The Grid Issue 02

June 2014 | Issue 02

Charging ahead

Spearheading the channel space by being at the forefront of innovation

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CONTENTS

04

Management speak

05

Profiles

07

CA

08

Citrix

09

Dell

11

Intel

12

McAfee

13

Microsoft

17

Components

18

Brocade

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June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

3

Management speak

Gear up for tomorrow

Mario Gay, General Manager, Mindware

W

e are delighted to present the first edition of The Grid— a publication that aims to be your go-to guide when it comes to business information and updates. In this issue, you will find interviews with our product managers and vendors to gain a better insight in to what lies

ahead for us.

The year has begun well with most of the growth coming from cloud, Big Data and mobility. You will notice that our vendors too are focusing largely on these trends.

Although there has been a flurry of activities around cloud and related services, we believe this part of business will further consolidate in the coming years. And more and more companies today, are seeing the immense opportunities Big Data analytics can bring into the market. It can go a long way in shaping the strategies of tomorrow and can also help in being closer to the final customers.

The region has seen a tremendous uptake of tablets in the last few months. However, how this space will map out is something we will have to wait and watch. With the market being extremely volatile, it is important for partners and vendors alike, to be in sync with the changing demands and expectations of the customers, in order to grow.

In fact, the need of the hour is to be a step ahead and anticipate the evolving demands.

Therefore, it is important to gear up as technology is becoming public knowledge by the day and more a part of the future than ever before.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue. Do write to us with your feedback and look forward to doing business with you in the coming months.

Capturing the growth

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Radwan Basheer, General Manager, Mindware, KSA

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TheGrid | Issue 02 June 2014

elcome to the inaugural issue of Mindware’s booklet—The Grid. Through this initiative, we aim to keep you informed with the latest news and updates from our vendor-partners across different regions.

We have had an in-country presence in the Saudi Arabian markets for the last five years. And I’m happy to share that the business has been growing at 10 to 14 percent year on year.

Like most markets, the KSA region also has its own challenges. The coalition in the market makes business decisions unpredictable. Companies are not as professional as they should be, making it difficult to have realistic forecasts. But that being said, it has definitely gotten better over time and I see it maturing even faster within the next couple of years.

Taking this scenario into consideration, we plan to expand our portfolio and work even more closely with resellers and partners in the region. We want to create initiatives that will further enable our partner community. One of our objectives this year, is to increase the number of partners. And we plan to do this through careful selection so that we continue to maintain the quality of standard of our partners. Our focus on partner training programmes helps to empower our partners further. We want our partners to think of us as strategic advisors when it comes to their business decision. And our partner programme is well in place to offer various initiatives such as rebate, discount or marketing.

We are extremely optimistic about the outlook for this region. We extend our expertise to you in every regard. As much as you will invest, we will invest better, therefore let’s go capture the growth together.

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Profile

Gaining traction The Grid speaks to Shadi Tahan, Solutions Unit Manager, MENA, Mindware, to gain an overview of the company’s strategies in the region.

What is your business objective for the current year?

In 2014, we plan to expand our incountry presence as being more on the ground will help us to understand better our clients’ priorities and challenges, which is key for us.

Could you discuss the company’s plans for this market?

We are investing more in security, storage and cloud resources to be aligned with this market’s big bets.

How do you plan to develop the business here? Are there any marketing or expansion strategies in place?

We are mainly focusing on increasing the number of sales and technical resources on the ground in each country to support our partners.

W

hat strengths do you bring to the table with your experience?

I believe my experience of 10 years of regional distribution with deep understanding of the supply chain and market potential for each country vertical and technology have been my biggest strengths till date.

Could you discuss the importance of the MENA region for the company?

Mindware is present only in the Middle East North Africa region. It is one of the highest growing regions and offers immense opportunities in the ICT business. Also, this region has a fast uptake of new technologies.

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“Mindware has a customercentric culture and we see ourselves as an extra hand to our partners and vendors”

Shadi Tahan, Solutions Unit Manager, MENA, Mindware

What kind of challenges do you face here?

Each country in MENA has its own dynamics and needs on all fronts, be it technology, logistics or finance.

Therefore, we tailor our offerings to fit accordingly.

Can you discuss any market trends that you have noticed here?

Cloud is getting more traction in addition to data security in the region.

Companies are open to experiment with cloud solutions and also understand that security is a musthave add on.

Anything else you would like to add?

Mindware has a customer-centric culture and we see ourselves as an extra hand to our partners and vendors.

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

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Profile

Modus operandi The Grid discusses about the updated ERP system and more with Wissam Hajj, Regional Operations Manager, Mindware.

C

an you give us a brief overview of the ERP system?

How has the update improved operations?

Our updated ERP, which is designed to run on Microsoft Windows Server platform, has enhanced operations in several ways.

