company’s business well enough.

Sell without knowing what your client does in intimate detail and understand where the root of their IT pain is. You aren’t going to be able to provide a solution that solves their problems.

Tailor a solution that helps the client improve and achieve better business outcomes.

Simply offer lip service to the business situation a customer is in. They will eventually struggle to convince the right people in their organization to buy into new IT expenditure.

Listen to what the client’s requirements are and find the solution for that requirement in a package rather than pulling together five or six different ones.

business outcomes. If you don’t know your client’s business or are venturing into unfamiliar verticals, over-promising can ultimately lead to business failure for all parties. While most channel players are pretty savvy with starting small, building up with engagements and getting client recommendations, there is a tendency for some to try and be everything to everybody.

The solution “It is amazing how many people don’t even know what their clients really do – whether their clients are expanding, whether they are contracting, whether they are trying to grow a market in one vertical or another,” says Elliot

75%

of the initial contact period should be spent listening and asking questions, not pitching

Take a rigid approach to pricing and offer more than one option.

Epstein, CEO of sales training organization Salient Communication. “They simply don’t understand their customers’ customers.” Clearly, if you don’t know what your client does in intimate detail and understand where the root of their IT pain is, you aren’t going to be able to provide a solution that will solve their problems. And if you don’t know your client’s business or are venturing into unfamiliar verticals, over-promising can ultimately lead to business failure for all parties. While most channel players are pretty savvy with starting small, building up with engagements and getting client recommendations, there is a tendency for some to try and be everything to everybody. Yes, branching out into new markets is a good thing, but having a clearly defined focus on which verticals you will play in is key. So essentially the message is to understand whom to talk to, what conversation to have, and better define your own market focus when taking solutions to customers. For integrators the lesson is simple – avoid techno speak when pitching solutions to prospective clients. Talk about technical concepts, products and approaches in layman’s terms so

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soluTIoN sAles | FeATure n that even your grandmother could understand what you are saying. Language is important, and if you are not speaking the client’s, then you are not communicating effectively.

Keep IT relevANT relevANT To Them Like every other business, vendors have to adopt a narrative that positions their solutions in the right cost-saving, productivity-improving, benefit-laden light. and arguably more than anybody else in the channel, they need to ensure their partners get this message and articulate it to customers. Many vendors believe they do need to, from a channel partners’ perspective, show how the customer is going to get a defined return on investment (roi) and be able to demonstrate how the solutions they are putting forward really do provide a short roi. While everyone is talking about roi and total cost of ownership at the moment, that doesn’t mean the message is without substance. but if you only give lip service to the business

Know what your client does in intimate detail and understand where the root of their IT pain is to provide a solution situation a customer is in, they will consequently struggle to convince the right people in their organization to buy into new iT expenditure. Partners also need to ensure they are taking a flexible approach to pricing and offer more than one option. “unless you leave yourself quite flexible, you will find it is hard to sell,” ca security business unit senior director, andrew ndrew Kelly, said. ““all the customer environments differ that much – some have a preference for

solaris, some for Windows, some for Linux. all of those things can muck the package around a bit so i think the key is try and look for common subsets so you get a talking point for the customer. but leave yourself flexible to actually alter the package. it is very hard to give a fixed price and say take it or leave it, because customers are just too varied.” it is common for some partners to pull together five different vendors in their own product range to patch together a solution, particularly in highly competitive and diverse markets like security. however, some experts feel that they would be better off spending the time doing the research and getting a full solution pack from one vendor. so you need to actually take a step back and listen to what the client’s requirements are and find the solution for that requirement in a package rather than pulling together five or six different ones. They should sell the client what they want, not what the channel partner wants to sell them. n

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n Opinion

Bart Perkins

Fending off the Business Case Blues

f you want to hear your employees whine, just ask them

to create a business case for their next project proposal. All together now: “That’s too much work.” “This project is so simple it doesn’t need one.” “It’s a no-brainer, really. You should just go ahead and approve it.” Ignore the whining. Yes, business cases require time and effort, but projects generally eat up significant corporate resources. Comparing comprehensive business cases is still the best way to make tradeoffs about which projects to fund. Of course, you’re not going to be able to convince everyone of the reasonableness of the business case requirement. Some, faced with the prospect of twisting a nonstandard project into the standard corporate business case template, will assault you with arguments for skipping the business case that might seem unassailable. Among the more compelling arguments you might hear are the following: This project is required to meet regulatory mandates: Cases like this can be light in the benefit descriptions. But the case still has to be made. Not being hit with fines, penalties and liability is a benefit. And the business case must clearly describe how the project addresses regulatory requirements. Too often, projects are put into 40

the regulatory funding bucket on slim pretexts. For example, in the early days of Sarbanes-Oxley , many companies found they were being told that previously deferred financial projects were required for compliance reasons. Many weren’t. We need this project to reduce a critical risk: Projects such as disaster recovery planning, business interruption planning, and security services are difficult to justify with a standard business case, since they neither increase revenues nor reduce costs. These projects address

