ChannelWorld - May 2011 by Sreekanth Sastry

Integrate wIth the cloud: Integration is crucial. how should a business merge with the cloud? Page 32

cchannelworld hannel Strategic inSightS for Solution providerS | CoVer PriCe rs.50

Sanjay PraSad, CEO, MindRiver, has expanded the services portfolio with astonishing results

Inside

May 2011 Vol. 5, issue 2

News Analysis

SaP needs to deliver more than just hype about new products at the user conference Page 12

FaST

coMPan MP Y MPan How to grow your business faster? Here are three possible ideas. Tested and proven. >>> Page 24

when cloud providers fail there’s no way to directly migrate data between service providers Page 14 the grill: director – tivoli, Software group, IBM asia Pacific, erik elzerman talks about the big blue’s strategy Page 17

Opinion

how has computer security changed since the last time you looked? Page 30

Case Study

delhi’s Filix consulting spins an erP solution for a ludhiana based textile manufacturer Page 34

Don’t Miss...

Interview with dimension data India’s ceo Kiran Bhagwanani Page 40

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n Editor’s Note

TM Arun Kumar

Eastward Ho? Wait

amata Banerjee’s victory in West Bengal,

which ended the Left Front’s more than three decade rule of the state, seems to have cheered up the entire business scenario in the east with the stock prices of companies based in the region like ITC, Exide, CESC, etc, spiking up significantly in the aftermath of the election results. The general assumption for this exuberance is that the Left, which by definition is anti-capitalistic and is perceived to be an enemy of big business, is finally out of power and Mamata Banerjee, on the other hand, will be more friendlytowards business and will push forward an agenda for growth in the state. As far as assumptions go, this is a fair enough one to make. After all during the Left’s decades long reign, West Bengal has consistently fared worse than most Indian states in almost every index measured for development. Industries have mostly either refrained from entering the region or worse fleeing the state. However, it may be a tad too soon to start worshipping Mamata Banerjee as the savior of business in the state. For all its perceived inadequacies, it was during the reign of the Left that some amount of industrial investment started coming back to Bengal after perhaps a couple of decades of shunning the state. If today global companies like IBM and CA or

Indian firms like Wipro and HCL have a presence in the state, it is largely because of the efforts of the Left Front government, which welcomed these firms and many more with open arms and sops. That certainly can’t be termed as antibusiness by any stretch of imagination. Besides, the Left was also on the verge of landing one of the biggest and perhaps the most marquee of investments to the

nDidi says she will bring the state back on the path of progress. But will she do that by declaring a public holiday for a sporting success?

state — the Tata Nano plant — fighting off stiff competition from many states in the country. The fact that the Nano project moved out of Bengal in the last minute can largely be attributed to Mamata Banerjee’s efforts. Now, that brings us to the question of what Didi, as Mamata Banerjee is fondly referred to as, has in store for the state. Well, she has promised to bring the state back on the path of progress — a motherhood statement without any specific actionable items. Makes one wonder if the Nano plant wasn’t on the path to progress. But Didi’s specific three pronged strategy is to revive the state’s industrial policy with a broad focus on micro, small and medium enterprises, restarting and remodeling closed public sector

units, and attracting large scale private investment in sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, mining, power, etc. Just confused, but how different does it sound from the policy of a Left Front government? That’s not all. After all the Railway minister is also well known for her populist policies. So, in an effort not to be out done by her counterparts in the south, who have historically set the benchmarks in these with their offer of free rice and color TVs, she has promised free railway passes to students and families below the poverty line. Wonder who is going to pay for it. While Didi may end up actually implementing a good industrial policy that attracts investments to the state, her past track record of championing populist policies, which included a ridiculous demand for a public holiday after India won the cricket world cup, doesn’t seem to suggest that it may happen any time soon. Let’s face it, she is very different from a Nitish Kumar or a Naven Patnaik, who shun the lime light, quietly go about doing their work, and let their work talk for them. So, while the jury is still out, it may be too soon to plan that business trip to Kolkata. TM Arun Kumar is the Executive Editor of ChannelWorld. Contact him at arun_k@idgindia.com

may 2011

Editor’s Note.indd 1

INDIAN Channelworld

5/14/2011 6:49:30 PM

For Breaking News, Go to Channelworld.in

Inside Indian Channelworld n may 2011

■ news digest 06 Amazon Outage Reinforces Doubts | The prolonged outage of

Amazon.com’s EC2 Cloud Service could likely set back adoption of hosted services by giving some a strong argument for taking it slowly 08 Android Unifies Into One Platform For All | The expansion

of Android from smart phones to tablets, TVs and desktop computers impressed developers attending the Google I/O conference 08 Acer, former CEO spar over declining fortunes | Acer has

charged its former CEO, Gianfranco Lanci, with performance issues, after he had criticized the company’s resistance to globalization in interviews with the media. 10 Microsoft on the Defensive With Skype | Microsoft’s $8.5

billion acquisition of Skype is largely seen as a defensive move by analysts to keep up with Google and Facebook

■ news analysis 12 SAP Has Some Explaining To Do | SAP needs to deliver more

than just hype about new products at the user conference 14 When Cloud Providers Fail |

There’s no way to directly migrate data between service providers

■ opinion 01 Editorial: TM Arun Kumar on how the West Bengal election and the demise of the Left may not usher in a much needed change of attitude of the Government towards the corporates 30 Frank Hayes: How much has

computer security changed since the last time you looked?

TOC_new_2.indd 2

17 ■ The Grill 17 Erik Elzerman, Director – Tivoli, Software Group, IBM Asia Pacific, talks about the big blue’s strategy and industry path

■ Feature 32 How to Integrate with the

cloud? Integration is crucial. Every business comprehends that you can’t have multiple applications operating. Credit Card can spin up a SaaS application. But consider how you integrate with that cloud app, or you’ll be condemned to create another Silo

■ On Record

20 R Sivakumar, Managing

Director, Sales & Marketing, Intel South Asia, speaks about company’s enhanced value proposition for market and their message to the partners

24 ■ cover story

24 Fast Company

While larger companies may have many excuses for a slow growth, inactiveness could pose serious threats and even mean death, to relatively smaller companies. How do you you grow your business faster? There is no single answer to that query. But here are three possible ideas. These have been tested and proven.

■ case study

34 Spinning a Solution Take a look at how Delhi based Filix Consulting delivered an ERP solution when a large SI decided to end its association with the project for a textile manufactuer located in the challenging IT market of Ludhiana

5/14/2011 8:25:36 PM

NetApp India Ranks

A big Thank you to all our partners for choosing us as their Most Valued Principal. This win re-emphasizes the faith our partners have in NetApp and strengthens our partnership to build successful businesses on NetApp

#3 in “Storage Management Category”

Training & Certification

Customer Support

Financial Terms

Management Styles

Overall Score

Standing 2009

#1 in “Network Storage Category”

Marketing Assistance

Under the survey, Channel partners are invited to rate the performance of vendors in 15 different categories across six parametrers - Technology Solutions, Marketing Assistance, Training & Certification, Customer Support, Financial Terms and Management Styles.

NETWORK STORAGE Technology Solutions

* NetApp India has been ranked #1 in the MVP (Most Valued Principal) Survey 2010 – 11 done by Channel World (IDG) Magazine.

NetApp

IBM

EMC

Hitachi

Rank

Company

NetApp wins comfortably as IBM & HP fight for second spot

For Breaking News, Go to Channelworld.in

Inside

ChannelWorld

■ Fast Track

Editor-in-Chief Vijay Ramachandran Executive Editor TM Arun Kumar Associate Editor Yogesh Gupta Principal Correspondents Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya Correspondents Kartik Sharma, Shreehari Paliath

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

Channelworld.in Publisher, President &CEO Louis D’Mello

indian Channelworld n may 2011

n EDITORIAL

36 Rafiq Ayub, Director,

Digilog Technologies, says they are on time with their job that organizations need not follow them for getting their work done. They believe in just getting married to projects 38 Santosh Kumar,

43 ■ Focal Point

Founder-CEO, Nestor InfoTech, says his philosophy is quite simple. He wants to make a mark in the enterprise solutions space within the next couple of years.

43 CRM Systems: Unite or Die?

crm: It’s good to get agreement across

■ macro view

the CRM systems. When it comes to CRM systems, large companies are anything but centralized. Even if your company makes centralized CRM decisions, it may have merged or made acquisitions.

Q&A: Kiran

45 Who Should Own the CRM Effort?

40 ‘A New Dimension’

Bhagwanani, Chief Executive Officer, Dimension Data India (earlier Datacraft India) talks about their latest initiatives & strategies for business growth and the importance of end-to-end services portfolio to emerge as a winner in the enterprise space

crm: There is no substitute for this level of

executive sponsorship . CRM purchase is almost never done without at least the tacit approval of the sales VP. But driving the purchase decision is not the same thing.

■ face off

48 Two Tablets, Same Dose: Both Cisco’s

Cius and Avaya’s Flare seem to be competing head on. Is there anything to differentiate the two?

Trainee Journalists Ankita Mitra, Aritra Sarkhel n CUSTOM

n DESIGN

& PRODUCTION

Lead Designers Jithesh C.C, Suresh Nair, Jinan K.V Senior Designer Unnikrishnan A.V Chief Photographer Srivatsa Shandilya Production Manager TK Karunakaran n Events

& AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

Vice President Rupesh Sreedharan Senior Program Manager Chetan Acharya, Pooja Chhabra Program Manager Ajay Adhikari Management Trainee Ramya Menon n MARKETING

Alcatel Lucent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

HP Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Amercian Power Conversion (I) Pvt Ltd . . . . . . . 15

IBM India Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BC

Dell India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Juniper Networks India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . 22 & 23

EMC Data Storage Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd . . . . 19

NetApp India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Emerson Networks Power (I) Pvt. Ltd . 43, 45 & 47

Netgear Technologies India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . 31

Fujitsu Asia Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Riverbed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC

HP IPG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC

Zyxel Technology India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

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

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.

TOC_new_2.indd 4

AND SALES

President Sudhir Kamath VP Sales Sudhir Argula GM Sales Parul Singh AGM Brand Siddharth Singh Sr. Manager Marketing Rohan Chandhok Manager Sales Kalyan Basu, Pooja Nayak, Varun Dev, Minaz Adenwala Asst. Manager Sales Ajay S. Chakravarthy Asst. Manager Brand Disha Gaur Associate Marketing Dinesh P Asst. Manager-Sales Support Nadira Hyder n Finance

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5/14/2011 8:26:02 PM

News

What’s within

PAGE 08: Android Unifies Into One Platform For All PAGE 08: Acer, former CEO spar over declining fortunes PAGE 10: Microsoft Goes On The Defensive With Skype PAGE 12: SAP Has Some Explaining To Do PAGE 14: When Cloud Providers Fail

I l l u s t r a t i o n s b y U N N I K R I S H N A N AV

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

cloud security

Amazon Outage Reinforces Doubts

he prolonged

outage of Amazon. com’s EC2 Cloud Service could likely set back adoption of hosted services by giving some a strong argument for taking it slowly. For other organizations, Amazon’s problems reinforced an already-held belief that cloud services can’t match an enterprise IT operation when it comes to meeting the technology needs of business or government entities. More than a week after the days-long partial outage 6

started on April 21, Amazon released a detailed 5,700word analysis with mea culpa identifying the culprit as a certain configuration error that occurred during a network upgrade. “The recent outage confirmed, for us, that cloud services are not yet ready for prime time,” said Paul Haugan, CTO of Lynnwood. “Cloud services need some more maturing and a much more hardened infrastructure and security model prior to our adoption,” Haugan added. Jay Leader, a Senior Vice

President and CIO at iRobot, whose products include the Roomba vacuum cleaner, said Amazon outage illustrates the limitations of cloud computing. “We don’t use Amazon or any other public cloud services, and we won’t, perhaps ever, or at least until there is transparency about where the data lives, who controls where it lives,” held Leader. “Obviously, these issues are very heightened right now and will continue to be so for quite a while in light of the outage,” said Gartner analyst Kyle Hilgendorf ,who also said that, “Amazon portrays an aura of invincibility; this outage is going to remind enterprise customers that nobody is perfect and diligence is required.” The outage also reinforces that there’s no way to directly migrate customer data to another provider, said Arun Taneja, an analyst at Taneja Group , Taneja summed up by saying that, coupled with recent decisions by EMC, Iron Mountain, Cirtas Systems and others to shut down or scale back hosted storage offerings, the Amazon incident could spur a backlash against cloud storage services, even though they can offer good value. — Patrick Thibodeau and Jaikumar Vijayan Computerworld

Notebook PC

Notebooks Due in June Samsung and Acer will begin selling notebook PCs running Google’s Chrome OS in June, as Google presses ahead with its project to position this new operating system designed specifically for web applications as a viable option for consumers and businesses. Samsung’s notebook has a 12.1-inch display and in the US will cost $429 for a model that only offers a Wi-Fi option for connectivity

and $499 for one that also offers 3G connectivity from Verizon. The Acer machine will also offer Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity options from Verizon and will start at $349. US users will be able to place orders for the notebooks starting on June 15 from both Amazon and Best Buy. The computers will also be available in the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. Juan Carlos Perez IDG News Service

Indian Channelworld M AY 2011

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5/14/2011 11:41:21 PM

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP HP STORAGEWORKS

PARTNER SPEAK GANESH MAHABALA Sr. Vice President, Valuepoint Systems

HP STORAGE’S PROACTIVE SUPPORT ADDRESSES CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS It is important for SIs and VARs to upskill themselves on latest technologies and advocate them to their customers.

Having delivered solutions across various industry verticals, according to you, which verticals have been the biggest consumers of storage? Media and Telecom (ISP and CSP) are the biggest verticals. The revolution of 3D and 4D entertainment and the popularity of large multiplexes across the country also have led TV and movie companies to expand their storage space. For them the challenge is to not only manage data, but also manage the speed of editing and broadcasting. HP solution with XP storage and also the newly acquired 3PAR products with the combination of Quantum StorNext is one of the ideal solutions for these verticals. Even in telecom, with the advent of 3G and ever-increasing number of applications streamed on to tablets and Smartphones, the requirement of intelligent storage is enormously increasing. The momentum created by cloud computing is also proving to be a great boom to the storage business.

Are companies paying enough attention to backup and DR when planning a storage strategy? If not, what do you think the reason is? Yes, customers have started paying attention to backup and DR. After the 9/11 attacks and the tsunami in India and now Japan, customers have really started looking at backup and DR as serious concepts for their business to be up and running. Many CTOs/CIOs are today evaluating DR and are adopting the concept rapidly. However, customers’ key concerns are on the

proprietary software and array specific replication technologies which are vendor specific. Rapidly changing products and technologies are making the cost of deploying DR higher than what is budgeted or planned. But, if one evaluates options like storage virtualization or virtualized storage, one can deploy DR strategy very economically, yet with more availability and automation. So, the gap is from both sides – customers not evaluating enough options and vendors not educating customers enough on available technologies. We at Valuepoint focus on the latter and evaluate each customer’s needs and give customers multiple options before finalizing any solution or coming up with a ‘ready-to-fix’ solution.

