Reseller Middle East

PUBLICATION LICENSED BY IMPZ

ISSUE 187 // JULY 2012 // WWW.RESELLERME.COM

CONTENTS

ISSUE 187 // JULY 2012

HIGHLIGHTS 7

News

COVER FEATURE

We help you catch up on all the major news and announcements in the regional channel community

INTERVIEW 22

Secure strategy InfoWatch, a DLP and social media monitoring vendor, is focusing on emerging markets across the EMEA region, following its success in Russia and CIS countries. Alexander Zarovsky, international business chief at the company, tells us about the company’s strategy and plans for the region

DISTRIBUTOR FOCUS 24

Mastering the art FMP, a subsidiary of UMG dedicated to the distribution of Samsung mobiles working towards strengthening its leadership position across KSA’s burgeoning smart phone market through product promotions and critical value add services

26

Steady direction Logicom Dubai has experienced exponential growth since its inception.

Demetris E. Demetriou, GM at Logicom Dubai takes us through the company’s history as he discusses larger plans and more value add services for customers and partners in the region

32

EVENTS 30

Shaping the future The ResellerME Partner Excellence Conference was a resounding success that brought together prominent members of the region’s IT channel to map trends and share best practices.

FEATURE 61

The good, bad and ugly Vendors and law enforcement agencies are cracking down on counterfeit and grey market operations, yet these operations continue to witness explosive growth across developing nations. We speak to industry experts to understand the challenges this creates for the sale of original products and how they can be addressed

HONOURING EXCELLENCE The ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012 was a night of reverberating celebrations where the entire channel community came together to honour the very best in the region

PEOPLE

69

70

The perseverant positive

Learning to grow

Lancy Mohan Menezes

Khwaja Saifuddin

JULY 2012

Reseller Middle East

3

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Copyright © 2011 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell Corporation Limited, Reg. No. 02081369, Dell House, The Boulevard, Cain Road, Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1LF.

EDITORIAL

Publisher Dominic De Sousa Group COO Nadeem Hood Managing Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9126 EDITORIAL Senior Editor Sathya Mithra Ashok sathya@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9111

A word of appreciation

Assistant Editor Pallavi Sharma pallavi@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9103 ADVERTISING Commercial Director Rajashree R Kumar raj@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9131 Key Account Manager Merle Carrasco merle@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9134 CIRCULATION Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9147 PRODUCTION AND DESIGN Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9112 Designer Analou Balbero analou@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9104 Photographer Cris Mejorada cris@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9108 DIGITAL www.rwme.net DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya Social Media Co-ordinator Jay Colina online@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by

1013 Centre Road, New Castle County, Wilmington, Delaware, USA

Pallavi Sharma Assistant Editor Talk to us: E-mail: pallavi@cpidubai.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/ ResellerME Twitter: @ResellerME

The last three months have been a mad rush of events, interviews and writing. The last three months have also been my first at ResellerME and I have come a long way from when I first started.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the entire industry that came out in full force to support the ResellerME Partner Excellence Conference and Awards last month.

It was the gathering of this community that made all the hard work worthwhile, not only did they support us by sending in a truckload of nominations but made it all the better by joining us as we honoured the very best in the region. The success of the Conference and Awards was evident from all the feedback we have received over the last month- words of encouragement and an eagerness to see what’s in store for next year.

The last three months have seen us feature some of the most powerful names in the industry. People who have been an integral part of their organisation’s growth curve in addition to contributing to the evolution of the community at large. While the ‘women of the channel’ stood out for their success in a male dominated industry, ‘the titans’ were the leaders of some of the largest IT distribution companies in the region.

I look through these features today and realise how strong this community really is, for it is made up of people- people who are passionate about what they do, people who are passionate about who they meet and most importantly, people who are passionate about fulfilling their promises.

As the representative of an industry leading publishing house and channel title, I believe it is our responsibility to create platforms that bring this industry closer together. These platforms are a testament to our commitment to the channel and its people.

With six months of 2012 already past, the next six months promise to be packed with action. On our part, we will continue to bring you industry leading issues in addition to unique event platforms to help you connect and share best practices. We only hope you will continue to support us through your participation and feedback.

Once again, thank you for all your encouragement, there is a lot more to come, so keep reading and sharing your opinion.

Write in to me at pallavi@cpidubai.com or connect with us on Twitter @ResellerME. We value your opinion, for we are the voice of the channel. For now we wish you all a relaxed and refreshing summer break until the camera starts rolling again....

Branch Office PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 4 440 9100 Fax: +971 4 447 2409 Printed by Atlas Printing Press © Copyright 2012 CPI All rights reserved While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

JULY 2012

Reseller Middle East

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HIGHLIGHTS News

AMD appoints new head of multinational accounts and consumer business in META

Yves Nguyen Dinh An, head of multinational accounts and consumer business, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at AMD

AMD recently announced the appointment of Yves Nguyen Dinh An as new head of multinational accounts and consumer business for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region (META).

In his role, Dinh An will be responsible for overseeing AMD’s retail business in the META region, in addition to strengthening relations and aligning objectives with AMD’s multinational business partners.

“Yves is a great addition to our expanding team in the META region,” commented Bernard Biolchini, AMD’s VP of sales and GM of AMD META. “He has over 20 years of experience in the IT sector, and will play an important role in consolidating AMD’s ties with existing and new business partners in the region.”

According to AMD, he joins the company from HP, where he most recently served as director of the Notebook Business Unit for the entire Europe Middle East and Africa region (EMEA).

Dinh An spent 17 years with HP, spanning category sales management, marketing operations, strategy and planning and engineering at regional, country and worldwide levels. HE holds an engineer degree in computer science and electronics from the French Institute of Technology.

Symantec honours TechAccess with ‘Value Added Distributor’ award TechAccess was recently awarded the ‘Value Added Distributor’ award for the year 2012 by Symantec in the MEFA region, the company has announced.

According to representatives, TechAccess was recognised for the outstanding value added services provided to Symantec in terms of marketing and sales throughout the year.

Speaking on their achievement, Chris Cornelius, sales director at TechAccess said, “We thank the entire team of Symantec for recognising our efforts and awarding us. We are overwhelmed at this achievement and I would like to thank TechAccess Symantec team and all our business partners without whom this would not have been possible”.

Johnny Karam, regional director, Middle East and French-speaking Africa, Symantec said, “TechAccess’s support and drive has been invaluable to the growth of Symantec’s business, playing a fundamental role in generating new opportunities and initiatives that have significantly broadened Symantec’s influence across the region. A formidable force in the channel, we are delighted to work with such a strong and focused team at TechAccess that have been instrumental in building a solid foundation for success.”

EMPA scores top honour at Fujitsu’s IT Future event in Dubai Regional IT distributor EMPA Middle East recently announced that it has been titled “Highest Growth Channel Partner of the Year 2011” by Fujitsu IT Solutions.

The company reported that it was awarded during Fujitsu’s IT Future partner event EMPA was awarded for its pioneering work in channel development and outstanding service delivery, representative said.

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The award was presented by Niamh Spelman, senior VP – Sales Cluster Emerging Markets at Fujitsu Technology Solutions.

“This is a great honour for EMPA and we sincerely thank Fujitsu for recognising our efforts. Our team has indeed worked hard to reach this level and the support from the vendor has been phenomenal. We are very excited with the outlook of our cooperation with Fujitsu,” said Houssam Mobied, CEO of EMPA Middle East.

The event was held at the Atlantis Hotel, The Palm on 21stMay 2012 in Dubai and focused on the various facets involved in shaping the future of IT and explored the wide array of concepts and solutions that will improve IT in business and in public administration scenarios. EMPA Middle East has been an authorised distributor of Fujitsu desktop PCs, notebooks, tablet PCs, monitors, computer accessories since 2007.

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HIGHLIGHTS News

Optimus holds Avaya certification training program Optimus Technology and Telecommunications announced that it recently held an Avaya training workshop for partners in Dubai.

The training program which was organised by Optimus Academy was a success with twelve partners qualifying for the Avaya Professional Sales Specialist (APSS) certification, the company said.

The two-day training workshop provided participants in-depth insight into Avaya’s product range and enhanced their abilities to create basic solution designs. Optimus provided an intensive training course to prepare candidates for their APSS certifications. The distributor also held the APSS examination at the end of the workshop for participants to qualify for the APSS certification, which is a mandatory requirement for Avaya partners.

Nehul Goradia, VP – Channel and Alliances at Optimus Technology and Telecommunications

said, “As part of our Optimus Academy initiative, we once again organised an intensive APSS training workshop for our channel partners.

This program is very popular and we get great response whenever we announce the APSS certification event but are unable to accommodate all due to the limited seats available per workshop.

At this workshop, 12 partners, who were trained by experts on Avaya’s product range, sales, design and support, received the APSS certification.

Going by the response we received, we will be holding more such training programs across the region to accommodate our partners from other countries as well.”

Cisco and Citrix launch Partner Accelerator Initiative Cisco and Citrix announced the launch of the Cisco and Citrix Partner Accelerator.

This new global initiative aligns the channel sales and delivery models across the two companies through a single framework to build partner competencies, elevate partner differentiation and drive partner profitability.

According to the companies, joint Cisco and Citrix channel partners can use the Partner Accelerator to capitalise on the fast-growing customer demand for enterprise mobility, desktop virtualisation and device choice by delivering the Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) with Citrix XenDesktop solution.

Brian Allison, director, data centre go-tomarket solutions, for Cisco said, “Customer trends like bring your own device, workshifting, mobility, video, collaboration, desktop and application virtualisation, and cloud are

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changing the workplace as customers look for solutions that enable them to access all applications, communications services and data securely, with a superior user experience, from any device, anywhere, anytime. The Cisco and Citrix Partner Accelerator draws from the two companies’ best practices to give channel partners the resources they need to deliver complete, multi-vendor solutions that meet the needs of the changing workplace, and build more strategic relationships with their customers.”

With the Partner Accelerator tool channel partners can engage in consultative sales, expand their data centre, desktop virtualisation and collaboration practices, and develop repeatable solutions, the company said.

In addition, the Cisco and Citrix Partner Accelerator also makes available sales and marketing resources, which reduce the

partners’ time-to-market and allow partners to compress customer sales and implementation cycles, representatives said.

Cynthia Gallant, VP, worldwide channel strategy and market development, for Citrix said, “Citrix and Cisco have been working together for over two years to bring a complete solution to the market based on the Cisco VXI platform that addresses the critical customer requirements to enable secure access to desktops, applications and data from anywhere and any device, while reducing operational complexity and cost.

The Partner Accelerator, the next step in the evolution of our partnership with Cisco, arms our joint partners with the tools and training they need to build more strategic relationships with customers and grow their business by increasing revenue and shortening the sales and implementation cycle.”

HIGHLIGHTS News

Xerox Emirates launches Technology and Innovation Centre in UAE Xerox Emirates recently announced the opening of the Technology and Innovation Centre (XETIC) located at their offices in International Media Production Zone (IMPZ).

This world class innovation and technology centre provides Xerox partners and customers in the Middle East region with access to view and experience the latest innovative technology solutions lead and perform within a real business operating environment, the company said.

The first of its kind for Xerox in the Middle East, the facility leverages Xerox industryleading innovation and service expertise and strengthens global competitiveness in business process and document management latest technology and solutions.

At the centre, customers and partners will have the opportunity to view and really experience the various offerings from Xerox including focused innovations for safety and security, environment and sustainability, looking colourful, produce more to deliver great results, improve productivity and efficiency and reduce costs.

Partners and senior delegates attended the official opening of the Technology and Innovation Centre.The opening of this centre in the region is a clear illustration of Xerox’s overall commitment and continued focus on innovation, the company concluded.

FVC appoints Waleed Heloo GM for GCC and Pakistan

Waleed Heloo, GM, GCC and Pakistan at FVC FVC, a prominent value added distributor in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has announced the appointment of Waleed Heloo as its new general manager covering the Gulf countries (excluding Saudi Arabia) and Pakistan.

According to the company, Heloo brings with him more than 18 years experience in the IT sector to his new role at FVC. Heloo will spearhead FVC’s continuing expansion in the region, focusing on consolidating and adding new vendor partnerships that will complement the company’s existing solutions portfolio across unified communications, application delivery, information security and cloud computing.

K. S. Parag, MD at FVC said, “As the leading value added distributor focused on emerging technologies, we have a commitment to continue to lead the sector with cutting edge technology that will not only enhance the solutions already on offer but fulfil a key requirement of the enterprise sector in the region. Waleed has a wealth of experience in the Middle East and will bring his unique perspective to our business, making him an invaluable addition to our team.”

Heloo is already working with the network of existing channel partners to help them create stronger go-to-market strategies as part of FVC’s ongoing channel partner programme. He plans to expand and enable the company’s channel eco-system by building stronger partnerships with existing partners, appointing new strategic and vertical partners and providing better and scalable support to potential resellers across the region.

“The market is evolving rapidly, influenced by new technologies, new devices and new requirements. I see this as the right time to revisit and rebuild a new strategy for the business, allowing us to target the huge opportunity awaiting us within existing and future potential market segments. This requires a portfolio of strong vendors with innovative solutions, a new scalable business model, new go-to-market strategy with the right industry relevance and of course a stronger channel to execute these plans,” said Heloo.

Mitsumi Distribution hosts Toshiba Channel event in Ethiopia Mitsumi Distribution, an emerging technology distributor in Africa announced that it has concluded a successful Toshiba Channel Event in Ethiopia.

The event held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia brought together over 150 Channel partners together with executives from Toshiba and Mitsumi Distribution.

The event was focused on giving channel partners a thorough understanding of the diverse range of Toshiba products and the product roadmap. Channel partners

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were also trained on the go to market strategies for the latest products from the systems and hardware manufacturer.

Satyen Chokshi, business unit manager at Mitsumi Distribution said “Ethiopia is an important market for Mitsumi. I’m very proud of the success this event has achieved, and that we were able to deliver to our channel partners exceptional presentations and training to help them. We believe that our partners are our main strength in this region.

We will make every effort to help them

increase profitability by empowering them with knowledge, skills and support” Speaking about the event, Nelo Neves, regional manager-Africa at Toshiba PSG, said “We are excited to launch our new product range to the market and look forward to working with MITSUMI in educating our channel partners about our products. Toshiba will continue delivering the same innovative technologies that have made the Toshiba brand so famous internationally.”

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Dafnia Technologies LLC Abu Dhabi Tel: +971 2 5557351 Fax: +971 2 5557352 Email: marketing@dafnia.ae

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HIGHLIGHTS News

Aptec receives IBM System x Distributor Growth Award Aptec Distribution, part of Aptec Group, one of the largest technology distributors in the Middle East, Pakistan, Turkey and North Africa, received a very prestigious IBM System x Distributor Growth Award at the IBM Middle East and Pakistan Business Partner Executive Conference.

Held on the 28th May 2012, the IBM Partner Conference honoured distributors for their exceptional performance in 2011 across different business areas.

