CRN India 1 March 2012 - Channel Champions Issue

editorial

Improve and evolve

T

he Channel Champions survey is a mammoth exercise that spans three months for the CRN team. First comes the survey and then the qualitative interviews based on the quantitative findings.

For every commercial product category the CRN editorial team conducted anywhere between 25-35 qualitative interviews to understand the voting patterns and get the details about the vendors’ strategies and policies that worked positively or negatively for the channels. In all our editorial team conducted close to 400 qualitative interviews.

This edition of CRN features channel preference and satisfaction in 14 commercial product categories. In the next edition of CRN we will feature the survey findings for the components and consumer product categories.

For the CRN team it’s a rewarding experience. We get to talk to many channel partners and understand their changing priorities, their evolving vendor alignments, and also overall trends. Besides, it gives us greater insight into what really happens on the ground.

Usually our engagement with most vendors is with their top management who talk about their plans and

Volume 1, Issue 09

Managing Director

: Sanjeev Khaira

Printer & Publisher

: Sajid Yusuf Desai

Director

: Kailash Shirodkar

Associate Publisher & Executive Editor : Dhaval Valia Group Commercial Director

: Salil Warior

Contributing Editor

: Ramdas S

Assistant Editor

: Sonal Desai

Principal Correspondent

: Abhijeet Mukherjee (Mumbai)

Senior Correspondent

: Amit Singh (Delhi)

Design Art Director

: Deepjyoti Bhowmik

Senior Visualiser

: Yogesh Naik

Senior Designer

: Shailesh Vaidya

Designer

: Jinal Chheda, Sameer Surve

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Head Office UBM India Pvt Ltd, 1st floor, 119, Sagar Tech Plaza - A, Andheri-Kurla Road, Saki Naka Junction, Andheri (E), Mumbai 400072, India Tel: 022 6769 2400; Fax: 022 6769 2426 Printed and Published by Sajid Yusuf Desai on behalf of UBM India Pvt Ltd, 6th floor, 615-617 Sagar Tech Plaza - A, Andheri-Kurla Road, Saki Naka Junction, Andheri (E), Mumbai 400072, India.

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6

strategies. Through this exercise we find out whether those plans and strategies worked in the marketplace and whether they benefited channel partners.

We do the CRN Channel Champions survey with a strong conviction that it helps the vendors to get neutral feedback using which they can analyze what part of their channel-led GTM is working and what part isn’t.

It feels nice to hear when channel partners, while being interviewed for the qualitative survey, tell us that following our feedback on policies and strategies certain vendors have become more channel-responsive.

I would like to highlight two companies—Fortinet and McAfee—which had received some caustic remarks from partners in the 2010 survey. In the 2011 survey both these companies have been voted winners as they addressed most of the issues raised by their partners.

While CRN would like to take some credit for this, it is eventually Fortinet and McAfee that need to be lauded for taking our survey results seriously and doing what is best for their partners—which is best for their business.

Do give us your feedback about the CRN Channel Champions 2011 so that we too can improve and evolve. n

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01/03/2012 www.crn.in

E-mail me at dhaval.valia@ubm.com

USA Huson International Media (West) Tiffany DeBie Tiffany.debie@husonmedia.com Tel +1 408 879 6666 Fax +1 408 879 6669 Huson International Media (East) Dan Manioci dan.manioci@husonmedia.com Tel +1 212 268 3344 Fax +1 212 268 3355

Japan Pacific Business (PBI) Shigenori Nagatomo nagatomo-pbi@gol.com Tel: +81 3366 16138 Fax: +81 3366 16139 South Korea Young Media Young Baek ymedia@chol.com Tel: +82 2227 34819 Fax: +82 2227 34866

EMEA Huson International Media Gerry Rhoades Brown, gerry.rhoadesbrown@husonmedia.com Tel: +44 19325 64999 Fax: + 44 19325 64998 Important Every effort has been taken to avoid errors or omissions in this magazine.

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While care is taken prior to acceptance of advertising copy, it is not possible to verify its contents. UBM India Pvt Ltd. cannot be held responsible for such contents, nor for any loss or damages incurred as a result of transactions with companies, associations or individuals advertising in its newspapers or publications. We therefore recommend that readers make necessary inquiries before sending any monies or entering into any agreements with advertisers or otherwise acting on an advertisement in any manner whatsoever.

Commercial PC

Tell the world it’s Dell WORKGROUP PRINTER

HP makes a good impression SERVER

HP back in business NETWORK STORAGE

EMC makes it four in a row enterprise networking

Cisco retains pole position SMB NETWORKING

D-Link still ahead STRUCTURED CABLING

Five-in-a-row for Digilink 8

Computer Reseller News

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14

client security

18

NETWORK SECURITY

22

COMMERCIAL UPS

26

Software Application

28

VIRTUALIZATION

30

INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT software

32

THIN CLIENT

McAfee’s remarkable turnaround

Fortinet gets going

One more for APC

Microsoft edges out Tally

It’s VMware again

Kaseya hangs on

HP tops in thin

34 36 38 40 42 45 47

Connect and interact with more than 1,000 resellers at half the cost of a 50-delegate F2F event

May 2-3 & November 21-22

After the successful launch of CRN Virtual Expo in May 2011, CRN brings to you two Virtual Expos in 2012.

CRN Virtual Expo 2012 will bring together more than 1,000 channel partners from across 150+ cities, thus making it the largest such virtual initiative in the IT channels in the country.

A combination of web and video-based live conference program and an interactive online exhibition, the CRN Virtual Expo promises to be the most cost-effective channel marketing tool for IT vendors.

For Sponsorships contact: Salil Warior | +91 99875 80188 | salil.warior@ubm.com North: Sanjay Khandelwal | +91 98117 64515 | sanjay.khandelwal@ubm.com West: Ranabir Das | +91 98200 97606 | ranabir.das@ubm.com

www.crn.in/virtualexpo

methodology

Choosing Channel Champions

C

RN has been conducting the Channel Champions survey for the past 10 years in India and for 21 years in the US. The main objective of the Channel Champions survey is to lend a voice to channel perception and their experience in dealing with vendors who drive their business.

At the same time, the survey aims to provide vendors a neutral view of channel expectations and how well they are managing channels and helping them grow.

In the current edition, we present the annual Channel Champions 2011 survey rankings for commercial product categories—products sold largely to SMBs and enterprises.

The next issue (March 15) will carry the survey rankings for consumer products and components.

In 2010 we had added four new categories—Software Application, Virtualization, Infrastructure Management Software and Thin Clients. We had also split the Networking Infrastructure category in two—SMB Networking and Enterprise Networking. This year we have retained the same categories for the survey.

However next year it seems we

will need to add a Cloud Computing category with the concept gaining ground and several partners venturing into cloud services.

Survey methodology

The CRN Channel Champion 2011 survey was conducted through an online poll that ran from December 1, 2011 to January 14, 2012. In the commercial category we polled 872 unique respondents across 95 cities.

Overall we polled 4,248 vendor evaluations which means that each unique channel respondent who took the survey for the commercial category voted for an average five different product categories from the 14 commercial categories listed for the survey. In comparison, for the 2010 survey, we had received 3,522 vendor evaluations from 687 unique respondents across 85 cities.

For each commercial product category unique respondents voted their vendor preference and satisfaction on the following eight key parameters and 24 sub-criteria.

Product availability. Included sub-criteria such as the regular availability of products, and whether a product was over- or under-

Survey Demographics Total unique votes polled: 872

North 22%

South 27%

East 10% West 41% Region

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Computer Reseller News

Total vendor evaluations: 4,248

Class A 34%

Class C 37%

Class B 29%

Type of City

01/03/2012 www.crn.in

Partner 62%

Non-Partner 38%

type of reseller

In the commercial category we polled 872 unique respondents across 95 cities. Each respondent voted for five categories amounting to 4,248 vendor evaluations distributed. In several commercial product categories products are delivered back-to-back, hence we also captured the delivery lead time for such products.

Price-performance. Included subcriteria such as product features, quality and reliability, and price.

For commercial products, special prices are decided by the size of the deal and the importance of the customer, hence we also factored in the special pricing offered by vendors which often makes or breaks a deal.

Channel profitability. The overall profitability that partners could achieve while dealing with a particular vendor. This included the front-end margins offered and the back-end incentives which partners could earn.

Brand-pull & customer marketing.

This criterion included the brand pull enjoyed by vendors among endcustomers, and the different local customer marketing promotions conducted by the companies to generate demand.

Channel marketing & pre-sales support. This comprised parameters such as market development funds provided to partners for business

methodology

† development and generating

demand, as well as channel schemes and incentives. Pre-sales support, which includes technical and sales enablement of partners, was also incorporated.

Training & certification. This criterion included regular sales and technology training provided, online training resources, productspecific training, and the value and effectiveness of vendor certification.

Post-sales support. Included aspects such as warranty policy, RMA turnaround and escalation mechanism, toll-free phone support, and Web and email support.

Channel policy & management.

Respondents voted on parameters such as the fairness, transparency and swiftness of various channel processes, and the accessibility and responsiveness of managers.

Scoring

For each product category respondents were asked to vote for one of their top three vendors in terms of business dealings, and rate it on the eight key criteria and 24 subcriteria.

The CRN Channel Champions survey questionnaire is open-ended, which means resellers are allowed to rate any vendor of their choice; we don’t compel respondents to choose

For every category the CRN editorial team conducted 25 to 35 qualitative interviews.

In all the team conducted close to 400 qualitative interviews

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Channel Champions Product Categories

2011 Winners

Commercial PC

Dell Hewlett-Packard

Workgroup Printer

Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard

Server

2010 Winners

Hewlett-Packard

IBM

Network Storage

EMC EMC

Enterprise Networking

Cisco Cisco

SMB Networking

D-Link D-Link

Structured Cabling Client Security

Digilink Digilink McAfee Symantec

Network Security

Fortinet

Commercial UPS

APC APC

Check Point

Software Application

Microsoft Tally

Virtualization

VMware VMware

Infrastructure Management Software

Kaseya Kaseya

Thin Client

Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard

vendors from a list of names.

Vendors that received less than 10 percent of the total votes polled in a particular category were not considered eligible and were hence not included in the final ranking.

For instance, in the Enterprise Networking category, we received 218 unique votes (from 218 unique channel organizations), and hence any vendor which got less than 20 votes did not make it to the final rankings table.

As a result, brands such as Brocade and Extreme failed to make the cut in the final ranking because they did not receive the minimum 20 votes.

Within the finalists, we arrived at the average scores for each vendor for each criterion. Under each main criterion the scores of the sub-criteria were added and averaged to arrive at the overall criterion ranking.

Individual criterion scores were added to arrive at the final score, and the final rankings were based on this overall score.

In plotting the survey results and arriving at the rankings we were ably helped by our knowledge partner, Aranca, India’s leading B2B research agency.

Following this the CRN editorial team embarked on a marathon exercise to do qualitative interviews of those who took the survey.

For every product category the CRN editorial team conducted anywhere between 25-35 qualitative interviews to understand the voting patterns and get details about the strategies and policies of all the vendors that worked positively or negatively for the channels.

In all, the editorial team conducted close to 400 qualitative interviews. n

commercial pc

Tell the world it’s Dell

D

ell edged past HP, Lenovo and Acer to be crowned as the channel champion in the commercial PC and notebook category. HP PSG came a close second, followed by Lenovo. Acer came fourth. HCL, Sony, Toshiba and Wipro did not qualify because they won less than 10 percent of the votes.

