PLUS
IBM Goes Into Centenary Celebration on June 16 /08 www.smechannels.com
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TREND SETTER /50 Gigabyte: Educating
SME CHAT
customers Can help Build the Bandr
/42
IBM: “We Will Continue Introducing Creative Bundles and Packages”
CAN SLOW AND STEADY
WIN THE
RACE? /28
The SSD market in India is showing signs of picking up because of increased understanding about its benefits.
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Buy an HCL ME Pentium Dual Core laptop and get a 16GB Kingston USB worth `1,499
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Buy an HCL ME Core i laptop and get a branded strolley bag worth ` 4,999
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PLUS
SmartLink Debuts its Motherboard Business /12 www.smechannels.com
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Tally: “Totally happy to use Tally”
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Cisco: value based approach makes Partners Happy
SME CHAT
/48
MMD: “To Minimise Selling Cost of Our partners We Are Investing in Marketing“
MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL
BRAKES ON THE GROWTH PATH SANJAY MOHAPATRA editor@smechannels.com
IT IS A SLIGHTLY difficult time for the county. The inflation rate has touched 9.4%+, MPs have been alleged to have siphoning huge amount of money from government exchequers in various occasions. The county’s GDP has gone down to 7.8% in Q1 2011. The first case happened with commonwealth games, where the officials are levelled with the allegation of robbing off the government exchequer to the tune Rs 36,000 crore from commonwealth games funds in 2010. Hardly had this case got resolved, the 2G scam came into the lime light with the telecom minister and his colleagues got into scanner of the CBI and reported to have involved in a case of Rs.1.76 lakh crores loss to the country.
Logitech Stereo Speaker Z110 TODAY, EVERYTHING is becoming smaller. Even your notebook size has diminished to be a tablet with all functionality. As long as your functionality is intact and experience is superb you will keep on desiring things to be small and cute. Moving in the same philosophy perhaps Logitech has designed its new speakers – Z100. Logitech Stereo Speaker -Z110 is one of the vey compact speakers that connects with – and power through – your computer’s USB port. It connects to any audio source that uses a 3.5 mm plug, such as the headphone jack on your MP3 player, making it easy to enjoy your favourite music, videos and more from almost any source. Looking like two eyeballs, these speakers are highly versatile.
Following this events, there is a huge tug of war on the Lokpal bill and anti coruption issues between Anna Hazare team and government. Even those people who are never been icons of political reasons got involved into it. The government is completely involved in firefighting the situation. Besides, there are various local issues which is bothering the governmental mechanism in prioritizing the solutions for economics and growth of the county. Today looking at these uncertainties other sectors are also getting influenced. The reserve bank of India has changed the repo rate and reverse repo rate but the inflation rate is not coming down. The pricing of the daily consumables are touching sky high. Price of the petroleum products is gaining heights like never before. Today, petrol price has crosses Rs.70 in many cities. The national stock exchange, which was doing good job for last two years, has started tumbling again. Some time back in
SPECIFICATIONS Connected with USB power, it sucks from your Notebook
2009, the fall in stock exchange had stifled the momentum of other industries as well. In this situation how the IT industry can remain immune. I was in Nehru Place talking to some of the key partners. It was a sad scene there. People are not happy about the whole thing in the county. Some are of opinion that the market is not going to grow for next two quarters because in the present situation, the government will not be able to take its eyes off the Lokpal bill issue and 2G scam case. It will go on like this for next two quarters. So it is a bad time now as IT cannot be seen in isolation.
FINAL WORDING Price at INR 625 and with 2-year limited hardware warranty, the speaker system is the real companion of the mobile workers. Even on the desktop these speakers really makes your desktop much cleaner. OVERALL RATING
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contents
JUN VOLUME 02 ISSUE 04
2011
ER COV RY STO
india’s first IT magazine for sme business
Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Executive Editor: Smruti Chaudhury Copy Editor: Neil D’Souza Reporter: Neeta Israni Design & Development: Gagandeep Miglani Visualizer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Senior Manager: M Raj Executive- Marketing: Rajat Kumar Circulation and Printing: Panchanan Bhoi SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/101, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 9313891660 E-mail: raj@smechannels.com Bangalore Subrat S NO.661, 10th Main, 5th cross, 4th Block, Koramangala, Behind Old Maharaja, Bangalore-560034 Phone: 9886107294 Mumbai Hemal Shah B/14, Neel Ashish 92, J.P.road, Andheri (West) Mumbai - 400058 info@smechannels.com Kolkata S Subhendu BC-286, Laxmi Apartment, Kestopur Kolkata-700101 Phone: 9674804389
Can slow and steady win the rave? /28
The SSD market in India is showing signs of picking up because of increased understanding about its benefits.
EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/102, Kaushalya Park, New Delhi110016, Phone: 91-11-41055458 info@smechannels.com Bangalore 136/ 9, Ground Floor, Eden Crest Apartment, Grape Garden, Ejipura Vivek Nagar PS Bengalore-560047
SME CHAT Siemens /40
“We Are Number One in Indian Market”
SME BIZ
news@smechannels.com
CISCO /44 Value based approach makes partners happy
IBM /42
“We Will Continue Introducing Creative Bundles and Packages”
RSA /48
“To Minimise Selling Cost of Our partners We Are Investing in Marketing“
TREND SETTER Gigabyte /50
Educating customers Can help build the brand
Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya
more inside Editorial~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04 Snippets~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 08 Partner Corner ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 24, 46 Case Study Tally~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 26 Guest Talk~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 39 Products~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 52
Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016
Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458 Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi 110020, India. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publisher. Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues) All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.
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SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | CONSULTING | SERVICES
for more log on to smechannels.com
IBM Goes Into Centenary Celebration on June 16 IBM celebrates 100-year of its operations on June 16, 2011. On this occasion, the company has released a book, ‘Making The World Work Better: The Ideas That
Shaped a Century and rang the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange. During its first century, IBM has played a leading role in transforming business, science and
society. The company’s history can be seen as a succession of key milestones–from investing in a research lab in the depths of the Great Depression, to developing the first
hard disk drive that created the data storage industry, to working with the U.S. government to develop the Social Security System. Chairman of the Board, President and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano said, “For IBMers, long-term thinking means continually moving to the future. IBM has survived and thrived for 100 years by remaining true to our core values, while being ready to change everything else. This has allowed us to transform technology, business and society through our first century, and we believe it’ll enable us to achieve even more in our second.” Shankar Annaswamy, MD, IBM India Private Ltd., said, “It has been an exciting journey for IBM in India. Starting with just a small office, we’ve grown to become a microcosm of the IBM Corporation with presence and leadership across all segments. As we move ahead towards the next century, we’ll take forward this legacy of innovation and growth and continue to contribute to the economy and society in India. One of the oldest living IBM alumni, Luis A. Lamassonne said, “IBM has always been one of the best companies. The company is special because of the people. I’ve faith that IBM will survive for many more years, for another century.”
HP Unveils FlexNetwork Architecture HP makes HP FlexNetwork architecture available in the market. Said to be the only unified architecture for the data centers, campus and branch, it enables enterprises to fully harness the power of media-rich content, virtualization, mobility and cloud computing. A core component of the HP Converged Infrastructure, the HP FlexNetwork architecture converges network silos by ensuring protocols are implemented consistently across all networked devices throughout an enterprise. As a result, clients are able to simplify and speed service delivery across the data center, campus and branch, driving increased agility and innovation. Single-vendor, proprietary approaches, such as Cisco’s, lock in customers while driving up cost and complexity with different architectures required at each point in the network, including data center, campus and branch. This lack of convergence and increased complexity make it difficult to roll out new applications and services.
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Toshiba Adopts RD Strategy Toshiba India has appointed Regional Distributors (RDs) in the states of Bihar, Goa, Jharkhand, Orissa, Uttarakhand and North Eastern regions. The company has chosen reputed IT partners that have a strong financial background, ability and passion to sell its high technology innovative laptop and netbook products. With this initiative, Toshiba plans to expand its distribution footprints beyond the top 30 cities and B&C class towns. The intent behind this move is to make the whole gamut of innovative Toshiba laptops available to a wider consumer base. The appointment of Regional Distributors (RDs) is a part of Toshiba India’s overall strategy to garner higher market share in the Indian market. The new distribution structure in the untapped areas will ensure deeper penetration into these potential growth areas more efficiently. Toshiba India will work very closely with these newly appointed Regional Distributors (RDs) to facilitate aggressive support in terms of local consumer marketing activities and channel promotion schemes. Toshiba India is also seriously looking at appointing Regional Distributors (RDs) in other states including Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir and. In line with this expansion in business organization, the company is also gearing to ramp up the Service infrastructure in these states. On the occasion of the appointment of these RDs, Sivakumar N. (GM, Toshiba India) said, “We remain committed to providing supreme quality innovative products to Indian consumers and in our endeavor to expand our product’s reach to wider spectrum of consumers, we’re delighted to appoint the new set of Regional Distributors in these potential growth regions. We’ve chosen our RDs based on their market strengths and whether they meet the criteria set by Toshiba to cater to a larger cross section of consumers in these states. We’re expecting rapid growth for the Toshiba brand this year. We’re expecting to double our market share by the end of year.”
Dell Launches the Thinnest 15” Laptops Dell also has introduced XPS 15z - one of the thinnest 15” laptops and the first in a series of new thin and ultra-powerful products from Dell to come this year. With the XPS 15z, everyone from mobile warriors to students and smallbusiness owners now have everything they need to work hard and play hard in one stunning package. A leading-edge combination of uncompromising power and stunning design, the XPS 15z offers 2nd-generation Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors, 15.6-inch Full HD (1080p) display for superior entertainment and web-browsing experiences, a backlit keyboard with adjustable brightness and over seven hours of battery life–all housed in a luxurious, eye-catching and elegantly crafted case that is less than an inch thick. The XPS 15z is the first in a series of upcoming thin Inspiron- and XPS-branded products that deliver the ultimate blend of style and performance so you can pursue your personal passions. With XPS 15z with 2nd-generation Intel Core i5, 4GB DDR3, 500GB 7200RPM HDD and NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M with 1GB graphics memory, the notebook will be priced at Rs 69,900/-, and the Intel Core i7, 750GB 7200RPM HDD notebook will be priced at Rs 80,900/-.
MY POINT
“Our approach to cloud computing is to maximize customer choice and industry innovation, so our partnership with EMC reinforces our commitment to help customers accelerate adoption of this phenomenal trend in IT.” NARESH WADHWA
PRESIDENT AND COUNTRY MANAGER, CISCO INDIA & SAARC
Xerox India Beefs Up Presence in Orissa Xerox India strengthened its foothold in Orissa and rolled out a road show in the ‘Temple City’ of Bhubaneswar. As part of the company’s Go to Market channel activation plan for 2011, this event for the volume business, received overwhelming response and was attended by over 120 resellers partners spanning the state of Orissa. Xerox also showcased a strong portfolio of solutions in A4 mono and color lasers targeted at SME’s and Enterprise businesses. As part of the activation program for resellers and channel partners in the state of Orissa, Xerox India will provide direct pre-sales/post-sales support to these partners to deliver maximum benefits to customers. Xerox India will ensure that these partners are well trained and are equipped.
Cyberstar Launches 23-City Roadshow Cyberstar launches a 23 - city road show covering all locations where the company has a direct presence. Designed to spread awareness and train reseller partners on Panda Security solutions, the day long program consists of a half a day session on Panda PCOP followed by more in-depth discussions on how to promote the Panda brand amongst target customers in the region. The road shows are a part of Cyberstar’s ongoing efforts to promote the Panda brand amongst channel partners and end customers. “In the first six months of our operations, we have had tremendous traction for Panda AV, IS and Netbook Security solutions amongst channel partners and customers, “ said Raj Rathi, Managing Director, Cyberstar Infocom.
Inspan completes Inspan Insights-2011 Inspan Infotech has successfully completed its first set of ‘Inspan Insights-2011’ road show series. The first set in the Q1 (AMJ) of this financial year slated in May kicked off from Kerala reaching the upcountry markets like Kannur, Mallapuram and Calicut. The road show at all 3 place turned out to be a good, attracting 25 channel attendees at Kannur, 35 channel attendees at Mallapuram and 25 attendees at Calicut. On an average there were 50 -60 participants in each road show event. This initiative from Inspan is supported by the brands like Mercury, Genius & Corsair-Products on display included ViewSonic, ADATA, MSI Laptops, Numeric and Quick Heal.
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SNIPPETS
Salora to Distribute Sharp Products Sharp Business Systems (India) has tied up with Salora International to have its products distributed in the Indian market. Sharp is aggressively focusing on the IT sector to provide complete Business Solutions with its new range of products. The company’s portfolio in India include Digital Multi Function Devices, Facsimile Machines, Multi-media projectors, Solar Power Solutions, Electronic Cash Registers and complete range of Consumer Electronics & Home Appliance Products. Within a short span of ten years in India, is already amongst the top brands for Digital Multifunction Products (Network Printer/Copier/Scanner/ Fax) Multi-media Projectors & LCD Display Solutions among other products. Mr. Sunil K. Sinha, CEO, Sharp India operations said, “The alliance with Salora International will give a headstart for Sharp to increase its reach in the Indian market by using the readymade platform provided by Salora.”
GOIP TO DISTRIBUTE SENSAGE SIEM SenSage, the leader in solving complex Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) challenges, announced momentum during the first half of 2011. The company has also penned an agreement with GoIP, the leading IT solutions and services company, to bring SenSage SIEM and log management products to customers in India, Southeast Asia and North America. Anshul Gupta, COO, GoIP, said, “SenSage product line strengthens our solutions in the Telecom, Internet Service provider, financial services market space. SenSage is a pioneer in the field of Event Data Management with Event Warehouse solution for security and compliance. With SenSage products we will not only help our customers in conforming their compliance reporting needs but also help them effectively deal with the numerous security threats using innovative Security Intelligence solutions. We are currently focusing on Telecom and BFSI segments with SenSage solutions.” GoIP provides end-to-end technology solutions and services within the Infrastructure domain to Telecom Operators, Services Providers, Government and Enterprise Customers. The company has extensive technical strength and manpower, to execute large System Integration projects in IT and Telecom. Its key strengths include Design, Implementation and Management of Wired and Wireless Access Networks, Platform Solutions, Data Centre Solutions and Infrastructure Management Services. GoIP’s Infrastructure Management Service offering includes Remote Infrastructure Management, Security Management, Connectivity Solutions, Onsite Support and Help Desk support.
SmartLink Debuts its Motherboard Business Smartlink Network has forayed into motherboard business by launching a brand called DIGILITE. Under DIGILITE, the company has launched seven motherboard models. These include three from AMD platform, one Atom bundle and three from Intel platform. Mr. K. R. Naik, Executive Chairman, Smartlink said “We were among the early entrants for manufacturing motherboards in India. Equipped with technology, expertise, experience and sophisticated manufacturing capabilities, we are now re-entering the motherboard market with DIGILITE brand, which we are confident will be another successful brand from the house of Smartlink”.