The company recognised for delivering over 221% growth year on year and its contribution to the proactive channel development. The Aptec team was thrilled to receive this award for the first time in more than 13 years since it established a distribution relationship with IBM. Govind Haridas, Security and Storage Business unit manager at Aptec Distribution, said, “We would like to thank IBM Middle East and Pakistan team and

all our partners for this high-status award.

IBM is a key strategic vendor for Aptec for many years now, relationship with IBM started more than 13 years ago and it only strengthens with years.”

Canon Emirates launches recycling scheme in the UAE

Canon Emirates recently announced plans to launch a carbon neutral toner and ink cartridges recycling program in the UAE. The program will be launched with the support of Industryre, a sustainable management consultancy firm.

Shadi Bakhour, GM, Canon Emirates, said, “This announcement is part of our

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on-going commitment to be a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable company.

At Canon, we continue to become more environmentally efficient across all our operations and to develop innovative technologies that can reduce the environmental footprint of our products and services. We are very pleased that the UAE market is setting a precedent in the region with this pioneering project. This is in line with our corporate philosophy of ‘Kyosei’, which means living and working together for the common good, and given that the UAE is a commercial hub for the Middle East, we feel that it is only fitting that we start the roll-out with the Emirates”.

In the long term, Canon Middle East plans to expand the program to all markets

in the region. However, during the initial rollout in the UAE, Canon Emirates will be aiming to cater to Canon’s corporate customers from all sectors in the UAE, the company said.

A unique feature of the scheme is that any Carbon emissions generated as part of this process, for example, during the transportation of the collection boxes, will be estimated and offset through a carbon credit offsetting procedure, it was reported.

Carbon credits are similar to certificates that represent a reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Projects that prevent the generation of greenhouse gases or remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere earn these credits, which can in turn then be “sold” to other businesses and individuals to “offset” the emissions they generate. One carbon credit is the equivalent to a saving of one tonne of Carbon.

“We are delighted to partner with Canon on this project. At Industryre we are committing to help companies meet their sustainability and business objectives. We are looking forward to bringing together our world-class expertise across the different sustainability disciplines to help launch this initiative in the UAE”, said Ahmed Detta, managing partner at Industryre LLC.

HIGHLIGHTS News

Kaspersky Lab launches “Kaspersky Music” in association with Universal Music Group in the Middle East Kaspersky Lab, a developer of secure content management solutions, recently announced the launch of “Kaspersky Music” service in association with Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the world’s largest music companies.

As part of the online music service, Kaspersky Lab customers will exclusively receive free access to Kaspersky Music website, available in English and Arabic. The website contains a wide variety of music ranging from International music to Arabic, Islamic and poetry available for free download.

According to the company, Kaspersky Music users will also get the chance to

participate in frequent raffles and competitions to win concert tickets, CDs and exclusive merchandising from Universal Music. In addition users will receive updates on the latest news from Universal Music’s artists around the world and a list of the top downloaded songs from the website.

Commenting on the launch of Kaspersky Music, Tarek Kuzbari, MD, Kaspersky Lab Middle East and Turkey said, “We are offering our customers a unique and safe music browsing experience in the Middle East region, and we couldn’t think of any better partner than Universal Music to partner with for such an initiative. Kaspersky Music is one

Omnix International to strengthen focus on KSA’s construction market

Omnix International, a distributor of digital software imaging solutions, has revealed its strategy to strengthen its focus on KSA’s burgeoning construction market, which is currently valued to be worth over USD 82 million.

The move complements a recent report released by business research and intelligence firm, Ventures Middle East, titled ‘KSA Construction Industry Overview,’ showing that in 2011, the country’s construction industry saw contract awards reaching a value of USD

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80 million, which is expected to grow to USD 86 million by 2013.

Omnix International recently held the Autodesk Solutions day, an event at showcasing the enhancements in the Autodesk 2013 portfolio, engineering and entertainment software featuring in-depth creation suites and latest design innovations, to more than 400 users from more than 90 companies in the country, it was announced.

The key industries in focus during the

of the services that we will be providing to our current and potential customers whom will benefit from download of different kind of music tracks”.

Patrick Boulos, MD of Universal Music Group, MENA said, “Universal Music Group works with many multinational corporations around the world and we are happy now to extend our experience in the field of music to Kaspersky Lab. We will be feeding the Kaspersky Music service with the latest top chart hits, International news and music, great Universal artists’ merchandise products, to offer Kaspersky Lab customers an exclusive, first of its kind, musical experience.”

event were architecture, engineering and construction (AEC).

Omnix International, which is the authorised Autodesk distributor for the Middle East region, has revealed a strong demand for more world class and fully reliable design solutions across the real estate, infrastructure and utilities segments of KSA’s construction market, wherein the demand is constantly driven by the country’s rapidly growing and fast urbanising young population. The growth is further attributed to new infrastructure projects all over KSA, which includes major projects like railway development, road improvements and airport projects.

“We are very confident that today’s event will help spark more positive responses to our wide range of Autodesk Solutions. Our aim is to help today’s participants with the latest enhancements and innovations in our line of powerful design solutions, thereby giving them the advantage of transforming their designs into reality faster,” said Mohammad Amir, country manager- CAE Division, Omnix International, Saudi Arabia. “‘Autodesk Solutions Day’ is an ongoing roadshow series where our resident team of experts not only demonstrate key proficiency on the featured software but also share insights on the KSA market and best practices from other industries.

Today’s participants are expected to gain the advantage of unlocking the many benefits to be gained from using Autodesk like superior collaboration and the ability to optimise workflows between the many products within an Autodesk software suite.”

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HIGHLIGHTS News

Westcon Group awarded by APC

by Schneider Electric

Westcon Group, a value-added distributor of unified communications, network infrastructure, data centre, and security solutions with a global network of specialty resellers, announced that its Critical Infrastructure business practice was recognised as “Solution Partner of the Year” by APC by Schneider Electric.

“At Westcon Middle East, we’ve steadily built a reputation as one of APC’s premier valueadded distributors. Our dedicated teams are uniquely focused on helping partners accelerate their business leveraging APC by Schneider Electric’s award-winning power and data center technologies,” said Steve Lockie, MD, Westcon ME Group. “We value our long-standing relationship with APC by Schneider Electric and are honored to receive this recognition as one of their most valued partners”.

Commenting on the growing partnership between the two companies, Olivier Delepine, VP, UAE and Gulf Countries, APC by Schneider Electric said, “We continue to develop a strong relationship with Westcon. Having worked on various important projects over the past year, we look forward to building this relationship further.

We remain grateful to the ability of our partners in leveraging our solutions and ensuring that end users get the best out of our products. It gives us great pleasure to recognise today the hard work done by the Westcon team.”

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Kingston begins shipping HyperX dual-channel kits for Intel Ivy Bridge processors Kingston Technology Europe, an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, a manufacturer of memory products, recently announced that it is shipping Kingston HyperX dual-channel kits engineered especially for the new Intel third-generation Core i7 and i5 processors (Ivy Bridge).

“The new 22nm architecture of this processor allows significant performance gains for benchmarkers, enthusiasts and overclockers,” said Antoine Harb, business development manager, MEA. “Enthusiasts who want to push the performance boundaries of the new processors will want to pair it with Kingston HyperX memory. Our

2666MHz kit combined with the top CPU in the Ivy Bridge family will allow unparalleled performance.”

Kingston also announced that it has achieved Intel XMP certification for its family of HyperX memory specifically engineered for the new 3000 series processors. In addition, 2800MHz HyperX kits were certified on ta number of other motherboards including Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe, P9Z77-V and Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H. Kingston HyperX memory is available through Kingston’s channel of authorised distributors, resellers, e-tailers and retailers.

It is backed by a lifetime warranty and free technical support.

Eros Group reconfirms SuperBrands status in the Middle East Eros Group, a distributor of leading electronics brands Samsung, Hitachi, Candy and TCL in the Middle East, announced that it has retained its prestigious SuperBrands status for 2012 after being awarded the honour for the second consecutive year.

The UAE SuperBrands Council, a committee of eminent figures from the business world, reconfirmed Eros Group as one of the SuperBrands 2012 in the UAE following a comprehensive evaluation process.

Deepak Babani, CEO, Eros Group said, “Being named a SuperBrand for the second consecutive year means Eros Group has now established itself as one of the leaders in the electronics sector in the UAE and region. We have a holistic approach to business that includes delivering the best quality

products, services, and experiences to our clients, creating value for our stakeholders and principals, taking the best possible care of our employees and partners, and actively contributing to the community that has been our home for the last 44 years. I thank everyone involved for helping Eros Group achieve this success.”

The SuperBrands organisation is acclaimed worldwide as being an independent authority and arbiter of branding excellence and is committed to paying tribute to exceptional brands and promoting the discipline of branding. The SuperBrands Council in each country is comprised of individuals who have shown exceptional aptitude in business and who have a thorough knowledge of that particular country’s markets and methods of business.

HIGHLIGHTS News

SanDisk signs first authorised distributor in Oman SanDisk Middle East has announced its expansion into Oman through its partnership with Souq Technology International.

The partnership will drive SanDisk’s strategy in Oman and take advantage of the country’s growing electronic market which is predicted to increase from USD 521 million to USD 635 million in 2015, the company said.

“Our partnership with Souq Technology International reinforces our objective to expand our product reach in Oman. The entire range of SanDisk storage products will now be available to a wider market through the expertise and established distribution network of our approved partner. While some of our products were being sold in the country, Souq Technology International

is the first authorised distributor,” said Tareq Husseini, sales director at SanDisk Middle East and Africa.

Souq Technology International has been operating in the Middle East for almost a decade and is active in 16 countries. Through the establishment of a local company in Oman, Souq Technology International will be able to distribute the full range of SanDisk products to over 500 retailers in the country, it was reported.

According to a recent report by BusinessWire demand for electronics in Oman is steadily growing. The increase in the country is driven by new technologies and the growing popularity of digital lifestyle products and other key products. Computer hardware is predicted to grow by 7% annually

over the next four years while audio and video devices is expected to increase by 4% annually until 2015. The Oman mobile market will also see a significant increase as sales are expected to grow to USD 207 million by 2015, analysts predicted.

The SanDisk product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and solid state drives for computers.

Spectrami and Actifio organise training workshops for partners across ME

Spectrami, a prominent value added distributor in the MENA region recently conducted a successful training workshop on copy data management in association with Actifio, the Protection and Availability Storage (PAS) platform company.

The workshop focused on the

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challenges faced by large organisations and enterprises across the Middle East region to counter the growing menace of copy data management at a rapid pace, which is driving the cost of managing storage out of control.

Experts from both Spectrami and Actifio presided over the sessions. Steven Blumenau, worldwide head of sales for Actifio presided over the workshop, which was attended by several key partners STME, ISIT, Wipro among others.

Anand Choudha, MD, Spectrami, said, “This workshop is as part of Spectrami strategy to work closely with its partners and

does knowledge transfer for them to be able to support the customers in presales and post-sale implementations with an objective to create a strong ecosystem of partners for Actifio in the region.”

This initiative was the first in the series to be held across the region in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman among others.

The workshops focus on updating the company’s channel partners about the latest global trends in the storage space and how Actifio with its breakthrough Protection and Availability Storage (PAS) technology platform can help their customer particularly large organisations and enterprises reduce their storage cost by 90%.

Recently, Gartner rated Actifio, Protection and Availability Storage (PAS) platform as the new ground breaking technology in copy data management and named Actifio a ‘Cool Vendor’ in Storage Technology for the year 2012.

HIGHLIGHTS News

HP announces launch of HP Play in conjunction with Universal Music MENA HP has announced a strategic partnership with Universal Music MENA that will give consumers across the Middle East access to the Universal Music Group’s rich catalogue of global and regional artists, with the launch of HP Play – a new digital music experience.

Digital music enthusiasts across the region will be able create personalised playlists and enjoy online streaming and downloads at no cost from Universal Music on purchase of the latest HP Sleekbooks, a new thin and light notebook range launching in the region.

HP Play is now available in the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. As part of the deal, customers that purchase the new super mobile HP Envy 4 or HP Envy 6 Sleekbook will be given an HP Play pack to register with a serial number online and access HP Play for free for 12 months, the company said.

In addition, other customers have the opportunity to purchase HP Play packs at selected retail stores or online via the HP Play website.

Salim Ziade, GM, HP Printing and Personal Systems (PPS), HP, Middle East, said, “As the world’s largest technology company, we are excited to partner with the world’s leading music group to offer music fans across the Middle East access to this extensive catalogue. At HP, we are constantly working to redefine the digital entertainment experience for our customers. With innovative new products, services and collaborations, we want to enhance the way consumers connect with their favourite content, whether it’s music, movies or games.”

The partnership is also a means to promote the purchase and use of legal software and technology products.

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Labourers enjoy electronic items as part of Eros Group’s‘Pass it on’ campaign Eros Group, distributors of world renowned brands along with ‘Take My Junk’ and Dubai British School (DBS) recently distributed reusable electronics and gadgets to the labourers at a labour camp in Greens, as part of the Eros Group’s ‘Pass it on’ initiative.

The ‘Pass it on’ campaign was kick started in DBS on 13 June 2012 with a forum for students, parents, visitors and teachers to tackle the e-waste problem in the UAE. Through the forum, the students were encouraged to make a commitment to pass on their unwanted electronics products to the labourers in the UAE who could have better use for them. During the one month long campaign at DBS, Eros group organised various sessions for the students and their parents to create awareness on the benefits of electronic

‘reduce, reuse and recycle’.

The awareness campaign which is in its third year now, is in conjunction with ‘Take My Junk’ and aims at reducing electronic waste through extending the life cycle of electronic products by giving them away to those less fortunate. ‘Pass it on’ drop boxes were placed in DBS where students had put their unwanted electronic items. The students collected items ranging from mobile phones, air purifiers, music systems, cd and dvd players, mixers and blenders which was much appreciated by the labourers.

The team from ‘Take My Junk’ then collected the items from the school and distributed it to the labourers at a labour camp in Greens with the help of volunteers from DBS’s students, teachers and members of the Eros Group.

Comguard releases security for virtualisation from Kaspersky Lab in the region Comguard, a Dubai based value added distributor for IT security products and the authorised distributor for Kaspersky, today announced the availability of Kaspersky Security for Virtualisation in the Middle East region.

Kaspersky Security for Virtualisation provides an anti-malware solution for virtualised infrastructures including servers, desktops and data centres, the company said. In addition, it can also manage security for a wide range of devices like physical servers, virtual machines and mobile devices from one, unified security management console that simplifies essential security tasks and improves visibility of security issues.

In addition to plug-and-play compatibility with Kaspersky Lab’s

own endpoint security offerings, the new innovation which is delivered as a virtual security appliance also integrates seamlessly with VMware vShield Endpoint to provide agent-less, anti-malware security based upon Kaspersky Lab’s advanced anti-malware engine.

Developed from the same codebase as Kaspersky Lab’s line of endpoint security products, Kaspersky Security for Virtualisation avoids the needless complexity and resource-drain associated with security programs that typically “bolt-on” acquired technology for virtual environments. With Kaspersky Lab, customers have a single, unified management platform for their virtual, physical and mobile environments, the company added.

