May Issue 2022

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Ingram Micro Inks Distribution Agreement with Submer /05 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business VOLUME 13 | ISSUE 03 | PAGES 44 | MAY 2022 | RS. 20/-

GUEST ARTICLE / 23

How AI Is Reshaping Storage Technologies.

SECURITY / 24

Toward Next-Gen Security.

INTERVIEW / 34

Orange to Focus on SDx, DC and Cloud This year.

CONNECTED Collaboration Solutions have transitioned from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ and are expected to register a double digit growth through 2022.- P/16

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IMG Launches iTravelInsured Essential Pg: 12 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business GUEST ARTICLE / 27

INTERVIEW / 30

7 Best Practices to Make Cloud Login More Secure.

Our Education System Should be Outcome-Based.

SME CHAT / 36

Juggling with Futuristic Technologies.

MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL

WHAT IF RECESSION SETS IN? SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

Dear Friends We in India are part of the global business village. If there is any global incident – be it pandemic, earthquake, hurricane, or war, it impacts the country. Today, when we are facing double whammy of extended pandemic in China, and Ukraine and Russia war, how can we be immune from the impact.

Due to the war, there is a shortage of host of products including petroleum, minerals, edible oil, and many more. The war has brought in sanction against the Russian block. Even though India is not in any block but then the ecosystem of OPEC is not supporting India from price point of view. Hence, the petroleum products are on a skyrocketing price. Government of India is trying to keep the pricing under control either by importing from Russia or giving price discussion on duties. It means government is spending more for every drop of petrol. The rice in petroleum products is increasing the price of the other

BenQ unlocks Premium Home Cinema Experience BenQ’s latest 4K UHD ultra-short-throw Laser TV projector, the V7050i with HDR-PRO CinematicColor, built-in Android TV, and Filmmaker Mode meets the standards of UHD alliance and ensures content delivery as intended by Director. The V7050i also comes with advanced motion estimation and compensation technology (MEMC). When it comes to rich entertainment content, the Googlecertified Android TV feature embedded in the projector ensures an extensive collection of movies, TV shows, sports for ultimate home entertainment. The intuitive and well-organized interface makes content exploration easy and quick.

products which are dependent on it. Today, raw materials, food items, commentary goods, airlines, automotive, clothes, household goods, IT supply, etc. are very highly priced.

On the other hand, since China is suffering lockdown in its major manufacturing facilities, there is acute shortage of IT products. For a long time, there is a short supply of chipsets which has impacted severely the production in automotive Industry. The IT industry is completely crippled by the hardware supply disruption. It is not unknown to all that China is the manufacturing hub for all brads of IT components and hardware. Only software cannot complete the IT requirement of the market.

We are talking about digital transformation surge in last two years. This is a good thing but hardware supply for refreshment of products and even for new projects are taking hit and delay in completion.

Pundits are of opinion that recession has already set in. The prediction is that except India, no other country can touch the growth rate above 7%. It means economy is volatile. The biggest market of consumption, US is seen to have entered recession as the inflation has gone as high as 40%. The first three months of the FY 2022 has not seen good economic activities. Plus, the country is supporting other countries in billion of dollars as part of their geo-political alliance. The major byers of US products are not seen picking up trade with the largest economy. But good thing is that US is now trying to engage with India directly. This is perhaps good thing for Indian business – specially the IT industry.

The nerve centre of Indian IT industry, Indian channel ecosystem needs to be cognizant about the entire situation how the

FEATURES: THE V7050I USES THE LATEST GENERATION 0.47-INCH TI DMD ECD CHIPSET WITH XPR TECHNOLOGY TO ACHIEVE ITS TRUE 4K UHD (3840X2160) RESOLUTION. ITS EXCLUSIVE CINEMATICCOLOR TECHNOLOGY AND 98% DCI-P3 COLOUR GAMUT COVERAGE, THE V7050I BRINGS OUT STUNNING COLOURS.

geo-political situation is unfolding going forward. They should be more investing in creating service capability so that they can ensure a recuring value for them.

FINAL WORDING: BENQ V7050I PROJECTOR IN COMBINATION WITH THE AMBIENT LIGHT REFLECTION (ALR SCREEN) HAS WON THE PRESTIGIOUS EISA AWARD FOR BEST PRODUCT 2021-2022.

SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

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contents

VOLUME 13 ISSUE 03

2022

MAR er Cov ry o t S

Trusted Advisor of Channel Business

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Sub Editor: Nidhi Shail Content Editor: Manash Ranjan Debata Designer: Shadab Khan Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Marketing Manager: Vaishali Shukla Circulation and Printing: Rajkumar Hansa SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-41055458 / 8587835685 sanjeev@smechannels.com Bangalore #28/1, 3rd Floor, Sri Lakshmi Krupa, Near Shamanna Park, Model House Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore - 560004 Ph. No. +91 88618 21044 Mumbai Tahmeed Ansari 2, Ground Floor, Park Paradise, Kay-Bees CHS. Ltd.,Opp. Green Park, Oshiwara, Andheri (west), Mumbai - 400 053.

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STAYING HYPER CONNECTED

EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New Delhi110016, Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@ smechannels.com

/ 16

Collaboration Solutions have transitioned from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ and are expected to register a double digit growth through 2022.