What kind of training and support has HP Storage provided to help you communicate value to your customers? HP Storage has trained our sales, presales and post-sales personnel to discover, consult, migrate and manage customer’s storage infrastructure. Today our technical support staff is able to install and troubleshoot issues on HP P4000, P2000, EVA 4400, 6400 and also the complete range of Tape Libraries. HP has also enabled us to do demos and PoC activities with our customers. With HP’s proactive select support program, we are able to serve customers faster and more efficiently. We assure our customers that HP and Valuepoint systems together will be part of their journey by helping them meet their business demands and mission critical data availability

besides ensuring they have minimal or no interruption. HP’s strong certification programs also allow our technical team to gain in-depth knowledge on products and solutions. This has enabled us to create that expertise and value in the customer’s place.

If you had one piece of advice for SIs and VARs on how to convince their clients on the need for next generation storage solutions, what would it be? I would suggest they become advisors for their customers rather than being ‘just-intime’ solution providers or resellers. Today, customers are looking for SIs and VARs who can understand their business needs, pain points, SLAs and provide solutions to tackle those points rather than just fulfilling the demand. It is also important for SIs and VARs to upskill themselves on latest technologies available and keep advocating them to their customers. And lastly, stay focused and excel on the solutions and services which are on their portfolio instead of adopting an ‘I-provide-this-solution-too’ attitude. This will benefit both the customer as well as the SI/VAR. This Interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group in association with

n news digest operating system

Android Unifies Into One Platform For All

he expansion of

the rise of Android to “the Android from smart start of Java. Everything phones to tablets, runs on the same platform. TVs and desktop Android engineer Mike computers impressed Cleron talked about havdevelopers attending the ing “one operating system Google I/O conference. An- that runs everywhere,” but droid also commanded the Google officials declined to keynote stage, with Google indicate anything about the officials discussing future future of Google’s lesser releases for smart known operating phones and system, Chrome Google TV. OS. It runs the is the number of On the social Chrome browser Android activations front, Google on top of Linux, Google recorded since even pitched and assumes that the launch of its Android as an users will do operating system operating system nearly all of their for futuristic home automa- computing on the Web. tion – controlling the light While Google boasted switches and dishwasher in of 100 million Android your house. device activations, it has a “They’re turning Anlong way to go before it can droid into a multi-platform topple Apple’s iPad on the operating system,” said Mu- tablet front.Google I/O atrat Yener, a developer from tendee Kalman Lee, a Web Turkey who came to San developer for Demand Media in Santa Monica pointed Francisco for Google I/O. Adding to that he said, out that the key for Google “Android started only as mo- is to continue making Anbile but now it’s just going droid open source and welcoming to developers. everywhere, tablets, Google “As long as we can do TV,” Yener further likened

100mn

whatever we want on a tablet, I think it’s a big step in the right direction,” Lee said. Unlike Apple which has been criticized for tethering the iPhone and iPad to its own application and media distribution services, Google has taken a different approach with Android, allowing installation of third-party applications, and even a second app store built by Amazon. Google will release a single version of Android for both smartphones and tablets on open source by the end of this year. Google said the openness of Android will let developers build things even Google engineers aren’t capable of dreaming up. In the future, Android will integrate with home systems. Google is helping developers integrate Android with physical devices with the new Open Accessory Development Kit. The ability to connect Android to any device impressed attendees — Jon Brodkin Network World

personal computing

Acer, former CEO Spar Over Declining Fortunes Acer has charged its former CEO, Gianfranco Lanci, with performance issues, after he had criticized the company’s resistance to globalization in interviews with the media. Lanci, who resigned from Acer on March 31, said that he was on the brink of making changes that would have led to the company’s “de-Taiwanization”, 8

according to media reports. He said that the board was resisting globalization by not hiring engineers outside Taiwan, among other things. The public sparring comes as Acer reported a 21.2 percent year-on-year decline in firstquarter revenue. The public sparring is unlikely to hurt the company,

Gloves are Off: Acer spars with former CEO

which is poised to move ahead with the development of tablet PCs to overcome the revenue decline, analysts said. “This particular spat won’t

Short Takes  SMBs in India are plan-

ning to spend more than $2M on ICT in 2011 and there is an anticipated growth of nearly five times this spending by 2014, according to a research by New York-based AMI Partners.Only 8% of medium businesses currently use cloud-based ERP solutions, while small business use of this type of application is nearly nonexistent.

 Microsoft will now make

available Microsoft Price Lists and also enable billing for all its Indian Distributors and LARs in Indian Rupees. Starting May 2011, Microsoft will invoice all its Indian Distributors and LARs in Indian Rupee instead of the US Dollar.

 Array Networks an-

nounced that it has appointed Inspira, a leading technology solutions provider, as a key value added distributor in India. Inspira provides technology solutions to in select verticals that demand high performance, high availability, scalability and security.

have any effect on Acer’s business, because Lanci is already gone,” said Helen Chiang, Research Manager with IDC in Taipei. ” Acer continues to pursue globalization, a company spokesman said. The company is not promoting a Taiwan focus or ‘Taiwanization’, he added. “Gianfranco had his way of controlling things, and the new leader wants to build his own management style,” Tseng said. — Ralph Jennings IDG News Service

Indian Channelworld M AY 2011

News_Digest_new.indd 8

5/14/2011 11:41:22 PM

n nEWs diGEst ACquisition

Microsoft Goes on the defensive With skype

ICroSoFT’S $8.5

billion acquisition of Skype is largely seen as a defensive move by analysts, as the company struggles to keep up with the likes of google and Facebook on the Internet. This battle will continue and companies including google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft need to attract users, and that is what a deal to acquire Skype is all about, according to paolo pescatore , Analyst, CCS Insight. The deal looks like a largely defensive move to prevent its rivals from acquiring Skype, but Microsoft doesn’t really need to make the acquisition, because it has all the technical assets it needs to compete with Skype, said pescatore. According to Skype, it had an average of 124 million connected users per month in the second quarter of 2010 and at peak times, 23 million users online together. The cost of keeping one of its competitors from buying that user base will be high for Microsoft, worth $8.5 billion. But when Skype comes up for sale there always seems to be a lot of money involved, said Katja ruud, r research director at gartner. Back in december, CCS Insight noted that acquiring Skype would have provided Facebook with a huge group of users that complements its own; allowing the site to quickly add voice or video 10

calling functionality alongside the text messaging capabilities it already has. For google, buying Skype would also have made sense. The search giants competing services, including Talk and Voice, haven’t been nearly as successful as Skype’s, said leif-olof Wallin, research, Vice president at gartner. The challenge for Microsoft is that there will be a lot of overlap between its products and those of Skype, which includes Windows live Messenger. Microsoft has a serverbased unified communications tool that connects pCs to a pBx to offer VoIp calling, instant messaging

Around

TheWorld Alcatel may sell Enterprise biz Alcatel-Lucent is reportedly shopping around its enterprise switching, IP telephony and contact center businesses in an effort to boost its financial performance by focusing on core telecom markets.The unit could fetch up to $1.2 billion, and potential buyers include Cisco, HP, Avaya and private equity firms like the Gores Group, according to a story in Reuters. Alcatel-Lucent is meeting with prospective buyers in San Francisco this week, according to Reuters. Jim duffy, network World (us)

and videoconferencing. previously called Communications Server, it is now branded lync, while lync l online is a cloud-based service offering similar functionality. Skype is no longer seen as the threat it used to be by mobile and fixed-line operators, according to

sophos to Acquire Astaro Sophos announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Astaro.Businesses today face unprecedented challenges in protecting users and IT infrastructure from escalating complex security threats, especially those brought on by more mobile, roaming users, new application protocols, “The combination of Astaro’s comprehensive portfolio of network security solutions alongside our endpoint, email and web threat and data protection capabilities will enable us to continue to deliver providing complete security,”stated Steve Munford, Chief ExecuExecu tive Officer, Sophos. ChannelWorld bureau

Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight, who further added that, Skype’s deal with Verizon Wireless, which integrates Skype on some of the smartphones it offers, made it a more interesting acquisition target. —Mikael Ricknäs IDG News Service

Cisco, Xerox Join For Mobile Printing Cisco Systems has teamed up with Xerox to create a mobile printing system that lets users print from any device to any printer. They plan to make printing faster and easier, adding software to routers and switches . Channel partners will resell the technology and a managed service that will be delivered by Xerox from a data center built with (UCS) servers stephen lawson , idGns

indiAn ChAnnElWorld M AY 2011

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5/14/2011 11:41:32 PM

n News Analysis

SAP Has Some Explaining To Do

SAP will have to discuss and deliver products of substance at the Sapphire conference By Chris Kanaracus

AP needs to deliv-

er more than just hype about new products at the user conference, customers and analysts say! While SAP has spent the past year spinning a vision for on-premises, on-demand and on-device computing, its upcoming Sapphire conference is an opportunity for the vendor to lay out some important specifics on these plans since thousands are expected to attend. SAP also needs to avoid giving short shrift to the concerns of customers still reeling from the effects of the economic downturn, who are more interested in getting greater value from their current SAP investment than shelling out cash they don’t have for the latest and greatest.

Here’s a look at some key topics to be broached and questions to be answered at Sapphire, which kicks off in Orlando. The move to mobile apps One of the biggest announcements expected at Sapphire concerns a converged mobile-application development platform composed of SAP technology, tools and middleware it gained through the acquisition of Sybase. SAP’s customer base is clamoring for mobile applications but the company needs to tell them the best way to plan their purchases and projects, said Kevin Benedict, CEO of Netcentric Strategies, a consulting firm focused on enterprise mobility. “I believe they are attempting to do that,” he

said, “In the past it was challenging because they were a little bit unfamiliar with mobility.” Benedict further added that, one includes more complex applications that can also run in offline scenarios. The “container” approach sees applications written in HTML5 code that dynamically reorient themselves for various devices’ screens. “Each of those have [their] own product stack and methodology that goes along with it,” Benedict said, adding, “In the past [SAP] didn’t even know what to say, so I hope they spent the last year learning that and developing these buying-decision learning trees, so people can decide what might be a prudent place to start.” SAP is not trying to do mobility on its own. The company is “very aggressively” recruiting partners to build applications for its mobile platform, where, according to Benedict, Sapphire should expect quite a few to be showcased. Making sense of SAP’s SaaS strategy. SAP is using a two-fold approach for ondemand ERP software and has figured out the strategy. After initial fits and starts, its Business ByDesign Suite for midmarket companies and divisions of larger ones is ready to be sold at scale. SAP should and probably will deliver strong Business ByDesign customer stories at the show, said Jon Reed, an Independent Analyst, who closely tracks the company also said that, this will give attendees a better sense of the software’s stability and potential benefit to their businesses.

Indian Channelworld M AY 2011

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But the big money remains in SAP’s on-premises ERP systems, which run many of the world’s largest companies. At Sapphire, SAP needs to offer customers more clarity on when and how the software should be adopted including pricing information, said Forrester Research Analyst, China Martens. But SAP shops might also wonder where the divide is between what these extensions do and the features gained through regular product upgrades, for which they already pay handsome annual fees. Its up to SAP to make that distinction. Hullabaloo about HANA If SAP CTO and Executive Board Member, Vishal Sikka has a favorite topic these days, it’s the in-memory database technology that powers SAP’s new HANA (High Performance Analytic Appliance). Sikka and other SAP executives have exercised little restraint in touting HANA’s performance and cost advantages over other databases. But the product remains in its infancy, and a series of specialized analytic applications that will run on top of it are only now starting to be released. “I’m hoping they do a good job of forecasting the road map [for HANA], and take the hype out of it,” said Bridgette Chambers, CEO , Americas’ SAP Users Group (ASUG), which is co-locating its conference at Sapphire. Chambers especially wants SAP to show how customers will be able to save money with the technology. And SAP may also use Sapphire to discuss its broader database plans, given the additional products it gained through the 14

Wild cards

ome will be searching for signs of friction between Co-CEOs Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott. The two have split focuses, with Snabe closer to product development and McDermott overseeing sales. That hasn’t stopped rumors of power-jockeying, although actual public evidence of such is pretty scant. In a related note, the profile of CTO and Executive Board Member Vishal Sikka at the conference will also be scrutinized. Sikka, who has been referred to as SAP’s “third CEO,” recently told IDG News Service that while he is very close with the CEOs, he considers his boss to be company founder Hasso Plattner, and that Snabe and McDermott should “basically leave [him] alone.” The fact that Plattner and Sikka are scheduled to deliver a keynote address together at Sapphire will no doubt have speculative tongues wagging about the balance of power at SAP. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has made a tradition out of pulling a surprise guest onstage during his annual OpenWorld keynote. The list of luminaries has included Billy Joel and Arnold Schwarzenegger. SAP has booked rock icon Sting to entertain Sapphire-goers, but most likely he’ll stick to the concert stage. This leaves an opening for someone more aligned with SAP’s core business, and who better than Hewlett-Packard CEO, Leo Apotheker? Sure, Apotheker was forced out as SAP CEO by the company’s board last year, leading to the ascendance of McDermott and Snabe, so there might be some lingering tension there. But SAP and HP have always been tight partners, a bond that is only closer now given Oracle’s entrance into the hardware business, so anything is possible. Chris Kanaracus IDG News Service

Sybase acquisition. The company is expected to eventually port the Business Suite to Sybase ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise), a move that could potentially save significant money for customers now running Oracle. Sapphire show-goers might receive a sneak peek of this scenario as well as HANA running the Business Suite, although the latter seems less likely. What about the installed base? As with any software vendor, sometimes it seems like user event keynotes, where their emphasis on new and upcoming products and strategies resonate most with the media, analysts and the customers. “There are a lot of SAP customers who are a lot more cautious about what they’re rolling out and they’re not even on the latest release,” Reed said, adding, “will they have news

that speaks to the installed base and that doesn’t involve opening their wallet to a lot of new initiatives?” Chambers echoed the idea. “There’s a place for all that,” she said. “You’ve got to have a platform, a stage for telling people why you’re going to be relevant tomorrow. But they’ve got customers that invest millions of dollars in their software. It’s important that they balance it with a connection to today.” The packs were intended as a way for customers to get new functionality without the pain of a full upgrade but in reality the process hasn’t been smooth. And the packs themselves have experienced delays; therefore, good news about the enhancement pack would likely go over well with the Sapphire crowd. Meanwhile, uproar over SAP’s controversial move a

few years ago to raise support fees has largely died down, thanks to the passage of time and some eventual concessions by the company, including the restoration of a standard option. In January 2010, an SAP executive told IDG News Service that the goal was to “evolve” the KPI program into something useful but less time-consuming for customers involved in it. Sapphire may be a good place for SAP to update the crowd on where those plans lie today. ASUG will focus on core issues at Sapphire where it is launching an initiative aimed at helping customers get continual ROI. “Many customers go through technical upgrades and don’t adopt everything,” said Chairman, Anthony Bosco, CIO, Day & Zimmerman.  — Computerworld

Indian Channelworld M AY 2011

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CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP APC BY SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

CASE STUDY

APC POWERS NPS’ SMART DATACENTER APC’s InfraStruXure architecture helps India’s first global Managed Service Provider build a smart datacenter in a small footprint.

et Proactive Services (NPS) is India’s first global Managed Service Provider (MSP). Started in 1998 as the Bangalore Lab Pvt Ltd, it was acquired by Planet One Group and renamed as Net Proactive Services in 2002. The NPS support strategy revolves around providing uninterrupted availability of skilled resources, technology infrastructure optimization and world class operational and support processes. NPS serves customers from different verticals such as finance and banking, manufacturing, hospitality, telecom, public sector, etc. In order to provide the best-in-class services, the company was expanding its services and thus needed a new datacenter. When Future Businesstech India Pvt Ltd, a Bangalore-based Systems Integrator (SI) approached Net ProActive Services to service their server and storage, they saw an opportunity to take on more business and offered to help NPS build their new datacenter.