INTERVIEW Info Watch

Secure strategy InfoWatch, a DLP and social media monitoring vendor, is focusing on emerging markets across the EMEA region, following its success in Russia and CIS countries. Alexander Zarovsky, international business chief at the company, tells us about InfoWatch’s strategy and plans for the region.

Tell us a little bit about InfoWatch.

The idea to create a data leakage prevention system did not actually come from market demand; in fact, it was a result of Kaspersky Lab’s evolving technical offering. The company had just acquired anti-spam technology from another Russian company that filters information based on an organisation’s network perimeters.

The management at Kaspersky Lab then decided to create a technology prototype that monitored and filtered outgoing data.

The prototype worked and so a daughter company named InfoWatch was set up in 2003 with a focus on developing solutions to protect corporate confidential data. In the same year, the product had established itself and the company had already acquired its first client. Two years later, the term ‘DLP’ came into existence, and the abbreviation ‘DLP’ was only coined by IDC analysts in 2005.

InfoWatch was really the initiator and one of the inventors of this technology. In Russia, InfoWatch established the market for protecting corporate information from internal threats, and other players began to appear two to three years later.

Alexander Zarovsky, international business chief at InfoWatch

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Q: How has the company evolved over the years?

The DLP market itself is quite narrow - not all companies need DLP protection. By analysing the size and the speed of market growth in 2009 we decided to expand our business into other areas and expand our offerings to suit both the enterprise and SMB segments.

In 2010, InfoWatch, together with another vendor, created a Russian subsidiary “Kribrum” which deals with a new generation of social media monitoring systems and is hugely popular across customer-centric industry verticals such as banking and hospitality. It is a cloud-based social media monitoring solution

to help companies manage their reputation, improve customer experience and leverage customer opinion expressed online for marketwinning product development.

In 2011 we turned to SMB sector and acquired a small but active German vendor Cynapspro , recently renamed EgoSecure to offer endpoint protection for small and medium size companies.

Q: So how did the move to the Middle East come about?

InfoWatch has been present in the Middle East for more than two years, we decided to move here as part of our expansion campaign. The market is attractive for the company because it is gaining traction in the DLP and social media monitoring segments.

Increasing data volumes and bring your own device practices coupled with regulatory requirements are creating the need for robust solutions to protect corporate information. For instance, governments are tightening data protection regulations following the increasing number of recent political data leaks.

In order to drive the adoption of our solutions on the Gulf region, we have invested in customising our proprietary linguistic analysis technologies to support Arabic language monitoring and control. The Gulf countries have responded very well to the technology and welcomed InfoWatch with an open mind.

In addition, we also have solutions focused on industry verticals such as government, banking, manufacturing, media, airlines and telecom. For instance, InfoWatch Traffic Monitor Enterprise has a set of preloaded data processing and decision-making rules, report templates and analytic queries, which are customised for a variety of vertical industries.

Q: How would you describe your channel strategy for the region?

We collaborate with solution experts, consultant

companies and resellers to provide our unique offerings. We started looking out for very niche partners and the idea was to appoint at least two strategic partners for each Gulf country.

We have been successful and now have 10 partners working with us to reach out to the entire market plus a few more in the pipeline for other markets. Partner selection depends on their technical expertise; solution understanding and market reach ability. They should also be industry preferred and vendor oriented.

Q: Could you give us more insight into InfoWatch’s training initiatives for partners?

We have focused training programmes for each of our partners to enrich their technical and sales skills. We regularly conduct single day dedicated sales training to educate the sales teams on our products and solutions and train them on our unique offerings. In addition, we also have a five- day technical certification programme designed specifically for engineers to enhance their solution implementation and support handling skills.

These programmes are conducted on a case by case basis depending on partner requirements and demand. The feedback from partners has so far been very good as we are flexible to conduct these trainings on-site or over the Internet.

Q: What are your plans for the next 18 months?

We are consciously shifting our focus and gearing our strategies to promote our products and solutions across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and in addition to other emerging markets like Africa.

In the next 18 months, we aim to create a recognised brand name and establish a concrete presence as a leading DLP and social media monitoring vendor. Naturally, our channel partners will be strategic to all our plans and we will continue to support them in their growth strategies and objectives.

“We collaborate with solution experts, consultant companies and resellers to provide our unique offerings. We started looking out for very niche partners and the idea was to appoint at least two strategic partners for each Gulf country”

INCREASING PRESENCE IN THE UAE InfoWatch, recently signed partnership agreements with SecureTech, MAP and Global Media Insight, giving these partners the rights to offer InfoWatch’s business solutions in the UAE. As a direct result of these new partnerships, customers in the UAE now have access to InfoWatch’s global solutions and expertise, combined with the local know-how and pre and postsales support, from these established local partners.

Zarovsky said, “We are committed to establishing a strong presence in this region, and the UAE is integral to InfoWatch’s regional plans and overall business strategy. We are pleased to bring new partners on board, especially as the market witnesses an increasing demand in the UAE for data leakage prevention solutions and social media monitoring tools. We believe that organisations will benefit from our unique offering, coupled with the local expertise of our partners”.

Q: In your opinion how is the threat landscape likely to change in the future?

There are a number of trends in the security landscape in the coming months and years that we believe we only impact our business positively.

For instance, the amount of information owned by companies will continue to grow steadily and it will be extremely difficult to control this huge and unstructured data without the implementation of a specialised data monitoring and control system. This will lead to further development of the world’s DLP market.

Another trend is a telecom revolution where the widespread use of the next generation 4G communication standard will inevitably lead to facilitation of e-commerce and also indirectly to more data being stored electronically. Companies will then need to think about data categorisation and protection from unauthorised usage. These trends will also lead to a strong demand for DLP solutions in general and we will do our best to meet this demand with our customised solutions. //

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DISTRIBUTOR FOCUS Future of Modern Products (FMP)

Mastering the art FMP, a subsidiary of UMG dedicated to the distribution of Samsung mobiles working towards strengthening its leadership position across KSA’s burgeoning smart phone market through product promotions and critical value add services.

According to a recent report by analysts at Informa Telecoms and Media, the smart phone penetration rate in Saudi Arabia was 17.1% last year and is expected to grow to 25% this year and touch 44.8% by 2015.

Analysts believe that a combination of factors is driving the adoption of smart phones in the Arab kingdom. The increasing availability of broadband services in the region coupled with the strong demand for mobile internet by the country’s young population who use their phones to share media, engage over social networks, check email and browse the Internet is said to be boosting the markets for smart phones in KSA. In order to leverage the growing interest in smart phones, while introducing significant valueadded services to the market in KSA , the United Matbouli Group (UMG), the sole distributor of Samsung Electronics in KSA, felt there was need for a separate business unit that would focus on providing consumers with value-add around smart phone provision.

Shehab Rashad, commercial director at FMP Saudi Arabia says, “Consumer interests and behaviour have drastically changed from the humble beginning of mobile phones to the modern era of smart phones and tablets.

Today, consumers don’t just use their phones to make calls, they use them to respond to emails, to browse the web, to share multimedia content and check into various social networks.

It is these peculiarities in consumer demands that necessitates the need for a business like ours that not only introduces the latest innovations from the world’s leading smart phone manufacturer, Samsung, but also extends a host of other services to customers through a team of dedicated and experienced personnel who understand the technology and the consumer needs,” he adds.

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FMP has a dedicated sister company for mobile maintenance services called TSM, which has 14 service points across KSA which also cover three major cities in the Kingdom including Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam. It also has a host of state-of-the-art warehousing and distribution facilities across the cities of Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam, Mecca and Madinah that report a turnover of approximately 2 million mobile phones a year. FMP currently employs more than 180 people in Saudi Arabia alone who cover a broad range of services including after-sales, technical advisory and social media associations with end users.

Having witnessed an overwhelming demand for its services from the market, FMP is now revamping its strategy to go beyond its role as the leading distributor of Samsung mobiles.

“FMP has recently revamped its corporate identity to not only assert its position as the key distributor of Samsung mobile phones in Saudi Arabia, but to also inspire a sentiment of trust and value amongst its existing and potential customers. The FMP name today invokes strong brand recall across consumers in Saudi Arabia and our new brand personality is a representation of our ambitious growth plans and the immense value added benefits that we intend to provide to our valued customers in the future,” says Rashad.

The company is now working on enhancing its logistics services by moving to a new state of the art warehousing facility. In addition to this, FMP customers can also leverage the company’s Golden Warranty promotion to enjoy added benefits on the leading innovations from Samsung. “Under the new Golden Warranty promotion, customers will now be entitled to a two year warranty on their Samsung smart phones and tablets along with an assurance of repairs within one hour. In a first for Saudi Arabia, free insurance cover will be provided to

consumers for their valued Samsung phones under the new promotion,” explains Rashad.

FMP is also working on launching its own e-commerce site. FMP predicts the online shopping will soon be hugely popular and hopes to capitalise on the trend with the launch of its own site. “FMP’s e-commerce platform is designed to be a user friendly yet aesthetically appealing tool that makes shopping for mobile phones and tablets for our consumers extremely convenient, cost effective and also bundled with many value added benefits. Customers can browse through the latest products, compare specifications and have the product delivered right to their doorstep, all from the comfort of their own homes,” he says.

With no intention of slowing down, Rashad says that the company is currently focusing on reaching out to the entire market in KSA and only once it has achieved this task will it move out to tap other emerging markets such as the UAE, Egypt and Qatar.

“The market in Saudi Arabia in evolving and the rapidly changing needs of the customers together with the increasing awareness associated with the leading products leads us to focus our attention on this market alone. We believe that a dedicated effort not only enables us to provision the right levels of expertise but also provides the best services we have to offer.

The same goes for our product line up, we see no room for another brand. The huge demand for Samsung Electronics across the region keeps us on our toes. In addition we share a long term trust based relationship with the vendor who not supports our activities but also paves the way for more creativity and innovation,” he says. //

DISTRIBUTOR FOCUS Logicom Dubai

Steady direction Logicom Dubai has experienced exponential growth since its inception. Demetris E. Demetriou, GM at Logicom Dubai takes us through the company’s history as he discusses larger plans and more value add services for customers and partners in the region Founded in 1987 as a company specialising in software and training, the Logicom Group is today one of the region’s leading IT distribution companies.

Noting the need for a company that connected internationally recognised vendors to locally based resellers, in 1992 the group decided to venture into the IT distribution business. Following its initial years of success dealing in PCs and PC components, in addition to peripherals, the company slowly began expanding its product portfolio to include networking, telecommunications and software solutions. Around the same time, Logicom also embarked on a journey to expand its geographical reach and set up operations in the Middle East with its first subsidiary in Beirut, Lebanon. This was followed by an office in Dubai, UAE in 2001.

In 2006, the company built its its own distribution facility in Jebel Ali, UAE while simultaneously setting up offices

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in Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain with small warehousing facilities. Logicom also offered its channel partners stocking and credit facilities in addition to channel development initiatives, pre-sales support and consultancy.

While the group has continued to focus on all these initiatives for the channel, it has also made a conscious effort to evaluate and revise its portfolio to stay on top of changing market dynamics and customer demands.

“While we have made strategic investments to leverage the significant interest in cloud technologies, we have also diversified investments in the components business having witnessed large OEMs take a larger share of the cake from local assemblers.

To counter these changes, not only have we invested in boosting our vendor relationships but also on enhancing our exsting offerings by focusing on value,” says Demetris E. Demetriou, general manager at Logicom Dubai.

Today, the company operates across 22 countries and serves more than 8,000 resellers through its full-fledged wholly owned subsidiary companies. It boasts long term profitable relationships with vendors like Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, Kingston, Adobe, APC by Schneider Electric, WD and many others.

“Over the last 10 years we have seen an average growth of 20% year-on year. As the UAE market continues to recover from the long drawn recession both the enterprise and SMB segments continue to show larger IT investments. Cloud computing technologies are also gaining ground in the regional market following the heavy adoption of these technologies in the US and Western European markets” he says.

To cater to the increasing demand for innovative ICT solutions, Logicom Dubai has consciously invested in technology forums and demo labs to help partners gain a firsthand look and feel of the latest

solutions on the market. For instance, the company has recently launched a Cisco Lab and an HP Lab that houses the latest unified communications and all-in-one desktop stations from the vendors. These initiatives have seen a huge response from the company’s channel players who can access these labs to not just experience the technologies but also use them to demonstrate solutions to their own customers.

“In the constant pursuit of value creation, Logicom capitalises on the fervour and passion of its people in order to provide the best service to its customers. Rising on the most recent technology trends we aim to be one step ahead, always ready to meet the evolving needs of our customers.

We host the Logicom Technology Forums and roadshows every quarter to keep our channel updated on the new technologies, new channel programs and credit offering updates,” adds Demetriou.

Although the company hasn’t formally ventured into the African market, it focuses on distribution in the markets of North Africa through its Beirut office. In addition, Logicom has set up a telesales team for Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Demetriou adds, “Even though this is a very big market with great potential, we are taking a very cautious approach due to the big risk factors involved in the region. We believe that within the next year we will be in a position to decide the future of our expansion in Africa.”

Demetriou believes that although vendors have invested in setting up qualified teams in the region, they need to help distributors support larger channel activities and initiatives. “ICT distribution is a complex, capital intensive and low margin business that requires distributors to offer credit facilities, manage real time stock supplies and availability in addition to recruiting the right people. All of these are big challenges and we need vendors to support us with market intelligence in order to avoid bad debts. They need to provide credit schemes and help us find practical ways to fight grey while assisting us develop our own people.

Most importantly, vendors need to maintain a constant stream of demand is for the

Demetris E. Demetriou, general manager at Logicom Dubai.

The company is now working on constructing a new state of the art distribution facility in Jebel Ali and expects to have it ready before the end of the year 2012. The distribution centre includes ample office space with training and demo lab facilities in addition to 8,000 square metres of warehousing capacity. The facility will also host a data centre that can be used to test and review the latest solutions and will be open to the company’s channel partners Logicom is also investing in opening more regional offices and warehouses in Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. In addition, Logicom is especially focusing on setting up its subsidiary in Iraq and is gearing it to begin operations in the near future.

“We continuously strive to add vendors to our portfolio that make the difference while complementing our existing offerings.

Logicom is specifically looking at vendors that can partner with us to provide solutions in the cloud computing as we believe

“We need vendors to support us with market intelligence in order to avoid bad debts. They need to provide credit schemes and help us find practical ways to fight the grey market while assisting us develop our own people. Most importantly, vendors need to maintain a constant stream of demand is for the products and help map the total addressable market effectively. This will ensure that distributors are maximising the Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) while delivering the expected results to the vendors” products and help map the total addressable market effectively. This will ensure that distributors are maximising the Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) while delivering the expected results to the vendors,” he explains.