Dell

Dell’s biggest strength has been its aggressive marketing which created huge demand even among SMB customers. With new customers demanding Dell, many respondents who had a bad experience in 2010 mentioned that they tried building fresh relations with Dell during 2011 and saw improvements in the vendor’s channel engagement.

The company scored the highest in the price-performance category.

Dell’s newly-launched Global Commercial Channels (GCC) received both flak and praise from respondents. Many expressed satisfaction with the deal

registration, faster price clearances and overall pre-sales support offered

by Dell channels. However, the fact that less than 50 percent of deal registrations go through remains a grouse.

Unlike other vendors, Dell does not offer a stock-and-sell model for its enterprise brands such as Optiplex, Latitude and Precision; these brands are available only on back-to-back deals. Vostro is sold through a stock-and-sell model for channels. While this model is liked by large partners because they feel that customers are not aware of its prices and so more margins can be made, others feel that going through the entire deal registration process for acquiring even one computer was cumbersome.

Dell’s price clearance on deals of between five and 100 units was the most aggressive among all brands.

Partners polled said that Dell offered the fastest back-to-back deliveries, averaging less than two weeks in most cases while the

Score Card Criteria Dell HP Lenovo Acer Product availability

94.7

Price-performance

85.5 78.5 81.0 81.0

Channel profitability

72.5

68.8

71.5

77.8

Brand-pull and customer marketing

85.8

83.3

80.0

76.8

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

78.4

76.8

74.0

68.5

Training and certification

69.2

75.5

71.2

66.0

Post-sales support

81.2

77.5

77.6

75.5

Channel policy and management

83.3

83.1

81.0

81.9

Final Score

97.0

96.5

97.5

650.6 640.5 632.8 625.0 *Scores out of 800

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Channels note that Lenovo still carries the image of being a Chinese vendor among customers as well as partners, and that it has not been successful in removing this so far other brands took an average of four weeks. This was an important difference which helped Dell clinch the crown.

While channels expressed overall satisfaction with Dell’s post-sales service, some partners reported issues with wrong MRP stickers (less than billing price) and also wrong components (such as the wrong version of Windows).

Dell’s post-sales service was opened to channels in 2011; a number of partners grabbed the authorized service center status.

While in 2010 there were complaints of competition with the Dell direct team, respondents felt that such cases have reduced.

Another complaint last year was that deal registration was based on opportunities and not on accounts, and this was frowned upon by many VARs. While the same policy remains on paper, respondents note that Dell was willing to work on account-based mapping once a relationship was established with the partner.

Dell offers a standard 1 percent on achieving targets as back-end rebates under the GCC program.

There are extra rebates for winning

commercial pc

competition accounts.

Hewlett-Packard

HP was the winner in the commercial PC category for the past two years, but was edged out by a thin margin in 2011. HP is still ranked very high in channel training and certification, channel marketing and pre-sales support, and product availability.

It continues to offer the widest range of commercial PC products, and this scored high with channels.

Over-distribution and overrepresentation of HP products have reduced margins for its PC business.

In mid-2011 HP had announced that it was exiting the PC business; later, it rolled back that decision.

While some partners said that this flip-flop impacted their business, others saw no impact.

In 2010 HP faced a lot of flak for a lack of channel engagement primarily because many managers at all levels had moved out. In 2011 respondents said that there were new faces, and that the channel engagement had improved.

Even channels in Class-B cities appreciated that they had personal visits from the top management.

Channels also point out that HP lagged behind on product refresh during the first two quarters but improved considerably in the final two quarters. This was a result of heavy dumping of channel inventory in Q42010; it meant that HP had to delay new product launches till its channel inventory cleared.

Lenovo

Lenovo had risen from the fourth spot in 2009 to the second spot in 2010. However, two major complaints pushed Lenovo down to the third spot this year—its over-aggression for winning deals where partner margins were compromised, and its poaching of partner accounts. Respondents alleged that Lenovo’s forcefulness in cutting deals also meant that it was dictating terms to partners, thus

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Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Commercial PC category: 717 North 23%

South 26% Class A 44%

East 11%

Class C 31%

West 40%

Class B 25%

Region

Type of City

affecting partner margins.

Lenovo revisited its regional distribution strategy for commercial PCs. The revamped RD model seems to have given the brand better coverage in states such as Karnataka, AP, UP and West Bengal.

Partners noted that in terms of schemes for the commercial PC business Lenovo did not have as many as in 2010.

There were also complaints regarding back-to-back deliveries of select SKUs, especially in Q32011, when it took as long as six weeks, said respondents. Lenovo’s commercial PCs are supported through IBM, which enabled Lenovo to execute

A big challenge Acer faces is that it lacks the image of a serious enterprise IT vendor, so partners find it difficult to sell Acer on anything other than price

Partner 60%

Non-Partner 40%

type of reseller

customized SLAs of even less than four business hours to enterprise customers, thus helping it win brownie points with enterprise VARs. Channels note that Lenovo still carries the image of being a Chinese vendor among customers as well as partners, and that it has not been successful in removing this so far.

Acer

Acer continues to be priceaggressive, and several partners who reported that they did business with Acer for the first time see the company as a potential ally to work on opportunistic deals.

Partners note that the Acer Select program has evolved, with a better lead generation mechanism plus a better rebate system. The company, which made serious investments in its Master Reseller program, offered resellers rebate schemes with requirements as low as five units to be part of a scheme.

A big challenge Acer faces is that it lacks the image of a serious enterprise IT vendor, so partners find it difficult to sell Acer on anything other than price. The lack of solutions, despite adding a server range, is still keeping the larger midmarket reseller and SI away from Acer. Partners want Acer to knock off its consumer PC image tag to succeed in the enterprise market. n

North: Deepak Sharma - 09311909945 / deepak.sharma@in.viewsonic.com East: Nil Madhab Bhowmik - 9831457341 / nil.bhowmik@in.viewsonic.com West: Rohit Mishra- 09373652839 / Rohit.mishra@in.viewsonic.com South: Mallikarjuna: 09900599899 / Mallikarjuna.k@in.viewsonic.com

workgroup printer

HP makes a good impression

H

P again won in the workgroup printer category owing to its aggressive pricing, high-decibel marketing, and extensive brand pull.

Canon maintained its second position riding on its improved availability, post-sales support and better margins. Although Epson’s low-cost options were popular among SMBs, the company lagged in capitalizing on this. Limited partners along with availability issues and decreasing profits acted as a dampener for Samsung.

HP

HP upped its focus on distribution in 2011 and formed a separate SMB team. This ensured product availability and prevented overdistribution, which the respondents said helped them to grow their SMB customer base. Continuing to rationalize its distribution model, the company further downsized its sub-distributor and partner base to cut down on over-distribution. There were intermittent issues of shortage of

some of its run-rate models.

HP strengthened its product range by introducing printers and AIOs with e-printing technology. The company also focused on SMBs in upcountry markets and launched affordable printers with low-cost ink cartridges.

While other brands increased their prices by 6-10 percent due to the dollar’s appreciation, HP remained cautious with its pricing with an increase of only 1.5-2 percent.

Respondents praised HP’s thrust on customer marketing with regular print advertisements. The company also introduced an attractive buyback with cash rebates for its LaserJet range.

One HP move that was highly appreciated was the introduction of HP Service One, a new specialization within the HP Partner One program that enabled partners to expand their technology services portfolio or offer co-branded managed print services and document management with HP. HP also maintained its momentum in channel engagement. Respondents

Canon

Score Card Criteria

HP Canon Epson Samsung

Product availability

94.1

Price-performance

80.1 79.1 79.6 79.7

Channel profitability

74.0

76.0

77.6

76.4

Brand-pull and customer marketing

91.2

88.0

84.8

83.9

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

83.4

79.6

77.2

81.1

Training and certification

83.2

78.5

81.8

80.8

Post-sales support

81.2

81.5

76.6

73.0

Channel policy and management

83.1

80.1

79.1

78.6

Final Score

93.1

91.5

89.3

670.4 656.0 648.0 642.4 *Scores out of 800

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said that its channel managers were regular in meeting partners and listening to their pain-points. They also helped partners with joint sales pitches, if needed.

The company offers a one-year onsite warranty on a few of its printers and a one-year standard warranty on its other models. According to respondents, this is where HP lags behind its competition which offers two-year onsite warranties.

Partners said that the company must take steps to increase their margins which have reduced to 2-3 percent as compared to 5-10 percent in 2010. Most respondents said that doing HP business does not fetch them a profit unless it is a volume business.

However, the issue of some models being billed at higher than MRP continued to trouble partners who said this exposes them to legal liabilities. They said that despite this matter persisting for over two years HP hasn’t done anything to address the issue.

Respondents agreed that Canon improved on its product availability and that they did not face any issue regarding this. The company extended its product range by introducing laser Wi-Fi printers, and strengthened its workgroup and AIO printer range.

Canon continued to see preference among partners and customers for its A3 flatbed MFDs. Partners said that the company enables them to maintain the highest front-end margins; they also appreciated Canon’s strategy to maintain MOP. Canon’s post-sales support ranked higher than the competition’s due to an increase in the number of service centers; this reduced the TAT to less than 24 hours. However, the company needs to strengthen its service

workgroup printer

support in smaller cities where the

TAT is above 48 hours. Respondents appreciated Canon’s efforts to overcome the spare parts shortage that was intermittent in 2010; they also lauded its two-year warranty support.

Partners maintained that despite launching a number of printer models the company was low on customer marketing. Canon was also not aggressive on the channel engagement front, and many respondents said that the company contacted them only through email about product launches and scheme announcements.

Partners also complained that the company dealt directly with large customers; this cut down their margins to a great extent.

Epson

Epson improved its laser printer portfolio by introducing LED laser printers which provide higher resolution at higher speed, consume less power, and take less time to warm up. Epson also launched its NX series of workgroup color printers and L100 and L200 inkjet printers with its ink tank technology; the company positions these as printers with low per-page printing cost.

Epson positions its printers as low-cost options against HP and Canon. It works on an applicationled vertical strategy to target photo labs, educational institutes and SMBs; it also caters to the needs of professionals such as fashion designers and interior decorators.

According to partners, while many of the customers prefer thirdparty cartridges against HP or Canon cartridges, Epson customers buy original cartridges because of their aggressive pricing.

Respondents maintained that the company offers the highest back-end margin of around 10 percent and front-end margin of 3-5 percent.

Partners lauded the company’s introduction of partner-centric schemes offering foreign and domestic trips besides gifts like watches.

The company was also prompt in

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Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Workgroup Printer category: 394 North 22%

South 24%

East 12%

Class A 38%

West 42%

Region

2011 saw Samsung filling the gaps

The issue of some HP models being billed at higher than MRP continued to trouble partners who said this exposes them to legal liabilities

Partner 51%

Non-Partner 49%

Class B 30% Type of City

communicating new launches through email as well as through frequent visits by its channel managers.

According to the respondents, Epson’s reduced focus on customer marketing and brand building through advertisements is a pain area. They also said that Epson’s dead-on-arrival policy is a dampener as it does not allow over-the-counter replacement of the product but instead extends the process to about 2-3 weeks.

Respondents said the policy is to replace or repair, but Epson sends only repaired products.

Samsung

Class C 32%

type of reseller

in its portfolio by introducing 10-12 entry-level products in mono, multifunction and color laser printers.

However, the company still lags in options in the high-end network printer and A3 printer categories.

