contents
May 15, 2012 l Volume 1 Issue 14
Cover Story With cutting-edge features, new form factors and better manageability, modern-day servers are now managing infrastructure elements like networking and storage, and creating opportunities for partners in the process
24 Cover Design : Deepjyoti Bhowmik
NEWS Analyses
Channel Chief
Cisco gets smarter with services
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ECS eyes 25 percent share
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Priyanka serves legal notice to HP
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EMC bets on big data
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Salesforce.com fires sales-marketing teams
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Kaseya looks at new strategies 12
Ankesh Kumar, Director, Channel Products & Marketing, Emerson Network Power India, elaborates on his company’s go-to-market and channel plans for 2012
18 Special Focus Cisco’s 10 big bets for 2012 At the recently concluded Cisco Partner Summit, the company disclosed the 10 pieces of its current strategy that definitely bear watching
22 Role Model
READ More
A partnership that is going places Mihir Chahwala and Moin Shaikh, Promoters, Innovative Telecom & Software, look back at the highs of their long journey together
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Editorial 14 Opinion
16
Feedback
16
Channel Buzz
37
New Products
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Shadow Ram
42
Get Personal
42
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Computer Reseller News
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Tech Focus 10 free Cloud Storage Options The release of Google Drive with 5 GB of free storage capacity has set off a cascade of other free storage options
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starting line MUST
Cisco gets smarter with services
ECS eyes 25 percent share
n RAMDAS S
Read
Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) is eying a 25 percent share in the motherboard market in FY2012-13, up from the current 15 percent. From a revenue of `150 crore in 2011, the company expects to earn `250 crore in the current fiscal with a strategy to increase its partner base and product portfolio. “We would like to increase our partners in all areas where we do not have an adequate presence. In the south we would like to grow in Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. In the west we would like to penetrate the upcountry markets of Gujarat such as Rajkot, Surat, Gandhidham and Vadodara,” said Ken Chang, Director, Sales & Marketing, Channel Business Unit, ECS India. The company also plans to strengthen its channel. Informed Chang, “We will increase the number of resellers from 400 to 800 and conduct joint roadshows with Rashi. We believe that the combined efforts will contribute an additional 5 percent to our motherboard marketshare.” On the product front, the company, Ken Chang which was hitherto focused on the entry-level segment, will now target the upper mid-market. It has launched new Intel chipset-based golden products chiefly targeted at these segments. The limited edition of the golden Z77H2-AX and Z77H2-A2X motherboards includes the ECS 15u of gold-plated CPU pins, memory sockets and PCI Express slots. “We have priced them between `15,000 and `17,000, and expect the portfolio to add another 5 percent to our motherboard marketshare,” Chang stated. The company has introduced quarterly loyalty programs which would award gold coins to partners for meeting sales targets. Chang explained: “This will improve the perception about ECS as a premium motherboard manufacturer.” Once ECS makes a mark in the mid-market with its motherboards, it intends to introduce products such as tablets, netbooks and AIOs in the country. n — Abhijeet Mukherjee
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isco is wooing partners to start reselling its value added services offerings—Smart Services—in the newly-enhanced Cisco Services Partner program. Over the next year, the vendor is hoping to double to 50 the number of partners offering Smart Services. At the center of Cisco Smart Services is a strategy for Cisco partners to diversify from rapidly commoditizing maintenance services to higher value-added diagnostic and planning services, and to build more reliable annuitybased revenue streams. Explained Amitabh Patney, VP, Commercial Segment & Distribution Business, Services Sales, India & Saarc, Cisco Systems, “Customers are adding more network devices to their infrastructure, and it is getting more complex for them to manage. That is where a Cisco Smart Service partner can provide a number of proactive and preemptive services which can add to the partner’s bottom-line.” Patney informed that services account for 20 percent of all revenue for Cisco globally. While in India the figures have not yet reached this level, Cisco expects that with more partners venturing into selling services this revenue head will increase. “With the network becoming the platform, we expect services to move from a reactive to a pre-emptive and proactive mode. We expect our Smart Services business to grow at 100 percent YoY, and account for 50 percent of our services revenue over the next year,” he said. The services include breakfix, remote management, writing add-on features on the API of various Cisco platforms, and even complex network optimization services. Said Patney, “Depending on the partner capabilities, we have co-delivery models as
“We expect Smart Services to grow at 100 percent, and account for 50 percent of our services revenue over the next year” Amitabh Patney, VP, Commercial Segment & Distribution Business, Services Sales, India & Saarc, Cisco
well as options for partners to white-label services and also to build independent value-added services.” Added K Subramanya, Director, Central Data Systems, Bengaluru, “We are trying to pitch services as a value-add with every deployment of Cisco products. This ensures that in most transactions our net margins are in double figures.” Patney pointed out that with a number of customers opting for network optimization and audit services, the opportunities for partners are growing. “In many cases, to ensure that their auditing and optimization plans are on track, customers want reports which have to be generated from the logs churned out by various devices. In other cases, customers want data from Cisco products to be integrated with other applications.” This has prompted partners to set up internal backend teams with capabilities to create applications built on top of Cisco platforms. Informed AL Srinath, CEO, Shell Networks, “We have a team that has created a number of applications for our customers. We have, for example, a meeting room booking application which is integrated with Microsoft Outlook Calendar.” n
starting line MUST
Read
EMC bets on big data
n Amit Singh
EMC has unveiled a series of strategies to go after the potential big data market with the combination of its Greenplum database platform and its scaleout NAS boxes Isilon. The vendor also informed that it is getting its partner ecosystem to make the best use of the two product lines to go after the big data explosion. Big data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage and process the data within a tolerable time. “Big data is one of the biggest opportunities for enterprise channels, and EMC is aiming to be a complete solution provider in this space,” said Rajesh Janey, President, EMC, India & Saarc. EMC had acquired Isilon Systems and Greenplum in separate acquisitions in 2010. “EMC Isilon has set the standard for highly scalable file systems with the highest performing replication tool. Big data is all about making sense of the large amounts of unstructured data that customers are generating on a daily basis, and this requires a file system Rajesh Janey and storage hardware that is truly scalable. With the ability to scale beyond petabytes, EMC Isilon makes the best platform for your big data analytics,” said Sunil Brid, Area Sales Director (Isilon Division), EMC, India & Saarc. Apart from high scalability, Brid informed that the file system OneFS deployed in the Isilon does not have any single point of failure. “For big data analytics you need scalability not compromising on performance. Isilon systems can take up to 72 drive failures without losing data,” stated Brid. EMC has also announced an integration of its Greenplum database with the open source Hadoop framework, a software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications. The new Greenplum Hadoop product makes use of Isilon’s OneFS which EMC says improves the overall scalability and stability of Hadoop. n — Ramdas S
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Computer Reseller News
Priyanka serves legal notice to HP
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aipur-based sub-distributor, Priyanka Computer Services, has sent a legal notice to HP India alleging that the vendor defamed the company’s reputation and diverted its business to other partners by unfair means. The company has claimed `50 lakh as damages from HP failing which legal proceedings would follow. CRN has a copy of the legal notice dated April 14, 2012, which contends: “With the change in local management, HP started supplying ink cartridges to Bhilai Steel Plant, Apollo Hospital and Jindal Steel & Power through other business partners without prior information. This resulted in accumulation of stock which eventually expired.” Priyanka also alleges favoritism by HP managers which impacted the company’s business interests. “HP’s local officials, namely Manoj Kapoor and Pankaj Jha, suggested these customers make purchases from their new business partners. Priyanka Computer did all the field work to finalize the deal with Bhilai Steel Plant but at the last moment local officials authorized another partner for supply. Manoj Kapoor and Pankaj Jha, in order to support their favorite business partners, gave false reasons that HP customers are not satisfied with our services, which downgraded our reputation in the market.” The notice also challenges HP’s business policy regarding expired consumables calling it unfair and unethical: “The expiry date of HP cartridges is two years from the date of manufacture, but every cartridge cannot be
checked due to bulk purchase. HP never prints the expiry date in the supply bill and as such the shelf life is not known to us or our clients. HP introduces new models of printers every year and the pattern of cartridges also changes, which results in practically no sale of old cartridges. Further, HP has no clear policy regarding replacement of expired cartridges.” As a result of this alleged favoritism and unfair expiry policy, Priyanka claims to be ridden with `8 lakh worth of expired cartridges. “Over the past couple of years I have tried every means to resolve the matter amicably with HP. I have been a premier partner of HP for more than 15 years, and spoke to every level of HP management. But they were not forthcoming with a solution, hence I was left with no option but to take the matter to court. We will pursue the case against HP India for unethical business practice under the Competition Act if we do not get a favorable reply within the next 30 days,” said Kishore Makhija, CEO, Priyanka. Simultaneously, Makhija has also approached CCMDA (Chhattisgarh Computer Media Dealers Association) for mediation. CCMDA has taken the complaint onboard and issued an ultimatum to HP to resolve the matter amicably or face a boycott. “We have conveyed to HP that our members will not do business with the company if the issue is not resolved at the earliest. HP has sought a week’s time,” said Devender Marvah, President, CCMDA. n
starting line MUST
Salesforce.com fires sales-marketing teams
Kaseya looks at new strategies
n CRN Network
Read
Automated Managed Services software tool vendor Kaseya has unveiled a series of sales and marketing plans as it tries to build a bigger base in the country. One of the key goals is to unify its marketing message and work on sales strategies that are similar across geographies. “Today we are present across all major markets, and it is important to have a similar go-to-market strategy. Some of the work done in the Indian market would be used to build collaterals as we explore new markets and domains,” informed Bob Davis, CMO & Founder, Kaseya. On the sales front, key goals would be to engage more actively with the national systems integrators in the country, and also eye the Indian large enterprise market. “We believe we have been able to gain significant mind and market share in the Indian SMB market, especially among midmarket partners. However, we want to now break into the big league,” added Davis. He explained that one of their objectives is to analyze and figure out new product offerings for the changing market demands.” We realize that many solution providers are using our platform to do more than traditional monitoring and automation. For example, we see our platform being used for data back-up. Our idea now is to bring new product licensing programs and new products for customers who need specific features of the platform.” Davis said that while the cloud is a gamechanger, it is more likely to result in opportunities for channels rather than being a disruption for their business. “We are readying our product lines for the cloud era. In future you would see many customers having a hybrid environment, having a mixture of a cloud and hosted environment. Our future product roll-outs would precisely address problems such customers are likely to face.” Recently, Girish Krishnamurthy, the highprofile CEO & MD, Kaseya India, put in his papers. Kaseya was tight-lipped about a replacement. Meanwhile, the Indian team is thinking of opting for a national distributor for its India sales business. However, Davis said that a decision will be taken only at the end of the quarter. n — Ramdas S