Having said that, the team at Logicom Dubai is optimistic about its future and has worked out a focused plan for the next 18 months.

this trend will soon offer huge growth opportunities for both the customers and resellers. Simultaneously, we are working towards building a team of dedicated experienced personnel who share the company’s commitment and passion for technology excellence by designing targeted programs in order to attract, develop and retain talented people within our organisation,” concludes Demetriou. //

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EVENTS ResellerME Partner Excellence Conference 2012

SHAPING THE FUTURE The ResellerME Partner Excellence Conference 2012 was a resounding success that brought together prominent members of the region’s IT channel to map trends and share best practices The IT channel in the region has come a long way with more focus on innovation, skills enhancement and value addition. The industry is no more about pushing boxes, today it is about giving the end customer his money’s worth, helping him cope with and counter the challenges presented by a dynamic business environment.

To honour this remarkable evolution of the Middle East IT channel, Reseller ME and publisher CPI introduced a one of its kind event platform in the region. Last year, the

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team hosted what they called the ‘Partner Up’ Conference, an event that brought key industry stakeholders together for the first time ever.

This year, the event was titled the ResellerME Partner Excellence Conference, where once again the entire community came together to highlight emerging trends and opportunities while collectively addressing key business challenges.

Through the course of the day, a range of expert speakers from within the very depths of the industry discussed the future evolution of the channel and the challenge rapidly changing technologies create.

Each presentation highlighted the radical change in the traditional role of the channel from one that focused on ‘selling boxes’ to one that now lays emphasis on its relationships.

Speakers agreed that with the emergence of technologies like cloud computing and virtualisation, the role of the channel will only be challenged further. The partner organisations that will survive in the long run will be the ones that adapt their business models and service portfolios to enhance their value to the customer.

We bring you brief excerpts from some of our speakers:

EVENTS ResellerME Partner Excellence Conference 2012

Dr. Ali Baghdadi

CEO and president at Aptec Group

“I have lived through the computing revolution, witnessed the boom and bust of IT. Over the years, the only constant has been change as technology innovation and the subsequent disruption continue to drive the growth in adoption of the latest technologies.”

“The channel needs to become relevant to their business, which is their customer. Organisations must focus on making a difference to their customers, they must have skills and most importantly, they have must have the ability to provision ‘services’ beyond the sale of a product or solution,”

Basil Ayass

enterprise product manager, Dell Middle East – Commercial Business

“Even within organisations, the inability for IT departments to understand the needs of the users hinders functionality and performance. According to a recent IDC and Unisys study, 46% of employees rate their IT departments as being poor or in adept at providing support for their own devices” “Today, we are facing a generation of customers and users who have been exposed to the Internet, gaming, social networks and email from the very beginning. This generation wants to be able to access all kinds of information anytime and anywhere and their demands from technology are constantly increasing. To counter these challenges, Dell has consciously updated its offerings and invested in a series of strategic acquisitions to enhance and complement existing solution portfolios,”

Hesham Tantawi

vice president, Asbis Middle East, Africa and Turkey

“The easiest way to set up and manage a successful business in dynamic times is to revise the company’s mission and vision in clear context of what needs to be done and what can be achieved” “As consultants our value is in our time. The time we spend in building relationships with the best vendors, time we spend educating our resellers to be able to effectively extend our products and services and finally, time we spend in supporting our customers through their growth”

Meera Kaul

MD at Optimus Technology and Telecommunications

“The channel needs to realign itself to meet the challenges of the future” “Vendors initially advocated value engagements as knee jerk solution for partners, a strategy that isn’t’ sustainable in the current environment where the business is about services” “We have to realise that the focus is shifting from hardware and the channel is not about trading in boxes.

We are already witnessing a complete overhaul of the channel driven by the end customer, where the focus is on building a robust infrastructure that is scalable to meet the demands of tomorrow and can be integrated with the technologies of the future. Therefore even vendors need to invest in supporting their partners establish the infrastructure to enable service delivery for customers,” she stated.

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Asem Galal

managing partner at G & K Consulting

“With the emergence of cloud technologies the role of the channel has changed even further. The channel should be most concerned about the fact that traditional cloud service delivery links the customers directly to the vendor, leaving no room or role for the channel. In the face of such a challenge, organisations first need to focus on developing business models that manage both vendor and customer expectations” “Partners must focus on the changing perceptions of the customer asking questions like how do I want customers to perceive the organisation? Should they look at us as suppliers of technology or as partners and experts in our field? Do I want them to turn to us for support?”

“The partners who survive in the long run will be the ones who customers look at as business and technology partners, who are experts with the capabilities to understand the business and support them through the best possible implementation”

Jude Pereira

managing director at Nanjgel Solutions

“The growing investments in security in the Middle East no doubt open a world of opportunities for the channel. However, security is a niche arena of operations that requires a pool of expertise that not only knows the technology but also understand the varying needs for security across different industry verticals and businesses.

“The first thing any partner organisation needs to do is to ensure that they tie up with the right vendors, vendors who have proven leadership in the security space but also those vendors who map emerging challenges to provision intelligent technologies. They need to partner with vendors who offer them the right levels of technical and sales support, who will boost their growth and complement their existing service offerings” 2012 is the year of advancements in authentication technology going beyond traditional token based systems and signature based systems to more intelligent security solutions that can identify, block and mitigate the risks associated with a security breach. We will also see a sharp increase in investments associated with mobile device management as more organisations continue to embark on the bring-your-own-device trend”

Ernest Azzam

laser and enterprise solutions business manager, HP IPG Middle East

“While we continue to witness the transition from conventional printing to digital printing solutions that enable rapid scalability, in the office space we are seeing a steady demand for colour printing. In addition, with the heavy proliferation of smart phones and tablets, the consumer market is witnessing a strong demand for web connected devices and printing from mobile devices” “The channel can secure a competitive advantage by being leaders in educating the customers about the features that are available today. A lot of customers do not even know that they have some of the features available on their devices. The resellers who take the lead by educating the customers on what is available and possible on their devices will win in the marketplace” “Features like e-print and web connected printers with apps and scheduled printing are revolutionising the printing space. Channel resellers and customers need to be aware of these features and capabilities and take the right decision by choosing the right product that will cater to their needs now and in the future”

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Honouring Excellence The ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012 was a night of reverberating celebrations where the entire channel community came together to honour the very best in the region.

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Reseller Middle East and publisher CPI together with presenting partner HP recently hosted the third edition of the Reseller ME Partner Excellence Awards at the Grand Habtoor Beach Resort and Spa in Dubai, UAE. The event was a resounding success bringing together an audience of 400 key members of the region’s booming IT community. Prominent vendors, distributors, resellers, retailers and system integrators came together at the spectacular event on the night of the June the 12th to recognise the collaborative evolution of the region’s IT sector.

The Partner Excellence Awards highlighted the ground breaking efforts of organisations and individuals spanning 30 categories. True to its name, the awards

recognised the outstanding efforts that both organisations and individuals in the region are making towards establishing a robust ecosystem that boosts the environment for technology deployment and usage.

From the latest products and solutions to the most creative channel strategies, the Reseller ME Partner Excellence Awards were given to the most deserving organisations whose nominations were judged on the basis on their innovation capabilities, geographical spread, technical knowhow and other value add services.

This year the team at Reseller Middle East received a total of 255 impressive nominations across vendor, distributor and reseller categories that were judged by a panel of expert judges who were selected for their keen industry knowledge and eye

for detail. In addition, the Reader’s Choice Vendor and Distributor categories received a whopping 12000 votes via the ResellerME website, a clear indication of the growth of this industry in recent years.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank each one of our sponsors for making this spectacular event possible, the judges for taking on the difficult task of selecting one winner across each of the 30 categories and the industry for sending in their nominations and whole heartedly supporting this initiative.

The following pages will take you through the proud winners of the Reseller ME Partner Excellence Awards 2012 and give you an in depth look at the basis of their selection. Congratulations to the winners and we will see you again with a much larger, more exciting event next year.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Networking Vendor of the Year ‘Partner led’, this is how the networking giant describes its overall business strategy. The company exhibits an outstanding commitment to driving 80% of its business goals through the channel and over the last few years, the company has focused on being a channel-based go-tomarket vendor.

Software Vendor of the Year SAP initiated a new global strategy to empower its ecosystem and channels from January 2011. The company aims to improve the channel mix through a two-fold strategy based on indirect licenses and maintenance business generated by SAP channel.

SAP has also established an all new global team with a local presence in every

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Cisco Most recently, Cisco has announced that it will rely even more on partners for sales to the mid-market and SMB spaces, and will reward partners for their investments in the SMB and mid-market.

Cisco announced that it is investing $75 million globally in fiscal year 2012 in initiatives and programs to support

SAP market unit, led by a president who reports directly to the CEO. Most notably, the company recently announced that it will drive business within the SME segment exclusively through partners and a set of contracts defining all aspects of channel interaction have been adopted with this aim in mind. In fact, at a

partners in the form of marketing resources, incentive programs and access to Cisco Technical Engineers Network to accelerate partner growth. These initiatives are targeted towards two important goals: Channel enablement and lead generation.

The company has already rolled out some key initiatives in the Middle East. For instance through a consolidated intelligent resource repository named “Partner Marketing Central”, the organisation’s partners (regardless of their certification level) can access ready content at no cost that can then be aligned and integrated within their own marketing campaigns. It has also rolled out the Partner Sales Force Program focused on increasing partners’ business revenues by leveraging Cisco’s expertise to help them differentiate their services and offerings.

In addition to which the company has signed a number of strategic agreements with various public and government entities in the UAE to establish a self sustained learning based economy.

recent roundtable, the company announced that 79% of all SAP SME customers originate from over 3000 value added resellers; the company aims to increase that to a 100% in the coming years.

SAP solutions for SMEs include SAP Business One, a single integrated solution for managing small businesses and SAP Business All-in-One, a customisable and scalable solution for midsize companies with deep industry best practices built in. Currently, there are over 1,100 partner-developed addon solutions for SAP Business One and SAP Business All-in-One, the company said.

SAP’s program offering features knowledge base build-up through enablement, including talent identification via initiatives such as the University Alliance Program, Young Professional Program, sales and presales boot camps, consultant Feet on the Street programs, and a Partner Excellence corner.

In March 2012, SAP announced a fouryear plan to invest over US $450 million in skills development and sustainable innovation in the MENA region.

COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Storage Vendor of the Year Over the last few years, storage vendor EMC has emerged an undisputed leader in this burgeoning technology space underpinned by a number of innovative solutions and strategic agreements all aimed at easing the transition to virtualisation and cloud infrastructures.

In 2011, EMC announced the Velocity Service Provider program to jointly develop solutions and services with targeted,

Peripherals Vendor of the Year The product portfolio of Belkin International includes easy-to-use networking solutions, accessories for mobile devices, such as iPod, iPhone, laptops, and netbooks, energy conservation products, business-class solutions that include KVM switches,

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EMC

established service providers.. Today, there are more than 160 EMC-powered services being delivered by over 50 EMC Velocity Service providers around the world.

EMC continues to invest in its employees and partners through trainings for knowledge transfer. The company launched three new education tracks in 2011 to enhance skill sets associated with key emerging technologies.

Belkin LCD rack consoles, racks and enclosures, in addition to a broad USB and cable product mix.

The company has expanded its mobility category to support the latest Samsung devices such as the Samsung SII, SIII and the Galaxy tablets

These tracks include cloud infrastructure and services, data science and big data analytics and back up recovery systems and architecture.

At the recently held, EMC World Conference in Las Vegas, the company announced new initiatives such as the new VMAX Service Provider (SP) platform, the EMC Cloud Builder and Cloud Provider Practices in addition to EMC Cooperative Services.

The Cloud Builder Practice enables enables Velocity Solution Provider partners with advanced capabilities to design, build and operate their own branded IT-as-a-Service cloud offerings based on EMC technology.

Available to service-enabled resellers who are part of the Velocity Solution Provider program and have achieved Velocity Specialty status, the EMC Cooperative Services is a new service delivery model that gives partners an exclusive opportunity to supplement their existing skills and investments and broaden their portfolio of services.

EMC also recently announced aggressive investments in research and development amounting to a whopping US$ 20 billion in addition to the establishment of new data computing product division within EMC’s Information Infrastructure business.

To support its growing channel of resellers, in 2011, Belkin launched an online training website to offer certifications for sales people across the region.

In 2012, the company launched its all new Partner Advantage Program to offer tangible sustainable benefits to the company’s channel partners. The Programs offers support in the form of marketing development funds, rebate dollars in addition to the tangible tools and support needed to to attract new opportunities and boost profitability. Belkin’s new Partner Advantage Program provides financial support, marketing resources, training, sales incentive and support at four levels - Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum, as well as exclusive access to Belkin’s partner announcements and use of the Belkin partner logo.

For its prized customers, Belkin launched the “Try and Buy” return policy in July 2011.

As per the policy, shoppers purchasing any Belkin products including routers from an authorised retail location can return the product within 10 days – for any reason.

Components Vendor of the Year The world’s largest semiconductor company, Intel continues to exhibit its commitment to innovation by driving a huge portion of its business through the regional channel community.

Intel provides technology to over 5000 channel customers across the region and offers training and educational

Printing Vendor of the Year HP is a brand synonymous with the printing industry, with a strong history of innovative technology spanning the consumer, corporate and graphics printing segments.

Beginning 2011 through 2012, the company has completed a series of product refresh tours across all of the Middle East, to

Intel Corporation conferences to help customers meet the technology needs of their local markets.

The company ‘s initiatives for the channel include the Intel Technology Provider Program (ITP) that is designed to help channel customers market, sell and support Intel platforms and solutions.

The initiative is centred on providing

HP Middle East keep the resellers up to date on the latest products and technologies such as HP Topshot printer and HP ePrint services.

The company launched the Channel CRM in 2011 for Channel Partner. The initiative is aimed at supporting loyalty programs established by the company’s partners for their new and existing

partners with marketing support through the Intel Inside Program (IIP) which is the world’s largest co-marketing and branding program for OEMs and system integrators.

In addition, Intel’s Channel Authorised Manufacturer Program or CHAMP aims at matchmaking resellers with ODMs to ensure they have access to the latest building blocwks they need in order to build solutions and address their customers’ needs.

The company has focused on providing technical and sales training through a combination of online tools, face to face trainings and conferences such as the annual Intel Solutions Summit.

In addition, in 2011, the company revamped its channel partner program to better support customers around the globe almost 5000 of whom are located in the MENA region.

The company’s on-going commitment to the channel has resulted in growing the channel business in the MENA region by 7% year-on-year.

customers through funding, creating a database and other tangible tools and infrastructure for events.

Partners can also access valuable resources and materials from HP’s massive marketing and advertising campaigns through the Smart Portal, enabling them to advertise their services without undergoing major advertising expense. This service encompasses over 200 campaigns customized for each partner to meet their specified audience.

The company has also invested in a number of sustainability and green initiatives such as the HP Planet Partners Program and Printonomics. While the former was an effort to educate partners to enhance the office printing environment by reducing unnecessary waste, the HP Planet Partners in Schools Program was announced at Gitex Technology Week 2011 in conjunction with the UAE Ministry of Education, and has been underway since February 2012.