Bangalore #28/1, 3rd Floor, Sri Lakshmi Krupa, Near Shamanna Park, Model House Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore - 560004 Ph. No. +91 88618 21044 E-Mail info@ accentinfomedia.com

GUEST ARTICLE CALSOFT / 23

“How AI Is Reshaping Storage Technologies.”

Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya

SECURITY

Park, Hauz Khas

SECURONIX / 24

New Delhi-110016

“Toward Next-Gen Security.”

Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458 Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor,

INTERVIEW ORANGE BUSINESS / 34 “Orange to Focus on SDx, DC and Cloud This year .”

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Ingram Micro Inks Distribution Agreement with Submer Ingram Micro India has entered into a distribution agreement with Submer, a leading player in advanced immersion cooling solutions for Datacenters and Cloud and Edge computing. As part of the agreement, Ingram Micro will deploy Submer’s high-tech sustainable immersion cooling solutions in India.

Currently, Datacentre industries are witnessing strong growth in India. To reduce environmental impact and improve the possibilities of heat reuse, Submer aims to offer solutions that balanced business needs and sustainability. Submer’s cutting-edge solutions designed for Datacenters and, Cloud and Edge computing are purpose-built highdensity compute, that harnesses the power of Immersion Cooling. The solutions also address challenges

like heat-reuse, zero water and site selection. The adoption of Immersion cooling technologies enables infrastructure to perform highpowered computing seamlessly.

On the partnership, Navdeep Narula, Executive Director, Mobility, Compute and IoT at Ingram Micro India said, “We’re very excited to team with Submer – known for its core next-generation Immersion Cooling solutions. Submer will help us deliver modular immersion cooling solutions to offer Smart Datacenter to make a difference for customers with sustainable and renewable technologies to reduce the environmental impact of the datacenter industry. It will address some urgent issues like energy saving, carbon footprint and watersaving technology for accelerating expansion.”

Netpoleon Partners with Data Resolve Technologies to Strengthen Cybersecurity Offering in India Netpoleon and Data Resolve Technologies are engaged in a distribution agreement to enable greater availability of Data Resolve Technologies’ solutions among Indian organizations.

Under the agreement, Netpoleon will offer Data Resolve Technologies’ solutions including inDefend Advanced, inDefend Business, SEG, Desksight.Ai. Netpoleon’s

technical engineers will undergo a training program and be certified

by Data Resolve Technologies, enabling them to deliver expert and specialized support to businesses across India.

This partnership will bring together Netpoleon’s extensive network and Data Resolve Technologies’ comprehensive suite of intelligent security solutions to

pursue their mutual goal of protecting end users, end points, and businesses from data leakage.

“By partnering with Netpoleon our new Indian distributor, we aim to take our mission one step further and accelerate our growth many folds by increasing our customer based and engagement through trust, reliability, and persistence in providing the best possible way to

protect their data and increase their efficiency which is core to their business,” said, Dhruv Khanna, CEO and Co- Founder of Data Resolve Technologies.

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

Digital Labs, an innovative education programme, is designed to hand-hold school going children aged 11-14 years, through their first experience with the world of programming and new technologies. By creating an open atmosphere for learning, Digital Labs aim to help students to embrace technology and acquire a problem-solving approach.

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

The partnership aims to establish ten Digital Labs at Vodafone Idea Foundation schools in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

P Balaji, Chief Regulatory and Corporate Affairs Officer - Vodafone Idea Limited, and Director - Vodafone Idea Foundation said, “Exposing school going children to coding and robotics helps spark creativity, stimulates critical thinking, imbues a collaborative mindset and opens up a world of opportunities.

Exotel Appoints Pranesh Babu, as SVP of Delivery and Support Exotel has appointed Pranesh Babu as SVP of Delivery and Support. In his new role, Pranesh would lead the Delivery team in solutions designing, customer onboarding and revenue realisation strategies for large enterprises. In addition, he would also lead Support initiatives ensuring Exotel’s customers continue to receive the best-in-class service round the clock.

Pranesh Babu has 30+ years of experience in the telecom services domain. Pranesh joined Exotel from Cisco Systems, where he was Director for Services handling TAC (Technical Assistance Center) Support and Project Delivery roles. He also worked with Sify Technologies for 14 years, where he served as President and CTO of Network and Service Engineering.

Customer engagement tech is the backbone of any business, and welldesigned engagement journeys can transform CX and growth outcomes.

We want to provide world-class solutions design, execution and support to our customers,” said Ishwar Sridharan, COO & Co-founder of Exotel.

“Pranesh is a renowned industry leader and brings with him deep experience in building and scaling Customer Experience teams. Customer Support and Solutioning have always been Exotel’s strength, and with Pranesh, we hope to make it our differentiator.”

Gartner Announces the 2021-2022 Genius Brands in the Gartner Digital IQ Index Table 1. The 2021-2022 Gartner Genius Brands Industry Aerospace & Defense Auto Beauty and Personal Care Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Food & Beverage Hospitals & Health Industrials & Chemicals Insurance Luxury Mono-Brand Retail Multi-Brand Retail Pharma RX Retail Banking Travel & Hospitality Wealth & Asset Management

Brands Bell, Honeywell Aerospace, Leonardo Ford, Mercedes-Bez, Toyota L’Oréal Paris, Maybelline, Pampers Clorox, Miracle-Gro, Tide Ben & Jerry’s, Folgers, Red Bull Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center Benjamin Moore, CAT, John Deere GEICO, Progressive Insurance, State Farm Kate Spade, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co. Dell, Lenovo, Nike Amazon, The Home Depot, Walmart Dupixent, Trelegy, Trulicity Capital One, Chase Bank, Discover Bank Domino’s, VRBO, Taco Bell Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments, TIAA

Notes: The Gartner Digital IQ Index is more than just a list,” said Beland. “It’s a tool that helps marketing leaders contextualize brand health and investments, imagine new opportunities and inform their strategic roadmap amidst disruption.