n Business cases help clarify and quantify project requirements and contingency plans, which enhance the chances that the project will be a success

low-probability situations with potentially huge consequences. In such cases, under benefits, you need to quantify the cost of the anticipated failure (e.g., how much revenue will be lost per hour if the reservation system is down?) This project furthers our corporate mission: This argument is typically used in not-for-profit organizations and government agencies, where revenue concerns are secondary. Even then, it is viable only if the organization has created and prioritized a few clearly articulated strategic imperatives that support its mission. Projects can then be evaluated based on the degree to which they support one or more of these imperatives. This might sound crazy, but ...: This argument attempts to circumvent the business case review process, often when a project includes largely unverifiable assumptions.These

projects typically represent a new business paradigm and may appear too risky to undertake. A few of these projects, often proposed by true visionaries, do deserve to be funded, and a business case is a first step toward helping you recognize whether a visionary project has real potential. A classic example is the iPod, which has dramatically changed the way music is sold. It’s worth noting that although few organizations can afford to fund this type of project during a recession, Joseph Schumpeter, the well-respected economist, asserted that recessions are actually an excellent time to invest in these groundbreaking efforts. Remember, business cases enforce rigorous project planning, which is a crucial component of project success. While some resistance to developing business cases is understandable, the truth is that a compelling business case can be your project’s best friend. You can use it to help clarify and quantify project requirements and contingency plans, which actually enhances the chances that the project will eventually be a success. And you have to love anything that can keep your project from going down the drain, along with your job.  Bart Perkins is managing partner at Louisville-based Leverage Partners, which helps organizations invest well in IT.

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Spot Light

I l lu s t r at i o n by U n n i k r i s h n a n A .V

everything you wanted to know and more

Inside PAGE 42: Opening Corporate Doors PAGE 44: Is the hype and the political popularity surrounding cloud computing turning attention away from the Open Source movement? PAGE 46: Case Study: How Open Source helped ING Life grow by over a 100 branches and save over Rs 8 crore last year PAGE 50: Opinion: Is Open Source ERP right for you? Or there are too many “empty calories” in an ERP spend?

Going Mainstream

Is Open Source, the once scruffy outsider, set to be king in 2010? By John Fontana Illustration by Unnikrishnan AV

rguably the biggest

prediction for 2010 around Open Source and Linux is that most end-users won’t talk about it or even think about it. But that won’t be a death knell; it’s a coronation. Experts say no more will Open Source and Linux be the scruffy-bearded outsider to dressed-up packaged software. Open Source is working its way into everything, functioning behind the scenes as the brains for new client access devices such as smartphones, new applications built off existing open source technology and service-based apfebruary 01, 2010

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n SPOTLIGHT | Open Source plications that live in the cloud. The focus is function and not the underlying technology. Perhaps Mike Olson, Sleepy Cat founder and now Cloudera CEO, said it best when he told Network World, “At Sleepy Cat, we were proud to be an Open Source company. At Cloudera, I think of us as an enterprise software company that happens to be built on open source software.” In addition, governments and other IT organizations in 2010 will validate Open Source through adoption-based on set policies and begin to bring it through the front door based on feature and functionality needs, rather than sneaking it in the backdoor. It is that recognition of the capa-

Vendors are more likely to work through foundations and other groups on their Open Source efforts of what we are predicting to happen in 2010.” Gillen says that fact is most prominent in cloud computing. “For anybody building a cloud service that is not a derivative of an existing installed application, there is a pretty good probability that Linux and/or Open Source components are going to be part of the stack that gets deployed in that cloud. Today you don’t have any other options. You can’t build a Windows cloud.” Microsoft in February will crank up billings for its Azure cloud platform, but the big push there is to rally developers to build the apps that people will want to consume or can’t live without. For Open Source, “platform” also is shaping up to be another big theme in 2010, according to insiders. “Open Source apps are consistently becoming a platform that is being

built on,” says Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of MindTouch. “This has surprised many open source vendors who thought they were building an application.” Fulkerson says that trend could find legs in 2010 as base software packages become the foundation for new classes of applications and services. Jay Lyman, an analyst with the 451 Group, says open source and Linux in 2010 will find equal footing alongside proprietary software when companies evaluate new tools. He cites a US Department of Defense (DOD) memo in October that clarified guidance on the agency’s use of Open Source. The memo said the technology was equal to commercial software in almost all cases and by law should be considered by the agency when making purchase decisions. Lyman says the economy, the evolution and maturity of Open Source , and the presence of more commercial support are opening corporate eyes to the technology. “We still see a lack of policy on Open Source adoption in many organizations, but things like the DOD memo help facilitate a more official and formal adoption of open source,” he says. Lyman says other expected 2010 trends include wider Open Source penetration in new industries such as healthcare. He cites Medsphere’s support options around the OpenVista electronic health records software.