HP met with 17 schools across the UAE to share sustainable values and practices with students.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Trend Micro Security Vendor of the Year Trend Micro has been a consistent front runner across the security arena continuously adapting its technologies to counter the threats of the evolving security landscape.

Since its inception in 1988, Trend Micro has strived to create innovative technologies

and services that stay ahead of the dynamic threat landscape. Now as customers look to adopt the latest technologies like virtualisation and cloud computing, Trend Micro is focused on helping customers secure their environment, provisioning maximum

Systems and hardware Vendor of the Year Dell is today in the midst of an enthralling phase of evolution with a string of acquisitions under its belt to ensure it stays competitive while offering customers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to help them establish robust infrastructures.

The company in the last 12 months also acquired eight companies, many of which are software and security companies tied to the company’s enterprise products.

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Dell Middle East

The company’s big acquisitions this year have included security company SonicWall and thin-client hardware, software company Wyse Technology and a string of companies that migrate workloads from mainframes to industry standard servers including EqualLogic, Compellent, Force10 Networks, KACE, SecureWorks and Perot Systems. Through these acquisitions the company has also provisioned its channel

visibility and control while simultaneously leveraging the benefits of these technologies.

Core to its commitment to offering bestin-class security solutions are the company’s channel partners across the region.

Early this year, Trend Micro launched a new channel partner program that aims at providing added benefits with unrivalled cloud expertise and training programs. The program has been designed to enable better coordination and create an environment of collaboration between the company and its partners to create a superior customer experience.

The programme gives partners a competitive edge in the market by offering specialised training and rewards. The program assists in identifying what specialisations are required in order to help the partner grow their business, based on their resources, skill sets and market capabilities. The specialisations are designed to focus on the relevant solution offerings that address real business issues via hands on or face-to-face training, online portals that allow partners to learn at their own pace.

partners with an unrivalled portfolio of solutions and products that bring them a significant competitive edge.

In 2011, the company launched the PartnerDirect 2.0 program that provisions partners with rewards for certification and training. Dell also successfully integrated the Compellent and Force10 channel partners while leveraging the best elements of both programs to strengthen this program. In 2011, Dell offered more than 140,000 training sessions to partners. Dell also launched the online Demo Centre, this year that provides anytime, anywhere access to a suite of hosted demos.

The number of PartnerDirect partners at Dell has grown more than 40% to nearly 100,000 this year.

Dell also recently announced a robust software strategy to supplement its strength in the hardware segment. The company hopes to initially develop mobile-device management software that will help manage and secure mobile devices and PCs. The company has also given its entire PC business a makeover launching eight new laptops and four desktops in addition to upgrades to the iInspiron line of notebooks.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Avaya

Reader’s Choice Vendor of the Year

2011 was an interesting year for Networking and unified communications (UC) vendor Avaya, who in the last year alone delivered solutions to more than 400 key customers across the MENA including organisations like Dubai Civil Defence, Dubai Islamic Bank, The National Telecommunications Institute Egypt, The Intercontinental Hotels Group and Riyadh Bank among many others.

Avaya’s customers in the region now comprise 90% of the top 10 enterprises in the UAE, 70% of the hospitality market in the Emerging Markets, 90% of the top 10 enterprises in Saudi Arabia, 90% of the top 10 banks in the GCC, 70% of the service providers, and 70% of the contact centres in the Emerging Markets.

Delivering on its promise to innovation, the company also announced a number of key product launches including IP Office 8.0 for SMEs, Avaya Flare on iPad and

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other devices, upgrades to the Avaya web. alive 2.5 , Next-Gen Contact Centre, in addition to announcement of a strategic partnership with Skype.

The company boasts over 500 partners across the emerging markets, with 300 based in the Middle East and has implemented a high touch channel-centric strategy to boost its business even further.

Through 2012, Avaya has continued to innovate across the collaboration and video technology space and is now focusing on new solutions including fit-for-purpose data networks and SIP to enable seamless integration between communications and business applications. Noting the heavy adoption of social media in the ME, the company is also leveraging its expertise in the field of business communications to deliver enterprise solutions that tap into this emerging technology trend.

Avaya offers its partners courses such as a Professional Diploma in Marketing Business Services and Solutions provided

by ITSMA and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Certifications from Avaya include Video or Data Authorisations, Video or Data Expert, Avaya Certified Solutions Architect, and Avaya Connect Video Solutions certification and the company has invested in focused training sessions to ensure its partners across the region are equipped with the skills required to address the needs of key customer verticals.

Across the MEA region, the company operates in 20 Countries including South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Nigeria, Kenya, Seychelles, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Oman, KSA, UAE, Pakistan, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait in addition to its regional headquarters in Dubai.

helpAG Enterprise Reseller of the Year Over the last year, helpAG has successfully executed a robust business strategy that has helped the company achieve 67% growth year on year. In 2011, the company has invested in technical teams growing its team of technical experts by almost 40%, in addition the company has recently opened office in Doha, Qatar.

Noting the growing need for SIEM solutions

Super Retailer of the Year Over the last one year, Emax has opened 10 new stores and today boasts 32 retail outlets across the GCC, in addition, the company has also grown its IT business by 26.5%.

In keeping with market trends, Emax reports a 10% drop in netbook sales and supplements this with an increase of 23%

in the region, the company has most recently signed on as the first Middle East partner for Nitro Security, which was later acquired by McAfee. Last year, help AG also the Mi-Token authentication solution to the regional market.

A key element behind the company’s success has been its strong focus on achieving the highest possible partner status with a number of prominent vendors

Emax in tablet sales across the region. The credit for this exponential increase in the sales of tablets goes to the company’s first of its kind promotions such as the bundle offer of a free tablet with the purchase of every laptop, a concept introduced at GITEX 2011. Emax has leveraged its association with parent

including such as F5 Gold Unity Partner, Palo Alto Platinum Partner, Symantec Encryption Solution Specialist, Symantec Data Loss Prevention Specialist, Symantec IT Compliance Solution Specialist and Blue Coat Gold Partner.

In 2011, help AG also won numerous vendor recognitions like the Symantec Security MENA Partner of the Year; Palo Alto Partner of the Year; and F5 Unity Partner of the Year.

The organisation also introduced the ‘Learning Lab’ sessions, which is course material developed and delivered by helpAG. An example of these is the helpAG web application security training module, which is a four day training course covering all aspects of advanced web application hacking, giving our customers engineers a better understanding of how to protect against such attacks.

HelpAG has also put in a place a customer support ticketing system that allows the company to track open customer support cases with customers in a more sufficient and automated fashion. The company currently handles more than 500 support incidents a year all within SLAs (Service Level Agreements) between customers and helpAG.

company, The Landmark Group and plans to open kiosks at various City Max Hotels and Centrepoint stores in the near future.

The company’s key initiatives have been recognised and honoured by a number of prominent partners including Redington Gulf, Jumbo Electronics, LG and Brother Gulf among others. Most recently, the retailer has been announced an Authorized Reseller by Apple for the region. Emax was also judged the “Best Electronics and Entertainment Store” and “Retailer of the Year 2011” by Mall Of The Emirates, UAE. To offer a one-stop shop for its burgeoning client base, Emax has also recently announced the Electronics Care Unit (ECU) to assist customers with software and hardware upgrades and installations in addition to services like data recovery and trouble shooting.

The company has also invested in a number of corporate social responsibility initiatives such as the Beat Diabetes program, organised awareness walks for Autism, as well as sponsored prizes for various Quiz contests in schools and colleges.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

SMB and Consumer Reseller of the Year The Quality Group of Computers opened its doors in 1988 back then it was just a showroom establishment with a small range of PC peripherals. Today, the company carries brands such as Buffalo and Tally (data care software), Intel, NVidia, WD, Symantec, HP, Acer, Samsung

System Integrator of the Year GBM boasts a rock solid relationship with networking giant Cisco, recognised by the company for its excellence in customer satisfaction and honoured with Gold Partner status for over eight consecutive years.

During 2011, GBM identified identified the need to strategically and systematically expand its offering portfolio in other areas beyond its traditional solutions.

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Quality Computers

and LG in addition, to being a Microsoft OEM partner.

The Quality Group of Computers also happens to be the manufacturers of the Touchmate brand of PCs and PC peripherals. The brand was aimed at catering to the medium to low income segment of

Gulf Business Machines The company devised its growth strategy to maintain its position as the leading GCC network integrator, while expanding its data centre offerings across the region. It also decided to venture into physical security and audio-visual markets and launched a Network Operating Centre (NOC) last year.

Through the establishment of the Network Operations Centre (NOC), GBM provides

consumers and focused on creating products that delivered the experience of a much more expensive brand at half the cost. Today, Touchmate tablets, speakers, monitors and a whole host of other products are available across almost all the major hypermarkets and are distributed across 70 countries.

Over the years, the company has diversified and today deals in computers, notebooks, accessories, digital gadgets and software solutions, in addition to electronics, mobiles, automation and security solutions.

With such a diverse portfolio of products and solutions available under one roof coupled with regular bundle offers and product promotions, the Quality Group has established a strong presence in the channel. The company offers flexible credit lines and quick RMA services to provision a consistent and ‘on-demand’ supply of products and services.

With a Microsoft Gold Certification Award and ‘home grown’ PC and PC peripherals brand to its credit, the Quality Group is witnessing rapid growth.

remote services to manage and monitor customers’ IT infrastructure and applications in order to ensure business continuity. The NOC interface is a 24/7 ITIL-compliant service desk which offers the customers a single point of contact for queries, service requests and enhanced operations.

GBM has focused on nurturing in-house technical skills, developing the right partnerships and enabling the sales, solution design, and delivery teams to provide advanced and integrated solutions. In 2011, the company has signed on more than 14 key customers across the region including companies like Warba Bank (Kuwait), Bahrain Internet Exchange (Bahrain), Zain (Kuwait and Bahrain), Qtel and ICTQatar (Qatar) and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and International Petroleum Investment Company (UAE) among others.

In 2011, the company has also achieved two key certifications including the Cisco TelePresence Video Advanced Authorised Technology Partner and Cisco Mobile Internet Technology Authorised Technology Partner. In collaboration with Cisco, the company has also been the first to launch a Cisco training centre in Oman.

Broadline Distributor of the Year The BDL Group has reported a healthy growth rate of 19% year on year for the last three years and announced revenues exceeding US$770 million in 2011.

The company boasts a brand portfolio that includes products and solutions from Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Samsung , LG, Lenovo,

Components Distributor of the Year The Asbis Group has operations in 55 countries with 33 branches across Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, North and South America. The company’s range of products include IT components, hardware and software and its brand portfolio includes Intel, AMD, Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo, Dell, Symantec, Acronis and Promise in addition to many others.

BDL Group

MSI and Microsoft. In addition to its key operations in Saudi Arabia, the group also operates in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and the UAE. Following the opening of three new branch offices to cover the southern and northern areas of KSA taking the grand total of offices in

Asbis Middle East Asbis Middle East focuses on the markets in the GCC, Africa and Turkey. The company’s strategy is geared towards partner enablement through training and marketing activites including webinars, regional roadshows and channel incentive programs. The distributor also conducts regular channel training programmes in collaboration with

the Kingdom to six spread across Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, Khamis Meshet , Tabouk and Madinah.

Serving more than 2700 distributors BDL boasts eight strategically located warehousing facilities, comprising more than 40,000 sq. ft, in Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, (Saudi Arabia), Cairo (Egypt) and Jebel Ali, Dubai (UAE). The company also has 18 service centres spread across KSA, Cairo, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE. BDL is an Authorised and Certified Service Centre for warranty and outof-warranty repairs for major computer manufacturers such as Dell, Acer, Samsung, Asus, LG, Lenovo, MSI and other. BDL specializes in repair services for Desktop PC, Notebook, Server, printer and monitor BDL has also recently added excellent services to post-sale service was launched BDL Express service, a post sale service that provisions the delivery of products handed in for service or repairs right to the customers’ doorstep reducing the need for the customer to visit the service centres.

its many vendors which are available to resellers online.

At the regional level, despite the recent turmoil in Egypt, Asbis has managed to double operations in the market over the last year by offering enhanced suppor for channel partners through funding and marketing.

In 2011, the company launched the Asbis Fusion club, a long term loyalty program for AMD resellers that spans more than 13 countries. The Asbis Fusion Club is aimed at uniting resellers who provide AMD technologies and help them better position and sell the latest products from the vendor. The club focuses on offering incentives and helps resellers highlight and leverage emerging opportunities. As part of this initiative Asbis Middle East co-hosted two international Fusion Club events in 2011 that brought together AMD resellers from the entire MEA region.

In 2011, Asbis Middle East reported revenues approximating US$20 million with offices in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, KSA, Tunisia and the UAE.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Security Distributor of the Year COMPUTERLINKS Distribution has offices across 18 countries and offers a leading range on IT security solutions from vendors like Symantec, RSA, EMC, McAfee, Q1 Labs, Extreme Networks, F5 Networks, Kaspersky and Juniper Networks among many others.

The company helps partners deliver the latest intelligent security solutions and provisions marketing, pre-sales and post-sales technical support. Through 2011, the company

Specialised Distributor of the Year Secureway Network Distributors, a prominent regional distributor with a strong focus on security and networking solutions representing brands like Fortinet, F5 Networks, Sophos, Sourcefire and Lumesion among others. Most recently, Secureway added Infoblox and Huawei Enterprise to its

COMPUTERLINKS Distribution

introduced the Channel Partner Profiling and Gap Analysis program that combines the strengths of the strengths of Computerlinks Professional Services organisation with the newly launched Telemarketing team. The program helps the company build specific education models focused on key market verticals such as finance, education, telecom or e-government by leveraging on the existing industry focused solutions and best practices

Secureway Network Distributors leading solutions portfolio.

Over the last year, the company has consistently supported its channel partners by increasing training accreditations and technical expertise. Secureway together with its vendor partners also hosted a number of focused partner training sessions in the UAE,

from vendors and align these with customised training for the channel.

The company also recently announced the launch of “Demos on Demand” service initiative that allows Computerlinks to share detailed, product specific POC demo videos with the Channel, so they may experience a virtual hands-on demonstration of the technology in question with detailed configuration, interface and troubleshooting guides to help at any stage of the pre and post sales process. Partners may share this content on their corporate web sites and share it with end users.

The company currently has more than 50 partners across the Middle East engaged in these programs and has shifted its focus to cater to the markets in the Northern Gulf and Saudi markets where it believes vendor presence is yet lacking and opportunities are immense. The Telemarketing team within Computerlinks has also launched a campaign to identify opportunities and leads in together with the channel and vendors through vertical specific campaigns aimed at positioning solution offerings based on industry standards and compliance regulations to specific industry segments such as banking and finance and education.

Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In the UAE, the company continues to invest in on-going training sessions at its’ own Authorised Training Centre (ATC), to provide partners the convenience of a ready infrastructure to help them gain a thorough understanding and experience of the company’s offerings.