Source: Gartner (May 2022)

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EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT

AMIT LUTHRA APPOINTED MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS GROUP (ISG), LENOVO INDIA MANEESH SHARMA HAS JOINED LAMBDATEST AS CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER PARK PLACE TECHNOLOGIES APPOINTS DAVID CRAMER AS ITS PRESIDENT OF SOFTWARE, MANAGED AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES STRATEGIC BUSINESS UNIT

VERTIV HAS APPOINTED GIORDANO ALBERTAZZI AS PRESIDENT, AMERICAS

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SirionLabs Secures $85M in Series D Funding SirionLabs has received a fresh round of $85 million in Series D funding led by Partners Group, a leading global private markets firm, acting on behalf of its clients, with participation from existing investors Avatar Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global. This brings the total raised by SirionLabs to $157 million – a significant milestone for the company since it was founded in 2012 by entrepreneurs Ajay Agrawal, Kanti Prabha, Aditya Gupta and Claude Marais as it more than doubles the company’s capitalization.

The investment will enable SirionLabs to continue expanding its leadership position in the rapidly growing enterprise CLM market, which is projected to reach $3.3 billion by 2027.

“The two biggest challenges in CLM are aligning post-award performance with contract terms and automating the import of legacy documents using AI,” said Ajay Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO of SirionLabs.

“The SirionOne platform has a compelling technology advantage in both of these areas. This capital allows us to seize the moment, accelerate product innovation and bring our award-winning solution to an increasing number of enterprise customers.”

The funding from Partners Group will support scaling SirionLabs’ operations, which includes adding up to 200 employees to its global workforce.

Matrix Joins Hands with Intellve as a Technology Partner Matrix has joined hands with Intellve Solutions as a technology partner.

Intellve has developed state-of-the-art integrated, intuitive and intelligent operative Command and Control centre applications (Intellve ICCC) for smart cities, large enterprise operational security, and e-surveillance for BFSI and for safety & security of the critical infrastructure.

Matrix developed an integrated access control and visitor management solution with Intellve Solutions intelligent command and control centre for Indian Oil Petronas Private Limited, Haldia. The Command and Control Center Platform helps the client successfully manage complex operational environments by giving real-time alerts. Integrated maps, GIS, alarm reporting, rule engine SOPs, integrated real-time dashboards, Pattern & Trend Analysis and other features can help the enterprise to manage its operations better.

Kaushal Kadakia, Marketing Manager, Matrix says, “This interoperability will provide a point of control to the end customers for managing the crowd flow in their premises without any technical glitches. Furthermore, system integrators can suggest both solutions to end customers without worrying about the integration part for a seamless operation.”

LTI to Merge with Mindtree The Boards of Directors of LTI and Mindtree at their respective meetings have approved a composite scheme of amalgamation of both these independently listed IT services companies under the Larsen & Toubro Group. The proposed integration will see LTI and Mindtree join forces to create an efficient and scaled-up IT services provider exceeding $3.5 Bn. The transaction is subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

Both the companies have delivered better financial performance and created value for shareholders. Given that recent industry shifts (e.g., prominence of large deals, preference for endto-end offerings) are benefitting at-scale players, the two companies have decided that the time is appropriate to combine the strengths of both organizations to better serve the customers.

Significant scale benefits are anticipated through LTI and Mindtree’s complementary strengths resulting in a stronger portfolio of offerings across verticals. Enhanced customer engagement and delivery model through industrialization of delivery and streamlined value-enabling processes is expected to result in improvement in large deal capabilities.

LTI Innovation Studio for SAP Business Technology Platform Launched at SAP Sapphire Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI) has launched its LTI Innovation Studio for SAP Business Technology Platform at the 2022 SAP Sapphire conference. The LTI Innovation Studio for SAP Business Technology Platform helps global organizations accelerate their transformation journeys with the RISE with SAP solution and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). The studio helps businesses realize the vision of an intelligent enterprise and enables them to amplify value from their digital core investments.

LTI Innovation Studio for SAP Business Technology Platform powers digital transformation with ready-to-deploy industry leading digital apps, microservices and a migration cockpit. It is a set of services and tools that can improve operations by automating business processes, making them smarter, easier to use, and more efficient by utilizing key components of SAP BTP like SAP HANA, the SAP Analytics Cloud solution, AI, machine learning, enterprise integration APIs and the UX extensibility tools.

Kyndryl Enters Strategic Partnership with Red Hat Red Hat and Kyndryl today announced a strategic partnership to help customers embrace open, differentiated automation technologies and managed services to modernize core business applications and IT infrastructure, while enabling scalable enterprise operations and greater resilience with advanced security capabilities. Together, Red Hat and Kyndryl will offer integrated services and solutions based on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate critical workloads from the enterprise datacenter to the edge and across public clouds.

As per the agreement, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform becomes the primary enterprise automation solution across Kyndryl’s infrastructure services, with Kyndryl as a leading service provider for Ansible Automation Platform. Kyndryl is currently one of the largest global users of Ansible Automation Platform, running tens of millions of automations and managing more than 500,000 customer endpoints worldwide.