“APC’s InfraStruXure architecture provided a power, cooling, and rack solution at a very economical price point”

ASHOK R

Associate Vice President Solutions Future Businesstech.

CHALLENGES As a Managed Services Provider, NPS provides its customers with real operational and business benefits. Its service offerings are designed to provide enterprise customers end-to-end solutions to manage their increasingly complex network computing environments. Hence it was important that their own data center should have the bestin-class technology which can help NPS scale to meet future growth. When Future Businesstech studied NPS’s requirements, they understood that there were several key requirements – the new datacenter should be able to scale effortlessly without straining the IT budget. NPS also needed appropriate controls for physical threat monitoring. “Having a single vendor would keep things simple,” said Ashok R, Associate Vice President – Solutions, Future Businesstech.

SOLUTION NPS had initially allotted 900 sq feet for the datacenter. However, Future Businesstech redesigned the datacenter keeping in mind APC’s InfraStruXure architecture. The architecture provided a power, cooling, and rack solution at a very economical price point, as well as the ability to install the system in a small footprint. Its modular design was much more efficient than the company’s old approach, and Future Businesstech was able to reduce the space to 324 sq feet, leaving the rest for expansion when required. Instead of a CRAC-based solution, the SI opted for the in-row-based one as it offered better delivery of cooling to critical equipment and greater redundancy, not to mention the ability to quickly expand. For the UPS requirement, they calculated a load of 24 KW (including a future load of 3 KW). This calculation was based on 45 desk top computers at 250 watts, twelve 42” plasma panels at 250 watts, five printers at 450 watts and three EPABX at 800 watts. The SI selected APC Smart UPS

AT A GLANCE Customer

Net ProActive Services

Solution Provider Future Businesstech India Pvt Ltd Offering APC power, cooling, and rack solution VT rack mounted, 32 KW /40 KVA with 30 minutes backup.

BENEFITS “APC was the single vendor we preferred for the power, cooling and other core infrastructure. We saved significant time and money because we didn’t have to coordinate multiple vendors and get them all to communicate with each other,” said Ashok. “Presentation of the datacenter is also very important to Net Proactive Services. They do a lot of walk-throughs and demos, and InfraStruXure is a very attractive, sleek system that inspires confidence,” he added. “Oversizing a data center is a common error. Keeping in mind the heavy real estate costs, we have developed aesthetic infrastructure solutions with smaller footprints and higher efficiencies. Our modular and scalable architecture allows customers to right-size their data centers with the flexibility to easily scale up as and when the business demands it,” says Shrinivas Chebbi, CGM & VP, APC by Schneider Electric, India. This feature is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group in association with

n News Analysis That can be of particular concern in highly regulated industries such as financial services or law firms.

Storage providers EMC announced the closure of Atmos Online storage service because it was competing with its own resellers. Also, it offered no guarantee to its customers to retrieve their data once the service closed. Iron Mountain too announced it had stopped accepting new customers for its Virtual File Store Service and was closing down..

Backlash coming?

When Cloud Providers Fail

There’s no way to directly migrate data between service providers By Lucas Mearian

ll of these things are coming together to give cloud storage providers a black eye. Anyone who was on the fence about cloud storage may be off of it by now,” said Gartner, Research Analyst at Adam Couture. Last year, four Cloud Storage service providers (C-SSP’s) said they’re shutting down including Amazon’s, Cloud Services. But what about the user data when the cloud they use evaporates? Currently, there’s no way for a C-SSP to directly 16

migrate customer data to another provider, the hosting company must return the data to its customer, who then must find another provider or revert to storing it locally, said Arun Taneja, Principal Analyst at The Taneja Group.

SNIA and migration The Storage Networking Industry Association’s Technical Work Group is developing an API called the Cloud Data Management Interface that’ll allow providers to migrate customer data from one vendor’s cloud to the next

The API will become significant over years as three out of four cloud storage companies in recent years have died, added Taneja. “There’s no way for Amazon to send your data directly to another storage service provider like Nirvanix. The transfer has to happen back to the customer,” Taneja said. Cloud service providers use a “garbage collection” method for deleting old data. First, data is marked for deletion and then the actual erasure or overwriting process happens at a later date, Taneja said.

Giving an example of Cirtas and its ‘tier 2’ primary storage, where the services didn’t go well, Taneja expressed his concerns over the backlash against Cloud Storage Services, saying they can offer good value in the right circumstances. “The hype is just out of sync with the reality and I’m not saying this is not the right time to be seriously looking at [the] cloud, but people have to go in with lower expectations.” Companies are now offering “secure data deletion” in the cloud that amounts to crypto-erasure,

Hybrid options Nasuni, StorSimple and TwinStrata are popular types of Hybrid Storage Cloud having different features but their basic function is onsite data storage and replication. . If a Nasuni customer requests for the data to be deleted, the encryption keys are erased, leaving the data unreadable in the Cloud and also, where the encryption keys can be retrieved only if they are mistakenly deleted.  — Computerworld

Indian Channelworld M AY 2011

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n The Grill

Erik Elzerman

Director – Tivoli, Software Group, IBM Asia Pacific, talks about the big blue’s strategy The network management space has seen quite a few transitions and IBM Tivoli has worked its way through the strength of acquisitions over the last few years. How good does the Tivoli picture look like for IBM now? From a Tivoli perspective, we have put together the entire portfolio under the umbrella of Integrated Service Management (ISM), a very business centric concept, providing organizations with tools, infrastructure, and capabilities to enable them to deliver the services they need in their business in as reliable, scalable, secure, and efficient a manner as possible. At the end of

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the day, whether it is IT or non-IT assets, there is a need to manage them optimally. One of the key elements of this framework is security. We have the most diverse set of capabilities around security in the industry, which we have included in ISM. Within the domain of ISM, we have the need to provide solutions in four main areas – automation (Netcool) which monitors IT and non-IT assets, security, storage (through hardware partners internally and others) and enterprise asset management. We have product offerings such as Maximo to support the last category. Indicatively,

Dossier Name: Erik Elzerman Designation & Present Role: Director for Tivoli Software in Asia Pacific since August 2010. Organization: IBM Career Graph: His prior roles within IBM Software Group include Director for Enterprise Software in South West Europe based in Madrid, Director Enterprise Sales AP, Director SMB & Channels AP, General Manager in ASEAN/SA for four years, as well as IBM Software Group National Sales Executive ANZ. He has been with IBM for more than 25 years. He has a Bachelor of Economics with majors in both Economics and Accounting from the University of Sydney.

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n The Grill | Erik Elzerman portfolio. The framework has diverse capabilities for risk and compliance. Hitherto, the security functionality wasn’t quite complete to protect all the entities in the framework – be it applications, the physical infrastructure and people, amongst others. We are now adding end –to-end protection through a strategic acquisition. This, I presume, will complete the missing piece in the larger context of organizations moving onto the cloud and virtualized layers.

For the record, a sizeable percentage of our existing partners have made the step to scale up successfully

in Asia Pacific, we are growing and have just around 1800 people (development activity and otherwise) and services are a significant investment for IBM, as compared to any other player in this particular segment. India is very significant and we see security as a vital discussion for us. So, security is the missing piece in the ISM portfolio and strategy…? Yes, the IBM software group has been acquiring new companies to complement the ISM 18

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Integrated Service Delivery is a term that clearly poses huge challenges to legacy partners both in India and outside. No, IBM ISM is all about integration and seamlessly at that. We spend considerable amount of time with our legacy partners to ensure that they are picking up skills to catch up with the new areas technically and strategically. In India, we have identified partners with full capabilities and they will be supported with the right enablement programs. To illustrate, I have been talking to partners and one specific partner in Mumbai demonstrates full range in service delivery quite autonomously. He has operations in different countries with a critical mass, so this is will be an interesting space to watch. ISM seems to be heavily tilted towards the large enterprise. What is the story that IBM goes to mid market with as far as partners are concerned? No, apart from the large enterprise, we certainly have mid-market on our radar, and the products we have can very well scale down into that segment. It is a high growth market. We are very focused on creating new revenue streams to our partners. We have partner programs to enable them with specific competencies and skill sets. IBM has rigid mandates on training and certification and Tivoli is high on the priority list. It is said partners who do not adhere to these mandates are shown the door. Is this true and has this resulted in a decline in the overall partner count? I wouldn’t call it filtering or showing the door. The overall objective is to improve the quality of expertise. So, if a partner doesn’t pass the test, he wouldn’t be authorized to resell any of

our specialized products. There is a very large push to make partners scale up. It would be important to understand and appreciate that no other player has the depth of offerings that ISM has. It is quite important to match client service delivery through the right skill sets. Our partners realize this and make sure their competencies match up to the mandates. We have invested time, money and resources to this effect. For the record, a sizeable percentage of our existing partners have made the step to scale up successfully. But, as you see this is a very dynamic environment; we are adding new acquisitions. As we do that, we allow new partners access, but existing partners have all access and opportunities; there is no impingement whatsoever. IBM is now talking about veering towards industry based selling. What is IBM bringing onto the table with this approach that has been tried and tested by other vendors? That’s true. Till now, most of our certifications were solutioncentric. Now, we are looking at partners who have industry expertise or what we know as micro-verticals. We have introduced industry-centric certifications for our partners. We are seeking out partners with specific industry solution selling expertise. It gives us an opportunity to expand the partner base. As we create these solutions under our smarter planet approach, within the software group, we are getting industry aligned. In some industries, we have already made inroads. At this point, it is early days. The acquisitions we have made and will make add onto partners who come with industry selling capabilities. For example, three weeks ago, we acquired Tririga. This is going to further enhance our capabilities in smarter building solutions, and we get partners from there with the requisite focused industry expertise. You have consciously refrained from using external collaborations for your partner strategy… Yes, our partner and business strategies are largely in house and with a little help from our partners. This, we feel is more pragmatic and hands-on. This has worked for us fabulously. 

Indian Channelworld M AY 2011

5/14/2011 7:15:00 PM

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP EMC

CHANNEL DIRECTIONS

SMBs make up for 70 percent of the Disk Storage market Study indicates that there are about 35 million units in India’s SMB market, which is projected to grow to 48 million by 2015. There is a huge opportunity for the channel community to tap into this segment. the midrange and SMB segments in India made up for 70 percent of the External Disk Storage market. These facts indicate the huge opportunity ahead of us.

MANOJ CHUGH,

President, EMC India & SAARC and Director – Global Accounts, EMC Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) An industry veteran with over 27 years experience in the ICT industry, Manoj joined EMC in 2003. He is responsible for accelerating EMC’s growth in the APJ region, strengthening the team, and enhancing relationships with partners EMC has just announced your Unified Storage products (VNXe and VNX) for SMB and midrange businesses. What opportunities do you see in these segments? The challenges faced by SMBs are no different from those faced by large enterprises. With digital data growing rapidly, SMBs are also faced with the burgeoning need to manage their data better – store, back-up and retrieve. EMC has designed an entirely new storage array built specifically for the SMB segment, which does not have the luxury of in-house storage experts. EMC VNXe can be installed in minutes and configured in seconds. By offering twice the capacity at half the cost of most current competitive alternatives, it is a compelling choice for organisations that are under pressure to manage digital information deluge and deliver efficient IT services As per a Zinnov study titled “IT Opportunity in the Indian SMB Sector”, in 2008, there were about 35 million units in India’s SMB market, which was projected to grow to 48 million by 2015. Also, as per IDC, Q4 2010,

How does EMC’s Unified Storage products address the SMB/ midrange customer requirements? EMC’s new family of unified storage systems - the VNX, consolidates the industry-leading features and functionality of EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra into a single, powerful family of unified storage arrays that scale from entry-level to datacenter-class systems. The VNXe (for entry) series, is designed specifically for SMBs, department level storage solutions for enterprise, and remote or branch offices, combining breakthrough simplicity with advanced performance, availability, and efficiency benefits. The VNX family is the future of EMC’s midrange storage systems—and will extend EMC’s market share leadership. The VNX family is fully optimized for virtual applications, designed with the latest Intel multi-core processor technology to achieve record-breaking performance. It also introduces new, comprehensive software packages for simple and affordable management and total data protection. Both the VNXe series and VNX series are managed by EMC Unisphere, a centralized and simple interface. The VNXe systems are designed for IT professionals with little storage expertise. Its unique wizard-based setup and application-centric provisioning enables customers to configure storage for 500 Exchange mailboxes—or 1TB of VMware data stores—in just a few minutes. For SMBs, Unisphere application-driven wizards make VNXe simple to install, simple to provision and simple to manage—with instant access to a self-service online community.

SMB is a vast segment and unlike the large enterprise segment where EMC has a strong base. What is your channel route to reach this segment? EMC has created a new ‘Authorized Reseller’ category to enable partners to easily add the EMC VNXe series into their product portfolio. All partners under the Authorized Reseller category can quickly and cost-effectively get up to speed in under three hours through free training. They can also enjoy the associated benefits of offering leading storage technology from EMC. What traction is EMC seeing in the adoption of cloud computing? What are the opportunities channel partners? According to the results of an IDC White Paper sponsored by EMC: “Hybrid Cloud on the Rise: A Key Strategy to Business Growth in Asia Pacific”, 14 percent of Indian organisations are currently using cloud computing, 76 percent plan to use cloud computing at least after six months. Indian organisations surveyed showed a very strong inclination toward the private cloud in both 2010 and 2011. The key for partners is to look at why there is a demand for cloud computing technologies, and the answer is in the primary challenge that exists today – IT managers and CIOs have to achieve greater efficiencies from their IT purchases without heavy capital investments and yet manage the enormity of digital information growth. This Interview is brought to you by IDG Custom Solutions Group in association with

On reCOrD n

R Sivakumar Managing Director, Sales & Marketing, Intel South Asia v speaks about company’s enhanced value proposition for market. By Yogesh Gupta 20

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Intel has diversified from core processor business with acquisitions of McAfee and Infineon’s wireless division to name a few. What is company’s new value proposition as a technology provider in the marketplace? SIvAkuMAr: The world today consumes 2.5 billion data devices and these are not only Intel devices. That is projected to touch 14 to 15 billion as people access data from internet through different form factors like smart phones, tablets, laptops, net books. The concerned aspect is over dependency of users on technology including critical tasks (personal and professional) which are touched by data. This demands high level of security. Historically, security has been more of piece meal like type of security on laptop, on mobile etc. Over period of time, we expect that the industry will need a flawless set of technologies - both hardware and software and easiest way to do seamlessly integrate them into hardware base (from architecture level) with software support. There is strong industry talk about upcoming Intel processors to be embedded with McAfee technology. What is the consolidated approach? SIvAkuMAr: There is no communicative strategy yet. But security will be a significant pillar for every technology we build across what we call ‘Compute Continuum’ (smallest form factor handheld to all kinds of computing devices from embedded stuff to consumer electronics to high end data centers). There will be no disruption to the existing

business of McAfee. They are a solid and very profitable company with robust channel partner ecosystem and innovative security roadmap. Now, we own the technology and it means our ability to take it deep and take it across variety of things - hardware, software and others. Intel has been a goldmine for assemblers through successful programs like GID. Do you see a transition across the community as branded PCs are outshining assembled PCs? SIvAkuMAr: Assemblers and GID (Genuine Intel Dealer) initiative continues to evolve with the market trends but a substantial part still comes from desktops. There is no denying that consumers are buying more of tablets, mobility products, smart phones and these products do not lend itself to local assembly. But there is tremendous prospect for channels partners to participate in selling processors for these new devices and related technologies. Increasingly, because of explosion of devices, many partners have ventured into new business like embedded computing. They are building IVR systems, security systems, building network security in housing complex. If you are only selling plain vanilla desktop, you don’t make enough money. Smart partners look for differentiator factor by adding a piece of middleware, piece of software in their solutions. This compels customers to approach partners for customized solutions than pick an off the shelf product. Apart from global alliances with