In July, 2011, Secureway launched the ‘Frontier Partner Program’. Designed to support and empower its channel partners the program provides access to several resources that include the partner portal, training support, project lifecycle and technical support, lead generation, marketing tool and resources, along with other incentives including rebates and discounts. As part of this initiative the company also appoints an experienced training coordinator to impart the necessary level of expertise within Secureway’s channel community.

In addition, the company creates its own ‘network survival guides’ in local languages and provides partners with a step-by-step guide on problems that may be encountered and how best to address them.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Networking Distributor of the Year The WestconME Group combines the industry leading portfolios of Comstor, Westcon Security, Westcon Mobility and the Westcon Convergence brands and has reported an overall growth of 28% CAGR across the last three years.

The company boasts an impressive vendor

Value Added Distributor of the Year The distributor supports a well balanced portfolio of hardware; software and networking technologies which has helped it sustain a healthy CAGR of 14% over the last three years.

Over the last few years, Aptec has consciously re worked its strategy to make the transition to a value added distributor with the establishment of Advanced Technology Services (ATS), an initiative

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WestconME Group portfolio including names such as Cisco, Avaya, Brocade, Extreme Networks, LifeSize Communications, Motorola, Proxim, SonicWALL and Trend Micro among many others.

Including Comstor and the Westcon Convergence businesses, the company has trained over 900 individuals as part of its

Aptec Holdings aimed at providing all technical services and support to vendors and its channel partners.

In 2011, Aptec launched Advanced Logistics Services ALS), a fully licensed and authorised third party logistics business approved by both the Department of Economic Development (DED) in Dubai and the Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority (JAFZA).

The company spearheads a number of channel initiatives geared towards

partner network with over 450 and over 170 Vendor Platform Certifications had been completed by channel personnel during last year. These certifications are over and above the monthly training sessions conducted as part of the company’s FASTTRACK Trainings banner.

Westcon offers its partners a range of services including presales support.

The company follows a six step go to market approach that includes annuity tracker, Marketing as a Service (MaaS) and Credit as a Service (CaaS) offerings for Westcon’s partner community. These initiatives have helped the company stay ahead of the financial challenges in the market, the MaaS program has allowed resellers with limited marketing expertise to leverage Westcon’s resources and skills to help them deliver creative marketing campaigns.

Westcon has also announced the availability of a ‘Current Analysis’ tool for channel partners to help them gain thorough market intelligence and devise robust business strategies.

enhancing the community’s existing skill sets. For instance, Aptec in collaboration with Cisco, VMware, NetApp and APC hosted the Datacenter Partner Alliance program, designed to educate partners with server and storage consolidation and virtualisation strategies to meet their customers’ Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) needs. Dell Storage Program and Track Oracle EXTra program are examples of similar initiatives aimed at helping partners up skill their technical and sales resources.

Aptec also offers post-sales IT managed services that can be sold by the company’s resellers, these services are offered by ATS. The company also supports channel partners with finance and credit facilities, in addition to marketing tools and resources.

In 2011, Aptec has added offerings that target the regional SMB space with partnerships with vendors like Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, among others. Aptec was also recently recognised as an authorised training partner for the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute across the region, authorized training centre for VMWare in the region as well as the only Microsoft Cloud distributor in the Middle East.

Optimus Reader’s Choice Distributor of the Year

Optimus Technology and Telecommunications strategy has always been geared towards introducing best of breed solutions and value centric services to the regional market. The company prides itself on its ability to create and maintain an infrastructure required to sustain a pure value based distribution model.

A key part of Optimus’s value initiatives has been the level of support the company brings to its partners through trainings and other services. For instance, Optimus 360° is a suite of services deployed to provide holistic support to the company’s partners across sales, marketing, pre and post-sales support in addition to lead generation through inside sales desk, marketing services and technical support services that it offers through the Business Partner Portal. Optimus also provides focused credit and local stocking facilities to support

the cash flow and logistics requirements of its partners across the region.

The company has also founded the Optimus Academy to provision multiple channel training programs to enable channel certification and compliance for its many partners. Optimus has also tied up with international training providers to offer unrivalled skills enhancement. The company has conducted four technical and non-technical trainings every month of last year with focus on trainer enablement and certification and as a result has certified 25 new partners in various products and solutions in 2011.

Optimus also launched the Wafa Channel Loyalty Programme to recognise and reward channel partners for their commitment to the company and business achievements.

In November 2011, the company launched Optimus Primero, an integrated

Technology & Telecommunications

marketing-as-a-service (MaaS) service platform to help its reseller partner understand and leverage the benefits associated with marketing and brand management. The company also added a total of 23 new reseller partners to its existing portfolio and ventured into Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Optimus has also employed three new solution architects and six new account managers into its existing regional employee base and has signed on new vendors such as Novell, Opti-UPS, Acer and Jabra.

Optimus also announced a suite of cloud products, cloud specific trainings and education sessions as part of its ‘Optimus On Cloud’ initiative to help the regional channel leverage this key technology trend.

Optimus has partnered with the Cloud Security Alliance to promote the use of best practices for security assurance within the subject of cloud computing.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Huawei Technologies

Best Growth Initiative by a Vendor Since its official launch in the Middle East in 2011, Huawei Enterprise Business has been focusing on building a core community of trusted and valued partners in the region. In less than 12 months, the company has built a channel structure that is simple and clearly structured based on transparent agreements between the vendor and its growing channel community.

The company’s operations in the region already represents 9.3% share of the overall global business, which in itself is a marked indication of its rapid growth and ability to offer unique advantages to partners and customers in the region.

Huawei Enterprise Business supports partners through generous discounts and

Best Growth Initiative by a Distributor Almasa Holdings has consciously invested time and valuable resources in understanding the labyrinthine intricacies of the regional channel community and devised a strategy to fill in the gaps and leverage opportunities that offer growth for the entire ecosystem.

For instance, the company has

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Almasa Holdings

revamped its strategy and created Almasa Value Distribution as a standalone venture that offers solutions spanning the networking, communications and security space. Almasa Value Distribution leverages relationships with global leaders, HP and Avaya to provide the region’s growing SMB segment with a comprehensive range of

incentives against milestones such as sales performance, marketing activities and lead generation. The regional channel strategy includes tier 1 resellers, distributors and value added partners (VAPs) who sell to specific regions or vertical industries working with Huawei.

Huawei launched the Huawei Authorise Learning Partner (HALP) programme to provide training and certification in IP and data communication technology.

This programme has been designed in partnership with Stage 2 Learning Solutions, a certified group under Al Khaleej Group, to equip technical engineers and experts with technical skills that will help partners understand areas including network designs, benchmarking and maintenance in IP technology. Classified into three tiers to enable experts to develop their IP knowledge based on their professional background, partners can be certified either as an Associate, Professional or an Expert.

Globally, Huawei invests an average of 10% of its revenue in R&D and more than 62,000 employees where 44% of the overall headcount, are engaged in R&D.

innovative solutions from both vendors.

Core to the company’s strategy is its focus on developing the channel, Almasa Holdings plays an active role in empowering the channel through investments sales education, technical training, marketing and finance support in addition to partner management and end customer support.

Over the last one year, the company has been appointed Master Distributor for gateProtect and soon followed this up with a series of trainings across KSA and the UAE. Its commitment to symbiotic growth for the entire industry has helped the company start 2012 with a remarkable 200% market growth since January 2011. The company was recently appointed Exclusive Master Distributor for IP Technology Labs, providing FastLane Solutions to the MENA region; the company has also successfully increased its channel breadth by over 50%. Almasa Value Distribution now plans to increase its workforce by upto 50% to ensure it continues to deliver innovative and competitive services to both its partners and customers in the region.

Claire Jones,

Woman Executive of the Year (Vendor) Claire Jones came to the Middle East fresh out of university in 1995. Following a stint at BT ND 3Com, Jones went on to join Cisco UAE in 2005. In less than two years, she went on to be appointed as the networking giant’s first regional sales manager in the Middle East.

Jones was the mind and soul behind Cisco’s initiative called the ‘Connected

international regional channel manager for the UAE at Cisco UAE

Women’s Group’ in the UAE, the initiative focused on attracting, developing and retaining talented women employees. Today this group boasts more than 50 members and is also responsible for leading Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility programs for the UAE. Currently international regional channel manager for the UAE, Jones believes that the

Meera Kaul,

Woman Executive of the Year (Channel) The channel today is all about the value it brings to an existing vendor’s solutions and products.

Meera Kaul initially came to the UAE more than 12 years ago and having witnessed the dot com boom in the US first hand, she almost instantly began noticing huge value gaps in the channel community.

MD at Optimus Technology and Telecommunications

What she found was that back then; the channel followed a primary trading mentality with almost no focus on the provision or extension of services.

Not ones to let an opportunity go by, Kaul spent her time networking and gaining intrinsic knowledge about the region’s channel, she also leveraged her passion for

breadth, reach and expertise of the channel will aid the networking giant target the SME segment. Her role at Cisco UAE has seen her responsible for establishing and maintaining strategic partnerships, ensuring effective channel management and governance in addition to people management.

She also led the launch of the Select certification program in the Gulf, which targeted the recruitment and growth of channel partners focusing on the SME segment. Today, there are more than 120 Select Certified partners in the UAE, and the SME segment continues to be the fast growing segment for Cisco in the UAE. During her tenure at Cisco UAE, she has achieved numerous awards including Emerging Markets Commercial Sales Manager of the Year, Sales Manager of the Year, Territory Market Manager of the Year and Chairman Club Winner.

With the IT channel in the region still maturing, her climb through the ranks is testament to her commitment to her organisation, its partners and the larger channel community in the region.

technology to recognise emerging IT needs in the region. In 2008, she set up Optimus Technology and Telecommunications aiming to not just fill the value gaps but also represents vendors that hadn’t yet ventured into the region but were keen on being represented by a distributor who was familiar with the region, its market and culture.

The rest as they say is history. While the company has gone from strength to strength, Kaul consciously invested in architecting a technically advanced team of experts to up-skill the company’s channel partners. Under her guidance, Optimus has introduced one of the most comprehensive Training Academies in the distribution ecosystem, creating a unique Loyalty Management experience for the partner community and also initiated a cloud capacity building strategy by partnering with the Cloud Security Alliance. Most recently Optimus has launched the marketing as a service (MaaS) initiative for Optimus’s reseller base to help the partner community further boost its profitability.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Simran Chabbra, Gulf distribution manager at Microsoft

Partner Champion of the Year (Vendor)

Simran Chabbra has a career spanning 17 years across organisations like HP, Compaq, IBM and Microsoft and has experienced the transformation of the industry first hand Simran Chabbra has experienced the rapid transformation of the IT industry from the depths of organisations such as HP, Compaq, IBM and Microsoft. With a career spanning over 17 years across prominent vendor organisation, Chabbra enjoys the versatility of the region’s booming channel industry.

Her experience in the channel has seen her launch the consumer channel with HP in India in 1995, driving “own the town” campaigns to propagate the importance of IT products in small cities, suggesting out of the box initiatives to drive the retail footprint and anti-piracy activities

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In her role as Gulf distribution manager at Microsoft Gulf, Chabbra is responsible for establishing and managing relationships with prominent distributors who buy products and services directly from Microsoft. At Microsoft, she interacts with close to 70 stakeholders both internally and externally to ensure that the company’s channel primary channel partners are up to date and aware of the latest product and solution offerings from the IT giant. She oversees the execution of the company’s well structured channel strategy to ensure partners derive maximum benefits from Microsoft’s many initiatives.

Chabbra is recognised by the company for her ability to build strong business relationships and is perceived as a trusted advisor within the partner community. A result oriented and pragmatic leader, she

has a keen eye for detail that has helped her build and manage, work in and with leading teams across the globe. She is extremely passionate about creating an environment that allows for maximum interaction with the company’s partners in order to introduce innovative concepts and strategies to keep the thrill of work going.

Chabbra believes that “partners are the heart and soul of Microsoft” and constantly strives help the channel address the challenges posed by increasing competition and complex customer demands. A believer in the saying ‘the only constant is change’ she believes that like all other things, strategies must be regularly revisited and revised to ensure they address current market needs and leverage emerging market opportunities.

Roger El Tawil, Partner Champion of the Year (Channel)

Roger El Tawil was brought on board as executive director and shareholder at Almasa Value Disrtibution to refine the company’s strategy and execute its objectives. With over 15 years of experience across a number of roles and organisations in the region’s IT industry, El Tawil is a renowned industry expert who has progressively exhibited his commitment to the company and its many partners.

He has focused on leveraging the company’s existing relationships while establishing a number of key new partnerships with prominent vendors and partners across the region. El Tawil leverages his keen industry knowledge to establish channel strategies that are based on a thorough understanding of the partner’s capabilities and specific product portfolios.

Under his leadership, Almasa Value Distribution has continued to introduce channel strategies that support partners through a range of marketing, operational, technical and financial services.

Roger has introduced and implemented numerous channel connect and training programmes across the region, to demonstrate the company’s commitment to enhancing the existing skill sets across the regional community. He has also helped Almasa Value Distribution recruit and extensively train local security channel partners to boost the company’s network security offerings.

In addition, he has also spearheaded a number of prominent initiatives geared towards providing vendors the opportunity to introduce and promote their products to the channel. For example, after expanding its portfolio and being named the Exclusive

executive director at Almasa Holdings

Master Distributor for IP Technology Labs, El Tawil further engaged the channel, organising a product launch for IP Technology Labs’ solutions that hosted an audience of over 75 partners and resellers.

Prior to his role at Almasa Value Distribution, El Tawil was channel and marketing director, Middle East and North Africa at Avaya where he was instrumental in establishing the company’s position as a leading business communications systems vendor. His responsibilities included thought leadership around Avaya’s stateof-the-art Intelligent Communication solutions while addressing the growing needs of dynamic businesses in the region to enhance productivity, profitability and customer satisfaction. Roger’s leadership at Avaya resulted in his recognition as the industry’s Channel Executive of the year in 2010.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Arun Chawla, CEO, Trigon

Outstanding IT Executive (Channel)

Arun Chawla began his career in 1991 at Al Ghurair Enterprise as senior sales executive for the company’s PC product line. In 1994, he was promoted to the post of marketing manager where he assumed responsibility for both sales and marketing of the PC product line and later promoted to marketing manager of the company’s client server business.

In August 1997, Chawla was appointed marketing manager at Trigon, a new venture at the time where he was quickly promoted through the ranks and is today CEO. Focused under his leadership, Trigon Gulf has created, retained and maintained a great team and set a breaking path for others to follow.

Over the years Trigon has consistently adapted new technologies to keep pace with the fast changing market. He was one of the first individuals to introduce touch screen technology to the UAE market.

Chawla was the mind behind the company’s strategy to implement a profit-based target system rather than revenue-based targets for sales teams, which in turn was emulated by other regional distributors. He believed that the while the turnover figures were important, the bottom line figures were an imperative indicator of a company’s growth capabilities.

He holds Masters Degree in Business Management and is Gold Medalist from School of Economics. Chawla is

also member of Australian Institute of Management and brings with him a rich experience of 28 years in IT Industry with companies like HCL, Westinghouse, Cromemco, Siemens-Nixdorf.

