Channelworld December 2014 Issue 9 by Sreekanth Sastry

FOCAL POINT: We bring to you five MBaaS systems summarized on their common grounds and key differences. PAGE 31

ChannelWorld STRATEGIC INSIGHTS FOR SOLUTION PROVIDERS | COVER PRICE Rs.50

Sachin Rao, MD and CEO, Archon Consulting Systems, pushes mid-tier enterprises to adopt the hybrid cloud.

Inside DECEMBER 2014 VOL. 8, ISSUE 9

News Analysis

HYBRID HYGIENE Companies are mixing the flexibility of a public cloud with the security of a private cloud. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how to do it well. >>PAGE 16

Major tech companies are flipping out, remaking themselves to be more like their competitors. PAGE 10

Grill: Christof Majer, President-Global Partner Sales, Qlik, on why Qlik Sense is a true market disruptor for new-age BI. PAGE 25

On Record: Gaurav Chawla, Director, Gemalto India, emphasizes on building a partner network to address the demand for authentication solutions in India. PAGE 12

Feature Get ready for radical changes in software purchasing as startups take over the market. PAGE 28

CHANNELWORLD.IN

www.cyberoam.com

Turning CIO into the next-generation catalyst Cyberoam NGFWs enable enterprise CIOs harness IT & network transformation with insights beyond security, helping them innovate, monetize and differentiate.

Key business benefits of Cyberoam NGFWs to CIOs: • Next-generation threat protection (also secures critical infrastructure / SCADA networks)

• Wirespeed gigabit performance • Visibility into BYOD and Virtual environments • Easy compliance • On-appliance Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Also available through

NICSI / NIC

Cyberoam Product Line : Network security appliances (Next-Generation Firewalls/UTMs)

Centralized Management (Hardware & Virtual)

Centralized Reporting

n EDITOR’S NOTE

Vijay Ramachandran Innovation Master Class

NNOVATION IS a much abused word. And, when the

going gets tough out comes the mantra—innovate. Most organizations know instinctively that over time, one needs to change strategy and look to do different things in order to survive and prosper. However, as far as I can tell, adversity breeds the best form of innovation. Take World War II, for instance. In a situation that can only be described as dire, the Allies and Axis powers pulled off many technological miracles. Both sides were short on everything—money for sure, but low timelines were typical (after all, the option was being run over). Yet, in six years of conflict, the crucible of war spewed out radar, sonar, microwaves, synthetic rubber, antibiotics, jet engines, computers, alternative fuels, and I’m not even bringing up weaponry. And, it was in the depths of the post-war recession that AT&T’s Bell Labs cooked up not only the transistor but also the cellular network for mobile phones. It seems that a can-do attitude, a shared goal and being first to market are among the ingredients that helped to get the innovation magic going. So why should these mantras not always work for organizations? Simply put, innovation within businesses is fraught with difficulty. It’s equally hard for organizations and the individuals that constitute them to think out of the clichéd box. And, true, game-

changing innovation brings with it the risk of catastrophic failure. How many companies are willing to take the plunge, then? Scott D. Anthony tries to unravel these issues among others in his book The Little Black Book of Innovation. Basing it on personal experience, Anthony shares what he’s learned about what innovation is and isn’t and how the skill of innovative thinking can be mastered. He does this by keeping the tone of the book chatty yet authoritative. Beginning

n A can-do

attitude, a shared goal and being first to market help get the innovation magic going.

with setting the foundation for an innovation journey, he quickly differentiates between creativity and innovation by pointing to two geniuses Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Alva Edison. In Anthony’s book only Edison is the true innovator since he was able to ensure that his inventions had immediate impact. Innovation is neither the stuff of dreams nor can it be an academic exercise. Anthony’s focus thus is on releasing our inner Edison. The fourth chapter, Innovation’s Seven Deadly Sins , should be mandatory reading for all leaders. In fact, I’d recommend beginning with this chapter, since it goes over what holds organizations back— home truths that you’ll recognize.

Impatient for growth? Anthony dubs this a manifestation of ‘Greed’, and warns that this often leads to prioritizing lowpotential markets. As he put’s it: “Greed has its advantages, but innovators need to make sure that they are greedy for the right thing. Often, innovators get greedy for growth. They want something that is as big as possible. Why could that possibly be a problem? If you look at quick growth, you are forced to look at what exists.” And, as he explains, booming growth in existing markets doesn’t come easy. Once you’re past the first four chapters, Anthony launches into the second part of his book a 28-day systematic program to grow innovation in your company. Each week of the program goes over a different thread, from discovering opportunities and blueprinting ideas to assessing and testing them and moving forward. What indicates an opportunity for innovation? Anthony’s short answer: “Look for an important, unsatisfied job to be done, or a problem the customer can’t adequately address today.” I commend this book to you. If there’s one book on innovation that you read, make sure it’s this one.  Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of IDG. Contact him at vijay_ ramachandran@idgindia.com

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

FOR BREAKING NEWS, GO TO CHANNELWORLD.IN

Inside INDIAN CHANNELWORLD n DECEMBER 2014

■ NEWS DIGEST 07 Juniper Launches its First Virtual Router | Juniper Networks

has introduced a virtualized version

datacenter traffic is expected to triple due to a booming cloud computing industry, says a Cisco report. 08 IBM Takes Enterprise Cloud Security Head On | IBM has

prepared a new portfolio of services designed to secure an enterprise’s cloud operations. 09 McAfee Rolls Out Products for SMBs | McAfee has announced a new

line of security suites that provide

of its MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routing platform to deliver the first carrier-grade virtualized router. 07 Venture to Join Elite Innovators Program by Citrix |

Citrix has announced the selection of top 10 teams that will participate

SMBs with a flexible way to safeguard their data and devices.

■ NEWS ANALYSIS 10 The Identity Trivia | Suddenly,

major tech companies are flipping

16 ■ COVER STORY

16 Hybrid Hygiene

in the Citrix Startup Accelerator Innovators Program. 08 Cloud to Make Up Threefourths of Datacenter Traffic by 2018 | Over the next four years,

out, remaking themselves to be more like their competitors.

■ OPINION

Cover Photograph by: SRIVATSA SHANDILYA Cover Design by UNNIKRISHNAN A.V

03 Editorial: The secret sauce of

innovation is a can-do attitude, says Vijay Ramachandran. 36 PlainSpeak: Yogesh Gupta

explains why the assumption that convincing CIOs alone will win partners deals is wrong. Connecting with other stakeholders equally important.

Enterprises are interested in the cloud, but IT managers are discovering that one cloud doesn’t fit every company. Some companies can go with the economy and convenience of a public cloud, while others need the added security and customization of a private cloud. However, some enterprises are opting to mix the speed and flexibility of a public cloud with the security and control of a private cloud.

■ THE GRILL

25 Christof Majer, Vice President-

Global Partner Sales and Qlik Partner Network, Qlik, on why Qlik Sense is a true market disruptor for new-age business intelligence.

CHANNELWORLD

14 Thornton A. May: In most enterprises up till

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

now, analytics has been something different and disconnected from day-to-day operations. That’s about to change.

CHANNELWORLD.IN

Publisher, President & CEO Louis D’Mello n EDITORIAL

■ FAST TRACK

27 Bharat Shetty, Founder and CMD, Mudra

Electronics, explains how the company has truly

are five MBaaS systems—AnyPresence, Appcelerator, FeedHenry, Kinvey, and Parse—closely examined, surveyed, and summarized on their common grounds and key differences.

■ FEATURE

28 Buying from Startups

carved out a niche for itself by offering solutions that are product-independent and how a vendoragnostic strategy has helped it sustain business.

■ FOCAL POINT

31 5 Clouds for Building Mobile Apps

The idea of buying an enterprise application from a startup company might sound like anathema, but some IT leaders believe we’re in the middle of a significant shift that favors startups—moving from huge applications with extensive features to task-based activities, inspired by the apps running on mobile devices. Get ready for radical changes in software purchasing.

Editor-in-Chief Vijay Ramachandran Executive Editors Yogesh Gupta Deputy Editor Sunil Shah Features Editor Shardha Subramanian Assistant Editors Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya Special Correspondent Sneha Jha Principal Correspondents Aritra Sarkhel, Shweta Rao, Shubhra Rishi. Senior Copy Editor Vinay Kumaar Video Editor Kshitish B.S. Lead Designers Suresh Nair, Vikas Kapoor Senior Designer Unnikrishnan A.V. Trainee Journalists Bhavika Bhuwalka, Ishan Bhattacharya, Madhav Mohan, Mayukh Mukherjee, Sejuti Das, Vaishnavi J. Desai n SALES

& MARKETING

President Sales & Marketing Sudhir Kamath Vice President Sales Sudhir Argula Associate Publisher Parul Singh General Manager Marketing Siddharth Singh General Manager Sales Jaideep M. Manager Key Accounts Sakshee Bagri Manager Sales Support Nadira Hyder Senior Marketing Associates Arjun Punchappady Benjamin Jeevanraj, Cleanne Carol Serrao, Margaret Sunitha Dcosta Lead Designer Jithesh C.C. Senior Designer Laaljith C.K. Designers Vinoth P, Vivekanandan Management Trainee Aditya D. Sawant, Bhavya Mishra, Brijesh Saxena, Chitiz Gupta, Deepali Patel, Deepinder Singh, Eshant Oguri, Mayur R Shah, R. Venkat Raman n OPERATIONS

Vice President HR & Operations Rupesh Sreedharan Financial Controller Sivaramakrishnan T.P. CIO Pavan Mehra Senior Manager Operations: Ajay Adhikari, Pooja Chhabra Senior Manager Accounts Sasi Kumar V. Senior Manager Operations T.K. Karunakaran Manager Operations Dinesh P. Executive Assistant to the CEO Tharuna Paul Manager Credit Control Prachi Gupta Assistant Manager Accounts Poornima

MOBILITY: Mobile back end as a service

is a fairly new product category that has largely supplanted mobile enterprise application platforms. The general idea of mobile backend as a service is that mobile applications need common services that can be shared among applications instead of being custom developed for each. Mobile applications using MBaaS follow a distributed architecture. Inside

n OFFICES

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Cyberoam Technologies Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC

Epson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBC

Dell India Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 & 20

Grass Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BC

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

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

Bangalore IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore 560 027, Karnataka Tel: 080-30530300. Fax: 080-30586065 Delhi IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. DLF Corporate Park, Tower 4 B, 3rd Floor, Room 301, MG Road, DLF Phase 3, Gurgaon- 122001, Haryana Tel: 0124- 3881015 Mumbai IDG Media Pvt. Ltd. 201, Madhava, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai 400051, Maharashtra Tel: 022-30685000. Fax: 022-30685023

ChannelWorld.in Get

Online FIND THESE STORIES AT CHANNELWORLD.IN

Hotlines Partner hotlines are a one-stop-shop for all your business needs. This section is dedicated to India’s leading ten OEMs to help you keep tabs on their latest announcements and tech offerings. This includes their latest acquisitions, executive movements, product releases, and more! Visit www.channelworld.in

■ CASE STUDIES Learn how principals and their channels work together to overcome complex business challenges at the customer end in our case studies section. Visit www.channelworld.in/case-study

■ FAST TRACK True to its name, this section tracks the path of channel companies that have posted exponential growth in recent years. To read their secret recipes, their success strategies and the challenges they overcame, visit www.channelworld.in/fasttrack

■ OPINIONS ■ VIDEOS From peer-to-peer advice and new technology developments to what the channel community expects from the enterprise market, our videos cover everything that affects you. Watch them on www.channelworld.in/videos

■ FEATURES Our features delve into a vast range of topics that interests principals and the channel alike. From industry trends to technology trends, and from global best practices to surveys—we have it all. Visit www.channelworld.in/features for more.