Quotation management & control has now improved. The update has helped automate the Quotation conversion into sales orders & integration with B2B where applicable. And also has automated the Credit Control management process & approvals thus speeding up the credit decision process. Now there is a better back-log management for both the Purchasing & Sales Order. And other enhancements include better inventory, stock aging, and stock depreciation control, enhanced cashflow management and faster response to business needs.

What are the benefits for the vendors and other partners?

Our System segments our partners horizontally in the areas they’re addressing, i.e. Enterprise - Midsize Enterprise – SMB and so on, and vertically in function of the ‘Vertical Market’ they’re dealing with or supporting like banking, public administration, oil & gas, media, hospitality, service and retail.

Both our ERP & CRM combined can target the right market sector with the right promotional campaigns with the right material and products.

Could you take us through the Order-to-Delivery processing at the company?

Order-To-Delivery Process all these activities are driven by our ERP system.

First, the Back-office team processes the Sales Order. The Credit team then

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TheGrid | Issue 02 June 2014

checks the credit limit of the customer and approves the sales order for purchasing. After which, the Purchase team checks the “TO Order Report”. All Sales Orders approved for purchase by credit team gets listed in this report.

Purchase Team places PO with the vendor. Wherever the vendor is equipped with B2B automation, the Purchase Orders placed in our ERP system automatically gets submitted to vendor via Biztalk Server (B2B automation). This helps us in avoiding the duplicate task of placing purchase order through the vendor’s website.

Then receives the Invoice from vendor through Biztalk Server (B2B automation) where applicable and also receives the stock against the PO by our warehouse teams. For back to back orders, system will trigger alerts to the concerned sales person notifying them of the stock arrival.

The Sales team, then, checks the Sales

Wissam Hajj, Regional Operations Manager, Mindware

Order backlog and identifies the Orders to be released and gets the approval from the Credit team. The Warehouse team checks ‘To Ship’ report. This report lists the Sales Orders which are ready for Invoicing. The Warehouse team then reserves the stock against sales orders/ prepare the picking list. And the same team packs the items and Invoices the Sales Order. Finally, the customer collects the items from our premises, or the items are dispatched to customers through the designated freight forwarder.

What kind of innovation can we expect to see this year?

There will be more automation and integration where possible. And we plan to enhanced Data Mining & BI. There will be continuous technological improvement by updating and ugrading our technological infrastructure to enhance security, reliability and speed up our business response timing. In terms of customers, we are in the process of implementing a new partner portal. Our objective is to achieve the following tasks with this new Partner portal: Partner Registration: Any prospective customer should be able to register with us through our portal to become a partner.

Tracking Order Status: Our partners should have the facility to track the status of all their pending orders with us.

Document management: Partners logging on to the Portal only see the documents they are authorized to see.

Partners should have the facility to view/ download documents like invoices and statement of account.

RMA Management: Partners should have the facility to submit RMA requests and they should be able to track the RMA status via portal.

Publishing Promotions/News: Our partners should have access to our latest promotions/events/news via our partner portal.

Order management for promotional items: For any promotional Items, our partners should be able to place orders with us via our port. www.mindware.ae

CA

Safeguarding data Hussein Moghnieh, Channel Manager, CA, on how partners can maximise the opportunities present in data protection solutions.

And for our MSPs and other service provider partners, we’ve now documented our APIs to ease integration with their platforms, added ‘JumpStart’ data seeding to accelerate protection at remote sites, and new MSP-friendly reporting that lets them easily monitor customer implementations.

Hussein Moghnieh, Channel Manager, CA

www.mindware.ae

C

ould you elaborate on the features of Unified Data Protection?

Our new arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP) really is featurerich solution. There are more than 30 new marquee features in the product designed to give customers a full spectrum of enterprise-strength data protection, yet delivered in a simple, user-friendly fashion.

On top of the new unified architecture, some new features include Workflow-based Protection Plans that let users easily dial up or down their protection schemes to match business needs, a new web-based user interface and management console, extended virtual machine protection with agentless protection for both VMware and now Microsoft Hyper-V environments, and continuous, full-system replication and high availability for near-instant recovery of an entire system.

What is the technology behind this solution?

The foundation of arcserve UDP lies in the new unified architecture as well as the new Recovery Point Server, which combined drive a full range of highly efficient data protection capabilities for physical and virtual environments.

The resource-saving Recovery Point Server is the heart of the new solution, combining global source-side de-duplication, integrated blocklevel replication, AES 256-bit level encryption, and cascading retention policies. Because of the Recovery Point Server, customers can ease the strain on network bandwidth and storage resources.

How is it different from other data protection solutions?

