April Issue 2022

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Commvault merges APJ and EMEA regions into One ‘International’ Region /05 www.smechannels.com

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INTERVIEW / 34

Druva Expands Industry’s first saas-based MSP Program to Asia Pacific Region.

INTERVIEW / 38

Embracing Digital-First Business Model.

SECURITY / 46

From SolarWinds to Log4j: The global impact of today’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

AT THE HEART OF

DIGITALTRANSFORMATION Making the most of a pandemic-triggered massive digitalization, the IT solutions providers are at the center of a digital transformation megatrend - P/18

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KnowBe4 Finds Holiday-Themed Emails Entice Employees to Click Pg: 12 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business GUEST ARTICLE / 24

SECURITY

Reimagined work demands redesigned machines.

/ 26

The Balancing Act of Financial Organizations to Compete in a Technology-Driven World.

IOT

/ 28

Attacks on IoT: The Call to Combat Rising Cyberthreats in the Telco Space.

MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL

A CONSISTENT ECONOMY CAN PUSH CONSISTENT IT CONSUMPTION SANJAY MOHAPATRA

sanjay@smechannels.com

Dear Friends India as a market is poised today from an overall brand perspective. Our consistent governance and democracy are very big assets along with the long haul of a political party in the prime minister’s office. Today half of the world is engaged in the war and the other half is engaged in eradicating pandemic. India has taken the side of the world to eradicate pandemic, fight against illiteracy, poverty, and corruption. So, today most of advanced countries including USA, Europe, China, Japan, Australia, etc. are looking at India to play a major role – starting from supplying vaccines to food to fodder, even arm and ammunition.

Investors in this situation are thinking India a better place to invest and therefore our economy is growing on a pretty steady pace around 7-8% YOY, whereas other countries including China are growing at half of the growth of India.

Where there is a huge surge in data consumption across world, people are looking at India to store data as many of the advanced countries including Singapore and Hong Kong have brought in moratorium on data centre built.

Canon DX C3800 series Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE (iR-ADV) DX C3800 series comprises of four advanced A3 colour laser multifunction devices (MFDs). This model is aimed at expanding Canon’s footprint among Enterprises and large businesses, Jobbers (Copy Shop Owners), SME segment along with Government sector. As colour printing is touted to create more visual impact along with offering a premium look and feel, the launch of the new colour MFDs is in line with Canon’s vision to enable businesses with the best of printing solutions, thereby fuelling their growth by propagating the theme of #ColoursForLife. Furthermore, the extensive line-up of the new imaging devices empowers businesses of all sizes with capabilities aimed at maximising productivity and user convenience.

Indian government on the other hand have brought initiative to bring in Data Centre parks and sustainable and green energy production parks to support the former.

This is not only catering to the overseas customers and countries but also pushing the agenda of encouraging the growth of domestic digital economy.

We have already entered the FY 2022 and from a broader perspective, we are entering into an economy of US$3.5 trillion.

One of the largest on the earth – may be 3rd largest. When other 2-3 countries who are ahead– precisely USA, China or Japan, are very large economies compared to India, but these are all export-based economies. If there is any global challenge, these economies would not take time to collapse, whereas in India for next decade remain as self-sustaining economy as it has the largest consumer based.

This is the reason why India’s IPL is the most coveted sport. Today, overall IPL revenue has crossed $10 billion which is very close to some of the European and American leagues.

So gradually, things are becoming very king size and these are becoming natural as there consumption is very high. If we compare any project in India with projects in UAE, today UAE things look much bigger and fancier. But the cost to putting up those projects in UAE in almost 20 times than India. So the bottom-line is much better here in India than other counties.

During the pandemic, when every stock exchange was not doing good, Sensex was rising and till now it is on rise and touched 60,000 market in between. This shows that the fundamentals of India are very good and it can sustain another decade. Therefore, Indian IT industry is not an exception. The growth in this sector is bound to happen but there is shift in the consumption patter. It is more cloud enabled, mobile first and secure first. So the partners need to look at the perspective while doing an investment.

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contents

Trusted Advisor of Channel Business

VOLUME 13 ISSUE 02

2022

APR er Cov ry o t S

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Sub Editor: Nidhi Shail Content Editor: Manash Ranjan Debata Designer: Shadab Khan Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary

MARKETING Marketing Manager: Vaishali Shukla Circulation and Printing: Rajkumar Hansa SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-41055458 / 8587835685 sanjeev@smechannels.com Bangalore #28/1, 3rd Floor, Sri Lakshmi Krupa, Near Shamanna Park, Model House Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore - 560004 Ph. No. +91 88618 21044 Mumbai Tahmeed Ansari 2, Ground Floor, Park Paradise, Kay-Bees CHS. Ltd.,Opp. Green Park, Oshiwara, Andheri (west), Mumbai - 400 053.

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AT THE HEART OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION / 18

Making the most of a pandemic-triggered massive digitalization, the IT solutions providers are at the center of a digital transformation megatrend.

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“Reimagined work demands redesigned machines.”

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“The Balancing Act of Financial Organizations to Compete in a Technology-Driven World.”

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IOT LOGRHYTHM / 28

“Attacks on IoT: The Call to Combat Rising Cyberthreats in the Telco Space.”

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Commvault merges APJ and EMEA regions into One ‘International’ Region Commvault merges APJ and EMEA organizations into one organization led by – SVP and GM, Commvault International – Marco Fanizzi, who has significantly expanded the business, since his appointment as EMEA leader 2 years ago.

The new International region will comprise of more 150 national markets and will continue to deliver the world class support to all customers and partners consistently across all of those countries. All regions will continue to be represented directly to regional management level, as before.

“As we begin our new financial year as a leader in a very competitive industry, we must remain focused on prioritizing our investments on the ability to scale and accelerate our growth globally.”

Said Commvault CRO Riccardo

Di Blasio. “While geo-political and economic events still challenge the global economy, we can be assured that data management, protection and utilization will only become more business critical for every organization anywhere in the world.”

Asia-Pacific region has experienced a high number of ransomware attacks over the past year with India being one of the most affected countries. In fact, according to a recent Indian Computer Emergency Response Team report, more than 14.02 Lakhs cyber security related incidents last year. With these challenges being faced by every country in the world, Commvault is building flexibility to retain the consistent, repeatable growth it has seen from the APJ and EMEA regions.

positioned to make that a reality.”

Over the course of its 20-year history, 1 Beyond co-founders, current CEO Terry Cullen and CTO Rony Sebok, developed an engineering-driven company known for automated camera tracking solutions that drive and enable intelligent video features including presenter tracking, group tracking, dual camera tracking, and ePTZ auto tracking. The true magic

behind 1 Beyond is its ability to bring an automatic multi-camera solution that elevates the experience with individual speaker views as well as full room views that appear simultaneously so remote attendees can see the whole space.

Crestron to Acquire 1 Beyond Crestron announced its planned acquisition of the intelligent video technology developed by 1 Beyond.

The integration of this technology will strengthen the Crestron ecosystem and core competency in videoconferencing, AV, and control and automation for collaboration rooms of all sizes, styles, and purposes.

“To enable productive and effective hybrid meetings, the modern

workplace requires technology that provides an equitable experience between the in-room participants and the remote participants”, said Crestron President and CEO Dan Feldstein. “Intelligent video should be pervasive in the workplace, expanding the benefits from the large unique spaces to more mainstream collaboration rooms, and by integrating 1 Beyond products into our portfolio, Crestron is uniquely

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Vertiv Xpress Drive ’22 Vertiv India along with its Value-added North India partner Radiant Info Solutions organised its “Xpress Drive ’22 roadshow event on 23rd March in The Umrao, New Delhi. The event saw considerable participation from Radiant partners’ community. Over 100 partners across Delhi NCR region attended the event.

Vertiv and Radiant demonstrated new cutting-edge data center products and gave live Demo sessions to educate the attending partners during the event. In the sidelines, a one-to-one interactive session was also arranged to address partner queries regarding products and customer support.

This interactive partner event aims at enabling partner growth notwithstanding the challenging business landscape. This knowledge sharing sessions during the event will help channel partners harness the opportunities that this market holds, said Nishant Gupta .

Nishant further added, “We were delighted to see the curiosity among the channel partners about Vertiv products and offerings. Partners were very excited to know more about the products and sales pitch. We will keep on educating partners on the ITMS to help them position the brand in the market.”

This partnership was formed to help Vertiv expand its network of channel partners and establish a stronger foothold in the Indian market.

BPE Organizes Tech Fair 2022 for their Channel Partners Best Power Equipments (BPE) organized two-day Tech Fair 2022 at Holiday Inn, New Delhi. More than 150 channel partners & distributors gathered at the Tech Fair. The two-day event was followed by factory visit & R&D facility to Noida & Greater Noida. The event was addressed

by Amitansu Satpathy, MD of BPE who congratulated each partner in making BPE a growth story.

The company displayed newly launched products & gave a demonstration of products like BPE IoT ; a new product technology based on IoT which aims to be game changer for the industry. The company also unveiled their plans of introducing Cloud and CMS service enablement solutions including Mobile App, Energy storage solutions 5kVA-500kVA, Lithium battery-based UPS and three phase modular UPS. Speaking on the launch, Amitansu Satpathy, Managing Director – BPE commented, “This is memorable occasion as we are gathering today, I would like to thank everyone for making BPE a known brand in the industry.”

He also added that technology advancement in our industry is paving the way of future. We would be regularly holding these sessions to educate our partners about new technologies in this industry.

Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 7.3% in First Quarter of 2022: Gartner Table 1. Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 1Q22 (Thousands of Units)

Company

1Q22 Shipments

1Q22 Market Share (%)

1Q21 Shipments

1Q21 Market Share (%)

1Q22-1Q21 Growth (%)

Lenovo

18,258

23.6

20,882

25.0

-12.6

HP Inc.

15,863

20.5

19,295

23.1

-17.8

Dell

13,739

17.7

13,084

15.7

5.0

Apple

7,005

9.0

6,449

7.7

8.6

ASUS

5,594

7.2

4,640

5.6

20.6

Acer

5,531

7.1

5,850

7.0

-5.5

Others

11,503

14.8

13,393

16.0

-14.1

Total

77,494

100.0

83,592

100.0

-7.3

Notes: Data includes desk-based PCs, notebook PCs, ultramobile premiums (such as Microsoft Surface) and Chromebooks, but not iPads. All data is estimated based on a preliminary study. Final estimates will be subject to change. The statistics are based on shipments selling into channels. Numbers may not add up to totals shown due to rounding.

Source: Gartner (April 2022)

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EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT

VISHAK RAMAN TO HEAD FORTINET’S BUSINESS IN INDIA, SAARC & SE ASIA

KIRAN DUTT APPOINTED AS VICE CHAIRMAN OF IEEMA’S LV SWITCHGEAR DIVISION

ROHIT ARADHYA JOINS BARRACUDA NETWORKS AS VICE PRESIDENT & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENGINEERING

NUTANIX HAS APPOINTED HARSH VAISHNAV AS ITS HEAD OF CHANNELS FOR NUTANIX INDIA AND SAARC

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Sophos Achieves Perfect Scores in SE Labs’ Protection Tests Sophos has said today that its endpoint products ranked top in all three of SE Labs’ protection tests in the first quarter of 2022, achieving a 100% total protection accuracy score across the board. This repeats the three perfect test results in the first quarter of 2021. Sophos’ Intercept X leads the enterprise and small business categories, and Sophos Home Premium is the top consumer security product.

Simon Reed, senior vice president, SophosLabs, said, “These awards are further evidence of the power of Sophos’ next generation security portfolio in defending against ransomware and other cyberthreats. The perfect scores are even more valuable for us if you consider the high standards of SE Labs. Their test approach and methodology are most representative of all third-party testers when compared to the actual, real-world threat landscape.”

“For Sophos, the concept of ‘cybersecurity delivered’ is all about easy to use and state-of-the-art solutions that help to prevent, detect and respond to attacks,” he added.

Sophos Intercept X is a sophisticated endpoint security solution, offering multiple layers of protection against advanced attacks. It combines anti-ransomware technology, deep learning artificial intelligence, exploit prevention, and active adversary mitigations to stop the widest range of threats.

Schneider Electric becomes the official ‘Sustainability Partner’ for Rajasthan Royals Schneider Electric becomes the official ‘Sustainability Partner’ for the Rajasthan Royals with the team and management pledging to become ‘Green Yodhas’ for the planet. Schneider Electric will work with Rajasthan Royals to find ways of making the game of cricket more sustainable.

Commenting on the partnership Ranjit Barthakur, Chairperson of Rajasthan Royals, said, “As a franchise, our purpose has been to impact society positively through cricket. We are delighted to be supporting Schneider Electric’s efforts of promoting an environment-friendly and sustainable approach to life. Even through our work with the (Royal Rajasthan) Foundation, we have stood for making a difference, and with this exciting partnership, we aim to reiterate our emphasis on practicing environment and climate-friendly techniques.”

Anil Chaudhry, M.D & CEO, Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd, Zone President, Greater India, said “Whether it’s on or off the field, every little action has an impact on our environment in the form of carbon footprint.

DIGISOL Participated in Convergence India Expo 2022 DIGISOL recently showcased it’s Made in India range of Fiber To The Home, Switching Solution and Structured Cabling products at the 29th Convergence India Expo 2022 in Delhi. The range of products displayed included XPON ONU Routers & OLT’s, Made in India Switches, Media Converters, Ethernet Routing Switch, Patch cords, Patch panel, Keystones, RJ45 Plugs, Faceplate, Fibre Patch cord, Compact LIU, Adapters, Pigtails, Cables and Splitters.

“Convergence is a major technology event in India, bringing IT professionals, System Integrators and Business prospects under one roof. Through Convergence India Expo we got best opportunity to connect with huge numbers of visitors and showcasing our newly launched Trusted Made In India Brand campaign for partners and end consumer along with our best high Specs Made In India product range for the Indian Market,” said Krushna Shivaji Garkhede, Head of Marketing, DIGISOL Systems Ltd.

Uniphore Launches Unite App Alliance Partner Program Uniphore today announced its Unite App Alliance Partner Program. A major pillar of the global Uniphore Unite Partner Program, the App Alliance program enables value-driven collaboration and cross-selling for participating Independent Software Vendors (ISV).

Participating ISVs will have greater access to and involvement in shaping the direction and strategy of future conversational AI, automation and supporting CX technology innovation.

Launched late last year, Uniphore’s Unite Partner Program is a comprehensive program that provides end-to-end support to the partner lifecycle, allowing partners to benefit from Uniphore’s market-leading conversational AI and automation technology to offer more robust support to joint customers. The Unite App Appliance Partner Program takes this offering a step further by allowing expanded collaboration and complementary co-selling among participating ISVs. “The role of CX has never been more important than today,” said Jafar Syed, SVP, Global Head of Channel Alliances & Partnerships at Uniphore. “The Unite App Alliance Partner Program extends the power of our conversational AI and automation solutions by providing joint customers with additional choices and more functionality to address their specific needs.”

Iris Wave Enables SR Edutech, Coimbatore Set up Educational Mobility Management Iris Waves, as part of their recent EduTech initiative, has commissioned a complete enterprise mobility management solution, commonly known as MDM – Mobile Device Management for their much valued Coimbatore based – Sarvahita Education Institution better known as SR Edu Center with 100 Schools and about 1 lac students under its ambit.

Himanshu Chawla, CEO, Iris Waves, said,“ The company has distributed Lenovo & Iris Tabs to connect over 5,000 students of the institute using the state of the art MDM solution from Scale Fusion which will help the students and the academia to study from home or anywhere in a secured environment.”

“This solution is designed to have the latest and updated K – 12 content handy on these Tablets with complete security & manageability built in. The devices are geo fenced ( to be used in a particular geography only with complete control on the application).These devices are covered for any kind of mishap under the nationalized ADP program which will be run and managed by Iris for the institution.” he added.

Iris has been untiringly providing Education technology & Solution since the breaking of Corona Pandemic times, enabling Educational institutes to run and stay connected with their students, continue imparting of education.

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Seagate Wins NAM Manufacturing Leadership Award Seagate Technology has bagged an award for its achievement in smart manufacturing from a group of its manufacturing peers—a national association of manufacturers with 14,000 company members.

The company won a 2022 Manufacturing Leadership Award for its outstanding innovation from the Manufacturing Leadership Council (MLC) at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

The winning project provides a powerful foundation for high-volume AI analytics in the factory. Dubbed OPICA—Optical Inspection with Centralized Analysis—the novel strategy supports analytics at the factory edge. It is a no-code application of deep learning that identifies defects that can occur during production, and prevents them from escaping downstream.

“The judges who evaluated this entry noted that it pushes the envelope on inspection and demonstrated an advanced use of technology with strong, proven results,” said Penelope Brown, MLC’s senior content director.

Built with inclusivity in mind, the award-winning solution democratizes AI on the factory floor.

Zoom Receives Latest Certifications for Enhanced Platform Security

Uniline Rolls out “Channel First” Initiative 2022 UPS manufacturer Uniline Energy has rolled out its “Channel First” initiative, a big partners expansion and upgradation program for the FY 2022-23.

The power solution enterprise has over 250+ service locations and Pan India business presence.

The company has set a target to garner over 800+ channel partners across Power & Panel Manufacturers, IT & Communications Systems Integrators, Govt – GeM , Civil, Electrical, Medical, Healthcare, Security and Defense sectors.

Ravi Tiwari, Head – Channel Sales, said, “With our existing team of 350 partners across India, we plan to extend our reach and aim to have over 800+ channel partners with our business road map.”

Uniline Energy has lined up its latest Innovative UPS & Power Solution range around the “Made in India – Made for India – Engineered to Global Standards” initiative that aims to deliver world class products for all applications.

Zoom Video Communications today said it has recently received a variety of third-party certifications and attestations, unveiled product innovations, and established programs, a pointer to the initiatives undertaken at Zoom to help protect the security and privacy of its users.

“Safety, security, and privacy are at the core of how we make decisions at Zoom and enhance our platform,” said Jason Lee, Chief Information Security Officer at Zoom. “We remain committed to being a platform that users can trust for all of their online interactions, information, and business.”

Third-party certifications and standards are integral to Zoom’s security program’s foundation. The company recently expanded its list of growing attestations, including Publication of a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) on Zoom’s Meetings, Webinar, and Chat services from SURF; achievement of the Cyber Essentials Plus certification; Provisional Authorization (PA) for Zoom for Government from Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) for the Department of Defense (DoD) at Impact Level 4 (IL4), Common Criteria Certification.

Milestone Registers Record Revenue Growth

Genesys Conducts 2022 APAC Partner Conference

Milestone Systems has recorded revenues of 1.1 billion DKK, an increase of 12 percent compared to the previous year. A focused performance by Milestone, new product launches and customers looking to install or upgrade their security infrastructure are accounted for the revenue growth.

In addition, key industries increased leaning on video technology beyond security to do e.g. forensic searches with smart analytics, optimize business processes and improve operational efficiencies.

Thomas Jensen, CEO, Milestone Systems, said, “2021 was a successful year for Milestone Systems. Our industry leading video management platform is in high demand, and our team delivered a world class effort. This generated substantial revenue growth in spite of continued Covid-restrictions and supply-chain shortages in several markets. Sales were also fueled by the continued expansion of our customer base, strong progress in the hospitality market as well as new industry developments in smart cities. We look forward to continuing to develop our offerings in collaboration with our clients and partners.”

Genesys recognised its partners with several partnership excellence awards at its 2022 APAC Virtual Partner Conference for their proven success in advancing and elevating the customer experience (CX) and delivering superior business value for customers across the region. These awards were presented to the partners for their continued drive towards excellence, commitment to CX, and growth of the Experience-as-a-Service market.

Taking into account the achievements of partners during the fiscal year 2022, CS Infocomm Pvt Limited was awarded top honours for India as the ‘India Partner of the Year’, and Tata Communications Limited was recognised as the ‘APAC Disruptor Partner of the Year’. These winning partners have successfully delivered best-in-class customer offerings by leveraging Genesys platforms, uniquely tailoring offerings to each individual customer and orchestrating empathetic customer experiences at scale.

During fiscal year 2022, more than 70% of Genesys customers used the company’s public APIs to customize the customer experience to meet their unique needs.