Apart from columns from IDG’s editors on technology trends and business challenges, this section offers insights from global experts and management gurus. Visit www.channelworld.in/opinions

■ SLIDESHOWS View our slideshows to get a hang of the latest tech gadgets, the craziest IT inventions, technologies that have flopped, new trends in the channel community, and a lot more. Visit www.channelworld.in/slideshows

■ PREMIER 100

The ChannelWorld Premier 100 event recognizes enterprise channel partners who have set new benchmarks in Indian IT landscape. This annual event showcases the achievements of the winners. Log on to www.channelworld.in for more.

NEWSLETTERS ChannelWorld newsletters are ready reckoners for all you want to know about the channel space. A daily dose of the latest news served straight to your mailbox.

Interviews

Our interviews are a platform for top executives of India’s prestigious channel organizations—and global OEMs—to share their business strategies and what makes them tick. Visit www.channelworld.in/interviews

Don’t receive our newsletters? Log on to www.channelworld.in and subscribe today! FOLLOW US ON:

www.facebook.com/ChannelWorldIndia www.twitter.com/ChannelWorldin

News

WHAT’S WITHIN

PAGE 08: IBM Rolls Out Services for Enterprise Cloud Security PAGE 08: Datacenter Traffic to Triple in Four Years: Cisco PAGE 09: McAfee Rolls Out New Product Portfolio for SMBs PAGE 10: Here’s How Tech Companies are Aping Competition

F I N D M O R E A R T I C L E S AT CHANNELWORLD.IN

DEVICES

Juniper Launches its First Virtual Router

UNIPER NETWORKS

has introduced a virtualized version of its MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routing platform to deliver the industry’s first carrier-grade virtualized router. The Juniper Networks vMX 3D Universal Edge Router, which operates as software on x86 servers, claims to give service providers and enterprises the ability to seamlessly leverage the benefits of both virtual and physical networking so they can rapidly deliver services and cost-

effectively keep ahead of customer demand. Juniper also unveiled a new set of capabilities designed to help customers build High-IQ networks that leverage the benefits of virtualization and automation. It is estimated that there will be 50 billion networked devices worldwide by 2020(1), the company says. Ravinder Singh, chief executive officer, Edgewood Networks, said, “Through Juniper’s new virtual MX and network functions virtualization offerings, Edgewood will add new network

services to improve performance of mission-critical applications for our clients.” As the appetite and reliance on customized services grow, service providers are looking for ways to address this need while staying profitable and capitalizing on revenue growth opportunities. This requires them to adopt a more agile business approach, one that allows them to develop, scale up as well as scale down new services at the pace of business. Susan Johnson, senior vice president, global supply chain, AT&T, said, “AT&T is testing vMX for use in its SDN architecture. Our industry needs to shift network infrastructures from hardware-centric to software-centric such that the network behaves as flexibly as the cloud.” As a fully functional virtual router, the vMX brings cloud-like agility to the network, allowing businesses to quickly roll out new applications, resources and initiatives to support internal and external clients. Customers can combine the vMX with Juniper’s complete physical router portfolio delivering the tools service providers and enterprises need to maintain a common operations environment for both virtual and physical routers.

DECEMBER 2014

—Team ChannelWorld INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

TRAINING

Ventures to Join Elite Innovators Program by Citrix Citrix has announced that an executive council of industry leaders have selected top 10 teams to participate in the Citrix Startup Accelerator Innovators Program. Citrix launched the rigorous three-month program with an innovators intensive three-day session for selected companies. The ten

teams will be mentored by seasoned business executives, industry leaders and venture capital investors in addition to being provided with resources, infrastructure support and workspace. “We are keen to encourage the growth of the next-generation technocrats in the country. Through this program, we hope to strengthen India’s start-up ecosystem and support new ideas in the transformative mobile and cloud era” said Rakesh Singh, VP and GM, Citrix India. -Team ChannelWorld

SECURITY

IBM Takes Enterprise Cloud Security Head On

rity: authenticating access increasingly move in the cloud, protecting their operations applications and data in the to the cloud, they cloud, and improving visneed to remain vigilant ibility into the effectiveness against security breaches. of security controls watchIBM had this in mind as it ing over cloud resources. prepared a new portfolio Over 200 engineers of services designed to sehelped build the portfolio cure an enterprise’s cloud over the past year. The operations with services extend the rigor that IBM’s collection has come to be of security softthe amount IBM expected with inware programs, invested in house operations. such as QRadar researching on security as a “The move to security event growth market. the cloud is nothmanagement ing new, but what software and the we’re seeing is that people Guardian data protection are now considering movsoftware, so they can be ing critical workloads to used to guard cloud rethe cloud,” Marc van Zadel- sources as well. hoff, vice president of stratInitially, the services will egy for security systems, focus on securing resources IBM, said. on Amazon Web Services The Dynamic Cloud Seand IBM’s own SoftLayer curity portfolio, available cloud, though they can also now, “allows customers to be used with other cloud take security to the cloud services, Zadelhoff said. with them,” Zadelhoff said. The portfolio includes The portfolio concena central portal that offers trates on aiding enterprises a summary of the state of in three of areas of secusecurity across all of an S ORGANIZATIONS

$2 bn

organization’s assets. Most security breaches can take weeks or even months to discover, IBM has estimated. The longer a breach goes undiscovered, the more damage an attacker can do. So a security portal can help identify problems as soon as they arise. The IBM services can scan the applications being used in the cloud for potential vulnerabilities, and can alert developers or system administrators of any potential security weaknesses. They can identify sensitive data in the cloud, and then monitor that data for any unauthorized usage. Pricing is based on different services used, overall usage, and other factors. IBM itself already collects more than 20 billion daily security events in the course of managing security for clients. This intelligence allows IBM to identify threats early on. IBM has identified security as a growth market. It has acquired 12 security companies in the past decade, and has invested over $2 billion (about Rs 12,000 crore) into security research and patents. —Joab Jackson

DATACENTER TRAFFIC

Cloud to Make Up Three-fourths of Datacenter Traffic by 2018 Over the next four years, datacenter traffic is expected to nearly triple, thanks to a booming cloud computing industry. That’s according to Cisco’s fourth annual Global Cloud Index, which predicts that the cloud will account for 76 percent of total datacenter traffic by 2018. That’s 22 percent up from the cloud’s accounting for 8

54 percent of datacenter traffic last year. The report also showed that by 2018, half of the world’s population will have residential Internet access, and 53 percent of those will store content on personal cloud storage services. The Forrester Research reported that the public cloud market is set for “hypergrowth,” and

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

Rapidly Increasing: Cloud will triple the traffic in datacenter

is expected to reach $191 billion (about Rs 1,146 thousand crore) by 2020. That’s up from $58 billion (about Rs 348 thousand crore) last year.

Short Takes  HP has announced the

expansion of its network virtualization portfolio with a new distributed cloud networking solution. It is a SDN solution that enables service providers and large organizations to automatically deploy secure cloud networks across a distributed infrastructure.  Riverbed India’s man-

aging director Anil Batra has reportedly quit the company after having led the India operations of the tech firm for the last three years and nine months. While the reason behind this isn’t clear, industry sources confirmed that Batra is serving his notice period.  Infosys has announced

the appointment of David D. Kennedy as executive vice president and general counsel with effect from November 1, 2014. Kennedy will also be the executive officer of the company for the purposes of SEC reporting. He will be based out of Palo Alto, California.

While the public cloud is showing a 50 percent growth rate, the growth rates of both hybrid and private clouds come in at a strong 40 percent and 45 percent, according to Synergy Research Group. Similarly, Cisco’s report predicts that global datacenter traffic will nearly triple from 2013 to 2018, growing from 3.1 zettabytes per year in 2013 to 8.6 zettabytes per year. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes. - Sharon Gaudin

PRODUCTS

McAfee Rolls Out Products for SMBs

CAFEE, PART of

Intel Security, has announced a new line of security suites that provide small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with a simple, flexible, and costeffective way to safeguard both their data and devices. McAfee Small Business Security suite is optimized for businesses with up to 25 devices. For larger businesses, with up to 250 devices, McAfee Endpoint Protection Essential for SMB and McAfee Endpoint Protection Advanced for SMB are designed to protect devices and data while offering new cloud capabilities for additional management options. These suites will help businesses improve user productivity and provide protection against malware and exploits. According to National Small Business Association, the average cyber-attack among small businesses costs $8,699.48 (about Rs 42,000). Today’s cybercriminals, like bullies, tend to focus on the easiest targets with the weakest security resources to steal precious data. Small businesses often lack IT resources, but are faced with the same security issues as large corporations who have specialized IT teams. To defend against cybercriminals, McAfee offers commercial-grade SMBs security solutions to extend seamlessly across devices and data. “Nearly every day we hear about data breaches

affecting some of the world’s largest and wellknown brands,” Candace Worley, senior vice president and general manager at McAfee, said. “What often gets overlooked are the small main street businesses that are plagued with the same security issues, but often with far more devastating consequences.” McAfee Small Business Security is customized for small businesses and offers protection for PCs, Macs as well as Android smartphones and tablets from viruses, malware, and online threats. A simple, centralized dashboard is easily accessible from the cloud so businesses can manage