Most respondents agreed that Samsung is strong in post-sales support and that its TAT is from a few hours to a maximum of 48 hours.

Respondents added that although the company has limited partners it maintained proper communication.

Local channel managers were swift in responding to issues and providing a resolution at their level.

Samsung got aggressive in customer marketing with a focus on print and online advertising as well as social media. Respondents said that the company has increased its visibility but still needs to do more in customer-oriented schemes.

Samsung printers and consumables are considered to be value for money and the best priceperformance option. However, the company increased the prices of its entry-level printers by 2 percent and high-end models by 15 percent; this dampened its competitiveness.

Samsung also increased the prices of its consumables by 10-15 percent.

Partners complained about the decreasing profit margins of 5-7 percent in 2011 against around 10 percent in 2010. n

server

HP back in business

H

P came up trumps in the server category after a gap of two years on the back of a new Partner One program and more responsive channel management.

IBM, which won the mostpreferred server vendor crown in 2009 and 2010, came a close second amid allegations of increased direct selling and poaching of partner-managed customers by ibm.com.

Dell made gains in channel confidence and also expanded its partner base. However, the lack of a stock-and-sell model, lower deal registration conversion, and nonavailability of list prices dampened its overall ratings.

Cisco, Oracle and Acer polled less than 10 percent of the overall server category votes and hence were not considered for the rankings. However, partners who voted for Cisco were appreciative of its market and channel strategies.

Acer is still not considered a serious player, and channels seem to have given up hope on Oracle.

While virtualization continued to be the biggest technology driver, workgroup networking, messaging, application hosting and Web hosting also accounted for sales. Respondents reported strong growth for rack and blade servers which indicates that the data center and server room market is growing.

The biggest grouse for partners has been that vendors have not been able to generate enough leads for them, and that there’s little being done to ensure channel profitability.

Hewlett-Packard

For two years, 2009 and 2010, HP had struggled to keep its business partners happy because of a number of problems such as lack of good channel management, service issues, over-distribution, delays in price clearances, and delivery issues.

In 2011 the company ironed out most of these issues and also raised its game in the server market, thus winning the crown.

HP scored the highest in product

Score Card Criteria

HP IBM Dell

Product availability

93.3

Price-performance

82.5 81.0 83.1

Channel profitability

73.7

75.8

75.4

Brand-pull and customer marketing

82.5

84.5

79.4

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

84.2

79.0

77.9

Training and certification

84.3

82.5

78.3

Post-sales support

79.6

81.5

82.3

Channel policy and management

82.8

76.8

77.9

Final Score

90.8

88.1

662.9 652.0 642.4 *Scores out of 800

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availability, channel marketing and pre-sales support, and training and certification.

Partners noted that HP’s channel communication and response improved considerably. The vendor’s deal registration program, which faced a lot of flak in 2010, saw remarkable improvement. In 2010 there were delays—in some cases of up to a week—reported in deal registration approvals and price clearances. This was reduced to less than 48 hours in 2011.

HP was aggressive with a number of schemes for several SKUs— notably the ML 110 G6, DL 120 G6, ML 330 G6 and DL 160 G6— throughout the year. During the last two quarters of 2011 HP was the most aggressive with its schemes, often pricing its server SKUs at less than white-box servers.

The average back-to-back deliveries were well within four weeks for most of the year, while distributors carried inventory of all fast-moving product lines through the year. HP was the only vendor to carry inventory of dual and quad processorbased racks through tier-2 channels; this ensured better availability for non-partners.

On the Integrity server range, following its spat with Oracle, the company cut prices in the range of 1520 percent which helped a number of business partners to bag orders.

Paying heed to its partners’ complaints about the lack of local channel managers, the company attended to its attrition woes.

Respondents said that overall the HP channel sales team showed more aggression in the marketplace.

On post-sales support, while partners in Class-A cities gave HP a good rating, those in smaller cities expressed dissatisfaction about the quality of channel partners assigned to the service.

server

IBM

The key reason for IBM losing its number one position as the mostpreferred server vendor was that many of the company’s leading partners voted negatively and alleged that IBM’s direct sales team poached some of their large customer accounts. A few partners also alleged that ibm.com was going direct in deals as small as `3 lakh-4 lakh.

While they agreed that IBM’s Business Partner Organization tried its best to control the damage by providing new accounts to them, they still felt betrayed by the company. Also, the new accounts that were mapped to them were multi-vendor customers.

What also dampened partner sentiments was the speculation that the company is realigning IBM-led partner-managed accounts; many partners, particularly in the north, expressed their fear that if this happens they could lose significant business.

IBM launched new models of its Power7 series (Power 710 and 720) on the MOQ model in Q32011 under a channel program called Powerplay; this was appreciated by the channels which have been demanding the availability of Power SKUs at affordable price-points through distribution channels. While IBM’s post-sales support was ranked the best, partners in B- and C-class cities reported delays in getting spares.

Among partners IBM scored the highest, but non-partners point out that IBM is not as flexible as HP in getting deals done since HP’s stock-and-sell model makes it easier for such partners to acquire stock.

Still, IBM remains the most-soughtafter brand, and carried the biggest premium among the vendors.

Partners who voted for both IBM and HP (or Dell) noted that, among all server brands, IBM reacted faster and sharper to the dollar fluctuations and the disk drive shortage.

Dell

Though Dell polled one-third of

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Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Server category: 379 North 21%

Class C 21% 22%

South 27%

East 8%

Class A 53% 55% West 44% Region

Type of City

the votes compared to IBM and HP, Dell’s registered partners were very appreciative of its Global Commercial Channel (GCC) program launched in 2011. They said that though the overall channel engagement and management has improved, certain challenges still remain with regard to deal registration, the lack of a price list, and the lack of a stock-and-sell model. For instance, while partners agreed that Dell’s deal registration has improved and become more transparent, they reported that less than 40 percent of the deals were getting registered in favor of partners. Partners alleged that Dell is

While the GCC has inspired confidence in the channel community to align with Dell, respondents said that Dell needs to improve the quality of its channel managers

Class B 24% 25%

Partner 63%

Non-Partner 37%

type of reseller

still holding on to a number of direct accounts, even in the SMB market, and that this is a reason for deal registrations not getting done.

Except for two tower models, Dell does not carry any channel inventory.

While this was appreciated by large SI partners as it helps maintain MOP discipline, SMB-focused partners felt that Dell needs to revisit the policy.

Partners say that Dell was extra-aggressive in 1U and 2U dual processor racks as well as blades which were often seen to be 10-15 percent cheaper (on models such as Power Edge R510 and R610) compared to HP and IBM products.

While the GCC has inspired confidence in the channel community to align with Dell, respondents said that Dell needs to improve the quality of its channel managers and make them more channel-friendly. Also, Dell needs to conduct more channel marketing and training programs for GCC in B- and C-class cities.

Partners expressed satisfaction about Dell’s services which the vendor delivers through a mix of direct, partner-managed and thirdparty partners like TVSE. The company rewards partners who have achieved certain targets with services and maintenance contracts for Dell products. n

network storage

EMC makes it four in a row

E

MC continued its reign as the most preferred storage vendor in the Indian channel, but not without facing a tough fight from IBM and NetApp. This is the fourth successive year that EMC has taken the pole position in the storage category.

IBM came a close second, with NetApp following by a slender margin. HP finished fourth, and although from a channel management and product portfolio perspective it improved its rankings, HP lacks the solution-centric focus on its storage GTM which the other three OEMs have.

Dell and Hitachi polled less than 10 percent, but partners who voted for these brands feel that both these companies have the right technology to make a difference in the future.

EMC

In 2011 EMC invested heavily in expanding its channel base. The company started the year with as many as 40 new updates to its

product categories introducing new products under its Clarion, Celerra, Symmetrix, Isilon and Data Domain brands. It introduced a completely new range called VMX for SMBs. Under the Iomega brand it refreshed its portfolio with a 24 TB 12-bay NAS box; it also launched a product specifically targeted at the IP surveillance market. As a result, most respondents agreed that EMC has got the most comprehensive network storage portfolio.

With channel expansion and the launch of new products, the company invested heavily in training and certifying new partners.

It introduced a number of new programs for the SMB reseller, including opportunity identification in verticals such as SMB, government and public sector, with a finder fee as well as ORC of up to 15 percent of the order value.

On the post-sales support front EMC raised the bar by increasing the number of support centers to over 100 locations in the country from

Score Card Criteria

EMC IBM NetApp HP

Product availability

93.6

Price-performance

87.5 81.1 75.4 78.3

Channel profitability

81.7

81.1

82.4

78.1

Brand-pull and customer marketing

85.2

82.1

74.5

77.3

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

86.1

84.4

81.3

80.0

Training and certification

87.4

91.1

91.9

84.4

Post-sales support

84.6

81.2

83.9

81.1

Channel policy and management

85.3

79.2

82.5

81.3

Final Score

93.3

91.0

92.9

691.2 673.4 662.4 652.8 *Scores out of 800

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around 64 in 2010, and offering a four-hour response.

However, EMC did face criticism from a few partners who said that the company, in its channel expansion drive, has signed up too many partners which is resulting in more competition and pricing pressure.

A number of partners polled from Class-B and -C cities complained about the lack of proper channel engagement. They said that EMC doesn’t have enough resources to engage with them, and that as a result the pre-sales, channel and customer marketing, and training are suffering.

IBM

For the second consecutive year IBM came a close second to EMC. Interestingly, most IBM partners are also EMC partners, and they opined that in storage-only deals EMC is preferred over IBM because EMC has a wider solutions portfolio and offers better prices and margins.

When it comes to server-storage deals, IBM is preferred.

In 2011 IBM focused on consolidating its channel strategy for storage. The company identified 40-50 leading partners across the country and focused on working with them to target new solution areas such as back-up, de-dupe and virtualization.

It also enabled these partners to offer storage services using its Tivoli suite. Toward the end of the year the company launched a new channel program called IBM Storage Specialist.

Respondents said that IBM’s strength is the way it combines storage as part of the total IT ecosystem, and offers customized storage solutions for platforms such as SAP, Exchange, Oracle, DB2 and AIX.

Many IBM partners who took the survey said that the company conducted rigorous training and also provided them customer marketing and pre-sales support.

What pulled down IBM’s ranking was its channel policy and management, with some partners voting negatively and alleging that its direct sales team poached some of the large partner-managed accounts.

A few partners also alleged that Ibm.com was going direct in deals as small as `3 lakh-4 lakh.

While IBM tried its best to control the damage by providing new accounts to these partners, it didn’t go down well with them—the affected partners said that they were given accounts which were multivendor customers.

NetApp

NetApp continued to rank as a vendor with strong unified NAS technology and a good partner program.

The company continues to be fairly exclusive, focusing only on mid-market and enterprise customers. In fact, a few respondents believed that the company is too choosy, so much so that it avoids bidding for some projects.

On the product front, NetApp cut the prices of its entry-level NAS boxes by as much as 40 percent during 2011, and brought down the prices of its FAS 2000 series to less than `450,000. Unlike EMC, IBM and HP, NetApp does not offer MOQ schemes, nor does it allow the channel to carry inventory.

NetApp’s training and certification received good ratings.

Respondents informed that NetApp does not limit its training to its storage products, but also provides partners with pre-sales and postsales training on products from other vendors such as VMware, Citrix and Microsoft, specifically for solution areas such as storage virtualization, high availability and data management.