Opening Corporate Doors bilities rather than the development model that contributed to IDC leaving out the term “open source” when it discussed the technology as part of its predictions for 2010. “I think the reason why is that open source has become a standard part of the industry and it’s not necessarily something we raise an eyebrow toward,” says Al Gillen, program vice president for system software at IDC. “The larger trends that are happening now are in part, or in a significant way, being assisted, driven or enabled by open source. Open source under the covers is very much a component 42

he combination of pumped-up technical features and relatively low prices are giving vendors with Open Source-based products more inroads to corporate networks than ever before. “In the dot-com bust it was Unix to Linux migration because Linux was cheaper than Solaris on SPARC,” says Barry Crist, CEO of Likewise, a maker of integration and identity management software for mixed environments. “Phase 2 [of corporate open source adoption] has been accelerated by the current economic conditions. IT is looking to do things in a costeffective manner and there are a lot of viable open source solutions out there.” “The license terms attached to products have become secondary to the value it offers,” says Mike Olson, the CEO of Cloudera. “People now are much more rational about how they adopt technology across the board. Open source is a detail, not a defining characteristic.” Adoption has also been fueled by the success of established Open Source companies such as Red Hat, Novell, Alfresco and SugarCRM, which have proven to enterprise users that it isn’t the development process but the results (and quality support) that matter.

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Open Source | spotlight n

Is cloud computing killing open source?

ccording to Andrea DiMaio, a member of the Gartner Blog Network, the increased use of cloud computing could be diminishing the use of Open Source. In this post, specifically looking at the government vertical, Andrea asserts that while cloud computing and Open Source are clearly linked, the hype and the political popularity surrounding cloud computing is turning attention away from the Open Source movement. Core to this issue is that the usage of both is driven around the cost advantages. “Therefore, some of the primary drivers to choose open source, i.e. cost and vendor independence, are just going away: In most cases, cloud-based solution are going to be cheaper (and more elastic), and to use open source one has to go through a vendor anyhow. As a consequence, I have seen a drop of interest in open source and corresponding surge of interest in cloud computing to solve pretty much the same problems (how do I reduce my dependence on Microsoft? How do I save on licensing costs?),” DiMaio wrote. I see the same trend in the marketplace

He also sees the lines between developers and operations managers blurring in terms of Open Source as the two groups sit side-by-side in meetings and on projects, and that vendors are more likely to work through foundations and other groups on their open source efforts, what he calls a “foundational approach” to Open Source. He adds that another significant trend in 2010 will show more Open Source adoption in small-to-midsized businesses. “There are more channel players and VARs, system integrators, hosters and other service providers, and all these players are incorporating more open source into their offerings. So in many cases SMB customers do not know it is Open Source or they don’t care.” This year is likely to explode the growing concept of free hardware, says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. 44

as well. Typically, advocates of open source technology are now turning to cloud computing, both inside the government and the Global 2000. They say cloud computing: l Removes the costly and time-intensive

hardware acquisition component that you need for any on-premise system, open source or not. lR emoves the number of people you need to keep around to maintain on-premise systems, open source or not. lC an be quickly provisioned and easily expanded. You can decide to leverage a cloud provider at 9 a.m. and be up and running by noon, if not sooner. lH as proven to be a faster way to get rid Microsoft and IBM licensing costs. l I s more politically correct than open source, and it’s viewed as innovative. What’s funny about all this is that cloud computing has actually expanded the use of open source technology. The fact is that almost all of the larger cloud computing providers leverage open source to drive their datacenters and at a massive scale. However, when considering that most IT

“This is the industry moving toward a services model where you make money on thing like iTunes or app stores or Nokia’s Ovi service, or wireless data plans, but not hardware. You’ll see more free computers, free phones, and free consumer products bundled with services.” Along those lines, Zemlin predicts the rise of the app warehouse in 2010, which is a place that gives developers a supply chain to distribute their applications to many outlets. “That could be a carrier, an operating system vendor or a PC maker, but a single independent software vendor is not going to market their wares to each individual app store,” Zemlin says. He also says reports of the death of Linux on netbooks will be exposed as overly exaggerated, and he says the Linux Foundation has a few things up its sleeve that he declined to discuss. In all, 2010 could hold a diverse

organizations will leverage open source technology via the cloud, logically the use of open source technology could indeed find reduced use in the local datacenter. I would not cry for open source, however. The larger impact will be on more traditional players, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, who will also find that cloud computing cuts into their bottom line. Of course, each is rolling out its own cloud computing offerings, but each is hooked on the huge revenues around the sales of on-premise software licensees, and none has the same revenue opportunities in the cloud. Considering the emerging patterns, the larger cloud computing players won’t be the traditional software and hardware guys. It’s going to be new and existing companies that are “pure play” cloud and don’t have an on-premise software or hardware horses in the race. These pure-plays seem to be more innovative and nimble, which will be a winning trait to be successful with cloud computing. David Linthicum InfoWorld

number of developments and evolutionary steps, including once again the Linux desktop — especially since GNOME is set for a significant transformation in the form of the 3.0 version that will ship in September. Major overhauls are not part of Gnome’s DNA. The 3.0 version will introduce a new desktop shell built with the Clutter toolkit and add a new tool called Zeitgeist, a journallike alternative to conventional file management. It could also be the year of the big surprise, says Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, Novell’s openSUSE community manager. “2009 has obviously been a pretty rough year all around, there were a lot of layoffs,” he says. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if something comes out of left field from some of the smart people who found themselves out of work. Lots of smart folk have had a lot of time on their hands.” 