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loud CRM specialist, Salesforce.com, has fired over 35 employees from its sales and marketing teams in India. While this has left many partners worried, the company said that the development is a result of its decision to relocate its India head office from Gurgaon to Hyderabad. A company spokesperson from Singapore offered this explanation to our queries about the massive layoffs: “Salesforce. com is establishing its India head office in Hyderabad. Hyderabad is our largest office in India today, and will now serve as our main hub for all business functions. We are highly committed to our customers, partners and growing business in India. In fact we are aggressively hiring in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. We expect our overall investment level in India will continue to grow.” While Salesforce.com claimed that the layoffs were part of its overall strategy to consolidate its development and sales teams in Hyderabad, the suddenness of the development has come as a surprise. Some days after the event customers and partners are still waiting for clarity on the future course of Salesforce.com. According to the CEO of a VAD who recently migrated to SAP from Salesforce.com, “Any company provides products which are 50-70 percent ready. Most of the day-to-day usage is monitored by the partners, so there would not be any issues on that front. Dealing with backend issues could however be a challenge.” He said that partners who were on the verge of closing deals or had deals in the funnel would be impacted. “With nobody to clear SPC, the competition can get an edge. Also, there is nobody to help
“They have very good solutions, but their customer strategy leaves a lot to be desired. I have been denied access to my database which is on Salesforce.com” Vasant Vartak
Managing Director Kalyx Infotech
partners with post sales.” Vasant Vartak, MD of the Mumbai-based Kalyx Infotech, was more forthcoming. Said Vartak, who migrated to the on-premise IT architecture from Salesforce.com, “They have very good solutions, but their customer strategy leaves a lot to be desired. I have been denied access to my database (which is currently on the Salesforce.com platform) for the last few months. The reason: the sales executive pushed a 7-user license deal on me when I wanted licenses for five users. They sent me a bill of `10,000 for the additional two users, which I refused to pay, and since then I have been denied access to my database.” Partners gave mixed reactions to the development. Said K Jaishankar, MD, Ingram Micro India, “It would be business as usual for us. We would continue to enable and manage partners.” Ingram is the value added distributor for Salesforce.com in India. Other partners from Mumbai and Delhi, requesting anonymity, said that they were yet to hear from the company. A Mumbaibased partner said, “If the company was relocating its head office to Hyderabad, it could have also relocated its employees.” n
edit opinion Volume 1, Issue 14
Enabling virtual channel outreach dhaval valia
W
e at CRN are readying ourselves for the second edition of the CRN Virtual Expo. 1,500 unique partners have already registered for the expo, and we aim to sign up 2,400 which we believe would ensure attendee strength of 1,000+ during the two live show days of May 30 & 31, 2012. For this we have the backing of 15 channel associations, and have a power-packed conference program. I have been a champion of the virtual show ever since we launched this initiative in 2011. India’s disparate and wide-spread geography makes it challenging for IT vendors to take their products and communication beyond the top 50-60 cities. The virtual platform makes it possible to connect and engage with resellers from 150+ cities. It also acts as a prime engagement tool for smaller resellers in both big and small cities to learn, interact and network with peers, vendors and analysts. Last year when we launched the Virtual Expo our primary concern was about the quality of the last-mile connectivity that would support the delivery of the audio Webcast. The second concern was how the channel, which is largely keen on face-to-face relationship building, would react to the virtual medium. We were proved wrong on both counts. 600+ resellers from 100+ cities attended the first virtual show, much above our expectation of 250. More importantly, the average time spent by each channel visitor was more than four hours, and more than 4,300 white papers, videos, etc were either downloaded and/or viewed online. This clearly demonstrated that the virtual platform, if delivered using the right platform and content, can be a potent tool for a wide channel outreach that is not feasible in a physical environment. Most partners who connected felt that it was a timeefficient way of peer networking, knowledge sharing and vendor relationship building—from the comfort of their offices while attending other important work. At CRN our continuing aim is to create and provide new tools and platforms to help the IT channel and vendors connect and engage effectively. We hope the second CRN Virtual Expo will do exactly that with all of you logging in and leveraging the virtual platform to its fullest. Everyone is invited, and I look forward to meeting you at the Virtual Expo. n E-mail CRN Executive Editor Dhaval Valia at dhaval.valia@ubm.com 14
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edit opinion The cloud solution spin Robert Faletra
I
n recent interviews done by CRN, many vendors have claimed that their cloud offering is more advanced than those of their competitors. A few of them have even suggested that cloud solutions from their competitors are misdirecting customers. I do not see anything wrong in such comments. Any time a company has a chance to define itself by contrasting how it does business versus its competition, it is fair game, in my opinion. In some circles, it is called ‘position marketing,’ or ‘spin.’ Whether or not what these vendors are saying is true is open to debate, and frankly, something every partner needs to decide on his own. These kinds of statements were also prevalent in the early days of the industry when standards were unheard of. My real point here is that when a solution provider sells a cloud solution, very few customers are going to care about the underlying brands that make up that solution. As a result, position marketing to partners is going to become increasingly important to vendors as a point of differentiation. Historically, the majority of position marketing spend has been toward end-users and remains so today. It is something I think will become more common due to the future loss of brand identity to the end-user as a result of the cloud. If the line-of-business manager is not concerned about the underlying brands that make up a cloud solution, then vendors are going to have to work harder to convince solution provider partners to select them as the solution recipe. This is going to require a different approach to marketing. Through partner marketing, the emphasis will need to be on solutions, not products. Partners left the single product sale behind many years ago in favor of solution-selling, but to date solution-selling has still often come with an emphasis on the technology and brand make-up. That is going to dissipate as the line-of-business manager gets more involved in the buying decision and bases it on the problem being solved. An example may be a partner who is building a practice in reducing storage costs for midsize enterprises, allowing a company to launch new products more quickly and costeffectively by not having to build out storage infrastructure and buy storage beyond its needs. If the customer’s products are storage-intensive, bringing a new product to the market means it has to add storage before it can begin selling it. But if the customer buys storage as a service and has a contract where he pays for what he uses, then a product can be launched and sold before adding costs. The line-of-business manager is concerned about his costs because he has to return a profit. He is unlikely to care as much about the brand make-up of the solution because he is buying it from a solution provider who is guaranteeing the service. My point here is that positioning to the partner base is going to become even more important in future. n Email Robert Faletra at robert.faletra@ec.ubm.com 16
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CMDA to deal with defaulters strictly The May 8 story on CMDA dealing with defaulters has come at a very opportune time. The fact that a trade association is addressing partner concerns is a welcome step. In addition to all the points covered in the charter, my suggestion is that CMDA should create a central body which will maintain credit scores for all the partners. This body can rate each and every member based on his payment history (as reported by RDs/NDs). This score can be treated as a benchmark for credit calls, and will be at the discretion of the creditor. Cyberstar Infocom Pune
CMDA’s efforts to drive clarity and transparency across the partner ecosystem are laudable. While the CMDA guidelines are a welcome step, I believe that the
implementation of `50 as a delivery fee for the pick-up and drop facility may not be viable. The association has addressed all the other points very well. Great work CMDA. Keep it up. Sachin Salunke Computer Infotech Pune
Salesforce.com sacks teams Your online story dated May 4, story on Salesforce. com sacking its sales and marketing teams in India was appalling. MNCs have absolutely no concern for their Indian employees. Since they sack their own employees, their treatment of channel partners cannot be expected to be different. It is indeed unfortunate that most Indian partners are silent despite witnessing such atrocious behavior. Rajan Malik via email
Send your feedback at editor@ubmindia.com or post your views on www.crn.in
Advertiser Index Company name
Smartlink Smartlink Emerson HP Compuage-Odyssey Eaton Rashi PNY Fujitsu Compuage-Edifier Trend Micro Interop CLS Virtual Expo Asus Quick Heal Symantec EBM Biz IBM Iomega
Page No Web site
1 www.digisol.com 2 www.digilite.co.in 4 emersonnetworkpower.com 5 www.hp.com/in/zworkstations 7 www.compuageindia.com 9 www.eatonpowerquality/india 11 www.rptechindia.com 13 www.pny.com.tw 15 www.sg.fujitsu.com/scanner 17 www.edifier-international.com 19 www.trendmicro.co.in 21 www.interop.in 27 www.crn.in/lsummit 31 www.crn.in/virtualexpo 39 www.asus.in 40 www.quickheal.com 41 www.fortune-it.com 41 www.synology.com 42 www.indiaantivirus.com 43 www.ibm.com 44 www.iomega.com/vssolutions
Sales Contact
helpdesk@digisol.com helpdesk@digilite.co.in marketing.india@emerson.com in.contact@hp.com odyssey@compuageindia.com EatonPowerQualityIndia@Eaton.com response@rptechindia.com sales@fortune-it.com Rohit.Grover@in.fujitsu.com info@compuageindia.com avneet.kaur@trend-micro.in salil.warior@ubm.com salil.warior@ubm.com salil.warior@ubm.com reachus@asus.com info@quickheal.co.in sandeep.dhar@fortune-it.com info@ebm.in sales@indiaantivirus.com response@in.ibm.com indiasales@iomega.com
channel chief “We are no longer a UPS company” Ankesh Kumar, Director, Channel Products & Marketing, Emerson Network Power India, spoke to Abhijeet Mukherjee about his company’s go-to-market and channel plans for 2012 Could you update us on Emerson’s performance in the last fiscal? We had an overall growth of 18 percent, and in the current fiscal we are confident of growing by 22 percent. Right now the Indian UPS market—both consumer and enterprise—is worth close to `3,000 crore. The market is growing at 12 percent CAGR, so we are growing above this rate. According to Frost & Sullivan, Emerson’s overall marketshare is 16.5 percent, hence going forward with so much domestic demand we see considerable opportunity to grow further. UPS is only 55 percent of our revenue, including services. Other elements of our power solutions business are growing at a rapid pace. Our acquisition of Avocent last year helped us increase our non-UPS business. It has given us a wider portfolio which includes data center management software, KVM, infrastructure management appliances and power distribution units. We no longer insist on being called a UPS company. Rather, we are changing that image and would like to be perceived as a packaged power solutions provider.