Kyndryl plans to further scale its automation architecture through joint engineering work with Red Hat to extend its storage and network automation capabilities across its services team.

In addition, Kyndryl and Red Hat will establish an Ansible Innovation Center to co-create solutions and help customers realize hybrid cloud transformation by automating IT operations and services from the infrastructure level to the cloud and the edge.

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Palo Alto Networks Calls on Cybersecurity Industry to Adopt ZTNA 2.0 Palo Alto Networks today urged the industry to move to Zero Trust Network Access 2.0 (ZTNA 2.0) — the foundation for a new era of secure access. ZTNA was developed as a replacement for virtual private networks (VPNs) when it became clear that most VPNs did not adequately scale and were overly permissive, but the first-generation ZTNA products (ZTNA 1.0) are too trusting and can put customers at significant risk. ZTNA 2.0 solves these problems by removing implicit trust to help ensure organizations are properly secured.

“This is a critical time for cybersecurity. We are in an era of unprecedented cyberattacks, and the past two years have dramatically changed work — for many, work is now an activity, not a place. This means that securing employees and the applications they need is both harder and more important,” said Nir Zuk, founder and chief technology officer at Palo Alto Networks. “Zero trust has been embraced as the solution — and it is absolutely the right approach! Unfortunately, not every solution with Zero Trust in its name can be trusted. ZTNA 1.0 — for example — falls short.”

Synechron Expands Presence with 8th Office in India

Cyware Launches Automated ISACto-ISAC Operational Collaboration Initiative Cyware has expanded its technology offering to build the Industry’s first multi-sectoral operational collaboration network by enabling automated cross-sectoral threat intelligence sharing between information sharing communities (ISACs).

Conventionally, threat intelligence sharing between industry sectors has been limited and never completed at this scale where sectors including healthcare, space, energy and natural gas, retail, manufacturing, operations technology, legal services, education, and maritime transportation have joined hands to share malware and vulnerability advisories as well as Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and threat mitigation strategies with each other in real-time. The initiative will enable organizations in one sector to learn from threats seen by organizations in other sectors and proactively take necessary mitigation measures and defend against common threats.

Synechron Holdings Inc. today unveiled their new office in Pune, India. This is their 8th office in the country and 3rd in the city of Pune after setting up offices across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad.

This new, state-of-the-art facility is located at the EON IT Park, one of the largest financial hubs in India.

The new office is expected to further amplify the Synechron’s growth story in India. The new 50,000+ sq. ft. workspace will accommodate 600+ employees in their Offshore Development Centre (ODC) and will also house their 13th Global Financial Innovation Labs (‘FinLabs’). At the moment, Synechron has its global FinLabs located in New York, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Charlotte, London, Paris, Novi Sad, Amsterdam, Dubai, and Singapore, and they play a significant role in showcasing and advancing global digital transformation initiatives for the financial services industry.

Robust Response to Schneider Electric’s “Green Yodha” initiative

NFTICALLY Makes Minting NFTs Free For Users

Schneider Electric has received tremendous response from businesses and communities alike, towards its sustainability initiative, Green Yodha.

This Earth Day, as India Inc. commits to climate action, Schneider Electric continues to strengthen its pledges to ‘Invest in Our Planet’ through its Green Yodha initiative which enables the digital transformation of energy management and automation, focusing on the urgency of transitioning to a green economy.

Within four months of its launch, Government Stakeholders, such as NITI Aayog, Ministry of Jal Shakti and Central Electricity Authority; and eminent industry partners such as JK Cement, Pepsico India, Marriott India, Haldirams, UST Global, Capgemini, have already become Green Yodhas.

25+ credible global climate leaders and activists too have endorsed the initiative organically.

This India for India i4i initiative is helping businesses be up to 30% more energy efficient by optimizing energy consumption and reducing downtime.

NFTICALLY, India’s first global NFT marketplace creator & B2B SaaS is excited to announce that now it will allow the minting of NFTs without any gas fees on the Polygon network. The feature is enrolled to support the pockets of the users who earlier paid hefty amounts as a minting fee and were held back from minting their NFTs. This change will further boost creators, artists, businesses, and basically, anyone who is looking to get their NFTs on the market to create and mint their NFTs without any hassle of gas fees. The move comes to promote more NFT creators to enter the NFT ecosystem without the fear of bearing heavy costs.

NFTICALLY has also reduced gas fees on other blockchains via Shared Smart Contract and adapted ERC20 payment tokens with the option to enable or disable them. Once the user gets their ERC20 tokens activated on the NFT Marketplace, NFTICALLY provides them with the option or flexibility to enable/disable them as per their requirements. The platform has also enhanced the flexibility to add Tether USD and Wrapped Currency as an additional payment option for the users.

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AMD Enables 4G/5G Radio Access Network Solutions to Support Meta Connectivity Evenstar Program AMD has announced that its Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC has enabled the development of multiple Evenstar radio units (RUs) to expand 4G/5G global mobile network infrastructure. As the demand for internet connectivity continues to grow at a rapid pace, the infrastructure that supports it needs to keep pace and improve. The Evenstar program, led by Meta Connectivity, is a collaborative initiative between operators and technology partners to build adaptable, efficient and metaverse-ready radio access network (RAN) reference designs for 4G and 5G networks in the Open RAN ecosystem.