The challenge is that mid-sized businesses are trying to keep up with rapid data growth while combining physical, virtual and cloud systems, but many of them are finding that specialized data protection ‘point’ solutions are too limited in scope for their environment, and that largeenterprise solutions are too costly and difficult to implement. With arcserve UDP, we’re bridging the gap – giving average mid-sized businesses a functionally-complete alternative to the cost and complexity of deploying

multiple point solutions or the behemoth high-end solutions that were really designed for large enterprises.

How can CA’s partners bring more value to this solution?

We sell arcserve UDP entirely through a two-tier distribution channel, and it includes a number of service provider and value-added reseller-friendly features, so we are very much focused on ways partners can add value.

Partners around the world are adding very profitably data protection service offerings to their portfolio based around the arcserve solution.

What are opportunities in this space for the partners?

Analysts have predicted that by 2016, one-third of organizations will have changed their backup product due to frustrations over cost and complexity.

This is a tremendous opportunity for partners to look at the current solution portfolio and add a data protection offering if they don’t already have one.

And if they do already have one, but it involves multiple products or it’s just not tailored to a partner model, it’s a great time to consider arcserve.

What are some of the trends here?

New technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization are two major driving forces currently, but they also add complexity to the IT environment from a management and protection standpoint.

Anything else you like to highlight?

The simplified pricing we’ve set for arcserve UDP is also worth a look. We’ve substantially altered the pricing model, offering all arcserve technology in different combinations using a goodbetter-best methodology and three purchasing types: per-terabyte, persocket and per-workstation. This makes it extremely easy for customers to select and purchase the exact right mix of functionality to meet their specific needs and budget.

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

7

Citrix

Matters of mobility The Grid speaks to Vijay Kumar, Citrix Business Unit Manager, Mindware, to understand the complexities of enterprise mobility.

C

ould you briefly discuss the solutions and offerings from Citrix on enterprise mobility?

In order to be be effective, people need to operate without the boundaries of location, time or technology. Closing deals, building relationships, managing finances and driving strategic value with agility is the demand of today’s global economy. With the acceptance of BYOD and IT consumerization, enterprise mobility is now a must have solution for many organizations.

Citrix solutions for enterprise mobility allow for the management and security of mobile apps, data and devices in the workplace, including, Mobile Device Management, Mobile Application Management, Mobile Information Management and other mobile enablement technologies, such as secure email apps or remote support.

How do you work around the security issues that come with enterprise mobility?

Enterprise mobility allows workers to become more productive and gives them the freedom of using their own devices, but it also increases security risks. While mobile security concerns range from passcode enforcement to device encryption, data breach, data leakage, network protection and stolen /lost devices are at the top of the list for implementers of mobile work style programs.

From a security perspective, organizations need a solution that provides them with tools to proactively monitor, control and protect the enterprise from end to end, across devices, apps, data and the network.

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TheGrid | Issue 02 June 2014

Vijay Kumar, Business Unit Manager, Mindware

Citrix products for managing enterprise mobility enable organizations to conduct business from anywhere, on any device, while still meeting security and compliance mandates. With Citrix solution you can set granular policies, block access based on compliance status, protect your corporate network from bad or non-compliant applications, distribute documents to secure document containers or users and monitor mobile user activity regardless of device ownership. If it’s a company owned device you can wipe it clean and if it’s an employee owned device you can remove your corporate data without impacting the personal apps and data of the user.

Hence, your corporate information is always secure.

Citrix XenMobile delivers the real-time defense enterprises need to capture the business opportunities that mobile business brings while safeguarding corporate IP, customer and employee

data, non-public financial information, and business intelligence. With cloudbased and on premise offerings, Citrix lets IT professionals secure and manage the most comprehensive array of mobile devices, gain visibility into and control over mobile apps, and shield the corporate network from mobile threats.

How has the reception of customers been, in terms of adopting and embracing BYOD and related solutions and trends, in the region?

With the explosion of tablets and smart phones, the region’s customers have been slow in embracing this technology.

However, in the recent months, the pace of adoption to these technologies have picked up and we have seen various successful live implementations in the region. We have seen clients adopting the enterprise mobility in stages.

Let’s Get Mobile: Many customers start by getting their users mobile by delivering basic Mobile Device Management (MDM) capabilities with XenMobile MDM and then providing users access to email using the native email client. In addition, they know that with email and email attachments, they need to find a way to solve the DropBox problem and turn to ShareFile, which is much more corporate and secure solution.

Complete Mobile Experience: In the final stage, users want to be able to access to all their apps – Windows desktop apps, SaaS, web and other mobile apps.

How are the channel partners playing a role in your business?

As the channel partners are closer to the end customer, they are the first to know of their requirements. Mindware is engaged with its channel partners in enabling the sales and technical team of partners. This would empower our partners to address these demands on Enterprise Mobility in a much more mature and knowledgeable way.