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Network Storage category: 275 North 18% East 8%

Class C 14% 15%

South 31%

West 43%

Class A 63% 65%

Region

Hewlett-Packard

While HP increased its focus on storage in 2011, its lack of a solution-centric approach in the storage market pushed it to the fourth position despite winning the server category.

Just as in the 2010 survey, many large HP partners in the 2011 survey opined that while EMC and

NetApp continues to be fairly exclusive. In fact a few respondents believed that the company is too choosy, so much so that it avoids bidding for some projects

Class B 21% 22% Partner 78%

Type of City

One of the aspects that received maximum appreciation from respondents is that NetApp gives its partners a free hand in bidding or quoting for a project and doesn’t interfere in the pricing of the deal.

Non-Partner 22%

type of reseller

IBM are providing solutions and services around back-up, recovery, data protection, thin provisioning, virtualization and de-duplication, HP is still focused on the hardware.

On the product front, following its acquisition of 3PAR, HP expanded its portfolio. While partners agreed that the inclusion of 3PAR makes the HP storage portfolio more rounded, they also opined that there are too many product overlaps between HP’s various ranges and 3PAR, and that this is creating confusion among partners and customers. Some partners noted that HP is yet to provide training or certification in the 3PAR range.

Certain partners suggested that HP make more investments in upgrading its EVA and MSA ranges because they are very popular and also have a large installed base in the country.

Most HP business partners expressed their satisfaction with the PartnerOne program which provides several new benefits on storage products.

Respondents said that HP improved on all aspects in 2011 as compared to 2010, including quick price clearances, pre-sales support, deal registration, marketing and overall channel relationships and management. n

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enterprise networking

Cisco retains pole position

C

isco was again judged the most-preferred enterprise networking vendor followed

by HP which improved its ratings as compared to 2010. Juniper just about managed to get 10 percent of the category votes; however, it was a distant third.

Extreme and Avaya received less than 10 percent of the overall category votes and as a result failed to qualify as finalists. Respondents said that Extreme did nothing special to inspire partners and grow their business, while Avaya failed to leverage on the Nortel portfolio and establish a strong connect with partners.

Cisco

Cisco introduced several of its lowand mid-end products through a stock-and-sell model in the beginning of 2011. Most layer 2 switches, entry-level layer 3 switches, and entry-level routers were moved to sub-distribution which improved availability and market coverage.

The company improved its lead times on high-end models from 4-6 weeks to 3-4 weeks. Cisco was seen as aggressive in its pricing due to increasing competition from HP. In many large deals it offered steep discounts of up to 65 percent of the list price, and also cut the prices of several stock-and-sell products by up to 15 percent.

The company increased its connect with partners with more sales and pre-sales resources aligned with partners. However, partners in tier-3 and tier-4 cities still feel that Cisco needs to improve on the channel engagement front.

Partners regard Cisco’s training and certification as the best in the industry. They said that the frequency of partner trainings has gone up from 8-10 in 2010 to about 10-12 in 2011.

According to respondents, Cisco rolled out several partner programs which enabled partners to do more business. The programs ‘Race to Rio’ and ‘F1 Overdrive’ were especially

Score Card Criteria

Cisco HP Juniper

Product availability

88.5

Price-performance

84.3 83.5 81.1

Channel profitability

80.1

76.5

75.0

Brand-pull and customer marketing

81.3

76.4

74.5

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

86.3

83.1

77.5

Training and certification

85.8

78.3

77.1

Post-sales support

86.5

82.2

81.0

Channel policy and management

82.4

78.9

73.2

Final Score

86.8

85.1

675.2 645.6 624.8 *Scores out of 800

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According to respondents, HP snatched some deals from Cisco by offering big discounts. This forced Cisco to reduce prices and offer bigger discounts on its products targeted at upcountry resellers and were appreciated by respondents.

Most of the respondents said that Cisco increased its customer marketing and hiked the partner MDF by 50 percent. However, most also said that Cisco’s marketing lags behind HP’s, which has consolidated its marketing for networking along with servers and storage.

Respondents regarded Cisco’s post-sales support as the best in the industry. To make it sweeter, the vendor introduced limited lifetime warranty on its low- and mid-end products in early 2011. It also introduced partner-led warranty support through its Gold and Silver partners; this, according to respondents, has decreased the lead time for replacement of low- and midend products to less than a week.

The company introduced the Partner Led program in September 2011 and handed over several named commercial accounts to authorized partners. A few Silver partners who took the survey said that they were allowed to select 50 named SMB accounts to manage; they also saw increased technical and marketing support under the new program.

However, many Select and Premier

partners are yet to get enrolled under the new Partner Led program.

Cisco was also active in offering customer and partner financing in 2011 through Cisco Capital. A few respondents said that they managed to bag projects largely due to the good customer financing options from Cisco.

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Enterprise Networking category: 218 North 22% East 11%

Hewlett-Packard

HP introduced its consolidated portfolio, including 3Com and Procurve, in November 2010, and also introduced a partner program that offered the highest margins on the sales of its networking portfolio.

Most respondents said that HP is providing stiff competition to Cisco and has compelled the networking major to introduce the stock-and-sell model, limited lifetime warranty and steep discounts on its products.

According to respondents, HP snatched some large deals from Cisco in Q12011 by offering big discounts.

This forced Cisco to reduce prices and offer bigger discounts on its products to match HP’s pricing.

Large HP partners said they benefited through bundling networking products with servers and storage. HP targeted Cisco customers through a program that provided cash rebates on the purchase of the HP A-Series, E-Series and V-series switches; HP also provided network planning and migration services free of cost under this program. As a result, a few partners said they were able to persuade some Cisco customers to move to HP. However, many partners felt that HP, instead of focusing on developing its partner base, was focusing on competitive prices. They opined that HP still has overlapping products between its Procurve and 3Com range, and that this creates confusion in the minds of customers and partners.

Though HP launched its certification program called ExpertONE, respondents felt that

Class C 16%

South 29% Class A 56%

Class B 28%

West 38% Region

Type of City

overall HP needs to improve its certification and increase its certified resources. And while HP has been aggressive in sales trainings, partners said it needs to provide more technical training in developing implementation skills.

Many HP business partners reported increased focus on networking by the local channel managers. They said that the local channel managers were proactive in providing pre-sales support, and that there was increased involvement in making joint sales pitches.

While HP offers limited lifetime warranty on its low-end, mid-end and some of its high-end products,

Juniper was price-aggressive, but failed to build on the momentum it had gained in 2010.

Partners complained about the lack of adequate pre-sales support

Partner 64%

Non-Partner 36%

type of reseller

its post-sales support ratings suffered as a number of partners voted against the company. They said that HP’s service turnaround suffered due to slow response from the engineers and because of complicated warranty processes.

Partners regarded HP’s channel policies as fair, but said that though its deal registration system is processoriented and largely transparent, it’s slow in providing deal authorization and price clearances for networking products.

Juniper

While Juniper was priceaggressive, it failed to build on the momentum it had gained in 2010. Partners complained about the lack of adequate pre-sales and implementation support due to a scarcity of technical resources.

Respondents were disappointed by the frequency of its technical training.

They also reported longer lead times of 6-8 weeks for back-to-back deliveries. According to partners, Juniper lacks the extensive range of products needed to cover all customer requirements.

Many respondents said that there were issues in channel management and responsiveness because several local managers left Juniper during the year. n

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SMB networking

D-Link still ahead

D

-Link retained its crown on the basis of having a large portfolio and strong brand pull. Digisol did well to give D-Link a run for its money and came a very close second.

Cisco improved its channel connect compared to 2011. Netgear came fourth in the overall ranking.

D-Link

After witnessing management changes and warranty support challenges in the early part of the year, D-Link upped its game in the second half.

D-Link has the widest portfolio in the SMB networking space, and the addition of entry-level NAS and UTM products (along with a focus on IP surveillance) gave D-Link partners an opportunity to bundle and garner a larger share of their customers’ IT spending. The company also offered steep discounts on sizeable projects.

Respondents said that due to the launch of its structured cabling portfolio in 2011, D-Link was able to make a bundled package of passive

and active products which increased their front-end margins to about 15 percent.

2011 saw D-Link appoint a new set of sub-distributors in many regions; this helped to differentiate its channel GTM from that of Digisol.

On the performance front, customers regard the quality of D-Link’s products as superior to those of Digisol despite the fact that many of D-Link’s and Digisol’s products are procured from the same OEMs. D-Link strengthened its pre-sales support in Class-A cities. However, partners in Class-B and -C cities complained of delayed pre-sales support.

On channel and customer marketing, D-Link received low scores. While the company was active in conducting road-shows and schemes, many partners in smaller cities felt that the target slabs for the various schemes were high and oriented toward large partners. As a result, they didn’t see any benefit in participating in such schemes.

Score Card Criteria D-Link Digisol Cisco Netgear Product availability

85.2

Price-performance

82.2 80.6 78.4 76.1

Channel profitability

83.6

84.9

77.1

74.0

Brand-pull and customer marketing

85.8

82.3

79.2

77.5

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

77.7

78.1

76.4

74.7

Training and certification

77.8

76.3

73.7

72.2

Post-sales support

85.3

86.2

80.3

77.1

Channel policy and management

79.6

80.5

76.6

74.2

Final Score

82.3

80.6

81.1

657.6 651.2 622.4 607.2 *Scores out of 800

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While respondents welcomed the move by D-Link to launch a training academy that offers professional networking courses, they said that overall D-Link, with its expanded portfolio and focus on solutions, needs to conduct more product and technical training sessions.

D-Link’s post-sales support faced a setback in April-June 2011 as it transitioned from Digicare to Kaizen IT Services for national support.

According to respondents, the replacements took 15-30 days, but since then post-sales support has become normal. D-Link offers limited lifetime warranty on most of its business networking products.

Digisol

Digisol offers the best channel profitability among all SMB networking brands. It also received high ratings in channel and customer marketing, and post-sales support.

Where Digisol lacks is in brand pull and the width of its portfolio in the SMB segment. Despite a number of new product launches in 2011, Digisol’s portfolio still lags behind D-Link’s.

Digisol’s partners said that being an emerging brand Digisol still lags in brand recall among customers.

But most respondents agreed that the company’s marketing initiatives in 2011 helped improve the brand presence. Respondents also noted that some Digisol products—24-port gigabit switches and ADSL routers— faced technical problems in 2011.

Most respondents, many of whom also sell D-Link, rated Digisol as providing the best channel profitability. They said that they make front-end margins of 10-15 percent. The company also introduced schemes that provided good back-end margins even for smaller resellers.

While Digisol provided regular

product training directly and through its RDs, many solution-centric partners said the company needs to evolve a strong partner certification program. Also, many respondents said that partners were earlier able to create attractive bundles combining Digilink and Digisol products, but with the Digilink business sold to Schneider such opportunities have become less frequent.

While both Schneider and Digisol continue to sell through the same network of RDs, there is no joint bundling benefits offered by the two companies. In most cases, the bundling is offered by their respective RDs and is largely based on their distribution strategies and revenue targets. Partners recommend that both companies create such bundles as it creates a bigger revenue opportunity for partners.

Digisol offers lifetime warranty on most of its products, and its post-sales support was ranked the best among all networking vendors.

Through its own service arm, Digicare, it ensured a replacement TAT of less than four days on most entry-level and mid-end products.

Partners in smaller cities complained about the lack of strong pre-sales support from Digisol and its RDs during 2011. However, many partners admitted that since January 2012, the quality of pre-sales support has improved.