Evenstar RUs with Xilinx Zynq RFSoC architecture provide the flexibility to meet a wide range of requirements including 4G/5G, mmWave, and sub-6GHz using the same foundational hardware.

Lenovo Teams up with TNS India Foundation to Create Employment Opportunities Motilal Nehru Government Polytechnic College in partnership with Lenovo India and TNS India Foundation (TNSIF) hosted a certificate distribution ceremony to commemorate the successful training completion of 150 students under the Campus to Corporate Careers Program. Around 100 students, who were part of this program, were provided on-the-job training at the Lenovo Manufacturing plant in Puducherry. These students have now been placed at manufacturing companies in and around Puducherry including, Lenovo India Pvt. Ltd, Yamaha Music India Pvt. Ltd, Foxconn Technology India Pvt. Ltd and Leo Fasteners by TNSIF. Nearly 150 students who participated in this program were pursuing Diploma courses from Motilal Nehru Government Polytechnic College and ITI courses from Women’s ITI college – Vambakeerapalayam, Puducherry & Women’s ITI College – Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu. All students were trained in soft skills and given career counseling and job placement support.

Celebrating 20 Years in Business, ManageEngine Announces India Expansion Plans ManageEngine has turned 20. Celebrating the completion of twenty eventful years in business, the company announced its plans to grow its Indian workforce by 1,000 employees in 2022. This year marks two decades of the company’s innovation, growth and success as a leading global technology provider.

Since 2002, it has served over 2,80,000 organisations, spanning over 190 countries across the globe.

Speaking to newsmen at the ManageEngine USERCONF’ 22 Bengaluru, Sridhar Vembu, CEO and co-founder of Zoho Corp., said, “We invest heavily in R&D, product design and integration, so that our customers can accelerate their own digital transformation. We invest heavily in support so that our customers have a reliable partner to navigate a fast-changing landscape. We are in IT for the long haul, so customers can trust us to be around.”

BenQ Ranks No.1 in Overall Projector Segment: Futuresource Consulting Survey BenQ has been named the No. 1 brand in the overall projector category by a Futuresource Consulting Survey. BenQ India has registered a 30% market share vis-à-vis other competitions in Q1’22. The company also holds the first position in terms of market share for both B2C and B2B projector segments.

COVID-19 has been a catalyst contributing to market growth in the home video segment. As a result, sales volume in the 4K UHD resolution segment increased by 34% YoY in Q1’22, and BenQ is reported to have a market share of 53%. Moreover, in terms of sales volume, the portable projectors for home segment grew by 82% YoY in Q1’22, with BenQ leading the market with a 50% market share. Another form factor which has seen stupendous growth is the 4K Laser TV in which BenQ has a formidable 51% market share.

Q1’22 also saw the reopening of educational institutes and corporate offices. This led to the increase in demand for B2B projectors. In this sub-category, the WXGA segment grew the most in volume by 108% YOY and BenQ is the market leader with 50% share in Q1 ’22. BenQ is also the number one brand in the Full HD data projectors with 27% market share.

DIGEST ORACLE ENHANCES ITS CLOUD SECURITY CAPABILITIES WITH INTEGRATED THREAT MANAGEMENT ORACLE IS EXPANDING THE BUILT-IN SECURITY SERVICES AND CAPABILITIES OF ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE (OCI) TO HELP CUSTOMERS PROTECT THEIR CLOUD APPLICATIONS AND DATA AGAINST EMERGING THREATS. FIVE NEW CAPABILITIES ROUND OUT OCI’S ALREADY COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY OFFERING, INCLUDING A NEW BUILT-IN AND CLOUD-NATIVE FIREWALL SERVICE AND ENHANCEMENTS TO ORACLE CLOUD GUARD AND ORACLE SECURITY ZONES. THESE IS EXPECTED TO HELP ENSURE THAT ORGANIZATIONS CAN EASILY SECURE THEIR CLOUD DEPLOYMENTS AND APPLICATIONS WITH SIMPLE, PRESCRIPTIVE, AND INTEGRATED SERVICES THAT IN MOST CASES, DO NOT REQUIRE ADDITIONAL INVESTMENT.

ZEBRONICS LAUNCHES ‘UNLEASH THE CHAMPION’ CAMPAIGN WITH ACE CRICKETERS CELEBRATING ITS ONGOING 25TH ANNIVERSARY, ZEBRONICS HAS LAUNCHED ITS NEW CAMPAIGN “UNLEASH THE CHAMPION”.

FEATURING ACE CRICKETERS, THE CAMPAIGN RESONATES WITH THE BRAND’S MESSAGE OF MOTIVATION, OVERCOMING CHALLENGES, AND THE COURAGE TO BEAT THE ODDS, WHICH IS WHAT THE BRAND HAS BEEN DOING WITH ITS ‘ALWAYS AHEAD’ IDEOLOGY. ZEBRONICS RECENTLY RELEASED FOUR VIDEOS FEATURING ACE CRICKETERS, AND 2 MORE WILL FOLLOW AS PART OF THEIR CAMPAIGN TITLED “UNLEASH THE CHAMPION” WITH MULTIPLE CRICKETERS LIKE KULDEEP YADAV, UMESH YADAV, MOHAMMAD SHAMI, RUTURAJ GAIKWAD, ROBIN UTHAPPA, & DINESH KARTIK TO CONNECT AND FURTHER STRENGTHEN THE BRAND’S APPEAL AMONG THE NEW-AGE AUDIENCE.