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Tenable Enhances its Partnership with ServiceNow Partnership Tenable enhances its partnership with ServiceNow that bolster The Now Platform with asset inventory and vulnerability data from Tenable.ot. Utilizing Tenable’s unified assessment and remediation guidance, this new integration streamlines asset inventory and centralizes IT and operational technology (OT) remediation workflows across converged industrial environments.

“As industrial networks become increasingly more complex with a mixture of IT and OT, it is more critical than ever to know what assets and vulnerabilities are in your environment,” said Ray Komar, vice president of technical alliances, Tenable.

“The days of managing multiple spreadsheets across disparate teams are over. We’re excited to partner with ServiceNow providing our joint customers a unified view of the attack surface, and empowering security teams to remediate threats,” added Komar.

Vodafone Idea Partners Ericsson to Set up Robotic Labs in Schools Vodafone Idea Foundation, the CSR arm of Vi, and Ericsson India have partnered to set up state-of-theart Robotic Labs in ten schools across the country to provide new-age learning experiences to children from underserved communities, preparing them to participate in future technological studies.

Digital Labs, an innovative education programme, is designed to hand-hold school going children aged 11-14 years, through their first experience with the world of programming and new technologies.

By creating an open atmosphere for learning, Digital Labs aim to help students to embrace technology and acquire a problem-solving approach.

The partnership is aimed at improving the students’ education and employment prospects across Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) by providing an exciting learning experience and develop skills such as teamwork, problem-solving skills, critical thinking.

Iris Supplies 4,000 LG TFTs to Chennai Partner Iris Global Services has recently supplied its Chennai partner Airwave Communications” with 4000 LG TFT display devices worth over Rs. 8.5 Cr. Airwave, which is Iris Global’s new valued partner since a year, is an authorized Rate Contract Holder for LG LFDs and Signages in ELCOT (the nodal agency for Tamil Nadu State Govt). IT purchases).

Airwave has been supplying all their LG requirements sourcing them from Iris.

Balaji MohanRaj, Managing Partner at Airwave Communications, said “Iris Global, has supplied us 4,000 Nos of 27 inch LG TFTs. These products have been installed and integrated for our corporate client’s offices at Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. They have used the devices for computing displays.

The supply amounts to around Rs. 8.5 Crore.”

“Iris has been very helpful to us with their prompt deliveries. Immanuel’s efforts have been truly commendable. We have also sourced and supplied LG TFTs from Iris for the State Educational Teachers Training program and we are planning on Security Projects soon,” Balaji added.

Matrix Comsec Bags Time2Leap R&D Award Matrix has bagged the Time2Leap Awards for Research & Development for designing and manufacturing its Face Recognition device at the MSME Investor, Export & Innovation Summit, organized by Summentor Pro Sales & Marketing Consultants, held on 20th April 2022, New Delhi. This award is to promote MSME and Start-up’s to scale up and showcase their key innovations to global markets for considerable impact on economic and social development of India.

Matrix’s Face Recognition device is based on cutting-edge Machine Learning technology where the device learns to detect and identify a human face based on intelligent and artificial video analytics (IVA).

Ganesh Jivani, CEO and Managing Director at Matrix Comsec, said, “We are happy to win this award for “Research & Development of Matrix’s Face Recognition Device.” We thank the jury for recognizing Matrix for our technologies, products and solutions that are indigenously designed and manufactured in India. Matrix offers cutting-edge physical security and telecom solutions in more than 50 countries including many first-world technologically advanced nations.

DIGEST ZEBRONICS APPOINTS JANHVI KAPOOR AS ITS BRAND AMBASSADOR ZEBRONICS HAS ROPED IN JANHVI KAPOOR AS THE BRAND AMBASSADOR FOR SMARTWATCHES AND AUDIO PRODUCTS WITH #ZEBRONICSFORLIFE CAMPAIGN. CELEBRATING FREE-SPIRITED MILLENNIALS, MUSIC ENTHUSIASTS, AND THOSE WHO LOVE TO VIBE WITH THEIR TROOP. TO EXPRESS AND UNDERSTAND THE PULSE OF THE YOUNG BLOOD AND THEIR DISTINCT AUDIO AND FITNESS NEEDS, ZEBRONICS HAS AN EXTENSIVE RANGE OF ADVANCED PRODUCTS THAT ARE DESIGNED FOR THE MASSES WITH SUPERIOR QUALITY, SNUG FIT, PEPPY COLORS AND SO MUCH MORE; LEVELING UP THEIR “PREMIUM FOR THE MASSES” VISION. TO ADD TO THE FAME AND POPULARITY OF ITS PRODUCTS, ZEBRONICS HAS SIGNED IN ACTRESS AND YOUTH ICON, JANHVI KAPOOR, AS ITS BRAND AMBASSADOR. THE BOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY IS RECOGNIZED FOR HER CHIC STYLE AND LIVELINESS.

SPECTRUM DIGITIZERS AND AWGS NOW SUPPORT NVIDIA CLARA SPECTRUM INSTRUMENTATION NOW OFFERS DRIVER SUPPORT FOR THE NVIDIA CLARA AGX, A UNIVERSAL COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE FOR THE NEXT-GEN AI MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS. THE NEW DRIVERS ENABLE SCIENTISTS AND DEVELOPERS TO CHOOSE FROM 64 DIFFERENT SPECTRUM DIGITIZERS, ARBITRARY WAVEFORM GENERATORS (AWGS) AND DIGITAL I/O CARDS, LETTING THE NVIDIA CLARA AGX KIT PERFORM HIGH-SPEED ELECTRONIC SIGNAL ACQUISITION AND GENERATION FOR ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNALS. WITH THE BIG VARIETY OF CARDS TO CHOOSE FROM, USERS CAN EXACTLY MATCH THEIR ELECTRONIC SIGNAL REQUIREMENTS. FOR EXAMPLE, THE DIGITIZER CARDS CAN BE USED TO ACQUIRE SIGNALS IN THE DC TO GHZ FREQUENCY RANGES BY SAMPLING THEM AT RATES FROM 5 MS/S UP TO A MAXIMUM OF 5 GS/S.

PARK PLACE APPOINTS DAVID CRAMER PRESIDENT DAVID CRAMER HAS BEEN NAMED PRESIDENT OF THE PARK PLACE TECHNOLOGIES SOFTWARE, MANAGED AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES STRATEGIC BUSINESS UNIT. IN THIS NEWLY CREATED ROLE, CRAMER WILL FURTHER DEVELOP AND GROW THE SOFTWARE, MANAGED AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES DIVISION. “PARK PLACE HAS A GLOBAL LEGACY OF THIRD-PARTY MAINTENANCE THAT WILL SERVE AS A STRONG FOUNDATION FOR A CONTINUING EXPANSION OF SOFTWARE AND IT SERVICES,” CRAMER SAID. CRAMER’S OVERSIGHT WILL INCLUDE SOFTWARE ASSET INNOVATION AND CONTINUED GROWTH THROUGH ORGANIC SALES, AS WELL AS ACQUIRING KEY ASSETS THAT WILL STRENGTHEN THE COMPANY’S VALUE PROPOSITION.

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Innovative iX TruePartner Program Increases Channel Revenue Gains iXsystems has crossed yet another milestone today. It announced the TruePartner channel program which multiplies partner generated revenues as much as 300% with the company’s expanded RevMatch revenue matching feature.

To outmaneuver the competition, partners are equipped with technically mature products and a 250,000 strong open-source community which reinforces their support infrastructure.

If we understand this whole mechanism a little deeper, the TruePartner Program advantages include increased and better margins for partner-registered opportunities. In addition, partners also receive increased margins on opportunities provided by iX. Partners are receive preferred access with well-crafted iX technical engineering and prompt pre- and post- sales support, along with a bundle of dedicated marketing resources. Inside sales integration with collaboratively driven joint meetings and leads are included in the program as are Not for Retail (NFR) demonstration units.

Akamai Launches New Products to Power and Protect Life Online Akamai Technologies unveils a series of new products and updates to existing products across its security and compute product lines. The announcements include Akamai’s entry into the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market with the launch of Linode Managed Database, the launch of Audience Hijacking Protector, and a host of other new features for developers and cybersecurity professionals.

“This week’s product announcements and updates are all about one thing: powering and protecting life online,” said Ari Weil, global vice president of product marketing at Akamai. “We rely on internet services more than ever, and at Akamai we’re proud to offer our customers the tools to help deliver digital experiences quickly and safely. We are particularly pleased to launch Linode Managed Database, the first product in our new compute range, giving our customers access to a broader range of tools no matter their computing workload, and making Akamai the world’s most distributed compute platform, from cloud to edge.”

Further detail will be published throughout the week on each key product update, and links are provided in the summaries below.

Tech Data Inks Strategic Partnership with Yugabyte Tech Data has entered into a new strategic partnership with Yugabyte. The Tech Data-Yugabyte partnership in the Asia Pacific & Japan region is the first for Yugabyte across TD SYNNEX & Tech Data globally. It supports Tech Data’s strategy on driving digital transformation built on data for business partners by accelerating capabilities in cloud native architectures, especially for born in the cloud partner ecosystems.

With growing interest around transformative trends such as Mission Critical Microservices due to its promise of improved scalability when compared to monolithic systems, born in the cloud apps, edge and IOT applications are driving shifts in today’s database market. IDC Futurescape predicts that by 2024, nearly 60% of organizations’ new custom-developed applications will be built and managed using microservices as foundations for stronger and higher performing automation. These shifts necessitate the need for modern databases to support these modern applications.

NetApp Excellerator Announces Cohort 10 NetApp recently announced the launch of a milestone: the tenth cohort of NetApp Excellerator – its flagship startup accelerator program. With this, the NetApp Excellerator, in just 5 years since its inception, has successfully accelerated the path of over 60 startups operating in the deep tech space.

With Cohort 10, NetApp has onboarded eight new startups that are leveraging cutting-edge tech to solve real-world problems. These startups represent diverse sectors like green-tech, kubernetes, computer vision, health-tech, and cloud security. EduFuse, Streamingo Solutions, LivNSense, AccuKnox, NeuroSAPIR, ShardSecure, Kubermatic, and Subcom form this elite cohort and have been meticulously selected based on their technology prowess and problemsolving ability.

Technology, like all businesses, benefits from diversity. Through NetApp ExcellerateHER, a dedicated initiative that promotes women founders, NetApp has mentored eight women-led deep tech startups so far. Launched in 2020, NetApp ExcellerateHER is seeing a growing interest from tech entrepreneurs both nationally and internationally.

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Forcepoint Brings Personalized Automation at Scale to DLP Forcepoint is scaling up to 8X the data visibility capabilities that were previously possible to enable enterprises manage their data growth.

The company has already been at the forefront in simplifying visibility with over 1,500 pre-built out-of-the-box templates that made it much easier to quickly deploy and efficiently manage DLP. Additional scalability brings needed power to these capabilities to easily manage much larger, unwieldy data sets.

Organizations strive to identify data loss as it happens. But what if it was possible to identify data loss before it happens? That’s the idea behind something we call Risk-Adaptive Protection (RAP). On average, it takes organizations 287 days to clearly identify and then contain a data breach. RAP utilizes over 150 “incidents of behavior” (IoBs) to continuously monitor users for risky behavior. It brings true zero-trust capabilities to DLP while delivering context, automation, and precision to DLP policy enforcement.

In the same way that Forcepoint DLP (DLP Everywhere) covers all the main vectors of security or channels (endpoint, web, cloud applications, cloud web and cloud email) RAP will soon cover not only the endpoint but also cloud web, cloud email, cloud applications and removable storage.

SNIPPETS

Nutanix Opens New Office in Pune Nutanix has expanded its operations in India by opening a new facility in Pune today that will provide service to customers and partners in India and across the Asia-Pacific region.

The new facility is one of the largest Nutanix campuses outside of the U.S. It is part of Nutanix’s global service and support function, providing Nutanix customers with 24-hour help as part of the company’s “alwayson” service and support program. It will also host, in a hybrid work model, research & development, customer success, training, and product support professionals and teams, accounting for a large percentage of Nutanix’s team members based in India.

The expansion is part of Nutanix’s ongoing growth plans in India which has the largest base of Nutanix team members outside the U.S. Since Nutanix began operations in the country in 2013, the company has also continued to add a wide range of customers in the country across the financial services, IT/ITes, public, health care and other sectors. Local customers in Pune include Amdocs, Persistent Systems Limited and KPIT. Sankalp Saxena, SVP and MD, India Operations, Nutanix, said, “Pune is home to an enormous pool of talent, and our new office in the city’s IT hub will enable us to provide more opportunities to local tech professionals and the training that will help them further develop their cloud skills.

Neo4j Grows Over 100% in APAC Fuelled by Customer Successes Neo4j®, has experienced more than 100 percent growth across Asia Pacific over the past year. Accelerated demand comes from a wide range of industries, including financial services, travel, retail, public sector, and healthcare organisations seeking to solve their most complex problems.

The company’s business benefits are further bolstered by a commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study on Neo4j’s graph data platform, which demonstrated more than 400 percent return on investment over three years for a composite organisation.

Hundreds of organisations around the region rely on Neo4j for mission-critical applications, and many thousands more experiment, prototype, and deploy Neo4j’s expanding portfolio of cloud services.

Notable customers include the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Telstra, Capital A, Standard Chartered Bank, DBS Bank, Starhub, Amity Thailand, Tabcorp, Woodside Energy, PlayHQ, and leading government agencies.

Nik Vora, Neo4j Asia Pacific Vice President, attributed the company’s performance to several key factors.

Earth Day 2022: New Data Finds Enterprise Learners Leaning into “Greening” Sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have, but rather a strategic necessity and business imperative. Pressure is mounting for all organizations to be more socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable, with the ultimate goal of reaching a place of net-zero emissions.

Many organizations are taking note, evidenced with hiring for “green skills” growing globally by almost 40% between 2016 – 2021. A net-zero transition requires a transformation of the global economy – no small task, as McKinsey estimates that $9.2 trillion in annual average spend will be needed for physical assets by 2050. However, it is by no means insurmountable, and as Stephanie Roe, global climate and energy lead scientist at the World Wildlife Fund and a lead author of a new IPCC report, put it, “there is a really amazing role that we can play, not just as consumers, but also as professionals.”

The good news is that at Skillsoft, we’re witnessing first-hand a sharp rise in green skilling in organizations around the world.

Australia experiences massive spike in WAF multi-vector, DDoS attacks With web applications under increased attacks, Akamai has analyzed data points for web application firewall (WAF) multi-vector and DDoS attacks between April 2021 and March 2022 to determine the severity of the situation in Australia.

A massive spike in WAF attacks from September 2021 to October 2021, and a steady resurgence of these attacks with a 100% increase in Q1 2022. This shows that attackers are redoubling their efforts to disrupt the Australian market after a sharp drop between October 2021 and December 2021.

The WAF activity chart in Figure 1 shows the monthly number of WAF attacks recorded from April 2021 to March 2022 per attack vector represented by the colored lines.

The top attack vectors were XSS (cross site scripting) and LFI (local file injection), which could indicate that attackers are trying to inject or execute malicious payloads to plant malware and potentially initiate remote code execution attacks.

Akamai can reveal that the Australian financial services sector has become a top target for web and API application programming interface) attacks globally.

Fujitsu, Dentsu and ISID embark on strategic cooperation to contribute to sustainable business growth Fujitsu, Dentsu Inc., and Information Services International – Dentsu, Ltd. announced their strategic partnership starting April 15, 2022 toward the realization of a customer-oriented transformation along three value chains: “demand chain,” “supply chain,” and “engineering chain.” Through their cooperation, the companies aim to contribute to the continued business growth of client companies and resolve environmental and social issues to achieve carbon neutrality.

As part of their partnership, the parties aim to support efficient coordination between the three aforementioned value chains of their customers by leveraging Fujitsu’s knowhow in supply chain management related business systems and various supply chain optimization technologies, Dentsu’s strengths in customer insights and planning and production capabilities in demand chains, and ISID’s extensive experience and knowledge in engineering chains.

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SNIPPETS

KnowBe4 Finds Holiday-Themed Emails Entice Employees to Click KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced the results of its Q1 2022 top-clicked phishing report.

Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4, said, “In our latest quarterly phishing report, we found that holiday-themed emails were the most tempting for employees to click on,” “HR-related messages such as a change in the schedule for the holidays likely piqued interest from employees to see if they would receive an extra day off or shortened work schedule due to the holidays. It is important to remember that cybercriminals utilise various tactics such as preying on people’s emotions when executing their malicious scams. Remaining vigilant and adopting a heightened sense of suspicion around emails that trigger an emotional response can end up preventing a detrimental cybersecurity attack.”

Global Holiday Emails 1. HR: Change in Holiday Schedule 2. Someone special sent you a Valentine’s Day ecard!

3. St. Patrick’s Day: Employee Behaviour/Company Policies 4. Our Valentine’s Day Gift To You 5. Starbucks: Happy Holidays! Have a drink on us.

Kioxia and Western Digital Jointly Invest in New Flash Memory Manufacturing Facility in Yokkaichi Plant Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corp. have finalized a formal agreement to jointly invest in the first phase of the Fab7 (Y7) manufacturing facility at Kioxia’s industry-leading Yokkaichi Plant in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. With construction of the first phase of Y7 completed, the joint-venture investment will enable initial production output beginning in the fall of this year. This marks another important milestone in the 20-year strategic joint-venture partnership between the two companies.

“We are very pleased to further deepen our strategic partnership with Western Digital through this joint investment in Y7,” said Nobuo Hayasaka, President and CEO of Kioxia. “The rapid digitization of societies underpins accelerating use of memory products.

We will continue to leverage our technological partnership and economies of scale to develop and produce cutting-edge semiconductor products and achieve organic corporate growth.”

8×8 and Genesys Partner to Integrate 8×8 Cloud Unified Communications with Genesys Cloud CX

Japan Airlines engineering division selects IFS Solution

8×8, Inc. And Genesys®, announced a product integration of 8×8 Work with Genesys Cloud CX. With the new integration, organisations can align agents and the appropriate subject matter experts to quickly collaborate for better customer outcomes.

In the digital workplace today, nearly every employee has a role in the customer experience, making it more important than ever to eliminate barriers between departments and systems.

Connecting teams across the enterprise enables customers and employees to engage more fluidly, improving loyalty on both fronts.

Robin Gareiss, CEO and principal analyst at Metrigy, said, “Gone are the days where contact centre agents reside on an island, away from the rest of the company. By integrating cloud UC and contact centres, CX leaders see improvements in key business metrics, including customer and employee satisfaction, revenue, costs, and agent productivity.

JAL Engineering Co., Ltd. to deploy IFS aviation maintenance solution in the cloud to modernize long range maintenance planning for its nearly 200 aircraft fleet IFS, the global cloud enterprise software company, announced the Japan Airlines maintenance and engineering subsidiary, JAL Engineering Co., Ltd., has selected IFS to support fleet-wide long range maintenance planning. The IFS solution, to be deployed in the cloud, will provide long range planners with the unified information insights they need to quickly develop and share regulatorycompliant fleet maintenance plans that best support aircraft availability, task yield, and hangar utilization for nearly 200 aircraft.

The IFS fleet planning solution replaces a JAL Engineering Co., Ltd. legacy fleet maintenance planning process that required extensive manual intervention. The IFS solution will allow the engineering team to manage more aircraft with reduced human intervention due to an efficient user experience, reduction in manual processes, real-time alerts, and automated processes.

Deployed in the cloud, IFS’s planning and maintenance solution will improve visibility across the organization by providing real time planning updates. JAL Engineering Co., Ltd.

o9 Solutions Expands Into Australia and New Zealand o9 Solutions, a leading enterprise AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making, expands into Australia and New Zealand to support its growing customer base in the region as demand for the company’s innovative planning and decision-making platform continues to rise.

“Delivering value to our global customers is our top priority, and the Australian and New Zealand markets are incredibly important to o9,” said Igor Rikalo, President and Chief Operating Officer, o9 Solutions. “Companies across a wide range of industries in Australia and New Zealand are increasingly seeking out o9’s innovative, AI-powered Digital Brain platform to drive greater integration and adoption of advanced analytics in their planning and execution processes.