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for SMB Networking category: 310 North 24%

South 29%

East 10%

Class A 35%

Type of City

Cisco improved its channel coverage and connect by introducing different schemes; however, smaller resellers opined that these schemes and their back-end incentive structures are oriented toward larger partners.

While partners in Class-A cities reported an increase in channel engagement through road shows, product training, and increased presales support, those in smaller cities complained about the lack of it.

Many partners appreciated the online training offered by Cisco, as well as other benefits such as the Partner Development Fund and the incentive program.

Cisco

Most respondents, many of whom also sell D-Link, rated Digisol as providing the best channel profitability. They said that they make front-end margins of 10-15 percent

2011 saw Cisco become aggressive with its SMB product line by introducing several products through stock-and-sell, launching extended warranty of 3-5 years on several of its SMB product ranges (with many having limited lifetime warranty), and reducing prices by up to 15 percent.

However, Cisco products are still 10-15 percent higher than D-Link products. As was the case in 2010, respondents felt that the perception among SMBs is still that Cisco products are highly priced and thus unaffordable.

Partner 48%

Non-Partner 52%

Class B 36%

West 37% Region

Class C 29%

type of reseller

Netgear

Netgear is regarded as a reliable brand and a strong alternative to D-Link and Digisol; however, according to respondents, its lack of customer marketing is impacting its position.

Most partners who took the survey said that while the company has a good product portfolio, there aren’t any visible efforts made by Netgear to create brand awareness.

During the year Netgear launched several new products and also conducted a two-city channel marketing forum to introduce partners to its new range of networking, storage and UTM products.

Partners said that the company needs to evolve a solution-centric approach. Some solution-centric partners of Netgear also said that with a new portfolio they expect more training from the company, and also require stronger presales support. Partners felt the need for Netgear to have regional representatives who could engage with channels on a regular basis.

Partners were satisfied with the post-sales support of Netgear, and said that products were replaced within an acceptable TAT of two weeks.

They added that the incidence of repair or replacement is very low in Netgear. n

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Structured Cabling

Five-in-a-row for Digilink

D

igilink topped the category of structured cabling for the fifth consecutive year riding on its wide channel connect, competitive pricing and back-end schemes. Tyco remained second due to the lack of engagement with smaller partners.

Despite being a new entrant in the segment, D-Link made its way to the list of channel-friendly companies.

Commscope continues to work with select partners and is regarded the best technology wise. And although Molex improved on its channel engagement, the company needs to work on its consistency.

Digilink

The acquisition by Schneider in April 2011 helped Digilink shed its SMB tag and gain better acceptance in large projects. While Schneider made no changes in the channel network, partners were benefited by access to its portfolio of wired networking and video transmission products.

The company maintained wide distribution of its products through

a well-tuned regional distribution model. Schneider was active in brand building and customer marketing to inform partners about the acquisition.

Schneider offered good discounts which enabled partners to make margins in the range of 10-15 percent.

Respondents said that the company was also aggressive in big projects where it offered incentives in the range of 10-15 percent which raised their margins further.

According to respondents, while the company protected the prices of cables against volatility in the prices of copper, it did not reduce its prices when copper prices eased. Partners also said that the company needs to make its price protection policy better.

Though Digilink organized several trainings in Goa, partners suggested that the company hold the trainings regionally so that more partners can participate.

Tyco

In 2011, Tyco separated its networking division and called it TE Connectivity;

Score Card Criteria Digilink Tyco D-Link Commscope Molex Product availability

91.2

Price-performance

86.1 88.0 83.2

84.4 81.1

Channel profitability

79.7

80.0

78.5

78.3

76.1

Brand-pull and customer marketing

81.7

82.4

78.9

79.6

75.3

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

81.8

77.5

76.9

74.6

74.3

Training and certification

79.9

77.1

75.2

75.4

68.8

Post-sales support

86.4

84.5

81.9

81.3

79.3

Channel policy and management

86.1

84.9

81.1

79.6

72.3

Final Score

88.9

88.7

85.4

84.1

672.8 663.3 644.8 638.6 611.2 *Scores out of 800

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Despite being the market leader, Tyco remained second in channel preference.

Respondents said that Tyco continues to be focused on large deals and large partners it also acquired ADC Krone to consolidate its position in enterprise network and data center connectivity and cabling solutions.

Despite being a market leader in the segment, Tyco remained second in channel preference, retaining its 2010 position. The company still lags in broadbase engagement with smaller VARs and solution providers.

Respondents said that the company continues to be focused on large deals and large partners.

Most Tyco partners said that the company managed well the price fluctuations emanating from copper price volatility. Some of the partners said that due to the increased prices their margins were reduced from rate contracts and repeat customers; however, they also benefited from price decreases and so praised Tyco’s overall price management. While Tyco doesn’t have a price protection policy, it provides one on a case basis to partners depending on the customer and deal size.

Partners said that the company improved its deal registration system by making it transparent and providing SPC to the partner authorized for the deal.

Tyco was aggressive in large

projects and offered special discounts in the range of 20-35 percent. A few partners alleged that in some big projects Tyco gives direct quotes to customers and also does direct billing.

This reduces the partners’ margins to only 3-5 percent as ORC. They added that the company is too customercentric and sometimes overlooks the interests of partners.

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Structured Cabling category: 283 North 24% East 9%

Class A 51% West 38%

D-Link

D-Link was a new entrant in structured cabling but rapidly gained ground to make its way to the top three channel-friendly companies in the category.

D-Link offered structured cabling products on par with Digilink but in many cases gave price quotes lower than Digilink. The company also became aggressive, offering steeper discounts on sizeable projects.

Respondents said that due to the good discounts offered by the company they were able to make margins in the range of 10-12 percent. They added that D-Link offers the widest range in the SMB networking portfolio; this gives them a good value proposition in bundling offers and increases their margins to about 15 percent.

Many partners said that customers perceive D-Link to be a sister brand of Digilink and thus it is finding acceptance.

D-Link appointed a new set of sub-distributors in many regions and strengthened its pre-sales support in Class-A cities. However, partners in Class-B and -C cities complained of delayed pre-sales support.

In channel and customer marketing, D-Link received low scores. Many partners in smaller cities felt that the target slabs for its various schemes were high and oriented toward large partners, hence they did not see benefit in participating.

Class C 22%

South 29%

Region

Commscope Systimax

Commscope increased its channel focus by reducing its delivery lead time and enhancing its channel engagement and pre-sales support.

Partner 62%

Type of City

Partners also praised the company’s focus on training programs.

Respondents consider Commscope as a premium brand and regard it as the best technology brand with significant pull among large enterprises.

Partners praised the unique technologies offered by the company. Respondents highlighted VisiPatch 360 as a revolutionary patching and integrated cable management solution from Commscope.

Although the company was aggressive on special pricing for large projects, partners said that it was not able to match the pricing of other brands and hence only played on performance and its USPs.

Respondents consider Commscope to be the best technology brand. Partners also praised the unique technologies offered by the company

Class B 27%

Non-Partner 38%

type of reseller

The company improved the availability of its products and was aggressive in engaging with partners.

Partners said that local channel managers readily provided them with solution positioning, project planning and joint sales pitch support as and when required. However, small partners complained about not getting adequate pre-sales support, and said that the company was mainly focused on large partners.

Molex

Partners said that the company improved its product availability in 2011 as compared to 2010 when they faced issues due to the appointment of a new distributor.

Respondents consider Molex as a competitive brand to Tyco in terms of quality and pricing. They said that the company was very aggressive in pricing and offered discounts of up to 50 percent in large projects.

Partners said that though they were able to make good margins, they wanted the company to offer backend schemes and partner programs.

They opined that the company needs to focus more on customer marketing and brand-building exercises.

Respondents agreed that Molex had improved in channel engagement and pre-sales support, but still wanted an increase in the strength of its channel management team. n

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client security

McAfee’s remarkable turnaround

F

rom the sixth position in 2010 McAfee climbed to the first place—truly a commendable feat. Quick Heal retained its number two position. Because of its lack of channel aggression Symantec lost its No 1 position. Kaspersky consolidated its market share in small to mid-sized companies. Trend Micro received good ratings for its SMB initiatives.

Respondents said that eScan doesn’t have a clear market strategy.

McAfee

In 2010 McAfee received criticism for the lack of a clear sales strategy and poor partner policies and management.

In 2011 McAfee worked to address these challenges. The company introduced many upgrades to its products, and through its alliances with OEMs helped its partners to break into several new mid-market and large accounts.

The company revamped its partner specialization program to bring greater clarity. It divided the specialization into slabs up to 250 users, 500 users

and 1,000 users or more. Respondents appreciated the SMB Specialization Partner program whereby McAfee introduced 15 percent partner commission for fresh deal registration and up to 30 percent for migrating customers of competing brands.

SMB partners said that due to a clear engagement policy they were able to increase their SMB business significantly and their customer base grew by 20-25 percent. The company also offered aggressive pricing for smaller customers with 100-250 node installations.

McAfee also paid heed to its partners’ long-standing complaint and put in place a large inside sales team for generating leads and driving renewals. The company shared quality leads which contributed 10-20 percent of the business. Many respondents also said that their renewal revenue increased sizeably.

McAfee also increased its training programs. A new initiative it launched in 2011 was training engineers from partners and end-customers for the deployment of 1,000 nodes and above.

Score Card Criteria

McAfee Quick Heal Symantec Kaspersky Trend Micro eScan 95.2

Price-performance

85.6 85.2 80.6 81.3 81.5 79.8

95.4

96.4

94.5

93.5

90.5

Channel profitability

84.0

80.5

79.7

80.7

76.5

78.1

Brand-pull and customer marketing

88.3

85.6

83.2

78.7

79.4

70.0

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

88.8

82.2

79.3

75.6

76.8

71.2

Training and certification

79.1

71.2

71.9

65.9

70.7

61.8

Post-sales support

84.3

82.3

77.7

79.5

75.8

74.3

Channel policy and management 85.2

81.3

75.3

77.1

76.5

65.1

690.5 664.0 640.8 633.3 630.7 590.8 *Scores out of 800

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Quick Heal

Quick Heal went aggressive with channel policies and strategies to target mid-market and SMB customers, especially those with 250 nodes and above. The strategy paid off as some of the leading partners said that it helped them to bag larger deals.

Meanwhile, Quick Heal continued to be the most-preferred brand among customers having less than 100 nodes.

According to respondents, although Quick Heal added new functionalities to its central console, it lacks the manageability and features to handle large enterprise environments.

Partners rated Quick Heal low on channel events and marketing. They said the company is spending all its marketing budget to promote the brand in the mainline media, and that its channel marketing has therefore suffered.

Symantec

Product availability

Final Score

It also trained partners in remote management to increase revenue from support services.

While McAfee’s deal registration remains manual, partners admitted that decision-making on deal authorization and price clearances improved over 2010.

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Symantec continues to be the most preferred customer brand in the large enterprise and mid market.

According to respondents, Symantec integrated client back-up and recovery functionalities, making a formidable product in the enterprise security segment.

However, the company took a beating because of its lack of channel aggression, the absence of a clear market strategy, and a decrease in channel management.

One of the primary challenges Symantec faced was the lack of a channel head following the exit of Vineet Sood. In the interim all decisions were taken in Singapore,

and as a result there were delays in SPC clearances and deal registration.

This also impacted the transition of partners to Symantec’s new Enhanced Partner Program. While partners appreciated the program because of its focus on specialization, they said they were stuck in the middle as there was complete lack of clarity about the new competencies and their GTM. The same partners admitted that with the appointment of Naveen Sadhwani as head of strategic sales, some clarity around Symantec’s specialization-led channel strategy is gradually emerging.