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Dell

Engaging with enterprise Anand Dathatreya, Dell Enterprise Product Manager, Mindware, sheds light on Dell’s enterprise business in the region.

W

hat is the business focus for Dell?

Mindware focuses on Dell Commercial business, which constitutes Dell clients (Desktops/Laptops) and enterprise products, viz., Dell servers/storage solutions, across UAE and Gulf.

Its prime goal is to achieve the maximum share from the corporate and the SMB market, offering technology solutions.

How much growth is expected from the enterprise business this year?

The Middle East is still one of the fastest growing markets in the world so there is huge scope for further expansion, across the regions.

“Areas like data centre solutions, data storage and virtualization are shaping purchasing decisions in the commercial sector.” www.mindware.ae

How do you plan to increase the growth further in the region?

From a channel perspective, we are always looking to adapt our offering in line with the changing technology and landscape.

We strive to increase our channel breadth across the regions to achieve the maximum mind-share, of the local channels, who are being approached by our respective country managers.

We evolve partner programs for the SMB channels and ensure that partners are up-to-date in an ever-changing world of technology and business solutions.

What are the solutions being offered to enterprise?

Mindware thrives on Dell’s strong IT solutions portfolio to address customer needs.

With the vendor’s support, we provide a set of technology solutions that span from the device to the data centre to virtual solutions that so capably address customer requirements.

The breadth of Mindware’s offering ensures that we can meet the requirements of all customers, whether they are an SMB channel or a major international corporation.

Dell’s enterprise chiefly encompasses solutions on servers, storage, networking and virtual solutions.

What do you believe is lacking in the enterprise segment?

True value-add distribution that can

Anand Dathatreya, Dell Enterprise Product Manager, Mindware

offer end-to-end solutions to the resellers in the market is still a maturing area in this segment.

The role of our value partners is to form an extended arm for Dell’s presence in the Middle East.

They should provide value-added services with our support, for us to reach areas and end-users, which we can’t do directly.

What is your outlook for this segment?

Areas such as data centre solutions, data storage and virtualization are shaping purchasing decisions in the commercial sector. This translates into significant sales opportunities for our channel partners, whose roles as trusted advisors ensures they are in an ideal position to provide the solutions that customers need.

Mindware, as one of Dell distributors for enterprise products, look forward to a strong business relations in the corporate channel segment.

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

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Introducing the Revolutionary Dell PowerEdge VRTX The perfect balance of Servers, Storage, Networking and Systems Management – All in a compact package.

Powered by Intel ® Xeon ® processors To learn more visit Dell.com/VRTX

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©Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Intel

Towards a connected future Firas Alfanney, Regional Sales Manager for the Middle East & North Africa region, Intel, shares insights with The Grid about the company’s future plans, new products and the way ahead.

C

ould you discuss some highlights of the company in the past year?

Intel is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and we’ve seen 25 plus years of consecutive years of positive net income. Last year was no exception to that. In brief, we posted revenues of $52.7B with an operating profit of $12.3B. We continued to invest in research and development and enable more affordable technology for emerging markets.

For the channel specifically, we brought the first Intel-based tablets to market and you’ll be seeing a lot more of those devices coming this year.

Following Intel’s acquisition of McAfee, we also enabled our distribution channel to sell McAfee products and the response has been fantastic. Another product I want to mention here is the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) we’ve seen rapidly growing interest in from our channel partners.

Could you elaborate on NUC? What are its key features?

The NUC (Next Unit of Computing) is a really innovative product which puts the performance of a desktop in a form factor, which fits in the palm of your hand. The 4-inches square form factor gives users flexibility to use it in a number of applications. And it also opens up new markets such as digital signage, digital kiosks, thin clients and of course fulfils traditional PC usage models such as a home theatre PC. There’s an Intel NUC YouTube channel which shows some really innovative uses. Also, we now have NUC models with 2.5” HDD (Hard Disk Drive) support which gives

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centre applications. So whether you are a gamer or looking after critical enterprise applications, there’s an Intel SSD that will cater to your need. And there are different densities from 80GB to 800GB to cover the capacity needs of users today.

What kind of innovations has Intel got for tablets? Can you share some developments that we can expect in the future?

Intel based tablets run on the X86 architecture and brings PC like performance and compatibility to the tablet form factor. Right now we are focused on designing products which will enable the best experiences on tablets. There will be a number of tablets coming to market this year from both our LOEM and MNC partners.

Also to mention, Intel based tablets support both the Android and Windows operating systems.

Firas Alfanney, Regional Sales Manager for the Middle East & North Africa region, Intel

users the option to choose between using a SSD (Solid State Drive) or HDD. For the models which support HDD, the chassis is slightly larger to accommodate the HDD.

What’s new in the CPU world?