How has the Avocent acquisition helped your partners? Because of increased virtualization and the increasing popularity of the cloud, power management and monitoring have become key concerns. Avocent’s power management software plays an important role at large enterprises where monitoring power distribution and heat emission is critical. The monitoring software provides every detail including heat generation and power requirements. Avocent also provides rack power management and a data center planner, so the acquisition has brought all the products under one umbrella. Most competing brands do not have all these facilities under one roof, so they have to procure stuff from a third party. This is where the acquisition has helped us. It will save on costs and increase sales because we can now bundle products and solutions. We’ve started training our partners with product knowledge and technology. We are also training
“We plan to have road-shows for OptimizeIT and Smart Solutions. We want to start with the metros and later extend the campaign to other top 10 cities” 18
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them to approach customers with an understanding of their requirements rather than just for box selling. This will help partners to upsell because they can provide customers a packaged power solution depending on their requirements. This new approach will bring at least 25 percent more margin to the partner. The expanded portfolio has helped us to close several deals in the past six months. Customers are seeing the value in us providing them a one-stop power backup solution. We have already signed some leading customers who have, on the average, bought 200 units of 3 kVA with our other offerings including racks, RDUs and KVMs. These customers include FedEx, Reliance Fresh and Dominos.
Tell us about your product launches. We have refreshed our OptimizeIT solutions portfolio which is aimed at providing enterprise-class IT infrastructure solutions to SMBs. The refreshed line addresses the growing need of SMBs for integrated power, cooling and monitoring in a pre-engineered, easy-to-order solution. We did a soft launch with pilot runs in a few cases for our intelligent integrated infrastructure portfolio, Smart Solutions, in India some time back. Smart Solutions offer customers an integrated framework which enables them to choose from industry best practices; it has intelligent management tools and features. On the UPS front we recently launched our ITA series of products which provides energy, space and power efficiency up to 96 percent. The new series comes in 6, 10 and 20 kVA capacities. The products have the lowest form factor of 2U, which can be paneled up to 4U.
What is your channel strategy for the next 12 months? Our business is divided into three parts. The first is the less-than-5 kVA UPS, the second is the 5-20 kVA space where we have a channel play, and finally we have the unit which takes care of the power and cooling requirements of large data centers. Most of these businesses come to us directly though we have exceptions wherein partners do have a role to play. We have three kinds of partners. One, the enterprise business partners (EBPs) who are exclusive to Emerson. Two, the network solutions providers (NSPs) who are systems integrators and IT solution providers; they are not necessarily exclusive to Emerson, but are extremely
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channel chief IT-savvy. Lastly there are the VARs who are basically box pushers. Emerson is banking on the NSPs for pushing their packaged power solutions with others’ passive IT infrastructure solutions. We are training our partners how to approach customers by providing them appropriate training material for OptimizeIT solutions. We are planning to have road-shows for two of our products, OptimizeIT and Smart Solutions. We plan to start with the metros and later extend the campaign to the rest of the top 10 cities. For part of the volume product portfolio, including Avocent racks and KVM, we are looking at regional expansion. We have partnered with Spark Technologies as an exclusive RD for racks in the north, and Network Tech Lab in Mumbai for the west. We are close to finalizing one RD each in the other two zones. Our plan is to have 6-8 such RDs by the end of September 2012. We also intend to increase the number of NSPs from the current 50 to 75, and EBPs from the current 80 to 100. We would also like to add 200 more active VARs to the current 800.
During the CRN Channel Champions Survey of 2011 your partners complained about irrational pricing. We are currently in a critical situation mainly because of the depreciation of the rupee against the dollar to the extent of nearly 20 percent. This not only increased our input costs but also raised the prices of components which are key materials for manufacturing UPSs. For locally manufactured products we had a cost impact due to the post-budget hike in excise duty and service tax. Imported products are also impacted by the rise in freight charges following the rise in global oil prices.
“We intend to increase the number of NSPs from 50 to 75, and EBPs from 80 to 100. We would also like to add 200 more VARs to the current 800” The net inflation to us is 22-24 percent. Though we are monitoring the situation we had no choice but to rationalize the pricing based on input cost. Looking at past sales data, with the rationalized pricing we have increased prices by only 5 percent so that partners are not affected. In parallel, we are monitoring costs and implementing value engineering projects to bring the input cost down. Not only this, for the benefit of our partners we have also changed the pricing structure. We have abolished special pricing and introduced fixed pricing to contain disparities within the bulk discount matrix.
During the same survey partners also complained that you did UPS business with data centers directly. Let me clarify. Most of the large data center (above 5,000 sq ft) business is taken care of by us directly because we have a dedicated team to handle their requirements. Moreover, large customers want us to involve ourselves directly in these deals with no partner play. Having said that, I would like to add that in case a partner approaches us with a lead for a large project and we feel he does not have the required bandwidth to handle it we provide him an over-riding commission. However, if he is capable of handling the project we provide him all kinds of support. n
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MUMBAI October 10 - 12, 2012 // Bombay Exhibition Center
THOUGHT LEADERS UNVEIL THE FUTURE OF ENTERPRISE IT
Alpna J. Doshi
VS Parthasarathy
CIO, Reliance Communications
Jayantha Prabhu
Vijay Sethi
CTO, Essar Group
Group CIO, EVP – Finance and M & A Services, M&M Group
VP - IS and CIO, Hero MotoCorp
Rajesh Uppal
Umesh Jain CIO, Yes Bank
Executive Officer – IT & CIO, Maruti Suzuki India
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“INTEROP is a fantastic show. We participated here to basically showcase our solutions around computer, storage and networking. We got the right kind of audience here.”
Prashant Ghoshal, Director – I T Solutions and Services, Geometric Ltd
Satyen Vyas, Director - Medium Business, Dell India Pvt. Ltd.
“INTEROP presents a great opportunity to get as many solution providers in one place as possible and talk to them. We can see, touch and feel the technologies that can allow us to add more productivity to our business.”
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David Briskman, VP & CIO, Ranbaxy Laboratories
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“At INTEROP, we got a great customer response and came across fantastic technologies displayed by variety of exhibitors. This is a good investment for exhibitors & participants and Siemens has found it worth.”
V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, EVP – Finance and M & A Services, M&M Group
Rahul Kulkarni, Senior Manager – Marketing, Siemens Enterprise Communications
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special focus Cisco’s 10 big bets for 2012 At the recently concluded Cisco Partner Summit, the company disclosed the 10 pieces of its current strategy that definitely bear watching n CHAD BERNDTSON
C
isco recently concluded its Partner Summit at San Diego in April 2012 where it laid out 10 focus areas. The stepped-up emphasis on sharing Cisco’s technology and go-to-market roadmap is, of course, no accident—Cisco has just emerged from a year-long corporate restructuring that many partners believe made it is more nimble and definitely easier to do business with. A lot of that restructuring happened in its engineering corps, and the company used the Partner Summit to share details of what is to come, particularly as it relates to Cisco in security, software-defined networking and the cloud. Based on those Partner Summit discussions, and an interview with Padmasree Warrior, CTO, here is a look at some key areas of Cisco’s technology strategy that partners should be following.
Security ambitions As has been mentioned several times, Chris Young, SVP, Security Technologies Business Unit, Cisco, was a star attraction at the Partner Summit without ever taking the main stage. It is not hard to understand why. Young, who joined Cisco in November as its first-ever, SVP-level security boss, is taking over a Cisco area in which many observers feel the company is lacking. Some analysts have speculated that Cisco is hard at work on a nextgeneration firewall product to succeed its Adaptive Security Appliance line and enable it to better compete with Next Generation Firewall vendors like Check Point, Palo Alto and SonicWall. Still others think Cisco will acquire in this area—something John Chambers, CEO, himself hinted at in a CRN interview last year. Based on all the continued attention, it’s hard to imagine that Cisco does not have something cooking in security.
The UCS ecosystem The impressive growth of
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Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco
Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) is pushing the company to continue to strike while the UCS iron is still hot, and Warrior explained that the goal is to continue to broaden the company’s UCS community— focusing on more strategic vendor partnerships such as the models it has in place for the Vblock and FlexPod configurations, a lot more app development, and a broadened story about how UCS-led data center architectures are different and have stronger value than competing architectures. “We will work with partners to create that ecosystem,” Warrior said.
Cloud ambitions When asked about her proudest accomplishment over the past four years heading Cisco’s engineering, Warrior said that it was the growth of Cisco from a non-player in the emerging cloud computing trend to a leader. “I came in March 2008 and I started to put together our strategy for the cloud, looking at the pieces we had and what we could do,” she said. “We had not yet thought much about the role the network could play in the cloud, so what I am hugely proud of is the movement Cisco has made from having no name in the cloud to being a clear leader in the cloud.” Next up for Cisco—after launching the CloudVerse framework (cloud program for its partners) and adding a Master Cloud Builder specialization last year—is Cloud Connect, a way to optimize customers’ cloud environments by using Cloud Connectors. These are modules that attach to the Connect platform and allow partners to build custom applications by using Cisco software. More details on the strategy are expected later this month and in June at Cisco Live.
Work with ISVs Cisco’s overall software strategy comes up quite a bit, what with major competitors like HP making substantial acquisitions in the enterprise software space and so much of networking overlapping with
special focus software integration trends. Warrior made no bones about the fact that Cisco needs to go deeper and wider with the ISV community. Already the company has 44 ISVs developing for the UCS API, and that is something, she said, that it is keyed-in on. “We need much more—that is an area we can focus on much more,” she said.
“Connectivity, programmability and network intelligence will not get commoditized; the network will go through a reinvention, and we will be the company that reinvents it” we feel we need to watch out for, and Insiemi falls into that category.”
Big data focus Cisco is not thought of as a big data analytics vendor, but according to Warrior, that is absolutely an area where the company has a play and where solution providers will be able to make money. The company’s focus on big data is in two areas: networking intelligence for applications—such as searchable video—and helping service provider customers monetize what is happening in their networks based on data they can glean from customer usage. Partners can create their own analytics capability and plug that into Cisco platforms, Warrior noted, and they will also be able to resell and integrate Cisco’s own analytics for their customers. “Our model with partners all along will be to continue to be flexible with what they want to do,” Warrior said.