TELENGANA ITE&C MINISTER INAUGURATES NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 3D PRINTING IN MEDICAL DEVICES AND IMPLANTS HYDERABAD HAS HOSTED THE FIRST EVER NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 3D PRINTING IN MEDICAL DEVICES AND IMPLANTS AT THE HYDERABAD INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION CENTRE (HICC). THE CONFERENCE WAS ORGANIZED BY THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING (NCAM), HYDERABAD IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF TELANGANA AND THE MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (MEITY), GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. HON’BLE MINISTER FOR ITE&C, INDUSTRIES AND MA&UD, SRI K T RAMA RAO INAUGURATED THE EVENT ALONG WITH MS. MICHELLE WADE, COMMISSIONER – SOUTH ASIA AT GLOBAL VICTORIA, STATE GOVERNMENT OF VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA. THE DAY-LONG NATIONAL CONFERENCE FEATURED EXHIBITIONS OF THE LATEST 3D PRINTING TECHNOLOGY, PANEL DISCUSSIONS ON THE LATEST TRENDS, APPLICATIONS.

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PayU launches Checkout for Bharat in 7 regional languages PayU has launched Checkout for Bharat today, which offers payment flow & checkout in major Indian languages. With this feature, merchants can offer customers a localized shopping experience in Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada which are the first languages of 79% of Indians. This feature helps merchants avoid customer drop-offs at payment due to language issues and penetrate the underserved tier 2, 3, and rural markets.

Businesses typically face a drop in transactions because of language barriers, as 75% of Indian internet users prefer local languages. PayU seeks to address this with Checkout for Bharat, whose optimized language feature is designed to attain up to 100% accuracy in translating information. The feature will personalize & improve the payment experience by saving customers’ language preferences for a quicker turnaround during the next purchase. Merchants can set a default language of their choice for checkout and users can also select their preferred language option for the checkout page.

Vedanta Certified as ‘Great Place to Work’ Vedanta Group, India’s leading producer of metals and oil & gas, along with its business units, have been accredited as Great Place to Work, for the second consecutive time.

Vedanta Group businesses including Cairn Oil & Gas, BALCO, TSPL, ESL, Iron Ore Business, Vedanta Jharsuguda, and Hindustan Zinc have also received the global certification. The survey was rolled out across all Vedanta Business units with engagement scores showing significant improvements.

Vedanta Group CEO, Mr. Sunil Duggal said: “We are delighted to receive this global recognition from Great Place to Work for the second year in a row. To be recognized among the most aspirational employer organizations around the world is extremely encouraging. We consider our employees to be our greatest assets and we strive to empower them to drive excellence and innovation in whatever they do.”

Innodisk Showcases Innovative Edge AI Computing Capabilities at Computex 2022 Innodisk exhibited its industrial-grade PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe SSD with namespace technology, which delivers better read and write efficiency, and a longer lifespan. Offering a temperature tolerance of -40°, all the way up to 85°C, as well as support for AES 256-bit encryption, this SSD is a game changer for industrial applications.

In the face of harsh environments and new types of industrial control systems, Innodisk introduced the world’s first Ultra Temperature DDR4 DRAM module, which goes beyond the typical industrial-grade temperature range to support -40° to a scorching 125°C. The series brings new features to the table, opens the door for new applications, and passes multiple strict tests to prove its industrial resilience.

Innodisk also showcased the first M.2 2280-to-single 10GbE Base-T Ethernet module, which is the smallest 10GbE expansion solution available today, and ten times faster than standard Ethernet.

Honeywell and Narayana Health To Co-Create Healthcare Technologies Honeywell has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Narayana Hrudayalaya Limited (Narayana Health) to identify, assess and collaborate on opportunities for the latter’s digital transformation journey. This will enable Narayana Health to offer technologydriven, affordable and accessible healthcare for all. The MoU is subject to definitive agreements to be executed between Honeywell and Narayana Health.

“These are times of great promise and even greater opportunities in healthcare innovation.

At Honeywell, we recognize this and have pivoted towards the development of technologies that will shape the future of healthcare delivery. The MoU with Narayana Health – one of India’s foremost healthcare service providers – offers us an opportunity to create a strategic technology development roadmap that will eventually transform India’s healthcare industry,” said Suresh Venkatarayalu, Chief Technology Officer, Honeywell. “Sensors and digital technology will disrupt health care delivery. Narayana Healthcare is delighted to work with Honeywell to develop digital technologies for making health care safer, more accessible, and more affordable.

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10x partners Westpac to launch a robust transaction banking platform 10x Banking has agreed to deepen its partnership with Westpac, to launch a market-leading transaction banking platform for the bank’s institutional clients.

10x Banking is going from strength to strength with clients across three continents including the successful launch of Westpac’s Banking as a Service offering (BaaS) last year. The move into supporting Westpac’s transaction banking business is a hugely significant step in 10x’s strategic growth plans while also underlining our clients’ confidence in our platform’s ability to support their ambitions.

Antony Jenkins CBE, Founder, Chairman and CEO of 10x Banking commented, “The banking industry is experiencing a radical change and Westpac is taking a leading role in its transformation. Using our technology to underpin the new platform is a logical next step in its move to cloud native technology.

At 10x we’ve built the technology I always dreamed of when I was running businesses in banking. We are excited to extend our partnership with Westpac.”