One if the things Intel has been working on has been to remove conflict minerals from our supply chain. Conflict minerals come from the Democratic Republic of Congo and violent militias control their trade and exploit workers. I’m proud to tell you that Intel has manufactured the world’s first commercially available conflictfree processors and we will continue to work with our partners to have a conflict-free supply chain.

Can you talk about the SSD product range offered by Intel?

Intel has a wide range of SSD’s available via the channel for consumers, enthusiasts and data

Could you elaborate on Intel’s vision?

This decade we will create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth.

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

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McAfee

Integrating security The Grid converses with Maya Kreidy, Regional Channel Manager, GCC, McAfee, on the ever-evolving IT security landscape and the company’s channel strategy. purchased a single product. This is a fundamental shift. It is absolutely critical for organizations to connect the dots and get a clear view in real time of what is occurring on their IT System.

Maya Kreidy, Regional Channel Manager, GCC, McAfee,

C

ould you discuss how the perception of IT security has evolved in the last two years?

Most of the time customers, tell us, ‘look we have done our homework, we are compliant.’ However, security is no longer about having the best of breed security approach . Good enough is simply not enough! Being compliant for an audit does not protect your organization 24/7 365.

Unfortunately, you can easily have all the boxes ticked in terms of security and still have a high security exposure.

It’s not so much about ticking the boxes than about how these boxes are interconnected. It’s about connecting the dots, understanding the information, understanding it in real time and being able to take action.

It’s no longer about ‘can’, it’s about «how’? More and more, we are working with customers who are seeing that security is becoming highly integrated to their business rather than just being compliant because they have

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TheGrid | Issue 02 June 2014

How is the company keeping up with changing market demands? Are partners playing a role here?

Every year the threat landscape gets more sophisticated. In the early 2000s, when the world was getting online, attacks were much easier to spot.

Executed mostly by amateurs, the lack of security technology allowed them to be noisy. Unsophisticated detection techniques allowed common attacks to be run off of scripts that were shared within the hacker community. In addition, the business of black market data was in its infancy – leaving the majority of attacks to be untargeted and focused on curiosity and mischief. Over the past 10 years, security technology has become more sophisticated.

Intrusion prevention systems now inspect packets and files, endpoint security has moved beyond simple Antivirus to comprehensive security suites and organizations have learned that looking at security activity is important.

As security has grown more sophisticated, so has the business of cybercrime, the attackers and the techniques used to steal data, take down systems, and perform hacktivism.

No longer can prevention techniques alone serve to protect enterprises.

Finding this new ‘needle in a stack of needles’ requires an intelligent use of security data.

We have built a Cyber Defense Center in Dubai that is available to serve all the clients in the region. McAfee has acquired two companies in the last couple of years to strengthen our

portfolio and make sure we cover all areas in terms of advanced evasion techniques and advanced persistent threats.Our partners are helping us identify those holes in the market and target it to provide our services and spread the awareness about security and McAfee’s role in providing a holistic connected solution.

Could you discuss your channel strategy for the region?

McAfee’s go to market strategy is a two-tier model hence we rely on our value-added distributors and security specialized partners to drive and develop our business in the market. We are working closely with our partners to increase McAfee’s share of wallet within their security offerings.

We are certainly looking into expanding the business done with our existing partners by penetrating new verticals and fill the gap in the market on all levels of enterprise and SMB. We work with few strategic partners who are security focused and may have regional exposure.

Can you discuss the latest products from McAfee? Which is the bestselling category?

McAfee has recently acquired StoneSoft and a previous acquisition of ValidEdge has added to our network solution two new products.

The new Next Generation Firewall is expected to lead in the market especially after the integration with the other solution we have. The ATD or advanced threat defense is the other product that will be leading in the market, playing an important role in the sandboxing and finding, fixing, freezing a malware with a very high rate of detection and prevention by performing not only dynamic analysis but also static code analysis that is very rare and unique to McAfee in the market. Our IPS is still the best selling in the market and has shown to be number one in the latest NSS Labs report with 99.6 percent detection accuracy as shown in the latest NSS report.

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Microsoft

5

Things the channel needs to know Bruno Delamarre, SME & Channel Director, Microsoft Gulf, shares insights with The Grid.

1 2 3 4 5

Office 365 business now generates $1.5 billion annually for Microsoft. Do you have your share?

Partners who start selling cloud solutions see a 34 percent increase in new customers.

Cloud partners have 2.4X faster growth than traditional partners.

By September 2015, Microsoft will sell more cloud licenses for Office than onsite.

Of customers who buy cloud solutions, 70 percent are new and have not transacted previously.

www.mindware.ae

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

13

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Microsoft

On cloud nine

Jeff Jacob, Business Unit Manager, Mindware, says Microsoft’s cloud business is set to grow further in the region.

H

ow has the uptake of cloud solutions been in the region? How do you see it further consolidating?