Approach to SDN Cisco’s role in the expanding software-defined networking (SDN) universe has come up a lot, and will continue to be a hot button. But the idea that SDN technology will further commoditize Cisco switches and routers is something Warrior does not agree with. “I think the reverse is true,” she said. “When we talk more about connectivity, programmability and network intelligence, that is a great thing for us. It will not get commoditized; there will be a lot more value generated from it. The network will go through a reinvention and we will be the company that reinvents it.”
The role of Insiemi During the Partner Summit, Cisco finally came clean on Insiemi, the SDN startup and potential Cisco ‘spin-in’ play. It confirmed that it has invested $100 million in Insiemi so far, with the right to acquire the company for potentially $750 million more on top of that. Insiemi, said Warrior, is focused on how to enable programmability and visibility into physical and virtual network resources. “It is part of our build/buy/partner strategy. If you look at emerging opportunities, especially those that do not really have any revenue today, we are striving to drive innovation, to drive opportunity for partners,” Warrior said. “There are some emerging disruptions
“What I am hugely proud of is the movement Cisco has made from having no name in the cloud to being a clear leader in the cloud”
Network monitoring expansion In the midst of bigger, splashier, sexier technology priorities, Cisco has done a lot in recent months to expand its network monitoring strategy, including with two recent acquisitions, ClearAccess in March and Truviso just this month, which will help it expand its network monitoring platform, Prime. No question those moves are part-and-parcel of Cisco’s analytics and big data priorities, too— using software to understand the network at a more granular level and then monetize that data as network intelligence. However, Cisco did not specify how big a business this would be for the company going forward.
Collaboration edge If there has been any shift in Cisco’s major collaboration strategy in the past year, it is that it now regards Microsoft as a major UC and collaboration competitor and is making aggressive moves to counteract the surge in customer Lync adoption. Adding Presence and IM capabilities, and making Jabber clients available at no additional licensing cost to customers is Cisco’s strategy. Partners have applauded the move as one that will make Jabber adoption easier for customers by untangling licensing fees and easing their capex burden for acquiring Cisco collaboration tools. Rest assured that as Microsoft firms up its strategy for leveraging Skype in various platforms, including Lync, Cisco will be ready with another return-fire move.
Payoff of engineering changes Warrior highlighted three ways that restructuring the company’s engineering units last year will pay off. Focusing on five core priorities instead of 30 to 50 adjacencies, she said, has created clear accountability in its five major business lines: data center, enterprise networking, service provider networking, security and video/collaboration. “The leaders of those lines control a lot of the R&D and revenue, and are empowered to make their own adjustments and investments,” she explained. “They do not have to come to me, and say, ‘hey, we need 10 engineers to work on this.’ Accountability and speed are much improved.” Thirdly, Cisco has created five strategic technology groups to support its five major engineering line-ofbusiness groups. Warrior described those groups as “horizontal,” supporting the engineering groups and eliminating duplicated efforts. n
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cover story
With cutting-edge features, new form factors and better manageability, modern-day servers are now managing infrastructure elements like networking and storage, and creating opportunities for partners in the process n RAMDAS S
C
omputer servers have been witnessing the biggest transformation since the days when mini computers displaced mainframes from the enterprise market in the late eighties. With cloud computing, virtualization and software-asa-service applications triggering a revolution in the IT landscape, there have been some exciting technological advancements in the server market. In terms of size, the server market has seen modest growth rates in absolute unit numbers over the past few quarters, globally as well as in India. According to IDC, for 2011, worldwide server revenue increased 5.8 percent to $52.3 billion as compared to 2010, while worldwide unit shipments increased 4.2 percent to 8.3 million units. In India the numbers have been fairly stagnant over the past few quarters, with the market in 2011 estimated to be around 143,000 units by IDC India. This means there has been only marginal growth since 2008 when the server market totaled 135,000 units. According to IDC, IBM, HP, Dell and Oracle are the top four players in the market. These companies cumulatively held 90.6 percent of the total market in Q42011. IBM led the year with a 32.8 percent factory revenue share and was followed by HP with 28.1 percent. However, HP and
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Dell were the leaders in terms of unit shipments. “Overall, the server market has declined slightly last year as a result of plummeting shipments in the entry-level x86 models. There were further obstacles in Q42011 such as the high dollar conversion rates and the challenges with hard disk availability and pricing,” says Madhan Dhandayutham, Research Manager, IDC. “The non-x86 market also witnessed sharp de-growth in revenue during 2011, with Oracle and HP showing dropping numbers and with only IBM increasing factory revenue.” Despite the overall slackening in the server market, from a technology perspective there are few product portfolios which are witnessing more dynamism. Here we take a look at some of the top trends that are expected to drive the server market over the next couple of years.
Everything virtualized Analysts and industry leaders say that if there is one technology that is driving the server market it has to be virtualization. “Virtualization has completely changed the way we look at servers and server-side applications,” declares Santosh D’souza, VP, Data Center, Cisco, India & Saarc.
cover story “Today you can buy a P series server for as low as `5 lakh. We have customers with less than 100 users who are investing in Power”
“If you compare a 6 core processor which supports 6 threads to a 6 core processor that supports 12 threads, the latter will perform 20-30 percent better”
Vishwanath Ramaswamy
Santosh D’souza
VP, Power Systems, STG, IBM India
VP, Data Center, Cisco India & Saarc
“No more are users looking at just physical machines. They are doing all the calculations in terms of VM, whether it is the licensing or capacity planning.” This has resulted in the market heavily skewing toward dual socket and recently even more toward quad socket servers. “I believe that over the last two or three quarters the number of single socket servers has seen a dip in volumes in the enterprise segment. Dual socket machines are the most preferred for running most virtualized environments,” says Pallab Talukdar, CEO, Fujitsu India. The demand for virtualization has also meant that server partners have to develop skill-sets on VM platforms, and this is forcing virtualization vendors such as VMware, Citrix and Microsoft to develop channel engagement programs for partners of Dell, HP and IBM. Remarks Ganesan Arumugam, Director, Partner Sales, VMware India, “We have seen that it is necessary for us to extend our channel engagement to the partner ecosystems of our server partners. This is a win-win for everyone involved.” Virtualization has also introduced new unified computing models (such as Cisco’s Unified Fabric and HP’s Converged Infrastructure) focused on data centers. These essentially pre-integrate traditionally separate elements such as networking, compute and storage, and are intended to provide an optimized platform for server virtualization. “The biggest transformation that is happening in the server-side computing market is that server technologies are defining the way storage and networking are also designed,” observes Vikram K, Director, ESSN, HP. Meanwhile, IBM has announced its first fullyconverged systems called PureSystems; they are based on a new chassis and system architecture that was known as ‘Project Troy’ inside Big Blue and referred to as the ‘Flex Platform.’ This is being touted as IBM’s clear answer to HP’s Converged Infrastructure and Cisco’s UCS platform.
The RISC-Unix story India was traditionally known as a RISC-Unix market in the nineties and most of the first decade of the new millennium. Having missed the mainframe era, Indian enterprises had embraced RISC-based Unix platforms. However, with x86 platforms scaling beyond the limits set by Moore’s Law, and with the availability of enterprise software for the x86 architecture, the demand for RISCUnix platforms has been on the decline. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, and the subsequent fall-out between HP and Oracle (which resulted in
Oracle withdrawing support for Itanium-based HP Unix platforms), has further damaged the credibility of the RISC-Unix platform. “To a large extent we believe the RISC-Unix era is over,” comments Talukdar. “There is really only one vendor (IBM) that seems to be stable, and customers do not want to bet on a single vendor. Today, with the scalability, performance and lower cost of ownership that standard x86 platforms offer, there are few terrains where proprietary Unix makes sense.” IBM, HP and Oracle differ. Argues Kapil Sood, VP, Systems Business, Oracle India, “After acquiring Sun’s hardware Oracle has invested considerably in developing the Solaris platform and the Sparc processor architecture. We have a road-map that extends for the next five years. For enterprises which run Oracle databases, our optimized Oracle hardware and software often perform 10 times better than x86 or other competing platforms. With the latest T4 platform we are offering a value proposition that is impossible for enterprises to ignore.” Vishwanath Ramaswamy, VP, Power Systems, STG, IBM India adds, “There are so many advantages which our IBM Power series offers that customers across several verticals continue buying it, and we are even seeing growth in the days ahead. For example, the Aix has virtualization in-built through the PowerVMs. The kind of performance that a single quad core Power processor along with the Aix platform provides is often better than that of a 12 core processor running Linux or Windows.” The biggest edge which RISC-Unix vendors have is enterprise platform support. They have constantly reminded the market that best-of-breed enterprise software (such as Oracle, SAP and DB2) scale better on RISC-Unix than on x86-Windows/Linux. “We have also significantly brought down the entry price of our platform,” says Ramaswamy. “Today you can buy a P series server for as low as `5 lakh. We have customers with less than 100 users who are investing in Power.”
