CLS 2019
CLS 2019: SPOTLIGHT ON CHANNEL PARTNER SUPREMACIES Over a hundred Indian IT channel partners, channel focused technology companies and thought leaders gathered at CRN Channel Leadership Summit (CLS) and Excellence Awards 2019. The event was held from 22-24 November 2019 at Hyatt Regency, Pune Sandhya Michu and Moumita Deb Choudhury moumita.choudhury@expressindia.com sandhya.michu @expressindia.com
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hannel partners have always been indisputable leaders in the IT space. Be it the vendor companies or organisations and establishments, they all swear by the potential of the channel partners. The Indian IT channel community has been evolving from time-to-time and has set benchmarks to reckon with. Their endeavours have powered and enabled endeavours of innumerable businesses – large and small. To recognise them and to shine the spotlight on their superlative efforts and exceptional work, CRN India organised 2019 edition of its flagship Channel Leadership Summit (CLS). Held from November 22 to 24 at Hyatt Regency, Pune, the summit served as an extraordinary platform for vendors and channel partners to deliberate on the prospects for business growth, emerging technologies and the growing role of channel in digital transformation, financial stability and technological empowerment within the IT channel business. They introspected on the prowess to tackle key business
challenges faced by the Tier I and Tier II markets and tap potential opportunities underlying in these regions. The third edition of CLS 2019 began with a fireside chat with one of the industry veterans, Devendra Taneja, Managing Director, PC Solution, who jogged the audience’s memory about his initial business struggle and how his business evolved from a timid PC distributor to a new-age cloud partner. This gripping session was conducted by Srikanth RP, Group Editor, Express Computer and CRN India. Taneja further shared insights on business models that work for the PC business. He shared with his fellow partners, how his farsightedness helped the business to move on to new technology before it gets commoditised.
Nurturing growth In a session, Venkatraman Swaminathan, VP & Country GM, India & SAARC, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric, deliberated on the topic, 'Maximise your profitability with Edge Computing'. In a comprehensive presentation, he spoke about how Edge Computing is going to be a big business opportunity for partners. Swaminathan talked about the company's channel roadmap and recent
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use cases in digital transformation. He emphasised on channel preparedness for tapping Edge Computing opportunities. Kaushal Veluri, Director, Channel Ecosystem, NetApp India took over the stage and talked on, 'Any Cloud, One Experience'. In his session, Veluri emphasised that digital transformation requires IT transformation and data has to play an important role in the process of digital transformation. He was of the opinion that the channel should keep their business plans based on millennial influenced technology trends. Lata Singh, Executive Director, Partner Ecosystem & CSI, IBM India, informed about the growing channel business at IBM and how the company is becoming more channel-friendly than ever before. She set out plans for the channel after the IBM-Red Hat acquisition, as workloads are moving to Linux, and as business needs elasticity and not just deployment.
Getting future-ready In a panel discussion titled, 'How tech partners can survive and compete in the age of apps, ML, and AI', leading channel stalwarts shared insight shared that insights. The panel