Foxconn unveils Performance-centric Z68A-S Mobo Foxconn launches the Z68A-S, an Intel Z68 chipset based motherboard supporting Intel 2nd generation Sandy Bridge processors and specially designed for advanced gamers and overclocking fans. Foxconn’s Z68A-S motherboard is a full featured motherboard that supports both built-in graphics and external overclocking using the Intel Sandy Bridge processors, Never before have you been able to dynamically switch between onboard and discrete graphics but with Lucid Virtu GPU Virtualization you can. Virtu analyzes your system usage and automatically switches to your discrete graphics card when playing 3D games and then back to onboard graphics for less demanding 2D applications.
AMD Unveils Powerful Graphics Cards AMD has introduced the newest generation of professional graphics cards--AMD FirePro V5900 and AMD FirePro V7900. More than doubling performance of competitive offerings in key professional market applications, the graphics cards are ideal for design, engineering, financial, and medical fields. The new graphics cards offer AMD PowerTune and GeometryBoost technologies in addition to industry-recognized AMD Eyefinity multi-display support to enhance workflow and application performance. As per Anirban Chakravartti of AMD, today, AMD FirePro gets even better with the introduction of the AMD FirePro V5900 and AMD FirePro V7900.
LG Strengthens its B2B portfolio LG Business Solutions has launched highly integrated technology solutions for Indian business verticals. After achieving sustained market leadership in IT and Display products in India, LG is strengthening its B2B portfolio. Showcasing end-to-end solutions for different business processes, innovatively developed by LGEIL, the product offering includes technologically updated digital devices and solutions for Quick Service Restaurants, Education, Retail (Mall), Hotel, Office and Banking businesses. “We’re highly confident that LG Business Solutions find right fitment in the Indian B2B market. Our technology strength backed with market insight and R& D will enable us to offer vertical specific products, creating an effective business environment in India. The single source buying & service support will enhance the comfort of our customers. We’re targeting a turnover of 800 crore and market share of 17 per cent by end of 2011 in this segment. Our India division has shown immense opportunity for growth of integrated solutions for B2B. We’re positive that our basket of products offered will set new standards in enhancing the productivity of various business verticals,” Said Soon Kwon, President South West Asia Region & MD, LG Electronics India.
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Asus New Gaming PCs
OM NANOTECH SHOWCASES CAPABILITY AT COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2011
ASUS has introduced number of exciting new products for high-performance gaming PCs to further expand its Republic of Gamers (ROG) range. Established five years ago, ROG is committed to developing the ultimate high-performance hardware. “The ROG philosophy is based on the core ideals of class-leading performance, innovative user controls and gamer-focused design. The products has announced not only hold true to these ideals, but also introduce a host of new innovations that push high-end PC performance to even greater extremes, said ASUS Vice President and GM of Worldwide Sales, Jackie Hsu.“ ASUS has unveiled three new ROG motherboards based on the latest Intel and AMD chipsets that bring new levels of performance for PC builders. The Maximus IV GENE-Z and Maximus IV Extreme-Z both use the new Intel Z68 chipset to deliver unparalleled gaming and overclocking features, while the Crosshair V Formula is the first AMD 990FX-based motherboard supporting both 3-Way SLI and CrossFireX, with a graphical UEFI BIOS. Two new NVIDIA GTX 580-based graphics cards, the MATRIX GTX580 and MARS II, further expand the ROG range.
Om Nanotech Pvt. Ltd., the leading manufacturer, supplier and exporter of Memory Modules, Computer RAM, Pen Drives, Flash Cards, is pleased to announce its presence at Computex Taipei 2011 in Taiwan. From May 31 to June 4, Om Nanotech showcased the latest collection of Ram, USB Drives, Memory Cards and Server Memory, etc. Leaving no stones unturned, Om Nanotech also introduced for the FIRST time 3GB, 6GB and 12GB USB Drives along with the new packaging for its Memory and Flash products. Present at the occasion, Atul Khosla, Director, Om Nanotech Pvt. Ltd., said, “Computex Taipei has an impressive history of over 30 years as it has been serving as a common platform for the IT Industry since 1981. The show brings together a vast number of observers, analysts, and journalists of computer and information industries from all around the world, who can share their experience and knowledge along with providing greater visibility to their Brands.” “Here at Computex, we are widening the scope of our business advantage by broadening our product base and continuing our tradition of modern design and innovation. We intend to let our customers around the world know that our primary commitment is to serve them the best that technology has to offer,” added Mr. Khosla.
INDIA PRINTER COPIER AND MFD MARKET DECLINED 2.5% IN Q1 ‘11 HP REMAINED THE LEADER WITH 56.7 %, FOLLOWED BY CANON WITH 21.7%, EPSON 7.5% AND SAMSUNG WITH 6.4% MARKET SHARE.
The combined serial inkjet and page printer, copier and multifunction product (MFP) market in India totaled 6,65,172 units in the first quarter of 2011, a 2.5 percent decline compared to the first quarter of 2010, according to Gartner, Inc.
377.3
362.3
4.1%
HP
Canon Q1 2010
Epson
Samsung Q1 2011
51.2
0.4% 51.0
49.6
74.0
-42.0%
42.9
37.8%
36.0
159.1
144.1
-9.4%
Others Growth
Note: Totals may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding Source: Gartner (May 2011)
INDIA PRINTER, COPIER AND MFP UNIT SHIPMENT ESTIMATES, 1Q11 (THOUSANDS OF UNITS)
EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT
Adobe Systems has appointed Vineet Sood as Director–Channels & Strategic Alliances for South Asia. Kishore Deshpande joins joins MIEL as the Vice President, Services Sales, India. In his new role, he will be responsible for all the Sales and Marketing activities of Consulting and Technical Services and MIEL End-point Diagnostic Services. Hip Street has appointed Sachin Kaushik as its Regional Manager for North India. He will be responsible for building relationship with channel partners and help the company in increasing its market reach. The Attachmate Group appoints Boris Ivancic as Vice President & General Manager for Asia Pacific. In his expanded role, he will be responsible for driving customer success and developing market opportunities for Attachmate, NetIQ, Novell and SUSE.
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SMARTLINK OFFERS RS.2 PER EQUITY SHARE DIVIDEND The Board of Directors of Smartlink Network Systems Ltd., at their meeting held on 23rd May, 2011, have recommended a Dividend of Rs.2 per Equity Share of face value of Rs.2 each (i.e. 100%) for the financial year 2010-11, subject to the approval of the Shareholders. The Board of Directors have also recommended a Special Interim Dividend of Rs.30 per Equity Share of face value of Rs.2 each (i.e. 1500%) – payment of Interim Dividend shall be made to all Shareholders from 8th June 2011 onwards. For the year ended 31st March, 2011, the Company posted Total Income of Rs.195.04 crores (Rs.172.58 crores) and Net Profit of Rs.16.56 crores (Rs.17.87 crores). The Board had earlier, in its meeting held on 31st March, 2011, approved the sale of ‘DIGILINK’ Business (Structured Cabling business comprising of manufacture, sale and marketing of Structured Cabling products carried under the brand name ‘DIGILINK’) to Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd. on slump sale basis as a going concern for a consideration of Rs.503 crores.
HP Brings Printing Solutions Experience Centre As part of its managed print service initiative, HP has inaugurated a new and full-fledged HP Imaging and Printing Enterprise Solutions Experience Centre. The new facility, located at Salarpuria Arena Building, Koramangala, Bangalore, was inaugurated by Pierre Mirlesse, Vice President, Managed Enterprise Solutions, Imaging & Printing Group, Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific. HP IPG Enterprise Solutions Experience Centre is a first-of-its-kind customer discovery centre in the HP Enterprise Solutions Experience Centre being country. Apart from this, the company also introinaugurated in Bangalore by Pierre Mirlesse VP duced new imaging and printing solutions, devices Managed Enterprise Solutions Imaging Print and partnerships designed to help enterprises accomplish an instant on vision, increase operational efficiency, decrease costs and accelerate their business growth.
Gigabyte G1.Assassin Mobo Wins Computex 2011 Best Choice Award Gigabyte Technology’s G1. Assassin motherboard has been awarded the prestigious ‘Best Choice’ award from Taipei Computer Association (TCA), the organizers of Computex 2011. This award builds on the recent ‘Design and Innovation’ accolade earlier this month from TAITRA (Taiwan External Trade and Development Council), the organizers of Computex 2011, in cooperation with iF International Forum Design,
reinforcing the GIGABYTE G1. Assassin’s status as the world’s best motherboard for cutting-edge PC gaming. Commented Richard Chen, VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at GIGABYTE, “This highly coveted award from TCA again highlights our efforts to constantly push the barriers of motherboard innovation, addressing a growing niche market that we felt was traditionally underserved.”
D-Link Turns 25 Years D-Link has celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a renewed pledge of leadership and innovation within the networking and consumer electronics industry. Conscious of the evolving global networking environment, D-Link is striving to achieve IPv6 readiness for all new products. Ahead of most vendors, several D-Link wireless routers first received IPv6 Phase 1 certification from the IPv6 Forum in 2006. Since then, D-Link has attained IPv6 compliance for all Managed Switch products including its full line of Smart Switches. D-Link L3 switches currently support IPv6 routing in addition to IPv6 management.
DIGEST ZYXEL LAUNCHES FIRST GREEN FIREWALLS -USG-20 & USG-50 The exclusive Intellienergy Green Technology reduces power consumption through the medium of traffic, Link Status and smart fan. These products are packed with superior high performance features. The interface is of GbE 5(10/100/1000, Copper) WAN1, LAN/DMZ 4 for the USG 20 and of GbE 6 (10/100/1000, Copper) and WAN 2, LAN/ DMZ 4 for the USG 50. The hardware encryption of DES/3DES/AES and new session rate of 1000 sessions per second is the same for both the ZyWALLs. The SPI Firewall Throughput is of 100 Mbps for both the USG’s, IPSec VPN Throughput is of 30 Mbps and 50Mbps for USG’S 20 and 50 respectively and the UTM (AV+IDM) Throughput for the ZyWall USG 50 is 15 Mbps.
TRANSCEND SHOWCASES CAPABILITIES AT COMPUTEX 2011 Transcend showcase its abundant array of product lineup that includes USB flash drives, flash cards, digital music players, external hard drives, digital photo frames and top-quality memory modules at Computex 2011, Taipei. In addition to its world-recognized consumer electronics product portfolio, Transcend also introduced its industrial-grade products in this event to provide more comprehensive solutions to potential buyers. In light of the growing market in the field of embedded applications, Transcend has been actively participating in the related occasions and achieved positive feedback from the customers.
RAMCO STRENGTHENS ITS FOOTPRINTS IN GLOBAL MARKET For the quarter ended March 31, 2011, the global income of Ramco Systems, including revenues from subsidiaries in USA, Canada, Switzerland, Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa has stood at USD 13.12 m (Rs 58.94 cr). The profit for the quarter stood at USD 0.22 m (Rs 0.98 cr) as against last year corresponding quarter profit of USD 0.06 m (Rs 0.26 cr). For the year ended March 31, 2011 (FY: 2010-11), global income of Ramco Systems grew at 27.82% to USD 47.41 m (Rs 214.21 cr). The profit for the year stood at USD 0.51 m (Rs 2.31 cr) as against last year corresponding year profit of USD 0.40 m (Rs 1.88 cr).
INCEPT ATTENDANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IS EASY TO USE One of the biggest headaches which plague the small business world, apart from the taxation system, is the appropriate management of its resources. Employee Management becomes a challenge for small companies. Hence there have been a number of companies since the past few years, trying to provide attendance management systems to various companies and Incept is one of them. “The fingerprint attendance management system by Incept is very user-friendly and has world class sensor technology, while remaining cost effective. Innovation has been done only to help SMEs, and we invite the rest of India to be a part of this process”., says Dhiraj Hakke, the Technology Manager for Incept.
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Kaspersky Unveils Small Office Security V2 Kaspersky Lab has released second version of Kaspersky Small Office Security, a solution specially designed for the protection of small businesses. The updated solution is simple to configure and provides optimal security for small business computer infrastructure and data, with minimal impact on system resources. Kaspersky Small Office Security 2 incorporates award-winning antivirus technologies from Kaspersky Lab. The antivirus scanner, heuristic analyser, application control system and isolated ‘sandbox’ environment for launching suspicious files enable the detection and blocking of both known and new malicious programs before they can inflict any damage. The solution protects servers and workstations running on Windows OS, which is the operating system of choice for many small businesses. The new version of the product is a comprehensive solution that provides wide-ranging protection against external threats. Kaspersky Small Office Security 2 now has a host of new features, such as backup capabilities, a data encryption system, a password management, etc.
Bussiness Octane Apprises a new Paradigm of Interaction
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC ACQUIRES 74% STAKE OF LUMINOUS French power-management company Schneider Electric SA has acquired 74% of the inverter and battery maker Luminous Power Technologies for around $310 million. Reported by VCCircle, the total net debt of the company was Rs 240 crore as of 31 March 2011, leading to an implied transaction multiple of ~16x fiscal 2011 EBITDA. The remaining 26 per cent owned by the founders will be subject to put and call options. Laurent Vernerey, executive This acquisition is expected to be accretive on earnings vice president of Schneider’s per share from the first year. This return on capital employed IT business of the acquisition is expected to beat Schneider Electric’s weighted average cost of capital in year in year, the company said. Luminous’s products “help homes and small and medium-sized businesses face frequent power cuts,” Schneider said. “With Luminous, Schneider Electric will become the leader in the Indian inverters and secured power market and gain access to a complementary retail network,” the company said. “This acquisition is another significant step for Schneider Electric to become a leader in new economies,” said Laurent Vernerey, Executive Vice President of Schneider’s IT business. “Luminous will also provide a platform to expand the inverter market into other new economies, in particular the Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia,” he said. Luminous is a leading player in the Rs 6,000 crore Indian inverter and power storage market that is growing at more than 20% a year. The battery maker employs about 3,000 people in 8 different industrial sites in India and one in China.
Business Octane has launched ‘Immersive TeleAllpresence’, a revolutionary new paradigm of business interaction for management and leadership teams across multiple locations that is game changing and will give any enterprise a strategic competitive advantage by helping to become more nimble and agile in this fast changing & ultra-competitive business world. It enables an unprecedented real-time, on demand, highest quality true-to-life get together of 18 to 600 participants across 3 to 40 locations simultaneously which till now could not be done both effectively and frequently. In fact Business Octane’s TeleAllpresence patent pending experience is 50 to 100 times more effective than video teleconferences, 10 to 20 times more effective than legacy Telepresence experience and 3 to 10 times more effective than even face-to-face meetings.