Under his guidance, Trigon has quickly advanced to generate over US$130 million in revenues. The company now boasts a dedicated employee base of 90 people spread across sales and marketing, retail and merchandising, IT and technical, administrative and logistics, and accounts and finance.

Trigon was also the first the first Distribution company to be awarded the ISO 9001:2008 certification. The company’s brand portfolio includes BenQ, D-Link,LG, Samsung, Acer, Xerox, and iOmega among many others.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Best Partner Excellence Programme of the Year (Distributor)

Once again, our judges arrived at a unanimous decision across this category recognising Redington Gulf’s Partner Connect program as being a best-in-class effort geared towards establishing a close knit and skilled channel ecosystem.

The Partner Connect Program for the company’s value added resellers (VARs) has been designed to allow more direct engagement with individuals working in sales and pre-sales roles across Redington Value’s numerous partner organisations. The program leverages on the company’s deep rooted understanding of the regional channel market and keen knowledge of the challenges faced by resellers and end customers. The program is focused on driving more interaction between the vendors and resellers through integrated product trainings, sales resources and

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promotions personalised for partners across the region.

By becoming a part of the company’s Partner Connect program, resellers can access relevant personalised information related to deals, offers, and products, cross-selling and up-selling products, in addition to leveraging expertise in the niche technology arenas such as networking, security, servers and storage.

As part of the initiative partners can leverage the program to develop BoQs and attend in classroom and online trainings, exclusive events and conferences that are relevant to their specific line of business and product portfolio.

In addition, Redington Value has further enhanced the relevancy of this program by connecting it to a loyalty program that offers partners an

Redington Gulf opportunity to accumulate point every time they register an opportunity or use the partner portal. These points can be redeemed for further enhancement of the partners’ skills such as training vouchers, product demos or gift vouchers.

Since its launch in mid 2010, the Partner Connect Program has registered over 30 active individuals on the portal.

The company has also signed on 120 new reseller partners and has another 160 in the pipeline.

Redington Value is the value add distribution arm of Redington Gulf, the region’s largest IT distribution organisation with revenues exceeding US$ 1.6 billion.

Redington Gulf operates across 14 countries with logistics facilities across 10 countries and offers channel partners solutions and products from over 30 prominent vendors.

Best Partner Excellence Programme of the Year (Vendor)

Microsoft Gulf’s Microsoft Partner Network Program emerged a unanimous winner across the various nominees for this vendor category. While the judges were no doubt impressed by the sheer size of this program comprising over 1500 partners, they were equally in awe of the initiatives the company has taken to boost the program’s productivity even further.

The company has taken a proactive approach to revamping its partner program by actively collecting partner and customer feedback to assess the different areas that this initiative looks to cover, in doing so Microsoft Gulf has been able to ‘plug in’ elements that would make the program all the more beneficial to new and existing partners.

For instance, MPN has introduced a structure that recognises partner status based on their competency levels and investments in skills enhancement. Microsoft

Gulf now recognises partners as being Gold or Silver on specific competencies, instead of on generic achievements such as their size or financial capabilities. This has evened out the marketplace allowing both big and small players to compete equally based on their skill sets and technical abilities across a specific workload or technology portfolio.

In addition to this, the company has also implemented a new incentive program that offers channel partners a chance to earn up to 30% of the deal value through an opportunity registration program.

Microsoft has also released a partner referral system called Microsoft Pinpoint, an online marketplace that helps partners identify the right business opportunities based on their area of expertise and resource capabilities.

Over the last year, Microsoft ran a comprehensive partner channel readiness program that delivered over 40 multi-day

Microsoft Gulf workshops covering level 100 - 400 courses to partners across the region to skill them up on the latest Microsoft technologies. This was combined with a comprehensive free online readiness program called Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Simultaneously, the company has made efforts to stay close to both its customers and partners by regularly investing in initiatives like customer satisfaction surveys and the Partner Advisory Council that comes together at least twice a year. The council brings together prominent channel CEOs together with the vendor’s leadership team to exchange information and express opinions on how the company can better support its channel ecosystem.

A recent IDC research found that partners effectively engaged in MPN saw 28% greater revenue per employee and 68% larger deal sizes, a clear indication of the strength and effectiveness of this program.

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COVER FEATURE ResellerME Partner Excellence Awards 2012

Sukant Mishra,

Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year (Channel) Sukant Mishra attained his MBA from Delhi University and went on to successfully establish a career in the IT industry as part of both distributor and vendor organisations. Soon after completing his education, he went on to join Multitech Systems in the US. Appointed as divisional manager, Mishra was

MD Octagon Group of Companie

responsible for developing the company’s channel structure for its VOIP and data communications technology division across emerging markets such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Mishra has worked across prominent distributor organisations such as Redington Gulf, where he was instrumental in

establishing the distributor’s hold in Africa. In addition, he has also worked with Aptec Gulf where he was responsible for establishing Aptec Gulf’s components division. This naturally meant creating an impressive vendor portfolio, recruiting trained expertise and signing on the right resellers to boost the division’s operations across the markets of the Middle East and Africa.

He then went on to be appointed CEO at Digimasters Distribution, he set up the company’s operations in Nigeria and Kenya and went on to sign prominent brands such as Acer, BenQ, Sony, HP and Asus among others.

Mishra used his 15 years of extensive industry experience to then set up Octagon International, an organisation that he has worked tirelessly to make relevant to the region and its channel community. As owner and founder of the company, he has focused on developing the right vendor and channel relationships to ensure the symbiotic growth of the entire industry in the Middle East region while boosting trade relationships with the emerging markets of Africa.

PANNEL OF JUDGES IVAN KRAEMER Ivan Kraemer currently works at Potential LLC FZE in Dubai where he focuses his elaborate industry experience spanning over 25 years in the Middle East and Africa region to support business and entrepreneurs in their bid to achieve performance growth. Having worked across both the vendor and value added distribution spaces in the capacity of an employee and an entrepreneur, Ivan is no stranger to the secrets of this industry.

Ivan holds a Degree in Electrical Engineering in addition to a Diploma in Business Management and Administration and a Diploma in Marketing.

PHILIP HUGHES Philip Hughes is widely recognised as a leading expert on route to market and channel strategies within the Middle East, and is a regular presenter at networking events

and conferences here and in Europe. Since October 2007, Philip has been operating as a consultant helping a number of local and UK based Companies plan local Middle East start-up Operations,, and as an advisor on IT Channel Issues in the region. In 2008 he helped set up Akhdar FZCo, the region’s first truly Compliant Asset Management and Recycling Business and has recently been appointed managing director - GCC Region of Sims Recycling Solutions FZE, (a leading IT recycling organisation).

AMER KHREINO Amer Khreino is the founder and managing director of Avenues FZCO with over 17 years in leadership, management and business development roles in the channel. In his current role, Amer focuses his expertise to offer strategic, financial and operational consulting services to the distribution and channel community as well as to global

providers who are expanding their service offerings in the region. He currently lives in the UAE with his family and has a Degree in Engineering and executive education in high impact leadership.

SAMER KARAWI Samer Karawi is a managing partner at Galal & Karawi (G&K) Consulting where he provides American and European ICT companies with business development services in the Middle East. Since the firm’s inception in 2008, Karawi has delivered multiple consulting and training engagements on business and channel development, retail business enablement, social media strategies, creativity and innovation in addition to strategic market reinvention. Prior to this, he has worked for over 25 years in major multinational IT companies in various capacities. Samer holds a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science and a Masters in Marketing from France.

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FEATURE Counterfeit and Grey Market

THE GOOD, BAD AND UGLY Vendors and law enforcement agencies are cracking down on counterfeit and grey market operations, yet these operations continue to witness explosive growth across developing nations. We speak to industry experts to understand the challenges this creates for the sale of original products and how they can be addressed.

Counterfeit trade and grey market operations are no longer restricted to high end products such as fashion, bags, watches etc. Over the last few years, the world has witnessed a steady increase in the sale of counterfeit hardware and pirated software.

Simultaneously, we have witnessed a steady upsurge in grey market shipments of smart phones, tablets, printer consumables among a host of other technology.

It may be interesting to some that two separate terms are used for what many seem to think is the same problem.

While the ‘grey market’ involves the trade in legal goods using channels that are

Lancy Mohan Menezes, business unit head, print and supplies at Emitac Distribution

not authorised by the manufacturer of the products, counterfeit refers to unauthorised manufacturing and sale of inferior quality goods or ‘fakes’ using a prominent brand logo or name.

“Counterfeit trade is a growing, profitable parallel industry. The issue is so profound that most vendors have a dedicated anticounterfeit budget to fight and counter the production capabilities of counterfeits and curb their inroads into the local markets.

Across the IT sector specifically, due to the pace of innovation and complex demands from products the barrier to entry is quite high. This is perhaps why we see that the most commonly impacted categories are optical disc storage media, tape storage media and consumables such as inks and toners. Counterfeit traders particularly eye the consumables that require a low initial cost yet represent large volume sales,” says Lancy Mohan Menezes, business unit head, print and supplies at Emitac Distribution.

“In the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), in general, counterfeit print cartridges for HP laser and inkjet printers mostly originate from Asia Pacific and increasingly from Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries. In some countries, counterfeit products are imported. In others, they are produced and distributed on a large scale within the country itself. Counterfeiters

Asia, including China, reported the largest grey market opportunities, with a 62% of the grey market in 2011”

Ernest Azzam, Laser and Enterprise Solutions business manager at HP Middle East typically build their business exclusively on counterfeit products and often use an entire illegitimate distribution network, including resellers and retailers. In other countries, infringers are often running legitimate businesses with original printing supplies but, in parallel, they also distribute and sell counterfeit products. Some countries such as the UAE also function as transport hubs for counterfeits due to their large ports and extensive transportation links,” adds Ernest Azzam, Laser and Enterprise Solutions business manager at HP Middle East.

Jimmy Joseph, AEC Product Sales Manager, Omnix International, an authorised distributor of Autodesk solutions, agrees: “The proliferation of fake counterfeit items has become a key concern across both the local and regional markets. These items have also developed sophisticatedly, leaving consumers confused and hard to distinguish

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FEATURE Counterfeit and Grey Market

A recent news release in a prominent local newspaper quoted the CEO of a prominent electronics retailer as saying, “Max Electronics will sell the new iPads on the grey market, but we will not be buying directly from overseas. The price in the UAE is expected to be double what Apple has quoted in the US. This lends credence to Gidwani’s remark.

which items are real or fake. This problem has largely affected the printer consumables segment, where a lot of fake cartridges, printer heads and even computer software have flooded the market,” he says.

Root cause analysis Industry experts believe that lower income and less educated buyers combined with massive internet penetration across the globe fuels the demand for illegal products. In addition, distributors and resellers are drawn to this market in a bid to stay competitive.

According to a recent KPMG study that surveyed 43 authorised distributors and resellers, including 15 European outlets, found that although almost 92% cited purchasing counterfeit products as a significant risk due to poor quality and support, 71% claimed it was necessary to purchase grey-market items to be competitive on pricing and fulfilment.

Still 81 per cent of distributors said their competitive position would improve if greymarket activity was eliminated, analysts said.

Ironic as this may seem, experts believe that a majority of resellers involved in grey market trade either do so because they are unaware of the harm it can cause to the brand and their own organisation or do so to make quick profits.

“The size of this market can vary with the macroeconomic environment and product supply vs. demand, among other factors.

Resellers are drawn to this market because it can be lucrative. Generally speaking, the

Jimmy Joseph, AEC product sales manager, Omnix International

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Faisal Jamal, COO at Despec MERA

Resulting doom The repercussions of purchasing grey market goods are far reaching. Trade in counterfeit, grey market goods affects technology brands their customers and the nation’s economy in general.

Analysts said that the grey market is witnessing a steady surge with smart phones contributing to 6% of the grey market shipments in this year compared to just 1.4% in 2011” more demand there is for a product, the greater the grey market for that product.

During tough economic times, budgets get stretched and the grey market can appear attractive to those looking for lower cost products which on the surface meet their needs,” says Karim Kattouf, program manager, Brand Protection – Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Turkey at Cisco.

Analysts also believe that the stringent government regulations can also boost grey market trade especially across countries where corruption, bureaucracy and monopolies are a given. Grey market trade is also seen to increase in countries plagued by war, political upheaval or natural disasters.

Niranjan Gidwani, deputy CEO at Eros Group adds another interesting perspective: “The countries that delay or restrict the launch of popular products or solutions often witness a significant spike in grey market trade. Price isn’t the only factor because for instance, we have witnessed in the UAE that the official price of a product once it is launched is much lower than what was initially offered in the grey market. This is because while official channels work on correct pricing the grey market works on demand. The greater the demand, the higher the price,” he says.

“The price advantages on grey products cause massive problems for distributors as they affect the purchasing habits of resellers, who overstock and in some cases sell at lower prices to stem losses. At times it creates an uncertainty in the market for pricing levels that are not realistically achievable by distributors. In turn, it affects the customer channel for resellers, who lose their business to the ones purchasing from grey suppliers,” says Faisal Jamal, COO at Despec MERA. Hendrik Verbrugghe, marketing director, Canon Middle East, says, “This creates major confusion in market with two prices or sometimes three prices present in market for the same product. In any given condition ‘grey’ prices are lower than regular prices, thus creating pressures on local margins.

Often, this means losing out on the customer who may resort to purchasing a product through an alternative route or worse purchases a counterfeit.”

According to Eros’s Gidwani, the grey market doesn’t just eat into the company’s sales but hampers customer care. “Many a time we have seen that products bought in the grey market are brought to service centres for repairs which cannot be done

Karim Kattouf, program manager, Brand Protection – Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Turkey at Cisco without warranty and that irks the customer.

But that is a price you have to pay when someone makes a purchase from the grey market,” he says.

“The fact that it is labelled ‘grey’ and not ‘black’ is the decisive factor. A grey product does not mean that the product is fake but it just means that it has been purchased outside of an authorised sales channel. So, despite the fact that buying these products isn’t illegal, consumers may end up with other problems such as the lack of warranty without which authorised dealers will not accept grey products. The UAE has an open policy toward importing products; companies can import products even if they are not the licence holders,” says Dan Smith, head of integrated marketing for the Middle East and

Naser Samaenah, regional license compliance manager, Adobe Systems MENA

According to an IHS iSuppli Mobile and Embedded Memory Market Brief from information and analytics provider IHS, in May 2012 Shipments of grey market cellphones are set to amount to 210-million units in 2012, representing 13% of the global mobile handset business.

While this is down from the peak year of 2011, when gray market totalled 250-million units, shipments are set to remain high, amounting to 189-million units, or 11% of the global cellphone shipments in 2013.