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n SPOTLIGHT | Open Source

ING Gets a New Lease on Life How Open Source helped ING Life grow by over a 100 branches and save over Rs 8 crore last year By Sneha Jha Illustration by Unnikrishnan AV

ser adoption has tradition-

ally been a stumbling block for Open Source. According to North Bridge Venture Partners’ 2009 Future of Open Source Survey, “unfamiliarity with Open Source software” was one of the five barriers enterprises cited to Open Source adoption. That said, there are enterprises that have embraced Open Source and achieved enormous benefits. ING Life is just one among them. Open Source helped the company to save over Rs 8 crore and funded its expansion plans. Competition in India’s life insurance business is fierce. According to India’s Insurance Regulatory Development Authority, only two of the country’s 20-odd

insurance players have broken even. ING Life isn’t one of the two. Which is why, like most of its competition, the company has been consistently trying to expand its network. And rural India, with its lower insurance penetration, is where everyone’s headed. Also, competition in the rural hinterlands is low compared to the metros where all players exercise their muscle. The Bangalore-based ING Life has a network of 265 offices spread out over 234 cities and towns. But that’s still a far cry from ICICI Prudential Life Insurance’s 2,100 branches (which also began operation about eight years ago). The problem with the rural push is that it’s expensive. But the high cost of servicing these non-metro clients

If we can package the whole thing on a shoestring budget,we’ll be able to target more sales and service centers countrywide Ravishankar Subramanian, Director-IT & Corporate services, ing life

is not compensated because, almost counter-intuitively, insurance comes at a relatively low price. That makes rural expansion a risky business. All of which makes optimizing cost an imperative, not an option for ING Life.

Opening a Window of Opportunity If ING Life wanted to contribute to the rural push, it knew it would have to lower the cost of setting up branches by attacking IT infrastructure. Some IT optimization had already been done. Because ING Life’s field force only spent a small fraction of their working day at the office, the company had ensured that branches pooled resources, which meant that every computer serviced every four or five sales managers. But hardware was a modest cost-reduction target and delivered short-term tactical gains. In order to achieve longer-term benefits, the company wanted to target software costs and that was they considered Linux as a cost-effective alternative. ING Life evaluated that Open Source would help it in reducing the IT cost of a new branch by 25 % and bring the total cost of setting up a new branch

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Thomas Edison with his Phonograph

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n SPOTLIGHT | Open Source by 5 percent. Going Open Source dramatically reduced the Rs 85,000 ING Life was paying Microsoft for every PC running Windows XP over a six- year period. The company started on a pilot in April 2008. ING Life’s Jayanagar branch in Bangalore was chosen as the site for a two month pilot. All of the branch’s computers were moved to SUSE Linux. The results of the pilot were encouraging because we didn’t find any surprises,” says Ravishankar Subramanian, director-IT and corporate services, ING Life. With the success of the pilot, Subramanian felt confident of embarking on a final roll out. And he did it quickly. Between June and December of 2008, ING Life moved 1,200 of its 2,000 desktops to Open Source. “Right now SUSE Linux and Open Office are being used by 5,000 employees. That’s the magnitude of this change,” says Subramanian.

Getting On With the Program “When I first heard of the migration, I was very apprehensive. I thought the cultural shift would be very hard,” says Venkat Reddy Peddolla, deputy manager, customer service, Secunderabad,

ING Life. “My biggest fear was adapting to a whole new range of changes. My level of technical expertise isn’t very high. Making adjustments to Linux was a big deal.” But the company successfully adapted to the new environment. One of the first things Subramanian did was to ensure that users, enterprisewide, knew that management backed the Open Source push. “The MD, Kshitij Jain, went to all the locations and talked about the benefits of this project. Similarly, Rahul Agarwal, who heads sales, and Shamit Gupta, the head of marketing, talked about the importance of getting this right. That brought about a change in perception. The senior management saw me through the project,” says Subramanian. Subramanian used computer based training (CBT) that would get users acquainted with the new interfaces and acquire the necessary skills and expertise to handle SLED. “I even visited small sites. We offered them a carrot: We’d be able to supply them with more hardware for the same cost this way. They had a few issues but, by and large, they were willing to give it a try,” he says. “I knew the cost involved with working on MS

Opening up the minds

here is no denying that it’s the efforts of CIOs and IT administrators that brought the open source to the mainstream. However, for most Open Source project, it’s inevitable for a CIO to talk the language of management and convince them about why the company should go for Open Source. In ING Life’s case, it wasn’t an easy task for Ravishankar Subramanian, DirectorIT and Corporate Services, to get a ‘go ahead’ from the top management. The top management of ING Life actually thought that Open Source would disrupt the business! Even as the idea germinated in his mind, he knew that migrating all the company’s Windows XP desktops, its WS 2003 servers and ING Life’s core applications to Open Source would be a large-scale change initiative. He was also acutely aware that nobody in the ING Group had ever attempted something as radical and that if he wanted to do this he would need to make an airtight case to the senior management of the group in Hong Kong.