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R Sivakumar | On Record n SAP, Oracle and others, local ISVs hence form an important channel for Intel. Intel launched new netbook chip to ramp competition with ARM. You also fight with Qualcomm on mobile devices. How do you manage to compete with more competitors than old foe AMD? Sivakumar: The reality is that for new form factors, there are many players ahead of us with good products and market acceptance. But at the same time, many of these opportunities have just started in terms of high sales of tablets, smart phones. The next 10 years or so would witness a real boom for these form factors and Intel will be a very significant player covering the entire spectrum of The Compute Continuum. If a customer wants a specific solution for specific area in a special form factor, Intel does not want to say no. Intel is accelerating into enterprise segment with servers, SSDs, etc. What’s the uptake in India where partners are polarized with niche vendors? Sivakumar: We essentially go to market for enterprise technologies through local /MNC brands who sell branded equipment and large base of channel suppliers. Each one has its value proposition across enterprises to SMBs. The branded products have standard features and fixed SKUs. On channel side, there will be fundamentally different set of things that has to do with flexibility, customized turnaround, hands on services. The market decides which value proposition is critical. One critical aspect

Partners should realize that that the market has become more specialized and this is where the strength of the partner comes in. It is not a pure trading game anymore. of the channel part of business is the customization and rapid turnaround side. Does Intel’s R & D centre at Bangalore deliver quick turn around time to customers to stay ahead of other technology vendors? Sivakumar: Most design centers of Intel built technologies for global market. The Intel India team based in Bangalore jointly led the design of the Intel Xeon processor E7 family, which planned and executed design activities including designing, pre and post silicon logic validation, to get the Intel Xeon processor E7 family productized. However, there is a market need for local solutions as we will not only work with customer but across the ecosystem. For example, it will look like a vanilla PC for education, but Indian education system has its own set of requirements which needs to be built locally. Government sector is critical across education,

infrastructure, healthcare and everything is anchored by technology. While we evangelize with decision makers of Government with latest technology, we continue to communicate the value of technology to Indian people. Datacenters with mission critical computing demand most advanced processor. How is Intel riding this wave to become a differentiator in the enterprise market? Sivakumar: Intel has been changing the economics for mission-critical computing server deployments for more than a decade. Enabling IT departments to better manage dataintensive environments through new security and reliability features and record-breaking performance, Intel Xeon processor E7 product families enhance high-end computing applications, including business intelligence, realtime data analytics and virtualization. Strengthening the line of defense for data centers, the new processors also provide advanced security features that ensure greater data integrity. The days of IT organizations being forced to deploy expensive, closed RISC architectures for mission-critical applications are rapidly nearing an end. This is where E7 delivers price performance to modern day datacenters. Does Xeon E7 offer up sell opportunity (through server refresh) for partners to their enterprise customers? Sivakumar : Absolutely. Apart from natural growth in business, most modern businesses are affected by technology trends like virtualization, automation, etc.

This calls for tremendous need for new technology. If we talk to channel solution providers, it is surprised on types of businesses they get into right from animation segment, data content creation, stock brokers. Partners need to realize that the market has become more specialized and this is where the strength of the partner comes in. It is not a pure trading game anymore. As Intel works with large channel community across extended product portfolio, what’s the key message to partners at large? Sivakumar: There is no single approach (vertical based or geography based) as it depends on the market opportunity. Our role can be horizontal tech provider, vertical based for end to end solution or purely as an advisor. The enrollment and engagement of ecosystem is most imperative as we are core technology providers. Partners have to understand that we are getting started on this colossal opportunity to get engaged with wide spectrum of technology solutions across ever increasing new customer set. The space between set of technologies as private citizen and employees will look much fuzzier as consumerisation of IT will make security more crucial. This is good news for solution partners. Intel will continue to deepen engagement with them to address those challenges, ensure product availability and grab those opportunities. The ultimate GTM is our ability to work with very diverse set of ecosystem partners. 

may 2011

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HOTLINE

DHANANJAY GANJOO, HEAD SERVICE PROVIDER BUSINESS INDIA & SAARC, JUNIPER NETWORKS

VIEW FROM THE TOP

Tackling the Uncertainty of Core Network Planning In order to remove the uncertainty and unpredictability from the planning process, network service providers are making an effort to better understand their customers, applications, and traffic. They can then start operating their core networks more efficiently by no longer throwing bandwidth – in the form of “nailed-up” circuits – at the problem and by growing their networks in such a way that they can phase their investments.

Service providers must balance the value of the technology and the solutions they deliver against the required capital and operations, but it is critical that their network cores be able to accommodate unpredictable traffic patterns that are changing dramatically. Planning core networks based on projected traffic peaks is simply too inefficient and also economically irresponsible to sustain over the long term.

SERVICE PROVIDER NETWORKS TODAY: Today, most service providers have a threelayer network: the optical transport layer, the circuit switching layer, and the IP/MPLS layer. These layers have unique requirements for redundancy, require independent provisioning and usually have separate teams managing them. To deal with the challenges of rapidly growing and unpredictable traffic, a typical IP routing vendor will most likely recommend buying bigger and faster routers since all the traffic is IP anyway. While this solution may provide the flexibility to manage dynamic traffic, it doesn’t address the growing economic challenge service providers are facing. On the other hand, if you talk to optical vendors, they will argue that their technology is the cheapest and simplest. But with ever-changing traffic patterns, can they ever hope to keep up? Obviously both approaches are aimed squarely at selling more of the same as legacy vendors try to solve the problems in ways that protect their market share. THE PROMISE OF HYBRID MPLS/OPTICAL SOLUTIONS: There is, however, an alter-

native approach to solving problem in the core network. Instead of adding to one layer or another, why not integrate them? As carriers look at the total cost of ownership of MPLS, Optical Transport Network and hybrid networks, the benefits of statistical multiplexing – where it is indicated – for most of the traffic coming onto the network – become apparent. Juniper’s modeling shows savings ranging from 40-65 percent depending on traffic characteristics such as flow size, peak-to-average ratios, and simultaneous traffic peak occurrences. Software is the key to successfully implementing this hybrid model. Seamless integration of the packet and optical control planes will allow for co-ordinated provisioning, management and restoration of a multiservice network. In doing so, service providers will be able to transport services natively without complicated transformations. The affordable way to support all electronic communications on a converged IP platform is to build smart networks that use capacity efficiently, and to avoid overbuilding whenever it is not necessary.

NEWS

Juniper Networks reports preliminary first quarter 2011 financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2011 Juniper delivered solid results in the first quarter and continued to build on market momentum. The company is on track with its innovation roadmap by announcing new solutions that define its vision of the new network. Innovation is at the core of the company’s multi-year growth agenda. Net revenues for the first quarter of 2011 increased 21% on a year-overyear basis to $1,102 million. The company posted GAAP net income of

$130 million, or $0.24 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $178 million, or $0.32 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2011. GAAP net income includes half a cent dilutive impact from net interest expense related to the $1 billion dollars of senior notes issued during the quarter. Non-GAAP net income per diluted share increased 19% compared to the first quarter of 2010 and decreased 24% compared to last quarter.

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP

EVENTS CALENDAR

Juniper Networks Annual India Region Partner Conference Juniper Networks received more than 100 channel partners from across the India Region for its 2011 India Partner Conference, which was held at Phuket, Thailand between 3rd and 5th May. The conference was attended by partners from across India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This third edition of the India Region Partner Conference featured keynotes from Juniper Networks India executives and was a testimony to Juniper’s continued focus in driving partner opportunities. The company also took this opportunity to announce the

2010 Juniper Partner awards. It presented two cup awards, eight partner awards (including regional and SAARC) and 21 individual excellence awards. It followed the global theme of “It’s Time to Build a New Network”. AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS The annual awards spotlight the outstanding achievements and commitment from Juniper Networks’ top channel partners in the areas of sales, customer service excellence, technology expertise, and service specializations. Highlights of the Juniper Net-

works Partner 2010 award winners include: Cup Awards Juniper India Partner Cup Best Partner of the Year – IBM Juniper India Distributor Cup - Best Distributor of the Year - Ingram Micro India Ltd Partner Awards Emerging Partner of the Year - Cubix Microsystems India Pvt Ltd Innovation Award of the Year - Nokia Siemens Network India Pvt Ltd Individual Awards Technical Excellence Award of the year - Rajeev Dabhol, IBM India Pvt Ltd

PRODUCT SHOWCASE

JUNIPER NETWORKS LAUNCHES THE MAG SERIES JUNOS PULSE GATEWAYS Juniper Networks recently announced the availability of the Juniper Networks MAG Series Junos Pulse Gateways, built specifically to provide a single point of convergence for managing the secure network connectivity and access challenges of a mobile, always-connected workforce. The MAG Series Junos Pulse Gateways, with the Junos Pulse client, deliver mobile, remote network access with Juniper’s market-leading SSL VPN and local access with Unified Access Control (UAC) technologies - all in a modular, purpose-built chassis.

PARTNER PROGRAMS

Switch Growth Incentive Program (SGI) Switch Growth Incentive Program (SGI) - Switch Growth Incentive Programme (SGI) is a global programme to boost the switching business. It is one of its most ambitious partner programmes, to not only drive partner profitability, but also to make a significant breakthrough in the switching market. With this initiative, Juniper offers solid back-end rebates as high as 25% to its partners without a fixed upper cap in addition to the frontend margins. This is a very aggressive programme so far unheard of in the switching product gear market.

Juniper has started targeting a few partners and there is already a great deal of excitement witnessed among the partners for the new programme. The programme, SGI, will consist of Juniper’s Elite and Select partners and opens newer avenues for the vendor including some big data center deals. Fast Track Program - The Juniper Networks Certification Fast Track program is specifically designed for experienced networking professionals who want to become certified in Juniper Networks Junos operating system. The Juniper Networks Technical Certification Program Fast

Track allows participants to gain competence with platforms based on Juniper Networks Junos operating system and their deployment in the enterprise. Partner Growth Acceleration Program – In the Partner Growth Acceleration program, we invest on key partners who are committed to growing Juniper revenues in new areas and accounts. The investments focus on improving Juniper’s manpower within these partner organizations, sponsoring marketing programs aimed at the target customer and setting up POC labs along with other features.

JUNIPER NETWORKS INTRODUCES QFABRIC: THE FOUNDATION OF DATA CENTERS FOR THE NEXT DECADE The exponential data center demands exponential power, flexibility and control, along with exponential reductions in energy consumption and TCO. QFabric is Juniper’s revolutionary breakthrough in data center networking, enabling a quantum leap in each of these areas.

n cover story

FAST COMPANY How to grow your business faster? No single answer. But, here are three possible ideas. Tested and proven. By Kartik Sharma & Radhika Nallayam

month ago, Infosys, the second largest software exporter in the country, disappointed many keen onlookers and missed many expectations when it announced its results. A two percent jump in revenue definitely wasn’t that impressive for the rest of the world. And, we know why all eyes are now on the newly chosen CEO -- stagnancy is a scary thing. Growth thus becomes the single biggest goal for businesses of all types. While larger companies may have many excuses for a slow growth, inactiveness could pose serious threats and even mean death, to relatively smaller companies. They are expected to grow at healthy double digit rates and at times, even a 50 percent growth fails to cause raised eyebrows. So the smaller you are, the tougher the target is. Apart from quietly accepting this fact, one can try and achieve this goal through many ways. After all, why else would we have so many books and write-ups on ‘how to grow your business!’ But unfortunately, the avid reader in you alone won’t 24

bring great results as proven ideas are still hard to find. ChannelWorld spoke to a few companies to find out what they did to grow and how they ensured their strategies worked.

Expanding the Horizons A solution provider who aspires to double its existing revenue in less than 24 months by introducing a couple of new services might sound a little unrealistic. But here is a company that actually achieved it by expanding its portfolio. MindRiver Information Technologies, a Bangalore based solution pro-

By adding two new services, MindRiver increased its revenue by 25 percent and is expecting a hundred percent growth in the next two years

vider, which in the course of its journey specialized in IT infrastructure management, wanted to expand wings to bring in more revenue rapidly. CEO Sanjay Prasad elucidates, “After doing infrastructure management for years, at some point in time we realized that no more growth is possible with the existing bunch of services. Then we went out to understand the market and came up with the idea of portfolio expansion by adding two new services to our kitty – application management services and managed services. The trick worked and we grew faster than expected. In the last few months our revenue has increased by about 25 percent and we are estimating a 100 percent growth in next two years.” But adding more services to its portfolio is easier said than done. On what basis does one add a particular service or solution to one’s portfolio? Is that based on some scientific logic or on pure gut feel? MindRiver decided to adopt a scientific approach and went for a market research to explore growth opportunities and the areas where business expansion could be possible. Need for managed

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P h o t o G r a p h s b y S r i v at s a S h a n d i lya

cover story n

Sanjay Prasad, CEO (L) and Ramalingam Srinivasan, Director & Senior VP, MindRiver Information Technologies

services was the first thing that the company identified, especially in the context of increasing cloud adoption. The company’s Director & Senior Vice President Ramalingam Srinivasan, the man who actually went out to the people with these offerings, explains, “We spent around six months meeting customers and evaluating the market. There are a lot of applications, right from the handset application to more complex applications like

SCM and ERP, which are running in the datacenter. The biggest challenge for a customer is the interdependency of these applications. It has become strenuous to manage all these applications for a company, whose core business is completely different. Hence they are looking for experts who can manage these applications.” Prasad adds, “It would have been a rather an unaffordable deal for companies to depend on a vendor for ser-

vices. They will have to increase their head count drastically if they want to do it in-house. Hence they prefer to rely on third-party providers like us.” The company is proactively managing various applications; that include performance, configuration, and security monitoring along with non-traditional applications where the end user can communicate with MindRiver in case problems emerge. “Applications may die after some time but there may 2011

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n cover story will still be people maintaining a few legacy applications and they will need application management. Our services start from the time of building the application and go down to till the issue is resolved by the application builder,” explains Prasad.