Cloud computing has always been there in IT, it’s just that the terminologies have changed over time. In the past when people used Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail etc, no one realized that they were actually using the cloud.

Today with the nomenclature changing and SAAS as a concept being pursued by all vendors, has resulted in a huge amount of excitement and noise. About a couple of years ago, no one actually understood or believed that the cloud will be accepted by organizations. The Middle East, being slightly more conservative when compared to Europe and the US, has shown gradual interest in the cloud.

With Microsoft’s launch of ‘Office 365’, the cloud concept has shown rapid growth in the region. As per statistics, until the channel had access to the Office 365 SKUs, the direct online subscription model has already gained momentum in the region. With Microsoft’s strong push towards cloud and the number of cloud offerings increasing, we are sure to see a huge uptake of cloud in the region. We believe that the end customers, especially, large corporates and Governments will adopt a ‘Hybrid’ cloud model where mission critical and sensitive workloads will be based on an ‘on-premise’ hosting model and day-to-day routine workloads being shifted to the public cloud namely offerings such as Office 365.

Do you believe partners in the channel are capturing the complete potential of the market, when it comes to cloud?

In the initial avatar of Office 365, partners did not have much of a say in an Office

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is a recent addition to Microsoft’s product mix. Partners are seeing a great potential to incorporate and develop custom built solutions tailor made for the current mobile workforce, unleashing the great potential of Office 365’s Onedrive.

Why is the region a strategic one for the company?

As per analysts, the SMBs in the MEA region are the fastest growing in terms of mobile and ICT spend. The Governments in the region are the main drivers of this trend, primarily Qatar and UAE leading the way in terms of IT spend in the educational sector. Being a long time Microsoft distributor, we see Microsoft laying major emphasis on the SMB segment end customers in the region, especially with the Office 365 mid-size business SKU, which is the right fit for a typical SMB end customer. This offering is suitable for organizations ranging from 10 – 250 desktops. Another predicament we see is the tendency of SMBs for resorting to piracy to fulfill their IT requirements primarily due to budget constraints. This is an area where the cloud subscription model, which substantially cuts down IT spend, will bring in a major shift.

Jeff Jacob, Business Unit Manager, Mindware

365 sale since the model followed by Microsoft was a direct online sales one, with only an advisory role for the partner. But the launch of channel centric SKUs for Office 365 in the last fiscal year has given all partner types a chance to convert their end customers who are presently on the legacy software licensing models into the cloud model.

A few niche partners in the region are customizing feature specific solutions to bundle on top of an Office 365 sale, which is a great opportunity to upsell into the marketplace. A few areas where partners could leverage the uptake of cloud adoption would be telephony solutions incorporating lync and enterprise social networking apps such as Yammer, which

What are some of the future plans for Microsoft in the next couple of months?

We have received communications that Microsoft is intending to release the Windows Intune through the channel in the region soon. Windows Intune is an offering, which lets you manage PCs and mobile devices from the cloud. Previously, this offering was available only in select markets and only through the direct subscription model. Also one major deadline is approaching customers who are still on Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 as support for these versions are coming to an end on the 8th of April 2014. This provides a great opportunity for us as Microsoft partners to leverage the upgrade opportunities in the install base of XP and Office 2003.

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Components

In high spirits Seema Wadhwa, Business Unit Manager, Lenovo / Intel, Mindware shares details on the component business of the company and strategies for 2014.

Could you discuss the highlights about the overall component business that you are handling?

Mindware since early 1990’s is a leading IT products distributor in the MENA region and is part of $3 Billion group with channel strength of more than 2500 resellers. Components unit has always been a big-ticket revenue generator for the company and associations with Intel have made both Mindware and Intel synonyms of each other in the region.

Due to its dynamic nature, the components business is a very challenging business area. Besides CPUs, we have been handling other products such as Intel-based tablets, SSDs, NUS and McAfee. The business demands are such that we have to keep a constant update on the market requirements, technology trends and competition against the branded or white box PCs. To achieve the maximum revenue and profits possible, we have to remain alert at all times.

In early 2013, Mindware signed franchises with Lenovo. With Lenovo, we had a successful start with our focus, which was more on the OS business. We have seen commendable demand on products like Yoga, Tiny, X1 carbon and Workstations. The entire commercial Lenovo product range has helped us have an edge over our competitors.

How do you enable the channel partners to grow profitably? Do you have any initiatives planned for the second half of 2014?

We have excellent sales professionals in our team and they understand the

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needs of the channel and align them with the products portfolio we carry.

Our team’s objective is not merely closing orders, rather they employ their ability to understand trends and they advice the channel accordingly on stocks, pricing and compatibility with other associated products.