Building up our local presence in the region is crucial to ensuring we are the partner of choice for organizations embarking on a journey to digitally transform their supply chain, commercial, and integrated business planning capabilities.”

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PARTNER CORNER

ZOOM LAUNCHES NEXT EVOLUTION OF GLOBAL PARTNER PROGRAM A unified, holistic global partner framework, Zoom Up Partner Program enables further alignment and cohesiveness between Zoom and its partners

VISHAL AMIN

CHANNEL HEAD, INDIA AND SAARC ZOOM

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

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oday, Zoom launched its Zoom Up Partner Program, a unified, holistic, global partner framework that makes it simple for partners to transact and grow their business with Zoom. The Zoom Up Partner Program (Zoom Up) rewards partners for their continued investments in Zoom and introduces new ways to engage and leverage the Zoom Platform.

Zoom Up incentivizes and empowers partners to gain further knowledge and expertise, expand their customer reach, and differentiate their business by providing five key business benefits: A Single and Simple Architecture; Rewards for Partner Investment; Expertise and Transformation; and Marketing to Accelerate Partner Growth This makes provisions for a unified, holistic framework enables further alignment and cohesiveness between Zoom and partners – such as resellers, carriers, distributors, ISV, Master Agents, referral partners, and more – by providing an easy-to-follow pathway that clearly communicates requirements and benefits.

The newly redesigned program directly aligns partner rewards with the partner’s level of investment in Zoom, incentivizing continued

growth within Zoom’s rich ecosystem of partner resources. Zoom Up gives partners the opportunity to expand their Zoom skill sets through new competencies and accreditations. Zoom Up provides a clear roadmap of how partners can further develop their desired areas of expertise.

The new Zoom Up Partner Program is also unlocking additional marketing benefits and resources for partners. From the Partner Demand Center for demand generation in any language, to additional marketing development funds for the highest levels of the Zoom Up Partner Program.

“Our partners play a valuable role in helping to drive adoption of the Zoom platform in the region. We are excited to elevate our collaboration with partners through the Zoom Up Partner Program,” said Vishal Amin, Channel Head, India and SAARC, Zoom. “The Partner Program will provide our partners with the tools and support that they need to be successful in helping customers transition seamlessly to a hybrid environment.

At Zoom, we remain committed to supporting our ever-expanding partner network with advanced capabilities and programs that enable more efficient ways of doing business for all stakeholders.”

“Our partnership with Zoom highlights our

“OUR PARTNERS PLAY A VALUABLE ROLE IN HELPING TO DRIVE ADOPTION OF THE ZOOM PLATFORM IN THE REGION. WE ARE EXCITED TO ELEVATE OUR COLLABORATION WITH PARTNERS THROUGH THE ZOOM UP PARTNER PROGRAM.” commitment to supporting customers in increasing productivity, engagement and communication as they move to a hybrid environment,” said Rohit Singal, Vice President – India. “With new features to leverage the Zoom platform for better business outcomes, the Zoom Up Partner Program will allow us to further innovate and grow our business in the region. We look forward to continued collaboration with Zoom and leveraging their high-quality, innovative & interactive solutions as we expand our business further.”

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COLLABORATION

JABRA, LENOVO COLLABORATE ON INTEGRATED VIDEO CONFERENCING MEETING ROOM SOLUTION Combining Jabra’s innovative 180° panoramic 4K plug-andplay video solution PanaCast 50 and Lenovo’s ThinkSmart Hub, the solution delivers intuitive, fast and seamless video conferencing solutions for meeting rooms

J

abra has teamed up with Lenovo to offer an end-customer solution delivering intuitive, fast and seamless video conferencing solutions for meeting rooms. The solution includes Jabra’s innovative 180° panoramic 4K plug-and-play video solution PanaCast 50 and Lenovo’s ThinkSmart Hub. The solution is made up of ThinkSmart Hub, which is optimised for business productivity and collaboration, as well as being pre-loaded with Microsoft Teams Rooms to help employees connect and share wherever they are, and the ThinkSmart Hub, 10-point touch HD display that allows users to initiate and control meetings, as well as share content and work with colleagues working remotely.

Initially available in the EMEA region, the Jabra PanaCast 50 & Lenovo ThinkSmart Hub brings together best of the technologies from both the companies for meeting room set-ups. Video conferencing and collaboration will be effortless courtesy of the most superior video and audio

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equipment in one, easy-to-use package.

This suite of products promises to deliver a new standard in video conferencing. These solutions allow for flexible working and fulfill requirements of the modern meeting room. Users can collaborate with their team at the touch of a button, whether they’re working from home, the office or anywhere else in between.

The Jabra PanaCast 50 is engineered to serve as a new-normal-ready intelligent video bar. Its 180° field-of-view allows for social distancing in meeting rooms. It can also intelligently adjust the video stream to follow the action in the meeting.

Lenovo’s purpose built ThinkSmart Hub is powered by an 8th Generation Intel Core i5-8365U vPro processor and delivers connectivity to support any meeting room configuration. Its stylish design means it can be placed discreetly, and it has ports to support multiple audio and visual accessories, and integrated cable management.

Its easy-to-use Microsoft Teams interface makes it ideal for meetings and collaboration.

“THE JABRA PANACAST 50 AND LENOVO THINKSMART HUB SOLUTION BRINGS IN INTUITIVE AND SEAMLESS VIDEO CONFERENCING COLLABORATION” Users can easily initiate and control meetings as well as share content, making it easy to collaborate with colleagues wherever they are working. It even has Integrated Infrared sensors that detect when participants enter the room and automatically turns the system on and off.

Joel Hamon, President EMEA and CALA at Jabra, said, “We are thrilled to be collaborating with Lenovo and the launch of the Jabra PanaCast 50 & Lenovo ThinkSmart hub solutions is an exciting step in delivering intelligent and secure meeting room solutions. With hybrid working the new normal, businesses everywhere are thinking about how best to collaborate and offer the most advanced meeting room set-ups with minimal technical input required. We are confident that this solution will help businesses take their conferencing and collaboration capabilities to new heights.”

Andrea Recupero, Head of EMEA Smart Collaboration at Lenovo, said, “We are very excited about the features and capabilities of our ThinkSmart Hub solution in conjunction with Jabra’s PanaCast 50 as this will further drive transformation towards smarter working environments. “ “It is crucial that customers have access to technology that empowers greater agility, creativity and engagement. With video conferencing at an all-time high, we continue to strive to deliver solutions that enable improved collaboration around the world,” added Andrea.

SECURITY

REVEALED: FIVE STEPS FOR REDUCING YOUR COMPANY’S CLOUD ATTACKSURFACE Five Steps For Reducing Your Company’s Cloud Attack Surface written by Puneet Gupta, Executive Director and Country Head – India, Virsec at VIRSEC where he talks about how today’s network perimeters are growing at a rapid rate and require multi-layered, strategic protection.

PUNEET GUPTA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND COUNTRY HEAD – INDIA, VIRSEC

“CLOUD NATIVE SECURITY SOLUTIONS, SUCH AS SECURITY GROUPS AND NETWORK ACCESS CONTROL LISTS (NACLS), OFFER AN IMMEDIATE LEVEL OF PROTECTION AT NO COST AND WITH NOTHING TO DEPLOY.”

T

he unique challenges of the pandemic propelled many organizations towards digital transformation. In turn, the global business landscape has witnessed mainstream migration to the cloud.

But as more organizations scale to meet the demands of a hybrid workforce model, more cloud services inherently increase the attack surface. A study by McAfee found almost 3.1 million external attacks on cloud user accounts through-

out 2020.

As attack opportunities proliferate, it’s vital that companies minimize external exposure to their cloud environments. Let’s take Amazon Web Services (AWS), the leader in cloud infrastructure services, as an example.

When the public cloud emerged, it reimagined how businesses deployed infrastructure and forced companies to rethink security for this highly dynamic environment. Cloud native security solutions, such as security groups and network access control lists (NACLs), offer an immediate level of protection at no cost and with nothing to deploy.

5 ways to protect your attack surface While cloud-native tools are imperative for network protection, it’s also vital to employ security best practices. Here are five steps to reduce your cloud attack surface.

1. Deploy sufficient network segmentation and security. Establish security zones in each of your environments and allow traffic through the firewall for only what is needed and scoped. At a minimum, have a separate virtual private cloud for each application and environment, but also consider assigning each application environment (development, staging, and production) its own cloud account.

2. Take advantage of the principle of least privilege. Assign access and resources with purpose.

For instance, a developer just deploying code should not have administrative rights across the entire cloud account. Nor should a developer have continuous access to a production environment.

Give them exactly what they need and noth-

ing more. There are tools available to help scope accounts and users appropriately.

3. Minimize the install base on computer resources. Install what you need, remove what you don’t. For example, with containers, only install the packages and libraries that your application needs to run. Anything superfluous an attacker can use against you.

4. Patch software to fix vulnerabilities. Patching is essential but it doesn’t address every vulnerability. It is dependent on the vulnerability having been seen in the wild; if you have a version of software that has a zero-day threat, it does nothing for you. And, once a patch is published, it’s a race against time to patch it before an attacker has an opportunity to find and exploit that vulnerability in a system.

5. Stop attacker-influenced code with runtime protection. True runtime protection acts as a safety net. It enforces what your application should be doing and stops what it shouldn’t be doing in real-time – before an attack happens. Adversaries are blocked before they can exploit a software vulnerability, known or unknown, or take advantage of misconfigurations, outdated security policies, improperly scoped access rights, and insufficient identity or credential management. Dwell time is non-existent, so threat actors never have a chance to install malware or exfiltrate data. And you gain air cover and time to make updates, while still being protected.

While today’s attack surface is expanding at an unprecedented rate, taking the right precautionary steps will considerably mitigate risk and protect your business.

SME CHANNELS 15 APRIL 2022

GUEST ARTICLE

ROLE OF E-GOVERNANCE AND DIGITAL INDIA IN EMPOWERING INDIAN CITIZENS Powered by innovation, e-Governance is changing citizens’ administrations by giving admit­tance to data, coordinating different frameworks and administrations among government and citi­zens.

JITENDRA JOSHI Director, Probity Soft PROFILE Exceptional entrepreneurial leader with a hands-on experience with very large projects. A go-getter by nature, Jitendra has extensive experience with large projects and can effortlessly pick a weak spot - whether it is in architecture or strategy. Agile coach, Java solution architect and Program Manager are the three manifestations of his core competence. Strongly believes commitment and belief in the cause are pivotal for the success of any venture.

Innovation is critical to the vision of a Digital India.

Virtual Entertainment, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud are the establishments that will empower the Digital India dreams of giving “governance and services on request” and “carefully enabling residents” and backing the social consideration plans being sent off by the Government.

Driven through innovation, e-Governance is changing citizens’ administrations by giving admittance to data, coordinating different frameworks and administrations among government and citizens, accordingly enabling and upgrading citizen’s social, natural and financial qualities.

The Government has been leading extremist digitalisation to instigate monetary comprehensiveness and social change, through drives like ‘Digital India’, ‘Make in India’ and ‘Skill India’. How the process is empowering citizens are as follows: Greater convenience to citizens and businesses Government services like issue of Birth and Death Certificates, trade licenses, building permissions, permits, etc. can be delivered faster and efficiently online.

In the offline process, the citizen/business has to visit a government office, find the right window, stand in a queue, fill up a form, pay a fee, photocopy and attach documents to get the job done. This process is time-consuming and if a citizen makes a mistake while filling the form or attaching a document, then the process has to be redone.

E-governance transforms this experience by taking citizen service delivery online. The citizen can fill up the form online, attach scanned copies of documents, make the payment and submit the request from the comfort of their homes. This online process takes significantly less time and there is no travel involved. Making these services available on mobile apps makes it even easier since now the service can be availed while being mobile.

Citizens’ empowerment through access

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to information Citizens are empowered through correct & timely information. This will make better choices which will benefit the society as a whole. Dissemination of correct information in a timely manner can be done through electronic media such as email, sms, whatsapp, social media, etc. e.g. - Government policies around Covid related restrictions was primarily communicated through electronic media. This enabled citizens to be aware of how they can contribute towards control of the spread of Covid.

Less corruption in the administration E-Governance modules enable remote interaction of citizens/businesses with government offices. This removes the middle-man from the communication loop and also disables the corrupt official, if any, from wielding the power of his/her authority for unlawful personal gains.

Such direct interaction enables the citizens and businesses to get correct information and services without having to engage in pleasing anyone in a government office.

Improves delivery and efficiency of government services Delivery of government services via the traditional paper route is inefficient, time-consuming and prone to errors. This process is often stalled by the personal biases of the officers involved.

E-Governance applications shift this process from man to machine. This brings a new level of efficiency and speed to decision making and therefore service delivery. Additionally, service delivery through systems improves the scale at which services can be delivered within a certain time-frame by removing human limitations from the equation.

To access more info login to: https://www.smechannels.com

SUSTAINABILITY

TEAMVIEWER PRESENTS SUSTAINABILITY PROGRAM C-A-R-E WITH THE GOAL TO ACHIEVECLIMATE NEUTRALITYBY2025 Sustainability is at the core of TeamViewer’s offering. Its products were born out of the need to reduce the necessity for travel and physical presence, which naturally leads to the avoidance of CO2 emissions.

ALEXANDER GÜHRER CCO & DIRECTOR CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT, TEAMVIEWER

“WITH OUR C-AR-E PROGRAM WE EMPHASIZE THE IMPORTANCE THAT ACCESS TO MODERN TECHNOLOGIES, EQUALITY, AND CO2 REDUCTION HAVE FOR US.”

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eamViewer’s purpose is to create a world that works better – in every way.

With c-a-r-e, TeamViewer bundles its sustainability activities under one roof, defining clear commitments, targets, and measures on its road to becoming an even more sustainable company.

“With our c-a-r-e program we emphasize the

importance that access to modern technologies, equality, and CO2 reduction have for us,” says Alexander Gührer, CCO & Director Corporate Development. “As part of our efforts, we accelerate our commitment to becoming climate-neutral, now aiming to achieve net-zero no later than 2025 – five years earlier than originally planned.”

Sustainability is at the core of TeamViewer’s offering. Its products were born out of the need to reduce the necessity for travel and physical presence, which naturally leads to the avoidance of CO2 emissions. This positive impact gets multiplied by a business model granting free access to TeamViewers solutions to private users for non-commercial purposes. TeamViewer and its product portfolio have evolved massively since its founding - but the company still helps its customers to avoid unnecessary travel and thus be more sustainable. By using TeamViewer technology to remotely maintain or repair machines and access devices from mobile phones and computers to heavy equipment, robots and vehicles, distances across the globe can be bridged easily and traveling from one place to another becomes unnecessary in many cases. TeamViewer is therefore

enabling companies to limit their carbon footprint and helps avoid approximately 37 megatons of CO2e emissions per year, which is the same as a fully booked A380 flying 7,000 times non-stop from Singapore to New York or the emissions of 11 million average cars in one year.

To monitor and optimize its own footprint, TeamViewer participates in the Carbon Disclosure Project as part of its sustainability reporting. The company also scrutinizes its emissions according to GHG protocol standards, using certified software for calculations and external scientific support. The results show the achievements of TeamViewer’s efforts: In 2021, the company reduced CO2e emissions by about one third compared to one year prior.

The name c-a-r-e illustrates TeamViewer’s priorities: In its sustainability program the company focuses on Climate neutrality, Access to technology, Reduced emissions and Equality. At the same time, it is a roadmap for concrete steps: l Climate neutrality: In line with the Science Based Targets initiative’s (SBTi) 1.5 °C goal, TeamViewer is committed to achieving climate neutrality no later than 2025. l Access to technology: TeamViewer leverages the free application of its software for noncommercial and socially beneficial use, thus democratizing technology and making it more inclusive. l Reduced emissions: With its solutions, TeamViewer enables customers to avoid emissions and delivers climate-neutral products sourced 100% by green energy. l Equality: Committed to fostering a diverse working environment free of discrimination, TeamViewer will increase representation of women in management across all levels to at least 33% by the end of 2024 and celebrates cultural diversity with a zero-tolerance discrimination policy.

TeamViewer commits to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and developed its sustainability targets on that basis.

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COVER STORY

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COVER STORY

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

Making the most of a pandemic-triggered massive digitalization, the IT solutions providers are at the center of a digital transformation megatrend

A

Accelerating digital adoption and transition to the cloud on an unprecedented scale, the pandemic has not only done a yeoman’s service to the IT industry, it has even driven the development of new products and services. Building upon the opportunity, IT solutions providers have turned the year gone by into a golden year replete with milestone achievements and possibilities.

As the India market remains in the eye of a major digital transformation buoyed by a techcentred Union Budget, SME Channels embarks upon making a ground report from the tech landscape, exploring the prime factors that designed the record growth, the challenges and upheavals on the way for IT Solutions Providers, the allimportant role of partners in shaping this surge and the visions and plans of vendors to enhance channel business profitability.

The last one year has seen a significant uptick in the cloud which has supported and spurred digitalization, leading to a lot of growth in Indian IT companies. This has helped the solutions providers create a significant pipeline now, which looks

lucrative.

According to Gartner, over the next few years, IT services individual spending is going to grow between 8% and 9% compared to 4-6% in pre Covid era. Clearly, it sounds very lucrative for IT services companies as they have successfully leveraged the opportunities presented by Covid.

Growth is expected to happen more towards digital services which individuals have expedited and where there’s a phenomenal uptick.

IT spending in India is predicted to total $101.8 billion in 2022, an increase of 7% from 2021, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. The digital transformation trajectory that began as a response to the pandemic is here to stay for the next few years. The country has experienced one of the fastest recoveries despite being one of the worst hit regions in the second wave of the pandemic in early 2021. Indian CIOs are likely to increase spending on projects that drive innovation and modernize legacy systems.

Similarly, all segments of IT spending in the country are expected to climb up, with software emerging as the highest growing segment. Spending, paricularly on software casts a rosy picture

and is forecast to total $10.5 billion in 2022 itself, up 14.4% from 2021. Albeit, a slower growth rate compared to that of 2021, spending on software in 2022 is forecast be nearly double of what it was pre-pandemic.

India’s largest software services provider by revenue, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is seeing higher demand for technology-based solutions in the area of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG), according to a company release.

The company’s suite of sustainability solutions, which includes TCS Clever Energy Intelligent Power Plant (IP2) and TCS Envirozone will be available on Microsoft’s Azure Internet of Things (IoT) platform to help businesses gain insights into energy usage and reduce waste and emissions.

The company stays engaged with clients across retail, financial services, pharma, manufacturing, automobile, consumer goods verticals to offer the IoT-based solutions.

The Services and Solutions Providers are doing a pivotal job by providing businesses the freedom to budget effectively by only paying for the services they use. This helps eliminate the additional infrastructure cost that they would have otherwise

SME CHANNELS 19 APRIL 2022

COVER STORY

“AFTER THE PANDEMIC, WITH THE REMOTE WORK MODEL RESULTING IN EMPLOYEES BEING DISTRIBUTED ACROSS MULTIPLE LOCATIONS AND THE SEAMLESS TRANSFER OF DATA REQUIRED TO ENSURE BUSINESS CONTINUITY, MOVING TO THE CLOUD ESSENTIALLY BECAME A TOP PRIORITY OVERNIGHT.” ARUN KUMAR J, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, MANAGEENGINE

incurred to set up their in-house teams. The solution providers are also getting global recognition by offering reliable solutions that combine knowledge, technology and innovation.

Embracing Digital-First The year 2021 has been a year of opportunity for the solutions providers to rebuild themselves and embrace the new digital-first business model.

“We have embraced the new digital-first business model. Predicting what lies next, 2022 will bring more possibilities and challenges as organizations continue adapting to a digitally enabled future.

The pandemic condensed years’ worth of technological innovation into months, leaving businesses in a race to catch up. Next-gen technologies like AI/ML, cloud computing, data science/analytics, and digital communication have created just as many challenges as opportunities, ”says Vinod Nair, Managing Director, Softline India.

A digital workplace is essential to increasing employee engagement, generating a high level of productivity, and building exceptional digital customer experiences. “As Softline prepares to embrace this new reality, we are recreating solutions for companies with easy access to remoteready solutions to enable business continuity, productivity, robust cloud security, modernization, etc. Also, scaling operations at a reasonable cost encourages collaboration, enhances data security, and empowers employees to deliver their best performance,” Nair adds.