Kaspersky

Kaspersky began giving shape to its mid-market and enterprise strategy with the appointment of a separate set of distributors for its business security product line. In addition, it created a separate SBU internally to focus on driving this business, and appointed Altaf Halde to head it.

The company also recruited some senior people to drive the enterprise business; this further strengthened channel confidence in the brand. It ran a special pricing scheme for SMBs which many partners said helped them increase sales. The company got very low scores on training; however, toward the end of 2011, it began training some of its partners at a new center at Navi Mumbai.

Nearly 70 percent of the respondents who voted for Kaspersky said that they did deals with SMBs with 50-250 nodes. However, they also bagged a few customers with a 500-1,000 node base.

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Client Security category: 379 North 25% East 11%

South 24%

Class C 24% Class A 51%

West 40%

Region

Trend Micro

While Trend Micro went aggressive with its SMB business and garnered good ratings from SMB partners, many of its large enterprise partners expressed displeasure with Trend Micro’s engagement with them.

On the SMB front the vendor enhanced its Worry Free portfolio and signed up Neoteric to drive SMB

Partner 69%

Type of City

sales. On the enterprise front Trend Micro launched the sixth version of OfficeScan 10.

A number of long-time Trend Micro enterprise partners said that in 2011 the company’s focus on large enterprises suffered due to its focus on SMBs. The partners also said that over the last two years the company has gravitated toward large SIs for large deals and doesn’t provide any worthwhile deals to large tier-2 enterprise VARs. They maintained that despite its assurances the company hasn’t put a renewal team in place and as a result their renewal revenue dropped.

However, they appreciated the

Partners said that Quick Heal is spending all its marketing budget to promote the brand in the mainline media, and that its channel marketing has therefore suffered

Class B 25%

Non-Partner 31%

type of reseller

introduction of the deal registration system which allows the registration of deals even as small as 100+ nodes.

Respondents raised issues about the vendor’s technical support which is outsourced to an agency which they said is not fully equipped. The agency takes 3-10 days to provide a resolution of even a basic technical issue raised by a customer or partner. But these partners also praised the company’s India head, Amit Nath, who they said is very accessible and in cases of escalation intervenes to provide quick resolution.

eScan

eScan received more votes than last year, showing it has improved its channel connect; however, nearly 80 percent of its votes came from the western region.

Respondents said that although eScan is perceived to be a better product technically, it loses out to the competition as it lacks a clear channel and market strategy. They added that eScan is still rigid about its pricing although it lacks brand pull and customer preference.

Respondents complained that although the company has appointed regional support teams they hardly get any pre-sales support when they require it. A few even alleged that some regional RDs were directly billing end-customers. n

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35

network security

Fortinet gets going

I

n 2011 Fortinet did well to win the title of the most-preferred network security vendor. Compare this to 2010, when the company had been criticized for its channel policies. Last year’s winner Check Point was pushed to the second position. Cyberoam, the No 2 last year, dropped to No 3. Cisco upped its channel engagement, going after the SMB segment. Sonicwall built on the channel momentum it gained last year.

Fortinet

In 2010 Fortinet faced criticism for its channel policies and management.

The company worked to address those complaints to win partner preference.

It also added more resources to its team which improved its overall channel engagement.

On the product front Fortinet made improvements to its GUI, introducing more features for application control and control-based access. The company also introduced two new products, Fortigate 20 and Fortigate 40, which were aimed at customers with less than 20 and 40 users. It enhanced the availability

of its products for SMBs by working through regional distributors.

The vendor did away with the lock-in for sub-200 user deals and introduced fixed-price products. This helped VARs to directly quote for these products to customers without deal registration.

Its enterprise partners praised the fact that unlike in 2010 when Fortinet left everything to Ingram, in 2011 it was keenly engaging with them to provide better pre-sales support, faster SPCs, and customer joint pitches.

Channel managers started meeting partners and providing them with information on new products, features and developments. The company also introduced Web and live chat support for pre-sales.

Ingram Micro and the subdistributors carried out regular training in Fortinet products. The company also offered discount vouchers to partners for certification.

One aspect that Fortinet needs to work on is customer marketing and events. Respondents from the east complained of the regional distributor being unable to ensure proper

Score Card Criteria

Fortinet Check Point Cyberoam Cisco

Product availability

95.5

Price-performance

86.3 85.1 82.4 78.2 79.9

Channel profitability

83.1

82.8

84.5

80.1

75.6

Brand-pull and customer marketing

85.3

85.6

79.3

80.8

76.5

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

83.9

81.2

78.3

79.2

77.4

Training and certification

86.2

84.5

79.3

78.2

77.7

Post-sales support

82.0

81.7

80.5

79.3

79.0

Channel policy and management

86.3

82.7

79.2

77.5

76.5

Final Score

96.7

91.5

90.7

Sonicwall 91.3

688.6 680.3 655.0 644.0 633.8 *Scores out of 800

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availability, and that it took 15-20 days for even volume products to reach customers. They also want the overall engagement from the regional distributor to improve.

Check Point

Check Point, which dominated the network security space for two years in a row, was pushed to the second spot. This was partly due to the vendor’s lower partner engagement in 2011, particularly in north India.

On the product front, Check Point continues to be the brand that’s bestrated by both partners and customers.

However, the company lacks any credible SMB focus. Respondents said that Check Point needs to create an SMB portfolio as most of the action is shifting there.

Some partners said that Check Point’s introduction of softwarebased blade appliances could help in targeting SMBs. However, the company needs to come out with a product and pricing strategy for it.

Many respondents appreciated the fact that Check Point rationalized its pricing by 15-20 percent compared to 2010. Yet Check Point continues to be 30-40 percent more expensive than even Fortinet. Check Point beefed up its inside sales team to help partners with renewals, and many partners said that this helped them rake in good revenue from renewals.

Respondents complained that the company’s pre-sales team was less active in 2011, and that the postsales team could not address certain instances of patch or firewall upgrades at customer sites. Check Point conducted L2 training for partners, but only if the partners demanded it.

Some partners from north India said they have reduced their focus on Check Point’s business as the company’s deal registration is not transparent and their regional managers favor certain partners.

As in 2010, partners said that Check Point is leaving too much to its

distributors and isn’t engaging directly with partners consistently.

Survey Demographics

Cyberoam

While Cyberoam continued to be a leading contender in the under-500 node UTM space, in 2011 the company’s overall channel preference suffered due to the lack of consistent channel engagement.

Respondents said that following the exit of Tushar Sighat in May 2011 there was a drop in the overall channel engagement from Cyberoam.

The company found Sighat’s replacement only in October.

A number of respondents who were earlier doing Cyberoam exclusively said that due to the aggressive channel strategies of Cisco and Fortinet they added them to their portfolio. However, they said that their primary focus is still Cyberoam.

A few said that Cisco was offering up to 60 percent discounts in many 250500 node deals.

The company didn’t launch any major channel or customer scheme during 2011. Some partners opined that this was due to Cyberoam dedicating most of its marketing budget to promoting its new Netgenie product range for home and SOHO. There was a lack of training programs in 2011, and the pre-sales support was not up to the mark.

Partners said that in projects where they were competing with Cisco they lost out due to the lack of timely presales support from Cyberoam.

However, most respondents said that Cyberoam has emerged as a strong brand in the SMB segment with a customer preference in the under-500 node category.

Partners also said that Cyberoam offers the best profitability among all vendors.

Cisco

Cisco upped its focus on network security and appliances in 2011 following the appointment of a new head for the business in 2010. The company approached its appliance business by leveraging on its active networking channel and offered

Unique votes polled for Network Security category: 317 North 22%

Class C 14%

South 26%

East 7% West 45%

Region

Class A 64%

Partner 74%

Type of City

aggressively-priced bundles to partners who were earlier selling competing brands with Cisco networking.

The vendor offered discounts up to 60 percent of the list price of the mid-range ASA line to customers buying its 2900 and 3900 series routers. In the SMB segment the company followed the same strategy, bundling the ASA 5500 series with the 800 and 1800 series. According to respondents, the advantage of the ASA range is that while it’s primarily a security appliance it also has routing capabilities that can serve small businesses with under 50 nodes.

Partners in non-metros said that Cisco entered into a price war with the competition and offered discounts up to 60 percent on the small business ASA products. They informed that Cisco channel managers visited them regularly and also made joint calls.

This was supported by good pre-sales which helped partners in Class-B cities sign deals in the education and manufacturing sector.

The vendor was applauded for its training and certification programs.

However, according to some leading enterprise VAR partners, in large enterprises Cisco network appliances aren’t regarded as bestof- breed. They said that in the past they had found bugs in some ASA appliances, and that there were security breach cases during customer benchmarking and intrusion

Class B 22%

Non-Partner 26%

type of reseller

tests. Hence, while selling Cisco networking, they sell Fortinet or Check Point.

Sonicwall

In 2010 Sonicwall had done well to gain channel momentum in the SMB segment; it continued this momentum in 2011. However, issues regarding over-distribution and sub-distributors bypassing resellers to sell directly to customers affected its channel preference.

The vendor launched its most ambitious product—SuperMassive— targeted at large enterprises, with aggressive pricing. Large VARs who sold SuperMassive were all praise for the technology and features of the product, and said that with this they could compete with Fortinet in large accounts. Sonicwall conducted elaborate training in Class-A cities around this product and also helped partners to set up POCs. However in the SMB segment, which is the company’s forte, respondents said that the company didn’t launch a single new product.

They opined that the launch of SuperMassive overshadowed the vendor’s SMB focus. Respondents said that since pre-sales was largely driven by the national distributors, the direct channel engagement from Sonicwall was missing. The direct competition from the sub-distributors was a key lament of respondents in Class-B cities. n

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commercial ups

One more for APC

T

he commercial UPS category consists of products ranging from 2 KVA to 40 KVA and above. APC retained the crown as the most preferred UPS and power solutions company in 2011. Emerson ranked second in channel preference, followed by Numeric.

APC

The company continued to lead its competitors in channel preference in 2011. APC has the widest market coverage and channel connect as compared to its competitors. It has exstock availability of products up to 40 KVA and beyond, while the back-toback lead delivery time is 3-4 weeks.

Last year the company introduced 10-12 new products in the 5 KVA and above category. In 2011 respondents reported improved availability of products as the company introduced more models in stock-and-sell in the 2 KVA-20 KVA range. Many of these products are designed for the Indian environment and have a longer backup time.

In 2010 respondents in Class-B and -C cities and states (such as Bihar, Jharkhand and UP) had complained of ex-stock non-availability of volume products. However, in 2011, respondents from this region commended the company for improving the overall availability.

APC increased its prices by 12 percent in October 2011 due to the rise of the dollar. While many respondents said that the price hike was steeper than expected, they appreciated the fact that APC provided them advance warning about the price rise.

APC provides a two-year warranty on the products and the batteries.

While many respondents said that APC batteries are priced 25 percent higher than other brands, they also mentioned that APC batteries are longer-lasting than those of its competitors.