Challenges in the way Introduction of new service brings along some hesitation and gaps in the customers’ mind. “Most of our customers are SMBs. One concern that most of them will have is around security. Traditionally, these companies are hesitant to open up their business systems. It was a big challenge for us to change the mindset of the customer. To overcome this challenge, we demonstrated

be well versed about the account. We grasp all the knowledge about him and his needs,” consents Prasad. However, most of the customers wanted to ensure that if the solution provider exits it does not leave the customer high and dry. MindRiver built the knowledge management portal for this purpose. Every bit of knowledge earned, learnt or built is available in that portal which is owned by the customer. “Customers can now get complete idea on how MindRiver manages the application from end to end. It teaches from the basic task to the toughest job. There are customers who don’t want process management but want us to build a knowledge management system for

MindRiver started with managed services in November last year. Now, it has 19 customers. Four of their application management customers are so big that each of them can give additional revenue that the SI is currently clocking. They were able to crack more than top ten product companies of the world. all the security tools and showed them a proof of concept (POC). We spent time in explaining the cost benefits and possibilities in increasing their return on investment (ROI) with our offerings,” highlights Prasad. Besides, inexperience in the domain was a huge challenge for MindRiver to kick start its plans. “We are often asked several questions – about our previous experience and some proof on our previous projects,” explains Srinivasan. “We accepted that we were newcomers, but then we exhibited our talent and skills. I dug into our internal pool and found people who had prior experience on application support. The research helped us convince them that we comprehended what they wanted. We try to persuade the customer to get a small deal initially, and then on the merit we get more business,” says Srinivasan. “Today most of the customers look at life cycle management. We try to 26

them,” says Prasad. The easy availability of help during an emergency was also a huge concern for MindRiver’s customers. The company explained how in its offerings most of the problems could be solved online. “We tried to look at how much automation could have been done so as to reduce the human dependence. You have to ensure that the process supersedes the human being. We also convinced them that our people will be ready for calls all the time,” says Prasad. There was another challenge waiting for Srinivasan. This time it was tougher as he has had to explain this new business concept to all the stakeholders. “It was a tough job to convince people internally, from the HR team to the sales guys. I was required to train them and tell them what we were doing. I requested them to allow me to start with the small business and promised them to show the numbers. And then the revenues

shot up to 150 percent and therefore the stakeholders got excited and we moved ahead.” MindRiver is now approaching the new companies that it had never intended to go to with its previous portfolio. “We started with managed services in November last year. Now we have 19 new customers. Four of our application management customers are so big that each of them can give additional revenue that we are currently clocking. We were able to crack more than top ten product companies of the world,” says Prasad.

Unfolding Opportunities “Today the demand is so high that we are not able to deliver. We have pending orders and people are waiting for us.” These words by Prasad illustrate the bright future that awaits the company in the domain. But this demand can be met only through efficient and consistent planning. MindRiver is building a Centre of Excellence to meet up the future needs. “There is a huge demand from my customers to ramp up the team. We intend to attract talent to our organization and train them for six months on the product of a particular customer and then will deploy them accordingly,” explains Prasad. “We came up with the idea of ownership. Instead of wasting time hiring people from the existing job market, we will hire fresh talents from engineering colleges, and setup a lab. This way we will have a constant flow of talent,” explains Srinivasan. “The opportunity is very vast. We will stick diligently to this space and continue to invest in it. We are game for the future,” concludes a confident Prasad.

Breaking New Ground Geographic expansion is surely a tough task as it involves unexplored territories, unknown customers, and attracting local talent that is unheard of for you. Does it mean expanding your business geographically is a bad idea? Definitely not. “It’s worth the effort,” says L Ashok, Managing Director of Chennaibased Futurenet Technologies. The company opened three new offices in the last one year, one each in

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cover story n At the same time, Futurenet had no plans to address these markets out of its headquarters in Chennai, though it had enough resources to do that. “Having local presence was important. Customers want us to be their neighbors,” says Ashok. The company definitely did its homework to figure out the opportunities in its targeted markets and prepared a list of potential customers in all the cities. Futurenet’s idea to venture into smaller cities was also validated by its principal companies’ plans for these markets. Most of the vendors the SI works with were upbeat about the opportunities in smaller cities and were aggressively targeting these markets through their partners. This gave the SI the confidence to move up a gear and open offices in three cities.

Adding Local Flavor While identifying the right markets was half the battle, the journey further was equaly tough for Futurenet.

Futurenet wanted to own more long-term accounts. The company was clearly not eyeing opportunistic customers who would not offer value business.

L Ashok, Managing Director, Futurenet Technologies

Madurai, Coimbatore and Trichi. The SI’s goal was clear -- tap the growing markets in these tier-3 cities at a very early stage. “Geographic expansion was always on our radar. Our initial discussions were around identifying the right markets. We primarily thought of opening our offices in tier 1 cities like Bangalore and Hyderbad as those are big markets. But later decided to look at smaller cities,” explains Ashok. The company, till then, only had presence in Chennai and Pondicherry. The rationale behind that decision was not the tough competition in bigger cities, but the relatively unexplored potential in the smaller cities.

Futurenet wanted to own more longterm accounts or ‘green customers’ as Ashok puts it. The SI was clearly not eyeing opportunistic customers who would not offer value business. “Our idea was not to go after transaction business. Our strength lies in offering end-to-end infrastructure solutions and open-source applications. Our market research showed us that there are plenty of customers who would adopt these solutions in smaller cities. We wanted to have a mind-share in this market at the right time. On the other hand, we wanted to create a lot of relationship-based accounts that would give us consistent business,” explains Ashok.

It had the huge task of finding the right resources in these regions and forming a team that would start delivering immediately. At the same time, Ashok and his team did not want to whistle in the dark and randomly hire a few people from these completely unknown towns. Futurenet quickly identified three senior people within the organization and relocated one to each city. “We wanted these senior people, who understand the DNA of our company, to lead the new teams in these cities. We identified techno-commercial people, who understand both technology and sales,” says Ashok. Futurenet took a conscious call may 2011

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n cover story to have ‘thin teams’ in these cities and scale up gradually as more business comes in. Yet again, the SI carefully chose people who could do multi-tasking -- people who understand technology and are also good at selling it. This approach helped the company in forming small at the same time efficient teams across the three cities. It also invested on getting these people trained by various vendor companies. Though it now had a well-organized structure in the new locations, getting business was still a horse of different color. “As it was an entirely new market for us, breaking the mind-set of people towards the ‘outsider’ image that we had was initially very tough. Though we are far more competent than most of the local players, we had

ies. Besides, Futurenet took a few of its prospective customers to its headoffice in Chennai and demonstrated its capabilities to them. These collective efforts helped the company in cracking a few accounts. “Our biggest strength is the technical capabilities that we have developed diligently over a period of time. We have 120 certified engineers, apart from the new people we hired in the new cities. The only way to show our capabilities to the new customers was to invite them to our head-quarters. Seeing is believing, and it worked,” explains Ashok. Competition from local players was a challenge for Futurenet and it was important for the company to prove its competence. Most of the vendors the company worked with were not in

Competition from local players was a challenge for Futurenet and it was important to prove its competence. Most of the vendors the company worked with were not in a position to help the SI much, as they had the compulsion to support local players. It was inevitable for the SI to have a compelling value proposition. a hard time convincing the customers,” recalls Ashok.

Playing Mind Share Game To address this issue, Futurenet took up a series of initiatives. Apart from meeting and talking to its potential customers in these cities on a regular basis, the company decided to conduct events for its customers. “We organized a couple of events and invited our prospective customers. My team from Chennai traveled to these cities to organize the events successfully. This worked out to be a smart idea and we gained a good mindshare in these markets,” adds Ashok. However, the fact that Futurenet did not have any successful local implementations to showcase was again a challenge. But it had a huge list of successful case studies about customers in Chennai and other cit28

a position to help the SI much, as they had the compulsion to support local players. “So, it was inevitable for us to show a compelling value proposition and position ourselves as solution provider and consultant, rather than a vendor,” says Ashok. Open source came to its rescue many times as it was an appealing topic to start a discussion with many small and mid-sized companies. Later, the discussions were taken forward and the SI confidently positioned virtualization and other technologies to these customers. Once a rapport was built, Futurenet positioned the entire end-to-end offering to its customers. The company also stayed away from price wars and entered accounts at a very early stage to propose solutions to customers. As expected, these efforts paid off. Futurenet managed to acquire about

15 customers across these three cities in a span of 6 months and feels that it is on the right track. “My investment in these cities in acquiring customers and marketing ourselves was quite high while comparing to that in Chennai. But the returns are going to be higher too. Most of these companies do not have strong in-house expertise and are likely to outsource a lot of non-core IT tasks to a trusted thirdparty like us,” says Ashok. The SI is expecting to bag more deals with this strategy and scale up its operations further in these cities.

Tagging the Growth The higher the risk, the higher the returns too, believes the team at Delhibased F1 InfoTech. The reason wasn’t different for the SI to venture into a completely new market that it had never addressed before. For a growing company that has been doing IT integration, RFID was a whole new ball game. But the company knew the potential of the market that it was going to get into. “We knew that it was important to develop new avenues to take our company to the next level. At the same time, we did not want to offer something that everybody else in the market has to offer. RFID definitely is a vast market and moreover, a relatively untouched market,” says Sunil Gupta, Director of F1 InfoTech. While leaping at the opportunity, the company did not forget to do its market research. To start with, the company performed a dipstick survey among its existing customers to understand their requirements and to know whether it could actually get a few customers to start with. F1 soon figured out that it already had some business at hand as a lot of its existing customers were keen on deploying RFID. “A lot of companies were offering barcode and customers were looking for an alternative technology. This, coupled with our research, gave us the confidence that it is a growing and vast market. Besides, we knew that it was going to be a high-margin business which will help us grow at a faster pace,” adds Gupta. F1 also approached a few consul-

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cover story n tants and RFID experts to understand the dynamics of the market. Besides, it also spent a lot of time doing research on the internet and talking to people in the industry before identifying RFID as the target market. As RFID is an enormous space, F1 decided to nail down on a few application areas, which would bring them immediate business. F1 did not want to be all over the place. The company thus identified asset management, supply chain management and library management as the areas that it wanted to focus on.

It Takes two to Tango Once it had its focus in place, Gupta and his team had the mammoth task of finding the right principals to work with and the right resources to develop and take the product to the market. Though it was not very tough for Gupta to find RFID experts to form his new team, zeroing in on RFID vendors took up a lot of time. “We had discussions with many

F1 Infotech focused on developing a separate team for RFID. It also had to ensure that its traditional SI business gets equal amount of attention companies and tried to understand their offerings. It was not very easy for us to find a principal company that had the offerings that matched our interest. After a lot of brainstorming and product demos, we identified our vendors. It took us almost 7-8 months,” explains Gupta. The company has not partnered with three key vendors in this space. Simultaneously, the solution provider focused on developing a separate team for its RFID business. At the same time, it also had to ensure that its traditional SI business gets equal amount of attention and remained unaffected. Apart from finding business from within the existing customer

Sunil Gupta, Director, F1 InfoTech

base, the new team identified new opportunities as well. They spent a lot of time understanding the scope of the market and adaptability of the technology. Gradually, F1 was received with open arms by many new and existing customers. While they were ready to listen to F1 and its RFID story, convincing wasn’t that easy for the solution provider. Customers were not very confident about whether the SI would meet its deliverables as it did not have any previous work to showcase. That was when F1 decided to do pilots for its prospective customers. “Though we had to invest on procuring devices to run pilots, it was an

effective way of convincing customers. Successful pilots help us to covert many fence-sitters to key customers,” says Gupta. Though too early to talk about, Gupta is expecting the returns to be great. Besides, RFID is considered to have limitless opportunities in terms of applications and thus F1 believes that this is just the beginning of a long journey. “We are planning to hire more experts and come up with innovative applications to target new markets. A couple of years down the line, we will be in a position to start a small manufacturing unit for RFID tags,” concludes Gupta.  may 2011

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n opinion

Frank Hayes

It’s Not Funny When Security

ow much has computer security changed since

the last time you looked? It’s now a half-hour TV comedy called Breaking In. Will it be funny? Will it be realistic? You’re missing the point: Security is now so mainstream that it’s getting the Two and a Half Men treatment — and that’s bad news for your IT shop. The problem isn’t that a sitcom based on penetration testing will teach bad guys how to break into your systems. They already know more than they’re likely to learn from a bunch of TVshow gags on Wednesday nights. No, the problem is that, more and more, the general public thinks of security itself as a joke. Consider Anonymous, the group that attacked Visa and MasterCard after the credit card companies stopped processing payments made in support of WikiLeaks. After security firm HBGary Federal said it knew who the leaders of Anonymous were, five of the group’s members hacked their way into HBGary’s servers and published 50,000 embarrassing company emails — and then explained how they took advantage of HBGary’s lax 30

security to break in. That was February. In March came the punch line: The Anonymouser who had pretended to be HBGary’s CEO and needed only a 15-minute email exchange to convince the company’s systems administrator to drop security is actually a 15-year-old girl. Or at least that’s what “Kayla” claimed in an interview with Forbes . Oh, those wacky kids! The day after that revelation, RSA Security announced that someone had broken into its systems,

n Biometric authentication and other cutting edge technology won’t fly because they’re expensive and the problem lies elsewhere

rooted around and walked away with secret details of RSA’s SecurID authentication technology — and those details might, the company warned, make the pricey SecurID less secure for, um, ID’ing users. And that was just a few weeks after a man from Belarus pleaded guilty in New York for running an identity theft ring that compiled detailed dossiers on each victim in order to make sure the thieves would have an answer for every conceivable challenge question when they called to transfer money or make other fraudulent transactions. Those dossiers included everything from Social Security numbers to — actual example — a victim’s oldest sibling’s nickname. With ammunition like that, challenge-based security really is a joke. Yes, it’s that bad. And

the usual ways you might try to up the security ante — pile on the encryption and biometric authentication and lots of other cutting-edge security technology — won’t fly. They’re too expensive, and besides, the weak links are almost always people, not technologies. But instead, what if you go straight to users and point out the joke that security has become? That there really are bad guys out there, and security problems are so widespread that they’re not just all over the news, they’re even the subject of TV comedy. And that makes it more important than ever to remember the basics: Don’t share your passwords or leave them out in plain sight. Don’t let strangers through security doors. Don’t assume that anyone who calls you is from IT. And don’t send any company information to anyone unless you’re sure they’re supposed to have it. Who knows? If you point out that security has become a punch line, maybe your users will realize that what they do matters. And if that gets them to take security a little more seriously — well, that’s something worth smiling about.  Frank Hayes has been covering the intersection of business and IT for three decades. Contact him at cw@frankhayes.com.

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How ow to Integrate with the cloud

Credit Card can spin up a SaaS application. But consider how you integrate with that cloud app, or you’ll be condemned to create another Silo. By Dave Linthicum

ENErAlly, BuSINESSES don’t bother

about the way the SaaS applications will integrate with their ex existing software, especially when they decide to go to the cloud for an enterprise application and open an account with Salesforce.com or some other SaaS provider. But integration is crucial. Every business comprehends that you can’t have multiple applications operating on different versions of the same customer record. For example, without those versions being updated and reconciled. Without integration, the quality of data lowers down. We don’t want a new SaaS system to be hindered by having to enter data twice. Also wherethe correct data is not available when a core business process requires it. For an effective approach towards integration, the process begins with business requirements. Nowadays new, innovative integration technologies of of32

fer cost efficiencies unavailable just a few years ago — although in some cases, requirements dictate that you opt for an old-school integration solution. In general, integration of SaaS applications is restricted to data integration and asynchronous process integration, ruling out the closely coupled application clusters some enterprises depend on. Within these constraints, how far you decide to push integration with SaaS apps depends on your business needs.

a avoidin G silos The beauty and the downside — of SaaS is that the business people don’t need IT to establish accounts and to get up and running. Without integration, SaaS silos spring up, resulting in duplidupli cate data, inaccurate reports, and ultimately, damaging data discrepancies. Integration technology allows clouds and core enen terprise systems to share data while dealing with the

different ways that the data is structured. This is accomplished through data mediation subsystems that manage the underlying differences in both structure and content in flight. With SaaS in particular; you need a flexible integration solution, because both the source and target system interfaces change more frequently than those presented by traditional enterprise software. Back in the ‘90s, integration technology was immature and expensive. These days, you can find lightweight open source integration solutions, such as that provided by Jitterbit, or cloud-delivered integration offered by the likes of Boomi (now a part of Dell). Even integration appliances have emerged, such as that offered by Cast Iron Systems (now a part of IBM). This is on top of the fifth- or sixth-generation, enterprise-class integration solutions sold by IBM, Informatica, Oracle, Software AG, and other established players that have been around for years.