New modular server designs Some of the biggest innovations in server technology are happening in the modular designs that server vendors are shipping. While server density doubled in a typical rack when blades were introduced a few years ago, the focus now is to deliver twice or even four times the server density by looking at designs with half- or quartersized blades. “There are primarily two approaches,” explains Sandeep Lodha, VP, Sales & Marketing, Delhi-based
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cover story Opportunities in the server MARKET
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rowing your server business in a market that is likely to have limited growth rates is a challenge. Here are some tips for channels interested in the server business. According to vendors, partners keen to move to the server-side computing practice need to start investing in skill-sets and certifications around technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and data centers. With Cisco, IBM and HP enhancing the certifications for their unified fabric solutions, partners must focus on certifications for these platforms depending on their alliances. Unix is likely to be around for a longer time while its footprint would be largely limited to a subset of cases. It makes a lot of sense for channels to strike alliances at least from an opportunity perspective. Vendors estimate that replacing servers which are even two generations (approximately three years) old with brand new servers can result in major savings for the customer. The opportunity for technology refresh is huge. It is imperative that partners stay well-informed about the performance matrixes and power savings of newer platforms. The margins of entry-level servers are disappearing. Migrating customers to a cloud-based platform may result in annuity-based revenue and more margins than selling entry-level servers. Server manageability is one of the best USPs to sell new servers in a slow market. The new features provide customers with insights into the performance of the servers and also provide details about the health of the servers and about their power and cooling needs. It is estimated that the new features cut the TCO by half, thus offering another peg to sell the idea of technology refresh. The biggest performance bottlenecks are around the disk sub-systems. This is where SSD drives are expected to play a bigger role in enhancing performance by delivering more than 80,000 IOPS per drive. It’s important for channels to take advantage of SSD technologies and recommend them for servers which run IO-intensive apps such as databases and analytics. General Purpose GPU is one of the fastest-growing areas in server computing. Vendors are searching for partners who have the ability to go after this market. n
NetWeb Technologies which manufactures servers based on Supermicro. “One is to reduce the size of a blade or in some cases even a rack. The other is to change the position in which the blades are laid out in a chassis. We have introduced designs where you can pre-populate up to eight dual socket Intel 5600 blade servers in a 3U chassis by placing them in a chassis vertically instead of horizontally.” Meanwhile, Dell has introduced a number of models as part of the 12th generation of its PowerEdge servers. “We have focused a lot on reducing footprints as well as offering a better performance/watt ratio with our new PowerEdge C series. With our shared infrastructure blade server concept, we can deliver half-, and in next
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few months, quarter-sized blades,” says Sitaram Venkat, Director, Enterprise Solutions, Dell India. According to D’souza of Cisco, “Today’s server environments are typically not compute-constrained but memory-constrained with the advent of multi-core processors. Cisco’s Extended Memory Technology uses custom ASICS that allow Cisco UCS models to provide far more memory per socket than other conventional x86 platforms.” He says that the biggest innovations from Cisco have been on the blade chassis. “Cisco UCS allows the extension of the external network fabric directly into the blade servers and virtual machines, negating the legacy blade chassis’ need for embedded storage and network switches; this further simplifies management.” HP and IBM are not far behind in increasing server density within the chassis. For example, configurations of IBM PureSystems expected to ship by the end of May in India are expected to have options to have up to 14 dual socket or quad socket compute nodes in a 10 U chassis, leaving enough space to add a storage SAN box. The message is clear: with newer form factors with smaller footprints and lower power consumption, today’s servers can deliver more than the previous generation.
Cores vs threads Intel and its arch-rival AMD have been releasing new generations of their Xeon and Opteron classes of servers every year over the past three years. These processors have been steadily making improvements in the number of cores fitted into the silicon die; they have been introducing new instructions to handle virtualization better, they support faster system buses, and they host more cache memory in the die. “The Intel Xeon E5-2600 family which we have introduced recently delivers 80 percent better performance compared to our previous generation (the Intel Xeon 5600 series),” says R Ravichandran, Business Development Director, APAC, Intel. Similarly, last year AMD introduced the Opteron 6200 series which scales up to 16 cores. So far Intel has scaled only up to 10 cores with its Xeon platform, and its commercial models for single and dual socket processors presently go up to eight cores. However, Intel has reintroduced the hyper threading technology (introduced in its processors at the turn of the century) to provide multiple threads per core. AMD followed the idea with some of its models in the AMD Opteron 6200 series. Vendors point out that the move works very well in the enterprise-class market where applications are not floating-point intensive. “If you were to compare a six core processor which supports six threads to a six core processor that supports 12 threads, the latter will perform around 20-30 percent better,” says D’souza. “Since there are minimal overheads to achieve this design, it makes a lot of sense for enterprise servers to be shipped with these processors.” Nevertheless, server vendors point out that when it comes to R&D applications physical cores matter more. “In the case of floating-point applications, physical cores
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cover story “Today, entry-level servers are available for less than `35,000. Yet we feel customers would rather pay a few thousand extra to be assured of future scalability”
“HP ProLiant G8 automatically analyzes its own health across 1,600 data points. Clients can resolve unplanned downtime issues up to 66 percent faster”
Sitaram Venkat
Vikram K
Director, Enterprise Solutions, Dell India
make a significant difference in performance with more cores delivering better, hence it is recommended that partners push models with real cores in such cases,” advises Venkat of Dell. Vendors are also reported to be promoting the AMD Opteron processors for quad socket platforms, while Intel Xeon processors are preferred for single and dual socket platforms. But Venkat believes, “It is more about customer demand and not quite about vendor positioning. The Intel Xeon E7 and Xeon 7000 series, which are positioned for quad sockets and beyond, are often priced more than double the comparable Xeon 5600 or E5 processors (which are positioned for dual sockets). In the case of AMD, the same Opteron 6100/6200 processors are used in dual or quad sockets, which at the end of the day result in major cost savings from a bill of materials point of view.”
Microservers an unfulfilled promise Two years ago HP had launched an entry-level server based on an AMD Athlon processor and priced at around `26,000 inclusive of Microsoft Windows Small Business Server essentials. Despite much fanfare and expectations, the product did not click with either the partners or SMB customers. Partners were not interested in pushing a product that offered on an average `1,000 as margin. “We do not want customers to buy entry-level servers because they outgrow them fast, and this makes us potentially liable for selling something that may be obsoleted quickly,” opines Rajeev Mehta, MD, Zest Systems, Delhi. Says Pradeep Khemani, Country Manager, Channel & SMB Sales, ESSN, HP, while confirming the company’s decision to ease out of the market, “It is an interesting market with thousands of SMBs needing a server—but not a powerful server. We will announce a new strategy later to address the opportunity.” HP’s competition agrees that the opportunity is huge, but shies away from committing a product that could address the space. “Today, entry-level servers based on Xeon processors are available for less than `35,000, and they are truly server-class and quite scalable too. Yet we feel customers would rather pay a few thousand extra to be completely assured of a future scalability option,” says Venkat. While Fujitsu does have a microserver model in its portfolio, the company management is not enthusiastic about pushing it aggressively in India. “We feel that many SMBs would rather look at cloud-based solutions for running their business,” says Talukdar.
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Director, ESSN, HP
New interconnect technologies A number of technologies are taking center-stage in server motherboards. Of these, 10G replacing 1G is likely to happen over the next six quarters. Both HP and Dell have announced several models in the Proliant G8 and PowerEdge 12th Generation servers that ship with the 10G standard onboard. “We are also offering on all models the choice to upgrade to 10G as a standard option,” informs Venkat. Infiniband is another technology that is being talked about, yet no one expects it to be a standard for commercial servers. However, the unified fabric chassis from HP, Cisco and IBM has Infiniband right on the chassis. According to Talukdar, “Infiniband will continue to be the preferred technology for most customers in the higher performance computing space, but it is still very far away from being a part of commodity server hardware.” Since the launch of the Xeon processor E52600 product family, server partners have also been deploying Intel Integrated I/O (Intel IIO) and Intel Data Direct I/O (Intel DDIO) on their new-generation server motherboards. Intel DDIO allows Intel Ethernet controllers and adapters to route I/O traffic directly to the processor cache, thus reducing trips to the system memory and also reducing power consumption and I/O latency. The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family are also the first server processors to integrate the I/O controller supporting PCI Express 3.0 directly into the microprocessor. This integration is estimated to reduce latency up to 30 percent compared to previous models, and with PCI Express 3.0 can up to triple the movement of data in and out of the processor.
Server manageability The latest generation of servers ships with a number of manageability features that further improve the TCO. This has become one of the biggest selling points for partners pitching for a technology refresh. With the launch of the E5-2600 processors, Intel has introduced support for tools (such as Intel Node Manager and Intel Data Center Manager) to monitor and control power usage. These tools provide real-time power and thermal data to system management consoles. Server vendors have already created a number of features on these platforms in the current generation of servers. For example, HP, through its Project Voyager, has created a patented new systems architecture called HP ProActive Insight architecture. Says Vikram, “Our HP ProLiant G8 is the only server which automatically
cover story “We are seeing the idea of using servers with low-power processors that give data center performance while consuming power comparable to a mobile device”
“Just like other products, SSD drives come in consumer and enterprise flavors, so it is important to choose the right drive”
Manoj Nayee
Pallab Talukdar
Managing Director, Boston India
CEO, Fujitsu India
analyzes its own health across 1,600 data points. Through self-monitoring, self-diagnosing and proactive support, clients can resolve unplanned downtime issues up to 66 percent faster.” Other features that vendors have focused on are thermal data management of the server as well as the server chassis. “We have introduced a new feature, HP 3D sensors, along with our G8 servers. These help you to pinpoint over-utilized servers based on real-time location, power, workload and temperature data,” informs Vikram. According to D’souza, “Using an innovative capability called Service Profiles, Cisco UCS separates the personality, configuration and connectivity of compute, network and storage resources from the physical hardware itself, thus allowing the assignation and re-assignation of logical identities to different hardware components.” Performance and cost savings claimed by vendors for the new manageability features range from 50 percent to over 200 percent.
GPU servers General Purpose Graphic Processor Computing (GPGPU) is one of the fastest-growing segments in high performance computing. With Nvidia and AMD releasing new GPU platforms that have 600+ processor cores, and also introducing new programming paradigms such as CUDA and OpenCL, GPU servers have become a reality. “There is increased demand for hybrid GPU and CPU computing which enables users to create platforms running trillions of calculations per second. We have a number of models of GPU servers that help customers across a wide range of domains to deliver performance superior to that of traditional servers,” says Manoj Nayee, Managing Director, Boston India. Mainstream vendors have caught on. For example, Dell has introduced models with GPU card options. Says Venkat, “We even have a model which supports, through an external interface, around 20 GPU cards. We expect the GPU server market to grow because the number of applications that support GPGPU is growing tremendously.”