20 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2022

Arun Kumar J, Regional Sales Director, ManageEngine, says, “After the pandemic, with the remote work model resulting in employees being distributed across multiple locations and the seamless transfer of data required to ensure business continuity, moving to the cloud essentially became a top priority overnight.”

Arun further adds, “We realigned our strategies to focus on the solutions that could help organisations adapt to the remote work model. We had specific solutions for remote work operations that ensured employees could access data across different locations without compromising on security.”

The technology landscape is becoming complex and will be a key differentiator for any business in the long run. Organisations must keep up with the pace of innovation and demands of growing business while the employees are working from home.

Sudhir Kothari, Managing Director and CEO at Embee, says, “Workplace modernization has become crucial now more than ever. Entire team of employees who are working from their homes all over the country or world needs to manage remotely. We at Embee are proactively providing companies with easy access to remote-ready solutions to enable business continuity, productivity, robust cloud security, modernization, and more while scaling operations at a reasonable cost.”

What’s Trending in the Market There are some mega trends that are prominently visible in the solutions and services industry.

Experts predict that the hybrid model will con-

tinue to be in vogue even after the pandemic is over, as most organisations will be adopting a hybrid work model. “Cloud adoption will continue increasing in the coming years. IT teams will prioritise ensuring data is simultaneously secure and accessible to offer a seamless customer experience since data will be accessed on multiple platforms across various locations. Also, security will continue gaining importance because of the evolving threat landscape. Organisations will also invest in tools like endpoint management and security, privileged access management, remote access, and Zero Trust,” predicts Arun.

“This is a new digital era that focuses on digitalfirst and cloud-first data. We at Embee always follow market trends and therefore, we will now be focusing more on lead engagement, solutions and services such as DevOps, microservice, containers and Kubernetes for app & platform modernization,” says Kothari.

“In the near future, our solutions will be aligned towards better monetization of enterprise data with DataOps, Azure Synapse based modern data warehouse, Azure Databricks based faster SPARK job processing, and power BI based data visualization for actionable insight, predictive and prescriptive analytics for solving customer business problems in advance. We are looking forward to giving our customers a platform of digital solutions with Low Code and No Code for a faster Go to Market,” says Kothari.

Punit Thakkar - CEO and MD - Shivaami Cloud Services Pvt. Ltd, says, “People need change. They need to understand that new technology needs to be adopted, but most of the CIO’s were fearing earlier that if they go cloud, which partner will help them? But the pandemic forced them to move to the cloud, so they moved some of the work from their workplace. Related applications which are not so critical but manageable move to the cloud, but there are lot of applications which are not on the cloud today,” “Cloud is consumption build based model, so you know your CapEx to OpEx. And people are going to be moving on to that, so I see what is my reading is maybe around 25 to 35% of the companies have moved everything onto the cloud, but another 75% are still there to capture.

And that’s a huge market. So, I see another three to five years run for the cloud market,” adds Puneet.

Adapting to Changing Business Dynamics To keep pace with the changing business dynamics, Solutions providers are leaving no stones unturned. From aligning their solutions as per

COVER STORY

“SOFTLINE HAS SPECIFICALLY BEEN HELPING EARLY-STAGE STARTUPS AND UNICORNS FOR OVER THREE YEARS IN SUPPORTING THEIR TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS THROUGH THEIR GROWTH CYCLE WITH CUSTOMIZED SET OF OFFERINGS AND RESOURCES TO STEP-UP THE GAME!.”

VINOD NAIR, MANAGING DIRECTOR, SOFTLINE INDIA

latest market trends, making significant digital investments to transforming their operations, they are doing everything to stay ahead of the pack. “We at Softline always align ourselves to the latest market trends and make significant digital investments to transform and modernize business operations. Traditional businesses are reimagining business models while adopting technologies to deliver enhanced value to consumers. We will now be focusing solutions & services such as next upswing of Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, and Analytics. These businesses are constantly aligning with the market demands,” says Nair.

Businesses are transforming their processes by integrating technologies such as Machine Learning, AI, and Multi Clouds. These further help in enhancing service and product quality and improves the customer experience by accelerating time to market. “Effective digital transformation is when a business can embrace distributed decision-making, agile workflows, and a digitally enabled and connected workforce and culture,” adds Nair.

Helping Startups and Unicorns Apart from catering to a global clientele, the solutions providers are also providing the much needed business critical help to startups and the unicorns to build up capacity at par with the big fishes. “Softline been helping early-stage startups and Unicorns for over three years in supporting their technology investments through their

growth cycle with customized set of offerings and resources to step-up the game!” informs Nair.

“Recognizing our exceptional track record we were named as a Microsoft Start-Up Factory Partner. We also are one of the only two recognized partners for HoloLens2 in India,” Nair further adds.

Certifications and Recognitions Galore While extending commendable service to the domestic as well as the global markets, the solution providers have received recognitions and certifications as a testimony to their service and quality solutions. “We have earned 17 Gold Competencies, maintained Azure Expert MSP status, and holds 9 different Microsoft Advanced Specializations. Softline India also won Microsoft Technology Partner of the Year 2021 –Security, 2 CIO Choice Awards for Application Development and Modern Workplace solutions, as well as the SME Channel Cloud Specialist Award 2021, and SME Channels Cloud Partner of India 2021. Softline’s pre-built apps on PowerApps prove that we take innovation seriously when it comes to building user-friendly apps for automating operations.

Softline India is the Winner of the Microsoft ES Open Hackathon, first runner-up in Zero Trust Security Hackathon 2022 and has been recognized for creating the best employee engagement solution on Teams,” informs Nair.

Diversifying Product Basket Various solutions providers are expanding and

diversifying their product basket so as to cater and lure businesses. “While we hold a commendable market share offering Microsoft solutions, we have broadened our horizons with the Innovation group at Softline offering Google solutions, AWS and Cybersecurity solutions such as Kaspersky and Checkpoint. Softline’s recent acquisition of Umbrella Infocare holds the status of an AWS Premier Consulting Partner & Citrix Platinum Plus Consulting Partner. Their expertise in AWS Managed Services, Migration and DevOps strengthens Softline’s existing capabilities and forms the basis for creating our global AWS Centre of Excellence (CoE),” says Softline’s Nair.

“With a focus on Cloud and Digital Technologies, Embee provides cutting edge solutions in the areas of Cloud infrastructure and platform modernization; Virtual Desktop Infrastructure; Modern Workplace Communication & Collaboration solutions; Data Analytics;Business Applications (ERP, HRMS, and more); Enterprise Security; and Managed & Support Services; Serverless, PaaS/SaaS and Low Code/No Code solutions & managed services along with All-Up Security, Collaboration, Big Data/Analytics, RPA, AI, ML & IoT are also the pivot solution areas for our company,” says Kothari.

Growing Capacity Not just mopping up more businesses, the solution providers are dramatically expanding their capacities to deliver in these uncertain times, too.

Last year, IT Service Management company, Softline had successfully set up remote workplaces for 200 enterprises. “We have achieved great success in the last year, setting up remote workplaces for 200 enterprises, totaling 10 Lac+ employees and many transformational projects including a solution rolled out for a Higher Education State Council of one of the key Indian states, a social program to level up 1, 62,000 students with digital skills from Microsoft and LinkedIn to prepare them for employment. A delivery mechanism the enables students to sign up, study, take mock tests, and get ready for exams. The solution rolled out can be replicated across all educational institutes which work in higher education throughout the country, and even globally,” says Nair.

“Some of our leading financial customers where we successfully drove workplace transformation in last couple of years include NSE, RBL Bank, AU Finance Bank, Suryoday Finance, Magma Fincorp. Our other leading customers include GEP, Wonder Cement, TATA Steel, TATA Motors, AegonLife, Hero FinCorp, Icertis, among 2000+ other customers,” says Kothari.

Kothari further adds,“We follow a practice of

SME CHANNELS 21 APRIL 2022

COVER STORY

“AT EMBEE, SINCE WE ALWAYS FOLLOW MARKET TRENDS, WE WILL NOW FOCUS MORE ON LEAD ENGAGEMENT, SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES SUCH AS DEVOPS, MICROSERVICE, CONTAINERS AND KUBERNETES FOR APP AND PLATFORM MODERNIZATION.” SUDHIR KOTHARI, MANAGING DIRECTOR & CEO, EMBEE

‘understand-evaluate-test-implement-transform’ to deliver a working solution with a defined return on your investment. Beyond selling, we believe in supporting our customers to adopt and transform with new technologies.”

AIML Capabilities in Big demand The concept of Data Analytics has been around for a while, but it was not until recently that Big Data revolutionized the business world. The more data you have, the better insights you can gain.

Recently, AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) capabilities, cloud-enabled services, and analytics started registering remarkable growth. The solutions providers too are taking notice and encashing upon the opportunities offered.

“Some of the most popular trends in data analytics include big data, machine learning, and AI technologies. These three trends will change the way we think about business, but with that change comes many opportunities for growth for businesses involved in these areas,” says Nair.

“At ManageEngine, we continue to invest in the latest trends and technology. AI and ML play an important role in the hybrid model, which is why we have incorporated our AI-assisted chatbot Zia into several ManageEngine and Zoho products.

Given that these AI capabilities are a natural extension to our products, our partners are able to offer our customers comprehensive support on these features,” says Arun.

Nair further adds, “Businesses across industries can benefit from using data analytics effectively.

The benefits of data analytics and analytics include better decision-making, more extensive innova-

22 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2022

tions, and product price optimization, among others.”

“Data analytics has become a central part of almost all the businesses today. The more data you have, the better insights you can gain from it. Some of the most popular trends in data analytics include big data, machine learning and AI technologies. These three trends will change the way we think about business, but with that change comes many opportunities for growth for businesses involved in these areas.

With data analytics our partners enjoy multiple benefits,” says Kothari.

Vertical-Specific Focus Gaining Ground IT Solution Providers are focusing on specific verticals and have built very specific capabilities across a few verticals, which is helping them to differentiate. In order to ensure greater traction for channel partners, they are offering verticalspecific solutions.

“Our main focus areas include enriching customer experience, enhancing employee productivity through effective collaboration & workplace automation, digitization & legacy process automation along with flexibility, scalability, application modernizations, analytics & innovations through Azure cloud,” says Kothari.

“The key areas we focus on include enriching customer experience, enhancing employee productivity through effective collaboration & workplace automation, digitization & legacy process automation, flexibility, scalability, application modernizations, analytics & innovations through Azure cloud,” says Nair.

“We range from solutions on the Microsoft

platform, Cloud solutions and services, Modern hybrid infrastructure, Asset management, DITO, Future workplace, Business solution, CRM, ERP, BI, Document workflow, and Cybersecurity solutions. Our experts empower organizations of all types, sizes, and scale to thrive and grow in the digital age,” Nair adds.

“ManageEngine’s suite of products is industry agnostic and useful across all verticals,” says Arun.

“Embee has a wide portfolio of app offerings, ranging from solutions on the Microsoft platform, to integrated ERP solutions on SAP Business One, and a home-grown modular IP, Octane HRMS. Serverless, PaaS/SaaS and Low Code/No Code solutions & managed services along with All-Up Security, Collaboration, Big Data/Analytics, RPA, AI, ML & IoT are also the pivot solution areas for the company,” adds Kothari.

Overcoming the Challenges Despite the swansong some factors are there that are impacting the growth curve for the IT Solutions providers. Is cannibalization of revenue, a major challenge? Or is it any other? Let’s listen it from the horse’s mouth.

“A few influential factors are affecting the growth of IT Solutions providers. One of the essential factors is the company culture and HR policies. This permits businesses to oversee their employee relationships better and provide a more positive work environment. More, the trend of remote work is also contributing to the development of IT Solutions providers as they can have a highly productive workforce located anywhere in the world. The security trend has also been on the rise in recent years as businesses are increasingly concerned about their security standards and how best to protect their data,” says Nair.

“The main priorities for organisations today are to ensure they stay relevant to dynamic market conditions, offer a seamless experience to both employees and customers in the hybrid work model, focus on automation, and stay compliant with local regulations. As the role of IT teams grows throughout the organisation, IT teams will need solutions that can help them solve pain points for their customers and keep the organisation relevant,” underlines Arun.

“One of the most important factors is the company culture and HR policies. This is because it allows companies to better manage their employee relationships and provide a more positive work environment. Additionally, the trend of remote work is also contributing to the growth of IT Solutions providers as they can have workforce located anywhere in the world. The trend of security has also been on the rise in recent years as

COVER STORY

“MY READING IS NEARLY 25-35% OF BUSINESSES HAVE MOVED EVERYTHING ONTO CLOUD, BUT ANOTHER 75% ARE STILL THERE TO CAPTURE. AND THAT’S A HUGE MARKET.” PUNIT THAKKAR, CEO AND MD SHIVAAMI CLOUD SERVICES PVT. LTD.

businesses are increasingly concerned about their security standards and how best to protect their data. There is also a growing need for technically skilled manpower. This is because businesses are increasingly looking for solutions that address their technological needs. Finally, rapid introduction and adoption of latest technologies has also been contributing to the growth of IT Solutions providers. It allows companies to rapidly upgrade their infrastructure and meet the demands of their customers,” notes Kothari.

Need for Skilled Workforce There is also a growing need for a technically skilled workforce. This is because businesses are increasingly looking for solutions that address their technological needs. “The rapid introduction and adoption of the latest technologies have contributed to IT Solutions providers’ growth.

It allows companies to rapidly upgrade their infrastructure and meet the demands of their customers,” says Nair, underlining the importance of skilled workforce for growth.

Upskilling Partners IT solution business is highly tech intensive. At this backdrop upskilling the partners to help them tap more into market opportunities holds the key to success in a highly competitive tech landscape.

“A solutions partner can be invaluable – they have the insight required to build a strategy that leads straight to your end goal and the experience to help you overcome any challenges. You must work with partners aligned with your company’s mission, values, culture, and goals. Working with the partner who is not aligned can hurt your business and slow down the desired pace of growth. This is where upskilling comes in,” says Nair.

“We invest a lot in training our partners and conduct regular training programs on the latest product enhancements and market trends. Along

with the product training programs, we also ensure all our partners are certified on our products,” says Arun.

“It’s true that partnerships are the cornerstone of most business-to-business ventures. They’re the fastest way to gain access to a new market and build a customer base. They have the expertise and capital to get their business off the ground.

They also tend to understand your business and the risks involved. This means they’re more likely to trust your judgment and keep you in the loop,” says Kothari. “It’s essential that you work with partners who are aligned with your company’s mission, values, culture, and goals. Working with the wrong partner can hurt your business and slow down your growth. This is where upskilling comes in.”

Acquisition Route to Growth As a mark of evident growth, solution providers are exploring all routes to business as well as capacity expansion. Very recently, Softline Group acquired Embee Software, a leading global provider of IT solutions and services. “Embee Software will continue to provide the same service level and quality you have expected since day one, but with an expanded reach around the world,”says Nair.

“Further expanding the footprint in the Indian marketspace is our strategic acquisition of Umbrella Infocare, a Delhi based organization and their 200+ strong team offers rich and advanced skills in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Citrix solutions. Together we lay the foundation to build a global AWS Centre of Excellence (CoE) and enhance Softline’s solution capabilities for our customers in India,” Nair adds.

Investing For Growth To build up further on their growth, the solution providers are planning or making all efforts

and investments for channel expansions in the country.

“Softline’s growth is underpinned by its threedimensional strategy to expand its geography, portfolio, and sales channels. Softline’s 8200 employees work in almost 60 countries throughout Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa—markets with significant growth potential,” says Nair.

“We enable, facilitate, and accelerate digital transformation for our customers’ businesses, connecting 150,000+ organizations from all sectors with 6,000+ best-in-class IT vendors alongside its services and solutions. Our company delivers a comprehensive range of IT solutions and is at the center of the digital transformation megatrend,” adds Nair.

“Embee Software has been acquired by Softline Group, a leading global provider of IT solutions and services. Embee Software will continue to provide the same service level and quality you have come to expect since day one, but with an expanded reach around the world. With this acquisition, Embee’s team of software engineers will become part of a global organization that provides services to over 50+ countries and has more than 7,000 employees. We also recently started our services in Bahrain, Middle East to become a leading IT solutions provider not only in India but in other countries too,” says Kothari.

“We are moving towards building value-added partners on the channel strategy and not just being transactional, as customers today expect partners to not only implement the product offerings but also to provide domain intelligence by solving their business challenges. Our investments are focused on enabling partners to deliver value to customers based on their business needs and market trends,” says Arun.

Signing off To conclude, the Pandemic-triggered massive shift to online operations and a significant uptick in the cloud, resulted in digitalisation on an unprecedented scale. Effectively capitalizing on the surge in demand for IT solutions and services, the solution providers have turned it into an uncommon growth phase. Whether enabling capacity building or introducing vertical-specific solutions, or taking to the acquisition route to growth or pulling all stops to channel expansion or ensuring partner upskilling and growth, the frontline solution providers of today are clearly bullish on growth. Delivering a diverse and comprehensive range of IT solutions, they are at the center of a digital transformation megatrend.

SME CHANNELS 23 APRIL 2022

GUEST ARTICLE

REIMAGINED WORK DEMANDS REDESIGNED MACHINES Introducing new commercial devices built on collaboration and performance

RAHUL TIKOO, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Client Solutions Group PROFILE Dynamic, Entrepreneurial Leader with a record of achievement and demonstrated success leading multibillion-dollar programs. Hands-on experience leading full product lifecycle including business strategy, product planning, product development, marketing and P&L management.

Extremely energetic business leader, able to lead and direct all phases of product development while managing, motivating and guiding international teams and delivering exceptional products on time and within budget.

24 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2022

The concept of Hybrid Work is unique to each of us. It means something different to everyone but with it comes an overwhelming sense of change and opportunity to redefine your relationship with work. How and where you do that is entirely up to you.

To help you embrace the dynamics of the hybrid world, we aren’t sticking to what’s worked in the past.

We believe that technology shouldn’t be “one-size fits all” and so we are redesigning our devices with more power, intelligent features and improved security – while making them smaller and thinner to better fit today’s workforce. Whether you are a C-suite executive jumping from video calls to inperson meetings or a creative professional taking a project from inspiration to reality, building off our recent commercial announcement, Dell Technologies’ new Latitude and Precision devices are expertly designed with collaboration and performance in mind to power the way you work best.

Redesigned for a new age of collaboration Some days the conference room is your kitchen table, others you’re heading to a client’s office to meet for the first time face-to-face in more than two years.

Either way, on-the-go business leaders need devices that enhance productivity, are easy to carry and look great. The new Latitude 9330 answers this call (literally!) – packing key collaboration, connectivity and privacy features into a 2-in-1 form factor. It’s the first 13” device in the 9000 series[ii] and the thinnest of the Latitude portfolio[iii] with a 16:10 InfinityEdge display – delivering a perfectly sized option for you, the mobile worker.

But there’s more. Let’s face it, after two years full of video calls, we’re still struggling to come off mute, especially when we have multiple windows or tabs open. Video calls won’t be going away anytime soon, and easy access to conference call capabilities is key.

To help you bring your best self to every call, the new Latitude 9330 is the world’s first laptop with a collaboration touchpad[iv] – offering quick access to microphone mute/unmute, video on/off, screen share and chat in Zoom meetings. With the collaboration touchpad, you have all these controls at your fingertips and once the meeting ends, the icons dis-

appear (no longer enabled), and the full trackpad is restored. Plus, with our FHD camera with separate RGB and IR cameras, and neural-noise cancellation, you can be your best on every meeting.

The Latitude 9330 continues to build off our commitment to use sustainable product materials in our products to help minimize environmental impact.

The keyboard is made with a total of 44% recycled materials, and the keycaps alone are made from 75% recycled content.[v] The device is also outfitted with bio-based rubber feet (39%), and recycled ocean-bound plastic in the fan housing (28%).