The FundamenTals T Tals There are many enterprises that still rely on the primitive FTP method to transfer data — even when integrating newfangled SaaS with local applications.Many enterprises still rely on the primitive FTP method to transfer data — even when integrating newfangled SaaS with local applications. The typical way to accomplish this is to lay down data from the source systems into a file once a day. Next, transfer that file from the cloud provider to the enterprise server and load the data into the target application or database. Also, the transfer can happen

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Cloud CompuTinG | FeaT ea ure n eaT once or twice a day at most, so data latency is an issue. Finally, failures may leave the source or target systems with bad or inaccurate data. Although FTP seems like the simplest approach, it’s never the right one. In the same vein, some organizations opt to build integration technology themselves, in effect coding an integration server from scratch. While this keeps developers busy, the results are almost always ineffective and inefficient. Now when such a broad range of integration solutions are available and affordable, there’s no excuse to go down the path of ground-up custom coding. Semantic mediation: It is the process of dealing with the differences in data structures or data semantics as they exist within the source system — say, from Salesforce.com to an SAP target system. The structures and data content are changed in flight while moving from source to target. Normally, the links between source and target structures are set up using maps that chart the structure from the source schema to the target schema. Structures can be mediated in a matter of minutes, and information can flow between two very different data structures. Connectivity: It is the ability for the integration technology to adapt to the interfaces provided by the cloud or enterprise-based systems — typically, APIs. Adapters account for the differences in the interfaces and the way the integration technology deals with the data. In the case of Salesforce.com, for example, you invoke a web service that produces data bound to a structure,

and the adapter is able to consume that data into the integration engine where it is manipulated as required — and then sent out another adapter to a local application, such an ErP or an inventory control system. Validation: It is the ability of an integration server to validate data, such as making sure a ZIP code is correct. Routing: It is the ability to make sure the right data ends up getting to the right system. It reacts to events, such as a customer record being updated or a sale being recorded. In reacting to the event, it carries out some preprogrammed function, such as extracting the changed data from the local enterprise system, ac-

a multitenanted integration engine that will be shared by many, but behaves as if it were local. y you get all the advantages of using a cloudbased service. Prices start at about $1,000 per month and goes up to roughly $5,000 per month depending upon the number of connections and data transferred. Negatives: First of all, SaaS integration has the same problem as SaaS in general: Its availability is in the hands of the provider. With integration, an outage may bring down multiple applications, and latency and performance issues may be beyond your control. y you also need some way of dealing with interfaces that are not Port 80 compliant and, thus, can’t

integration technology allows clouds systems to share data while dealing with ways to structure data counting for the differences in structure and content, and updating the remote cloud-based system with the changed data, typically in less than a second. These events can occur at a rate of hundreds or thousands a minute, or just a few per day.

The riGhT T soluTion Today, you have a choice of where your integration technology resides. It can live in a cloud, be bolted into a rack in your data center, or install on a server in your data center like conventional software. Positives: using a SaaS integration service to integrate a SaaS application can be a highly effective, low-effort option. In this approach — offered by Boomi, Informatica and others — the idea is to supply

transfer data outside the firewall. Additionally, while the pay-as-you-go pricing seems attractive, you may discover that purchasing integration software outright is actually more cost effective over the long haul. The appliance approach to integration was brought by Cast Iron Systems as a way of providing its clients with preconfigured hardware and software solutions. Some configuration and/ or programming may be required to meet your exact needs, but these integrationin-a-box solutions do arrive with the ability to connect to popular SaaS providers, such Salesforce.com, along with any number of local enterprise applications. The integration appliance vendors target the SaaS-toenterprise integration space.

The process of installation and configuration eases out with an appliance-based approach. The main drawback is that many appliances provide less robust integration than their software counterparts. But still we can rely upon the good old EAI (enterprise application integration) for more varied needs. The biggest disadvantage of EAI software is the cost. you y must maintain hardware and software in your data center, on top of paying as much as a half a million dollars for each license, with a yearly fee for program maintenance. The great advantage of EAI software is maturity. This is typically fifth- or sixth-generation technology, well-tested and feature-rich. It can provide core integration services for internal systems as well as connectivity to the cloud

BuildinG a BridGe The good news is that we’ve been working on the SaaS-to-enterprise integration problem for almost 10 years now. We know what works and what does not. Moreover, many single-purpose solutions that focuses on cloud-to-enterprise integration, such as appliances and on-demand integration technology, have emerged to solve this problem at a relatively low cost. But in approaching integration, you still need to think hard about your current business needs and what you’ll require in the future. In fact, the richness of the API set may well be a key factor in determining which SaaS application you choose in the first place. Smart integration means greater business efficiency. n

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— InfoWorld

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Spinning

A Solution Gaurav Mathur, Managing Director, Filix Consulting.

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How did Filix Consulting deliver an ERP solution when a large SI decided to end its association with a project for a textile manufactuer?

By Shreehari Paliath

ndia’s textile industry needs no

special mention in terms its contribution to the country’s growth and export aspirations. For centuries muslin has been the most prized and valued commodity of the Indian market, even before the software services monopolized the spotlight internationally. So, how does technology serve its purpose in an industry which provides for four percent of GDP and 18 percent of employment in the industrial sector and paradoxically where mechanization is inevitable? When Filix Consulting was approached by Ludhiana-based textile manufacturer and exporter Aarti International, the Delhi-based firm was only more than eager to render its services. When a yarn manufacturer has an installed capacity of producing 173,000 spindles, the strain on its IT methods is tremendous and transparency of production becomes vital. As Aarti International decided to enhance its production process, it was approached by Wipro, KPMG and Filix with bids. Evidently with Wipro’s leverage as a Tier 1 integrator and its enlarged reputation, they were the obvious choice for the implementation. So Filix Consulting lost out this project, or so they believed. But this partnership with Wipro was not destined to last long. “We are basically a skinning unit. When we approached Oracle for an ERP solution for our plant in Ludhi-

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case study n ana, they suggested Wipro and Filix. We already had an ERP solution in place before but we wanted to improve upon that. Although the contract was awarded to Wipro, we had to part ways due to certain contractual issues that cropped up. The ERP solution brings in transparency to the management in the plant processes. So there is often some resistance internally. This therefore becomes a challenge for us,” says Vinayak Mittal, Director, Aarti International.

Result of Recommendation Obviously with Oracle being a name to reckon with, its recommendation of Filix would have asserted a sense of confidence to Aarti International for the implementation. “We approached Filix with all our requirements and presented it to them and they in turn customized the solutions for us according to our needs,” adds Mittal. Filix Consulting has been an Oracle partner for only a few years now. But it seems to have rooted itself well in these unmapped industrial sectors. “Ludhiana as a market is very challenging. There aren’t many IT companies working there, but it is an important industrial hub in the country. So awareness about IT is not too high. Therefore understanding the customer becomes important and companies need to do the grilling at a very fundamental level itself,” says Gaurav Mathur, Managing Director, Filix Consulting. When Wipro decided to move out during the implementation and ended its association with the project, the additional thrust from Oracle helped Filix further in reinforcing its selection. Wipro had sold Aarti International a Sun bundle as Oracle had only recently acquired Sun and wanted to benchmark certain implementations on it. “Our initial challenge was that the customer had installed Linux over Sun. Although they had bought high end servers, the power utilization was not set up. We had to replace Linux with Sun before we proceeded further. The quality of the documentation of study that was carried out was also not up to the mark. We were finding it difficult to comprehend it. So to expect the customer to make sense of the documentation would be much to ask for,” says Mathur.

processes and improved transparency

In any project the implementation and service has to be seamless to ensure quality response from the system and also the customer. “Another challenge in these regions is that ERP system is something people are not used to. It is not easy to help them convert to the new applications. So, presently Aarti is happy with the services that we provide, but a challenge for them would be to train their own employees to use the systems. Adopting the whole process and employing quality man-power is an issue. Ludhiana as such does not have enough people who have worked on ERPs before. Here the problem is that often the owners are not able to impart enough time to resolve the pain points in the plants. So that time lag could create issues during the execution of the system from their end,” says Mathur.

Challenges: customer training, limited

Taking Control

Snapshot Key parties: Filix Consulting, Aarti International

Key Competition: Wipro, KPMG, Sierra Atlantic

Location: Ludhiana Project Cost: Rs. 1.25 CR Project Time: 6 months Key Technologies: Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1.3 and Oracle Business Accelerators

Key Vendor: Oracle Key Benefits: Upgrade in the plant

exposure to ERP

Cleaning the Mess The entire documentation was redone by Filix and validated by Aarti International. Though this was an Oracle Business Accelerate implementation, which usually would not require a study to be undertaken, Filix had to conduct the study again especially as Oracle did not have a foot print in the textile industry. So this project would also be used as a base document for future implementation in case there were similar solutions to be mapped in this vertical. “We had earlier implemented a similar ERP solution for another garment manufacturer. I think our pre-sales and the experience of the earlier project helped us,” adds Mathur. It is obvious that major industries will often serve as vortex for IT implementations, especially when there is a rapid stretching of production and large-scale automation. There is greater focus now on the Ludhiana market because the textile sector in Coimbatore and such areas are hard pressed to sort out and prescribe to the enhanced pollution norms. Filix Consulting already has an imprint in these areas as they are focused on other sectors which have allowed them to understand the implementation better in terms of the geographical location.

This project has brought in two firms in the loop for hardware and software. The entire hardware was delivered by Wipro, before their departure from the project. “All the installations were executed by Wipro itself. We did not have ant direct engagement with them, but the customer collaborated with them,” adds Mathur. Filix ensured that all the conditions that were placed in the contract that was awarded to it were executed well. Presently, the hardware and ERP is being maintained by Filix. For Aarti International the ERP solution has helped them in stabilizing their entire system. It is being used to control processes like production, stores, purchasing and all the other aspects of the plant. “Certain parts of the plant like engineering and maintenance are still under implementation. These are yet to be brought under the ERP blanket and we expect Filix to finish the final aspects in a couple of months. But overall we are happy with the entire setup provided by the solution provider,” says Mittal. We often witness instances of people stepping into unchartered waters and coming up trumps. When it comes to IT the concept of filling up a void of a missing IT behemoth becomes complicated. In this case Filix has created a satisfactory circumstance for its customer and itself.  may 2011

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n FAST TRACK

Digilog Technologies

P h o t o b y S r i v at s a S h a n d i lya

or more than 28 years

Rafiq Ayub has witnessed the explosion of IT security in India. And with his company, Digilog Systems, now renamed as Digilog Technologies, Ayub has engrossed himself in a number of Indian Government’s mission critical security programs. Recalling his journey, Ayub says, “After completing my engineering in 1980, I was all prepared to do something of my own and within a span of two years I started my company.” Digilog started with working in specialized fields like instruments required in Geo-physical exploration of ground water sources. There was a huge scarcity of drinking water in the state of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in those days. The company then diversified into the security industry in 1985. “We were one of the very few companies in India who were professionally doing projects in security field. Being a small company we had to face problems competing with the large players but we did some smart projects in aviation like one with HAL,” says Ayub. In 1995, Digilog got into Information Technology. Ayub explains, “Things were migrating and happening from analog to digital, even in the security field it became IP, it was no more DVR but NVR. Server, storage and different IT equipment became critical, so migrating to IT became mandatory for us.” Digilog partnered with IBM and started working with Government of India “People who have seen the works of NASA, after seeing our work, admitted that our work is better than NASA. In this way we built up reputation both in Indian and

We believe in getting married to our projects says Rafiq Ayub, Director, Digilog Technologies 36

global market,” says Ayub. According to Ayub, Digilog has done the largest storage solution with EMC for some of the Indian Government’s major research centers and some major projects with Cisco.

With Government In the last 10 years, Digilog chiefly worked with the Government. “Since I was the Chief Advisor for Security in Karnataka’s Vidhana Sauda; Government projects were my first preference. But I don’t prefer working with State Government, because of the cumbersome task in getting payments due to the high level of corruption present,” Ayub says. “As a matter of responsibility of being involved in the confidential projects where country’s security is at stake, we have been forced to keep a low key profile. We have been allowed to have a website only recent but there was a time when our geographical expansion was also under check.” Says Ayub by adding, “We changed the psychology and thinking of the space department and the way in which they work,” “The knowledge we gathered came handy and attracted us to work more with Government,” Ayub adds.

The Global Experience Digilog’s tie up with a global company named Licel for which Ayub says that it is the only manufacturer of electronics required for the Lidar which is a replacement (with more efficiency) of Radar. The company is also working with an Israel based company Mellanox Technologies which is a leading supplier of end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet connectivity solutions and services for servers and storage. “What I like about business people in developed companies is that they don’t hesitate to take the blow. But the same won’t happen in India. Here there will be a legal battle and for the next fifteen years you would still be fighting,” Ayub confesses. “There were embargos on us for

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doing business outside India and with MNCs. But now a days it’s less and if somewhere we find any embargo we don’t take those projects,” he adds.

Snapshot Year of Foundation: 1982

Private Sector Digilog is eager to engage more with the private sector but is finding challenges on the way. “I would love to do more private projects, but the basic problem is that I have been very unlucky with the marketing team. Some of my marketing chaps that I found got all the inputs from our company and then joined the competitor after a year or six months. And all that inputs and hard work that we did from our organization would be taken away by the other company just for the matter that he would be getting 5 to 10 percent more salary,” laments Ayub. He says, “People go overboard in terms of trying to impress people with presentations, brochures, mails and other extravaganzas. The most important thing is you have to understand the psyche of the person and the team which is designing something, because it means nothing if I don’t deliver on field.” Rafiq Ayub does not believe in compromising with the quality of work, “We believe in getting ourselves engrossed and embedded with the organization where we are not treated as a vendor but as a part of the organization. And we never tried to sell something that we would not prefer to buy ourselves,” adding “we are so on time with our job that organizations need not follow us for getting their work done. We believe in

Headquarte: Bangalore Business Activities: IT hardware / software, IP based Physical Security Solutions, Perimeter Protection Systems, Control Room Solutions, Lidar Related Products for Atmospheric Research, Website: www.digilogsys.in Key Executives: Mohammed Tayib - Manager Technical - HQ Anoop Sellappan - Manager Technical - Trivandrum Sangeetha Balachandran - Branch Head - Mumbai Palani V - Manager Accounts & Administration Branches: Trivandrum, Hyderabad, Mumbai & Bhopal Principals: IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, Fujitsu, Linovo Revenue: 2009-10 – 6.18 crore Revenue: 20010-11 – 10.15 crore

just getting married to our projects.” Ayub boasts about his experienced team where the youngest person serving is working in the company for the last 16 years, “We tried to hold on to the people and make the environment of understanding each other. My team understands the psychology and work culture of Digilog; unless you have a perfect team you cannot function properly.”

revenue split

vertical split 40%

10%

Workstation Consoles

Corporate

90%

Government

30%

Security & Surveillance

30%

Hardware

Vendor support Ayub finds many MNCs being a bit improper in business, to which he says, “Companies like HP and EMC believe in giving multiple quotes in a project. In some projects where 15 people are quoting, 13 people will be from HP or IBM and each one will be different in pricing. But IBM does not resort to that thing; when you are working with IBM, you know from day one that they will not let you down. Loyalty is there.” “These tactics may help a company in short run but it gives a bad impression to the customers where he feels like all he needed to do is asked for a limited tender and gives it to three people and he could have resolved it. Why did he have to go public? You will find some companies who are resorting to these gimmicks and tactics, but at the end of the day neither the vendor is happy because his margins are squeezed nor customer. It is also leading private MNCs into the corruptive practices.” adds Ayub. Ayub gives a good example of vendor loyalty with a bid for a project. “In the bid six people have quoted HP, five have quoted Dell, and Fujitsu, with whom we have tied up with.” That is called the integrity, when Fujitsu told us that, “you are going to lead in the particular tender they have stuck to that. In return we also remain loyal to them,” He adds.