APC improved its post-sales support noticeably, especially in smaller cities. Respondents from places like Gandhidham, Ranchi

Score Card Criteria APC Emerson Numeric Product availability

93.6

Price-performance

83.0 81.8 83.7

Channel profitability

84.3

82.3

80.1

Brand-pull and customer marketing

82.4

77.9

72.0

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

79.2

76.6

74.3

Training and certification

82.3

79.1

74.3

Post-sales support

81.9

79.7

76.1

Channel policy and management

79.5

76.5

74.4

Final Score

90.3

86.2

666.4 644.0 620.8 *Scores out of 800

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APC’s pre-sales support, special pricing on large deals, technical guidance to customers and postsales support have helped them grab bigger deals in 2011 and Varanasi said that the TAT (for repairs, replacement and batteries) has reduced considerably from 4-5 days to 1-2 days in the last one year.

Also, for volume products, APC has introduced remote support which has been helpful in reducing service lead times.

Partners said that APC’s pre-sales support, special pricing on large deals, technical guidance to customers and smooth post-sales support have helped them grab bigger deals in 2011.

In deal registration most respondents said that the company needs to be more transparent. On many occasions deals went to subdistributors who had better rapport with channel managers.

A few of APC’s Inner Circle partners strongly criticized the various policy changes the company introduced in early 2012. Under the new policies, the company has reduced back-end rebates from 10 percent to less than 5 percent on quarterly sales slabs. For partners who are also ASPs, there has been a slashing of the service rate card.

Emerson

Emerson launched new products in 2011 after acquiring DB Power.

Respondents said that the company came out with new SKUs in all ranges above the 20 KVA segment where it was lacking in 2010.

Unlike APC, Emerson provides UPS only up to 8 KVA ex-stock, while for high-end UPS there is a 3-4 week lead time in delivery. Respondents said that Emerson’s products are higher priced—on an average 15 percent higher than APC and 25 percent higher than Numeric. A 5 KVA Emerson online UPS is priced at `62,000 while a similar product from APC costs around `47,000.

However, respondents also said that Emerson products are made keeping in mind the environment in which Indian companies function, and they are known for their ruggedness. Besides, Emerson batteries are at least 25 percent cheaper than those from APC. The products come with a two-year warranty.

The company enhanced its channel marketing by introducing several schemes. Many respondents, especially in metro cities, said that they benefited from these schemes and that their business volume increased by 10-12 percent. However, respondents from cities such as Bareilly and Bhopal said that they were unaware of these channel schemes and regretted that Emerson does not communicate its schemes properly outside the top 10 cities.

In 2010 many of Emerson’s leading partners had alleged that the company did most data center business directly.

But in 2011 the same partners said that Emerson worked jointly with them to execute many such deals where they were involved in installation and billing.

Compared to 2010, warranty support improved as Emerson strengthened its team of field engineers. In remote locations it improved its TAT from more than a week to 4-5 days.

The company’s back-end rebate payment system remains slow and manual. In addition, the deal

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Commercial UPS category: 310 South 24% 26%

North 25% 24%

Class A 40%

East 12% 11%

West 37% 41%

Region

Class B 27%

The channel preference for Numeric suffered in 2011 due to the weakening of post-sales support and the increasing focus on direct selling.

Numeric is very strong in the lower segment till 10 KVA. Numeric products are popular

Emerson revitalized its channel sales and management team with the appointment of a new country manager, and since then there has been improvement in its channel engagement

Partner 54%

Type of City

registration process is largely manual and hence lacks transparency.

Partners said that Emerson revitalized its channel sales and management team in H2 with the appointment of a new country manager, and that since then there has been noticeable improvement in overall channel engagement.

Numeric

Class C 33%

Non-Partner 46%

type of reseller

in SMBs, manufacturing units and banks. Price-wise, Numeric is value for money, and is priced lower than APC or Emerson.

While Numeric offers the best front-end margins, the back-end margins are as low as 2 percent.

Partners complained about the delays (of up to six months) in rebate payments, and said that despite bringing the issue to the management’s attention nothing had been done to address the matter.

The number of direct deals done by the company increased in 2011.

A few respondents said that nearly 70 percent of the mid-to-large deals in their regions are done directly by Numeric. A few even complained of customer poaching, as was the case in 2010.

The company doesn’t do any direct channel marketing, and lets its distributors manage it.

Respondents (except in the south) said that distributors aren’t doing consistent channel marketing. Also, partners (again, except those in the south) complained about the lack of any channel training programs during 2011.

Numeric’s post-sales support weakened as compared to 2010.

Respondents said that the TAT in a large number of cases exceeded 7-10 working days. Even partners in the south complained of poor response. n

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software application

Microsoft edges out Tally

M

icrosoft, with its Dynamics range of ERP and CRM products, and cloud offerings (BPOS and Online CRM), was able to build a large channel connect compared to 2010, and due to its focus on training and realignment of channel programs emerged as the winner.

Tally, which was the winner in this category in 2010, finished a close second in 2011 though it continues to be the most widely distributed software company.

SAP polled more votes than last year, but this was only 12 percent of the total category votes.

Microsoft

In 2011, Microsoft launched the cloud version of its Online CRM and also launched the new Office 365 cloud services.

The company was particularly aggressive with its Online CRM, and offered deep discounts to new customers in order to compete with established players such as

Salesforce.com. Microsoft also offered deep discounts on its onpremise and Online CRM to existing ERP customers.

Respondents said that this helped in deep selling. Many partners who took the survey said that they were able to close more than the expected deals because of Microsoft’s overall aggression. Deal sizes ranged from 10 to 40 nodes for Online CRM. For on-premise ERP and CRM, respondents saw an increase in the number of deployments in 2011.

On the Office 365 front, Microsoft invested heavily in strengthening its support teams to help partners.

The company has created separate teams and appointed regional business development managers (BDMs) for driving cloud services.

The regional managers have been empowered to identify their own focus areas and GTM for the cloud business. Partners welcomed these changes, adding that the cloud BDMs are now helping them to draft business plans and develop a joint

Score Card Criteria

Microsoft Tally SAP

Product availability

98.0

Price-performance

89.3 90.8 86.3

Channel profitability

82.3

81.5

85.7

Brand-pull and customer marketing

88.4

85.4

85.3

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

89.0

83.9

86.5

Training and certification

88.2

84.7

83.6

Post-sales support

84.2

84.9

79.1

Channel policy and management

84.5

80.4

79.3

Final Score

97.8

98.3

704.0 689.6 684.0 *Scores out of 800

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In July 2011 the TN government increased VAT from 12 percent to 14.

Within 24 hours Tally came up with revised pricing to ensure that customers did not have to pay more GTM strategy.

The company also increased its training budgets for ERP, CRM and the cloud, offering discounts of 20-50 percent on certification. It conducted more frequent onsite and online training than in 2010. It also offered more MDFs to partners for customer events.

A key issue highlighted by many respondents is the increasing number of partners offering cloud services which they say is overcrowding the market. Also, many partners expressed displeasure at the company’s decision to change the rebate payouts from quarterly to half-yearly. The company’s decision to introduce rupee billing was welcomed by partners. However, most Microsoft partners expressed unhappiness with the vendor’s decision to appoint LARs to manage licensing for its top EA customers.

Tally

Tally upgraded its ERP 9 at the beginning of the year with Release 3.0. The new version came with several new features and functionalities such as the new rupee symbol, a bi-directional language feature, and simplification of several

business processes.

The company enjoys strong preference in under-100 user organizations where it has a strong customer connect due to its accounting software.

Tally announced its intention to launch completely radical ERP software in September 2011, but this was postponed to March 2012 due to issues in beta testing.

Respondents were critical of Tally’s move to reduce the renewal commission from 15 to 10 percent on the ground that renewals do not require any extra effort. Some partners alleged that Tally introduced new partners into their existing customer accounts on the pretext that the existing partners were not providing proper services to the customers.

A number of tier-2 partners criticized Tally for giving too much power to its 60 Master Tally Partners (MTPs) over the past two years.

While a number of them praised the MTPs’ role, many said that the MTPs are not consistent in channel marketing, training and pre-sales support. Some respondents who complained about the MTPs also said that Tally’s management refuses to intervene even when compelling issues are escalated to them. Those who voted positively said that the MTPs were doing a good job mentoring them and helping them meet their revenue target.

Respondents appreciated the company’s online, SMS, Web and remote support, which is prompt.

Tally provides information about new products and pricing on its partner portal and also addresses technical queries quickly. Partners from the south appreciated Tally’s prompt action when in July 2011 the Tamil Nadu government increased VAT from 12 percent to 14. Within 24 hours Tally came up with revised pricing to ensure that customers did not have to pay more.

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Software Application category: 190

North 29% East 11%

Class C 19%

South 26% Class A 47% West 34%

Region

SAP

Partner 72%

Type of City

preferred brand in mid-market and large enterprises, in 2011 the vendor upped its focus on the SMB segment and increased its connect with several tier-2 partners.

Respondents said that the company appointed field managers in each region; among other things, these managers ensured strong pre-sales support. The company was aggressive in the market and took Microsoft head-on in the SMB segment. Many Microsoft Navision partners said that they are now facing competition from SAP in six out of 10 deals as against two out 10 in 2010.

Channel profitability improved

Channel profitability improved with more incentives offered

by SAP. On an average, partners made margins of 40 percent in 2011 against 25-30 percent in 2010

Class B 34%

Non-Partner 28%

type of reseller

with more incentives offered by SAP during 2011. On an average, partners made margins of 40 percent in 2011 against 25-30 percent in 2010.

While partners said that the training and certification fee has been hiked by SAP, they appreciated the additional skills which the new training modules offered, and which helped them become business consultants. Respondents said that as a result of the training their conversion rate improved and the deployment time reduced, thus allowing them to take on more projects. Some respondents said that their SAP business grew by 35-40 percent in 2011.

SAP also increased the frequency of its partner training and regularly invited its authorized partners to its Bengaluru office to share in-depth information about new products, features and pricing. Respondents said that SAP took special initiatives to address the perception among SMBs that it is a white elephant— high on cost, and difficult to deploy and manage. In many cases, channel managers personally met prospects with such perceptions to underline the overall price-performance of SAP. The company also conducted rigorous training for its partners’ presales and sales resources. n

While SAP is regarded as the most

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virtualization

It’s VMware again

W

ith a dominant position in server virtualization and a renewed focus on the VDI space, VMware retained the crown as the most preferred virtualization vendor for the second time in a row in 2011.

Microsoft was ranked second because it upped the ante in the virtualization segment with a more focused channel strategy. Citrix, with its limited partner base but a dominant position in VDI, was ranked third.

With virtualization increasingly gaining ground among Indian companies (including even SMBs), we received 30 percent more votes than in 2010.

VMware

With an expanded sales team, VMware went on a partner enrolment drive during the year. However, the channel expansion irked some leading partners who said that it has overcrowded the market. They also alleged that several new partners onboarded by VMware lack the

requisite skills-set for virtualization.

During the year the company flip-flopped on its licensing policy.

In August 2011, VMware globally introduced its new vRAM-based licensing policy. However, due to negative feedback from customers and partners—that the new policy significantly increased the cost of VMware deployment—the company launched a revised vRAM-based policy which was more realistic. Partners who took the survey appreciated the speed with which VMware responded to market feedback.

VMware went aggressive with VDI with the launch of ViewManager 5.0, which respondents said was a much better offering than its previous version. Most respondents who were certified to sell VDI opined that VMware has a focused strategy; they expressed confidence that with a tweaking in the licensing policy for VDI VMware could increase its market share significantly. VMware offered incentives to its VDI partners to run POCs, and also introduced a 10

Score Card Criteria

VMware Microsoft Citrix

Product availability

95.2

Price-performance

84.7 82.7 84.1

Channel profitability

83.9

77.4

83.2

Brand-pull and customer marketing

89.8

86.5

83.5

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

88.4

87.7

79.2

Training and certification

83.8

83.0

79.5

Post-sales support

82.4

79.1

81.1

Channel policy and management

77.6

82.1

76.5

Final Score

94.8

95.2

685.6 673.2 580.8 *Scores out of 800

42

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A few leading VMware partners complained of delays in presales support, lack of transparent deal registration, and favoritism by regional managers percent back-end on the list price for every deal won.