Subramanian was certain the management would first want to know if less extreme options had been covered. So he approached Microsoft for a more cost-effective solution. According to Subramanian, Microsoft lowered its cost by 20 percent by reducing the number of components it offered. That’s when he decided to present a SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) plan to the senior brass in Hong Kong. His case was built on three pillars: growth, cost and savings. What really acted as a counterbalance to management’s doubts was this: The strategy would cut the IT cost of a new branch by 25 % and bring the total cost of setting up a new branch by 5 %. It would also reduce the Rs 85,000 ING Life was paying Microsoft for every PC running Windows XP over a six-year period. The potential savings piqued the management’s interest and they decided to send a risk assessment team to study the proposal. “This gave with me the confidence that I could indeed pull this off,” concludes Subramanian.

Office and we all understood the need to reduce that cost. I understood that it was only a matter training. The change was not as hard as I had anticipated,” says Peddolla. The company also focused on training its employees. The 20-man project team comprised people who would form the fulcrum of the change and were trained for five months on Linux and UNIX. The company also hired an Open Source helpdesk team from an outsourcer. The hired helpdesk handled first issues and escalated more complex problems to the in-house experts. Other user problems revolved around compatibility. “When we sent (remote offices) something from the head office which was on Window to the field which was on Linux, there were compatibility issues,” recalls Kumar. Another challenge was e-mail. Some employees who had been with the company for a long time kept their e-mails offline. “To make it work on a new e-mail front-end from Linux posed a technical challenge because of the sheer volume of the files,” says Subramanian. For some of these issues, Subramanian went back to Novell to see how closely they could match Microsoft in terms of features. In the case of automatic archival of old e-mails, Novell gave them a solution which was close to the Microsoft way out. “They are progressively giving us upgrades closer to the Microsoft system,” says Subramanian.

Oh! For Open The project’s success isn’t limited to happy employees. Even after adding the costs of travel and onsite support (about Rs 4 lakh) and training (about Rs 4 lakh), ING Life still saved money. At only about Rs 2,000 per SUSE license a year, it is saving Rs 43,000 on every machine over six years. Back-of-theenvelope calculations of those savings spread across 2,000 machines add up to Rs 8.6 crore over six years. ING Life, which grew by about a 100 branches last year (up from 40 the year before) knows that it has plenty of catching up to do. Hopefully, the monies that it saved through its ‘mission open source’ will go some distance in opening up India’s heartland for them. 

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Alexander Graham Bell with his telephone

16-17 April, 2010. BAngAlore

n Tagline

opinion | spotlight n

Is Open Source ERP right for you?

ow about we play an ERP word-associa-

tion game: I say ERP costs, what words come to mind? Expensive? Never ending? Increasing? Heartburn-inducing? How about cheap? Probably not. It doesn’t take an economist to realize that IT needs to be doing everything it can to reduce ongoing expenses right now. Two of the chief responsibilities for CIOs in 2009 are increasing implementation speed and lowering costs. Does a massive, 18-month, multimilliondollar ERP rollout, with the odds of implementation and user acceptance stacked against you and 22% annual maintenance costs to boot, seem appropriate now? ERP industry guru Vinnie Mirchandani likes to say that there are too many “empty calories” in ERP spend, especially in SAP and Oracle maintenance fees. Now is clearly not the time to be ordering up large portions of highlycaloric ERP software rollouts. Now let’s play word association with Open Source ERP. Are you thinking untested or unreliable or “not for us”? In late 2007, CIO surveyed 400 IT leaders about their ERP systems. Despite innovation, integration and cost issues, CIOs said they remained committed to on-premise, traditional ERP systems. Just 9% reported using an alternative ERP model. Those models included software as a service, Open Source tools and various in-house apps. With Open Source ERP, two CIOs I interviewed summed it up best: “Would I want to go Open Source ERP? I’m not so sure. I’m pretty conservative,” said one. The other said, “It’s not proven yet.” Some time has passed since that 50

survey, and IT shops might want to re-look at Open Source ERP options from Openbravo, Compiere, ERP5, Open ERP and xTuple (formerly OpenMFG). Cutter Consortium senior consultant Vince Kellen says that Open Source will get a “second chance to get a toe in the door” this year. “Initially, adopters will look for focused or niche applications, including office software for desktops, rather than rip-and-replace ERP swap-outs,” Kellen notes. “However, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more early adopters attempt large-scale Open

n In late 2007, CIO surveyed 400 IT leaders about their ERP systems. Despite innovation, integration and cost issues, they said they remained committed to on-premise, traditional ERP systems. Just 9% reported using an alternative ERP model.