SAP Leads BI Market IDC has found SAP to be the leader in the worldwide business intelligence (BI) tools market based on software license and maintenance revenue (including subscription revenue). IDC also reported that SAP has grown faster than the worldwide market for financial performance and strategy management (FPSM) applications for the fifth consecutive year. The two IDC analyses –‘Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2010 Vendor Shares’ and ‘Worldwide Financial Performance and Strategy Management Applications 2010 Vendor Shares’–found that SAP leads the worldwide BI market with revenues of $1,866.4 million and a 21 per cent market share, while revenue for FPSM was $629 million constituting a 24.9 per cent market share. From 2009 to 2010 SAP outperformed the worldwide market growth in each category and for BI tools SAP grew by 19.9 percent.
Matrix Unveils a New Software License Structure Matrix Comsec has introduced a new software license structure by implementing logical partitioning in COSEC (Time Attendance and Access Control System). With this new structure, COSEC Application serversCOSEC PE/GE/ME/LE PLATFORM, targeting to different customer verticals will come with basic features. These PLATFORMS are completely web based with key features like basic report generation, hardware configuration, export and import data and many more. Jatin Desai, Product Manager of security products said, “Matrix has implemented logical partitioning for increasing overall simplicity and for reducing the cost of the software to end customers. Thus benefitting the customer, by giving him optimum returns from his investment.”
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Polycom Gobbles HP’s Visual Collaboration Business
Riverbed Extends its Leadship
Part of its aggressive strategy, Polycom acquires HP’s Visual Collaboration business, including the Halo Products and Managed Services business. The companies also signed a strategic agreement that makes Polycom an exclusive partner to HP for telepresence and certain video UC solutions, including both resale and internal HP deployments, and integrates Polycom’s video applications on HP’s WebOS TouchPad product line. Shane Robison, executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer for HP, joined Polycom CEO Andy Miller during yesterday’s webcast to discuss the strategic alliance. Polycom also announced the revolutionary Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC), a breakthrough open video exchange cloud with the world’s leading service providers.
IBM SMARTCLOUD TO MEET GROWTH IBM has unveiled its next-generation IBM SmartCloud Enterprise to meet the growing demand of Indian businesses. Delivered through IBM’s recently launched Asia Pacific Cloud Computing Data Centre in Singapore, the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise is an enterprise-class, secure cloud platform specifically created to help businesses take advantage of shared cloud services to drive efficiencies, manage costs and speed-to-market. The new IBM SmartCloud Enterprise is based on an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) delivery model that offers rapid access to multi-tenant solutions scaled and priced based on usage. By expanding on IBM’s existing Development and Test Cloud, the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise reduces application development tasks from days to minutes via automation and rapid provisioning, enabling business to achieve upwards of 30 per cent cost savings versus traditional application environments.
HCL and GSTF to Train on Green Computing HCL Infosystems has launched special IT training programs for Green Computing, in partnership with Global Science and Technology Forum (GSTF). As part of this partnership, HCL with Global Science and Technology Forum (GSTF) will offer introductory training programs across 130 cities expected to reach out to over 10,000 students by the end of this year. Green Computing holds great significance in the current business environment and has become an integral part of every organization’s development across the globe. With more and
more green practices being adopted, there’s a need to develop a pool of highly trained Green IT professionals. GSTF and HCL Learning apart from introducing the new are also in the process of upgrading its existing programmes. The partnership is also expected to launch some special programmes based on computing concepts and is also working on integrating next generation platforms like cloud computing, which is expected to drive the next IT revolution along with Mobility and Broadband.
EMC & Cisco Mutually Institute Cloud Centers EMC Corporation has extended its collaboration with Cisco by jointly launched their Cloud Experience Centers in Bangalore. This is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between two IT industry leaders with the twin facilities located at the EMC Center of Excellence and at the Cisco Globalization Center East, creating a lab that provides Indian customers with an opportunity to experience the benefits and reliability of cloud-based IT infrastructure. Manoj Chugh, President. EMC India and SAARC said, “While Cloud Computing is a huge buzzword in technology, adoption is taking its time as CIOs are seeking the reassurance that cloud computing infrastructures are reliable, scalable, and secure.”
Riverbed Technology has remained the dominant player in the APAC WAN optimization market in 2010, extending its market share lead in the WAN acceleration category significantly over the other market players. Riverbed Exceeds 50% Market Share in APAC Region Within WAN Acceleration Category. Riverbed WAN optimization solutions enable organizations of all sizes to overcome a wide range of IT infrastructure performance bottlenecks, including poor application performance, slow database backups and insufficient bandwidth at remote sites. By speeding applications between data centers, remote offices and mobile workers, in some cases by up to 100 times,
Intel Unveils Much Hyped Ultrabook At Computex 2011, Taipei, Intel unveils a new category of laptops that it says will include the best features of tablets as the world’s top chipmaker struggles to find its footing in the exploding market for mobile gadgets as the news agency Reuters reports. As per the agency report Netbook pioneer Asustek (2357.TW) showed its first new PC in Intel’s “Ultrabook” class, the UX series, on Monday at the Computex computer show in Taipei. Intel said models made by other manufacturers would go on sale by Christmas and cost under $1,000. Ultrabooks will be very powerful and lightweight also.
Ready to Push Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Lenovo has launched its thinnest business laptop ever - the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 - in India. Exemplifying many industry first features, this fully loaded Notebook is designed for business leaders who demand the best in performance, mobility and entertainment. Celebrated, tech savvy actress Gul Panag unveiled the product in the presence of Lenovo India’s senior executives. The launch of Lenovo ThinkPad X1 complements the company’s new ‘For Those Who DO’ brand positioning. Powered by Intel’s second generation core processors, the product packs in a host of best-in-class features aimed at enabling the Doers of the corporate world to outperform. Its attributes, specifications are engineered to ensure rich functionality, configurability to drive down immediate and long-term costs, thereby providing unmatched efficiency and productivity.
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Iomega Amplifies Network Storage Offer
Iomega has launched new Iomega StorCenter PX Series of network storage products - Iomega’s most advanced series of desktop and rackmount NAS devices created specifically for high performance use at small- to medium-sized businesses and distributed enterprises. Powered by world class EMC storage technology, the StorCenter PX Series features four-bay and six-bay desktop models and a four-bay rackmount model, each available in scalable configurations at competitive prices. SMBs, remote offices and distributed enterprise users will benefit from the optional use of SSD drives to drive even higher performance.
QNAP Takes Everybody by Surprise at IFSEC 2011
KINGSTON ADDS SANDFORCE CONTROLLER TO BRING 3.0 (6GB/S) SSDS Kingston Technology has teamed up with SandForce to launch its first SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s) based SSD targeted at enthusiasts, gamers, and performance users. The Kingston HyperX SSD feature the fastest and most reliable SandForce controller to date, and is also available as a bundle with the HyperX Upgrade Kit for easy installation. Shipping in 120GB and 240GB capacities, the HyperX SSD is based on SandForce SF-2281 controllers featuring SATA Rev 3.0 (6 GB/s). It allows for incredible sequential read/write throughputs of 525/480MB/s, 4KB random read/write speeds of up to 95,000/70,000 IOPS, and SandForce DuraClass Technology to provide best in class endurance. The Kingston HyperX name has long been synonymous with high performance DRAM solutions for enthusiasts looking to achieve maximum system performance. Kingston’s new HyperX SSD is powered by the latest SandForce controller and Intel 25nm compute NAND (P/E 5K) to provide the performance and endurance that the most demanding users require. “This launch is very exciting for us at Kingston. The SandForce controller allows us to deliver the high-end performance that is needed for power-users, gamers, and enthusiasts. Achieving a final production quality controller and firmware has been an exacting process, but well worth the wait. By pairing SandForce’s latest controller with Intel 25nm compute NAND (P/E 5K), we’ve built an SSD that meets the requirements set by true enthusiasts, said Nathan Su, Flash Memory Sales Director, APAC Region, Kingston.
QNAP Systems has taken everybody by surprise with its newest, comprehensive line-up of Turbo NAS servers, VioStor NVR video surveillance systems at Bangalore’s IFSEC 2011 VS- 6020 x 1-Powered by dual-core Intel Atom CPU and 1GB memory, the VS-6020 Pro VioStor NVR is the high performance network surveillance system for monitoring, video recording and playback from multiple IP cameras. The Linux-based system supports PC less quick configuration, monitoring of IP cameras over the network, and video playback by connecting a monitor to the built-in VGA connector, a USB keyboard, and a USB mouse. The VioStor NVR supports simultaneous megapixel recording (up to 8-megapixel) and unique multi-server monitoring, a feature which allows monitoring of up to 128 IP cameras from multiple QNAP NVR servers at the same time. No extra software is required on the PC. I
Accel to Service Emerson Products Kyocera Unveils “Smart MFP’s” Emerson Network Power has appointed Accel Frontline Services as its Strategic Warranty & Return Material Authorization (RMA) Service Provider in India for its Small & Home Office range of UPS. The alliance with Accel Frontline extends the reach of Emerson Network Power’s after-sales support across the country. Customers can now contact a Centralized Tech Help Desk managed by Accel Frontline for On-Site Warranty and RMA related support, and a dedicated technical staff will provide doorstep repair & replacement services for in-warranty products. Additionally, customers can check on the status of their RMA / service requests through email, SMS, or on Accel Frontline’s webpage dedicated for the purpose. With 160+ dedicated service locations across India, Accel Frontline has excellent control over logistics and technical know-how to service Emerson Network Power’s UPS customers.
Kyocera Mita India Private Limited, a part of the 11 Billion Dollar Japanese Kyocera Group has launched a new range of Multifunction Printers in the Indian Market. Dubbed as “Smart MFP’s”, these machines make regular office document processing very simple. The best part is that all standard features are built in and there is no need to spend additionally on the expensive options! The Managing Director of Kyocera, Mr. K. Swetharanyan said that the new Kyocera Mita machines will “redefine Simplicity in printing”. There are two series of “Smart MFP’s” being launched: 1. Monochrome 25 and 30 ppm Machines and 2. Brilliant Color 20 and 25 ppm Machines. These machines are expected to allow even people planning to buy entry level machines to look at the option of upgrading to color.
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PARTNER CORNER
RAKESH KHURANA, PROPRITOR, IMPERIAL PHOTO STORES.
“EVERY VENDOR WANTS A PARTNER OF REPUTATION WE HAVE THAT� Imperial Photo Stores was started around 1952 to trade and resell photographic goods. Today, it is of Rs.10 Crores.SME Channels spoke to Rakesh Khurana, Propritor, Imperial Photo Stores, to know about it. Excerpts... Brief about Imperial Photo Stores. Imperial Photo Stores was started around 1952 to trade and resell photographic goods. The main business of the company was to see the photographic goods to photogoods dealers and studios all over the country. At that time, it was all black and white, and the company had customers all over the country. Now at this stage, the turnover of the company is grossed at Rs. 10 Crores. Which brands the company is dealing with? The company deals and markets all photographic materials i.e. photo-taking and photo-making materials. The company markets products of all the premium companies like SanDisk, Kodak, Nikon, Photoquip and so on. When it comes to SanDisk especially, our loyalty has been consistent. We house the entire range of SanDisk products including the USB Flash Drives, imaging cards and mobile memory cards. What is the competitive advantage of Imperial Photo Stores? The competitive advantage is that the company is well-established in the photographic trade since the past 60 years and had has a glorious record of marketing goods all over the country.
Who basically are the customers of Imperial Photo? Basically the customers of Imperial Photo Stores are colour labs, professionals and institutions. The company has goodwill and good reputation among the customers as well as the suppliers. What kind of value addition makes to the products? The company is able to market the goods in wholesale as well as retail with value addition between 5-10%. Why will a vendor like to appoint imperial photo its partner? The vendor will like to appoint Imperial Photo Stores as its business partner because we have a dedicated clientele on account of our fair dealings. Every vendor wants a partner of good reputation and we have the capacity to generate the business as well as provide that factor of good reputation.
to the glamour of photography and thus, we will be open to introducing quality products. What kind of growth is the company expecting? We expect growth of 10-15% in the business since the youth these days is becoming more and more photography-savvy. Is it a multi-brand or singlebrand store? It is a multi-brand store. Any specific reasons for focusing mainly on SanDisk products? Almost all digital cameras and other photographic equipment require memory cards and card readers. SanDisk is the first choice of all the users and SanDisk stands at the top.
How many outlets does it have? The company has 1 outlet in ChandniChowk, Delhi and 2 in the N.C.R. region.
What kind of footfall do you witness in your store in a day-today basis? Around 50-75 people come to Imperial Photo Stores every day.
Which new brands you want to add in the years to come? The photographic trade is changing very fast. The vendors are coming with newer items which add
Do you have plans for the expansion of retail stores? Yes, we are in the process of expanding our business.
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CASE STUDY
TALLY
“TOTALLY HAPPY TO USE TALL Y” IT IS VERY RELIABLE
A
dvaith Motors (Advaith Hyundai is the brand name) is a wholly owned company of the Advaith Group. One of the largest automotive retail corporations in India, the Advaith Group has its focus on delivering a world class customer experience across all its business functions. Advaith Motors has an enviable record of consistently being World’s largest and most awarded Hyundai dealer with 4 showrooms conveniently located across Bangalore on Residency Road, Outer Ring Road, Vasanthnagar and Bannerghatta Road. The facility on Outer Ring Road is Hyundai’s largest 3S facility in India. With a 1200 strong work force committed to exceeding customer expectation, Advaith Hyundai services are at par with Hyundai global standards. The Service Centres are continuously upgraded and equipped with the state-of-the art equipment, in line with Hyundai’s exacting worldwide standards. The Advaith Hyundai showrooms are a one-stop shop to meet all customer needs, displaying the latest cars from the Hyundai stable, the latest range of popular and exquisite accessories, vehicle financing options and expert customer guidance to help select the right Hyundai car. The sprawling showroom at Outer Ring Road, spread across 2 levels offers additional facilities that are unique. Two enclosed audio-rooms to provide demo for the car audio systems. As of today, Advaith Hyundai has 5 Showrooms in Bengaluru, 3 in Mysore and 1 in Mangalore. There are 10 Service Centers in Bengaluru, 2 in Mysore and 1 each in Hassan and Mangalore and growing. The company has taken distributorship of Mahindra vehicles. The company has also taken up JCB dealership-the earthmov-
N V SRINIVAS HEAD – FINANCE & ACCOUNTS ADVAITH GROUP
“Tally.ERP 9 is useful for instant reports; easily customizable, it is easy to get Tally trained professionals.” CONTACT Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. AMR Tech Park II, No. 23 & 24, Hongasandra, Hosur Main Road, Bangalore – 560 068. India.Tel +91 80 66282559; Fax +91 80 30228775; www. tallysolutions.com
ers in 2 places. They need to keep spare parts in 10-15 outlets for these big machines.