Around

TheWorld New Enterprise Support Plan of Apple

Four months after Apple and IBM announced a partnership to amalgamate IBM’s big data and analytics capabilities with iPhone and iPad, Apple launched an offering that taps both companies’ expertise to assist enterprises. AppleCare for Enterprise, the new support tier, was painted with broad strokes on a new Apple website. It generally fits what industry analysts were told during summer briefings. Apple and IBM unveiled their alliance on July 15 this year. - Gregg Keizer

and monitor their security subscription. It also offers firewall, email, and web protection, creating a perimeter of defenses to help keep threats out before they get to a device. For larger, growing businesses, the products utilize new, next-gen endpoint protection technologies to secure desktops, laptops, Macs, servers, and mobile devices with superior

Brocade Hires Mobile Networking Luminary Kevin Shatzkamer

MS Advancements are a Boost for BYOD Programs

Microsoft is giving corporate BYOD programs a boost by upgrading its Office offerings for iPhone, iPad, and Android to deliver more features free. The company announced new free versions of Office apps for non-Windows devices that mean employees bringing their own phones and tablets to work can be productive using features of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Most importantly, users can create and perform more editing functions on Office documents, although they won’t get the full range of features that come with forpay Office 365 subscriptions. - Tim Greene

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

protection over endpoint, web, and email. This solution is managed by McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator—now available in cloud-based or premises-based versions. “For SMBs whose employees use multiple devices it’s getting more crucial to have best in class security solutions,” Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at McAfee, said. —Team ChannelWorld

Brocade has announced the hiring of mobile, cloud, and digital media technology expert, Kevin Shatzkamer, as the engineer and CTO of mobile networking. In this role, Shatzkamer will collaborate with customer CTOs to develop new operational models to quickly realize revenue-generating services through the use of emerging technologies such as SDN. - Team ChannelWorld

n NEWS ANALYSIS

The Identity Trivia

tagged-in-a-photo notification is all about. We also learned this week that Twitter is reportedly experimenting with the elimination of both @ replies and hashtags, and the transformation of the “Tweet” button to say “Share.” If those other changes come to pass, Twitter as we know it will be no more. Instead, we’ll have a much more Facebook-like Twitter.

FACEBOOK WANTS TO BE GOOGLE

Suddenly, major tech companies are flipping out, remaking themselves to be more like their competitors. By Mike Elgan

GUESS THE grass is

always greener on the other side of the corporate campus fence. Four major technology companies announced expensive and risky programs to become less like themselves and more like their competitors.

TWITTER WANTS TO BE FACEBOOK One of the reasons Twitter is the favorite social site for actors, technology influencers, and industry luminaries, is a set of quirky, minimalist attributes. The most celebrated and obvious is a 140-character limit on the size of tweets. This limitation makes it easy to send a tweet, and super easy to read a stream of tweets. Speaking of tweets, the use of the word tweet is one of Twitter’s charms. Others

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

include endearingly antiquated features like the use of @ replies and hashtags. Suddenly, however, all this is in peril as Twitter appears to be suffering a fit of Facebook-envy. Twitter this week unceremoniously made it possible for up to four pictures to be posted in a single tweet, and up to 10 people to be tagged in each photo. That makes both the posting of tweets and the reading of a stream more burdensome and time-consuming than it used to be. It’ll be like, you know, reading Facebook. The reason for it is at least partly Facebookian as well. All that tagging sends advertising-enhancing “signals” to Twitter. It also forces interaction—people tagged will be notified, and essentially lured into an engagement with Twitter to see what the you’ve-been-

Facebook, meanwhile, is suffering from Google envy. While Mark Zuckerberg has been toiling away trying to prevent a general flight from Facebook to smaller social sites by first creating the Poke app to stem the flow to Snapchat and then spending a fortune on Instagram and Whatsapp, he’s no doubt looked with envy at all the fun Sergey Brin and Andy Rubin have been having at Google. Brin has been loosely in charge of Google’s many moonshot projects, from self-driving Priuses to Google Glass to balloons that deliver Internet connectivity to remote areas of the world. Rubin, meanwhile, was reassigned a year ago. He went from running Google’s Android group to being placed in charge of Google’s terrifying army of robots, which Google bought in a frenzied binge. What does a search engine company want with a gas-powered robotic mule? In Silicon Valley, that’s the wrong question. What does a search engine company want with a gas-powered robotic mule? In Silicon Valley, that’s the wrong question. The

question is: If a robot mule exists and can be bought— and you’ve got billions to spend—why wouldn’t you buy it? Besides, the future will arrive sooner than you think. The only way to survive as a technology company is to re-invent yourself. You can’t wait until the future is clear. You have to buy everything that looks promising and hope for the best. That’s the lesson Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg learned from Google. Suddenly, his company is going nuts with the moonshot projects. Facebook this week announced the $2 billion (about Rs 12,000 crore) acquisition of Oculus VR, a maker of virtual reality products useful mainly for total immersion gaming. Sure, Mark Zuckerberg justified the purchase by saying that virtual reality might one day be social, or by claiming it to be the platform of the future. But a future in which people socialize by entering shared VR spaces wearing giant goggles on their faces is so far away that acquiring Oculus VR doesn’t really give the company an advantage in that future. Zuckerberg also announced something called the Facebook Connectivity Lab, which is a new division of Facebook that’s bringing Internet connectivity to the poor using— wait for it!—drones, satellites and laser beams. Why does a social network need a space program? Wrong question! I suspect the real reason for all this is that Zuck is tired of Google having all the fun.

Social Media Plays Spy

ome companies go to a lot of trouble trying to keep their intellectual property and corporate secrets safe. Naturally, they’re on the lookout for corporate spies and extortionminded cyber thieves, as well as insiders turned Benedict Arnolds. Few of them, though, give much thought to employees who unintentionally leak sensitive data. The problem is that the ways of doing that just keep growing, and most people are blissfully unaware of the dangers. Social media has become a big part of this problem. Here’s an example. You would be amazed how many corporate coders are apt to include in their LinkedIn profiles deeply detailed accounts of things like disasters they helped avert at their company. Say that a programmer helped fix a deeply flawed database implementation. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to go on LinkedIn and name specific vendor products used and provide lots of specifics about how bad the problem was and how he helped craft a nontraditional fix. The coder’s intent is to tout his own creativity and resourcefulness. But one result is that a lot of

GOOGLE WANTS TO BE AMAZON Google, meanwhile, appears to have a case of Amazon envy. Sure, Amazon is a killer online retailer. But two aspects of Amazon really stand out. The first is that the company was an early leader in the provision of cloud computing services with its Amazon Web Services offering. The second is that Amazon always favors low profit margins in order to cut costs to aggressively take customers from competitors. By using a zero- or less-than-zero margin price to suck the oxygen out of a market, Amazon is able to suffocate the competition, then take over. Consider the case of Diapers.com, in which Amazon deployed its sophisticated army of priceundercutting bots to sell diapers cheaper than Diapers. com no matter what. And once the company was near

information that his employer would prefer to keep quiet is visible to just about anyone. And there are people who will go looking for that sort of thing, including competitors, financial analysts and reporters. Companies can’t possibly approve all social media comments and photos their employees post; those could amount to millions per day for the largest enterprises. And I would hope that companies would realize what a bad policy that would be. What they need to do is to implement strict rules and guidelines about what can’t be disclosed, and then they must raise awareness among their employees about the dangers that lurk in social media. If they have confidentiality rules already in place, they need to make sure that they explicitly mention social media. In other words, employees must become informed self-censors, always careful not to make inappropriate public posts that could be discovered by management. -Evan Schuman

death, Amazon swooped in and bought it cheap. Now, Google is going after Amazon’s business of general cloud services, and it’s using Amazon’s price suffocation strategy to do it.

AMAZON WANTS TO BE APPLE Amazon, we learned this week, looks to be making a play for the living room to compete against Apple for the future of streaming, on-demand video content. In that area, Amazon would also be competing against Microsoft. And sGoogle. And Roku. You get the picture. We don’t know the specifics, but it appears that Amazon on Wednesday may announce some kind of streaming TV, movie and music-video offering that probably involves a set-top box and consolestyle gaming. Why would an online bookstore sell an

home-entertainment system? Wrong question! To a certain extent, all this is happening because technology companies know that technology companies fall after they rise. They fall because they fail to lead the Next Big Thing, they allow themselves to become obsolete, or they allow their competitors to get too big and powerful to fail. That knowledge leads companies to want what their competitors want. Twitter wants Facebook’s huge follower base. Facebook wants Google’s moonshot street cred. Google wants Amazon’s market share. And Amazon wants Apple’s ubiquity. Which is fine. But companies need to be careful and make sure that, in trying to thrill people who aren’t customers yet, they don’t forget to serve their existing customers. 

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

Photograph by SUMEET

ON RECORD n

Gaurav Chawla,

Director, IAM, Gemalto India, emphasizes on building a partner network to address the demand for authentication solutions in India. By Yogesh Gupta 12

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

What are Gemalto’s differentiators as opposed to other well-established security vendors? CHAWLA: Most global companies have two-factor authentication (2FA) solutions in place led by the business compliance of securing their infrastructure. In India, the market is still nascent though the adoption has accelerated since a year. Gemalto provides multiple products and a combination of various technologies in Identity and Access management (IAM). If an organization needs a combination of telecom and security or banking and security, our vast experience gives us that edge to

deliver those customized solutions. As an end-toend security solutions provider, we support solutions across complex IT infrastructures that ensure different security levels for different set of employees. The 2FA industry is leaning toward software solutions. Will hardware tokens phase out from organizations? CHAWLA: BYOD is a trend that is compelling vendors to offer both solutions— hardware and software— in the authentication space. An employee cannot be restricted to a desktop for authentication solutions. It is difficult in India to distribute hardware tokens across employees.

GAURAV CHAWLA | ON RECORD n Authentication is the balancing act of convenience versus security—as software is faster to deploy while hardware tokens are preferred for enhanced security. With the rise of smartphones, we offer a combined solution which is OS- and device-agnostic. OTP generation through mobile applications is still vulnerable because password keys are on the mobile software. Gemalto provides a micro SD on your phone which acts as a hardware-level security layer. We have solutions to convert a smartphone into a two-factor device, providing convenience of use with the highest level of security to organizations. Hardware tokens will not phase out, though the form factor and delivery mechanism might change.