Source ERP.” I spoke with Openbravo COO Josep Mitja. His company had published its ERP code on Sourceforge in 2006 (so it’s had a couple of years to germinate), and today, Openbravo’s ERP application has been downloaded more than 1 million times via Sourceforge. (It’s a 100% free download.) Mitja told me something that is quite relevant to on-premise/traditional vs. SaaS vs. Open Source discussions today. “Users and business owners don’t care whether it’s Open Source or not,” Mitja says. “They want something to solve their needs at the best possible price.” When asked about the perception that Open Source ERP applications can’t handle the complexity and scale of today’s corporate environments, Mitja acknowledges that “the barriers to entry” have been higher for Open Source providers like his. But, not surprisingly, he says that the collaborative environment in which the products have evolved and near constant feedback Openbravo has received have strengthened Openbravo’s products. Of course, Open Source ERP applications, just like SaaS and other cloud computing-type solutions, are not the answer to all of ERP’s woes — those complexity, cost and vendor lock-in issues that can be overwhelming. But Open Source ERP is now a viable and cost-effective alternative during these unpredictable economic times. Everybody’s changing these days. But just how open are you to changing your IT strategy and softwarebuying habits?  Thomas Wailgum is senior editor at CIO, US. Send feedback on this column to editor@channelworld.in.

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The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur with their airplane

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Sizing it up

An initially small task at Kale Consultants saw MIEL e-Security overcome challenges and execute a more complex project By Yogesh Gupta Illustration by Unnikrishnan AV

ale Consultants, a competent solutions provider to the global Airline, Logistics and Travel (ALT) industry, was faced with a daunting business challenge in 2008. A 30% data increase YoY in KPO operations resulted in an urgent need for data backup architecture, says Mahesh Shah, Executive Vice President, Kale Consultants. The company delivers products through license-based, outsourced or hosted media. With a dedicated focus on developing solutions for travel and transportation cus52

tomers globally, data backup and DR became very sensitive, he adds.

FOR A PIECE OF THE PIE The project kicked off with a requirement for competent backup software. With a relatively large enterprise-like setup, Kale Consultants became a desirable account for leading vendors directly, or through large SIs. With every vendor vying to be the customer’s long term strategic partner, this led to a ‘price dropping’ strategy. Mahesh Shah says, “A multi-vendor scenario is always beneficial for both sides to

get a true picture. We shared our commercial pain points for the vendor to rework their payment terms and offer the best priced solution.” From 2006, MIEL e-Security had a minuscule footprint with Kale Consultants executing ‘bits and pieces’ of their security infrastructure like ISO, Vulnerability assessment etc. “It was an open enquiry where vendors were invited to execute successful POCs”, says Anuj Gupta, Director, MIEL eSecurity. “At the end of 2008, the recession further shrunk the customer’s budget. IT budgets suddenly reduced

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case study n

Case File Key parties: Kale Consultants, MIEL e-Security, Symantec,EMC, NetApp,Tandberg,VMWare,Fortinet Locations: Mumbai, Thane, Pune Project Cost: Rs 1 crore Implementation time: 1 year Major Technologies: Data Backup, Storage, Server Consolidation, Security Solutions Key Activities: Site Analysis, Security, SI, Post sales support Post Implementation ROI: Data Protection, Reduced Risk of Data loss, Less TCO & Operations Costs

apart from becoming skeptical about spending his dollars,” says Amit Vyas, Business Manager, Availability & Storage Solutions, MIEL e-Security. The customer looked for a competent solution provider who would own this deployment and make it work across platforms. We evaluated a number of vendors but no one reflected the confidence to execute the project, recalls Shah. We shared the previous failure and made it crystal clear to them – make it happen and take the payments”, he says.

THE FIRST HURDLE

to a mere 30% of the initial funds allocated. For 6 months, the price dropping was bizarre,” says Gupta.

ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY In 2007, another vendor implemented a backup solution at Kale Consultants. This ‘not too successful’ engagement took a relatively long time for final product assessment, recalls Shah. The key requirement remained the capability of the backup solution to shrink the data and effectively backup across Oracle and SQL platforms. That backup solution did not support Oracle, he says. “Initially, there was a doubt

whether the customer would really go ahead with the project after POC due to the previous time’s results. A cautious customer has high expectations

Kale Consultants demanded a reasonably in depth POC. From mid 2008, MIEL engaged with the client through a POC on Symantec Net Backup. The demand for end-to-end availability across different technologies meant the need for standardization of IT architecture. Vyas says, “We worked

MIEL is a medium growing, agile organization. It is a company which understands and reacts quickly to customer pain points Mahesh Shah, Executive VP, Kale Consultants

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n case study closely with the customer’s IT team to gather and process information regarding their setup, solutions, working on the SI plans and checking compatibilities.” In a complex IT environment (OS, Server Hardware, Applications, Storage, Network); issues like down times, policies of compliance, became crucial,” says Vyas. Within the first month of the project, MIEL realized that it was a typical enterprise environment with product limitations and technology challenges. “A POC in a smaller environment is different than the demanding environment of a real infrastructure,” says Gupta. The heterogeneous environment with incumbent policies along with a fast growing IT project infused the need to rebuild the entire infrastructure. This meant a chance to emerge as a holistic solution provider, he says.