Business Challenge Ever since 1999, Advaith Hyundai is using Tally Software. Earlier they had another software which was good in security levels and speed, but not helpful as far as reporting and customisation are concerned. The service of the other software was not at all up to the mark. The company has GDMS software supplied by Hyundai which gives data of all the vehicles. The server for the GDMS
is in Chennai. The details of not only Advaith Hyundai dealers, also the other dealers’ (competitive dealers) details are also available in the server. For each vehicle which comes for repair, an R.O – a repair order needs to be opened. Whatever data comes in a day is required to be fed into the system. The issues raised are required to be addressed. History of the vehicle, billing for services needed to be done at Chennai. The charges have to be proper, neither less nor more. The price list is already decided by the parent company. The billing has to
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TALLY
CASE STUDY
be issued fromGDMS only. The import of data is required before the end of the day.
The Solution
Cheque printed using Tally.ERP 9
K KARTHIK SOLUTIONS MANAGER, B E SOLUTIONS ENTHUSES
“We found that they were keen to have a method by which they could avoid re-entry of Data. We wrote a bridge solution, which avoided entering of data again and thus helped avoidance of errors.”
The data – bills and inventory- was required to be exported to Tally.ERP 9. The bridge program was written by B E Solutions Pvt. Ltd., - a Master Tally Partner in Bengaluru. Mr. K Karthik, Solutions Manager, B E Solutions enthuses, “AMC support was being given by us to Advaith for its Tally software. We found that they were keen to have a method by which they could avoid re-entry of Data. We wrote a bridge solution, which avoided entering of data again and thus helped avoidance of errors. They had quite a good number of ledgers. Now, whenever a new sale or service ledger is created in GDMS, gets replicated in Tally in no time” The export of data ensures that there is no tampering of data totally. Except the entry of data, all other functions are blocked. The printing of cheques using Tally has commenced in some of the showrooms/service centers.
BENEFITS
Finally...
l Instant reports
Mr. Srinivas ends with a happy note, “We are bound by the GDMS software of Hyundai. But for all our bills, and our own records, we are totally happy to use Tally. It is very reliable”
l Easily customizable l Easy to get trained professionals
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COVER STORY
STORAGE
CANSLOW&
STEADY WIN THE RACE? The SSD market in India is showing signs of picking up because of increased understanding about its benefits. BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com
D
igital content in various forms is exploding as the number of access devices increase. Our interactions with the content has changed over the years to become a part of daily life whether it is for work, entertainment, convenience or to update ourselves with information regarding the world around us. Along with the increase in information, the need for storage solu-
tions has also increased. User requirements have also become demanding with an increased focus on mobility to access information on-the-go, where system performance and power conservation become very significant factors in enhancing user experience. Storage technologies play an important part in increasing that satisfaction. A number of storage technologies are available such as hard disk drives, optical drives,
tapes, flash and Solid State Drives (SSD). Each of these technologies has advantages and disadvantages making it ideal for certain kinds of applications in terms of capacity, performance, reliability and cost. SSDs are the latest storage technology that has evolved to meet customer expectations along some of these parameters. SSD technology is not new and has been around for more than ten years. However, it is only in
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UNTIL 2015, SHIPMENTS OF SSD GROW BY 90% EACH YEAR, LEADING TO 4.1 MILLION IN 2015.
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“INDIA HAS HUGE POTENTIAL FOR BOTH DRAM AND FLASH MEMORY PRODUCTS. WE BELIEVE IT IS THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SSD MARKET NOW AFTER CHINA.” NATHAN SU, FLASH MEMORY SALES DIRECTOR, APAC REGION, KINGSTON
the last two years the SSD market has increased its appeal for a variety of reasons and has gained momentum in the global markets. That momentum has become evident in recent times in India as well. This is primarily because the market has matured in terms of understanding the technology, the increased number of players in the market. These players have rapidly scaled up partners, educated them, invested in market development activities and have helped create a favorable climate for the growth of SSD in India. Speaking of the current state of the market, Nathan Su, Flash Memory Sales Director, APAC Region, Kingston, says that the market potential in India is “huge”. “India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and is also on a population splurge, so it has large demands for SSD products. India has huge potential for both DRAM and flash memory products. We believe it is the world’s biggest SSD market now after China.” Most vendors are betting heavily in the Indian market going by the fervent activity evident in the market. This is based on assumptions that certain external conditions such as PC penetration, especially laptop penetration is growing significantly. The increasing presence of global companies who extend best practices such as adopting the latest technology, specifically instituting stringent security measures in all their subsidiaries. However, there is no doubt that the market is still in its infancy, with little visibility into what the uptake will look like in the future. “There is no reliable data available on the sale of SSDs in India, but takers for these high-performance drives are going up. Adoption in enterprises has picked up from 2010. The market for SSDs in clients systems is limited to high-end systems, and a very small portion of the overall client market,” says Sushil Bandi, Country Manager, for the Indian sub-continent, Western Digital.
This is opposed to the global market (particularly the US market) where the SSD market uptake has been significant and there are estimations available about the size and growth rate. The total available market for laptop PC hard disk drives worldwide in 2010 was 69 exabytes and is forecast to grow to 95 exabytes in 2011, according to Gartner in its forecast, “NAND Flash Supply and Demand, Worldwide, 1Q 09 - 4Q 11, 4Q10 Update, December 2010. “That’s a lot of storage capacity. What’s more, the average capacity of a notebook hard drive is forecast to grow from nearly 300 GB in 2010 to more than 350 GB in 2011. Laptop users want
more capacity, not less,” says Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager, India and SAARC countries, Seagate Technology. Conventional wisdom in some circles of the storage marketplace is that in the coming years SSDs will begin to replace hard disk drives in significant numbers in laptop PCs. However that view has to be tempered with the sobering fact that in 2010, the entire NAND flash memory industry had enough installed capacity to produce just over 11 exabytes of storage. More than 10 exabytes (93%) of that capacity went to consumer devices such as smartphones, tablets and SD cards with just 0.86 exabytes (7%) of that NAND capacity being used in solid state drives, according to the Gartner Forecast. Industry sources argue that the Gartner estimates are inflated because of the following reason. NAND flash memory production capacity is forecast to grow to 21 exabytes in 2011, with about 2 exabytes (9%) going to solid state drives and the rest (91%) to smart phones and other consumer devices. The cost to build a megafab, capable of producing 3.75 exabytes of nonvolatile NAND flash memory is $10 billion. What’s more, a megafab would take two to three years to ramp to full production. Assuming that all the additional NAND is used for solid state drives, the $10 billion investment would produce enough flash memory to serve just 4% of the 95-exabyte laptop storage market projected for 2011. Spending $10 billion to buy 4% of notebook storage market share, or $2 billion in revenue, is not viable. Therefore although estimates are available even for the global market, no one is still able to have a medium term view of what even the global SSD market would look like.
So What is SSD About?
“MAJOR HINDRANCE FOR THE GROWTH OF SSD IS THE PRICING AS WELL AS AWARENESS FOR THIS PRODUCT LINE.” M A MANNAN, COUNTRY MANAGER, CORSAIR INDIA
According to Wikipedia, SSD is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data with the intention of providing access in the same manner of a traditional block input/output hard disk drive. SSDs are distinguished from traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), which are electromechanical devices containing spinning disks and movable read/ write heads. SSDs, in contrast, use microchips which retain data in non-volatile memory chips and contain no moving parts. Compared to electromechanical HDDs, SSDs are typically less susceptible to physical shock, are silent and have lower access time and latency. SSDs use the same interface as hard disk drives, thus easily replacing them in most applications. As of 2010, most SSDs use NAND-based flash memory, which retains memory even
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“FASTER, SMARTER AND MORE EFFICIENT DATA CENTERS ENABLED BY SSDS INCREASE THE PERFORMANCE OF APPLICATIONS SUCH AS SERVER VIRTUALIZATION, ONLINE TRANSACTION PROCESSING (OLTP), ETC.” RAJESH KHURANA, COUNTRY MANAGER, INDIA AND SAARC COUNTRIES, SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY
without power. SSDs using volatile randomaccess memory (RAM) also exist for situations which require even faster access, but do not necessarily need data persistence after power loss, or use external power or batteries to maintain the data after power is removed. A hybrid drive combines the features of an HDD and an SSD in one unit, containing a large HDD, with a smaller SSD cache to improve performance of frequently accessed files. These can offer near-SSD performance in most applications (such as system startup and loading applications) at a lower price than an SSD. These are not suitable for data-intensive work, nor do they offer the other advantages of SSDs. There is increasing excitement in the market about SSD as it offers considerable advantages over traditional HDDs. The most significant differentiator is that there are no moving parts so that eliminates the threat from mechanical failure which is the top most reason why traditional HDDs fail. Over time, the moving parts that make up a traditional hard drive wear out or simply fail. Solid-state hard drives work more like the flash memory cards used in digital cameras and the thumb drives that have all but replaced CDs and floppy disks. They use no moving parts for data storage, so they have a lower failure rate. Another advantage of not having moving parts is that SDDs do not make little or no noise compared to traditional HDDs. SSDs is much faster than traditional HDDs as the start-up time to read the disk is faster because of the flash memory compared to the traditional HDDs where the disk must spin before it starts while processing data. The presence of flash memory chips provide distinct advantages such as lower power usage, faster data access and higher reli-
ability. The power usage plays a key role for the use of solid state drives in portable computers. Because there is no power draw for the motors, the drive uses far less energy than the regular hard drive. The flip side of SDD is that it is very highly priced at the moment as it is still a new prod-
“THE MARKET FOR SSDS IN CLIENTS SYSTEMS IS LIMITED TO HIGH-END SYSTEMS. AND, A VERY SMALL PORTION OF THE OVERALL CLIENT MARKET.” SUSHIL BANDI, COUNTRY MANAGER, FOR THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT, WESTERN DIGITAL
uct and the volumes are yet to bring down the market price. Also as it is still relatively new in the market, many features are still evolving. Another challenge to the adoption of SSDs is the slow write speed, which means that the rate of speed of saving the data to is slow. SSD also have limited number of write cycles compared to the traditional HDDs which can save much faster and have a potentially unlimited writecycle. In traditional HDDs we can erase the data and write over and over again.
Market Drivers The maturity in the digital access market has given rise to sophisticated storage technology requirements with an increased emphasis on higher performance, reliability and lower cost. New external imperatives such as the need to conserve power for higher performance and as a result of the increased awareness for the environment have been instrumental in increasing the appeal of SSD. Increased concern for enterprise security has emerged as a big driver in favor of SSD market. With increasing instances of data theft and regulatory compliance issues, corporate are trying to limit the data storage on notebooks as they can be easily stolen and compromised. Installing SSD restricts the amount of data capacity as it has lower capacity than the HDD. There is no end in sight for explosive data growth. Worldwide creation of data in 2010 has been estimated at 1200 exabytes, or 38 terabytes every second of every day. In 2020, people across the world are projected to generate 35,000 exabytes of data, or 1110 terabytes every second of every day, according to IDC. (A Digital Universe Decade – Are You Ready? May 2010) With businesses and consumers creating digital content in record amounts and distributing it at light speed, users want data in an instant, wherever they are—in the office, at home or on the road. “As a result we see a trend of deploying SSDs – the one answer to keeping pace with information growth at the data center. Faster, smarter and more efficient data centers enabled by SSDs increase the performance of applications such as server virtualization, online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing, content delivery networks (CDN) and cloud computing,” says Khurana of Seagate Technology. The mix of enterprise SSDs, working together with traditional enterprise hard disk drives deliver the performance, intelligence and efficiency business data centers need to keep up with the blurring increase in demand for
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“WITH NO SEEK TIME OR ROTATIONAL DELAYS, SSDS CAN DELIVER SUBSTANTIALLY BETTER INPUT/ OUTPUT PERFORMANCE THAN HDDS.” SANDEEP DUTTA, VP – STORAGE, SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY GROUP, IBM INDIA/SA
instant, anywhere access to digital content. According to Western Digital’s Bandi, SSDs have several advantages over the customary HDD. “Since SSDs use non-volatile NAND flash memory, it results in high transfer speeds, better performance and reduced power consumption. It is light-weight and small in size. Additionally, it delivers performance unmatched by regular hard drives. It is ideal for intensive usage. These drives are very rugged, shock-proof and reliable thereby giving extraordinary value to enterprises who want to store vital data for future reference and as a secondary storage alternative. Individuals seeking high performance can also use these drives as an ideal tool to enable efficient multi-tasking. Moreover, SSD also prove to be energy efficient in certain applications.” Sandeep Dutta, VP – Storage, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/SA, “says SSDs offer a number of advantages over traditional. “With no seek time or rotational delays, SSDs can deliver substantially better input/output performance than HDDs. Capable of driving tens of thousands of I/O operations per second (IOPS), as opposed to hundreds for HDDs, SSDs breakthrough performance bottlenecks of I/O-bound applications. Applications that require dozens and dozens of “extra” HDDs for performance can meet their I/O performance requirements with far fewer SSDs, resulting in energy, space, and cost savings. SSDs result in a substantial improvement in I/O performance, which translates to increased business output, reduced energy consumption and in some cases decreased cost.” Nathan Su from Kingston believes that mobility is one of the key drivers for the uptake of SSDs. “Mobility is the key. People need to make sure their information stored in the hard disk won’t be lost on the move.” Nathan Su also believes that the SSD industry is constantly bus-
tling with innovation and introducing advancements that will benefit the enterprise market. “Several applications for enterprise systems and servers will be introduced as the need for higher IOPS at lower power consumptions are kept as priority features for enterprise SSDs. Reliability, maintenance, power consumption, heat generation and associated cooling costs, and acoustical noise are the other factors that SSD seeks to address and will in turn appeal to the enterprise markets,” he added. On the other hand, Transcend has launched exceptional SSD products- The 2.5” Solid State Drives (SSDs). Built on a faster and newer controller, the revamped SSDs provide random read speeds of up to 40MB/s, resulting in significantly faster system boot up and application launch performance. The newly released SSDs are available in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities, which enclose the new advanced controller chip and 64MB of built-in DDR2 DRAM cache memory, the new SSDs feature sequential read and write speeds up to 260MB/s and 240MB/s, and random read/write speeds of 40MB/s and 27MB/s. This dramatically improved performance along with reducing the average system boot times, offers stutter-free response and stability for netbooks, notebooks, high-end gaming PCs and industrial computers. Users can also take advantage of their cool, noiseless operation to enjoy the perks of silent and practical computing. Even the company has launched potable SSDs with USB 3.0 interface combining the benefits of USB 3.0 with all the performance and durability advantages of an internal SSD, providing unparalleled speed and stability those portable HDDs are hard to compete. Moreover, the SSD is equipped with an extremely convenient One Touch auto-backup button, which allows you to backup and synchronize your data instantly. To
add more durability, the new model (SSD18C3) comes housed in a vibration-absorbing and slip-resistant silicone outer shell.