SNIPPETS

Lyca Mobile to Deploy Flytxt CVM Accelerator Solution in EU & US Lyca Mobile will deploy Flytxt’s AI-powered Customer Value Management (CVM) Accelerator across its seven largest markets –Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the US and the UK. Lyca Mobile announced the implementation of Salesforce solutions earlier this year to unify customer data and interactions on multiple channels in order to drive personalized customer interactions. Flytxt’s CVM Accelerator will feed actionable customer and product insights for Lyca to maximize Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) across these personalized interactions.

CVM Accelerator is a purpose-built AI that seamlessly integrates with any CRM or CX environment to deliver actionable intelligence for maximizing CLTV. Its power was demonstrated during a one-month pilot project in one of Lyca Mobile’s European markets. Lyca harnessed the predictive insights from the Accelerator while executing marketing campaigns through Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which resulted in 1.3% increase in ARPU. Jogan Satkunanathan, Chief of Pricing and Product Management at Lyca Mobile, said: “We wish to place customers and digital capabilities at the center of our business strategy as we enter the next phase of our ambitious growth journey.

ElectricPe Inks Partnership with Electric One ElectricPe, an EV charging platform, has partnered with Electric One, an EV Super Stores Chain, to provide robust charging infrastructure and encourage EV adoption. Through this alliance, Electric One customers across 82 stores in India will get access to ElectricPe’s EV platform.

The alliance will be executed phase by phase, starting in Bengaluru, before scaling across different regions, providing EV customers access to on-demand charging at the click of a button. It will also strengthen ElectricPe’s network, which has already onboarded 2,500 public charging points in Bengaluru, the largest network in the city.

“At ElectricPe, we have an unshaken vision to establish the largest network of charging points across India on our platform. Electric One has 82 physical stores, servicing multiple OEMs, and has aggressive growth plans; once a customer purchases an EV, they will immediately get access to our nationwide network and all the perks our platform offers; thereby boosting customer confidence. Working alongside Electric One, we aim to rid the fear of range anxiety and help cater to customer needs in every nook and corner of the country,” said Avinash Sharma, Co-Founder & CEO, ElectricPe.

JA Solar Supplies DeepBlue 3.0 for JSW Energy 225MW PV Power Plant in India JSW Energy’s 225MW solar plant, in which JA Solar DeepBlue 3.0 modules were installed, has recently been put into operation. The plant, located in Karnataka, India, is part of a wind-solar hybrid project, for which power purchase agreements were signed with JSW Steel, one of the largest steel companies in India. Both JSW Energy and JSW Steel are part of an Indian conglomerate, JSW Group, which has presence across core sectors such as steel, energy, infrastructure, paints and cement. Leading energy companies are utilizing low-carbon emission technology such as photovoltaics for helping India transition to clean energy.

Rich in solar irradiance and suitable for developing PV solar energy, India has consistently been among the top ten PV markets in the world. As a leading energy company, JSW Energy is targeting a 50 percent reduction in its carbon footprint by 2030 through utilizing more green energy in production.

Huawei Launches PowerPOD 3.0, a Next-Gen Power Supply System During the Huawei Next-Generation Data Center Facility launch event, Fei Zhenfu, CTO of Huawei Data Center Facility Team, released a new generation of power supply solution—PowerPOD 3.0.

Through core technology innovation and component convergence, the solution optimizes the layout and builds a worry-free data center power supply system that saves footprint, power, and time.

By using an innovative converged architecture and the industry’s ultra-high-density UPS5000-H, the power density per cabinet is increased and the space layout of the power supply system is optimized. The number of cabinets is reduced from 22 to 11, resulting in a significant footprint decrease. In a 12 MW data center, for example, the footprint saved by the PowerPOD 3.0 solution allows for deploying more than 170 additional racks compared with a traditional power supply solution.

The link efficiency of a traditional power supply solution is generally lower than 94.5%. In contrast, PowerPOD 3.0 raises the efficiency up to 97.8% while shortening the link length. In addition, the UPS5000-H delivers an efficiency of 99.1% in S-ECO mode, effectively reducing power consumption.

Using the PowerPOD 3.0 in a 12 MW data center will save nearly 300,000 U.S. dollars each year.

Biometrics Market Size To Reach USD 39030 Million By 2028 Biometrics Market is segmented by Type Fingerprint Recognition, Facial Recognition, Iris Recognition, by Application - Military, Civil. It is published in Valuates Reports under the Software Utilities Category.

The global Biometrics market size is projected to reach USD 39030 million by 2028, from USD 15900 million in 2021, at a CAGR of 13.2% during 2022-2028.

The primary factors driving the biometrics market growth are increasing biometric technology advancements across various sectors and rising demand for authentication and identification solutions, as well as security and surveillance solutions in various application areas.

Furthermore, the growing use of biometric systems in the consumer electronics, financial services, and automotive industries will drive demand for this technology in the near future.

The introduction of the e-passport, voter registration in a low-literacy economy, ration card registration, and identifying persons of interest has resulted in its widespread adoption throughout the government sector.

SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

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SNIPPETS

IMG Launches iTravelInsured Essential International Medical Group has launched iTravelInsured Essential, a new cost-effective travel insurance offering ideal for price-conscious travelers seeking only the most vital trip protection benefits.

IMG’s lowest-priced travel protection program, iTravelInsured Essential allows travelers, such as U.S. residents traveling within the U.S., to protect their prepaid, non-refundable trip costs with the most fundamental travel insurance benefits.