“Grey-market phones represent a huge segment of the overall mobile handset industry. For manufacturers of these phones, keeping up with consumer trends while maintaining low costs will continue to be a concern as they fight to remain viable in a fiercely competitive market. As a result, the market for lower cost flash memories like embedded multimedia card (eMMC) and serial peripheral interface (SPI) NOR has witnessed a subsequent spike as manufacturers of these phones strive to keep production costs low,” said Michael Yang, senior principal analyst for memory and storage research at IHS. What’s important to note, is that the manufacturers of these cell phones normally thrive in developing countries where a large underground economy exists and consumer demand if driven by low prices.

Africa region of Xerox’s Developing Markets Operations.

“The use of pirated software entails risks of different types both on the technical level and the legal front. For instance, the software may have in-built malware that can affect your systems, it may not be compatible with other programs or devices or may even damage the system or device. In addition, using pirated software puts an organisation at risk of being charged for copyright infringement,which can lead to both financial losses and damage to the firm’s reputation,” says Naser Samaenah, regional license compliance manager, Adobe Systems MENA. On the vendor side, the use of counterfeit and grey market products represents a huge challenge with these products and solutions

In China, for instance, grey-market handsets include counterfeits as well as socalled white-box units in which any logo can be slapped on a ready device. Frequently these white-box phones also feature smuggled chips, lack official certification and use fake international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) codes otherwise used to distinguish genuine handsets.

According to the research, Asia, including China, reported the largest grey market opportunities, with a 62% of the grey market in 2011. Analysts said that sectors like Indonesia and Vietnam are now moving beyond low-cost grey market handsets into grey-market feature phones, which are considered a step above low-cost handsets because of slightly more sophisticated functionalities. The grey market in Latin America, Middle East and Africa skews more toward low-end smart phones where entire new populations are being exposed to mobile devices for the first time, analysts at IHS said.

Analysts said that the grey market is witnessing a steady surge with smart phones contributing to 6% of the grey market shipments in this year compared to just 1.4% in 2011. “Feature phones, however, will continue to command the lion’s share of grey-market handset shipments this year, at well over 60%,” the report concluded.

becoming harder to identify with displays of branding and high tech specifications.

‘Grey’ trade cuts into the revenue of hundreds of legitimate dealers, suppliers, and manufacturers. For these legitimate companies, the losses are huge and damaging because they now have to shell out additional resources in educating the market about the disadvantages of purchasing from the grey market or buying a counterfeit. If they don’t invest in customer awareness, they risk losing out huge sums in revenue as customers have a tendency to seek lower prices on the latest products and solutions. In addition, lacking customer awareness may also lead to damage to a legitimate dealer or manufacturers reputation due to lacking warranty or technical support for grey market and counterfeit goods.

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FEATURE Counterfeit and Grey Market

In a sort of ‘cascading effect’ the loss of revenue to legitimate businesses as a result of increasing grey market and counterfeit trade also affects the country’s GDP and ability to generate foreign investments. This in turn affects the government’s ability to invest in infrastructure and other citizen services.

Geared for a fight “The grey market has always been an issue, in the channel, for consumers, enterprises, vendors and the government. Now with a tough economic situation some channels choose to leverage their activities in one market to gain an advantage in others.

Vendors typically do not allow this type of activity due to the efforts to put into developing channels across countries that they believe are most suitable for the respective market aimed at serving customers in the best possible way. This is not just a channel issue but also a vendor issue where products have been keyed or developed for that market based on dynamics or peculiarities of the region. More must be done in collaboration between the channel and vendors to stamp this activity out,” says Smith.

Xerox has implemented a number of initiatives to contribute to the fight against ‘grey’ trade. The company works with law enforcement officials, such as customs and excise as well as legal counsel internationally to investigate any developments in the grey and black market. According to Smith,

Dan Smith, head of integrated marketing for the Middle East and Africa region of Xerox’s Developing Markets Operations

Hendrik Verbrugghe, marketing director, Canon Middle East

John Spoor, channel sales manager, MEA at GFI Software

Xerox has also appointed an Internet monitoring firm to search out websites that advertise Xerox products without the proper authority or violate Xerox trademarks. “These investigations are carefully monitored and yield important finds. We have also implemented holograms and tracking data on all Xerox products to help establish authenticity of the goods. In addition, Xerox is a member of the Imaging Supplies Coalition (ISC), a trade association of imaging companies that band together to educate customers on counterfeiting issues.

Wholesalers, dealers and consumers may also submit questionable goods to the ISC for authentication by the manufacturer,” he says.

To help its channel partners, Xerox has a series of Compliance Officers who work with the partners to ensure that counterfeit and grey market consumables are identified and appropriate action is taken. The company also invests in regular partner trainings to help the channel relay their knowledge of the ‘grey’ market and its disadvantages to their own customers.

Similarly, Canon has an IP and legal team based in Europe with representatives across the Middle East region who organise custom seizures and random checks to ensure that the activities of the channel are thoroughly supervised.

HP’s Azzam says that the company actively fights manufacturing and fraudulent sales of printing supplies across the globe by partnering with law enforcement authorities.

Together, they identify and seize counterfeit

products, cut off distribution routes and prosecute fraudsters.

“HP works with policy makers and non-government bodies such as Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy, (BASCAP) to toughen applicable laws and enforcement capacity. We also proactively educate our employees, salesforce, channel partners, customers and the public to encourage them to protect themselves from fake print cartridges and consequent legal action,” he says.

Azzam adds, “Since last year, in the U.A.E. the total number of seized counterfeit printing items destined for HP printers is over two million. In addition, according to the Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), counterfeit products account for about 8% of revenues generated by imaging supplies sales in EMEA That’s a significant figure and indicates that counterfeit trade is still booming and counterfeiters have targeted the Middle East and UAE for their operations.

As the seizures indicate, HP and law enforcement are fighting back successfully.

HP is confident that its successful collaboration with the U.A.E. authorities has weakened local counterfeit operations. It’s important to ensure that there’s ongoing pressure to identify, capture and prosecute counterfeiters wherever they are.”

Menezes from Emitac, which is a prominent value added distributor for HP imaging and printing solutions, says that over the years the company has taken due to care

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FEATURE Counterfeit and Grey Market

to ship every product with an authorised distributor sticker to establish brand authenticity and origin.

Despec MERA organises training events with its vendor to educate partners on anti-counterfeit. “Furthermore with our local availability in more than 10 local warehouses across Middle East and Africa we hope that by investing in having stock locally it gives the channel the opportunity to buy genuine products locally. To further add to the confidence, vendors constantly run promotions or boosters to encourage the market to purchase from authorised sources,” says Jamal.

“Vendors in the region run major campaigns to educate customers and interact aggressively with law enforcement agencies to curb the trade of counterfeits in particular.

Joint seminars and trainings are held to create awareness and develop product champions to address this issue at every level and ensure that the consumer gets the right products. In addition, vendors are making efforts to unite their channel under loyalty programmes that offer them a whole host of

Neelesh Bhatnagar, CEO at Emax

Niranjan Gidwani, deputy CEO at Eros Group

Mohammad Mobasseri, senior VP at Comguard

incentives and support while educating them to promote the cause for legal channels and original merchandise,” says Menezes.

Despite these significant efforts experts believe that the industry needs to take stringent measures to crack down on the sale of counterfeit products and seriously curb the growth of the grey market.

“While the situation is improving a whole lot more needs to be done. Heavier penalties and more frequent checks on unauthorised channels are needed in order to make any difference to the grey market. We need to understand that while counterfeiting is illegal worldwide, they grey market isn’t. Some countries do permit the import of goods even without the licenses to do so. I fear that this form of trade will only continue to increase and hinder the legal channels if we don’t start prosecuting people with heavy penalties,” John Spoor, channel sales manager, MEA at GFI Software says.

Cisco’s Kattouf also believes that the future of the grey market and counterfeit goods completely depends on how effectively the entire community combats it.

Mohammad Mobasseri, senior VP at Comguard, adds, “Although there have

been significant efforts on the part of law enforcement agencies to crack down on counterfeit products, these efforts have been in spurts. We need to see more co-operation between vendors, resellers and customers.

Customers must be aware that as long as there is a demand, there will be a supply of counterfeit products in the market place.”

“Grey” market is different from “Counterfeit”, says Canon’s Verbrugghe (what is his job title?). With the Euro crisis and Dollar value steadily falling, Verbrugghe says that Canon anticipates an increase in grey market.

“With time if the crisis deepens then we can see an increase of 10 to 15% from current level in next 12 to 18 months. The good news is that the sale of counterfeit products will continue to decrease as the market will show a willingness to pay a premium up to 10% to 20% for original “grey” products in comparison to a counterfeit,” he explains.

“With regular shrinking margins in IT distribution, the price attraction will continue to lure the resellers to buy from grey sources.

I don’t believe we will see an eradication of either grey or counterfeit in the coming months. However, with right efforts we may just see the situation change for the better,” concludes Jamal.

As Neelesh Bhatnagar, CEO at Emax believes, the UAE has the legal infrastructure to spot and crack down on grey market activities yet there is long way to go. Can vendors and distributors weed out the grey market and parallel imports with the help of local authorities? Jury is still out. //

The fact that it is labelled ‘grey’ and not ‘black’ is the decisive factor. A grey product does not mean that the product is fake but it just means that it has been purchased outside of an authorised sales channel”

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PEOPLE Lancy Mohan

Lancy Mohan Menezes , business unit head, print and supplies, Emitac Distribution

The perseverant positive “Every individual has a purpose in life. While some may find their purpose early on, others take time to realise their true calling. I believe it is this search ones purpose that keeps us walking through the sands of time,” says Lancy Mohan Menezes, business unit head, print and supplies at Emitac Distribution.

Menezes chose a career in IT at a time in India when the only respectable career options were associated with medicine and engineering.

He graduated with a “Bachelor of Engineering” degree in Computer Science. Following his graduation, Menezes took up jobs with prominent IT distribution houses across India, Saudi Arabia and finally the UAE. “I have spent over 18 years in this business.

I have witnessed the PC go from being a ‘luxury’ investment to being an affordable ‘necessity’.

Interestingly, the printing and imaging solutions industry continues to grow despite the move into the era of digitisation and digital content in addition to the pressure on adopting a paperless environment. With automation and digitisation there are more documents printed today than ever before and this has led to the transition from standalone printing devices to multi-function devices (MFD’s) that can be accessed via the internet from any part of the world. We are in the midst of perhaps the most interesting technology

era where a whole host of devices from PCs, printers, and smart phones in addition to a range of other mobile devices are expected to be able to interact with each other, how the vendors leverage these demands to create the latest innovations only remains to be seen,” he says.

Menezes believes that with all the changes ahead, the role of the IT channel will become all the more important. “The channel plays a vital role in the vendor’s go-to-market strategy and is an internal part of the sales cycle. We provide the first hand feedback, knowledge and experience required to launch a product effectively in the market. The channel has stood the test of time and in spite of the economic downturn have evolved stronger and are the real ‘heroes’ that contribute to fulfilling and driving demand in the market place. There is a lot that I have personally learnt from my participation in the channel, my journey has inspired me and helped me realise the importance of self learning, self motivation and intelligence. I have mastered the art of planning, executing and driving effective growth strategies through my peers and seniors in this industry,” Menezes says.

Hailing from the city of Bangalore in India, Menezes has been married for over a decade and has two beautiful children. He says, “My wife has been a tremendous support and has been the wind beneath the wings to help maintain the

balance between work and family. The kids have been a great inspiration for both of us and they may find it funny reading this, but life truly has more meaning with kids around.” “’Switch of’ and ‘un-wind’ are inspiring words but tough to enact and imbibe, however over time one learns to take control of their thoughts and prioritise their time. A passionate hobby definitely helps and I turn to music, swimming and walks to unwind, other times I occupy myself with kids activities of which there is an exhaustive list,” Menezes adds.

One of Menezes more interesting hobbies involves collecting and reflecting on age old idioms and proverbs that he believes is ground work to one day writing his own book. “Fiction isn’t my style, I am a practical person and therefore my book will probably revolve around the many intrinsic relationship and human ‘bonds’. I don’t want to spill the beans just yet,” he says.

He believes in the adage “You live only once” and therefore strives to live a balanced and tries fruitful life and contribute to society whenever possible. Ten years from now, Menezes aspires to be part of the board of directors at a vibrant organisation where he can be a trusted consultant, establishing strategies for future growth.

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PEOPLE Khwaja Saifuddin

Learning to grow Khwaja Saifuddin holds a Masters in International Business Management from Lucknow University, India and has worked across both vendor and distributor organisations in various sales positions.

Currently, Saifuddin is senior director of sales, Middle East and Africa at Western Digital.

“I have been a part of the IT industry for the last 14 years having worked across various sales positions at companies like Samsung and Emitac. As senior director of sales at WD I am responsible for effectively implementing our global strategies and driving growth of our products across the Middle East, Africa and the Indian Subcontinent also covering Turkey, and CIS countries,” he says.

He began his career with a sales position at Emitac Distribution, a prominent IT distributor and services provider covering the MENA region and believes this to be the most enriching experience of his career. “Not only did I learn all the dos and don’ts of the Middle East markets but my tenure at Emitac also helped me understand the true importance of relationships in the channel. Even today, I leverage my experience at Emitac to build a strong channel ecosystem based on the principles of trust and mutual benefit,” Saifuddin adds.

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Saifuddin enjoys the jet setting part of his job role that gives him the opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and familiarise himself with dynamic cultures and traditions. Most importantly, it helps him understand the vast difference between markets in terms of infrastructure, geographical accessibility and consumer demands which in turn aids him in implementing effective strategies across WD’s multiple market segments.

He says, “Education is part of my daily life, where I need to be on top of major developments taking across this rapidly evolving industry, the dynamic markets and turbulent economies. While I do this through regular interaction with channel partners and reading up on all the news and development, I am also currently pursuing the General Management Program from IIM Ahmadabad, India, to ‘keep my axe sharpened’.”

Saifuddin says that his professional drive is best described as ‘being in over drive’.

“At work I am the captain of the ship- ready for any eventuality,” he adds. A calm yet ambitious person by nature, he prides himself on his punctuality and despises delaying a time commitment, “this goes for me and for anybody else I may be meeting or working with,” he says.

Khwaja Saifuddin, senior director of sales, Middle East and Africa at Western Digital A devoted husband and loving father to his two kids, he adds that the biggest challenge is finding the right balance between work and family. When not at work, he enjoys spending quality time with his family. He says, “I enjoy long drives with my wife and two kids, and visiting the many indoor attractions available for children in Dubai, especially during the summer months. We also take short breaks once in a while to get away from the monotony of everyday routine. I particularly enjoy discussing cars with my five year old son.”

Saifuddin indulges in his passion for gadgets and lists out the WD TV Live Hub, iPad2 and iKonRC as being among his favourite tech devices. Despite his love for technology, Saifuddin isn’t as passionate about social media. “Social media is definitely not an important part of my professional life, while it is a part of my personal life, it’s not substantial.

I only use it to be able to keep in touch with long lost friends and distant family,” he says.

He wishes for a much needed vacation that takes him to a land that offers complete disconnect from the outside world. “Enjoying the serene preserves of nature with my family without the constant rush of the outside world, this is the dream on top of my wish list,” Saifuddin says.

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