Market Challenges Despite these advantages, market uptake of SSD has been slow and not up to speed. The main challenge for slow uptake has definitely been the high price of SSD. “Major hindrance for the growth of SSD is the pricing as well as awareness for this product line. The price difference per GB between HDD and SSD is quite huge and unless this gap is reduced we can’t expect SSD to grow. Though the features are incomparable against HDD with its read/write speeds but the pricing gap is not encouraging for the end users to opt for SSD,” says M A Mannan, Country Manager, Corsair Memory, India. Dushyant Mehta, Chairman & MD, Mediaman Group, said, “At present SSD market is not yet matured. But in future, SSD will always remain in the laptop not necessarily in the shape and size of a hard drive. It will come as part of the PCB. And actually market for SSD will be the external storage. We will get 10 times faster speed which is an advantage but at a cost that is much higher. So my opinion is it will be very difficult to position it as a mass consumption. Until unless the SSD comes with 500 gb storage at an attractive price point it will be very difficult for mass consumption.” Western Digital however believes that SSDs sales are picking up gradually. However, it is still an expensive proposition with regard to desktops and notebooks, for users as well as manufacturers. “It will still take time for SSDs to gain momentum, even though they are getting cheaper by the day, to beat the cost-per-gigabyte advantage that HDDs offer,” says Bandi of Western Digital. Moreover, large-scale adoption depends more on consumer needs. The average PC or laptop user might just not realize the SSD advantage except for faster boot-up or application launch-time. However, an extreme gamer looking for high level speed and performance will be happy to invest in an SSD, as it justifies the results he will get. “I feel the point to be understood here is that HDDs and SDDs are complementary technologies that will co-exist for a long time to come. Today most flash goes into tablets and smartphones, only a very tiny low-volume portion makes it into notebooks.” The main challenge at present is that SSDs are not as cost-effective, but the situation will improve in favour of SSDs with time. Till then, HDDs and SSDs are meant to co-exist, each delivering its own unique benefits added Bandi.
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“SOMETIME IN 2012, WE CAN EXPECT PRICES OF SSDS TO GO DOWN ENOUGH FOR CONSUMERS TO START SEEING THE BENEFITS OF USING SSDS INSTEAD OF HDDS.” AJAY KOGTA, COUNTRY MANAGER, INDIAN SUBCONTINENT, STRONTIUM TECHNOLOGY
Bandi also feels that the general awareness about SSDs, their utility and benefits, and most importantly their unique role in an HDD dominated ecosystem is very low. Due to low general awareness on SSD technology, many customers are yet to adopt SSDs even though they might make a strong business case over (or with HDDs) in certain applications. Flash is still a relative unproven technology, especially in client systems, eg. wear-leveling is a challenge right now. “Another challenge we face is on the channel front. Like the consumers, channel partners are also not well-versed with SSDs and hence find it difficult to generate sales volumes. The major target segment for Western Digital’s SSD product line is to focus on the enterprise/ embedded/industrial markets and not in the very low consumer segment.” The inclusion of SSDs in computers and servers has been slower than what many predicted. The reason is the high cost associated with NAND Flash chips. The prices of these chips have not fallen as aggressively as expected. “But sometime in 2012, we can expect prices of SSDs to go down enough for consumers to start seeing the benefits of using SSDs instead of HDDs. Demand for storage capacity and performance will rise sharply in the coming years, as microprocessors will continue to grow faster, software applications will become more resource intensive, and network computing will become more pervasive,” says Ajay Kogta, Country Manager, Indian Subcontinent, Strontium Technology. Right now SSD is just like DTH against cable TV. Elaborates Strontium’s Kogta “We need to wake up the customers for better speed than what they are using. Unless they feel the real need for the speed they will not switch from traditional HDD. Lots of education is required and it might take 1-2 years.” The two main challenges are storage capacity and costs. “Today when a regular HDD capacity
is 1.5TB, it is a challenge to convince the consumers that they only need 128GB or 256GB inside their computer. The cost per GB of SSDs is still very high for consumers to choose SSDs over HDDs,” added Kogta. Kingston’s Nathan Su thinks price is the issue that has challenged stronger uptake of SSD. “People see it as a good to have, but not a must have. However when the SSD price drops and OS system finds more efficient ways of utilizing SSD features, more and more people start adopting it in the system. And once they install it in their system, they will not going back to use HDD.” Su also believes that the SSD is still an unfamiliar name in the market and a lot more market-building activities are required to create the appropriate buzz in the market.
SSD Market Dynamics The promise of the SSD market has lured all storage vendors in the game. Prominent among the SSD players in India are IBM, Strontium, Western Digital, Seagate, Kingston, Transcend, and Corsair. There are a wide variety of offerings in the market and vendors have leveraged the traditional channel partnerships to tap the market. The current preoccupation amongst vendors is to engage with the partner community in a meaningful manner to educate them about the benefits of the product category so that they become effective sellers. At the same time, vendors themselves are investing a lot of resources in market building activities. Western Digital offers SiliconEdge Blue in 64, 128, and 256 GB capacities retailing in the Indian market. This drive is aimed at consumer enthusiasts but it is a tiny market. For the embedded market, Western Digital has SLC Silicon Drive N1x that is available in capacities up to 128GB. In terms of channel engagement, Western Digital believes that the SSD market is currently
nascent. It will evolve gradually with other components of the IT ecosystem. There is certainly scope to train channel partners and equip them with general know-how. “In my opinion, channel partners are not lagging behind. Once there is a fair market demand and manufacturers display a strong commitment to the SSD market, partners will be more receptive towards the new technology,” says Bandi. Since adoption is better in the enterprise space, the onus right now falls on system integrators to better educate their customers on how SSDs can complement their existing HDD based storage. Strontium Gamma Series and Strontium Matrix series both use MLC grade Flash with Sandforce Controller and 25nm Flash chips with Marvel controller. These products are currently available with all of Strontium’s distributors fulfilling the demand in market. “Channel partners are very excited but they are also waiting for volumes to pick up and become run-rate products,” says Strontium’s Ajay. In the second half of 2011, Strontium’s marketing campaign will focus only on SSDs. It is called the ‘Boot up Faster’ campaign and the key message is to use Strontium SSD for faster boot up and accelerated application performance. Kingston has a wide variety of SSD products. The SSDNow V series is designed for consumers and small business. The SSDNow V+ series is ideal for demanding corporate environments. The HyperX SSD series: SATA3.0 interface is best suited for gaming systems and the SSDNow S series is ideal for system integrators and non-PC applications. Kingston’s partners are upbeat about the prospects of SSD and have taken enthusiastically to this product category. Kingston has also actively focused in helping its partners understand the nuances of this market and has invested in creating marketing collaterals. In addition, Kingston has invested in marketing activities, such as seminars and roadshows as well as providing literatures to partners. With a portfolio of hardware, software and services, IBM’s SSD product is also accompanied by its software called Easy Tier which helps in the movement of data when performance is required. SSDs are delivering much more performance compared to other storage devices but the costs per GB are still much higher. SAP systems require both, high performance (IO/s with a low response time) and high capacity. IBM Easy Tier combines the benefits of SSD and HDD, high OI/s and low $/GB, an optimal solution for SAP environments. IBM has added an Easy Tier feature to its high-end DS8800 storage array that moves
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hot data to SSD automatically. Easy Tier will dynamically and automatically redistribute the 1GB extents within DS8000 disk pools. Operating across administrator identified pools of storage—including any type of rotational disk as well as SSD disks—Easy Tier will automatically reposition data based on IO patterns and disk characteristics with no further administrative interaction. The Easy Tier function automatically moves more active data to SSD drives, which helps enable use of fewer, more energy efficient disk drives to reduce energy consumption. “In IBM’s solution, customers can see a quantum increase in performance by changing just 2% of storage estate to SSD using Easy Tier,” says IBM’s Dutta. Speaking about the company’s engagement with the channel community, Dutta says, “We are constantly enabling and educating the channel partners, business partners on SSDs. Our objective includes educating the partners not only in substituting hard drive but supplementing it with SSD. Continuous enablement and on-field training along with storage demo boxes with SSDs where partners are demonstrated on the specifications are also part of this partner engagement. It is a continuous process and channel partners are really gearing up to sell SSDs.” Corsair offers SSD in two different categories. For the price sensitive market, it offers the Nova series and for users seeking speed, it offers the Force series. Recently, the company has been focusing on promoting the Force series SATA3 which has enormous speed and had been widely accepted among the Indian channel community. Corsair has actively engaged with its channels community in promoting its SSD product line. “Corsair’s high-end partners across India are already stocked with SSD products to cater to the ever growing demand. We concentrate on educating the dealers about the benefits of SSD who are our brand ambassadors for customers. Once the dealers are educated they pass on the knowledge to the end users and convert HDD clients to SSD,” says Corsair’s Country Manager, M A Mannan. In December 2009, Seagate announced Pulsar drive, the first product in its new enterprise SSD family. The Pulsar family leverages Seagate’s leadership in meeting enterprise customer expectations in product development, qualification, fulfillment and ongoing support on a worldwide basis. “As Seagate is the worldwide market leader in enterprise storage and the first enterprise HDD vendor to deliver an enterprise-class SSD solution, we have been having a great response from the customers,”
says Seagate’s Khurana. Seagate now expects enthusiastic market response to the second generation Pulsar SSD products (Pulsar.2 and Pulsar XT.2) that was launched in March 2011.
The Outlook The outlook for SSD market is promising as it has captured the imagination of consumers and PC OEMs. However, although the product has been in the market for some time it is yet to pick up the volumes, primarily because of the high pricing. But the good news is that end users, partners and PC OEMs are getting increasingly educated about the benefits. The external market conditions such as the popularity of mobility at work and as a lifestyle, concern for environment, need for increased security have helped SSD make inroads into the mainstream market. On the enterprise front, SSDs are ideal for deployment in corporate database and on-line transaction processes to improve response time and reliability. For the same reason, email servers are also an ideal application for SSDs. SSDs are also the perfect solution for virtualized ecosystems to deliver on the unavoidable high I/O rates. Hosted cloud services can also improve service levels and transactional response time by deploying SSDs as primary storage, although
“SSD WILL ALWAYS REMAIN IN THE LAPTOP - NOT NECESSARILY IN THE SHAPE AND SIZE OF A HARD DRIVE. IT WILL COME AS PART OF THE PCB” DUSHYANT MEHTA, CHAIRMAN & MD, MEDIAMAN GROUP
this is quite some time away. At present, SSDs commonly find application in STBs, TVs and editing systems, medical equipment, surveillance systems, PCs and peripherals and CNC devices among several others. In the future, SSDs will be about delivering the right solution and expanding its presence from a niche product offering to becoming mainstream. SSDs are now positioned as a premium solution and vendors are fighting hard to fight that position. “Believe it or not, now is the tipping point for SSD demand. We have seen a great growth in SSD sales since last year,” says Nathan Su of Kingston. But reality is otherwise. Prices are still high for SSDs to be mainstream at the moment. “We feel the Rs 4000 retail price of 128GB SSD will beat the psychological barrier of buying. This should happen sometime in H1 2012,”Strontrium’s Kogta. However, SSDs are gradually becoming more affordable. The reason behind the high pricing is that increasing the density of flash memory or packing extra capacity in the same form factor is an expensive proposition. Breakthroughs in the capacity barrier are happening by the day. However, it will take some time for manufacturers to be able to make them commercially viable. The industry is currently working on more affordable but still reliable SSDs with MLC (Multi Level Cell) technology as opposed to SLC (Single Level Cell) technology which is predominantly used for enterprise applications. “Technological developments have led to drop of pricing and we have seen SSD prices drop from an unaffordable level to acceptable standards and that has seen an increase in the market size,” says Corsair’s Mannan. The growth of the flash memory market in recent years and the advancements in flash technology have allowed SSD OEMs using NAND flash technology to reach lower price points and offer SSDs as a compelling alternative to rotating magnetic HDDs. The pricing will come down with time and increased acceptance of SSD in the market by enterprises. “We are seeing good traction in the enterprise market. They have the inherent need for faster, more reliable drives which enable multi-tasking. It is also used as a secondary storage alternative in IT facilities of organizations,” says Bandi. In conclusion, with increasing adoption SSD will become a mainstream product as prices lower with increased volume and awareness about its benefits increase. However, both traditional HDD and SSD will co-exist for a long time to come as each come with its own set of benefits.
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GUEST TALK
IMPERATIVES FOR A SUCCESSFUL SME It’s extremely vital to build your team considering that a SME has so much to do that you need trusted and competent hands to wade thru all the critical tasks.
AJAY WAHI Managing Director, Fastbooking India and Author of Management Books
BRIEF PROFILE Ajay has been working for 25 years of which the last many years he has been running the Indian operations of foreign companies. As matter of chance, all these operations were small and not large and he faced a common challenge across all the SMEs he worked for: how to retain people and get the maximum productivity from them so as to keep a small flock together and achieve results and create a win-win for both the employees and the CEO. And he is sure all SMEs in our country face this challenge: how to retain people and yet get the max out of them. His book called “and the award for Best SME of the year goes to is one of the best sellers and eye opener for many of the SMEs.
BASED ON MY experiences of running organizations for the past 25 years, especially the SME types, I would like to present my thoughts around how to make a SME successful. While I use the words THOUGHTS, but these are essentially my proven actions which delivered positive results. BUILD YOUR TEAM It’s extremely vital to build your team considering that a SME has so much to do that you need trusted and competent hands to wade thru all the critical tasks. Those SME owners who keep all their cards to themselves lose where-as those who build teams, share rewards etc grow AUTOMATION SMEs are always short of money considering that they want to grow into newer areas, products, territories, etc. Those who invest in just people and feel their SME is growing just because their numbers of people are growing could one day go bust because that becomes a case of over-staffing. It’s good to invest in building people skills and not building people by numbers! So, do a thorough research and see for all processes (in production, sales, deliveries, projects etc) and check for such areas, if automated, would either reduce the need for more people and / or make them do the activities correctly the first time. If you deliver with more people, the rewards will be high for all to share. POLITICAL FREE SET UP Being an SME, you always lack time and the last thing you want is politics in your set-up. So, keep an eye on all your employees. It’s better to have 90% performers with no politics than to have 110% performance form a person but at same time his attitude of politics hurts the company. BE HANDS-ON SME founders should always be hands-on for your production, sales, HR, marketing, etc. Remember that
as an SME, you may have not have so much experienced people and thus you need to always guide them so that they perform. And this guidance is possible only if you are WITH them. HAVE RIGHT QUALIFIED STAFF Many SMEs, for the sake of show-off, tend to recruit MBAs from the nest of the management colleges just to show to the world and also inside to their staff that they are so great as they have super MBAs. These super MBAs come and go when they see they are an over-kill! Selecting the candidates with right qualifications helps them to remain motivated and to you as you pay less. SELECT PEOPLE WITH RIGHT ATTITUDE For the first 3-4 years, all SMEs employees need to forget their homes. It’s a fact. Many SMEs in the rush to recruit people look at talent and not at the person’s personal life. I would say its better to take a 90% performing employee with 110% personal satisfaction than recruiting some-one who may be 100% but 50% satisfied on his personal front! IMPLEMENT THE BEST PROCESSES For any SME, people come and go and this is something that you cannot escape from. So, rather than focus on why a person left and feel bad about it, please focus on how you can reduce the loss of his exit. If you have the best process, you could then be sort of people independent. Got manufacturing, ISO is good. For IT, there is CMMI. For BPO, there is COPC. There are indeed many more imperatives to make a SME successful and these are only handful. However, I am sure these would provide some insights for your benefit. I have not talked much about sales and cash management as these have often been talked about. The reason for focus on PEOPLE in my chapter above is simply because the SME success or failure is determined thru people. If they are good, sales and cash management would happen automatically!