Low-power servers With power and cooling accounting for up to 50 percent of the cost of running a data center, there is a lot of interest in low-power servers and server processors. Big data is also seen to be an opportunity where large computing needs are expected to create a demand for solutions that offer lower power costs. Also growing is the single socket 1U rack market for
dedicated Web hosting out of data centers or private clouds. To address this market, Intel had launched the Xeon E3 series with select models having a power rating of 35W (similar to those seen in mainstream laptops). AMD has also announced models under the Opteron 3200 series to address this space. “The AMD Opteron 3200 Series processors are designed to deliver the best economics for the hosting community, a part of the business world that is often neglected by traditional offerings,” says John Fruehe, Director, Product Marketing, Server, Embedded & FireStream Products, AMD. “Hosters have a very specific set of needs that includes quick ROI and power efficiency.” Meanwhile, in a bid to create low power solutions, Supermicro has introduced server models featuring Atom processors. Observes Nayee of Boston, “We are also beginning to see the idea of using servers created with low-power processors such as Calxeda ARM-based processors—the very same used in most tablets and smartphones today— giving data center performance while consuming power comparable to a mobile device.”
SSDs for servers Server storage has traditionally been on enterprise SCSI technologies. Over the past few years the standard has been Serial SCSI (SAS). However, with the advent of SSD, and the fact that SSD prices have been tumbling over the past few quarters, SSD has become a choice as the disk drive for servers. The biggest advantage of the SSD is the speed it provides while requiring little power to run. While a SATA disk drive provides typically 120 IOPS, and a 15,000 RPM SAD drive provides about 270 IOPS, best-ofbreed SSDs deliver around 84,000 IOPS. Then there are PCI card-based SSD solutions (such as Fusion IO) which exceed 150,000 IOPS. These are very expensive—almost 25 times the price of an SAS drive— yet vendors like Lodha say that Indian customers are buying these solutions if they seek better performance. “In the last quarter we believe almost 800 servers were shipped with SSD by Dell India,” says Venkat. “I think the market figures would be 3,000-4,000 servers with SSD as the primary storage.” This would translate to roughly 10 percent of the market. Vendors are also quick to point out that not all SSDs are server-ready. “Just like other products, SSD drives come in consumer and enterprise flavors, so it is important to choose the right drive,” cautions Talukdar. n
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market focus from AV to total security According to Gartner, the security software market in India was pegged at `1,045 crore in 2011 and is set to grow to `1,530 crore by 2014. Out of this, the consumer (1-3 users) AV market is estimated to be worth close to `500 crore n ABHIJEET MUKHERJEE
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ncreasing Web threats are driving the consumer antivirus (AV) market. According to McAfee, globally, 40,000-60,000 new malwares are hitting consumers everyday—and the number is rising daily. “The complexity of threats has undergone a major change over the last few years. Cyber criminals today write malware mostly for financial gain, so the criticality of protecting your network is vital,” remarks Ben Wark, Regional Sales Manager, South East Asia & India, McAfee. With Indians spending more time on the Internet, the exposure to threats has increased. Says David Hall, Regional Product Marketing Manager, Consumer, Symantec, “In a survey we conducted in 2012 in India, we found that people here spent 58 hours per week online.” The increased penetration of the Internet in the hinterland is driving the demand for consumer AV in Class-B and -C cities. According to IAMAI, with 120 million users, India has the third largest Internet user base in the world; this number is expected to reach 350 million by 2015. Increasing consumer awareness over the last 2-3 years is another reason for AV growth. Consumers are realizing the importance of data protection, both personal and professional. “With the increase in BYOD acceptance by corporates, many consumers need to protect their enterprise data on their personal PCs,” points out Jagannath Patnaik, Director, Channel Sales, South Asia, Kaspersky Lab. Online transactions have also increased over the years. According to a recent RBI report, from April 2011 to February 2012, online transactions using only debit cards at POS were worth `480 billion. Consumers are now comfortable booking movie tickets, travel tickets and making online purchases. This has also increased the threats. Online scams such as drive-by-downloads (links directing users to malicious Websites), phishing and spamming are commonly being used with sophistication and the intention to target specific segments of users. AV vendors are now busy writing codes to fight the menace.
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Declining prices At the same time, the drop in AV prices is also prompting consumers to buy AV software. “AV prices have fallen by as much as 50 percent in the home segment over the last two years,” notes Wark. “This has encouraged more people to buy licensed versions rather that use a pirated copy.” Most of the products available are 1-3 user licenses, and are on the average priced at `200-1,200 for a single user license for a year. Some even have five-user licenses.
Comprehensive security The AV market has moved to total protection which provides additional features such as parental control, firewall, anti-spyware and anti-phishing. “Viruses are just a small subset of the malware that includes worms, trojans, rootkits and botnets. Additional protection is needed against adware, spyware, spam, Web-based risks and other malicious activities. Issues related to child abuse on the Internet, privacy and reputation loss for adults are also raising concerns,” Wark says. Vendors are now more focused on selling total security products compared to AV alone. “AV does the basic job of protecting the computing device, but with the increasing threats consumers need a total protection suite that will not only protect from threats via external storage devices but also from the Internet and unauthorized logins,” explains Pankaj Jain, Director, Eset India (ESS Distribution).
Mobility The proliferation of mobile devices is pushing AV growth because securing smartphones and tablets is a big concern. While (according to IDC) the tablet market is expected to grow to 265,000 units this year from around 160,000 tablets in 2011, the smartphone market is expected to reach 20 million units. This trend is further strengthened by the use of mobile devices for online transactions such as utility
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The second edition of CRN Virtual Expo 2012 is all set to create history, with more than 1,000 channel partners from 150+ cities expected to attend the two live days, making it the biggest ever virtual event in India. THE HIGHLIGHTS
15 Partner Associations supporting the Expo 1,500 unique partner registrations for the show already Powerful online conference program
Financial Analysis & Benchmarking: Improving Your Company’s Financial Performance
Workplace Transformation: Opportunities for Partners
Lokesh Jain Certified Financial Planner & Associate Trainer, Brianna
Uttam Majumdar President, Locuz Enterprise Solutions
Post Budget: Software Taxation in India
The Global Economy: Threats & Opportunities for IT Channel
Biren Shah Chairman, ISODA
Sanjiv Bhavnani Founder, Mentorpreneur Advisors
Understanding the Opportunities within the Indian SMB Landscape
Managing Profitable IT Partner Business in the New Economy
Neha Jalan Goenka Senior Associate, AMI-Partners
S Sriram CEO, iValue Infosolutions
Platinum Partners
Gold Partners
Exhibit Partner
Knowledge Partners
p a r t n e r s
Association Partners
Association for Information Technology
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NorthWest Computer Traders Welfare Association
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market focus “We believe that very soon Indian consumers will take up managed AV services and will depend on partners who can make a good profit from the business”
“Keeping consumers informed is a huge task. Retaining your distribution network and keeping partner motivation high is another challenge”
Sunil Kripalani
Jayont Sharma, Chairman & CEO, Milestone Interactive Group (AVG)
VP, Global Sales & Marketing, eScan
bill payments, checking bank statements and other money transactions. “Mobile devices should be protected as they contain personal data and are vulnerable to malicious threats. Consumers often download infected applications while loading applications from the mobile apps stores,” says Govind Marda, CEO, RS Computers, the ND for Bit Defender in India. Mobile thefts are also a regular occurrence. AV companies are offering specific mobile solutions that include remote wiping of data, parental lock and antitheft functions.
Managed services According to vendors, managed services are going to be big in the next two years. “The industry is gradually moving toward managed AV even in the home segment. This will not only make the product cheaper but also increase penetration as more people can afford the services,” states Sunil Kripalani, VP, Global Sales & Marketing, eScan. Agrees Amit Nath, Country Manager, Trend Micro India & Saarc, “A leading mobile service provider is currently selling AV to its existing customers at `25 per month. Something similar can be done by partners as well. Managed services will bring affordability and convenience.”
Opportunities Mobile security presents a good opportunity in India because the country has a huge mobile base of close to 900 million subscribers, out of whom 30 percent are smartphone users—and the number is growing. “We are currently selling 3,000 licenses per month, but with more aggressive marketing and channel enablement we will scale it up to 25,000 licenses per month,” says Abhijit Jorvekar, VP, Sales & Marketing, Quick Heal. Managed services will also see a huge opportunity in the home segment. “We believe that very soon Indian consumers will take up managed AV services and will depend on partners who can make a good profit from the business,” says Kripalani. To leverage growing opportunities in the segment, vendors, both domestic and multinationals, including Quick Heal, Net Protector, K7, Norton, eScan, Eset, AVG, McAfee and Kaspersky, are penning aggressive strategies which are mainly partner-led. eScan enables partners to initiate activities such as security awareness campaigns, road-shows and forums.
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“Participating in trade-shows, IT expos, etc will help partners to enhance their business,” adds Kripalani. AVG sees tremendous opportunities in tier-2 and -3 markets, and is highly focused on expanding the partner base in these locations.
Challenges Though the prices have reduced, partners still feel that there is a lot of disparity in terms of pricing, and that consumers go for the product with the lowest price. “We feel there has been a price war among vendors as most products are priced differently. For consumers, price is a deciding factor, and we find it hard to sell higher-priced products. We make profits in lowpriced products on volume sales,” says Sunil Kumar, Proprietor, Life Computers, a Varanasi-based multibrand retailer. Vendors however feel that products are priced high because they invest in R&D and marketing activities, and ensure that the user needs minimal post-sales support. “I do not think there is any price war because different vendors have products targeted at different audiences. Most of the products available in the lowprice segment require post-sales support, while good products ensure that there is minimal support needed,” says Jain. In addition, vendors feel that the government’s policy of double taxation is a big challenge. Says Jain, “Excise duties have also increased, and have added to our costs, and passing those costs to the consumers would mean shrinking sales for partners.” The lack of technical know-how on the part of consumers is another challenge. “Though there has been an increase in consumer awareness in terms of the benefits of using AV and the need for data security, they still need to know what comprises a good AV,” remarks Marda. India is a vast market with immense competition. “Keeping the consumer informed about your product is a huge task. Similarly, retaining your distribution network and keeping the partner motivation high is another challenge,” says Jayont Sharma, Chairman & CEO, Milestone Interactive Group (AVG).
Conclusion Despite consumer awareness, there is a huge untapped market in the Internet user base which will help partners grow. Partners need to develop innovative ways to tap this potential through bundling schemes, enhanced online stores or managed services. n
Role model A partnership that is going places Mihir Chahwala and Moin Shaikh, Promoters, Innovative Telecom & Software, look back at the highs of their long journey together n Amit singh
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nnovative Telecom & Software, which started in 1988 as a small PC dealer in Surat, has transformed itself into a `112 crore organization with branches in Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, New Delhi, Vapi, Bharuch, Jamnagar and Vadodara. Mihir Chahwala and Moin Shaikh, Promoters, Innovative, credit the growth to their single-vendor focus strategy. “We have maintained vendor loyalty. We do not want to offer the same solution from multiple vendors and confuse customers. Customers always appreciate a clear-cut strategy that addresses their pain-points,” says Chahwala.