Gemalto is a relatively new vendor in India. How are you leveraging security channels for deeper inroads? CHAWLA: Partner trust is extremely important. We are building a partner network to address the increased demand for authentication solutions across enterprises and the government. Besides empowering Indian distributors—RAH Infotech, KDK software, and Agmatel—we have around 40 partners including big SIs working across different verticals. Pure resellers do traditional recurring business by selling card readers to toll companies and banks, while solution partners deliver OTP and PKI with integration support. A strict channel policy is not a good idea, we have lost deals because of that.

Companies like Vasco are getting aggressive with authentication productson the cloud. Your take. CHAWLA: We are actively talking with cloud service providers to offer our solutions on a pay-per-usage model. Apart from service providers catering to SMBs, we are approaching big systems integrators for the cloud route. Gemalto’s cloud authentication server’s compliance with Microsoft’s single-sign on access feature caters to the needs of modern organizations. Gemalto’s Protiva ID Confirm platform integrates with Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services, providing strong authentication to Web-based enterprise applications with a unique digital identity.

What is the big picture for the partner community? CHAWLA: Apart from a clear technical advantage over other vendors, our partners work with a larger security stack of strong authentication, enterprise data security, secured storage, ultra-secure laptops, and cloud security. Gemalto’s corporate ID batch—a single card for attendance, canteen payments, PKI, OTP, and 2FA—is a great asset for organizations. We are aggressively pushing on smart card-based micro SD for mobile phones and mobile PKI too. We encourage channels to offer value added services to their customers which ties back to Gemalto’s strategy of customized solutions and integration with third-party products. 

n OPINION

THORNTON MAY

Analytics: The New Normal

NALYTICS IS something new for most of us, and

In most enterprises up till now, analytics has been something separate from day-to-day operations. That’s about to change.

therefore scary. But as it moves from the realm of the data geeks and into the general enterprise where most of us live, it’s helpful to recognize that there is nothing new in the way this situation is unfolding. We have all seen this movie before. A new technology cluster comes into view that promises to expand the production possibility frontier (that’s economic speak for “it is going to help us do more stuff”). Organizations that want to do more stuff (all of them, basically) and that also want to be perceived as

Thornton A. May is a speaker, educator, and adviser, and the author of The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics. Contact him at thornton@ thorntonamay.com

being in front of the curve undertake a series of explorations in the form of task forces and pilot projects. A vocal cohort of enthusiasts, evangelists, early adopters, and analysts talk up startup companies that are advancing the new technology. Conferences, webinars, and podcasts ensue. If the opportunity associated with the technology cluster is big enough and if the underlying technologies are complex enough, new roles are created. This is where we stand today with analytics. Organizations are test-driving a variety of new roles to see which combination provides the fastest and least disruptive path to enterprise competence in creating competitive advantage via differentiated information management (a.k.a. analytics). We have data scientists, chief analytics officers, chief data officers, and chief digital officers popping up all over the place. What we have learned through the painful birthing process of other C-level executives is that their success depends on how they relate to the rest of us. Getting the full value from analytics will require changing behavior from all. The CIO at a northern Californian clothing company was once asked by his

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

chairman why IT cost so much. The CIO responded that he would be able to deliver twice as much the IT functionality at half the cost and a quarter of the time if users, particularly executives, were more technologically literate and took some personal responsibility for managing the digits in their domain. The same holds true for analytics. If executives embraced analytics as part of their professional identity, as a skill set for which they took personal responsibility, organizations would be able to create unbreakable bonds with customers and provide shareholders with above-market returns. That’s a big “if.” And yet that is what must happen. In analytics, real value is achieved only when workers take action in real life. In most companies, the part of the analytic process in which insight induces actual action in the workplace is all but forgotten. Analysts provide the insight but then presume that executives will take appropriate action. That gap has to be closed up. The worker has to be motivated and should have the ability to act on the insights for analytic value to happen. What is your organization doing to change behavior around analytics? 

n COVER STORY

Hybrid Hygiene Companies are opting to mix the speed and flexibility of a public cloud with the security and control of a private cloud. Here’s how to do it well. By Sharon Gaudin

NTERPRISES ARE increasingly

interested in the cloud, but IT managers are discovering that one size does not always fit all. Well, at least they’re finding that one cloud doesn’t fit every company. Sure, some companies can go with the straight-up economy and convenience of a public cloud, while others need the added security and customization of a private cloud. However, there are the enterprises that need to go to the public cloud with non-sensitive data but need a more secure system for their critical systems and information, or because their regulatory environment requires a private cloud. For such companies, there’s the hybrid cloud.

“Many users want to mix the clear flexibility, agility, speed and cost benefits of public cloud services with the control, security and performance benefits of private networks or the private cloud,” said John Dinsdale, an analyst with the Synergy Research Group. “Hybrid cloud services are a good answer for many of them.” While the public cloud is showing a 50 percent growth rate, the growth rates of both hybrid and private clouds come in at a strong 40 percent to 45 percent, according to Dinsdale. Hybrids are a solid choice for companies looking to fully dive into the cloud or expand their presence in it. “I believe that hybrid clouds will become the most prevalent cloud usage model for enterprises,”

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n COVER STORY said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “Users will utilize public clouds for short-term needs, but rely on their internal private clouds for the bulk of their computing,” Olds said. “This model gives datacenters the ability to add extra capacity very quickly to handle seasonal usage spikes or other events, without having to purchase new systems.” Enterprises break up their cloud workloads differently based on their needs, including uptime, quality of service and security concerns. Exactly how they allocate their cloud into public-versus-private is part of what makes a hybrid more complicated than simply using one or the other. Anyone setting up a hybrid cloud needs to carefully separate missioncritical or strategic systems and information from the rest, set up security and availability policies and

The Cloud Roadmap

The flavor of cloud computing CIOs are planning to use in their organizations:

n Private cloud

36%

n Public Cloud

48% 16%

n Hybrid Cloud SOURCE: STATE OF THE CIO MID-YEAR REVIEW 2014

consider compliance issues. “There are complications in running a hybrid cloud versus just a private or public cloud, which makes the planning process so vital,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.

“Hybrid clouds are very important for the enterprise, primarily because it gives them a choice--so they need to choose well.” So if enterprises are looking to use a hybrid of the public and the private cloud set-ups, what’s the best way

The Hybrid Highway Sachin Rao, MD and CEO, Archon Consulting Systems, talks about pushing mid-tier enterprises to adopt the hybrid cloud model.

oday, applications are becoming cloud-ready and this is pushing midsized enterprises in India to adopt the cloud model. There is an upward push toward the adoption of IaaS, SaaS, and AaaS. “Managing the surge in the demand for compute resources, deploying BYOD solutions, implementing a go-green strategy, and integrating social media into businesses have led customers to move their non-core business applications to the cloud,” Sachin Rao, MD and CEO, Archon Consulting Systems, says. Archon Consulting, a company that aims at achieving 10 to 15 percent of its revenues from the cloud business, started building cloud solutions in 2012, and since then, has been working with customers to identify and move their workloads onto the cloud. “Some of our customers moved onto the private cloud for their business-critical workloads. The next step for them is going hybrid. Cost, scalability, elasticity, and manageabil18

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

ity of infrastructure will act as key catalysts in the process,” Rao says. Companies today might not have a private cloud, but have legacy applications that can be run on one. This, in turn, gives rise to a hybrid situation. “We help customers build a policy-driven enterprise and offer our services through their datacenters,” Rao says. Even though cloud providers are trying to keep pace with enterprise demands,

bottlenecks prevail. It is important to have a common architectural, security, and services framework when migrating to a hybrid cloud. “Security of data and user acceptance is a problem. Infrastructural changes are needed to adapt to the cloud technology. Pricing is another problem. Unlike what customers think, it is expensive as cloud service providers adopt a linear pricing model,” Rao adds. He also points at vendor-centric clouds not being designed to communicate with each other, resulting in locking of data. For the smooth transition of client infrastructure, certain hygiene factors should be followed. The virtualization footprint at customers’ datacenters should be analyzed and non-critical business services moved directly onto the public cloud. Identification of business risks and proper security controls on different layers is also important,” Rao says. Talking about building solutions to do more business around the hybrid cloud area, Rao says, “OEMs should recognize that managing their hybrid ecosystem will present new challenges and SIs can help them conquer these and improve performance.” -Ishan Bhattacharya

Benefits Basket Benefits Indian CIOs are looking to derive from a hybrid cloud model:

41%

Reduced cost

SOURCE: STATE OF THE CIO MID-YEAR REVIEW 2014

lease private-cloud space on a thirdparty service from Microsoft, Amazon or other providers? Companies can host and manage their own private cloud or they can also hire a provider, such as IBM or Rackspace, which will create and manage a single-tenant cloud environment for them. Another question here: Do you have specialists who can handle this or should you get outside assistance from cloud consultants and other specialists? Generally speaking, the smaller a company, the more outside

The Hybrid Game Plan Are Indian CIOs using or planning to use a hybrid cloud model?

n Yes 28% 49% 23%

40%

Less downtime

41%

Better performance

42%

Higher reliability

48%

More control

to do it? How can a company try to get the best financial deal out of the hybrid cloud and still get the security and scalability it needs? According to industry analysts, there are some basics that every IT manager should consider. Here are a few of them. Assess your needs. This may sound simple but it isn’t. What do you need out of a cloud? Companies should consider if they could save money, and person-power, by having a service provider manage the servers and software needed to operate anything from e-mail to HR software or marketing and ordering applications. Another thing to consider is how much moving applications and data storage to the cloud platform could free up what is most likely an overworked IT department. Some analysts contend that by offloading some of information technology’s heavy lifting to the cloud— including fixing crashed systems, helping users who bring their own devices to work and dealing with an expanding security perimeter—enterprises can let someone else worry about at least part of the regular maintenance routine. That, in turn, means IT workers will have more time to be innovative in terms of how they can help the business succeed. Do you want to build your own or do you want to

n No n No plans to use

help it probably needs when moving to the cloud platform. “These are just some of the qualifying questions you have to ask and answer before you even get started,” said Jeff Kagan, an analyst. “I would say the best place to start is with a private cloud hosted by a cloud service provider with non-sensitive information. Then as you get more comfortable, you can expand.” He noted that from there, companies can expand into the public cloud or they can build their own in-house private cloud. Categorize your apps and data. The end result of having a hybrid system is it separates the company’s information and applications into categories based on where they need to sit in the cloud. So a critical step is to take an honest look at what you’re considering to move into the cloud and figure out how sensitive it is or how strategic it is to the core business. What needs to stay where it is? What kind of mix of public and private cloud do you need? “Anytime you open up your private system to the public, security is at a higher risk,” said Kagan. “But just because there’s more security risk, it is not a reason companies will stay away from the public cloud. They just have to be much more careful.”