‘The tech team led from the front’

uring the pre-sales project phase at Kale Consultants, MIEL delivered numerous technical presentations and alterations during the technical design, feasibility study, and deployment planning. “This was to ensure our supremacy in the final round while competing against most vendors from the industry,” says Anuj Gupta, Director, MIEL E-Security. A clincher for the project’s success at Kale Consultants, according to Gupta was a rather diverse approach. “We took an initiative to let our technical team lead from the front,” he adds. With a robust technology background, Amit Vyas, Business Manager, Availability & Storage Solutions, MIEL e-Security was instrumental as the ‘front face’ for this project. Be it technology, vendor or commercial meetings, Vyas took the lead. The customer gained confidence as most queries were instantly answered reflecting MIEL’s technical expertise. “The customer was cautious from the prior ‘not too successful’ deployment, but had a full-fledged technology roadmap. My job role was to speak the roadmap lan-

THE CHALLENGES CONTINUE Kale Consultants was undergoing an IT consolidation phase across four locations in 2007– 08. “While interacting with the airline transaction business, there was no scope for any downtime or goof up. They wanted a scalable project which encompassed ‘Enterprise product solutions at SMB prices’,” says Gupta. Complexities like interoperability, availability, security and related technical challenges multiplied, as the customer kept adding solutions across storage, firewall etc, says Vyas. For the first two orders, MIEL gave flexible payment terms to win the customer’s confidence. “Half way through the project, the recession receded and Kale Consultants sensed business benefits in investing in technology architecture through us,” says Gupta.

Vyas. This helped MIEL engage more with their storage environment. The customer then exposed the infrastructure to us, requesting a technology roadmap for three years, says Gupta. A high level of post-sales commitment was expected and MIEL were asked to submit their Opex plan for the next two years to adapt to the dynamic business requirements. “Opex costs had to be frozen, including renewals till 2011,” says

FROM SMALL TO BIG During POC at the Mumbai office, the MIEL team was engaged with studying the ‘backup and restore’ environment. The customer was experiencing a loss of nearly 900 hrs of downtime a year due to repeated reboots in their Linux architecture. “We did an application tuning through JBoss – an open source utility by Red Hat which solved the problem to a great extent. This goodwill gesture gave us confidence and instilled faith in the customer,” recalls 54

The environment with its incumbent policies infused the need to rebuild the entire infrastructure Anuj Gupta, Director, Miel e-Security

guage and not sales pitch,” says Vyas. Mahesh Shah, Executive Vice President, Kale Consultants agrees, “Sales people usually sell what they have in their portfolio without realizing customer pain points. Being from tech pre-sales, Vyas understood, translated and mapped our project requirement in an enhanced way.” “There were small issues like delivery delays, and system expectiation from both sides, but that did not stop us from talking to each other. We could resolve issues faster speaking directly to technical team at the forefront,” says Shah. “This was not a planned move as our sales team usually manages relationship accounts for most projects. Except initial deals, the technical team of MIEL interfaced the customer most of the time during this project. MIEL has now replicated this model for half-a-dozen of its deals, wherein they would keep the sales guy in the background. The technical team driven by Amit Vyas would interact more often with end customers,” says Gupta. Gupta. “When they succeeded with a backup solution, MIEL became more than a ‘one off’ transactional vendor. DR storage capacity planning was extended as we involved MIEL with data security, storage and solutions around it, says Shah.

WORTH THE EFFORTS The project was executed in two phases across 12 months in 2009. From a backup perspective, the time window was less than customer expectation. Also, data reliability is a lot higher, agrees Shah. The roadmap ahead includes creation of near online DR and migration from tape to disk- based backup. With laptop proliferation, security through employee machines is a concern area,” foresees Shah. “MIEL is a medium-growing, agile and listening organization which reacts quickly to customer pain points.” What started as a small data backup solution grew to almost ten times the order. The key learning here was to never underestimate the customer’s requirement,” sums up Gupta. 