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RAHUL KULKARNI SENIOR MANAGER – MARKETING, ASIA PACIFIC, SIEMENS ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATION
“WE ARE NUMBER ONE IN INDIAN MARKET” It is tough to make transition from one area to other because customers cannot accept it easily but Siemens Enterprise Communications is able to do so and gained of the SMEs. SME Channels spoke to Rahul Kulkarni, Senior Manager – Marketing, Asia Pacific, Siemens Enterprise Communication, to know more. Excerpts
How are you positioned in the Indian SME market? We are positioned number one in Indian market with about one fourth of the total market share and growing aggressively in voice and applications. Our product and solutions portfolio is the broadest and the most innovative not only for SMBs but also for LMEs. Siemens Enterprise Communications drives tangible business value for its customers by offering scalable, complete enterprise communication solutions that combine the power of its own products and services with open technology architecture to integrate complimentary industry and business solutions. With our solutions such as OpenScape Office, I would say we have been tapping the SME market most aggressively and successfully so far. What kind of trend you see globally for SME adoption of UC? How different is it in India? Let us rather consider the overall global trend in communications before zeroing in on UC adoption in SME to understand the whole ecosystem. Globally, some key megatrends driving enterprise communications have been most prominent. Like there are five key market trends – the beginning of the cloud era of communications– most driven by the forces of consumerization. Enhancements to the user experience along with seamless mobil-
ity have drastically changed, for the better; the devices we use and how and where we communicate. Social media, as a phenomenon, has defined a completely new way to communicate. Flexible deployment options give everyone choice in communications distribution and consumption. Lastly, reliability and security are now at a point where customers – enterprise and consumer alike – trust cloud-based applications. On the other hand, in India, one may easily register some critical trends, of late. Customers have started investing in communication solution which improves employee productivity. Video adoption in enterprise has increased substantially. Many customers migrated from simple voice mail to Unified Messaging solutions, green field customers started deploying full IP telephony solutions, audio-video integration in boardroom has taken centre stage, SME’s were faster to adopt technologies like Unified Communications, Wireless LAN in enterprise has seen biggest growth during last year. Coming years will see more rapid changes in both communications technologies as well as business models. On the technology front - Large Enterprise unified communications will be software-based, voice will be integrated into enterprise business processes and applications, Social networks and related communications will be integral part of enterprise communication, UC will move from ‘nice to have’
to ‘key competitive advantage’. On the business front - single vendor enterprise UC solutions do not seem very realistic, multi-Vendor services capabilities will be required, communication will move from infrastructure subject to Communications as a Service (CaaS). Which products are you pushing in SMEs? Small Medium Enterprises can improve business performance, excel in customer service and cut costs with our systems and platforms designed specifically to meet their needs. Our broad range of communications and collaboration systems help SMEs improve business performance by cutting down on lost time chasing voice mails or email, excel in customer service by putting their customers through to the right agent, with the right information at their fingertips. And they can even help reduce costs by making the communications more efficient. We provide the communications functionality SME segment needs, delivered on the platforms that best suit their business. They can integrate unified communications functionality into Microsoft Outlook, launch conferencing from their desktops or use the existing infrastructure, such as analog telephones or entry phones. OpenScape Office is the industry’s first UC application designed specifically for small- and
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SME CHAT
“WE OFFER SIMPLE AND SCALABLE UC AND COLLABORATION EMPLOYING GENUINE OPEN STANDARDS.” medium-sized businesses. OpenScape Office Contact Center makes it possible for SMEs to bring unified communications to their contact centers. HiPath 3000 is our flexible unified communications platform that scales from 20 to 500 users. HiPath 1100 provides high-performance telephony experience with up to 140 users support. Openscape Office MX Platform is an allin-one, unified communications appliance with network connectivity. OpenScape Office LX is the only unified communications and collaboration software solution built specifically for small and medium sized businesses. OpenScape Cloud Services offer on-demand access to enterprise-class unified communications applications. What kind of advantage you offer over the competition? Our USP is Open Standards. We offer simple and scalable unified communications and collaboration employing genuine open standards to ensure our UCC solutions integrate seamlessly with other applications and communications platforms. This Open Communications approach not only simplifies initial implementation and deployment, it also safeguards financial investment by enabling further expansion and integration to all future capabilities. Moreover, it makes them easier to use, driving user adoption and maximizing return on investment (ROI). The key
differentiators of SEN are: Long-term financial viability and future scalability, Impressive new management, Solutions interoperability, Investment protection, Wide breadth of solutions, services, and deployment models, Enable unified business responsiveness, Flexibility in delivering communications-enabled business processes. How has been your GTM and channel engagement strategy? As of GTM, Siemens had been determined to outperform the dismal market conditions of the past year, which it did based on shipments and revenues. The voice market last year was off by more than 20% and the data market by about 15%, though things were improving by year’s end. The company did better by several percentage points than overall market numbers, according to various research reports, for its voice/application and network infrastructure/security business units. On a very bright note, its professional/managed services business unit actually improved by 10% last year despite the down market. Second has been our strong initiative to shift its traditionally heavy focus on direct sales to more third party distribution channels. This would have the effect of greatly expanding market coverage and potential sales opportunities. Several key partnership relationships have been announced during the past year, such as the very recent deal
with Shared Technologies. Another significant partner announcement last year was NetLink’s acquisition of Siemens’ local assets across various countries. Our third GTM strategic chunk has been the organization of the company on a global basis focused on customers, markets, and channels. The historic focus of Siemens had been on large enterprise customers and global accounts. Though we have not ignored the small business segment, the strength of Siemens had been at the high end of the enterprise communications market with the strongest coverage of dispersed geographic markets with local corporate presence. Establishing world class benchmarks for its staff and field organizations and support structure is our primary goal still. And finally, Siemens has been impressively successful in restructuring itself to save more than 500 million Euros in costs. This was done by downsizing a relatively bloated organization, scaling back bureaucratic processes, and cutting back on various expenses such as travel, IT, and real estate. Recent and future cost savings mechanisms are designed to ensure long term financial viability and future scalability. On the Siemens voice and applications business unit: after a slow start a few years ago, shipments of our OpenScape platform began to take off substantially for both voice and UC/messaging licenses (though older technology offerings followed the overall market decline initially). Globally, OpenScape voice shipment orders increased last year by almost 10%, an impressive result considering market conditions. In the US market the increase was multi-fold, with individual system installation size increasing a factor of 50%. Some upcoming product announcements were also previewed, with the OpenScape name replacing the HiPath branding convention. Siemens remains a strong competitor on the worldwide stage for enterprise communications and a force in driving the development of the market. Our shipments of OpenScape platform have already begun to take off substantially for both voice and UC/messaging licenses. Our go to market & engagement strategy with regards to indirect business is to cover the bases as we cover the globe. Globally we have over 720 accredited and exceptionally loyal Channel Partners. We focus on Strategic LME clients too, select global & regional accounts and select vertical markets including Healthcare, Finance and Public sector. We have been striving to adapt and execute our Global Go-To-Market Strategy in India this year and initially it was a moving target given the dynamism of Indian market. We have so far come up in flying colours with the biggest market chunk. SME
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SME CHAT
SANDEEP DUTTA VP – STORAGE, SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY GROUP, IBM INDIA/SA
“WE WILL CONTINUE INTRODUCING CREATIVE BUNDLES AND PACKAGES” IBM is a leader in the sever business, the company has recently announced to have become the leader in the external disk storage business for FY 2010. SME Channels wanted to know more about this and spoke to Sandeep Dutta, VP – Storage, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/SA. Excerpts BY: SMRUTI CHAUDHARY info@smechannels.com
What are the reasons behind decline of External Disk storage market in India? The external disk storage, like the overall hardware market, was impacted due to deferred investments in Storage in FY 2010. However, data explosion is happening at an exponential rate across verticals and across market segments in India. The explosion of information created by business is making storage a strategic investment priority for companies of all sizes and we are optimistic about the outlook for 2011 and beyond. 2011 and beyond, will continue to see storage as a strategic investment priority for mid-sized companies. Customers will be focused on storage efficiency or doing more with the less, and this will see an increase in the adoption of consolidation, virtualization and de-duplication technologies. What was the mantra of IBM for clinging onto the No.1 position? Our storage business in India has been growing at a tremendous pace. According to IDC, IBM
maintained its leadership in 2010 with a 26.2% market share, in revenue terms, and over 4% points lead over its nearest competitor. We are investing both through acquisitions (like: XIV) and organic development (like Storwize V7000, SONAS) to drive innovation in key storage technologies across software and hardware. Additionally, we are making multimilliondollar development investments in high-end file storage, archiving solutions, disk virtualisation and tape density to continue to drive IBM leadership. These investments have helped us build the most robust portfolio of Storage offerings for our clients, further consolidating our leadership position in the market Which products have been the drivers of growth? The launch of a series of systems in 2010, including the IBM StorwizeV7000 and the IBM System Storage DS8000 devices, has helped strengthen the company’s leadership position in the market. StorwizeV7000 is designed to improve storage efficiency and costs while providing clients ease
of use and performance in a midrange package. DS8000 offers high-performance, high-capacity; secure storage systems that are designed to deliver high levels of performance, flexibility, scalability, resiliency and total overall value for the most demanding, heterogeneous storage environments. Our next-generation high-end open disk storage system, XIV has also met with huge success. The XIV system has an innovative grid architecture designed to deliver the highest levels of reliability, performance, scalability and functionality at low overall cost, while providing unprecedented ease of management. How have you motivated partners to do it for you? There are a couple of key factors that is driving business partner momentum when it comes to Storage. a) We are offering breadth of technology and help them tailor solutions to best fit market the partners cater to. We are doing a lot of testing to ensure that solutions and combinations work in that market. For example, IBM Storwize V7000 is
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SME CHAT
“IBM MAINTAINED ITS LEADERSHIP IN 2010 WITH A 26.2% MARKET SHARE, IN REVENUE TERMS, AND OVER 4% POINTS LEAD OVER ITS NEAREST COMPETITOR”
clearly the most innovative and easy to use midrange disk systems with enterprise class features. This is a hit amongst our partners. b) IBM is focusing heavily on enhancing partner skill sets across multiple cities through Training & Certification. c) Lastly, we continue to introducing creative bundles and packages which are financially attractive to partners and their customers.
focus will be on • Competitive migrations • Increase focus on hi-end storage : DS8K, SONAS (talk about cloud here) • Continue to gain share in mid-market, driven through channel partners (XiV, SVC/Storwize V7000, DS5K and N-series) • Bring our labs to our clients and partners • Increase our channel footprint
Which verticals have driven your market? Storage opportunity lies across verticals. However, the verticals we are seeing maximum traction in, include Telco, BFSI, Government/Public Sector and mid-market
Any new products you are going to add this time? We continue to be focused on bringing leading edge offerings to our clients and partners. We have a strong roadmap of launches and refreshes line up this year which we will bring to the market at an opportune time
What are your plans and strategy for this fiscal? We will remain focused on Consolidating & Maintaining our leadership position in the external storage disk space by continuing to gaining incremental market share and taking share away from competition. Towards this objective our
What are your upcoming branding and marketing activities? Business partners are an integral part of our strategy; hence we will be focused on launching programs that help up build a robust ecosystem. For example, Know Your IBM and Family
Holiday Carnival, Sone Pe Suhaga which are cross Brand programs that include Storage, were lined up in 2011 to engage and excite our partners. We will continue to roll our innovative and exciting programs in H2 2011, in addition to maintaining a stringent focus on partner enablement. Do you want to further grow from the existing market share? If yes you will notch up the competition pie or expand the market. As outlined earlier, we will be aggressively focused on both competitive migrations and market expansion to consolidate our # 1 position in the market. Mid-market for example will be a key focus area for us where we will continue to focus on aggressively increasing its presence in tier 2 and tier 3 cities through our geo-expansion strategy and building our partner base to take our new launches, such as DS3500 entry level disk storage series and StorwizeV7000 which is suited to address the requirements of mid-sized clients. SME
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SME BIZ
CISCO
VALUE BASED APPROACH MAKES
PARTNERS HAPPY
After a long patient waiting and learning from the market Cisco Consumer division has settled down with the fact that they want to focus on the high-end products where partners can add value for the customers and earn more margin. BY NEIL D’SOUZA info@smechannels.com
FACTS ABOUT Year of Operation in India
:
Since 2006
Direct Presence in India
:
Through 3000 channel partners, available in 150 cities in 2000 small retail stores and has 30 RMA exchange centres
Key People
:
Suresh Balasubramanian, National Sales Director, Cisco Consumer Products, India
Key products
:
Wireless-N Router, Wireless-N Access Point with Dual-Band, Wireless-N Broadband Router with Storage Link, Wireless-N Home Router, Wireless-G Home Router with SpeedBurst, Wireless-G Broadband Router, Dual-Band Wireless-N USB Adapter
Website
:
http://www.linksysbycisco. com/APAC/en/home
I
t is matter of time that necessitates companies to take various stances in the industry. When Linksys was acquired by Cisco way back in 2003, that time probably the market for home networking was not that much lucrative but Cisco had to invest in the technology to change its image of being an enterprise solution company to a holistic network company. And, Cisco knew very well that shortly the consumers market will assume a mammoth size. Clearly, Cisco was a leader on the enterprise side and Linksys on the home and consumer side, and the marriage could easily make the leader in both the worlds but the perception change did not go well. The company had to struggle and went on changing the name of this acquired company from Linksys to Linksys- by Cisco. Today they call it as Cisco Consumer products. Suresh Balasubramanian, National Sales Director, Cisco Consumer Products, India, says, “Rightly Linksys has gone through various avatars with various name changes. Now we are rechristened as Cisco consumer products. It has been a year that the company has gone through this transition. So as the name suggests, we’re entirely and wholly focus on consumer segment.” In the markets like India and other emerging markets the distinction between the products or
solutions for consumers and the SMEs is a very thin. It is very difficult to draw a line. There is overlap between them. Cisco Consumer Products does not shy away from this thought but their focus is the consumers segment and they reach out to them through the retail. Suresh adds, “Our products are available in all the retails stores including organised stores - right from the top format stores to very small Mom & Pop stores. The idea is to make the products available where the consumer go and purchase.” Suresh says, “There are certain products of ours which we position for the consumers but are sold to the SMEs channel as well. Here the channel is SIs who take the products for various projects.” So Cisco Consume Products not only are sold to the consumers but also consumed by the SME Channels, Suresh adds, “Although there is no validated data but my guess is that 70% of our products go to the consumers and 30% goes to the projects.” If 70% of products go the consumer market it means the consumer Wi-Fi market is really picking up. Today, there is an increased adoption of gadgets in the consumer household including PCs, Tablets, smart phones etc. So there is a need for increased connectivity inside the homes. And the primary need of all customers is to have all
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CISCO
FINAL QUESTION
SURESH BALASUBRAMANIAN, NATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, CISCO CONSUMER PRODUCTS, INDIA
WHAT IS THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF CISCO CONSUMER PRODUCTS?