SOURCE: STATE OF THE CIO MID-YEAR REVIEW 2014

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n COVER STORY

Cementing the Cloud Strategy How Vinit Thakur, CIO, Dalmia Bharat, embarked on an aggressive consolidation plan to build a solid foundation to take his organization to the hybrid cloud.

ome of India’s most successful companies are conglomerates with large footprints, spanning multiple industries. Group companies allow individual businesses to function as separate entities, perhaps to maintain the sanctity of their operations, or because they are afraid of disrupting established processes. But today’s technology landscape is challenging such conservative thinking. How can companies take advantage of big data, analytics, and mobility, among others, if they continue to maintain separate infrastructure stacks? How can IT support dynamic business plans if IT systems are carved in archaic datacenter architectures? These questions have long troubled Vinit Thakur, group CIO, Dalmia Bharat Group. With a vision for holistic growth buoyed by technological innovation, Thakur led the company on a cloud transformation journey. The Company: Dalmia Bharat Group is one of India’s most prominent conglomerates with interests in cement, sugar, refractory, and power. The last few years have seen the company grow through a series of M&As. Some of its notable partnerships include names like Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts and Orissa Cement. In the last 18 months, the company has doubled its user base. In 2012, it acquired Adhunik Cement in Meghalaya. “The entire IT organization was segmented,” Thakur says. “Each business had its own infrastructure, applications, and ERP systems. There was no centralization.” The Business Case: Thakur knew that in future, all businesses would run on the cloud. “We’re moving quickly to a broadbandenabled, tablet-centric environment where work gets done from anywhere. IT has to enable this by moving out of on-premise solutions and be cloud-ready,” he says. Companies, especially medium and small-sized companies, can often find tighter security practices in a hosted cloud service than they could manage on their own. 22

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

With growth on its mind, the company needed fast, agile systems that could scale and be responsive to the needs of the business. At first, the public cloud seemed ideal. Thakur wanted to bypass the whole virtualization layer and move completely to the public cloud. “But I realized that despite the buzz, not all business critical needs can be met on the public cloud. That was a real eye-opener. Solutions that we wanted were not available in the AIX or HP UX platform, in many ways forcing us to consolidate.” The Project: Dalmia’s IT team and a few vendor representatives visited all company

it’s ERP onto a single virtualized stack that resides in its datacenter. The server and storage needs of the entire group were consolidated on a single virtualized platform, while legacy applications were left in the native state. Currently, the datacenter houses 259 virtual servers, housed in a single stack. Currently, the company is running on a hybrid cloud platform. It is quickly rolling out public cloud services like Office 360 and a cloud ERP. “We want to be a complete cloud company. We are already re-looking our security policies, but the ecosystem of partners and service providers has to mature.”

locations and analyzed the needs of every business. What was initially visualized as a consolidation project was expanded to components of the group’s other businesses. “We wanted to unite our business-critical applications on a common ERP platform. For that we had to strengthen our infrastructure on a common platform,” Thakur says. A migration plan was drawn up. In six months, Dalmia Bharat successfully migrated its business-critical applications and

The Benefits: The project has already driven service levels to new heights. “Fault lines have come down, system resilience has increased, and user response time has shrunk,” he says. The company now has the flexibility to add systems on the fly and integrate faster. “We are fourth in the cement business. Our aim is to break into the top two. We have protected our legacy systems, while getting future-ready,” Thakur says.

They just need to be vigilant in making sure they’re asking for as much security, or more, than what they already have or what they think they will need going forward.

“Those are the big questions when considering a hybrid solution,” said Olds. Let’s say you have an online store that runs fine on your existing systems most of the year, but needs

more capacity in December, for the holidays. “A hybrid cloud sounds like the perfect solution,” but there are numerous approaches you could take, Olds said. These include instances of your store on a public cloud along with keeping the instances you have on your internal systems. Alternatively, you could just keep your catalog on the public cloud and keep all ordering and account applications on systems in your own datacenter, he explained. Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, noted that companies should depend on policies for what applications or data should be in a private or public cloud. If these policies don’t yet exist, Enderle said, companies should develop them before launching into the cloud. Talk to other customers. Nearly every analyst recommended that IT administrators meet with other companies that are of similar size and have similar needs and find out what they have already learned from their own cloud experiences. Ask about pricing. Ask about the features they are getting and which ones they wish they were getting. Ask about any security and reliability issues. What is working for them and what isn’t? “You want to learn from other’s experiences as much as possible rather than from your own mistakes,” said Enderle. Kagan added that while the cloud sounds simple, it’s actually complicated and land-mined with critical issues like security and reliability, which could make or break a business. “If you know other companies that use a cloud provider and can get recommendations, that’s always a good place to start,” he said. Choose vendors carefully. To find the right vendor—one that has experience and successes with businesses similar to your own—companies need to ask a lot of questions. Ask for their statistics. How many companies have they worked with? How many large enterprises, versus medium and small companies, have they worked with? Ask to speak to some of their customers who run similar-sized businesses, or ones in

The Silver Lining Rahul Meher, Founder and MD, Leon Computers, is exploring business opportunities related to cloud computing despite its unique set of challenges.

ndian enterprises are slowly, but steadily leveraging the hybrid cloud to create a unified, automated, and well-managed computing environment. Pune-based Leon Computers, too, is engaged in an active tryst with cloud computing. “It is the most reliable and efficient way for end-users to back up their data securely and be able to recover it whenever they want. Scalability, flexibility, affordability, fast deployment, and unlimited storage spaces are the biggest advantages of the cloud,” Rahul Meher, founder and MD, Leon Computers, says. Leon Computers has been providing hybrid cloud solutions since five years now and hence, is well aware of the challenges of moving to a hybrid model. For example, he knows that providing the ability to run workloads on compatible virtualized platforms and using an organization’s preferred OS with enough elasticity for applications is a problem. “Data must flow seamlessly between two clouds in a secure manner to deliver access to elastic storage and application interoperability. Both clouds must be able to support the same data warehousing policies and storage access management solutions,” Meher says. Despite these challenges, there is enough scope for the hybrid cloud in the Indian market. The retail sector is an early adopter of the cloud where analysis of sales information has always been a computationally intensive task. Law firms are also utilizing the hybrid cloud as encrypted offsite data stores to safeguard against potential theft or hardware failure. “Organizations with a thin IT budget would find it difficult to rollout a hybrid cloud solution. Hence, a gradual movement from the private to the hybrid cloud works well for most of our customers,” Meher adds. To create a niche in this fast-emerging technology and to tide over the prevailing challenges, Leon Computers is working on its own IP for cloud-based solutions. “The IP that will be rolled out by mid-2015, will help us create a differentiator in the mind of the customers and take a significant leap in the cloud landscape,” Meher says. -Madhav Mohan your vertical area. Ask for their stats on reliability and security. “There are a large variety of cloud companies, both large and small, that focus on different areas,” said Kagan. “Decide what you will need, then make sure the company you choose can handle it all.” Also consider using more than one provider because it lets you compare in a real-world situation. Then as time passes, “you can migrate more to the one that you like the best,” Kagan said. Move in increments. Companies shouldn’t feel compelled to jump in

with both feet. Move slowly. Learn from your own experience. “I would always recommend starting with a smaller and private cloud to get your feet wet,” said Kagan. “Learn what you need to know in this new area before you expand. That will take some time, but it’s much better to step into the shallow end and then jump into the deep end.” He also recommended that companies lean on their service providers to help guide them through the process—not only in setting up the cloud but in training their own people to use it. 

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

Dossier Name: Christof Majer Designation: Vice PresidentGlobal Partner Sales and Qlik Partner Network Company: Qlik Current Role: Christof is responsible for Qlik’s partner sales and partner program strategies—their design, roll out, enhancements, and implementation. After joining Qlik in 2007, he has enhanced the partner program to serve more than 1,700 partners worldwide, representing more than half of Qlik’s total licensed revenues.

Ph o t o g r a p h by FOTO C O R P

Career Graph: Christof has over 15 years of global experience in the business software industry. Prior to Qlik, he was responsible for VMware’s OEM sales partners in Central Europe. At Altiris, he led the partner program development for EMEA.

n THE GRILL

Christof Majer, Vice President-Global Partner Sales, Qlik, on why Qlik Sense is a true market disruptor for new-age BI.

The recently launched Qlik Sense seems like an old wine in new bottle in the BI world. We now run a two-pronged product strategy—QlikView and Qlik Sense. What with our channels and 33,000 customers, there is a definite roadmap with QlikView. Also, its version 12 is due early next year. Qlik Sense has the same robust engine, but the new interface has modern features like HTML 5, cascading effects, and open APIs. The two products complement each other. The Qlik Sense launch of a free desktop version in July this year was followed with the commercial enterprise version two months later. It is too early to comment on its uptake but the initial signs are very positive. IBM launched a beta version of Watson Analytics and Microsoft extended its BI capabilities in 2014. Was Qlik Sense late to the party? A difference of a couple of months does not matter as we have leaped much ahead of competition. Qlik Sense is device-agnostic and spans seamlessly across new-gen devices. The friendly user interface with enhanced features enables any user to start working on it within 10 minutes. More than 80 percent of use cases in analytics are descriptive and data visu-

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n THE GRILL | CHRISTOF MAJER

More than 80 percent of use cases in analytics are data visualizationbased. Qlik Sense addresses this newer and bigger market.

lytics market is growing fast. We will soon become a half-a-billion-dollar company. Relatively, other smaller vendors might not be a safe bet. When channels select product portfolios and technology vendors, they keep in mind one thing: margins. That is important, but the key driver should be a company with innovative technology, brand power, and strong financials. BI becoming a mainstream market further accentuates a vendor’s value proposition.

alization-based. Qlik Sense addresses this newer, and more importantly, a much bigger market.