Future Ayub finds Cloud Computing becoming an integral part of IT these days. “Cloud Computing is the area which has a very good potential, also being a very economical option in future. We are looking forward to have business around it.” He says. Digilog has its offices in Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad, Bhopal and Mumbai. We have some major projects in the pipe line. A lot of work is there in the specialized field of Servers and Software. This year we have seen tremendous growth and we are determined to sustain it.” Ayub concludes.  — Karthik Sharma

Source: Digilog Technologies

April 2011

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n FAST TRACK

Nestor InfoTech says Santosh Kumar K S, FounderCEO of Nestor Infotech

We want to make a mark in the enterprise solutions space says Santosh Kumar, CEO, Nestor InfoTech

rom being a 100 percent

advance payer to disties to a respected solution provider, mere one and half years since inception, Bangalore’s Nestor InfoTech Solutions has come a long way in a short span of time. Sample this: The cumulative revenue of the company from November 2009 till date is a phenomenal Rs13.5crores, with about Rs 38

9 crores being revenues of 2010-2011 alone. Further, Nestor hopes to clock Rs 45-50 crores by end of fiscal 2011-2012, and has already done a topline business of Rs 4.5 crores in the last 2 months of the current fiscal, which has made it a profitable venture very early on. “Our philosophy is quite simple. We want to make a mark in the Enterprise Solutions space within the next two years,”

P h o t o b y S r i v at s a S h a n d i lya

The Two-vendor Approach Nestor’s alliance with Dell and Cisco explains most of its early success. Moving off the beaten track, Kumar has stuck to a selective vendor approach and sees maximum growth for Nestor through these two vendors. A slow and calculated strategy, Kumar’s IT experience of 16 years has helped him to understand that working with two strong vendors is a safe approach vis-à-vis putting your fingers into many pies. “These two vendors collectively give Nestor an end-to-end value proposition and a complete bouquet as portfolio to take to the customer and we don’t feel the need to go for multiple partnerships,” explains Kumar. He has stuck to his guns despite a lot of well meaning advice to the contrary. His stint with Dell between 2001 and 2005 helped him to understand the internal workings of the company. Capitalizing on this experience, he has forged a strong partnership with the vendor. Cisco was a collaboration that happened by virtue of Kumar’s long standing relationship with the company over the years. Proof of concept: Nestor has done Cisco business worth Rs 3.5 crores over the last seven days. Also, with Dell, Kumar says the vendor’s Eco friendly storage boxes has generated quite some interest among clients, and Nestor has been able to sell quite a few service packs. Dell’s demo units come at very affordable prices for start-ups like Nestor, says Kumar So, will there be no change in the equations, going forward? No, says Kumar quite confidently, that Dell and Cisco will continue to contribute significantly to Nestor’s topline. Both the vendors’ internal teams have reportedly expressed great enthusiasm towards working with Nestor in the long term, and Kumar foresees no hindrance in getting large deals into Nestor’s kitty. Kumar has also made it quite clear internally that technical competencies of the teams have to scale up to match up to service

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provider levels. This is because both the vendors, Cisco and Dell have very stringent mandates on certifications, and Nestor eyes being completely service provider compliant by 2012; Kumar is himself a DCSE, to start with. He says, “We want a client to come to us for everything instead of going to third party vendors for piece meal jobs.” All said and done, Nestor recognizes the challenge of getting the most skilled people on board, and Kumar says no expense has been spared to date and will be spared going forward in getting the best in business. Cisco has also come forward in helping in recruitments at different stages, making the process a little easier.

Value Added Services In the initial days, margins were not such a big consideration for the company, as much as getting the customers and also building goodwill was, but somewhere along the way, the thinking is now clearly focused towards value and value driven agenda. Currently, Nestor has 180 customers of which 80% are SMBs and about 20% are Large Enterprises. Further, there are plans in the pipeline. Nestor’s SNOC for its existing customers and a 15000 square feet datacenter in Hyderabad are high on the company’s radar. What Nestor plans to do with its SNOC is interesting. It plans to give its existing customers a one year freeof-cost service support package. Says Kumar, “We want our existing customers to see the value in the proposition we are giving.” From the second year onwards, the customers would be charged a nominal fee. A customer retention mechanism that Nestor feels would certainly pay off for the company, since the customers are well aware of what Nestor can bring onto the table. The SNOC is set to kick off operations soon and would commence monitoring operations for key MNC customers such as Music Online, SMOP and SRM Technologies. With the datacenter, Nestor plans to offer Cloud and Enterprise Co-Location Services to begin with. According to Kumar, the datacenter will be functional in a

These two vendors (Dell and Cisco) collectively give Nestor an end-to-end value proposition and a complete bouquet as portfolio to take to the customer and we don’t feel the need to go for multiple partnerships. These are our high growth areas” couple of months. How does Nestor hope to sustain the FOC model in the SNOC? Kumar has a ready answer to that, he says, “We are not in any way compromising on revenue streams on new customers. So, things will ease out quite well.”

Aggressive Growth Plans Apart from revenue and head count expansion plans, Nestor plans to extend its geographical presence across South India, Singapore and

Snapshot Founded: November 2009 Headquarters: Bangalore Key Executives: Vishwas Lad Chairman& MD, Santosh Kumar K S – CEO, Sanjay Samuel – COO Branches: Chennai & Hyderabad Revenues: 2009-10: Rs 1.5 crore Revenues: 2010-11: Rs 9 crore Key Solutions: Datacenter, Network Cabling, Audio-Video Solutions, IT Security Solutions, Fire & Safety, Storage and Back-Up, Telephony, ISP, Intelligent Systems, Business Continuity and DR, Virtualization and Consolidation, Facility and Building Management, Visual Communication, Unified Communication, Smart Homes, Server Computing Key Principals: Cisco, Dell

US. Structure-wise, the organization has been divided into Enterprise Solutions Group (ESG), SMB Networking Solutions and Presales teams. The Presales team, quite vital to Nestor’s growth designs solutions, accompanies the sales teams on client meetings and even lays out the POCs. Nestor is in the process of hiring more engineers to boost the presales strength. Expansion plans don’t come easy; Nestor has infused Rs 4 crore till date, and plans to put in another Rs 14 Crore over the next month or so for further business requirements. With a branch currently operational in Chennai (which started off with 2 members and has now grown to 21 people) and another opening in Hyderabad shortly, Nestor is also actively looking at dedicated staff for the NOC as well as the datacenter. Nestor’s Bangalore office has about 26 employees across the groups. Kumar envisages a strong workforce that will take on big prestigious projects with the right expertise and ease. And if this is not proof enough, Nestor hopes to be a 150 member strong team in 2012. Hasn’t the company’s rise been quite phenomenal and a little too fast? Yes, concedes Kumar, who is quick to add that progress is a factor of many variables –people, planning and astute execution, and all the three elements have apparently fallen in place for the company. Nestor was the brainchild of investor Vishwas Lad and Kumar, who was then IT head at Space Matrix. Lad, who heads as the Chairman& MD of the company, has lent unstinted support to the project, which has helped in the unobstructed and rapid progress of the company. Now, Nestor is now also tapping other investment funding options from abroad and some of the plans that will be taking fruition over the next couple of months will be funded by a source from the US, says Kumar. The company is supported by technocrat advisors who are consistently assisting Kumar and the core team in decision making. So, there seems to be no stopping this company, which seems on the fast track, literally.  — Shantheri Mallaya may 2011

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â&#x2013; maCRO VIEW | Kiran Bhagwanani

Investments are moving towards areas where CIOs are looking for business benefits, either by reduced costs or increased effeciency By Yogesh Gupta

ph o t o g r a p h by foto c o r p

Kiran Bhagwanani, Chief Executive Officer, Dimension Data India (earlier Datacraft India) talks about the importance of end-to-end services portfolio to emerge as a winner in the enterprise space How has the role of Dimension Data transformed as an IT solution provider in past couple of years? We started around the core business of networking and security. Today, we have six strong lines of business which include datacenter capabilities, converged communications, and Microsoft solutions. Our first major thrust over the past few years was launching innovative solutions in infrastructure domain which solve business problems. The second thrust has been towards services. While we excelled in the integration capabilities, we have accelerated capabilities around services. The idea is to encompass end-to-end services spectrum in enterprise right from consulting to implementation to operations & management. And the third big trend is cloud.

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What is your Cloud Strategy? What are the advantages of the recently launched ‘One Cloud’ service? Since 12 to 18 months we are enabling existing clients (with virtualized environment) to set up private clouds (or opt for public clouds) and centralizing infrastructure architecture. We believe almost 80 percent of large enterprises will have private cloud and others on public. The differentiation what we are trying to create is offer solutions for private cloud. We also have solutions with public cloud through ‘One Cloud’ initiative with BSNL. The six tier III certified datacenters — first of its kind in India — is basically a joint arrangement where space is provided by BSNL and physical layout and managing cloud services is done by us. Working on revenue shared model, we could offer shared application services in future on utility model. This is a sweet positioning for the client as being an infrastructure specialist, we could have on premise (through virtualization) or off premise (through one cloud services) solutions. With Datacraft now known as Dimension Data, what are the key initiatives to grow business in India? Our canvas has grown larger as we are now part of Data Dimension group which has direct presence in 49 countries with support capabilities extending to 147 countries. Going by growth roadmap in India, we would increase present employee strength of 1200 employees by 20-25 percent in next 12 months. One big bet by us is the committed investment of $50 million in ‘One Cloud’ initiative. Dimension Data operates five GSCs (Global Service Centre) worldwide. The second big bet is stepping up investment in Bangalore GSC by moving to a new 400 seat facility. The objective is to develop the ability to complete remote towers across data centre, networks, security, and end user computing. The new branding means consistent client experience and same best practices for clients across the globe. For Indian organizations planning to spread their wings globally, our global presence gives them extra benefits to partner with us.

Products are getting incidental. Clients look at services overlay and that’s where we excel versus competition.

With emerging technologies like Cloud, Virtualization, is there a paradigm shift happening in buying pattern? Investments are moving towards areas of technology where CIOs are looking for clear business benefit, either by way of reduced cost or increased operational efficiency. The second trend is more ‘skin in the game’ from the services integrator. This could be in the nature of some kind of utility-based model. Products are becoming incidental. Clients are looking at services overlay and that’s what we specialize in versus our competition. From core SI viewpoint, there is huge upside in growth across datacenter services (largely driven by virtualization) and Microsoft solutions. As for verticals, financial services and government are top of the priority apart from IT/ITES. What are CIOs demanding in their IT infrastructure today and how are you riding that wave? The three distinct trends around which most client con-

versations revolve around are cloud, mobility and video. Clients ask us to assess their environment, need for IT refresh and tell about their readiness for cloud. The second trend is around smart devices/ handhelds. Clients want capability in IT policy to give secure access to smart handled devices. That is driving us to VDI. The second driver of VDI is highly regulated industries like banking financial services, stock exchanges, healthcare, that are concerned about data integrity and privacy and CIOs are locking the data in datacenter and allowing secure access to mobile users. This leads to VDI. UC is selling quite well largely on the voice side. Now clients want video from conference rooms on their desktops. How you suffice all these customer demands not by just implementing but taking operational responsibility is where Bangalore GSC plays an important role. You work with many IT vendors. Isn’t it difficult to maintain vendor targets and still maintain ‘neutral vendor’ tag to enterprise customers? We try to build capabilities which are vendor neutral. On networking side, we work largely with Cisco as we believe they are the strongest enterprise player. For rest of vendors, we go by best of breed capability and by the fitment of technology across clients. We see ourselves as services organization and the product becomes as a best fitment rather than anything else. What according to you are the main attributes that an enterprise looks for in a modern day IT solution provider? Very strong service focus is foremost thing. Today clients are looking at differentiation through a combination of strong product portfolio and ability to deliver good client experience. If you look at services capabilities, we span across three spectrums from consulting to implementation to operations and management. Flexibility in commercial structure is important. We have done several projects on utility-based pricing, not necessarily on cloud but as dedicated infrastructure for the client.  may 2011

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everything about CRM

CRM Systems:

Unite or Die? It’s good to get agreement across the CRM systems. By David Taber Preston

to CRM systems, large companies are anything but centralized. Even if your company makes centralized CRM decisions, it may have merged or made acquisitions that Balkanized the systems. IBM announced it’s going to spend $20 billion on acquisitions. So, how many dozen CRM systems do you think they’re going to be bringing

Focul_Point-new.indd 43

hen it comes

in over the next 24 months? The IT reflex is to move towards consolidation. Of course there are economies and efficiencies to be had, but CRM systems aren’t like infrastructure purchases. The users’ reaction to the system are not just the features, but the configuration and the data quality that really matters to the system efficiency. Since the users are “gold collar” workers, some of

I l l u s t r a t i o n s by U n n i k r i s h n a n AV

Focal Point

your most expensive personnel, yet with the widest variations in productivity, so their happiness with CRM system is what determines its business impact. So it doesn’t matter if you are able to save 10 percent on CRM costs, because that is miniscule in comparison to just a 2 percent step-up in sales productivity. That “small” revenue increase can mean a 1 percentage of increase in company yeilds, something that IT cost efficiencies won’t achieve. You don’t want to spend foolishly, but at the same time you don’t want to focus on consolidation’s cost savings at the expense of revenue. Referring to our 4th of July theme, what did the founding fathers do after the Revolutionary War?

They didn’t make one huge state but they federated the states that were already there, this made it easy to add new states as the country expanded. Here’s how to follow their example, federating your CRM systems:

Federating Outputs The first (and perhaps most highly visible) thing to do with multiple CRM systems is to provide roll-up reports and executive dashboards that consolidate your organization’s key success factors and metrics. This is best done with a data mart that pulls needed data from each of the CRM systems. In creating these consolidated views, the data analysts will discover problems in the data: n Duplicate and phantom

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n focal point | CRM account records n Double-counted deals n Poor data quality and

cleanliness n Issues with naming, standards, and semantics Of course, many of these problems would disappear at least in theory if everyone were using a customer master database and the CRM systems were synchronized with accounting. All too often, that theory is just an aspiration, and the data mart’s new reports will instantly expose the above problems. This is nothing to fear: you should take this as an opportunity to educate your executive colleagues about the business value of a customer master and a data dictionary.