The company introduced a new specialization for DR/BCP which was appreciated by its enterprise business partners (EBPs) as it helped them bag larger projects and make better profits.

While partners rated VMware as aggressive in customer marketing, they said that most customer schemes are globally-driven, and very few are India-specific.

Partners expressed satisfaction with the frequency of channel training offered by VMware. According to the respondents, besides online training, the company offered onsite training twice a quarter even in tier-2 cities.

VMware scored ahead of the competition on all parameters except channel policy and management. A few leading partners complained of inconsistent partner engagement, delays in pre-sales support, lack of transparent deal registration, and favoritism by regional managers (RMs).

Some leading partners in the north alleged that support and partner engagement has suffered drastically after the appointment of the RM in early 2011.

In the south and west, some

virtualization

authorized partners, including

two large EBPs, leveled allegations about favoritism and the lack of transparency in deal registration.

However in January 2012, VMware made some changes in its lead management and deal registration system, and some partners said they are hoping it would make the system fair and transparent.

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Virtualization category: 149

East 7%

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Class C 9% Class B

South 33%

West 45%

Microsoft

Microsoft went aggressive in virtualization in 2011 with more channel enablement and customer marketing.

On the product front, the company upgraded its Systems Center Suite to enable HyperV to support heterogeneous environments.

Microsoft partners who took the survey said that the company conducted a series of training programs—onsite and Webinar—to skill partner resources in HyperV and provide them sales and pre-sales training. Partners appreciated the content provided on the Webinars, mainly global case studies of live production environments of customers.

The vendor offered cash incentives for setting up POCs at customer sites.

It added more resources to its channel management team in every region to work more closely with partners, and upped the back-end incentive for virtualization to 10 percent.

Even VMware partners admit that in mid-size projects they are seeing competition increase from Microsoft.

A few partners who took the survey reported a 40 percent increase in their virtualization revenue from the Microsoft platform. A few partners from Class-B cities bagged deals for HyperV deployment in the government and education sectors.

Nevertheless, Microsoft still has a long way to go compared to VMware in terms of the maturity of its product offerings. HyperV continues to be deployed in smaller virtual environments—up to 20 physical servers— due to its technology limitations.

North 15%

Region

11%

Citrix

Type of City

Citrix maintained its momentum in VDI as a de facto market leader; however, it continued to work with select partners.

Where Citrix scored lower is on pre-sales support and channel management.

Partners want Citrix to have RMs in metros who can engage consistently and promptly with them

Partner 83%

Class A 80%

Respondents admitted that Microsoft is offering its virtualization platform almost free to existing customers with 1,000+ nodes. But while they don’t make money on licensing, there is good revenue from providing implementation services.

Microsoft partners believe that if the company continues to improve its technology and sustains its aggressive GTM, it can give VMware tough competition in the SMB and midmarket segments.

Non-Partner 17%

type of reseller

In 2011, though the company made some moves to target the SMB market—launching VDI-in-a-box and announcing an alliance with NComputing—partners are yet to see any focused GTM. Most respondents agreed that on price-performance there is no alternative to Citrix in the VDI space, and that the brand recognition it enjoys in the large enterprise and midmarket segment is unparalleled.

Where Citrix scored lower is on customer and channel marketing, and pre-sales support and channel management. While the company received top ranking from its leading partners in Mumbai on these parameters, those from Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata complained of a lack of proper presales support, training and customer marketing.

Nearly 50 percent of the respondents agreed that the company needs to do more in terms of customer and channel marketing and training.

While the company has good partner programs, for the management of partner relations it received lower scores. Partners want Citrix to have RMs in each metro who can engage consistently and promptly with them.

With VMware increasing its focus on VDI, Citrix will have to improve its channel GTM to sustain its leadership. n

Infrastructure Management

Kaseya hangs on

F

or the second consecutive year Kaseya was adjudged the channel champion in the infrastructure management software (IMS) category. However, the number of partners who voted for Kaseya came down considerably compared to last year.

In 2011, with the launch of Intune, Microsoft’s remote management tool, many partners have started offering managed client services to their customers.

A number of other vendors (including IBM with Tivoli, HP with OpenView, Landesk, Level One, Quest and Zoho) received votes in the survey. However, all these vendors received less than 10 percent of the category votes and hence didn’t make the list of finalists.

Kaseya

Kaseya witnessed a consolidation in its partner base. From 60 partners voting for it in 2010 only 30 partners voted for the brand in 2011.

The company consolidated its channel strategy in Q12011 following disenchantment among several partners. As a result, the vendor decided to work with 20 dedicated partners of the 90 partners it had enrolled.

While these partners gave Kaseya positive ratings on all parameters, the erstwhile partners who felt sidelined voted negatively on most channel-preference parameters.

The respondents who voted negatively said that Kaseya created too much hype around IMS and made commitments to partners which it couldn’t keep. Still, they appreciated the fact that when they decided to surrender their IMS licenses to Kaseya the company was forthcoming and is paying back the license fee to them.

The partners who voted positively for Kaseya said that the vendor was focused on converting deals and provided all possible support to close contracts with their

Score Card Criteria Product availability Price-performance Channel profitability Brand-pull and customer marketing Channel marketing and pre-sales support Training and certification Post-sales support Channel policy and management

Final Score

Kaseya Microsoft 100 100 85.5 85.0 81.1 76.5 88.2 90.0 86.1 80.4 87.5 82.5 85.2 80.6 88.5 83.0

702.1 678.0 *Scores out of 800

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Infrastructure Management category: 112

East 6%

North 18%

South 30%

West 46%

Region

Class C 9% Class B 16% Class A 75%

Type of City

Non-Partner 25% Partner 75%

type of reseller

customers. Most of them said that their IMS business grew by over 100 percent in 2011. Kaseya also moved beyond end-point support and created specific solutions for domains such as Microsoft Exchange, IT asset management, back-up, recovery and end-point security.

In December 2011 Kaseya launched its next generation of tools and services called ‘AMS in Autopilot,’ a dashboard-based service that helps IT management to focus on decision-making while the most critical tasks are automated.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s infrastructure management portfolio has largely included several free and commercial systems management tools that are available with its various offerings.

In addition, over the past couple of years, the company has made several tools available to channels through its Microsoft Codeplex that partners are using to offer valueadded managed services to their customers. However, these tools can remotely manage only Microsoft platforms and don’t support heterogeneity; these services can therefore only be offered to Microsoft customers.

Then in Q12011 Microsoft launched Windows Intune, a cloud-based PC management tool as a beta service targeting Microsoft client platforms such as Windows 7, Vista and XP. It signed on several partners to sell this service in Q22011, and is said to have trained around 150 partners.

Microsoft has conducted training programs around Intune in Class-A cities since its beta launch, but partners in other cities are yet to hear of any comprehensive training. While during the beta phase the program was free, Microsoft continues to offer 30-day trial periods for both partners and customers, and on-demand extensions for potential large customers to evaluate the program.

However, most partners said they are yet to commercially sell the services around Intune as the pricing proposed by Microsoft is very steep for the Indian market. According to partners, Intune services are available for `500 per node per month (though Microsoft is offering freebies). n

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Supporting Associations

thin client

HP tops in thin

H

P retained the channel champion title in thin clients.

Due to its improved market coverage, Ncomputing emerged as the second most preferred brand with improved rating across all channel preference criteria compared to 2010.

While Wyse improved the availability of its products in 2011, it continued to suffer in channel preference. Enjay and Thinmax were the other two brands that were polled by a number of resellers. However, the total votes polled by each brand was less than 10 percent of the overall category votes and hence they didn’t make it to the final list.

HP

HP has the widest availability of thin clients and also large market coverage. The company faced certain availability issues, and from August to September 2011 one of HP’s popular models (t5575) was in short supply.

HP’s thin clients are priced about 20-25 percent more than those from Wyse. Its entry-level products start at

`11,000 (without the monitor), while those from Wyse are priced around `9,000. However, said respondents, in large orders HP matches any competitive bidding through SPC. The company enjoys strong brand pull and customer preference.

HP’s pre-sales support was also rated better than the competition’s, and so was its post-sales support.

Most vendors offer a three-year replacement warranty on thin clients.

In channel policy and management, HP has a structured partner program with clear incentive slabs, a deal registration process, product configuration and an SPC mechanism. While HP conducts regular customer and channel marketing programs, partners said that these programs need to be conducted at more frequent intervals.

They also felt that HP needs to boost its training. Compared to 2010, the company organized training less frequently. Partners said that due to this they had faced troubles in product deployment and as a result

Score Card Criteria

HP NComputing Wyse

Product availability

90.6

Price-performance

76.3 74.5 75.2

Channel profitability

80.1

82.5

75.0

Brand-pull and customer marketing

83.2

77.5

78.5

Channel marketing and pre-sales support

84.5

82.0

71.8

Training and certification

79.4

81.5

40.5

Post-sales support

80.7

76.5

73.0

Channel policy and management

82.8

80.4

70.5

Final Score

89.7

76.0

657.6 644.8 560.8 *Scores out of 800

had to depend more on vendor support.

NComputing

NComputing increased its focus on India in 2011 and improved its market coverage and channel base.

Compared to 2010, it also improved product availability by introducing more models and stock through sub-distributors. However, there were intermittent instances of nonavailability of products through subdistributors.

The entry-level product from NComputing is available at `5,000 (without the monitor), and it’s largely deployed in SMBs. In large enterprises HP and Wyse are preferred over NComputing.

While NComputing has gained in branding, it is still not well known.

However, in 2011 the company increased its customer marketing by participating in events. Many partners who took the survey said that compared to 2010 the company increased the MDF for customer promotions.

Where NComputing ranked lower was on pre-sales and post-sales support. Most partners said that NComputing has a weak technical team and hence partners don’t get the requisite pre-sales support.

On the warranty front, replacement time is more than five working days in most cases as the replaced unit is dispatched from a Chennai warehouse.

Respondents said that back-end rebates take 3-4 months to be cleared

by Redington.

Wyse

The company continued to be the second-most preferred brand among large enterprises because it’s a global brand and its products are good in performance and features.

In spite of this, the company

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47

thin client

failed to gain on channel preference

in 2011 largely due to a lack of India focus. Wyse is focused on engaging with select partners and managing large customers and deals.

Regarding product availability, the lead time is 4-6 weeks, which is longer than expected. The entry-level price of a Wyse thin client (without a monitor) is `9,000, which is 20 percent cheaper than HP’s, while on performance it is rated equal.

The back-end margin is also not an issue for partners who strike large deals and get another 4-5 percent.

Respondents said that the company does not do any customer or channel marketing. Also, the company has no focus on partner training. The warranty support of the company is good and replacement is

Survey Demographics Unique votes polled for Thin Client category: 215 North 23%

South 27%

Class C 22% Class A 49%

East 11% West 39% Region

Class B 29%

Type of City

NBD in most cases. There is a lack of senior-level management people in India, and as a result respondents

Non-Partner 41%

Partner 59%

type of reseller

said there are delays in decisionmaking when it comes to getting SPC for large projects. n

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