Most partner organizations lack technical skillsets on BI and data visualization. Why haven’t vendors evangelized the market on new-age technologies? A million odd tech students add significantly to the talent pool every year. We have many partners in India who hire BI consultants by the dozens. Skilled manpower for analytics important. We are conducting launch events globally including full-day training programs and product positioning for partners regarding Qlik Sense. —Yogesh Gupta

Analytics is a highly fragmented market with players like HP, IBM, SAP, and Tableau. Isn’t it difficult for channels to choose their BI vendor? The Gartner magic quadrant in 2009-10 had defined the limited amount of BI players. In the 2011 edition, Qlik was included for the first time, receiving a “poster child of the new-generation BI” tagline from the analyst. Channels know the ana-

BECAUSE

Better information EQUALS

“ We encourage partners to chalk out a long-term strategy, each time an organization needs a new security widget. - Andrew Littleproud, President, McAfee

Better business Read the latest interviews from the biggest names of leading IT organisations on their company direction, technology roadmap and channel strategies.

Read more at

www.channelworld.in/interviews

“ We are looking for disruptive partners who want to be a part of a big change in the industry. - Adam Judd, VP, Asia Pacific, Brocade

that a lot “ The common mistake folks make is

of vendor marketing that they think the channel can do ‘marketing’ for them. - Julie Parrish, SVP&CMO, NetApp

n FAST TRACK

Snapshot

Mudra Electronics

Founded: 1987 Headquarters: Delhi Key Executives: Chander Sharma, Executive Director-Marketing; Pradeep Sharma, Director-Security and Strategic Affairs; Aparna Rai Shetty, Director-Finance Revenue 2013-14: 18 crore Revenue 2012-13: 14 crore Employees: Over 80 Principals: Acer, HP, Check Point, Cyberoam, Hitachi, EMC, NetApp, Microsoft, Oracle Key Business Activities: Security and storage, networking, systems integration

Photograph by SUMEET

Website: www.mudraindia.com

A vendor-agnostic strategy helped us sustain business, says Bharat Shetty, CMD, Mudra Electronics.

T WAS around 1999 when Acer

and Compaq entered the Indian market and Indian computer manufacturers had to take some tough decisions. One of them was Mudra Electronics. Its founder and CMD Bharat Shetty astutely decided to sign up with Acer as its principal partner, but soon realized that pushing boxes was not going to get the company enough dividend and respect. Since then, Shetty has moved on from the volume business, and is now a proud owner of a systems integration company that’s driven by technology. “We decided that Mudra will not be driven by principals, that’s why we never market any brand,” Shetty says. That’s why Mudra has constantly provoked the ire of a number of principals. “Most of them get upset because they expect their brand

to be at the fore and the partner to be at the backend. But we are very clear on offering a solution that’s product-independent, but solutiondependent,” Shetty says. The 17-year-old company has constantly reinvented its business

VERTICAL SPLIT 10%

IT/ITeS

30%

Defense and Public Sector

10% BFSI

10%

Hospitality

10%

Education

30%

Government

approach and offered customers something unique. “In the last two years, SIs have been suffering because of market dynamics. But we could think out-of-the-box and offer solutions within the limited budget of our customers,” Shetty says. This explains its customer retention rate of more than 95 percent. Forty percent of the company’s revenues come from the mid-market segment, which Shetty feels, is growing at a phenomenal rate. “Before 2010, 50 to 60 percent of our business used to come from the mid-enterprise segment. But that has drastically changed due to our focus on public, defense, and government sectors. These are the captive markets for us and have helped in improving our bottom line,” Shetty says. In the last three years, Mudra has also seen its revenue double—from Rs 8 crore in 2011 to Rs 18 crore in 2013. Going forward, Mudra sees itself laying more focus on providing storage and security solutions—which at present contributes to 70 percent of its revenues. It has also hired security professionals to strengthen its physical security, city surveillance, and communications. “We constantly reinvent our approach to IT,” Shetty says. — Shubhra Rishi

SOURCE: Mudra Electronics

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n FEATURE | BUSINESS STRATEGY

BUYING FROM STARTUPS Get ready for radical changes in software purchasing. By Howard Baldwin

HE IDEA of buying an enter-

prise application from a startup company might sound like anathema to a CIO. But Chris Laping, CIO of restaurant chain Red Robin, based in Greenwood Village, Colo., disagrees. He believes we’re in the middle of a significant shift that favors startups—moving from huge applications with extensive features to task-based activities, inspired by the apps running on mobile devices. Mirco Mueller concurs. He is an IT architect for St. Gallen, Switzerlandbased Helvetia Swiss Life Insurance, which—having been founded in 1858—is about as far from a startup as possible. He recently chose a SaaS tool from an unnamed startup over what he calls “a much more powerful but much more complex alternative. Its list of features is shorter than the feature list of the big companies, but in terms of agility, flexibility, ease of use and adjustable business model, it beat” all of its competitors. 28

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

The biggest advantage of startups, in Mueller’s opinion? “They have no technical historical burden, and they don’t care about many technical dependencies. They deliver easy-to-use technology with relatively simple but powerful integration options.” There’s certainly no lack of applications available from new players. At a recent conference focusing on innovation, Microsoft Ventures principal Daniel Sumner noted that every month for the last 88 months, there’s been a $1 billion (about Rs 6,000 crore) valuation for one startup or another. That’s seven years and counting. But as Silicon Valley skeptics like to point out, those are the ones you hear about. For every successful startup, there are at least three that fail, according to 2012 research by Harvard Business School professor Shikhar Ghosh. So why, then, would CIOs in their right mind take the risk of buying enterprise applications from an untest-

ed entity that may be short on experience, money and maybe even time? Because the world has changed. “The model we’ve used to buy onpremises software for about 20-plus years is shifting,” insists Laping. “There are new ways of selecting and vetting partners.” Part of that shift is simple: The business side sees what technology can do, and it’s banging on IT’s door, demanding...what? Not new drop-down menus in the same-old ERP application, but rather state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, ain’t-that-cool innovation. The landscape is wide open: Innovation can come in the form of new technologies, such as the Internet of Things, or from mobility, the cloud, and virtualization—in fact, from anywhere an enterprise vendor isn’t filling a need. The easiest place to find that? Startups. The fact is that every technology giant today exists because someone took a chance on them, the way Disney took a chance on Bill Hewlett when

IT Str

it bought eight oscillators at $71.50 (about Rs 4,290) each in 1938, the year before Hewlett-Packard was founded. Recent examples of 21st century ventures that hit it big include Palantir (est. 2004), Workday (2005) and Dropbox (2007). It may not be so smart to bet on a startup that thinks it’s going to dislodge Salesforce as the go-to CRM application, suggests Patrick Sullivan, Managing Director of the Oracle technology practice at Accenture. “But startups can focus on the right gap in enterprise applications. The startups that find niches and innovate have done okay.” He cites Kony (a mobile application development tool) and Splunk (which logs machine-generated data) as two examples of startups that found their niche.

THE RISK-REWARD RATIO Like Laping, Karl Galbraith believes that the time has come for enterprises to consider startups. Currently a principal at security-and-audit-focused Galbraith and Associates in Ottawa, he was previously a CISO and acting CIO at various enterprises, including the Bank of Canada and the Canada Post. “The number one reason to consider a startup is that the current landscape of Magic Quadrant vendors is not serving a critical need. That’s a problem.” Especially in security, he says, some of the solutions from traditional security vendors are so unwieldy that “even after months and a lot of money invested, they never worked.” The same concept applies to startups beyond security. Faced with an inability to get what they want without buying extensive solutions from established enterprise vendors, proactive CIOs started looking for tools with a new willingness to take risks, to listen

to people who are more aggressive. With startups, Galbraith says, “CIOs get a view of next-generation technology. Whenever there’s a paradigm shift, you want a startup to give you feature agility.” Ravi Belani is managing partner at Alchemist Accelerator, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture-backed initiative focused on accelerating startups whose revenue comes from enterprises rather than consumers. He says, “The innovation that used to come out of big software houses isn’t there anymore, while the pace of innovation in technology is accelerating.” He acknowledges that there has been a longtime concern with startups about the ability of their applications

potential that they won’t be around in a few years. Laping disdains that notion. “In the new paradigm, [most software] implementations are so much shorter, you don’t have to think about that risk. You’re not talking about three years and $20 million. You’re talking about 75 days and $50,000. You implement little modules and get big wins along the way.” Besides, he argues, there are related risks to bigger vendors. “We worked

The fact is that every technology giant today exists because someone took a chance on them, the way Disney took a chance on Bill Hewlett when it bought eight oscillators in 1938, the year before HP was founded. to scale, but given startups’ ability to build their software on robust infrastructure platforms using IaaS or PaaS, and then deploy them via SaaS, “scalability isn’t as big a deal as it used it be. It costs $50,000 today to do what you needed $50 million to do ten years ago. That means it takes less capital today to create the same innovation. Ten years ago, that was a moat, a barrier to entry, but software vendors don’t own that moat anymore.” The confluence of offshore programming, open source technologies and cloud-based infrastructures has significantly lowered the barriers to entry of launching a new venture —not to mention all those newly minted tech millionaires willing to be angel investors. Another knock against startups: The

with one startup that got acquired because they represented innovation to the bigger company. They had been a small company with rapid product cycles, but the next four release cycles were nothing but integrating their software with the big company. That gave me no benefit.” “It’s a huge risk to go with a startup,” acknowledges Arthur Lozinski, CEO of Oomnitza, a Mountain View, Calif.based developer of asset-tracking software founded in 2012. “But startups can give enterprises attention to detail and fast turnaround times. We’re not doing anything else” except thinking about our product, he says. “There’s a lot more intensity and energy at a startup,” agrees Brian Gardner, executive director of the mobility center of excellence at Oakland,

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n FEATURE | BUSINESS STRATEGY Calif.-based healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser has tested a number of niche startup applications over the last few years, purchased a few and tested some it never pursued, according to Gardner. Startups’ focus “is on one product. [In IT] we’re working on multiple products at the same time with multiple stakeholders, and having to balance that through the workweek and quarter. They don’t have the distractions that we do.”