The Latitude 9330 also ships in our new premium packaging made from 100% recycled or renewable materials,[vi] which is also 100% recyclable.[vii] Coupled with the newest features of Dell Optimizer, you can feel confident working from multiple locations on the Latitude 9330 while facing increasing privacy risks, combating interruptions and using unreliable Wi-Fi. The latest Intelligent Privacy features conceal information on your screen when an onlooker is detected and dims the screen when you look away – also saving battery. Coupled with our dual electromechanical SafeShutter, these features help keep you and your data safe. With the world’s first simultaneous multi-network connection,[viii] you can connect to two networks at once for faster data and video downloads, and it joins the best network available. The Latitude 9330 also delivers all the performance needed with 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processors and the latest connectivity options, including Intel® Wi-Fi 6E[ix] and 4G LTE or 5G.[x] It’s a feature-packed device bringing collaboration to the forefront of your meaning of hybrid work.

Designed to enhance creativity with a focus on power For 25 years, the Precision line has pushed the industry to a higher standard of performance and user experience while consistently delivering innovative workstations and solutions that are an outstanding choice for professional applications and emerging technologies.

Last month, we introduced the Precision 5470, the most powerful 14” workstation in history, and the thinnest and smallest in the world.[xi] Now we’re bringing you even more power with the intro-

GUEST ARTICLE

duction of our new Precision 7000 series mobile workstations. With the latest thermal innovations, professional graphics, powerful CPU technologies (including some that haven’t been fully announced yet!) and new designs that provide more flexibility, our new Precision models pack a punch. These are the workstations of choice for those heavy-duty workloads – running VR/AR, AI/ML, complex 3D CAD, creative editing software and data science applications with ease!

Here’s what is new: For the first time, Dell Precision mobile workstations are available in a 16” form factor, giving you a world–class front-of-screen experience that doesn’t compromise on performance. Another first, the Precision 7670 comes in two chassis options – thin and performance – for a device that best powers your daily applications. The two chassis versions offer flexibility in scalability and configurability determined by your chosen graphics card – enabling you to customize the 7670 to your performance needs, including a variety of processor and graphics selections, as well as expansive memory, beautiful screen options (including a new OLED UHD+ screen with touch panel) and storage options.

For those who need even more screen real estate, the new Precision 7770 is a powerful 17” mobile workstation offering our highest scalability across the portfolio and providing desktop-like performance for professionals on the go. Both the Precision 7670 and 7770 will offer Intel’s most powerful CPUs – 12th Gen Intel® Core™ up to i9 processors (55W—coming soon!) with Intel vPro®– up to next gen 16GB NVIDIA RTX™ A5500 graphics and up to 128GB of DDR5 memory.[xii] And speaking of memory, the new Precision models will be our first workstations to feature a new, Dell-patented form factor for DDR5 memory called CAMM (Compression Attached Memory Module). Through CAMM, Dell is enabling a thinner chassis design without sacrificing perfor-

mance—perfect for hybrid professionals. With repair a key component of our commitment to help reduce waste and extend the life of products and materials, the CAMM module also makes the memory more accessible for field repair. Initially launching with CAMM, the Precision 7000 series will also be available with traditional SODIMM options soon afterwards. Stay tuned for a more technical blog on this new memory module and our intent to drive standardization across the industry.

Protecting your ideas is paramount and the new Precision 7000 series mobile workstations introduce new security features to help keep your work from debuting before it’s ready. Both the Precision 7670 and 7770 feature security elements to help prevent device tampering and intrusion including chassis intrusion detection, battery removal detection, contact and contactless smart card readers, traditional and FIPS-certified fingerprint readers, and an IR camera for login security.

And that’s not all either: The Precision 7000 series are packed with features that help you work smarter; Dell Optimizer for Precision provides unique reporting and analytics features and is tailored to optimize application performance for media intensive applications. It also has the same privacy, connectivity and collaboration features, such as the screen dimming when you look away and the ability to connect to two networks at once. Precision mobile workstations also ship in our new packaging made from 100% recycled or renewable materials.[xiii] As the industry’s most secure commercial PCs,[xiv] the new Latitude and Precision devices employ both software-based, above the operating system (OS) protections, and hardware-based, below the OS capabilities, to defend against current and future threats.

Final thoughts As we continue to reimagine how we work, we are committed to redesigning innovative devices and

services to ensure you show up as your best self no matter where or how you are working that day.

Check out our official press kit here for more information on each of the announcements.

Follow and stay connected with us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Pricing and availability l Latitude 9330 is available worldwide in June 2022. Pricing to be confirmed nearer to shipping date. l Precision 7670 and Precision 7770 are available worldwide in FYQ2. Pricing to be confirmed nearer to shipping date. [ii] Based on Dell analysis, April 2022. [iii] Based on Dell analysis, April 2022. [iv] Based on Dell analysis, January 2022. [v] Percentage by weight, based on Dell analysis, April 2022. [vi] Approximately 78% recycled content and 22% renewable content in the form of FSC paper fibers. Excludes optional items added to order and included in box. [vii] Paper packaging materials can be recycled via municipal recycling, where available. System bag is made from recycled plastic and can be recycled along with other thin plastics. [viii] Simultaneous multi-network connection works with wired and wireless networks. For select Dell platforms, a USB Wi-Fi adapter is required to connect a second Wi-Fi network. Based on Dell internal analysis, September 2021. [ix] WiFi 6E compatible router required. Router requires separate purchase. WiFi 6E connectivity only available in select countries. Check availability with your service provider. [x] 5G module is optional and must be selected at purchase.

To access more info login to: https://www.smechannels.com

SME CHANNELS 25 APRIL 2022

SECURITY

RICARDO FERREIRA EMEA FIELD CISO FORTINET

“DIGITAL ACCELERATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR COMPETING IN TODAY’S FINANCIAL MARKETPLACE. HOWEVER, IT DOESN’T COME WITHOUT RISH.”

D

igital acceleration is impacting how we work, live, and consume services.

In addition, the digital evolution of Financial Services Organizations (FSOs) raises essential questions about the future of banking. One looming concern is how FSOs will compete against fintechs, including addressing the need for innovation to improve customer experience.

Adapt to changing times The top three strategic areas outlined in the IDC Infobrief, sponsored by Fortinet, Accelerating Transformation Through Cybersecurity in Financial Services,* highlight the core priorities for financial institutions: Trust, Security, and Resilience. So, the question is, how can FSOs lead and win through innovation while ensuring that risks do not overwhelm a traditionally risk-averse industry?

Many FSOs have begun adopting new digital business models to help them thrive in a digitalfirst economy. These include prioritizing investments in key areas such as data-driven security, legacy modernization, and personalized and contextual customer experiences. But for these business models to work, they will need to rely on data, analytics, and cloud platforms.

So, when we ask, “what does success look like for the future-ready bank?” we see three major

26 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2022

themes: Automation and cost reduction: Automation, managed services, and cloud platforms will enable FSOs to innovate faster. Automation allows business units to integrate with the rest of the organization, build self-service, and reduce manual labor costs, such as adopting Robotic Process Automation and artificial intelligence-powered chatbots to deal with insurance claims. In investment banking, robot advisors use machine learning-powered algorithms to help retail investors make better decisions. Thanks to cloud platforms and managed services, these new products and services are economically feasible because they shift traditional CapEx to activities that create more value. l Customer intelligence and centricity: New platforms provide data and analytics for anticipating customer needs and hyper-personalizing the customer journey. Customer data, such as l

investment patterns, can guide a robot advisor to recommend portfolio choices aligned to customer preference. Similarly, natural language processing can help an AI system quickly assess a customer’s issue to redirect them to the nearest branch or get the appropriate representative involved. l New value propositions: Open banking was a massive change for banks, helping them realize the power of APIs. Building Banking as a Service (BaaS) has allowed them to develop new services and create stronger partnerships.

But what about the customer experience?

Who is not irked when reminded of their first troubled mobile banking experience, with terrible UX and lack of integration? It’s why, when some fintechs launched their online mobile banking, it was a beacon of light in a dark room. A real-world

SECURITY

THE BALANCING ACT OF FINANCIAL ORGANIZATIONS TO COMPETE INATECHNOLOGYDRIVENWORLD Digital acceleration is impacting how we work, live, and consume services. In addition, the digital evolution of Financial Services Organizations (FSOs) raises essential questions about the future of banking. One looming concern is how FSOs will compete against fintechs, including addressing the need for innovation to improve customer experience. Ricardo Ferreira, EMEA Field CISO at Fortinet says how fintechs can adapt to the changing times and compete in a technology driven world. security example that everyone might remember was the usage of biometrics for accessing online mobile banking. Big brands took a long time to adopt it, and while it might seem trivial from a UX perspective, it’s leaps and bounds towards progress.

Today, traditional brands regularly launch products that emulate offerings from nimbler fintech organizations. The lesson is clear: to gain a competitive advantage, banks must focus on creating a fast, intuitive, and seamless customer experience.

Are clouds grey in banking?

These business models require the accelerated consumption of new platforms, such as cloud computing. Financial organizations must understand they can create differentiated value and increase competitiveness by using the cloud to increase their speed of innovation and accelerate the go-to-market of new services and products.

Cloud platforms also serve as a bridge to modernize financial organization workloads.

CIOs want to migrate workloads cohesively while ensuring the capabilities from their on-prem solutions are still available. Major Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have jumped at the opportunity to integrate their environments into the same

control plane.

Yes, but isn’t that risky?

Regulators have flagged the concentration risk.

For example, the Bank of England has highlighted it in their stability reports. The latest Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) PS21/3 rules address third-party risk and operational resilience. And the European Union has gone a big step beyond with their Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

All these activities and proposals are designed to address these concerns. The European Systemic Risk Board has flagged cyber as a systemic risk to the European financial system due to the increase in cyberattacks—especially in the financial industry, which is 300 times more likely to be the target of cyberattacks. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) emphasizes that cyber events propagate risk through the entire financial system via three broad transmission channels: risk concentration, risk contagion, and erosion of confidence.

That is why cybersecurity is a priority as part of the EU’s “Europe fit for the digital decade” policy program. Programs such as EU-HYBNET, ACCORDION, and DORA for financial services ensure Europe works as a single entity by harmonizing requirements to increase resilience and

protect citizens.

What can financial organizations do about it?

To start, security needs to be woven into transformation efforts to ensure that innovation and transformation are conducted securely. For this to work, security must be included from a project’s inception, not as a bolt-on after a project and its services are launched.

What about protecting financial assets?

55% of European financial organizations already use some form of zero-trust strategy for their authorization and authentication. Zero-trust shifts the traditional paradigm from implicit trust for users and resources inside a static, networkbased perimeter to an authentication model that focuses on users, assets, and resources. Zero-trust requires authentication and authorization to be performed every time access is granted to a specific resource.

How do we address the ‘weakest link’ problem?

While people are an organization’s most critical asset, they are also the primary source for data breaches and network compromise. Organizations must be prepared for a loss of control if their workforce is not educated on cyber awareness.

Some large financial organizations have created partnerships with e-learning portals and vendors to provide tailored courses using nudges and financial instruments to reskill the workforce into new technologies. Similarly, financial organizations must plan to mitigate the rampant cybersecurity skills shortage, which will impact 90% of organizations by 2025, resulting in delays to the transformational journey.

What can we do?

Digital acceleration is essential for competing in today’s financial marketplace. However, it doesn’t come without risk. First, ensure employees are trained and reskilled in the organization’s technologies. Second, share data with industry peers to learn best practices and identify potential issues.

Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL) is an excellent example of transaction data sharing to mitigate Anti-Money Laundering (AML).

Finally, work with vendors and partners committed to cross-vendor openness and integration.

When vendors work together across the threat landscape, the sum of their products is greater than the individual parts, deepening your level of cyber protection.

SME CHANNELS 27 APRIL 2022

IOT

“BY COMPROMISING THE CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF TELCOS, CYBERCRIMINALS, LIKE RANSOMWARE GROUPS, ARE ASSURED OF SIGNIFICANT RANSOM PAY-OUTS BECAUSE OF THE FAR-REACHING, POTENTIALLY DEVASTATING IMPACT OF THEIR EXPLOIT.” MOHAN RAJ REGIONAL DIRECTOR, THE GULF & INDIA, LOGRHYTHM

I

n today’s cyberthreat landscape, threat actors are drawn to organisations that operate within critical infrastructure sectors, including telecommunications (telco), due to the potential to cause significant damage and disturbance to critical processes that benefit ordinary people and entire governments.

By compromising the critical infrastructure of telcos, cybercriminals, like ransomware groups, are assured of significant ransom pay-outs because of the far-reaching, potentially devastating impact

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of their exploit. These attacks have the potential to leave long-lasting consequences, operational disruption and total system shutdown.

Critical infrastructure attacks can make it hard for telco players to roll out and grow new infrastructure as part of their business; a necessity to keep up with the speed of innovation and capture new business growth. Security teams must consider fundamental factors like the evolving threat landscape, system vulnerabilities, different threat actors and information sharing to ensure the pro-

tection of their critical operations and end-users.

The IoT Challenge Traditionally, control systems for critical infrastructure were kept separate from the open internet. They were deployed on air-gapped networks and had tight physical security. However, the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the dynamic. With a global focus on digitalisation and building a hyper-connected world more and more telcos have been left with no choice

IOT

ATTACKS ON IOT: THE CALL TO COMBAT RISING CYBERTHREATS IN THE TELCO SPACE In this article Mohan Raj, Regional Director, the Gulf & India at LogRhythm, elaborates on how to keep the critical infrastructure immune from the cyber threats.

BY SANJAY

sanjay@accentinfomedia.com

but to adopt IoT into their critical infrastructure.

According to Gartner, the IoT market will represent a $58 billion opportunity by 2025.

Although this shift has helped cut operational costs and human resources, it has also enabled remote access and control of critical systems. This puts telcos in an even more vulnerable position when faced with emerging critical infrastructure threats.

Protecting critical infrastructure comes with many growing challenges — from the side effects of digital transformation to ensuring complex, interconnected supply chain networks. To stay ahead in a changing telco environment, it is essential for security teams to consider all these aspects to develop a solid critical infrastructure protection foundation.

Strengthening Telco Security The critical infrastructure threat landscape includes international and national terrorism by non-state threat actors, nation-state-sponsored cyberattacks, and the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) systems with the increased use of IoT across industries. Cybercriminals exploit the vulnerabilities in critical infrastructures for a number of reasons, including for geopolitical and financial gain.

The low barrier of entry and easy availability of cyber-sabotage resources are creating more threat actors and cybercriminal groups. Cybersecurity teams must increase awareness of the interests and motivations of different threat actors to understand the level of security controls needed to protect critical infrastructures. To gain this insight, organisations should consider cyberthreat intelli-

gence sub-teams that are focused on studying and analysing threat actors’ trends, interests, motivations, and potential targets.

On top of this, security teams also need to be aware of human error within their cybersecurity framework. Weakly enforced technical and administrative internal security measures combined with running critical systems on the open internet make them easier targets for compromise.

When targeting legacy control systems operating within a critical infrastructure sector, threat actors often settle for the lowest hanging fruit, typically people with elevated access privileges to desirable systems and data. For example, an attacker can gain back door entry into an otherwise secure network by acquiring direct access from an insider connected to a targeted organisation.

Telcos must assess and rework their security strategy and infrastructure to safeguard from not only human error but to keep pace with the everevolving attack surface. Adopting automation and reducing the human element to the bare minimum can minimise security gaps.

Another leading cause of vulnerabilities for telcos is the insecure design of infrastructure.

An insecure design creates vulnerabilities and openings for malicious actors to compromise critical systems. As a result of the vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure being inextricably linked, security teams must have a fundamental approach to systems design, infusing cross-domain considerations with security. Security teams must consider the evolving threat landscape and adopt secure and resilient strategies capable of handling real-time anomaly detection from multiple data sources and endpoints and accounting for changes

in compliance standards.

As telco critical infrastructure attracts extensive cybercriminal interest, the dynamic threat landscape requires more attention. In addition, threat actors with increasingly sophisticated intelligence capabilities are continuously searching for new vulnerabilities to exploit. Due to the rapid rate of change in the threat landscape, most telcos find it challenging to manage the risks on their own because of limited knowledge, authority, and resources. A concerted effort from both public and private sectors, working together to share knowledge and best practices will be vital to ensure resilience and security of our telcos.

Preparing for a Connected Future Critical infrastructure security is an essential part of the global economy and society.

As telcos leverage digital transformation to enhance processes and meet market demands, ensuring they are focussing their security efforts on OT and IT is a top priority. To do so, they must assess their security posture by checking that their chosen threat mitigation strategies are adequately deployed and operational, with the correct levels of coverage.

The key is to make any risks visible and transparent and prioritise assessments and mitigations based upon risks to the telco’s operations and sensitive data. Security teams need to be equipped with the visibility and capabilities required to proactively protect the networks assigned to monitor and manage critical processes, which modern-day society relies on.

SME CHANNELS 29 APRIL 2022

PARTNER CORNER

TOP 4 CYBER SECURITY TRENDS FOR APAC COMPANIES IN 2022 In this article Ramesh Umashankar, CEO, International Business, iValue InfoSolutions speaks about how the APAC business leaders can improve their cybersecurity postures.

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

I

n recent years, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region has become increasingly attractive to cybercriminals. According to IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022, Asia was the most attacked region in 2021, receiving 26 percent of the global attacks. India tops the list of the most attacked country in Asia.

Various reports highlight a significant shift in cyberattacks from North America and Europe to Asia. The rise in cyberattacks in APAC is credited to the region’s rapid digitalization coupled with low cybersecurity awareness, training, and regulations. This regional focus marks an emerging opportunity for business leaders in the APAC to consider how they can improve their cybersecurity postures and be aware of the latest cybersecurity trends.

HERE ARE THE TOP 4 CYBERSECURITY TRENDS FOR APAC COMPANIES IN 2022: 1. A renewed focus on data privacy and security The impact of GDPR laws on data protection has inspired APAC governments to introduce cybersecurity bills on data protection. Bangladesh is well on its path to introducing the first of its kind draft cybersecurity strategy that aims at creating

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safer cyberspace. While India is inching toward the final approval for its Personal Data Protection (PDP) bill.

But the biggest impact for companies in APAC is the widespread introduction of mandatory data breach notification laws. For instance, Singapore’s new Cybersecurity Act requires organizations from 11 key industry sectors to report any breach of critical information infrastructures to the Singapore Cyber Security Agency. Under its Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), organizations are to notify of any cyber incident within three days of the event. The shift from voluntary to mandatory reporting, in a time-limited setting, would require companies to focus on improving their privacy compliance and security strategies or risk paying hefty fines. iValue Recommends: Set up an incident response team and create a template data breach notification. Your team would be responsible for planning a response to a breach and notifying employees, partners, vendors, regulatory bodies, and other stakeholders.

2. Combating Ransomware-as-a-Service According to the 2022 Thales Data Threat Report, 1 in 5 businesses have paid or would pay a ransom for their data. Organizations in APAC are attacked 51 times per week on average. Indian companies

are prime targets for ransomware, with 1 in 4 companies reporting a ransomware attack in 2021. Adding to the alarming statistics are reports that APAC organizations are more likely to pay the ransom sometimes as high as $USD 1 million.

APAC’s vulnerability to ransomware, fuelled

by Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), is a push for leaders to devise ransomware defense plans.

The aim is to prioritize building cyber resilience by implementing new technologies and providing cybersecurity training to employees. iValue recommends: The biggest element for cyberattacks is human error. Invest in training your staff in best practices of cybersecurity and maintaining basic security hygiene. Have advanced threat hunting solutions in place to weed out trojans (Trickbot, Emotet, Dridex, CobaltStrik) and ransomware infections from your network.

3. Rise in collaborative cybersecurity efforts Given that threat actors target companies with multiple locations, there is a need for an increased collaborative effort between governments, companies, vendors to strengthen the cybersecurity landscape. In light of the increasing threats and challenges, many companies and governments are working together to share information and best practices and develop new cybersecurity solutions. Through initiatives such as information sharing platforms and incident response exercises, organizations in the Asia Pacific region are working together to address cyber threats and accelerate public-private partnerships in cybersecurity.