We have designed a partner loyalty programme in 2013, which has generated huge interest in our channel partners across the whole region and have helped them maximize their profits by being associated with Mindware on long-term commitment basis. Besides this, we keep our channel updated on the roadmap of products with which they ensure purchasing the right product at the right time at the right price, which is key to the success of the components business. Our investments in business applications and extensive communication and co-operation between our sales teams and internal teams like finance and logistics, ensure that our resellers have smooth transactions to ensure operational efficiency.

Could you discuss the strategies for the component business for 2014?

The components business is of dynamic nature. Hence, strategizing and optimizing the business needs is of utmost importance at all times.

On medium to large terms, we are on lookout of expanding our product portfolio so that we have more complimenting products to offer to our channel. In the short term, for 2014 our focus is to expand our reach by entering new territories and

Seema Wadhwa, Business Unit Manager, Lenovo / Intel, Mindware

recruiting new channel partners for the products we already carry. We are always looking at various approaches to maintain a balance between volumebased products and value-based solutions selling propositions. We will be leveraging all possible cross selling and up-selling propositions so that we maximize our revenues and our resellers can benefit by adding up more products and getting bulk discounts. We are also taking fresh initiatives to increase go-to market activities by participating in marketing events.

What are some of the trends you have noticed in this space?

In the current times, the market has become more sophisticated; sprouting new types of customers with demands for specialized products that span sectors like gaming, graphic development and other niches that did not exist so significantly before.

Technology and performance are of more significance at present in the channel, drifting focus from price, which held prime position in the past.

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

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Brocade

Lead with channel Eyad Aleriksousi, Business Unit Manager, Mindware, shares Brocade’s channel strategies and plans for the future with The Grid.

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ould you discuss how and why Brocade considers itself to be a value added vendor?

Brocade is an industry leader in Ethernet switching and routing, campus networking, application delivery, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

Brocade develops extraordinary networking solutions that enable today’s complex data-intensive businesses to optimize information connectivity and maximize the business value of their data.

We can say that always partners being evolved into a ‘value-added reseller’ and yes Brocade has adopted the same principles to support partners as a ‘value-added vendor’, through assured technology they provide, the peace of mind to customers through lifetime warranty for campus switches, lining partner’s and customer’s pockets by supporting partners with healthy margins and customers with good pricings with great savings on TCO compared to competitors, on top of the channel loyalty program.

Eyad Aleriksousi – Business Unit Manager, Mindware

“All the initiatives focus on enabling and scaling the partners up not only in technology but also sales.”

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What are the channel strategies in place for 2014 from the vendor’s perspective?

In the region we can see Brocade valuing its channel partners and relying on them to develop the Brocade business in the market. The strategy that we see for this year is to focus on few partners to lead the Brocade sales in the region through various channel programs such as Brocade Rewards, new APN programs including free Fabric trainings and so on.

All the initiatives focus on enabling and scaling the partners up not only in technology but also sales.

How does Mindware enable the vendor’s business? What is the value add?

We at Mindware are always aligning ourselves to the vendor’s strategy in terms of channel partners along with Mindware channel loyalty program that is in place. We are supporting vendors in the partner enablement through different workshops for partners, extensive specialized training programs to upgrade the partners’ partnership level with the vendors, recruiting new partners, providing POCs and demo equipment, representing the vendor in the remote regions where they lack presence such as Qatar, Bahrain and Levant.

Could you discuss the business focus for the next six months, from both Mindware and Brocade’s perspectives?

Having a new innovative team in place for Brocade, we are seeing the business focus for the rest of the year is on channel partners in regions such as KSA & UAE to support Brocade growth in Data Center IP networking solutions.

www.mindware.ae

Lenovo products

ThinkCentre M73 and M93p Tiny The M73 and M93 are available in Lenovo’s industry leading one liter tiny form factor. The M73 and M93 Tiny also have the remote power up option with a compatible keyboard and flexible mounting solutions. Featuring 4th generation Intel Core processors, the new ThinkCentre M73 and M93 pack a huge punch in the smallest fully functional form factor available. With powerful integrated graphics and solid state hybrid drives, high performance is on tap and even the most demanding business applications run smoothly.

Also available in mini-tower and small form factor, the M73 and M93 also include WiFi connectivity and USB 3.0 ports for fast data transfer.

M73 Tiny The Tiny desktops are the first 1L desktop in the industry.

Complete with flexible mounting solutions including support for standard VESA mounts, Tiny desktops fit just about anywhere, yet they provide a reliable, enterprise-level performance that you can depend on.

If the customer chooses to mount this compact unit on the back of the monitor, he can still power on conveniently from the front, by simply pressing Alt + P. Its Intelligent Cooling Engine (ICE) 3.0 is designed to provide a balance between thermals and acoustics, resulting in long desktop life. With two optimized settings, you choose the performance mode that best suits your work environment, prioritizing temperature or sound. Plus, ICE 3.0 allows for working in hotter temperatures and enables system monitoring with thermal alerts that preempt overheating possibilities.