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n Fast Track

Mikroz InfoSecurity

Snapshot

ikroz InfoSecurity pursues a suc-

cessful single-point business strategy: “Our focus is addressing the IT security concerns of our clients as if they are our own. Our first deal was cut after nearly 18 to 24 months of working with a single client,” says Capt. Ashok B. Shiroor, MD of Mikroz InfoSecurity. His wife Sushma, the company’s director, elaborates, “We started small and once our clients became confident, a strong and long relationship was forged. We build IT solutions which deliver absolute value for money.” According to the couple, today Information Security is a large enough market for everyone. Ethics, structure, transparency, commitment and a ‘live or die with’ attitude, is the success mantra that gives them the edge. With the majority of revenue coming from enterprise customers (75%), the company has been progressing at 20% CAGR over the past few years. Data Leak Prevention, Remote Access and Video Conferencing are also gaining momentum, says Capt Shiroor. The biggest challenge was building the brand and selling an unknown, indigenous information security product to a corporate. “I hail from an army background”, says 41- year-old Shiroor. The status changer was a countrywide end-point security PO with the Punjab National Bank across 1,400+ branches in 250+ locations. “We have built an efficient tech support team, but are still working on a strong sales/marketing team”, he says. The company’s model of delivering PoCs to prospects however continues to bear expected fruit, he reasons. Mikroz InfoSecurity is execut-

Our clients trust us to understand their needs, say Capt. Ashok B. Shiroor & Sushma A. Shiroor

Mikroz InfoSecurity Founded: 2005 Headquarters: New Delhi Key Executives: Capt.Ashok B.Shiroor – MD, Sushma A.Shiroor- Director, Saugato Banerjee- Head (Business Development),Vikas Jain- CTO, Ravi Prakash,Manager (Sales) Revenue 2009-10 (Expected): Rs.5 Crore Revenue 2008- 09 : Rs.3.75 Crore Revenue 2007- 08 : Rs.3.19 Crore Employees : 30 Key Principals : Symantec, McAfee, NeoAccel, Fortinet, IronPort Key Business Activities: Information Security & Availability Web Site : www.mikrozol.com

vertical split n Government 15%

n Education n IT/ITes

5% 45%

nO thers (Manufacturing,

Defence,Media,BFSI )

35%

S o u rc e : M i k r o z I n fo S ec u r i t y

ing large deployments of security / VPN solutions from NeoAccel across Banking, Government and Automotive sectors. “NeoAccel solutions have been a healthy revenue stream, since our business model is contact-based,” he says. The business opportunity of Remote Access is getting larger, with the current buzz-phrase ‘cloud computing’ getting increasing prominence. The company will explore innovations like security around DLP, Cloud Computing, and Video Conferencing. “We will be extending solutions to more countries and there is a plan to set up three more offices, says Capt.Shiroor.  — Yogesh Gupta

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n leadership secrets

Manu Parpia

‘Stay Persistent and Focused’

anu Parpia, Founder and Vice Chairman,

Geometric is a stalwart who has stood humble through the years and believes in the mantrawhen treading the journey of life, you should follow your heart. A Chemical Engineer from McGill University, Parpia started his career with Humphreys & Glasgow Consultants. “In the eighties, Jamshed Godrej requested me to develop a business of electronic typewriters. I had just busted a business and had nothing to do anyway, so I jumped in,” he recalls. In 1992–93, he felt driven to do something diverse.

Parpia already had a clear vision of a company in mind (later named Geometric) , and had in place its VC, international shareholders, and employees along with the financial minutes. “It was a complex route as software was a buzzword

and the number of VCs were less, but an entrepreneur needs to be persistent and focused”, he suggests. Always appreciating a good quality in every person, Parpia puts forth, “There have been many people who have influenced me. My father, a lawyer by profession went into the minutest of details to understand a problem and I have learnt attention to detail from him. Vasant Seth of Great Eastern and Naval Godrej, as remarkable human beings and brilliant entrepreneurs, have influenced me. Azim Premji has also been an inspiration. It is amazing to see the number of successful enterprises started

You could be foolish enough to believe you will succeed. However, you should be smart enough to drop things when you fail 56

Leadership New.indd 56

by ex-Wiproites, which talks of the entrepreneurial spirit of the company”, says Parpia. Honesty within himself and team members is crucial for a CEO. “You could be foolish enough to know you will succeed, but you should be smart enough to drop things when you fail. This dictum infuses toughness in organizations to carve a successful path,” he asserts. Advising entrepreneurs on financial management, Parpia advises, “Entrepreneurs should know how to generate cash. Or else, halfway into the project, they would be running from pillar to post to raise money rather than concentrate on business. ” However, the man who set up a mutli-million dollar company does regret the fact that he wasn’t able to balance work and home. “At business, one is more accountable as your actions affect many lives. Of course, family is closer and more important, but work is where you spend maximum time,” he says. Retiring as CEO three years ago, his work role has eased. “But my daughter lives abroad now. Equations change in life and they cannot wait for you forever,” says Parpia in a low tone. The most satisfying moment for Parpia was when his employees acknowledged his help beyond the salary pattern. “The best form of appreciation is former employees cherishing their work stint with you. This goodwill factor is important”, he smiles. If you do not dream big, you will never achieve anything, sums up Parpia.  — Yogesh Gupta

Indian Channelworld february 01, 2010

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