The journey Chahwala started Innovative with an investment of `20,000 borrowed from his father, Bansidhar Chahwala, a tea merchant. In the first year the company focused on diamond and textile companies in Surat, and clocked revenue of `36 lakh through PC sales and services. Shaikh, who had a diploma in electronics from PSGVP Mandal’s College of Engineering, joined the business in 1991. “Moin worked as an electronics engineer in Himson Textile Engineering. We met during a client meeting. Convinced that he was the man with the right set of sales skills, I offered him a partnership,” Chahwala informs. In two years the company acquired customers such as Essar Steel, Kribhco, ONGC, Surat Electricity Company, the Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology and Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers. “Most of these organizations started doing business in Gujarat, and were looking for suppliers for their IT requirements. Our experience helped us to bag their projects,” Shaikh says. A big boost came in 1994 when Innovative partnered with US-based Digital Equipment (DE). The partnership enabled Innovative’s entry into systems integration and enterprise solutions. Shaikh says, “Customers were demanding end-to-end solutions. We realized that we would have to move beyond box pushing into solution selling.” In 1995 Innovative bagged a project worth `1 crore to install 200 PCs, 10 servers and networking at Essar Steel. “Besides, we executed several projects for SMBs with an average requirement of 4-5 PCs and a server. This enabled us to clock revenue of `4 crore in 1995,” says Chahwala. The company deployed a SAP infrastructure project
“We have maintained vendor loyalty. We do not want to offer the same solution from multiple vendors and confuse customers. Customers always appreciate a clear-cut strategy that addresses their pain-points”
Moin Shaikh and Mihir Chahwala
for server, storage and campus-wide fiber optic networking worth `3 crore for Hindustan Inks & Resins in 1997. In 1998, after Compaq acquired DE, Innovative dissolved its partnership with the company. “They were focused on retail and we had graduated to enterprise solutions. Also, they discontinued a lot of DE products which left many customers dissatisfied. We then signed on with IBM as a new principal in 1999,” Shaikh explains. The same year, the company executed a project worth `2 crore for the Gujarat Election Commission entailing a server and PC network across its 26 centers, and connecting them with the headquarters in Gandhinagar. In 2000 Innovative executed a SAP infrastructure project valued at `1.5 crore for the Surat-based Colourtex. The company diversified in 2003 by expanding into software licensing through a partnership with Microsoft. In 2007 it started implementing Microsoft solutions such Exchange server and SQL server. Chahwala explains, “The Microsoft partnership enabled us to complete our portfolio beyond hardware.” In 2009 the company executed a project involving software solutions from Microsoft for 100 users at Gujarat Enviro Protection & Infrastructure.
Current business Innovative grew its topline by 83 percent to `110 crore in FY2010-11 compared to `60 crore in FY2009-10. However, in FY2011-12 the company saw growth of only 1.8 percent with revenue of `112 crore. The major reason for the flat growth in the last fiscal? “Several large deals were postponed due to adverse market conditions,” says Chahwala. The key growth drivers in FY2010-11 were geographical expansion into Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru which helped the company to acquire
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role model
2011
2010
2009
2003
1999
1994
1988
Award for Best SI for West India in new customers. In new lines of MILESTONES 2011. It also won the FITAG Leaderbusiness, while IP surveillance and ship Award for Best SI in the Gujarat integrated building management systems added to the topline, remote Chahwala started the company region for 2010, as well as the Lenovo Best Upcountry Business Partner infrastructure management services as a PC dealer in Surat Award for 2009. These awards were accounted for 25 percent of the in addition to several other awards growth in services revenue. Partnered with Digital won from various vendors. Innovative bagged SAP projects Equipment for enterprise worth `24 crore from various comsolutions panies of the Vedanta Group. These Future growth projects included setting up, consoliInnovative is aiming for revenue of Signed with IBM; executed a dating and virtualizing SAP systems `125 crore in FY2012-13. The com`2 crore project for GEC by using IBM Power 7 blade servers, pany plans to focus on services, mid-range fiber channel storage sysand will introduce cloud services Expanded into software tems and Tivoli backup solutions. on the SaaS model in 2012. For licensing with a Microsoft For an L&T group company, this it has built a 12,000 sq ft data Innovative upgraded the client center. partnership infrastructure (including Microsoft “We will offer applications such Executed software solutions Exchange 2010 and Office 2007) for as ERP and CRM on the cloud for 6,500 desktops. It also migrated other the textile and diamond verticals. A project for Gujarat Enviro applications and data across the beta version will be ready by MayProtection & Infrastructure customer’s 10 branches. end, and the cloud services will be Shaikh sees certain vendor moves launched in September 2012. We Embarked on geo-expansion, as major challenges for partners. will also offer hosting and DR seropened 6 branches “Vendors have become stringent vices,” details Shaikh. about processes such as documentaThe company wants to launch its Executed the largest project at tion, audits, marketing investments PaaS offering in 2013, and expects the Vedanta Group for `24 crore about `40 crore revenue to come and price clearances.” According to him, documentation and records for from services in the next two years. vendor audits have become a burden for partners, and the In addition, Innovative wants to focus more on conprocess consumes about 10-20 percent of their productive sulting, and the end-to-end infrastructure and services time. “Moreover, most of the large deals are vendor-led, business. It will also reduce its products-led business. which decreases the profit margins of partners from 8-10 The company is bidding for the Safe City project in percent to 2-4 percent. Overheads on transactions have five cities of Gujarat. The project entails implementation also increased to 6-7 percent.” of city-wide surveillance, emergency services, number plate recognition and traffic control solutions. “We’ve already bid for the project in Surat and will place bids for Best practices Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Gandhinagar,” reveals To remain profitable, Innovative focuses on operational Chahwala. efficiencies. “Strong finance management, strict payment terms with customers, and control over undue expenses help us to increase capital efficiency. To minimize internal On a personal note communication costs, we moved our mail messaging and Shaikh regards Anirudh Joshi, former VP, Redington Incollaboration to Microsoft BPOS and then to Office 365 in dia, as his role model. “He was an innovative person and 2011,” says Chahwala. provided good learning about the nitty-gritty of the partThe company also stresses employee trainings and cerner business as well as understanding of the customer’s tifications. Informs Shaikh, “Out of our 105 employees, 80 thought process.” percent are certified by various vendors. Of these, about Chahwala considers his father as his role model and 12 employees are super-specialists with certifications from follows his motto of honesty in business. He likes to VMware, Cisco, Symantec and Verint.” spend his free time reading books, especially thrillers like The company won the CRN Award for Best Enterprise Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone by Alistair VAR, Emerging Market, East, and IBM’s Game Changer MacLean. By contrast, Shaikh loves to swim, gossip with friends, and hit the gym. Both take annual breaks and travel together to distant “Anirudh Joshi was an innovative person destinations for 10-15 days. “We have together explored and provided good learning about the various locations in 30-odd countries. However, we love to visit Goa and Kashmir the most,” they say. nitty-gritty of the partner business While Chahwala drives a Skoda Laura and plans to as well as understanding of the buy a BMW this year, Shaikh has a Toyota Innova and wants to buy an Audi next year. n customer’s thought process” 34
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tech focus 10 free Cloud Storage Options The release of Google Drive with 5 GB of free storage capacity has set off a cascade of other free storage options. Here is a rundown of the action n Jack McCarthy
F
ree cloud storage is becoming commonplace as vendors rush to satisfy the growing demand for cloud access. Google Drive’s release last month with 5 GB of free storage capacity, and more for a fee, was one of the most publicized moves to let individuals, and increasingly businesses, put their data in the cloud. Not to be undone by Google, several other free storage vendors tweaked their offers as well.
Google Drive After months of anticipation, Google released its cloud storage service, called Google Drive, which increases storage capacity and integrates across Google’s cloud platform. Users will get 5 GB of free storage, and they can choose to upgrade to either 25 GB for $2.49 per month or 100 GB for $4.99 per month. Google storage services also offer much greater collaboration with Google Docs, which the company said is built into Google Drive. With its free storage and paid storage upgrades, as well as its collaboration features, Google Drive is immediately a major cloud storage player.
Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive To try to steal some of Google Drive’s cloud thunder last week, Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive announced
Microsoft has reduced free storage availability from 25 GB to 7 GB. Existing SkyDrive users however can continue to access 25 GB of storage
several improvements to its SkyDrive, including improved management features and greater integration with Windows. But the software giant actually reduced free storage availability from 25 GB to 7 GB. Existing SkyDrive users however can continue to access 25 GB of storage. Access to 20 GB of storage will cost users $10 per year, increasing to $25 per year for 50 GB of storage, with a maximum of 100 GB of storage priced at $50 per year.
Dropbox Dropbox has also been busy. In early April it increased its free storage limit from 2 GB to 5 GB along with a new digital image offering. Dropbox also introduced its camera upload service which allows users to share documents, photos and videos by sending a link to family, friends or colleagues. Dropbox has more than 50 million users in over 175 countries.
SugarSync Along with its offer of 5 GB of free cloud storage, SugarSync in March said it would allow Facebook and Twitter users access to 500 MB of free storage if they referred others to the service through social media sites. SugarSync refers to itself as a provider of personal cloud services, allowing users access to their data anytime, anywhere and from any device. In addition, users can sync files in any folder and access and share those files via the cloud. It offers file sharing and collaboration tools so users can share folders or files with a URL on social networks, in email, via instant message and more.
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tech focus iCloud Apple’s iCloud gives users 5 GB of free storage, with the option to expand access to 25 GB for $20 per year, capping the maximum storage availability at 50 GB. The iCloud service is integrated across Apple’s products, and users can share files across Apple’s desktop and mobile platform. Users’ paid music, books and photos are not counted against their free storage.
Box Box, a free cloud storage, file sharing and content management provider, offers a free 5 GB cloud drive that supports files from 25 MB up to 1 GB each. In late March Box introduced Box OneCloud, a service that lets users bring together and share mobile business applications from iPads. Box will integrate more than 30 productivity apps with the OneCloud platform, including four premier apps: QuickOffice, Adobe EchoSign, Nuance PaperPort Notes, and PDF Expert.