Federating Objects Whether your CRM systems are in the cloud or on premises, from one vendor to several, or covers a range of business units, there are some commonalities in every CRM system’s object model. They all have something resembling a lead, a sales contact, an account, and an opportunity. It’s usually more effort than it’s worth to get everyone to agree on the fields and semantics for an entire object. But it’s very worthwhile to get agreement across the CRM systems and business units on the precise definitions of: n What constitutes a customer, a current customer, and a satisfied customer? n What are the criteria for new business, customer loyalty, and repeat business? n What are the groundrules for entering deals into the forecast, and for interpreting forecast categories n When is a new lead a 44

What to Consider When Choosing a System

hat’s Happening: The customer-relationship management software you installed ten years ago is showing its age just as the market for CRM software has fully matured. You have choices now between on-premise and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Why You Care: According to Mark Ameres, a CRM consultant, many companies are running “dead-end” applications that either integrate poorly with other enterprise systems or can no longer accommodate corporate growth. “Our older systems were holding us back from providing the same level of student service and support we were able to provide when we were smaller,” says Michael Statmore, the IT director with Post University, which has a physical campus in Waterbury, Conn., and a growing online presence. The university chose Oracle ( ORCL) CRM On Demand to manage information about all its students, whether they take classes online or on campus. By using a SaaS application, Statmore avoided making investments in new inLead, and when is it counted only as a “touch?” n What are the definitions of an opened case, a closed case, and an escalated one? n What is the definition and metric of success for a channel partner?

Separation of Powers Expect that the of CRM systems will continue indefinitely, so the budget for procurement, maintenance, and improvement of the systems stays with the executive champions.

frastructure and is able to keep management costs down. The Real Deal: Online CRM costs less to deploy than an on-premise system, and it may be more easily funded because it can be budgeted as an operational-as opposed to a capital-expense, says Sajid Usman, an analyst and consultant with Accenture’s CRM practice. It’s also easier to add users and capacity as an enterprise grows. On the other hand, on-premise systems offer tighter integration with other enterprise systems and are more easily customized. Integration concerns were critical for Maricel Cabahug, CIO with Yaskawa America, which manufactures components for industrial equipment. She chose onpremise CRM from SAP because it could be linked more easily to the company’s SAP ERP system. Yaskawa America lost business when sales agents did not realize they were pursuing an existing customer as a prospect. “Someone can know that a customer has a machine being serviced and see that we are negotiating a new contract with that same customer,” says Cabahug. One the other hand, Justin But budgets are only one kind of power. There needs to be a way to coordinate and enforce basic policies for data hygiene, information access, security, and other common interests across the CRM systems.Instead, get the more technically astute members of the CRM community (with titles like system administrator, sales operations, marketing operations, and customer support manager) to caucus on areas of mutual interest. Market

Ricketts, CIO with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, chose Salesforce.com and an online fundraising management tool from Convio for its flexibility, lower initial costs and ability to scale up quickly. The nonprofit manages the activity of 14 million donors and 124 affiliated offices. “We did have to make sure the security precautions were the same we would have used for on-premise CRM, and we had to choose vendors who could show us the status of all servers, performance metrics, and the same stats of a premisebased product,” says Ricketts. What You Should Do: Don’t base your decision on what you’re currently using, says Ameres; consider which platform best meets your current needs for managing customer contacts and technical issues such as security or scalability. On-premise CRM is better suited for integration with other in-house applications, observes Usman. But a SaaS application offers lower up-front costs for companies that need a new system immediately and don’t have a big data center staff. — John Brandon CIO the idea of banding together the knowledgeable worker-bees as a way to get more influence with their bosses. Sounds sort of like “Join or Die,” doesn’t it. David Taber is the author of the new Prentice Hall book, “Salesforce.com Secrets of Success” and is the CEO of SalesLogistix, a certified Salesforce.com consultancy focused on business process improvement through use of CRM systems.  — CIO

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CRM | focal point n

Who Should Own the CRM Effort? There is no substitute for this level of executive sponsorship By David Taber

s I've written previously, the overall user population of CRM systems is dominated by sales and presales people. And a CRM purchase is almost never done without at least the tacit approval of the sales VP. But driving the purchase de-

Focul_Point-new.indd 45

cision is not the same thing as the long-term operational ownership of the system. I have yet to meet the sales VP who is interested in the governance, data quality, and deployment issues of a CRM system. But somebody has to own doing this work Early on, the Sales VP is

likely to be the champion, so that the budget and user enthusiasm for the CRM system materialize. In order to communicate to the sales team that the CRM initiative is important, the sales VP must take some specific, visible actions at various stages in the project lifecycle: nAt system procurement, making sure that his/her name and budget are associated with the CRM system. nAt project kickoff, dedicating time of a few key members of the sales team to the project team. nAt "Phase I" requirements definition, to make sure that sales priorities are reflected in the project deliverables. nDuring user testing, to make sure that key elements of the sales organization are represented, and that the testing represents real-world needs. nPersonally participating in user training sessions, show-

ing his/her personal interest in using the system the right way. During these sessions, it is essential that the VP communicate verbally and nonverbally, "this is genuinely important to my success... and yours." nDuring the first quarter of system operation, running account reviews and forecasting meetings entirely with data in the system, rather than in outboard spreadsheets or reports. While there is no substitute for this level of executive sponsorship, sales VPs have bigger fish to fry: their job is to make the numbers. Since making the numbers is where their incentives and skills are, it is unreasonable to expect that the sales VP will be able to maintain longterm CRM championship. Whom should they transition CRM system ownership to? Here are typical choices: nOne of the sales VP's direct reports, perhaps the U.S. regional sales lead. This is a bad plan, as it's not a great use of a traditional sales manager's time. Perhaps more important is the political angle: If the CRM system is viewed as the purview of the U.S. sales lead, why should the European or Asian sales VP be paying attention to it? It's hard to overestimate the internal competitiveness of sales teams.

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n focal point | CRM n A business development

VP or a sales exec whose career has been sidelined. This is an even worse idea, as it's undercutting the implied importance of the CRM system and leaving it in the hands of someone who doesn't have the power to really get things done. n A pre-sales or inside-sales team lead. This isn't too bad an idea, because these teams are typically the most avid users of CRM systems. But they don't have the power or budget to get things done on their own. n The sales operations team lead. This is probably the best "first stop" in the transition of CRM ownership, particularly if the sales operations people play important roles and have strong links with finance or legal. Sales operations teams need to get things done right (so that the order and the contract will make it through the mill properly) and are typically driven to get results quickly. Consequently, when they see a data quality problem or need for a policy change to avoid, say, a revenue recognition problem, they have the perspective and tenacity to get the job done. As I said at the outset, sales typically represents the majority of CRM users. But as your company's CRM usage gets more mature, the range of users will expand to include marketing, customer service and support, operations, finance, and even manufacturing/distribution/ fulfillment. Eventually, this natural evolution means that leaving the CRM ownership in the sales ops group will be limiting. Where should the ownership end up in the long run? Six Things to Consider: User population: How are 46

Integrating Social Media Is Hard to Do

onsumers check in on Foursquare. Your employees chat with customers on Facebook. Everyone tweets. Social media is everywhere, right? Not quite. The one place it isn’t is inside traditional CRM systems. While the marketing department and sales team are busy interacting with customers on social-networking sites, the potentially valuable information created by these exchanges remains largely isolated from core customer databases and analytics systems. CIOs want to bridge the gap between social media and enterprise CRM to give marketing and sales richer, more complete information about customers. Just as important: avoiding CRM silos, says Todd Michaud, vice president of IT at Focus Brands, the franchisor of specialty restaurants, including Cinnabon and Moe’s Southwest Grill. “I don’t want to worry about maintaining all these separate systems that really just talk about the same customers,” Michaud says. Advertising and communications firm McCann the users distributed across the org chart? Revenue center of gravity: "What is the revenue impact of the various user communities? Is customer support putting as many orders in the system as sales? If that measure isn't meaningful, look at "cost center of gravity" instead. IT fluency: Sales departments rarely have people with an appreciation for data models or business

Worldgroup encourages employees to interact with clients on social media. But McCann has yet to integrate Twitter and Facebook with its CRM applications and databases, says Global CIO Greg Smith. “We’re relying on employees to use their best judgment in noting those interactions in client files,” Smith says. An Immature Market Vendors of so-called “social CRM” software are scurrying to integrate their products with more mature systems, says Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Altimeter Group. For example, Radian6, which makes social-media-monitoring software used by large companies such as Dell and Comcast, recently added features that integrate with Salesforce.com, and Oracle has demonstrated that Radian6 works with its CRM software. By integrating Radian6 with Salesforce. com, users can view online conversations about their chosen keywords, tag and route items to colleagues for follow-up, or respond immediately to the customer. These actions are recorded and attached to process. Depending on your company's business, you may find the right talents in marketing, customer support, or engineering. Process and continuity: CRM systems are an IT resource, and they need to be managed with some discipline. Customer empathy: The whole point of a CRM system is to improve customer interactions and transaction profitability. If your

customer records in Salesforce.com. However, Owyang notes, “each vendor offers different applicationprogramming interfaces, which makes it very challenging.” Google launched its OpenSocial standard in 2007 as a common API for social software, but key players haven’t adopted it. The holdouts include Facebook, which promotes its own API. Social sign-on tools, including products by such vendors as Gigya and Janrain, let users log into one social network with credentials from another. These can make it easier to collect data from multiple social-media sites, Owyang says. But analyzing this data must be done outside of an enterprise-CRM or business-intelligence system. That leaves IT departments to develop their own interfaces with enterprise systems for now. “I would love to have Facebook and Twitter updates flow automatically into CRM, to mine and search,” says McCann’s Smith. But the technology “is just not there yet.” — Kim S. Nash CIO marketing team is really in tune with customers (particularly if they own your company's Website and ecommerce systems), they'll be the right choice. Typically, this is not a strong point for finance or IT types. Expressed interest: Which VP is chomping at the bit to own the CRM system? Your decision should weigh this issue fairly heavily.  — CIO

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CRM | focal point n

Avoid 3 User Identity Mistakes Recycling slots practically guarantees data quality problems over time. By David Taber

ost of the advice usually is about customer data. Often ignored is the CRM data about your users who log in and manipulate data every day. Some user policies are tempting, but with some nasty consequences. Here are three big ones that we see. n Naming Users By Their Function, Rather Than Their Name The default login for CRM users is their name or email address. But it can be tempting to have the login be the person's function, rather than their real name. If you have a large pool of workers that do essentially the same thing (e.g., "customer support operator 13"), this isn't the worst idea in the world. It does provide contextual information that isn't available

Focul_Point-new.indd 47

from the user's own name, but it de-personalizes your users. A better approach is to use the users Profile, Role, or other fields to provide that information in addition to the user's name. n Recycling License Identities When a user is gone, you want to deactivate their license as rapidly as possible so that the license can be used by the new user. But recycling the user license is not the same thing as recycling the license identity. In most CRM systems, the license identity (which can be thought of as a user "slot" in the system) can never be deleted: the moment it is first instantiated, records and audit trails all over the system record pointers to the slot. Indeed, in Salesforce.com, even the user name can be used only once across all customer instances...forever. All the system's history

and audit trails will still be pointing to that slot, so that history will be falsely attributed to that new user. Six months later, nobody will remember exactly when the new user transitioned in. If the new user has a different function in the organization, nobody will remember what the previous user's exact role was. It's really hard to reassign accounts if you don't remember what the original user's territory was. Not a good plan. Recycling slots practically guarantees data quality problems over time, as people try to "fix" the data or reports to adjust for blurred user identities. The best practice: never recycle user slots. Instead, deactivate old users and create new slots, explicitly transitioning the defunct user's data to the new owner(s) in a bulk data change.

If a user leaves the company and comes back months or even years later, Usually, it's best to reactivate the user's old slot and transition the data that belongs to them in their new role. However, if their new role is completely different from what they were doing before and their old identity could cause confusion, a new slot may be justified. In this case, their old avatar should be renamed (e.g., "joe.blow. OLD") to keep the identities clearly separated. n Sharing Licenses for Cloud Integrations If you've got several systems integrating with the CRM, it's tempting to have a policy where the systems share a single user license. Or, you might find it tempting to have each external system share logins with human users. Even if your CRM vendor's contract allows it, avoid these temptations. The first issue here is audit trails and data forensics.If all the systems are using one login, troubleshooting would be difficult. Worse is the potential for uncoordinated workloads, where external system integrations operate asynchronously, may need to update data at high speed. ď Ž â&#x20AC;&#x201D; CIO

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n faCe off

Avaya vs. Cisco

MInhaj ZIa

Bejoy ANtoNy

National Sales Manager, Cisco India & SAARC

Director, Channels and Strategic Alliances, Avaya India

Two Tablets, Same Dose

Both Cisco’s Cius and Avaya’s Flare seem to be competing head on. Is there anything to differentiate the two?

mAGine your favorite communications tools – video,

e-mail, im, social networks, presence, phone all at your fingertips. merge these tools into a single, unified enterprise workspace and you have the Avaya Flare experience. The Avaya Flare experience is first available on the ADVD (Avaya Desktop Video Device), a siP based device with large 11.6” multi-touch screen. The experience is media transparent. You just touch flick the contacts and swipe a person into the spotlight, voice and video calls just happen. it is a contextually aware touch interface and links people and information together to make your collaborative gathering more effective. The built in history feature presents with the relevant log of calls, im sessions, email messages, social media interactions. ADVD is the only device to bring together all communication interfaces that include enterprise mobility with 3G or WiFi access, high definition video and voice. it also supports bluetooth, usB, besides handset and cradle support for private conversations. Avaya Flare experience will also run on most tablets in the market delivering full enterprise unified communication and collaboration capability. many customers worldwide, and also in india, have deployed ADVDs as part of their unified communication roll out. The Avaya Flare experience leverages the Avaya Aura Communications Platform and its advanced uC features, services, application enablement and management capabilities. it delivers communications services, providing a single infrastructure, administration, and management.

ius, CisCo’s innovative new business tablet, by of of-

fers access to essential business applications and technologies. Cius uniquely addresses the needs of today’s workforce; giving the same rich computing experience in the office, around campus and off campus. This allows companies to consolidate the number of devices employees need with a single device that works anytime and anywhere. What sets the Cius apart is that it has been designed to address the requirements and demands of everyday business life. With its lightweight design of 0.5 kg and an 8-hour long battery life, it sports a seven-inch, highresolution multi-capacitive touch screen. At work, it rests in an optional high-definition media station with support for wired connectivity and a full desktop experience. in fact, recently, AT&T announced plans to offer Cius to its business customers as part of a managed solution. its compatibility with 3G and 4G data service means that there are no connectivity restrictions. The Cius also has a micro usB port and a 3.5mm headphone jack which further boost the overall communications experience. Cisco has identified that video will be the new standard for communication and the Cius embodies this vision. Cius would support desktop virtualization and will come standard with a virtual desktop client application so it can act as a thin client. The saas deployment model provides compelling benefits, including lower hardware costs, enhanced security, availability, and efficiency. — As told to Radhika Nallayam

InDIan ChannelworlD M AY 2011

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