For example, Philippine bankers are learning cybersecurity best practices from the United Kingdom. According to FIT Country Director Richard Colley, the initiative “aims to help forge relationships and build connections between the UK and the Philippines and work together in addressing cyber security risks.” Meanwhile, Microsoft is on a mission to unite APAC governments and state agencies with the cybersecurity council. The Asia-pacific Public Sector Cyber Security Executive Council is a growing group of government leaders, policymakers, regulators, and industry stakeholders from Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and the Philippines. The council meets every quarter to “maintain a continuous exchange of information on cyber threats and cybersecurity solutions.” iValue recommends: Look for security management platforms that offer automation at scale, customized threat intelligence, and leverage AI.

PARTNER CORNER

RAMESH UMASHANKAR

CEO – INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS iVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS

“APAC’S VULNERABILITY TO RANSOMWARE, FUELLED BY RANSOMWARE-ASA-SERVICE (RAAS), IS A PUSH FOR LEADERS TO DEVISE RANSOMWARE DEFENSE PLANS.”

4. Cybersecurity Education A dearth of cybersecurity experts and skillsets is the bane of the cybersecurity industry. Despite reskilling and up skilling efforts, organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to find and retain qualified talent. According to the 2021 World Economic Forum (WEF) report, the APAC region accounts for 66 percent or 2.045 million of the global cybersecurity talent shortage.

To address the cybersecurity workforce gap, organizations, institutions, and governments are working on specialized cybersecurity training programs. For instance, The Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation (APU) in Malaysia offers specialized graduate courses in collaboration with industry experts, a state-ofthe-art infrastructure learning space (CyberSe-

curity Talent Zone), a full-fledged Cyber Threats Simulation and Response Center (or Cyber Range), and a Security Operations Center (SOC) with military-grade real-time cybersecurity monitoring systems, research centers, and simulation infrastructure. Whereas, giant tech corporations like IBM and Microsoft are investing in cybersecurity hubs in APAC regions to deliver immersive training programs. iValue recommends: Cybersecurity is a necessity for every company. Organizations must recognize that investing in skilled cybersecurity professionals and building a team is essential for long-term success. Expand your team’s capabilities, skillsets, and geographies by hiring remote workers across the globe.

SME CHANNELS 31 APRIL 2022

GUEST ARTICLE

DEEP-SEA PHISHING: HOW TO DEFEND AGAINST ATTACKS Businesses must not let down their guard, as there will be more attempts by cybercriminals on Microsoft and others because of the attractive nature of PhaaS and other phishing kits

ALADDIN ELSTON Head of Information Security Altimetrik PROFILE A Cyber Security Leader of international repute, with a record of achievement and demonstrated success in leading cross-functional teams.

Passionate about digital business enablement, he is currently involved in top-of-the-league cybersecurity mentorship programs focused on diversity, exceptional problem-solving skills working in a variety of roles, and is always excited to take on new, ambiguous projects. An authority on Blockchain Technology, Aladdin has assessed the security of systems and infrastructures ranging in size from small to large including full enterprise networks, e-commerce web applications, and blockchain infrastructure, using strong business judgment.

Microsoft and its products are one of the top targets of cybercriminals across the globe. While investigating phishing attacks, Microsoft recently reported developments, uncovering a large-scale PhaaS operation called BulletProofLink. The service (aka Anthrax) offers a robust set of services for cybercriminals, including customer hosting and support, the sale of phishing kits, phishing email templates, and automated services with attractive price points.

After careful analysis during the investigation, Microsoft ensures that Microsoft Defender for Office 365 protects its customers from the campaigns that BulletProofLink enables.

Companies should not let their guard down; Phishing is big business and is evolving. There will be more attempts on Microsoft and others because of the particularly attractive nature of PhaaS and other phishing kits. Cybercriminal groups can leverage these services in either a subscription-based model or a SaaS model, which includes hosting, phishing emails, and credential theft. It’s an out-ofthe-box solution that is irresistible to fraudsters and cybercriminals.

Phishing and PhaaS kits include: • End-to-end tools needed by a cybercriminal for their trade • Email templates designed to evade detection • Portals that offer domain names and websites that are customizable for phishing purposes • Subscription services for the deployment of phishing campaigns, false page sign-in development, hosting, credential theft, and redistribution What is the cost of a breach?

The scale of coordinating phishing operations is growing and unfortunately, we are the target, especially, since business email compromise is a hot commodity. It is estimated that in 2019, there was a worldwide loss of $17,700 per minute due to phishing attacks. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report found that on an average a compromised record cost approximately $150. Using that as a metric, we can deduct the cost of a specific breach

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based on the number of records stolen. FBI reported that business email compromise (BEC) reached an incredible $1.8 billion in 2020, demonstrating how lucrative an operation this is for cybercriminals.

According to a report, nearly 83% of organizations in India saw a rise in phishing attacks during the pandemic. Around 83% of IT teams in Indian organizations said the number of phishing emails targeting their employees increased during 2020.

Understanding the breadth of impact on how these costs are calculated provides a clearer picture of how disruptive a breach can be. First, there is the loss of work hours plus employees’ equipment becoming subject to incident response and remediation efforts. Then, there’s the damage to the brand reputation of the business, and, in some instances, a company may lose intellectual property in addition to the revenue it generates. On top of these losses, the firm may face significant compliance fines, legal fees, regulatory scrutiny, and ongoing audits.

Security and preventive measures are expensive; however, more organizations recognize that not investing in them may lead to the company facing further damage to their brand while risking the loyalty of their customers. That is a far greater risk to their business and bottom line.

How to defend against phishing attacks Preventing phishing attacks starts with educating employees on how to identify them. This includes conducting training sessions with mock phishing scenarios and updating staff on the evolving nature of phishing attacks. It is also important to educate and test executives within the company, as they are prime targets. Many companies will send phishing emails to their employees, and those that “fall for them” are required to take a refresher course to reinforce how to avoid being scammed.

Proactive organizations will know which steps are necessary for raising awareness, including arming their employees with the skills necessary for recognizing and dismissing phishing attacks. Employees must also learn this includes any request they see for sensitive information or asking the user to click

GUEST ARTICLE

on a suspicious link, should raise a red flag and be reported to the security or helpdesk team. Many companies have also made their customers aware of the risks associated with phishing campaigns and suggest that all requests for personal information should be viewed with suspicion. Companies also stress that customers have alternative methods for requesting, sharing, and obtaining information. Consider who sent you the email. Is this a known trusted sender or brand impersonation?

Employees should keep an eye on any website content and URLs they are invited to click on, as attackers leverage slight typo-jacking, or a slight misspelling of an email or website address, to mislead customers into using their malicious sites.

Many phishing attacks will send an email using a senior executive’s name while in reality it was sent by a cybercriminal. Clicking on the sender’s email address will confirm who the sender is, as well as inspect headers and URLs by hovering over them to reveal the true source and destination of the request. IT teams must take preventive action that enables proactive, consistent, and scalable policies with practices to keep phishing at bay and stay ahead of attackers. Deploying security products, services, spam and web filters, secure email gateway and post-delivery protection can increase an organization’s chances of avoiding an attack.

Other basic steps include: • Convert HTML in email messages or disable script, with appropriate prompts wording to open or download images from a trusted source.

• Analyze your emails, attachments, and URLs. • Block known bad actors, leveraging shared resources from leading security companies.

• Configure email servers to prevent spoofing and replay attacks.

• Ensure that devices like laptops and mobile phones are up to date with current security patches and that ensures all devices have been backed up.

• Prevent employees from downloading software without authorization. It will also be necessary for organizations to make investments when it comes to remote access and identity management solutions, which may also need fundamental changes to the way they currently operate.

IT leaders must take steps to: • Deploy multi-factor authentication to protect your accounts, which makes it harder for attackers to log into accounts even if they have been compromised.

• Deploy malware and antivirus solutions, ensuring signatures are up to date and monitoring equipment .

• Require VPN for all remote employees.

• Encrypt all your sensitive information to ensure you have appropriate data classification and policies in place.

• Deploy security policies that include password durations, password expiration, and complexity.

Conclusion: Cybercrime and phishing are now becoming commonplace. Organizations understand the dangers and many companies have taken steps to protect their assets and customers. Cybercriminals have built an efficient, far-reaching infrastructure and network to launch sophisticated attacks on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, phishing has become a mature and lucrative business due to the aggressive and innovative nature of cybercriminals looking for new ways to scam others. Education can only go so far if it is not reinforced. Each of us must be diligent and understand what techniques are used by scammers and ways to avoid them. As the world becomes more sophisticated and connected by a proliferation of devices, the risks of phishing and other cyber threats will also increase. Security has always been and will continue to be an arms race with real consequences.

SME CHANNELS 33 APRIL 2022

INTERVIEW

DRUVA EXPANDS INDUSTRY’S FIRST SAAS-BASED MSP PROGRAM TO ASIA PACIFIC REGION Scott Morris, Vice President of Sales for APJ, Druva speaks about Simplicity, Security and Scale help partners improve operational efficiency and accelerate customer cloud adoption with Zero complexity or infrastructure cost. An excerpt.

Is there no commitment from an MSP? Especially in comparison to what’s been followed all these years.

So, how is it connected? Can you briefly explain the standard model for this?

Yes, of course there is a commitment. We work on a subscription based service which effectively means it can be turned on/ off instantly. The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud negates the need for MSPs to buy any hardware or software. Ideally, this allows MSPs to begin monetizing right from day one because there’s no need to sink one’s capital into heavy infrastructure. Additionally, our customer base include those that are either existing and/ or serving from an existing capability but wish to migrate into a more efficient and effective way of monetization.

Basically, you’re pushing around a service through an MSP, right?

Yes, correct. So it’s an aggregate model. Our minimum monthly commitment is 10 customers a year. This does grow incrementally for each and every subsequent customer they bring on. The underlying minimum commit can either be consumed or increased in order for the MSP’s to make

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more money and also to obtain a higher discount from Druva the next year of the program.

And, would they require any kind of configuration at their end in pushing your service from an infrastructure?

Well, there is no pre-provisioning that is required which means there is no need for maintenance or sizing or upgrades that need to be performed.

The idea is to stay focused on the core objective of identifying customers and bringing them into the MSP portal. We have built a unique console for the MSP community which helps create a true multi user, multi-tenant view of the user’s underlying assets. It’s a multi-tenant portal that allows an MSP to see all the customers at a top level, and then individually and securely manage each one of those customers with their own individual capability. So, MSPs now become an aggregator of the complex traditional solutions where they were used to putting in individual siloed solutions from the vendor and manage them as such.

Are you looking at putting a class of MSPs that would fit?

How do you approach this or how are

you offering this program? What’s the like- mindedness that you’re looking for from an MSP point of view?

What we are looking for is partners. MSP partners typically have got a very strong alignment to cloud migration and that is in sync with what both IDC and Gartner talk about- enterprises transitioning to cloud based workloads. Additionally, many of these customers while transitioning the on-prem traditional infrastructures to cloud, are also looking at how to remove other complexities. This is why they generally work very closely with an MSP that is not only helping them migrate, but also then helping them manage these complexities in the background. So, they become ideal candidates for us. And clearly, as you look at those MSP priorities, any MSP that views backup and recovery, either as a top priority or a growth area, becomes an immediate prospect.

And would there be any play for players like Amazon, or the hyperscalers?

So, we already have a hyperscale offering. We’ve built our platform on AWS which means we’re already a native in cloud solutions. In fact, we are the third largest ISV in the APJ (Asia Pacific

INTERVIEW

SCOTT MORRIS VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES FOR APJ, DRUVA

“THIS YEAR WE WILL SEE MSPS INCREASINGLY ALIGN WITH CUSTOMER OUTCOMES TO DRIVE GROWTH, AND THE ADOPTION OF CLOUDBASED TECHNOLOGIES AND SAAS SOLUTIONS IS INCREASINGLY A MAJOR PART OF THESE IT INITIATIVES,” SAID, SCOTT MORRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES FOR APJ, DRUVA.” and Japan) community today. Druva sits as one of the largest storage consumers globally. So we, in our own right, are a very strong partner to AWS and, we’ll be working closely with them to look at who are the most aligned service providers that we could potentially partner with by adding this incremental backup capability.

Druva achieved 100% growth last year, this year, how do you find the landscape to keep your flock together, specifically OEM partners, ISV alliance partners and service providers in the region? Also, how are you looking at the strategy to engage with startups this year, as we are witnessing lots of soonicorns in this region?

Growth continues to drive us. In fact, the data resiliency cloud really is the last bastion of onprem infrastructure. Today, it is nearly automatic for people to think, “Well, we’ll take a SaaS solution for that”. Some, 5- 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have considered a relational database in the cloud but it’s now automatic- relational database, CRM systems etc. Even email is considered on G- Suite or 365- it’s natural to now assume a software as a service provider becomes almost your default

starting point as opposed to an on-prem solution.

Today, Druva is on that pinnacle. And while you see the growth that we’re seeing, backup is yet to be defaulted to software as a service as the primary mode. Druva is unique in the fact that we’ve been doing this now for 10 years. There’s a lot of startups in the backup and recovery space, all clamoring to provide software as a service solution. Druva has done this at an enterprise scale.

We’ve got thousands of customers globally, protecting and being protected by this platform, and roughly 15% of these customers are in the Asia Pacific marketplace, and we continue to witness very strong, continued growth. India was one of our first markets that we opened up in Asia Pacific.

We introduced the multi-cloud concept which is wherever you choose to put your workload and how you decide to protect that under a single platform approach, ensuring that it gives you the highest level of security, recoverability and protection.

When it comes to OEM partners, Dell is our first, globally and it still is a new relationship with two full quarters in. At all levels, across US, Europe, and Asia Pacific, we are engaged absolutely in lockstep- sales team to sales team in the field. Dell has a huge install base of traditional on- prem solutions that reaches this huge target

market and all of their competitors are consistently pecking away at them from the outside. Dell EMC PowerProtect Backup Service is 100% OEM and powered by the Druva platform. This now gives Dell a very credible story of how they went from traditional on-premise to a cloud based software as a service offering while maintaining and protecting their customers without having them eroded away to these other vendor competitors.

We see many collaboration points, of course, as we continue to develop the product. SFDC from a Salesforce Sandbox Seeding point of view becomes a potential point of leverage. The relationship that we have with the ability to leverage VMware’s VMC product in terms of disaster recovery- be it on- premise or on cloud. The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud capability allows them to not only back up the virtual machine infrastructure into the Druva cloud platform, but as DR (Disaster Recovery) capability helps them move back up into a production workload back to on- premise. We become an enabler for these organizations. So, in short, now, as we go forward, you’ll start to see tighter integration from a security standards perspective.

IDC and other studies show that SMBs, particularly in APAC, are highly targeted by ransomware attackers. SMB companies depend on MSPs for security. How are you enabling MSPs to help recover their data after a ransomware attack? What about immutable backups and the 3-2-1 backup model? How does this fit into the Druva cyber resiliency cloud?

We do subscribe to the 3-2-1 backup model. But there are multiple availability zones in the cloudmultiple redundant copies of that. One must remember that today, malware and ransomware is becoming extremely clever. It’s not just the software that’s running around, its individuals and people that create the risk of a bad act getting in.

So, when we think of a security to overlay that, we simply follow a zero trust security model, which means never trust anybody, always assuming that somebody is a bad actor. And, so with that sense of heightened security, it allows us to do some really interesting things.

Now, when it comes to encryption as a key capability, we have a general encryption capability that only allows the customer to de- encrypt their own data. We don’t see our customer’s data.

The architecture and design of our platform only allows the customer with their key to see their own data. So, tomorrow even if a government

SME CHANNELS 35 APRIL 2022

INTERVIEW

came along and asked us to give us all of the records for company XYZ, it wouldn’t mean anything, because we couldn’t encrypt or de- encrypt it, even if we tried.

Even in the case of dual access (wherein two people have admin capabilities), our secure ops perspective catches some suspicious activity such as if one admin does a mass delete and we confirm the same with the secondary identified person.

Druva has a failsafe, which means we need a sec-

ondary person in the organization to validate an activity or capability.

How do you leverage next gen Tech’s like AI to address security issues?

We have a strong AL and ML focus. We use it when detecting anomalous behavior. We are also looking at patent matching technologies to apply to things like governance and compliance. So if

you think of GDPR or personal information policies that are implemented by governments around the world, we’re able to look for information in the background. This helps us to be able to drive alerts and it was again using API’s that plug into either your security alert platforms. We’re looking for patterns and analyse these patterns of behaviour.

BAKSHISH DUTTA, COUNTRY MANAGER, INDIA & SAARC, DRUVA A 3-2-1 model indicates three copies of data on two different media and one copy off site. To deploy this kind of architecture and if it is on- premise, then the customer has to invest a lot of hardware and a lot more to make things work. And, if an MSP is doing it, then too there’s a lot of effort and investment of time and putting things together. Now, we offer our SaaS on AWS and the way we architect our solution is that we ensure that the data that’s backed up to the cloud is stored in multiple regions and we move some unique blocks of data to the cloud making the backup process secure.

It is truly a 3-2-1 backup model and the ease for MSP is that there is no need to re-invent or establish another or to do anything at all, to make it 3-2-1 compliant. Our software also detects anomalous behavior and more importantly we also recently introduced a ransomware recovery module. What this essentially does is that it ensures that ransomware cannot be executed even while storing an infected backup copy on the cloud. So your secondary copies are

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always safe. In addition, we also have the capability to scan the backup data which allows us to go to the customer and inform them about a possible ransomware manifestation within their environment.

We ensure that in case a customer’s primary data gets infected, the secondary will not because the data with us is air gapped and on another cloud. We can build a golden copy of the snapshot with which the customer can restore faster and thereby get back to business faster.

One of the key problems that customers face is also that they keep backing a lot of data and they don’t really know the data that they’re backing up or how frequently they are accessing it. There is a need to understand the composition of that data that is stored on the cloud and we can give these insights to the customer so that they are aware if they are not really accessing the data. The customer can also think of either taking the data off or pushing it out to archival so that the cost goes down and we take the same cost benefits.

INDUSTRY TALK

GLOBAL IT SPENDING TO HIT $4.4TRLN IN 2022 AS TECH INVESTMENTS ACCELERATE Only 3% can correctly identify which emails and SMS are legitimate or scams and fewer than half know the steps to take following a data breach.

Worldwide IT spending is expected to increase 4 percent in 2022 to $4.4 trillion dollars, according to an updated forecast from information technology (IT) research and advisory firm Gartner.

The bulk of the budgets will go to communications services and IT services, which are forecast to record $1.4 trillion and $1.26 trillion in spending, respectively. Investments in software and devices will hit $824 billion and $674 billion, respectively, while data centre systems will see $218 billion in spending.

Gartner had previously forecast that global IT spending could reach $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.1 percent from the previous year.

While the revised forecast is slightly lower, Gartner said this year will still be “one of the noisiest years on record” for CIOs, which are respon-

sible for the implementation of information and computer technologies in businesses and other entities.

According to John-David Lovelock, Gartner’s Research Vice President, CIOs are accelerating investments despite the current global uncertainties, as they recognise the importance of flexibility and agility in responding to disruptions.

“Geopolitical disruption, inflation, currency fluctuations and supply chain challenges are among the many factors vying for their time and attention, yet contrary to what we saw at the start of 2020, CIOs are accelerating IT investments,” Lovelock said.

“As a result, purchasing and investing preference will be focused in areas including analytics, cloud computing, seamless customer experience

and security,” he said.

Inflation The spending growth will also be driven by wage inflation in the IT industry. Companies are offering competitive salaries due to the current dearth of IT talent, and this has prompted technology service providers to increase their prices.

Spending on software products is forecast to grow 9.8 percent, while IT services is expected to post a 6.8 percent rise, as digital transformation continues this year. Gartner also expects that digital business initiatives, such as “experiential end-consumer experience and optimisation” of supply chain will drive the double-digit growth in enterprise applications and infrastructure software spending in 2023.

SME CHANNELS 37 APRIL 2022

INTERVIEW

EMBRACING

DIGITAL-FIRST BUSINESS MODEL With a commendable market share offering Microsoft solutions, Softline has broadened its horizons to offer Google solutions, AWS and Cybersecurity solutions such as Kaspersky and Checkpoint The Pandemic has forced businesses to shift to online operations and there has been a massive adoption of remote working culture and online learning, resulting in digitalisation on an unprecedented scale. Along with the shift to online has also come an unprecedented surge in demand for IT solutions and services, turning 2021 A Golden Year For IT Services Companies.