MAKING IT WORK When you’re taking risks, never underestimate the importance of relationships. CIOs and entrepreneurs alike confirm that it’s easier to connect when there’s a trusted middle conduit. Red Robin’s Laping says, “As openminded as I am, I won’t take a cold call.” He only meets with startups he’s met through a “matchmaker” called Trace3 that brings together CIOs, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. That’s important, he adds, because when you’re looking for a startup, “it’s not like you’re going into a bar to pick someone up. I rely on my peer network or partners to tell me about someone they’ve run into” who can meet a specific need. Pedigree counts too. That means looking at what venture capitalist firms or angel investors are backing the startup, or simply checking out the top executives’ resumes. Notes Accenture’s Sullivan, “The guy who started Nest came out of a well-established product company called Apple. It had processes, it had quality control and he took that knowledge along with some of its employees.” Along the same lines, Oomnitza’s Lozinski spent several years at SAP Labs. Sometimes to make the relationship work, CIOs need to apply special dispensation. In a previous position, Peter Bowen, who now manages a team of consultants at Bedford, UK-based Telesperience Consulting, bought a billing application from startup Centenary Services (which has since been purchased by another company). Bowen’s company promised to make payments on faster terms than it did to other suppliers in order to help the startup avoid cash flow issues. “Basically, we micro-managed the whole 30

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

Startups Face Talent Crunch

ESEARCH has found out that lack of talent causes startups to fail as they fail to execute new and innovative ideas. The Startup Institute, a career accelerator that aims to equip individuals with the skills required to work in a start-up, revealed in a survey today that more than 79 percent of start-ups are struggling to find the right talent, with 41 percent of startups citing this as a reason for failure. The study, found that staffing issues are holding start-ups back and causing them to fail because it means they lack the skills to execute on ideas. The second most popular reason cited for start-up failure was a lack of funding, with 26 percent of respondents citing this as their main issue. Web development was cited as most sought after skill, with 38 percent of respondents saying this was the most important recruitment area for them, and demand for technical roles was higher than demand for non-technical roles.

Indeed, 60 percent of those surveyed said they were looking for people to fill technical roles, while 40 percent said they were looking for staff to fill business development and sales positions. Startup Institute founder Aaron O’Hearn said: “It is alarming to see the extent of staffing challenges in the startup community. While there is much talk about start-up hubs thriving, there is a real danger they won’t reach their full potential because the talent pipeline is not strong enough. “Short on time and resources, founders are struggling to find new recruits who can add immediate value in fast-moving teams. This is a worrying trend and it’s important to bring this to the public’s attention as high-growth technology companies continue to play a bigger role in the economy. Governments are thankfully taking note and I hope initiatives such as the Year of Code in the UK will be successful.” — Sam Shead

process,” he says. “Buying from a startup can be good, but you need to make sure the fledging does not get killed before it has learned to fly. You should be prepared to provide a helping hand.” One of the biggest issues both CIOs and entrepreneurs cite relates to product support—something that can overwhelm the startup and leave the enterprise frustrated. At Red Robin, Laping engaged San Francisco-based Firespotter Labs, which had developed an application for iPads named NoshList. It’s essentially a self-service waiting list that texts walk-in customers when their table is ready. Though such a capability is more common today, Laping says, he believes that Red Robin was one of the first national chains to tackle this. Even though he had “never had a support issue” with Firespotter, when Red Robin launched the NoshList pilot, Laping initially made it available to only 50 restaurants, with the proviso that the restaurant staff itself had to be prepared to provide support. Laping insisted that the employees use the chain’s internal social network to

share support questions and answers among themselves, rather than banging on his IT staff. Another method: Let the startup train IT staff to provide tier 1 support, while still relying on the startup for tier 2 support. It’s also a good idea to protect yourself through various methods of acquiring the code for an application in the event a startup fails. These include setting up escrow accounts for the code, or—if the startup decides to take the company in a different direction—setting up a plan to acquire early versions of the code so, if needed, the enterprise can integrate it itself into its own ecosystem. CIOs may have to even go so far as to determine how working with untested companies may affect their reputation. “Think about whether it fits with your brand,” advises consultant Galbraith. A conservative bank that’s found to have used a security startup but still suffers a breach is not a story a CIO wants to see in the press. “But if you’re the Canadian space agency and you’re using a grid-computing startup, that’s okay,” Galbraith says, “because you’re supposed to be leading edge.” 

Focal Point EVERYTHING ABOUT MOBILITY

CLOUDS for Building

Mobile Apps Here are five MBaaS systems surveyed and summarized on their common grounds and key differences.

By Martin Heller

BAAS (MOBILE

back end as a service) is a fairly new product category that has largely supplanted MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms). Over the past two months, I’ve closely examined five MBaaS systems:

AnyPresence, Appcelerator, FeedHenry, Kinvey, and Parse. The general idea of MBaaS is that mobile apps need common services that can be shared among apps instead of being custom developed for each. Mobile apps using MBaaS follow a loosely coupled distrib-

uted architecture, and MBaaS systems themselves typically always have more distributed architectures than MEAP systems, which tended to be unified middleware servers. MBaaS systems typically provide push notifications, file storage and sharing, integration with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, location services, messaging and chat functions, user management, the ability to run business logic, and usage analysis tools. Enterpriseoriented MBaaS systems also provide integration with existing applications and databases. Back ends don’t exist in isolation, so MBaaS systems provide some level of mobile client support. This ranges from exposing REST APIs to all comers to providing app generation for iOS, Android, some flavors of JavaScript, and perhaps other mobile platforms. In addition, back ends need to be customized and programmed, so MBaaS systems provide a combination of online and desktop development environments. Finally, back-end services are intended to be in continuous operation, so they need a level of application monitoring and error logging in addition to usage analysis. Monitoring and analytics might be provided directly by the MBaaS vendor or through integration with a thirdparty service. For extra credit, MBaaS systems can generate mobile SDKs. This is most useful when a vendor is exposing its services to partners doing mobile app development. In addition, MBaaS systems can

support offline operation of their mobile apps and offline/online database synchronization. MBaaS systems may provide their own mobile device management or integrate with an MDM vendor. MBaaS systems may also support device-specific services where appropriate, such as iBeacon on iOS devices.

COMMONALITIES AND DIFFERENTIATORS In the course of reviewing FeedHenry, Kinvey, Appcelerator, Parse, and AnyPresence, certain capabilities and implementations became very familiar. For example, all five MBaaS products provide storage using MongoDB, an open source NoSQL document database that stores JSON objects. All of these products provide a data design UI for their MongoDB data store, and these UIs all look similar. It wouldn’t surprise me if the UIs were all based on the same MongoDB sample code. All five MBaaS systems are available in a multitenant cloud. All have online documentation. All provide push notification and user authentication APIs. All support native iOS and Android apps at some level, and all have some way for developers to implement custom server logic. The differentiators between these products are telling. For example, their support for integration with enterprise applications and databases ranges from the basic ability to call external REST interfaces that return JSON to deep integrations with common applications and databases. The time required for a developer to implement a given enter-

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n FOCAL POINT | MOBILITY prise integration with an MBaaS ranges from days down to minutes, depending on how much of the work a given MBaaS vendor has already done for a specific integration. Some MBaaS systems are available on-premise, and some are available in private clouds. Some can be hosted in compliance with HIPAA, PCI, FIPS, and EU data security standards. Some have their own testing capabilities, and some offer cloud builds of mobile apps. Some support HTML5 and hybrid apps. Some compile JavaScript to native device code. Some support PhoneGap, some support Apache Cordova, and some avoid both wrappers for hybrid apps in favor of other solutions, such as generating native apps.

As we’ll see, the different MBaaS vendors have targeted slightly different markets and made slightly different technical choices. Nevertheless, they have a high degree of overlap and commonality.

ANYPRESENCE The goal of AnyPresence is not only to help enterprises build back ends for their mobile apps. AnyPresence combines app building, back-end services, and an API gateway. AnyPresence has an online designer that generates back-end code, mobile app code, and even customized mobile API code. All the generated code can be downloaded, edited, and run on compatible platforms. To cite one of AnyPresence’s favorite customer examples, Mas-

AnyPresence generates back-end servers for Ruby on Rails. In the future it will also generate Node. js back ends, which will be a good development. The AnyPresence environment can generate deployments to Heroku (usually for a Rails back end) to Amazon S3 (usually for HTML5 apps) to native iOS and Android apps with or without Apperian security. You aren’t limited by AnyPresence’s deployment choices, however. The generated code can always be downloaded and deployed elsewhere, assuming you have compatible deployment environments. The AnyPresence design environment exists online and runs in most browsers. The design environment has a dashboard; a settings screen; screens to create

sign environment and into all the generated code. The place you add most monitoring integrations, such as Airbrake and New Relic, is hidden deep in the Deployments/Add-ons tab. Naturally, monitoring is dependent on the runtime environment, and AnyPresence is designed to be environment-agnostic. For Splunk integration, you have to enable syslog output on the back end to push all the logs/events into Splunk systems for reporting and monitoring.

APPCELERATOR Appcelerator Titanium has been a player in the mobile development space for several years, with a local development environment that compiles JavaScript to native code for iOS, Android, and other

All five MBaaS systems are available in a multi-tenant cloud. All have online documentation. All provide push notification and user authentication APIs. All support native iOS and Android apps at some level, and all have some way for developers to implement custom server logic. All of these products provide a data design UI for their MongoDB data store, and these UIs all look similar. Some run their back ends on Node.js, some on Rails, and some on unspecified platforms. Some support BlackBerry, Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, or Unity clients. Some have hosted app and back-end IDEs in their cloud, some provide multiplatform desktop IDEs, and some have desktop command-line interfaces for cloud control. Some support multiple popular JavaScript frameworks, such as Backbone and Angular, and some use their own JavaScript frameworks, which may be adaptations of specific open source frameworks. 32

terCard has used AnyPresence to enable partners to easily build mobile apps against MasterCard’s Open API services. AnyPresence generates app UIs (or starter kits, if you wish) for jQuery, Android (XML layout), and iOS (storyboard), and it generates app SDKs for Java, Android, HTML5, Windows Phone, Xamarin, and iOS. The design environment refers to the generated JavaScript/HTML5 SDK as “jQuery.” In fact, AnyPresence actually generates CoffeeScript that uses the Underscore, Backbone, and jQuery libraries.