Amazon Cloud Drive With an Amazon account, users get access to 5 GB of free online storage on Amazon Cloud Drive to securely store music, videos, photos and documents online, with the ability to access them from any device. If more storage space is needed, paid plans are available for storage up to 1,000 GB. In February Amazon cut cloud storage prices by as much as 13.5 percent.
Ubuntu Canonical last week released an updated version of
Box will integrate more than 30 apps with the OneCloud platform, including QuickOffice, Adobe EchoSign, Nuance PaperPort Notes, and PDF Expert Ubuntu, upping to 5 GB from 2 GB the free cloud storage to users through its Ubuntu One platform. The upgrade also comes with file synchronization, management and collaboration features. Users can also buy music from the Ubuntu One Music Store at $3.99 per month, or $39.99 per year.
ADrive ADrive weighs in with 50 GB of free cloud storage, along with a paid service. The service gives users file sharing, universal service, folder/directory upload, search, remote file transfer, Zoho editor, and international character support for free as well.
OpenDrive The OpenDrive service provides 5 GB of free cloud storage for viewing and sharing documents and for collaboration. The company says users can access their data from anywhere from any connection. They can upload new files or manage existing files, manage folders, and create and edit documents with OpenDrive’s online office suite. n
Clear Credible Competent Consistent Compassionate Communicative CRN Creative CRN – the 8th C of Channel Marketing www.crn.in 36
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channel buzz ASIRT’s first Techday
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PBX products to explore the growing IP telephony opportunities in the enterprise segment. Limesh Parekh, Director, Enjay, promised to handhold ASIRT members through prospecting, pre-selling, selling and implementing Synapse, and also pledged to host an exclusive training session for the members. Brand guru Suneel Agarwal enlightened the audience with a presentation on brand building for small companies. He advised retailers and SIs to develop their own brands and not rely solely on bigger brands. The session concluded with some tips on brand building. These included: Develop your brand brick by brick; Change your profile from a reseller to an advisor to customers; Upgrade your toolkit with all the relevant information; Customize and personalize; Develop relationships; Combine and collaborate. ASIRT also announced the Chairman’s Club which is a congregation of industry stalwarts to support ASIRT in its goals to grow the industry and guide it the right way. The members include Ketan Patel, CEO, Creative Peripherals; Shirish Anjaria, Chairman & MD, Dynacons; Vinod Mulchandani, Director, Aarvee; Nityanand Shetty, MD, Essen Vision; Jiten Mehta, Director, Magnamious; Satish Bhatija, Director, MX Information; Paresh Shah, Partner, P H Teknow; Neel Shah, Director, Insight; Prakash Shah, Executive Director & CFO, Allied Digital; and Navin Pansari, Director, Rashi Peripherals. The association has decided to conduct its second Techday on 25 May 2012. n
he Association of Systems Integrators & Retailers in Technology (ASIRT) conducted its first Techday on 26 April 2012. Around 45 members participated in the 1-day event with the aim of enriching, ideating and learning about new technologies to build their businesses. The event also served as a networking platform for the attendees, especially partners and principals. Chetan Shah, Chairman, ASIRT, made a presentation on the US Unfair Competition Act (UCA). Under the UCA, product and service exporters have to prove that they use genuine software and hardware. The Act is applicable not only to the manufacturers but also to the entire value chain including component suppliers, exporters, and logistics and service providers. He thus explained how the Act prevents unfair competition and promotes global fair trade practices. Continuing the discussion, Kshitij Kotak, President, ASIRT informed that the Act protects US manufacturers and at the same time gives Indian exporters an advantage over competing nations where piracy is rampant. “With adequate support from the Indian government and manufacturers, the UCA Act can provide many opportunities, generate employment locally, and benefit the Indian economy,” he asserted. On its part, ASIRT will offer print advisories and supporting material to help its members spread the message to their end-customers. Partners such as Enjay IT Solutions used the platform to launch new products. The company launched the Synapse range of IP-
n Some members of the Chairman’s Club pose for a group photo
n The audience in splits during Suneel Agarwal’s presentation
n Brand guru Suneel Agarwal posing with Ravi Bhavnani and Sunil Doultani
n Kshitij Kotak and Chetan Shah with Himanshu Mehta of Online Management Service
n Atul Khatri, Director, Kaytek Computer Services, conducting the event with his usual panache
n Limesh Parekh, Director, Enjay, explaining the USP of Synapse IP-PBX
n Suneel Agarwal at his humorous best
To feature your company’s events in CRN, send write-ups with photographs to editor@ubmindia.com
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New Products iBall Slide i7218 tablet
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Fujitsu Lifebook SH531
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Ball has launched an upgraded version of its Slide tablet called iBall Slide i7218. The tablet weighs 450 grams and comes with dimensions of 210x120 mm. It has a seven inch capacitive TFT touch screen with 800x480 screen resolution, and comes with an ARM Cortex A8 1 GHz processor. It runs on the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. It comes with features such as full USB port, front-facing VGA camera and dual stereo speakers. The product comes with an 8 GB built-in storage capacity extendable up to 32 GB. In addition to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G support on dongle, it has an HDMI out port for easy connectivity to a TV or projector. The tablet comes pre-loaded with applications such as Facebook, Gmail and Skype. The product is priced at an MRP of `12,449, comes with a 2-year warranty, and is available with iBall authorized distributors.
ujitsu has launched the Lifebook SH531. The device comes with a 13.3 inch display, is powered by second-generation Intel Core i5 processors and Intel HD graphics, and runs on Windows 7 Professional. It is connected with Intel Centrino 6205 802.11 a/b/g/n WLAN, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet LAN and a 34 mm ExpressCard slot for external UMTS solutions. Other features include Blu-ray disc drive (optional), HDMI port, 1.3 megapixels Webcam and digital microphone for video telephony. The notebook weighs 1.9 kg. The product is priced at `45,000, comes with 2-year warranty, and is available with authorized Fujitsu distributors.
Epson WorkForce printers for SMBs
E LG semi short-throw projectors
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G Electronics has launched two high brightness semi short-throw projectors—BX503B and BX403B—which are powered by DLP technology. They have a filter-free design which reduces the need for support staff and thus saves money for corporates and schools. The projectors offer XGA native resolution of 1024x768 and a 2800:1 contrast ratio. The BX503B and BX403B come with 5000 ANSI lumens and 4000 ANSI lumens, and HDMI 1.3V deep color which eliminates on-screen color banding for smooth tonal transitions and enables increased color ratio. Both the projectors are LAN-enabled and have a lamp life of 2,000 hrs (normal mode) and 2,500 hrs (ECO mode). The projectors are ideal for home theater enthusiasts. They weigh 5.8 kg, and have a front exhaust and auto altitude detection. The products are priced at `1.65 lakh and `1.10 lakh respectively, come with a 2-year warranty, and are available with authorized distributors.
pson has launched its WorkForce brand of printers for SMBs. While the WF-7011 is a color A3 single-function printer, the WF-7511 is the first A3 inkjet all-in-one printer in the Epson portfolio. Designed as alternatives to color laser printers, the new models achieve a cost per page that is up to 50 percent lower compared to color laser printers. Epson has used its 143 DURABrite Ultra pigment inks which cost 75 paise per A4 page for monochrome printing and `2.10 per A4 page for color prints. In addition to a standard USB 2.0 interface, the printers have built-in Ethernet and Wi-Fi. The Epson WorkForce WF-7511 has a high-performance fax as well as memory card slots and USB ports which users can print image or PDF files from or scan items to. The printers can also print photos and documents from Apple iOS or Android devices through Apple Airprint or Epson iPrint, or from cloud services like Google cloud print apps and Evernote. The printers are priced at an MRP of `40,000 inclusive of taxes, come with a 2-year warranty, and are available with Epson authorized distributors.
The products featured here have not undergone any benchmarking or testing. The trailers contain information provided by vendors and distributors. To feature your company’s products in CRN, send write-ups with photos to editor@ubmindia.com
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shadow ram GET
Integrated we stand
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ndia’s top 15 tier-2 systems integrators (SIs) have come together to float a joint venture company to create economies of scale to pitch for large projects in the government and private sector. “The idea to form a JV germinated at the CRN Leadership Summit at Goa in 2009. The objective of the JV is to create a unified force of large SIs to generate economies of scale that will help us pitch for large projects where a single small entity would be ineligible to participate. The JV will also focus on providing managed services and rolling out cloud computing services,” said the chairman of a leading Bengaluru-based SI who is also one of the architects of the JV. He requested anonymity for now saying that once the modalities of the JV are over, a formal announcement will be made in June-July. Interestingly, the development is worrying for both vendors and distributors. Distributors are worried because the combined annual revenue of the 15 companies is over `2,000 crore. They are afraid that this JV would become a sourcing arm for all the 15 partner organizations and that this would lead to demands for greater discounts. n
Personal
“I want to remove corruption” Pranav Bhayani, Technical Support Manager, South Asia, Kaspersky Lab, has more than 14 years of experience in pre-sales, technical support management and partner enablement. Some of his past assignments were at Dimension Data India, MIEL e-Security and Stonesoft.
Pranav Bhayani
If not in the IT industry: I would have either served in the Indian defense services or run a travel company.
Biggest passion: Meticulously executing all my tasks. Behind the wheels: I like to drive my Mahindra Xylo. Gadgets I can’t live without: My mobile and DSLR camera. Weekends are for: Quality time with family. Favorite holiday destination: None, but I like to explore lesser-known lands. Hate the most: Corruption and lies. Favorite movie: 3 Idiots and Cast Away. Favorite star: All successful movie stars and eminent personalities. Role model: No one person in particular. Ultimate ambition: Live a life that benefits my family and society. Wildest thing I have ever done: Jumped on to the platform from a running train. Thing I most want to do in life: Play with my little daughter. If I became the PM: I would remove corruption from our society, encourage development and eliminate poverty. Celebrity I would like to spend a day with: Amitabh Bachchan, who has seen all the ups and downs of life. One person I would like to meet: Narayana Murthy, for his excellent entrepreneurial skills and philosophy. Deepest and darkest fear: Being away from my wife and daughter. n
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— CRN Network
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