In a special interaction with SME Channels, Vinod Nair, Managing Director, Softline India, reveals his organization’s strategy to leverage the growing demand for IT solutions; the key trends in the IT solutions and services market in 2022; how vertical-specific solutions have brought in greater traction for channel partners; and his vision and plans for the channel community.

Edited excerpts…

There has been a significant uptick in the development of new IT products and services triggered by digital adoption and transition to cloud due to the Pandemic. How have been leveraging this hike in demand for IT solutions?

2021 was a year of opportunity for Softline to rebuild themselves and embrace the new digitalfirst business model. Predicting what lies next, 2022 will bring more possibilities and challenges as organizations continue adapting to a digitally enabled future. The pandemic condensed years’ worth of technological innovation into months, leaving businesses in a race to catch up. Nextgen technologies like AI/ML, cloud computing, data science/analytics, and digital communication have created just as many challenges as opportunities.

A digital workplace is essential to increasing employee engagement, generating a high level

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of productivity, and building exceptional digital customer experiences. As Softline prepares to embrace this new reality, we are recreating solutions for companies with easy access to remoteready solutions to enable business continuity, productivity, robust cloud security, modernization, etc. Also, scaling operations at a reasonable cost encourages collaboration, enhances data security, and empowers employees to deliver their best performance.

What key mega trends do you foresee in the IT solutions and services market?

To keep pace with the changing business dynamics, we at Softline always align ourselves to the latest market trends and make significant digital investments to transform and modernize business operations. Traditional businesses are reimagining business models while adopting technologies to deliver enhanced value to consumers. We will now be focusing solutions & services such as next upswing of Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, and Analytics. These businesses are constantly aligning with the market demands.

Businesses are transforming their processes by integrating technologies such as Machine Learning, AI, and Multi Clouds. These further help in enhancing service and product quality and improves the customer experience by accelerating time to market. Effective digital transformation is when a business can embrace distributed decision-making, agile workflows, and a digitally enabled and connected workforce and culture.

What are your major Product/ Services offerings?

Softline is a leading global solutions and services provider in digital transformation and cyber-

security. The company enables, facilitates, and accelerates digital transformation for its customers’ businesses, connecting 150,000+ organizations from all sectors. With a focus on Cloud and Digital Technologies, Softline provides innovative solutions in the areas of Cloud solutions, modern hybrid infrastructure, future Workplace, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Modern Workplace Communication & Collaboration solutions, Document workflow, Cybersecurity solution, and Asset management Softline has built a strong base for its technical expertise by co-investing in a Global Delivery Center (GDC), Security Operations Center (SOC), and Microsoft Workplace Shared Services Center. Softline has specifically been helping early-stage startups and Unicorns for over three years in supporting their technology investments through their growth cycle with customized set of offerings and resources to stepup the game! Recognizing our exceptional track record we were named as a Microsoft Start-Up Factory Partner. We also are one of the only two recognized partners for HoloLens2 in India.

We have earned 17 Gold Competencies, maintained Azure Expert MSP status, and holds 9 different Microsoft Advanced Specializations.

Softline India also won Microsoft Technology Partner of the Year 2021 –Security, 2 CIO Choice Awards for Application Development and Modern Workplace solutions, as well as the SME Channel Cloud Specialist Award 2021, and SME

INTERVIEW

VINOD NAIR MANAGING DIRECTOR SOFTLINE INDIA

“SOFTLINE HAS SPECIFICALLY BEEN HELPING EARLYSTAGE STARTUPS AND UNICORNS FOR OVER THREE YEARS IN SUPPORTING THEIR TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS THROUGH THEIR GROWTH CYCLE WITH CUSTOMIZED SET OF OFFERINGS AND RESOURCES TO STEP-UP THE GAME!.”

Channels Cloud Partner of India 2021. Softline’s pre-built apps on PowerApps prove that we take innovation seriously when it comes to building user-friendly apps for automating operations.

While we hold a commendable market share offering Microsoft solutions, we have broadened our horizons with the Innovation group at Softline offering Google solutions, AWS and Cybersecurity solutions such as Kaspersky and Checkpoint.

Recently, AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) capabilities, cloud-enabled services, and analytics have registered remarkable growth. How have your partners benefitted from the opportunities created by these techs?

The concept of Data Analytics has been around for a while, but it was not until recently that Big Data revolutionized the business world. The more data you have, the better insights you can gain.

Some of the most popular trends in data analytics include big data, machine learning, and AI technologies. These three trends will change the way we think about business, but with that change comes many opportunities for growth for businesses involved in these areas.

Businesses across industries can benefit from using data analytics effectively. The benefits of data analytics and analytics include better deci-

sion-making, more extensive innovations, and product price optimization, among others.

IT Solution Providers are focusing on specific verticals and have built very specific capabilities across a few verticals, which helps them differentiate. What vertical-specific solutions do you offer to ensure greater traction for channel partners?

The key areas we focus on include enriching customer experience, enhancing employee productivity through effective collaboration & workplace automation, digitization & legacy process automation, flexibility, scalability, application modernizations, analytics & innovations through Azure cloud.

At Softline, we enable our customers with endto-end IT solutions to accelerate efficiency, get to market faster, scale business and optimize outcomes. We range from solutions on the Microsoft platform, Cloud solutions and services, Modern hybrid infrastructure, Asset management, DITO, Future workplace, Business solution, CRM, ERP, BI, Document workflow, and Cybersecurity solutions. Our experts empower organizations of all types, sizes, and scale to thrive and grow in the digital age.

What are the major factors that are impacting the growth for the IT Solutions providers? Is cannibalization of revenue, a major challenge?

Softline’s Digital Workplace Solutions enable businesses to create a modern, highly collaborative environment for their workforce. Embedding advanced capabilities Softline’s hybrid-ready solutions enable organizations to reimagine their digital strategy for growth in 2022 and beyond.

A few influential factors are affecting the growth of IT Solutions providers. One of the essential factors is the company culture and HR policies. This permits businesses to oversee their employee relationships better and provide a more positive work environment. More, the trend of remote work is also contributing to the development of IT Solutions providers as they can have a highly productive workforce located anywhere in the world. The security trend has also been on the rise in recent years as businesses are increasingly concerned about their security standards and how best to protect their data.

There is also a growing need for a technically skilled workforce. This is because businesses are increasingly looking for solutions that address their technological needs. Finally, the rapid introduction and adoption of the latest technologies have contributed to IT Solutions providers’

growth. It allows companies to rapidly upgrade their infrastructure and meet the demands of their customers.

IT solution business is highly tech intensive. How do you upskill your partners to help them tap more into market opportunities?

Digital innovation doesn’t always come easy. Creating an incredible digital experience for your customers requires plenty of development, designing, testing, and creating. It also means pinpointing precisely what your company needs to stand out from the crowd. That’s why a solutions partner can be invaluable – they have the insight required to build a strategy that leads straight to your end goal and the experience to help you overcome any challenges. You must work with partners aligned with your company’s mission, values, culture, and goals. Working with the partner who is not aligned can hurt your business and slow down the desired pace of growth. This is where upskilling comes in.

Have you recently made or plan to make any major investments in terms of channel expansions or product development in India and SAARC? The company enables, facilitates, and accelerates digital transformation for its customers’ businesses, connecting 150,000+ organizations from all sectors with 6,000+ best-in-class IT vendors alongside its services and solutions. Softline’s growth is underpinned by its three-dimensional strategy to expand its geography, portfolio, and sales channels. Softline’s 8200 employees work in almost 60 countries throughout Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa—markets with significant growth potential. The company delivers a comprehensive range of IT solutions and is at the center of the digital transformation megatrend.

Softline Group acquired Embee Software, a leading global provider of IT solutions and services. Embee Software will continue to provide the same service level and quality you have expected since day one, but with an expanded reach around the world.

Further expanding the footprint in the Indian marketspace is our strategic acquisition of Umbrella Infocare, a Delhi based organization and their 200+ strong team offers rich and advanced skills in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Citrix solutions. Together we lay the foundation to build a global AWS Centre of Excellence (CoE) and enhance Softline’s solution capabilities for our customers in India.

SME CHANNELS 39 APRIL 2022

INTERVIEW

NEW SPARK IN ENTERPRISE SAAS Creating flagship enterprise SaaS products by combining technology expertise with domain experience, Kovai.co has become a technology partner of choice for many of the world’s top enterprises

The pandemic has been has been an eye opener in many aspects. It has forced a tectonic shift across sectors over the last two years. Thanks to the rapid advancements in the field of deep-tech and digital technologies, despite standstill conditions, organizations prodded on.

Notwithstanding the surrounding gloom and severe despondency, the unthinkable happened!

India managed to incubate over 2,250 startups in the year 2021, over 600 more than what was added in the previous year, according to a report

by Nasscom and Zinnov. The Indian startup ecosystem remained vibrant and dynamic, despite the pandemic. Although 2022 is projected to be a promising year, the lessons learned in the last two years will be pivotal for the startups, as they navigate through the new normal.

In a series of features on the Great Indian Startup ecosystem, we shall present exclusive interactions with the most promising, innovative startups, based on three key pillars of innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship.

As a first in a series, we present here the story of Kovai.co – a leading Coimbatore-based multiproduct enterprise SaaS startup.

In an exclusive interview to SME Channels, Saravana Kumar, Founder and CEO, Kovai.co, provides insights into his company’s mission, stress on innovation, differentiation technology, the innert drive, business-critical early traction, state of current revenue, ways to mitigate risks, and last but not the least, growth projections.

What is your company’s stated mission? What’s the background of your founders?

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Kovai.co is a multi-product enterprise SaaS company specializing in enterprise integration and knowledge management space based out of Coimbatore, India and London, UK. Kovai.co is a technology partner of choice for many of the world’s leading enterprises to manage and monitor their Microsoft BizTalk and Azure Serverless environments. Kovai.co’s product team consists of thinkers and innovators who are re-defining the way robust Enterprise Software and SaaS products are built. Over the years, we have grown organically to 5 products - 240+ of our team members are currently serving 2000+ customers across the world. Creating flagship enterprise SaaS products, combining technology expertise with domain experience is our forte. Additionally, we built a successful global product technology company out of our home city – Coimbatore; I’ll call that out as Kovai.co’ team’s unique competence.

Kovai.co’s mission is to create a successful global technology product company out of Coimbatore.

The main notion behind starting this global company in a Tier 2 city such as Coimbatore is to bring more employment opportunities to the residents of the city and put Coimbatore on a global SaaS map. While the city has plenty of academically renowned institutions, Kovai.co aimed at bringing opportunities to these students. This has been the company’s main mission since inception.

Saravana Kumar, the Founder and CEO of Kovai.co, worked as a software consultant in London for 10 years before identifying a gap in the availability of necessary tools in the market when it comes to managing and monitoring Microsoft BizTalk Server environments.

What is your unique value proposition or competitive advantage?

Over the last ten years, Kovai.co is recognized by Microsoft as “Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional,” this pushes our technology experts to a higher level of value within the tech community.

Last year, Kovai.co was awarded the “Bootstrapped SaaS Startup of the Year” by SaaSBoomi.

The same year we reached $10 million in annual revenue and acquired 1500+ customers globally.

Organizations like McDonald’s & Virgin Mobiles chose Document360 for their knowledge base development for their employees. They considered many products but onboarded with Document360 for its speed of deployment and ease of use for editors and contributors. The feedback in general was that Documnet360 is fast and intuitive to use.

What positive early traction has your company achieved?

What innovation do you bring into the

INTERVIEW

Biz Talk: Snippets on Kovai.co

SARAVANA KUMAR FOUNDER AND CEO KOVAI.CO

“WE BUILT A SUCCESSFUL GLOBAL PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY COMPANY OUT OF OUR HOME CITY – COIMBATORE; I’LL CALL THAT OUT AS KOVAI. CO’ TEAM’S UNIQUE COMPETENCE.”

marketplace? Does your brand have differentiated technology?

In terms of technological innovations, Kovai.co conducts various technical activities to sharpen our people’s skills esp. in enterprise software and SaaS. Our products are problem solvers, simply said.

But this has come with years and years of developing innovative technology. Here are some of our differentiated offerings: • BizTalk360 – is for Microsoft BizTalk Server analytics, administration, and management. It helps administrators to work more efficiently with BizTalk server and be in control of its environment. Over 650+ customers globally are using BizTalk360 on top of their BizTalk environment.

Some of the key aspects are that it makes testing cycles more efficient, sends alerts when there is a problem, and helps to track different processes within business applications.

• Serverless360 – is a support platform engineered for Microsoft Azure resources. Serverless360 brings the best in class features and

solutions from business perspective to empower your Microsoft Azure support team. From business applications, activity monitoring to Azure documenter – Serverless360 provides supporting capabilities to all of Microsoft Azure Services including Logic Apps, Event Grid, Service Bus, Azure SQL, and API apps, etc.

• Document360 – helps companies instantly create an online Self-Service Knowledge Base for both customers and employees that can be accessed either publicly or privately. Key features include technical documentation, online user guides, FAQs creation, internal knowledge base, and building SOPs that can be used as employee handbooks or sales/marketing playbook.

Is your company still pre-revenue or has broken even?

Kovai.co has a revenue of over $10 million USD and is bootstrapped.

Kovai.co is a profitable bootstrapped company since inception. We generate an ARR of more than $10 million.

What is the biggest risk you face, and how do you plan to mitigate that risk?

I would say our biggest risk is probably people oriented. Attrition is an issue for any company as people get new opportunities and tend to move on. How we try to mitigate this risk is by taking good care of our people. We believe that every employee is likely to remain with us until

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After its Founder, Saravana Kumar, while working as a software consultant in London, spotted a gap in the availability of necessary tools in the market when it comes to managing and monitoring Microsoft BizTalk Server environments, Kovai.co was born.

The company has successfully built a global product technology brand out of its home city – Coimbatore The company’s main forte has been creating flagship enterprise SaaS products by combining technology expertise with domain experience Kovai.co has grown organically to 5 products, 240+ team members and serving over 2000+ customers across the world.

The reason behind starting it in a Tier - 2 city such as Coimbatore is to bring more employment opportunities to local people Kovai.co has put Coimbatore on the global SaaS map

retirement.

So, we try ensuring that our people always have something new to work on and constantly find themselves growing. If there are performance issues, we go deeper to find the root cause and offer them any assistance they may require or change their role based on their interests, so they can start optimizing their performance.

What is your growth projection for FY 2022-2023?

Kovai.co’s balance sheet is looking healthy with a double-digit growth year on year and we are targeting an ARR of $30 million by 2025.

SME CHANNELS 41 APRIL 2022

SERVICES

JUNGHEINRICH REAFFIRMS ITS COMMITMENT TOASIA Turning Challenges into Opportunities in the Intralogistics Industry, Jungheinrich taking advantage of the post pandemic boom in the market.

J

ungheinrich, one of the world’s leading solution providers for intralogistics, is reaffirming its commitment to Asia with dedicated approaches on the innovation of automation, digitalisation and future-oriented energy systems from the company’s Strategy 2025+ plan.

Although the pandemic ravaged most economies, opportunities sparked in the Asia region. According to a global analyst report, Asia is projected to make up 57 percent of the global e-commerce logistics market growth from 2020 to 2025. Regional logistics firms are now realising that optimising traditional processes creates a more efficient and sustainable supply chain. This saves costs and encourages higher productivity.

“Jungheinrich recognises that as processes become more efficient and more sustainable, that leads to higher profitability. We are continuously committed to innovating towards warehouse automation solutions that are more flexible, adaptable, reliable and efficient, thereby ensuring long-term sustainability to deliver significantly faster returns on investments.” said Daniel Schaefer, Executive Director, Distributors and Business Development APAC. Automation of intralogistics is the anchor of Jungheinrich’s Strategy 2025+. The company is intensifying its activities in digitalisation, as it expects market growth of between 7 and 10 percent. It has been vigorous in developing and growing its range of automated guided vehicles, automated warehouses, software, and robotics. The strategy focuses on tactical cooperation and acquisitions to further the company’s portfolio. Take in case its acquisition of arculus, a technology company in the

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autonomous mobile robots (AMR) sector.

Intralogistics in Asia is seeing a massive movement towards utilising artificial intelligence and Big Data to transform the industry.

Schaefer highlighted that by acquiring arculus, Jungheinrich has added highly innovative hardware and software solutions in the rapidly growing autonomous mobile robots’ sector to its existing portfolio of automation systems.

Asia’s demand for carbon offsets is picking up and more companies in global supply chains are seeking to lower their carbon footprint following the COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact in November 2021. Lithium-ion (Li-ion) powered forklift trucks are all the new rage with its energy density, small form, and fast charging capabilities and analyst firm Interact Analysis predicts that by 2028, Li-ion battery forklifts will constitute 75% of the global market. Jungheinrich’s fleet of lithiumion powered trucks release 52 percent fewer carbon emissions than similar capacity diesel trucks.

With more than 1 million electric trucks in use around the world, Jungheinrich is an industry leader in warehouse electrical with its innovative energy systems. The company’s goal is to achieve a lithium-ion equipment ratio of over 70 per cent by 2025 among the trucks it sells.

Through Strategy 2025+, Jungheinrich is committed to creating sustainable value in its economic, environmental, and social value dimension, while placing the needs of all its stakeholders at the core of its activities. Schaefer further explained that with a comprehensive portfolio of material handling equipment, automatic systems and services, the company can offer customers tailored solutions for the challenges posed by Industry 4.0 from a single

source.

“As a member of the 50 Sustainability & Climate Leaders initiative, Jungheinrich is taking a leading role in standing up against climate change. Jungheinrich’s commitment to a green initiative is seen in our operational and production processes. We are committed to support our clients in their sustainability goals. Such efforts have also seen Jungheinrich being accorded gold status consecutively from EcoVadis in recognition of our sustainable processes and systems.” Schaefer stated.

“Jungheinrich is recognised being among the top one percent of the most sustainable companies worldwide. We are taking a leading role in standing up against climate change as a member of the 50 Sustainability & Climate Leaders initiative. As a pioneer in electric mobility and lithium-ion technology, we are committed to support our clients in their sustainability goals. In fact, such efforts saw Jungheinrich being awarded the Platinum Award in 2021 by the sustainability platform EcoVadis, as one of the top global companies championing sustainability.” Schaefer stated.

While technology is key in moving the industry forward, Jungheinrich is always cognisant of the fact that it is a tool that needs to be compatible with human processes. This is the cornerstone of its “creating sustainable value” focus under Strategy 2025+ which reinforces the company’s objectives to strengthen processes for a more sustainable supply chain.

“Automation, digitalisation and sustainable practices are trends driving the future of intralogistics. To Jungheinrich, however, they are steadfast practices that the company has always been committed to and the foundations of its continued growth,” Schaefer emphasised.

SERVICES

DANIEL SCHAEFER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DISTRIBUTORS AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT APAC.

“WE ARE CONTINUOUSLY COMMITTED TO INNOVATING TOWARDS WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS THAT ARE MORE FLEXIBLE, ADAPTABLE, RELIABLE AND EFFICIENT, THEREBY ENSURING LONG-TERM SUSTAINABILITY TO DELIVER SIGNIFICANTLY FASTER RETURNS ON INVESTMENTS.”

SME CHANNELS 43 APRIL 2022

ROUND ABOUT

ALOK KULKARNI CEO, CYARA

“ENSURING ALL CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION CHANNELS OPERATE SEAMLESSLY AFFECTS THE BOTTOM LINE, WHICH IS WHY AUTOMATED CX TESTING AND QUALITY ASSURANCE IS PARAMOUNT FOR EVERY BUSINESS.”

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ROUND ABOUT

CYARA ACHIEVES 35% YOY GROWTH, EXPANDSINAPAC Cyara Launches Innovative Solution For Remote Agents, Announces New Strategic Partnership and Executive Hires

C

yara, provider of the awardwinning Automated Customer Experience (CX) Assurance Platform, today announced that it closed the first half of its 2022 fiscal year with 35% growth in product bookings, a 93% customer retention rate and 10 billion+ seconds of synthetic CX testing traffic annually.