With Cisco consumer products, you can run applications beyond browsing and email. You run audio, video and data applications even at homes. If you do not have a powerful product you cannot do it with ease. Cisco is able to provide you the same whereas competition products may not support that as they focus on the price than the applications. Secondly, the retailers are happy selling our products as they can add maximum value and earn more margins, which is a pain point at this point of time.
their gadgets talk seamlessly with one another. This is probably the reason why the home market for Wi-Fi is increasing. Of course at the moment it is a small one but its growth is quite high. There are various reports available in the market saying the total market size for wireless access points and Routers is at the threshold of 25 to 30 million dollars and growing at 20 points year on years. The market might be growing fast but why to deploy Linksys when the market has a huge number of brands with a very lesser cost? Suresh answers, “If the customers use internet for basic browsing and E-mails, then the cheaper alternatives are fine because the functionality is limited. But we see an emergence of segment of customers’ who require internet beyond just browser. A very obvious example is ‘Media streaming across various devices including smart phones, notebooks, PCs music players, HDTV, etc. But the basic
customer premises equipment or CPE will not support the applications. This is where we see a lot of traction happening and this is where we are different from others in the competition.” The second advantage is the brand name Cisco. Cisco is undisputed worldwide leader in the networking business. There is certain value and certain association with the Brand name for which the consumer are willing to pay more. But at the same time their expectation is also more. Cisco is assumed to be high priced. Suresh maintains, “There is a certain perception and myth in the market that Cisco products are very expensive but Cisco is very competitively priced. Incidentally it happens to be a challenge for us to go and educate the customers that Cisco is the world leader, we have the best of class products at the right price.” Interestingly Cisco’s bulk revenue still comes from the mass market products, with the starting price of sub Rs. 2000.
SME BIZ
Cisco is better off compared to others in India because Cisco has a huge presence in India. In fact in, Bangalore the company has a globalization centre, which is second headquarters outside US. Therefore the company has a solid head count presence in India also. The company focuses on a lot of channel enablement activities. A lot of activities revolve around retail stores. In the phase II the company expects to shift focus on consumer also. Suresh says, “We are the market leader in the overall category. Cisco is the number one player in consumer and enterprise segments of networking but as far as pure consumer segment is concerned my guess is, we stand within number 3 - some quarter no.1, another quarter no.2 or 3.” Cisco Consumer products bank on two tier distribution model. At the top are the national distributors who sell to tier 1 partners and subdistributors. They take products in bulk and sell to the retail stores. The company has pan in India presence - almost in all major citiescovering almost 300 cities and towns in the county.” The marketing activities are normally front - ended by its distributors and tier- 1 partners. In terms of feet on street, Cisco has regional managers who travel breadth and length of the county. And they have an extended feet on street programme as well. There might be 20 people located on various 12 cities in the county. The company actively do business with 3000 partners who are catered by distributers including Redington, Compuage and Neoteric. The first one has large geographic presence whereas the other two are nimble and agile. There might be some overlap but there are pockets where the smaller are very strong. As far as logistics is concerned everything is taken care of by distributors. But, as far as support is concerned Cisco has a toll free number and Accel Frontline as its support partner. The company has 32 replacement centres across the county managed by Accel. All their products come with 1 -3 years of warranty support and if anything goes wrong within the warranty period, then the customers are advised to take the products to any of the support centres and replace it.
Finally… Apart from the strong product line Cisco consumer products ensure strong bottom line which is better than the competition. Suresh maintains, “That is why the partners love us more than our competition. Our focus is on the higher end where partners get opportunity to add value. And, customers are willing to pay premium for the solutions.
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PARTNER CORNER
VINIT SHANGLE, HEAD - IT PERIPHERALS, SALORA INTERNATIONAL LTD.
ADAPTABILITY HELPS TO SUSTAIN GROWTH They say change is the only thing constant in the world. Those who go with the change are able to thrive in the market or else it is very difficult to sustain. Salora has adopted this philosophy in its future strategy.
7
0‘s and 80’s was the time when there was the upheaval of Television industry in India and Salora as a brand for TV was made a household name for its quality and aggressive pricing. Since then, the company has evolved in many phases and today we again see Salora in a new avatar as a dominant force in the IT distribution market. Vinit Shangle, Head - IT Peripherals, Salora International Ltd., says, “Salora has been there for last 35 years in the industry. Today, we are counted as one of the top distributors for many IT telecom, IT Hardware, consumer electronics and consumer components, lifestyle and so many products. For past few years we have been doing a lot of activities in IT and Telecom, etc. and want to consolidate our portfolio and re-emerge as a leader in the portfolio and comeback to the past glory in a few months from now.” He adds, “We have manufacturing for many of the consumer and life style products.” To justify Salora’s distribution strength the company distributes multiple brands including Acer PC, laptops and servers, MSI PC and laptops, Pleomax IT peripherals and Memory
products, Mercury motherboards, casings and speakers, Kingmax memory products, BPE UPS, Mobell Mobile phones, Motorola Mobile Phones, MTS mobile services, Tenda Wireless & LAN Networking products, Sharp office products, etc. Vinit adds, “We have a lot of plans to be on the track. To strat with in IT and Telecom, in the IT peripherals space we just added a company called Tenda. It is into networking space for the SMEs and Sohos. We introduced this product in India this month only and the plans are to take up good pie of the Rs. 500 crores industry.” On the other part, the company has been very aggressively selling Mercury range of products including TFT Motherboards, Memory modules, Speakers, UPS, Head-Phones and lots of other products. Pleomax peripherals have been there with us for last two years now. We have been selling their range of Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, Head-Phones, Ear-Phones, etc. The company is also a partner for BPE UPS, where they are selling online and off-line UPS into the trading segment as well as customers including banking segment. Of course the company is managing the back to back order from BPE for the Banking segment.
The core strength of the company lies in its strong infrastructure. The company has 28 branches spread across the country with over 30,000 sq.feet of warehousing space. Headquartered at Delhi, which is of over 4000 sq.feet, the branch offices are connected through an In-house ERP system, which has been working there for last so many years. In term of manpower Salora employs more than 1500 employees into sales, support marketing, back office, accounts, logistics and other departments. Salora is one of the proudest companies into IT distribution which is also registered in Bombay stock exchange and national stock exchange. Financially, it is one of the most stable companies. As per Vinit, these are the attributes which makes a lucrative brand or distribution house that the vendors or the principals should look at to tie up with. However the company does not come to the race of the top tier distribution houses. Salora is also much below the turnover of Tier-1 distributors. However including its business in various verticals, the company is today of Rs.1500 crores turnover. But the company is surely a national distributor. Only on the IT front, the
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PARTNER CORNER
FINAL QUESTION WHY IT IS SO THAT THE POPULAR PRODUCTS ARE GOING TO LARGE DISTRIBUTORS? WHY SALORA IS NOT IN THAT RACE?
When you are talking about the brands coming to India and getting into distribution sing-up with Tier-1 distributors, their strength lies in their quality and pull from the market than to do with a particular partner. Salora as a company has decided not to run for top line business. We are now more concerned about the bottom-line. Existence in the industry is very tough, the competition in the market is very high and the risk of bad debt is still very high. So we are not going into that space at all. WHICH ARE THE BRANDS YOU ARE ADDING NOW?
We have just added Tenda and we are not looking for any new brand in next six months, unless we establish, focus and we built up for certain percentage of the market, we’ll not add-up any new brand and unless/until we get an offer which is really exciting. Again the decision will depend on what kind of bottom line that we can add to the company. It will not be purely on a top-line business.
company is currently doing a Rs.500 cores of turnover but they are working on the target of around 800 cores. Currently Salora is working with Mercury, Tenda, Pleomax, BPE and Kingmax and Acer in the IT verticals. Beside this brand, the company has just introduced Salora branded mobiles, Salora 3G Data Cards and Salora SD cards. Currently Salora is working on reintroducing Salora as a brand with its own IT products. The company is working on a lot of products undeandr Salora brand. And in the coming years, as per Vinit, this is the driving force for the company at present and at future. But, the question here, whatever products the company has most of these are not pull products. To this Vinit answers, “Salora is 35 years into TV manufacturing. We still have our brand recall value. If you go to C, D and E class cities, people can recollect us. It is not so tough for us to get into the market – be it technology, IT, non-IT, etc. So that is where we are leveraging our strength on.” Having said that it is going to be a great push from the company but the company is not shying away from that. To talk about the recently added brand Tenda, the brand offers very good quality at an affordable price to the SMEs and SoHo market. Salora has got the products properly tested through a lot of in-house agencies. The installation is very easy and the price is very affordable yet at a quality which is at par with all international brands. Plus, their R&D and after sale support is very strong. They have identified India as a very big market and really want to focus on India. Issue with the Chinese companies is that they come, sign up and go. But this is the first Chinese company which is willing to invest in India in terms of setting up its own office for after sales support. They really want to invest money for marketing and after sales support, schemes and everything. They have realised India as a big emerging market for their products and they want to be there.
In term of after sales, the company has already set-up a toll free number for Tenda support. In terms of advertisements, since the products have just gone into market, Salora still waits for another month before they get into the print media campaign. In terms of other activities, they have already gone into the market with some small activities. In terms of schemes, Salora is going to introduce after a month. In fact there is plan for Tenda team to be in India towards the end of this month. They will decide the schemes and meet partners to understand the market and give a sense of their seriousness in their commitment to the market. Today the company has more than 1500 channel partners in India and the company is very strong in Delhi, Chandigarh, South Karnataka, East of India etc. Similarly in terms of competition, Salora thinks Tenda is not positioned against Netgear, D-link, Cisco and Linksys as they are the top of the line products. But the company is positioned against TipiLink, ZyXel and Belkin. The company has manufacturing of Salora TVs and TV components. The manufacturing is also doing a lot of speaker manufacturing. This is also another strength for the company to showcase to the vendors to tie up with them.
Finally… As far as service network is concerned, Salora has its own service centres by the name of Sil Care in 300 locations across country. This is also taking care of Tenda products. Besides the service arm is taking care of HTC, Huawei, Pleomax, Salora Mobiles, etc. the service arm is also making some more tie ups. The arm is growing year on year in the country. As far as its market share for each of the products are concerned, for Mercury Salora is second largest distributor in India. Similarly for Pleomax they are the exclusive distributor. For BPE they are also the largest distributor. For Kingmax they are also the exclusive distributor and finally for Acer and Motorolla they are the No.3 distributor in India.
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SME CHAT
GAUTAM GHOSH COUNTRY DIRECTORINDIA, MMD
“TO MINIMISE SELLING COST OF OUR PARTNERS WE ARE INVESTING IN MARKETING“ With the growth of Indian PC penetration, peripherals market has also grown exponentially. Specially, there is a huge competition in the monitor market. Vendors are trying to woo the customs with various marketing campaigns and how can the newly formed MMD stay behind. SME Channels spoke to Gautam Ghosh, Country Director- India, MMD to know about its strategy. Excerpts
Provide us a backgrounder of MMD and its product ranges? MMD (Multimedia Displays) is a wholly-owned company of TPV established in 2009 through a brand license agreement with Philips, and its role is to exclusively market and sell Philips branded LCD monitors worldwide. Four categories of Philips product lines are included under the agreement: the Business and Consumer Range of LCD monitors, All-in-One PCs, Public Signage and Monitor TV. Combining the strength of the Philips brand promise with TPV’s design and manufacturing
expertise and scale in desktop monitors and LCD TVs, MMD can deliver innovative products, faster and with better cost efficiency to the market. Currently MMD has launched a slew of Philips monitors ranging from thinnest monitor, Blade to energy efficient monitor, PowerSensor. What are the ranges of display products Philips range has today? The price range of Philips products vary according to their respective screen sizes and technical specifications.
Which products you think will drive Philips market in India? The whole product range of Philips monitors is unique and efficient in performance, in the sense that it can beat similar products of our other competitors. Gone are the days when huge desktop monitors ruled the pc market. Today, the need of the hour is to come up with something that’s sleek, energy efficient and still performs great. Our products fulfil all the criteria. Philips Blade monitor is the slimmest in its category with 12.9mm chassis whereas, Philips PowerSensor monitors are a smart monitor technology featuring a built-in “people-sensor”. What is the strength of Philips vis-à-vis the competition? Philips is a brand in itself, with the whole world aware of its advanced technology and unique products. It plays on its slogan, “Sense and Simplicity”, which compliments the nature of the products that come under its umbrella. The products are excellent performers and carry an elegant aura with them. They look sophisticated yet, powerful.
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SME CHAT
We give on-site service all across the country through more than 150 authorized partners. Customers just need to send an SMS the rest is taken care. We also have an in-house dedicated call centre connected through a toll free number. Our focus is to keep close track of our sales in each city and keep the spare parts nearer to our customers so that no time is wasted in moving the material from a central or regional warehouse, thereby resolving customer’s complaint within couple of days and in one visit itself. Customer just needs to send an SMS ‘PHILIPS’ to 56677 and rest is taken care. They can also call on our toll free number 1800-425-6396 or email us at india.callcentre@mmd-p.com. With margin coming down, how are you motivating the partners? Yes, margins are indeed a threat. To minimise selling cost of our partners we are investing in marketing to create a market pull so that they spend less in selling out our Brands. In addition we have offered lucrative terms to our partner to minimise the working capital cost.
“THE PRODUCTS ARE EXCELLENT PERFORMERS AND CARRY AN ELEGANT AURA WITH THEM. THEY LOOK SOPHISTICATED YET, POWERFUL.“
What is the total market size in India? Indian market for display poducts is around 350,000 a month as per IDC. Give us some market statistics on where Philips has market leadership? We are in the process of revitalising the Monitor Brand in Indian Market and are just into 6th month of the process. Wait and watch… Which are the verticals driving your business? Computers are needed everywhere and so are monitors. Sectors like SME/SMBs, education, government, IT, etc are the main driving forces of monitors business.