The M73 desktop features Intel Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP), providing stability for long-term deployments to help reduce transition, qualification, and testing costs, ensuring savings for your business.

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M93p Tiny The M93p desktop features 15-month platform stability with no planned hardware changes that affect the preloaded software image.

Image stability for long-term deployments helps to reduce transition, qualification, and testing costs to ensure savings for your business.

Maximize productivity with independent display support for up to three monitors (quad-monitor support is available in Mosaic mode on select models). The expanded work area and easier navigation between applications helps reduce errors and improve productivity as you extend your desktop across multiple displays. (Requires optional second DisplayPort connector.)

M93p desktops include security tools such as USB ports disablement to help prevent data theft and network security risks against unauthorized use of storage devices. Trusted Platform Module (TPM) encrypts data and key information like passwords and digital certificates, further securing applications, electronic transactions, and online communication. Plus the M93p desktop includes a chassis intrusion switch, which alerts against any unauthorized access attempts.

The device’s Intelligent Cooling Engine (ICE) 3.0 is designed to provide a balance between thermals and acoustics resulting in long desktop life.

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

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Products

Citrix XenMobile Fastest path to mobile productivity

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itrix XenMobile is a comprehensive solution to manage mobile devices, apps, and data.

Users have single-click access to all of their mobile, SaaS and Windows apps from a unified corporate app store, including seamlessly-integrated email, browser, data sharing and support apps. IT gains control over mobile devices with full configuration, security, provisioning and support capabilities. Flexible deployment options give IT the choice to manage XenMobile in the cloud or on-premise. In addition, XenMobile securely delivers Worx Mobile Apps, mobile apps built for businesses using the Worx App SDK and found through the Worx App Gallery. With XenMobile, IT can meet their compliance and control needs while users get the

freedom to experience work and life their way.

The key benefits include giving users device and app choice while ensuring compliance, delivering business class productivity apps that users love and IT embraces, enabling business by allowing simple, scalable and anywhere access to apps and providing advanced app and data controls to keep users happy while assuring content security for IT. Its other features include: • XenMobile securely delivers Worx Mobile Apps, the industry’s largest collection of apps built for business.

• With XenMobile, IT can deliver Citrix-developed apps that are built for business. The apps are fully containerized on the mobile device, separate from personal apps, for secure productivity.

DCF Optimized Rac Optimized Design, O Optimized Value

These apps include WorxMail, WorxWeb and ShareFile • It includes a unified corporate app store that provides a single place for users to access all of their apps mobile, web, SaaS and Windows on any device.

• Through the unified corporate app store, users are given secure multifactor single sign-on across their mobile, web and Windows apps ensuring that they don’t need to remember yet-another-password.

A Rack System Designed to Meet The Challenges Your Data Center •Faces FREEToday XenMobile MDM edition licenses or get 20 % off Your mission-critical networks are XenMobile Enterprise licenses carrying an ever-increasing amount of voice, video. of Looming on the withdata the and purchase first year horizon is a critical mass of VoIP, Software Maintenance for high speed access, wireless applications and new anddemand existingfor XenApp or increasing blade server XenDesktop Platinum customers deployment.

with perpetual licenses current The DCF optimized rack system from on Subscription Advantage (SA).

Emerson Network Power integrates your This promotion ispower available for computing hardware, management technologies and peripherals in your a limited-time only, contact a data center. It gives superior design and flexibility, Mindware Sales representative to allowing optimal data center equipment learn more. performance and easy installation.

DCF Optimized Rack System A flexible foundation for infrastructure support

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he DCF optimized rack system from Emerson Network Power integrates your computing hardware, power management technologies and peripherals in your data center. It gives superior design and flexibility, allowing optimal data center equipment performance and easy installation.

DCF Optimized Rack Systems offer advantages such as flexibility, higher availability and lowest total cost of ownership.

Flexibility: • Available in eight standard sizes, to

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meet site needs • Compatible with Emerson Network Power Rack PDUs, Liebert rackmount UPS and Aisle Containment — all from a single source • Factory installation of rack PDUs, for fast deployment • Tool-less accessories simplify cable management, airflow management and component mounting • Static load capacity up to 3000lbs/1,363kg • Simple integration of power, cooling and monitoring equipment

Higher Availability: • 75% front and rear door perforation provides maximum airflow to internal equipment • Easy access to and management of equipment • Front and rear locks for security • Fast on-site deployment Lowest Total Cost of Ownership: • Easy installation saves time and money: lift off hinges, dual side panels, 19” rail adjustment, U markings on 19” rails, low profile casters, tool-less accessories • Excellent value for features,

durability and price 2 Integral part of the total data center solutions from Emerson Network Power saves time and money on configuration and integration.

June 2014 Issue 02 | TheGrid

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