The news follows Cyara’s AU $485 million strategic growth investment in January from leading investment firm K1 Investment Management (K1).

During the second half of 2021, Cyara launched LiveVQ, an innovative CX assurance product that assures voice quality for remote and at-home agents. In the first half of 2022, the company also formed a strategic partnership with customer experience management solution provider, VIS Global, to help enterprises improve the quality of CX services across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.

“Today, consumers and businesses rely primarily on digital interaction, so the contact centre has become the new storefront for many organisations. As a result, the customer experience that contact centres provide directly impacts customer retention and sales,” said Alok Kulkarni, CEO of Cyara. “Ensuring all customer communication channels operate seamlessly affects the bottom line, which is why automated CX testing and quality assurance is paramount for every business.”

Global Expansion & Growth Cyara is the leader in the contact centre testing market, which Forrester estimates will

reach US $6.5 billion by 2024. In January 2022, Cyara received over AU $485 million in funding from K1 to support accelerated growth, driving further expansion of the contact testing market. The firm’s experience with business-to-business (B2B) SaaS and its focus on high-growth enterprise software companies makes K1 an ideal partner for Cyara.

In the first half of FY 22, Cyara saw significant growth across the globe, acquiring new customers from industries including healthcare, manufacturing, utilities, insurance, financial, technology, government and pharmaceuticals. Today, more than 250 high-profile global brands trust Cyara’s SaaS Platform to monitor and manage CX technology, which enables them to deliver stellar experiences for customers.

To keep up with customer growth, Cyara is hiring globally at many levels, and recently appointed seasoned executive Jeremy Braidish as Chief People Officer (CPO) to lead the charge. Jeremy brings 20+ years of human resources (HR) experience to drive Cyara’s global HR functions and strategy, in addition to talent acquisition and development. In addition, Cyara added Ajay Dawar, an experienced product strategist and leader with two decades of experience, as Sr. Vice President of Products to direct Cyara’s next phase of product growth and innovation.

time voice quality and connectivity monitoring regardless of agent location. If there is a technical issue during a customer call, LiveVQ provides automatic alerts paired with detailed diagnostics that help to eliminate lengthy root-cause analysis and accelerate resolution. With LiveVQ, IT teams can support agents efficiently so they can get back to taking calls, making sales and building brand loyalty.

Additionally, Cyara unveiled a conciergestyle white-glove service called Toll-Free Fast Check that automates the once-manual, labor-intensive task of managing and testing toll-free numbers (TFNs). Especially for enterprises with thousands of TFNs, this new service saves time and effort while building brand reputation through better customer experiences. And, for industries like healthcare, Toll-Free Fast Check is an automatic way to mitigate the risk of having to pay regulatory fines for inactive or defective TFNs. Complementing these new offerings, Cyara added enhanced virtual agent testing and support for additional contact centre platforms like Cisco 12.5, Cisco Finesse, NICE CXone and Genesys Engage 9.0 to strengthen these partnerships and extend compatibility with widely used contact centre platforms.

New Features & Services To meet the demands of remote work and address the needs of helping technical teams support work-from-home contact centre agents, Cyara launched LiveVQ – a new product that provides enterprises with real-

SME CHANNELS 45 APRIL 2022

SECURITY

HARISH KUMAR HEAD, ENTERPRISE & GOVERNMENT, CHECK POINT SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES, INDIA & SAARC

“THE SOLARWINDS SOFTWARE SUPPLY-CHAIN ATTACK WAS FACILITATED BY A BACK DOOR KNOWN AS ‘SUNBURST’, WHICH WAS ADDED TO THE SOLARWINDS ORION SYSTEM BEFORE BEING DISTRIBUTED TO CUSTOMERS GLOBALLY VIA A ROUTINE UPDATE.”

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f the past year has taught businesses anything, it’s that the impact of targeted cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities is now, without doubt, universal. From the fallout of the SolarWinds software supply-chain attack to the exposed Apache Log4j vulnerability, the case for organizations of all shapes and sizes to have a comprehensive and robust security infrastructure in place has never been stronger, even if they themselves aren’t necessarily in the crosshairs.

Many regard the now-infamous SolarWinds breach in late 2020 as a major catalyst for what would become a frenzy of “Gen V” or fifthgeneration attacks that persist to this day. Such large-scale, multi-vector attacks have virtually unlimited reach, with devastating security consequences for businesses and governments around the world. A year later, the Apache Log4j vulnerability was exposed, which made it possible for malicious actors to execute code remotely on

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almost any targeted computer to take control, steal data or even hijack a user’s machine to mine cryptocurrency.

The former was an orchestrated attack by an advanced persistent threat group, the latter was an exposed zero-day vulnerability that nobody saw coming. One thing both incidents have in common, however, was that they increased risk and vulnerability for businesses in every sector, in every corner of the world. As organizations plot their course through 2022 and beyond, it’s never been clearer that cybersecurity is a global issue rather than a local one, and this should be reflected in every cybersecurity strategy moving

forward.

The rise of “Gen V” attacks Gen V attacks are unique in the way that they leverage broad attack surfaces and multiple infection vectors to infiltrate large numbers of organizations, and they are increasing at an unprecedented rate. At a time when businesses and government agencies are expanding their network footprint, adding more endpoints and connected devices into their technology mix, the risk of being impacted by a Gen V attack has also never been higher. As outlined in our 2022 Security Report, the SolarWinds breach, which impacted

SECURITY

FROM SOLARWINDS TO LOG4J: THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF TODAY’S CYBERSECURITY VULNERABILITIES At a time when businesses and government agencies are expanding their network footprint, adding more endpoints and connected devices into their technology mix, the risk of being impacted by a Gen V attack has also never been higher. more than 18,000 organizations around the world, kickstarted a torrent of supply-chain attacks that still plague businesses today. In a year that saw cyberattacks against corporate networks increase by 50% across the board, software vendors like SolarWinds experienced the largest year-onyear growth in attacks with an increase of 146%.

Today’s corporate economy is built on an intricate web of software supply chains, which means that with every additional attack on a software vendor, the vulnerability of businesses around the world is further amplified.

Fuelling attacks: the Sunburst catalyst The SolarWinds software supply-chain attack was facilitated by a back door known as ‘Sunburst’, which was added to the SolarWinds Orion system before being distributed to customers globally via a routine update. This gave the APT (advanced persistent threat) group involved covert access to thousands of SolarWinds customers’ networks, from government agencies to Fortune 500 companies. Unfortunately, this mode of attack from APT groups is now on the rise. As our report details, the REvil ransomware group targeted multiple managed service providers (MSPs) throughout 2021, and in July managed to embed a malicious software update in IT company Kaseya’s patch management and client monitoring tool. Thousands of unsuspecting businesses were impacted, with millions of US dollars demanded in ransom.

Sunburst also likely inspired the attack on Colonial Pipeline, which carries almost half of

the fuel consumed by the US East Coast. The nation-state APT group, DarkSide, was allegedly behind the attack, employing a Ransomware-asa-Service model, meaning it relied on third-party affiliate programs to orchestrate the breach. This is one of the most striking examples to date of how tools used to carry out such attacks are becoming democratized and more widely used, again ramping up the pressure on businesses to guard their perimeters.

While the assets of the REvil ransomware group have since been seized and its ringleaders arrested, you cannot arrest code. Once one threat group makes headway with a particular attack, it doesn’t take much for an affiliate member to keep that momentum going. Emotet, one of the most dangerous botnets in history, made a return in November 2021 following its takedown a year earlier. It’s a trojan primarily spread through links, spam emails, malicious scripts and macro-enabled document files, and once it infects a user it can spread like wildfire without detection, stealing banking credentials and financial data from individuals, companies and governments around the world.

Ambushed by zero-day vulnerabilities While targeted attacks like the ones outlined above are presenting an increased threat to organizations around the world, so are exploits and vulnerabilities. In December last year, a remote code execution vulnerability was reported in Apache Log4j, the most popular java logging library in

the world. This library is embedded in almost all of the services and applications we use in our day-to-day lives, from Twitter and Amazon to Microsoft and Minecraft. Initially used by some threat actors to leverage cryptocurrency mining resources at the expense of their victims, there’s no reason an exploit like this couldn’t be used for more sophisticated and nefarious attacks. Check Point Research detected approximately 40,000 attack attempts just 2 hours after the Log4j vulnerability was revealed, and a further 830,000 attack attempts 72 hours into the event.

These zero-day vulnerabilities earn their name from their ability to completely blindside businesses, giving them virtually no time to react before they become potential victims. It then becomes a race between threat actors and their ability to exploit the vulnerability, and how quickly businesses can close the gap in their defenses.

Global threats require a global solution The threat climate has changed. The traditional defensive line that businesses can draw between themselves and the rest of the cyber landscape has become blurred to the point that it may as well not exist. Instead of guarding a static perimeter, businesses need to take a more holistic and realtime view of their security infrastructure. Security practitioners need to be able to maintain 360degree visibility of their entire network, regardless of how far and wide it has been distributed. They also need access to real-time threat intelligence on a global scale, so they can pre-empt far-reaching zero-day vulnerabilities and targeted software supply-chain attacks like the ones outlined above.

Check Point’s Infinity platform, for instance, is the only security platform of its kind that offered pre-emptive protection for customers against the Log4j exploit. It’s the first modern, consolidated security platform specifically designed to guard against zero-day vulnerabilities and sophisticated fifth-generation attacks across all networks, cloud deployments and endpoints. Part of Infinity’s success is its ability to leverage Check Point’s ThreatCloud, a real-time global threat intelligence platform that monitors networks around the world for emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

If organizations around the world want to operate safely and securely in 2022 and beyond, they need to start seeing cybersecurity as a global issue rather than a local one, and evolve their security strategies accordingly. Only then will they be able to confidently defend themselves against a threat landscape that knows no bounds and cannot be contained by borders.

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SECURITY

APAC IT DECISION-MAKERS WOEFULLY UNDERPREPARED FORCYBERRISKS Only 3% can correctly identify which emails and SMS are legitimate or scams and fewer than half know the steps to take following a data breach.

SECURITY INVESTMENT JACQUELINE JAYNE SECURITY AWARENESS ADVOCATE FOR APAC, KNOWBE4

“WHEN EMPLOYEES ARE USING THEIR WORK EMAIL ADDRESS FOR PERSONAL ACTIVITIES SUCH AS ONLINE SHOPPING, THEY ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO FALL VICTIM TO A PHISHING ATTACK.”

K

nowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced new research which has found IT decision-makers are complacent about risks to the business from phishing and BEC (Business Email Compromise – also known as CEO Fraud). Surprisingly, fewer than half (45 percent) of APAC IT decision makers say they are concerned about phishing as a risk to their organisation, while even fewer are concerned about BEC (34 percent).

48 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2022

The majority (77%) of APAC IT decision-makers say they plan on investing in/spending money towards cybersecurity in 2022. Those who plan on investing in/spending money towards cybersecurity in 2022: l Are most likely to be investing in/spending money on new cybersecurity software solutions (48%). l Followed by a cybersecurity awareness training program with ongoing and relevant content (47%).

Other areas of investment include further investment in infrastructure (39%), employee policy changes related to cybersecurity (33%), cybersecurity insurance (35%) and simulated phishing and social engineering for end users (29%).

When asked to determine whether example emails and SMS were real or fake, only three percent of APAC IT decision-makers were able to correctly identify them all. In addition, more than a quarter (27 percent) of APAC IT decisionmakers use their work phones for personal activity and 25 percent use their work email address for personal activity.

Jacqueline Jayne, Security Awareness Advocate for APAC at KnowBe4 is concerned: “When those charged with keeping a business secure are unaware of the risks and unable to identify scam emails and SMS messages, their organisations are at significant risk. According to the ACCC, Australians lost a record $323 million to scams in 2021 (up a massive 84 percent from the previous year) and Singapore’s Anti-Scam Centre states Singaporeans lost $201.7million in the first half of 2021. If those in charge of security are unaware of best practices, then they cannot educate and train employees. ” “When employees are using their work email address for personal activities such as online shop-

ping, they are much more likely to fall victim to a phishing attack that uses a hook such as delivery delays to entice the victim to click through.

Having a clear separation between work and personal activities makes it much easier to spot when an email is a scam – if you know you never shop online using your work email address, then you know that email from Amazon cannot be real.”

Data breach protocol Alarmingly, fewer than half (46%) of APAC IT decision-makers say they are confident they would know the steps they would need to take following a cyber incident or data breach in their organisation.

Furthermore, just four in ten APAC IT decision-makers believe the employees in their organisations understand the business impact of falling victim to a cyber attack (47%), are confident their employees can identify phishing and BEC emails (42%) and that their employees report all emails they believe to be suspicious (39%).

REVIEW

PRODUCT

MATRIX 2MP PANTILT-ZOOM CAMERA WITH 33X OPTICAL ZOOM

IBM Z16 WITH REALTIME AI FOR TRANSACTION PROCESSING AT SCALE

BY MANAS RANJAN info@smechannels.com

THE IBM Z16, IBM’S NEXT-GENERATION system with an integrated on-chip AI accelerator delivers latency-optimized inferencing. This will enable clients to analyze real-time transactions, at scale -- for mission-critical workloads such as credit card, healthcare and financial transactions. It is specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats that might be used to crack today’s encryption technologies.

IBM z16 uniquely brings together AI inferencing, via its IBM Telum Processor, with secured and reliable high-volume transaction processing. This will empower banks to analyze for fraud during transactions on a massive scale. IBM z16 can process 300 billion inference requests per day within one millisecond of latency.

With IBM z16, banks can reduce the time and energy required to handle fraudulent transactions on their credit card. For both merchants and card issuers, this could mean a reduction in revenue loss as consumers could avoid frustration associated with false declines where they might turn to other cards for future transactions.

At a time when other threats including tax fraud and organized retail theft are emerging as challenges for governments and businesses to control and Real-time payments and alternative payment

methods like cryptocurrencies are pushing the limits on traditional fraud detection techniques, the new capabilities of IBM z16 can help create a new class of use cases, including Loan approval, Clearing and settlement, and federated learning for retail.

Securing data with quantum-safe system In a hybrid cloud environment inclusive of on-premises and public cloud resources, it is critical to protect against today’s threats and posture against cyber criminals who may be stealing data now for decryption later.

Building on IBM technologies like Pervasive Encryption and Confidential Computing, IBM z16 takes cyber resiliency a leap further by protecting data against future threats that could evolve with advances in quantum computing.

Being a quantum-safe system, IBM z16 is underpinned by lattice-based cryptography, an approach for constructing security primitives that helps protect data and systems against current and future threats. With IBM z16 quantum-safe cryptography, businesses can future-ready their applications and data today.

THE MATRIX 2MP PAN-TILT-ZOOM CAMERA, AS ITS NAME SUGGESTS PAN-TILTAND ZOOM FEATURES AND HAS BEEN DESIGNED FOR 360° SURVEILLANCE. THE MATRIX CAMERA IS A BLEND OF PERFORMANCE AND STURDY DESIGN. POWERED USING BACK-ILLUMINATED SONY STARVIS SERIES SENSORS, THE DEVICE OFFERS SUPERIOR IMAGE QUALITY IN LOW-LIGHT CONDITIONS. APART FROM THIS, IMAGE ENHANCING TECHNOLOGIES MAKE SURE THE IMAGE CLARITY IS CONSTANT IN VARYING LIGHT CONDITIONS. ALSO, THE CAMERA OFFERS INFRARED SENSORS THAT PROVIDE NIGHT VISION UP TO 200 METRES. WHAT’S MORE? WELL, THE 360° PAN RANGE MAKES SURE THAT YOU CAN MONITOR LARGE AREAS EASILY WITHOUT THE NEED FOR ADDITIONAL CAMERAS. AGAIN, OFFERING OPTICAL ZOOM UP TO 33 TIMES YOU CAN ZOOM INTO DETAILS WITH A SINGLE CLICK. SINCE IT HAS A STURDY BUILT, THE CAMERA CAN WITHSTAND EXTERNAL IMPACTS (IK10 CERTIFIED). LIKEWISE, THEY CAN ALSO WITHSTAND HARSH WEATHER CONDITIONS (IP67 - INGRESS PROTECTION).

AMONG THE OTHER KEY FEATURES, THE CAMERA HAS 33X OPTICAL ZOOM AND 16X DIGITAL ZOOM CAPACITY ALONG WITH 1920 X 1080 RESOLUTION. THE DEVICE BOASTS TRUE WDR (140DB) AND H.265 VIDEO COMPRESSION TECHNOLOGY. EQUIPPED WITH A 256GB EDGE STORAGE, 8 AUTOMATIC SCANS, 500 PRESETS, THE MATRIX CAMERA ALSO OFFERS INTELLIGENT VIDEO ANALYTICS TO THE USERS.

SME CHANNELS 49 APRIL 2022

PRODUCT PRODUCT

BELDEN HPE

BELDEN GREYHOUND ETHERNET SWITCH FAMILY Belden’s Hirschmann GREYHOUND 105/106 Ethernet Switches, built to deliver fast, secure, cost-effective, and future-proof network connectivity in industrial operations are available now.

GREYHOUND 105/106 Ethernet Switches from Hirschmann offer a very high port density with support for multiple Gigabit speeds. The compact design combines hardened industrial hardware and high-performance switching and routing capabilities while meeting any performance, redundancy, or budget requirements.

Now customers can choose the features best suited for their environments and pay only for the speed, power, and security they need – with the confidence that the solution can scale easily as connectivity requirements increase.

Key Features: • Scalability to meet future bandwidth needs and connect more network devices • With multiple configuration options, enables customers to select the speed and power necessary for their specific applications.

• Robust security and high-performance switching features through best-in-class HiOS switch software that ensures the large amounts of data collected in the field can be delivered to the enterprise level quickly, securely and reliably. n Price: On Request, Warranty: On request, Contact: https:// www.belden.com/products/industrial-networking-cybersecurity/ managed-switches/rack-mount/greyhound-105-106

HPE SPACEBORNE COMPUTER-2 HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2), the first in-space commercial edge computing and AI-enabled system to run on the International Space Station (ISS), has successfully completed 24 research experiments, accelerating time-to-insight from months and days to minutes.

The experiments involved real-time data processing and testing of new applications to prove reliability in space as part of an effort to increase autonomy for astronauts. These experiments spanned uses cases supporting healthcare, image processing, natural disaster recovery, 3D printing, 5G, and solutions enabled by artificial intelligence.

SBC-2 is part of a greater mission to significantly advance computing and reduce dependence on communications as humans travel farther into space to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Features: • Experiment focused on increasing human safety and selfsufficiency by using AI-enabled damage detection in astronaut gloves • Automatic interpretation of satellite imagery after a disaster • Enabling 3D printing in space with validated software • Expanding network capability on the ISS with a 5G core prototype • Developing software codes to calculate fuel requirements based on space travel distance n Price: On Request, Warranty: On Request , Contact: http:// www.hpe.com

RAX10

‘RAX10’4-STREAM WI-FI 6 ROUTER FROM NETGEAR NETGEAR RAX10 is an affordable 4-Stream AX1800 Wi-Fi 6 Router for your home. The RAX10 is capable of wireless data throughputs of up to 1.8Gbps, enough to replace those physical Internet/Ethernet cables and go wire-free.

The NETGEAR RAX10 is a dual-band 4-stream Wi-Fi 6 wireless router that features 4X more capacity with 40% increased data throughputs and 100% backward compatible with older devices. The simultaneous dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz are capable of data throughputs of up to 600mbps + 1200mbps respectively. Based on a powerful quad-core 1.5GHz processor and three high-gain antennas, this little AX beast can handle 4 simultaneous streams of Wi-Fi 6. Now, four of your AX-compatible devices can easily enjoy up to 8K UHD videos or lag-free gaming. And for all those wired devices around your home, there are 5Gigabit Ethernet (4 x LAN + 1 x WAN) ports too that provide uninterrupted connections.

The NETGEAR RAX10 also has greater benefits with AX technology. While AX-compatible devices can connect at higher speeds, these devices also get an improved efficiency for longer battery life. Additional DFS channels also help reduce interference from neighboring Wi-Fi networks.

n Pricing: INR 8,149/- Warranty: On Request Address: netgearstore.in

50 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2022

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