What is your channel and marketing strategy? We have rolled out a Regional Distribution structure. We have Technocrat in East, Roop Technologies in West, Global Distribution in North and Nook Micro (subsidiary of Redington) in South. The structure is 2 tier where in our Distributors will sell directly into Retailers and SIs. These distributors have good reach in their region to capture potential channel partners. We are doing marketing on our products by placing advertisements in all the leading magazines, sending EDMs, write-up, product reviews and events.We will also do retail branding like glow sign boards, in shop branding etc. What is your focus on after sales support?
Do you have any Channel engagement activity running at this moment? We have successful completed our “All India Premium Channel Partner Meet” that was held from April 27 2011 to May 2, 2011. The channel meet was aimed at launching MMD’s operations in India covering key partners and markets in the North (New Delhi), South (Chennai), East (Kokata) and West (Mumbai). The meet was also aimed at announcing the starting of MMD India operations for marketing and sales of Philips LCD & LED monitors in the key markets. The event really was to strengthen the relationship with ourpartners in these cities. Attended by around 350 partners, the event also showcased the launch of Philips Blade – possibly the slimmest monitor in India, along with Philips new range of monitors. Moreover, product demonstration and other initiatives such as presales and post sales support like toll free number and free SMS, was also announced. Actually, the India PC Display market has tremendous potential. We are glad that we have set up MMD infrastructure in India and introduced our new products at the right time. What kind of growth are you eying at this year? In this year, we are looking forward to be in the top five players list. SME
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TREND SETTER
GIGABYTE
EDUCATING
CUSTOMERS CAN HELP BUILD THE BRAND Gigabyte is investing in creating awareness among the customers about what IT can do for them. This is where they see creating their market than talking directly about Gigabyte. BY NEIL D’SOUZA info@smechannels.com
D
uring Q1 2010, Market Watchers had announced that Gigabyte Technology’s motherboard shipments are estimated to have reached 3.1-3.3 million units for the first two months of 2010, tied up with Asustek Computer’s shipment estimate of 3.2-3.3 million units. Similarly, Taiwan News Daily DigiTimes had reported “Asus may be on the verge of losing its top position in the motherboard market -- a spot the company has held for quite some time. With its well-rounded feature-sets and aggressive pricing, Gigabyte has garnered much fanfare over the recent years.” During the same month, the company had reached an industry milestone of 1 million SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) motherboards shipment, making GIGABYTE the single most widely adopted SuperSpeed USB platform in the world. The extensive range of GIGABYTE USB 3.0 motherboards were based on Intel X58, P55, H57, H55, P45 and P43 chipsets, as well as AMD 790FX, 790X, 770, 785G chipsets. In addition to providing USB 3.0 on its motherboards, GIGABYTE was also working with USB 3.0 device vendors to develop the USB 3.0 ecosystem through cross-validation, debugging and copromotion activities. Exactly after one year, during Computex 2011, the company launched a huge advancement upon its product lines. The highlight was Z68 Express Chipset series motherboards
including the world’s first motherboards to feature onboard mSATA for Intel SLC SSDs to enable Intel Smart Response Technology. They also showcased G1.Killer gaming series motherboards, the X58A-OC motherboard as well as their newly launched AMD 900 series motherboards. Similarly on the AMD platform the company had showcased GIGABYTE 900 series motherboards, supporting the forthcoming 8-core AMD FX processors. During Computex 2011, GIGABYTE G1.Assassin Motherboard had also won ‘Design and Innovation’ Award from TAITRA. Before going into Computex 2011, during the fag end of May, Gigabyte had taken the Indian market by storms. The company had under taken 3 city (Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata) conferences for the channel partners. It was a kind of roadshow where local channel partners were invited and imparted with knowledge about Gigabyte’s latest motherboard technologies, overview of upcoming products, and new sales & marketing strategy. The top management of the company including Tim Handley, Deputy Director – Motherboard Marketing; Alan Chen, Deputy Divisional Director – Asia Sales Division; Alva Liu, Account Manager – Asia Pacific, as well as Sunil Grewal, Sales Head – India had attended the event. On the sidelines of the Delhi Event, Mr. Grewal had spoken to SME Channels on the competitive advantage of Gigabyte. Revealing
about the market for Gigabyte in India, he said, “We had a change in business policy since Q3 2010 and since then things turned around for us. In Q3 2010 we had assumed 18% of growth. In Q4 2010 our growth was 36%. In Q1 2011, our growth was 18% and this quarter we want to rock back with 36% growth. Today, we have 22% market share. We are definitely catching up with our competition very fast. So the change the business process has really given us good growth.” The company has stopped local outsourced manufacturing. Their idea is to bring quality products to India. Sunil adds, “When you outsource you do not get that kind of quality which you can control while you have your own manufacturing. It has also reduced the time to market for any of our newly launched products. For example today we already have Z68 motherboard in India. Earlier when we plan a manufacturing in India the company used to send CKD through the ship and the sample pieces were going back to Taiwan for testing and by the time the product was in the market. It used to be 2-3 months in the process. But today it is hardly 15 days. Even we are able to ship by air.” So the time to market has reduced to great extent. Tim added, “We manufacture motherboards in Taiwan against the trend of outsourcing to China. India gets the same motherboards that go to Germany, Japan and Australia. We do
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GIGABYTE
SUNIL GREWAL, SALES HEAD – INDIA, GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY
“THE ENDEAVOR IS TO BRING DOWN THE AVERAGE TURN AROUND TIME (TAT) TO THREE DAYS, ANYWHERE IN INDIA.” not want to compromise with quality though the price is little at the higher side.” Tim quips, “If you want a BMW, you have to pay for a BMW.” Sunil maintains, “We ourselves are the competition to ourselves because we have to improve many things.” As far as market share is concerned Gigabyte with No.2 almost at par with Intel. Out of the assumable 2.6 lakh motherboards sold every month in India, Gigabyte does around 55-60 thousand where as Asus sells around 80-85 thousand and Intel does around the same of Gigabyte. Motherboard Business Unit within Gigabyte enjoys a special position in the company as near about 80 per cent of their business comes from this unit. In the motherboard business, service plays a major role. Earlier Gigabyte used to have SmartLink and Accel Fontline. But today from 1st of March 2011, they have only Accel as
their ASP, which has around 39 service centres and 81 collection points. Gigabyte is the first company to have two exclusive service centres one in Mumbai and another in Bangaloe with its own investment including manpower to the CNC machines. These centres are manned by 4 Gigabyte expert engineers in each location brought from Taiwan and China. So Gigabyte is committed to the Indian market. Apart from these two locations, vey shortly the company will bring out similar exclusive centres in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Kochi to take the number to six in India. Here also GIGABYTE will bring in about six engineers to support the existing manpower in these locations. The endeavor is to bring down the average Turn Around Time (TAT) to three days, anywhere in India. The company will also appoint its premium partners for collection as well. The objective is to offer the customers one point solution – sales and service. Besides, Gigabyte India has been carrying a mandate of organizing at least 25 SI meets in a quarter. The company does not want to press much on the brand campaign rather invests in educating partners and customers on the use of IT because the company believes that unless people understand IT they cannot use the quality products offered by Gigabyte or for that matter from other companies. Undoubtedly, Gigabyte comes with a different approach in the industry.
TREND SETTER
They believe in Innovation. For example, in 2006 the company bought out solid capacitor, which no body was using or expecting at that point of time. But, today every company is using this capacitor. Even today the company is working on the same parameter in binging more and more innovations to the customers. Today the company has 2000 partners working with 4 distributors including Redington, Ingram, Neoteric and Avnet. In terms of geographic presence, the strength of the company lies in Metros where as they need to work on the B-, C -and D - class cities. Of course the company already have 30-32 people working for Motherboard BU in India including representations in every state. Channel is their main stay, which contributes around 95% of their business. It is also a global mandate for Gigabyte. Globally the company already has notched up a very good number - around 19.5 million volumes out of the total number of 67 million motherboards – almost 30%, which is second in the race.
Finally… Sunil believes that India is a huge market and people have money power to buy every good and quality product. As Gigabyte offers quality products along with excellent service, it is a matter of some patient waiting that will make Gigabyte the Numero uno player in the Indian Motherboard market.
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REVIEW
BUY l
2011
l B EST
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NETGEAR WIRELESS RANGE EXTENDER
BU
PRODUCT
Y l BE
NEC M SERIES PROJECTOR THE NETGEAR UNIVERSAL WiFi range
BY MANAS RANJAN
extender allows you to keep your current
info@smechannels.com
NEC’S RECENTLY introduced new range of portable and Eco friendly M Series projectors oozes styles and great functionality. The range offers ease-of-use and is affordable without compromising on the rich visual experience. These models are developed to address the needs of corporate and educational institutions that are on a tight budget, yet require bright wired/wireless network projectors with remote monitoring and control capabilities. Specifically developed with the user’s experience in mind, the projectors are equipped with HDMI connector and a wired/wireless (option) LAN port for projecting high quality digital images. It also allows users to connect to a computer using a standard USB cable, bypassing the need for computer cables. The remote control of the projector is also capable of conventional computer mouse operations, thus eliminating the continuous switch between a mouse and remote for different operations during presentations. The projector also has a viewer function that allows one to project data stored on USB memory via the plug and play mode, enabling presentations to be made without a computer. Besides functionality, the M-series offers great environmentally friendly quotient as the projectors come equipped with the options of an ‘Auto Eco Mode’, which automatically adjusts the brightness of the projected image to suit the environment, and the ‘Eco2 Mode’ which reduces light intensity during small screen projections. These modes are easily accessible via Eco buttons on the projector and remote control for easy engagement.Further, the range comprises models including M350X, M300X, M260X, M230X, M300W and M260W.
wireless equipment and improve coverage
FEATURES n 5000 and 6000 hours lamp life (in
Eco Mode), n 2000:1 contrast ratio n Designed for a quiet noise level of 27
to eliminate “dead zones”, giving you the freedom to roam anywhere in the house and access Internet without worrying about coverage. It is compatible with wireless b/g/n routers, gateways and Internet service
dB (in Eco Mode)
provider’s devices. Four Ethernet ports enable
n Quick Cooling and Direct Power Off
you to connect to gaming consoles, Internet
n Auto Power On automatically switches
TVs, and Blu-ray players. Compatible with any
on the power n Virtual Remote n Wall Colour Correction for vivid
images n Auto Vertical Keystone Correction
wireless b/g/n router or gateway from Netgear and other brands, the Range Extender pushes ‘N’ Connect using Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) connects computers to the Extender quickly
n Built-in monaural speaker with a powerful 10W output
and securely. The Real-time link-rate LED
n Front ventilation for effective heat
optimal wireless coverage.
dissipation n The Carbon Meter lets you check the
amount of CO 2 you reduced by using Eco Mode
PRICE Start at Rs.36, 000
locates the best placement spot to provide It’s step-by-step, graphical Installation Guide makes installation easy. No need to insert a CD or plug in Ethernet cables. Once you connect the device to your pc or notebook, the browser directly takes you to the set up page that is www.mywifiext.net. You
WARRANTY
can easily go through the basics and sect con-
2 Yrs on Projector and on Lamps 3 Months or 500 hrs (whichever is earlier)
figuration and security as well. Remember it is
CONTACT
PC or other wireless client to the extender.
Kumar Abhinav, NEC India, Email: Phone number - 011-6110 1000, Email: kumar. abhinav@necindia.in
OVERALL RATING
an extender not an access point. It connects a
n Price: Rs 3835, Warranty: 2 Year, Contact: NETGEAR Technologies, Phone: 011- 41207446, Email: sales.india@netgear. com, Website: www.netgear.com
52 SME CHANNELS JUNE 2011
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PRODUCT
NEW ARRIVALS
ASUS
ASUS GTX550 TI DIRECTCU GRAPHICS CARDS KINGMAX
KINGMAX 2.5” SATA III SSD KINGMAX’S LATEST 2.5” SATA III SSD offers the standard SATA III 6 GB/s interface and expanded storage capacity of 512GB. It also supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) which increases the performance and efficiency of SSD by internally optimizing the execution order of commands; thus taking users on a high speed ride. KINGMAX SATA III SSD has a maximum read speed that reaches up to 415MB/s and write speed at 260MB/s that significantly shortens the boot up time and also reduces file transfer time for users. In comparison to the traditional hard drive, SSD replaced the motor and rotating disks with NAND flash to store data; this shift to using electronic transfer comes with many benefits such as higher stability, energy saving, noise-free and etc. Moreover, it considerably lowers the malfunction risk and enables users to enjoy a quiet working environment. In order to meet the demands of next generation OS, KINGMAX SSD also supports the Windows 7 TRIM command which optimizes write performance by clearing the garbage collection in the block and save the empty block for new write command. Other built in features such as Error Correction Code (ECC) and Global Wear Leveling function allow an even distribution of write commands to every block to ensure better performance, higher stability, and longer product life. n Warranty: 3 years warranty, , Price: on request, Contact: John Yeh, Kingmax Digital Inc., Phone: 886287727879, email: john.yeh@kingmaxdigi. com.tw
ASUS GTX550 TI DIRECTCU graphics card offers exceptional gaming performance. ASUS exclusive DirectCU technology offers the advantages of 20% more cooling out of its direct GPU contact, all-copper cooling design, as well as exclusive Super Alloy Power quality components for faster performance and longer lifespan. Super Alloy Power offers an exclusive ASUS development that injects a custom alloy mixture into critical power delivery components – offering a performance boost of 15% and running up to 35°C cooler than reference. Super Alloy Power graphics cards also average a 2.5* times longer product lifespan compared to generic designs. n Price: Rs 10,500 (excluding taxes), Warranty: 3 Years, Contact: Rohan Kadam, ASUS Technology Pvt. Ltd., India, Phone: +91-22-67668831, Email: rohan_kadam@asus.com, Website: http://in.asus. com
DIGISOL
WIRELESS GREEN BROADBAND ROUTER DIGISOL WIRELESS GREEN Broadband Router DG-BR4000NG enables communication between wireless and wired notebooks/desktop computers in the network and it also allows Internet connectivity to the network. The DG-BR4000NG wireless broadband router can provide wireless data transmission rate up to 150Mbps which enhances the sharing of files, photo, audio, video and gaming experience over wireless network. DG-BR4000NG is truly a high performance and cost-effective solution for your home and small business environments. An energy-efficient router, it helps to save power by using advanced power saving technology. When the wireless radio is idle i.e. no wireless client is accessing the WLAN network the router saves power by off-loading CPU. n Price: Rs 1350 Warranty: Lifetime, Contact: DIGISOL sales support, Phone: 1800-209-3444 (Toll Free) & 022-30616666, Email: sales@digisol.com or helpdesk@digisol.com
54 SME CHANNELS JUNE 2011
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RNI No.: DEL ENG / 2010 / 3192
Data of Posting: 22 & 23 of Every Month
Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4145/10-12
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