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

and monitor environments, deployments, and builds; screens to generate and deploy apps, back ends, and SDKs; screens to add and manage data sources and data objects; screens for authorization, roles, and authentication strategy; screens for stock and custom extensions; the interface designer; and a customizable set of themes. I found the selection of data sources to be good and the implementation of the provided MongoDB data store to be on par with other MBaaS systems. What sets AnyPresence apart is the way the data model integrates throughout the de-

targets. With the release of Appcelerator Studio 3.3 and Appcelerator Platform 2.0 in July 2014, the company added an MBaaS with about 25 APIs, Node.js support, and online analytics. In addition, Appcelerator has published interfaces to its MBaaS that developers can add to apps built with native SDKs, although it hasn’t yet supported native SDKs in its own Appcelerator Studio IDE. Developers can see a quick overview of app installs, sessions, API calls, and crashes in the online Appcelerator dashboard overview page. Other parts of the dashboard allow for

cloud management, testing, performance metrics, and analytics. The Cloud panel shows usage, exposes data management, displays API request and push notification logs, lists custom services, and allows for cloud configuration. The testing panel uses SOASTA’s TouchTest as an integrated mobile testing solution. The performance panel allows you to monitor your apps and troubleshoot performance, crashes, and exceptions. It also lets you view crash trends, integrate with bug tracking systems, and configure your monitoring. Developers can define and view Appcelerator analytics online, as well as optionally publish selected analytics to the Appcelerator Insights app for the iPad, typically for use by a manager. Appcelerator Platform allows you to build custom back-end services using Studio and Appcelerator’s Node.ACS MVC (modelview-controller) framework. Node.ACS combines Node.js and Express with interfaces to Appcelerator Cloud Services. Appcelerator also allows you to run plain Node.js applications on its cloud platform. Appcelerator has multiple frameworks on the client side, and multiple API types for the cloud. At the base level on the client, Appcelerator offers the Titanium SDK, which provides an interface between JavaScript and native services. At a higher level, Appcelerator offers the Alloy Framework, which is based on the model-viewcontroller architecture and contains built-in support for Backbone and Underscore. When you create a

new client app from Studio, you typically generate one that uses Alloy. The Alloy framework handles some of what you need for offline/online data synchronization, but not all of it. Appcelerator lacks preconfigured, vetted enterprise data connectors other than for SAP and Salesforce.com. However, because it can run Node modules on its Node.ACS service, developers can

FeedHenry 3 supports native SDKs for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8, along with hybrid apps using Apache Cordova, HTML5 mobile Web apps, and Sencha, Xamarin, and Appcelerator Titanium. The way the JavaScript interface to the FeedHenry cloud works, it is hard to find a JavaScript framework that isn’t compatible. When writing for Feed-

in its curated modules list. That list includes interfaces to most major relational and NoSQL databases. Should the curated list not include what you seek, the much larger list of Node community modules is likely to yield a match. FeedHenry runs on all major public and private clouds, and on a wide range of IaaS and PaaS infrastructures. FeedHenry operates a HIPAA-

The goal of AnyPresence is not only to help enterprises build back ends for their mobile apps. AnyPresence combines app building, back-end services, and an API gateway. It has an online designer that generates back-end code, mobile app code, and even customized mobile API code, which can be downloaded, edited, and run on compatible platforms. draw on modules from the Node.js community. Appcelerator’s only commercial sync server is currently limited to a Microsoft Dynamics connector.

FEEDHENRY FeedHenry, with a focus on supporting enterprise line-of-business apps, is a Node.js-based, enterpriseoriented MBaaS and mobile application platform. It has a wide array of integrations, both online and offline development options, collaborative app building, and a drag-and-drop form builder. FeedHenry was spun off from the Irish Research Institute in 2010 and acquired by Red Hat in September 2014. FeedHenry claims to have global infrastructure on all major clouds and support for on-premise, back-end deployment. The FeedHenry online environment integrates directly with GitHub for collaboration and version control.

Henry in JavaScript, you include the feedhenry.js script in your HTML, initialize it with $fh.init, then call cloud functions from the $fh namespace. FeedHenry can import existing apps from a Zip or Git file. The FeedHenry build service, which functions along the same lines as Adobe PhoneGap Build, can turn an HTML5 app into binaries for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, iOS (universal), and Windows Phone. Each binary can connect to one of your MBaaS instances, and it can be built for development, distribution, release, or debugging, depending on the platform. FeedHenry has a dragand-drop form builder with a good assortment of templates to use as starting points. However, at the time I reviewed FeedHenry, it had few full-fledged app templates. FeedHenry lists more than 50 Node.js plug-ins

compliant cloud and live clusters in both Europe and North America.

KINVEY Kinvey bills itself as a complete mobile and Web app platform. It has extensive client support, integrates with the major enterprise databases, and offers a back-end data store, a file store, push notifications, mobile analytics, iBeacon support, and the ability to run custom code on the back end. Kinvey sells to IT as its primary customer because it provides an enterprise platform, not for one or two apps but for tens or hundreds of apps for an enterprise. However, it also engages and supports the developer community app by app. Kinvey supports native, hybrid, and HTML5 apps. It has native toolkit support for iOS and Android. In addition, it supports Angular, Backbone, Node.js, Apache

DECEMBER 2014

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD

n FOCAL POINT | MOBILITY Cordova/PhoneGap, and Appcelerator Titanium, and it provides a REST API. Kinvey integrates with apps through libraries and API calls, and expects you to edit your app locally. Kinvey cloud code is written in JavaScript, although not Node.js, and edited online. In addition to using standard JavaScript and external services, it can use Kinvey APIs for logging, accessing collections, sending push notifications, sending email, validating requests, date and time functions, asynchronous processing, rendering a Mustache template, and obtaining the back-end context.

Directory in the business and enterprise versions. Kinvey also supports Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn identities through OAuth. Kinvey data links connect to Kinvey’s MongoDB data store. In most cases, customers forward the CRUD requests directly to the real back end, but some cache the data in MongoDB. Kinvey currently has data links for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce CRM, Oracle Database, and Microsoft SQL Server. Kinvey has an automated control setup for offline data synchronization, in which data is automatically pulled from the cache if the

with good native client support and a JavaScript client SDK based on Backbone. Parse also runs JavaScript code on the back end, which offers developers the option of an all-JavaScript application stack. On the minus side, Parse is missing big pieces necessary for business apps, such as data integration, offline operation, and online/offline synchronization. At the same time, its pricing seems geared to lowervolume apps. Parse supports native mobile, JavaScript, and desktop apps. On the mobile side, it has native support for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8. On the

droid, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8. In each case, you’ll have to provision your push server, then provide the certificate or credentials to your app. Parse has a fairly complete user system predefined, including the usual sign-up mechanism with email verification and a provision for anonymous users. A system of ACLs controls what data individual users can read and write. For more complicated use cases, Parse supports a hierarchy of roles, with a separate layer of ACLs for the roles. Parse has nine integrations with other services. Three of them — Mailgun,

FeedHenry claims to have global infrastructure on all major clouds and support for on-premise, back-end deployment. Its online environment integrates directly with GitHub for collaboration and version control. It has a wide array of integrations, both online and offline development options, collaborative app building, and a drag-and-drop form builder. Cloud code can live in hook processing functions and custom endpoints. Cloud code is versioned internally in Kinvey. Kinvey supports deploying on almost any cloud, including private clouds. That includes deploying to HIPAA-compliant facilities and to facilities located entirely in the EU. Even Kinvey’s multitenant cloud is considered secure enough for most apps, as the company does end-to-end encryption, and customers that use data links can keep their data in databases behind their own firewalls. If you have a Google App Engine server, you can link it to your Kinvey back end. Authentication can be done internally by Kinvey or through LDAP or Active 34

application is offline. If the application is online, data is pulled from the network and stored in the cache. Using automated control, your Kinvey app will attempt to synchronize any locally stored data when the device goes online again, but if the server data has also changed you’ll have a conflict. You can set your conflict resolution policy toclientAlwaysWins, serverAlwaysWins, or a custom conflict resolution function.

PARSE Parse was once the poster child for MBaaS, and despite its acquisition by Facebook, it is still a viable, low-friction mobile back end for limited-volume consumer apps. On the plus side, it is well-documented,

INDIAN CHANNELWORLD DECEMBER 2014

desktop, it has support for OS X and Windows 8, as well as Unity games. Parse lets you run JavaScript code in the cloud using the same Parse JavaScript SDK as the client. Rather than have you routinely edit your cloud code in a browser, as FeedHenry and Kinvey do, Parse supplies a command-line tool for managing code in Parse Cloud and allows you to use your favorite JavaScript editor on your computer. However, you can view your code and your logs in your dashboard. The command-line tool is an app scaffold generator, app deployment tool, log printer, app rollback tool, and self-updater. Parse can send Push notifications to iOS, An-

Mandrill, and SendGrid —are for sending email. Stripe is for charging credit cards. Twilio sends SMS and voice messages. Third-party modules are available to integrate Parse with Cloudinary, Instagram, and Paymill. As far as I can tell, implementing enterprise data integration with Parse requires writing a REST Web service wrapper for the data source and a JavaScript module for Parse. I haven’t seen any options for hosting Parse other than using its own multitenant cloud.

MOI BETTER MBAAS As you can see from the scores listed at the bottom of the first page of this article, AnyPresence earned

the highest marks: a combined score of 9.1 and an Editor’s Choice badge. I feel that AnyPresence offers more value than the others for enterprises that need to integrate their existing systems with mobile applications, as it generates customized SDKs, along with apps and back ends, from your model and design. Costing a “low six figures” per year, however, it won’t fit into every company’s budget. FeedHenry, which earned an overall score of 8.6, is also an enterpriseoriented MBaaS. FeedHenry has a nice integration with Git for collaboration and version control, and I like its hosted app build service, its Node.js back end and curated Node modules list, and its drag-anddrop form designer. Like

AnyPresence, FeedHenry may not fit into every company’s budget. Kinvey, with an overall product score of 8.3, engages as a company with the developer community, as well as with corporate IT departments. I like the way Kinvey does enterprise data links through its internal NoSQL database API, and I appreciate the way it has structured its hooks for back-end business logic. I criticized Appcelerator for its apparent lack of effort to curate data integration modules, and considered that its high price relative to FeedHenry and Kinvey may diminish its overall value, giving it a net score of 7.8. However, Appcelerator as a company only recently pivoted into the MBaaS space. It may yet fill in its product’s missing functionality

BECAUSE

Better information EQUALS

and adjust its pricing to be more competitive. Finally, I consider Parse suitable for building and operating back ends for consumer-facing mobile apps, and not business apps, given its lack of any data connectors other than a basic REST client. My other

Kinvey is a complete mobile and Web app platform. It has extensive client support, integrates with the major enterprise databases, and offers a back-end store. major reservation about Parse is its usage-based pricing, which lets a developer get started easily but could potentially bite an underfunded startup that suddenly had a viral hit on its hands without a real business model. Its score

“ We encourage partners to chalk out a long-term strategy, each time an organization needs a new security widget. - Andrew Littleproud, President, McAfee

Better business Read the latest interviews from the biggest names of leading IT organisations on their company direction, technology roadmap and channel strategies.