“We are thrilled to introduce our new iTravelInsured Essential plan to travelers that have been long awaiting an economical travel insurance option in the market,” said Grant Hayes, IMG Director of International Sales – Travel.

“Customers who purchase iTravelInsured Essential are able to attain essential coverage at a reasonable price and can still have the same Global Peace of Mind® that comes with the other travel and health safety solutions we offer.”

The iTravelInsured Essential plan provides limited travel protection with coverage for trip cancellation and interruption, travel delay, and accidental death and dismemberment. The plan also includes access to IMG’s 24/7 emergency non-insurance travel assistance service. With this service, travelers are just a call away from IMG’s world-class customer service team that can help with lost luggage, emergency translations, emergency cash transfers, and much more.

Laiye Partners Accenture to Power Intelligent Automation Laiye, a leading Intelligent Automation provider, has partnered Accenture as its global partner and System Integrator (SI) under Laiye’s Global Partner Program. Laiye and Accenture will share their knowledge, expertise, and experience to help companies in their digital transformation journey through the scaling up of AI-powered Intelligent Automation.

This strategic partnership accelerates Laiye’s business growth and comes on the back of its recently completed $160 million Series C funding round.

“Laiye has made great strides in expanding its success around the world and enhancing its capabilities. This partnership in the Americas will allow Laiye’s customers to implement our suite of IA tools and Accenture’s cloud expertise and solutions, reflecting our continued and mutual commitment to delivering business excellence for our clients,” said Alejandro Arboleda, Vice President at Laiye North America.

“Enterprises all around the world are seeking digital transformation through automation and IT innovation, and all of these solutions rely on the cloud, data, and artificial intelligence.

Scammers Hack Twitter Accounts to Steal Popular NFTs and Digital Currencies According to new research, published by Tenable’s Staff Research Engineer, Satnam Narang, scammers have once again dug deep into their bag of tricks to capitalize on the fervor in non-fungible tokens (NFT) and cryptocurrencies.

Many are hijacking verified and unverified accounts on Twitter to impersonate popular NFT projects including Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Azukis, MoonBirds and OkayBears, to steal users’ crypto assets by driving them to phishing sites.

The success of some of these blue chip NFT projects has paved the way for broader adoption by promoting upcoming integrations with their own metaverses, giving scammers ample opportunity to capitalize on new or rumored announcements in relation to these projects. These scams take place in a few different ways, according to the research.

Cryptocurrency scammers are tagging users in replies across hundreds of tweets in a bid to drive them to phishing websites. These phishing sites are indistinguishable from legitimate NFT project sites making it difficult for the average cryptocurrency enthusiast to tell them apart.

Agora Deepens Leadership Bench Amid Record Company Growth Agora announces the promotion of three senior executives and the addition of a new Chief Security Officer as the metaverse spurs RTE demand globally Agora, Inc. has announced the promotion of key executives and a new hire designed to drive innovation and reinforce security as Agora continues its growth globally.

Effective immediately, Stanley Wei will expand his responsibilities as Chief Strategy Officer to lead strategy as well as commercial operations globally. Agora Co-founder Tony Wang is named the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), while Agora veteran Virginia Liu becomes Agora’s first-ever Chief Experience Officer (CXO), both effective immediately.

Agora is also announcing the hiring of Roger Hale, the former Chief Security Officer at BigID, a data-centric personal data privacy and protection company. He joins Agora as Chief Security Officer.

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LeadSquared Introduces Sales Performance Management Suite, Ace LeadSquared, a Sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and Marketing Automation Platform helping over 2000 global brands improve their sales efficiency, has another ace up its sleeves, literally called Ace. LeadSquared Ace is a sales performance management suite that uses a combination of psychological and analytical tactics to gamify sales processes and enhance sales performance.

The first product released as part of the Ace suite of products is Goals, which lets sales leaders set clear objectives and minimizes manual efforts for all sales functions and levels easily, with its no-code setup. Intuitive, adaptive, and customizable, it is equipped with a superior data engine and scalable architecture, built for businesses of any size and in any segment.

Goals can be set on any relevant metrics, such as Lead Generation, Calls Done, Deals Closed, Revenue Generated, and more, corresponding to varying roles across the organizational hierarchy.

While managers can plan, allocate, and update goals for individuals based on their domain expertise, territory, and historical performance, executives can also track their progress, areas requiring improvement, and more.

PARTNER CORNER

INNOVATIVE IX TRUEPARTNER PROGRAM INCREASES CHANNEL REVENUE GAINS iXsystems’ TruePartner channel program equips partners with technically mature products and a 250,000 strong open-source community which reinforces their support infrastructure.

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

I

Xsystems has crossed yet another milestone today. It announced the TruePartner channel program which multiplies partner generated revenues as much as 300% with the company’s expanded RevMatch revenue matching feature. To outmaneuver the competition, partners are equipped with technically mature products and a 250,000 strong open-source community which reinforces their support infrastructure.

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

Finally, TruePartners receive access to RevMatch™, where iX will walk partners through winning a deal, then will “match” contributions with other deal(s) that iX has sourced, of equal value iXsystems is a vendor on the rise in the channel and with the new program, the whole ecosystem benefits. Partner VARs, resellers, and MSPs get access to the leading open storage platform and products, with a wide range of use cases across one million deployments. This equates to more than ten exabytes of storage under management that is supported by the TrueNAS community-backed QA team.

“Managed storage and data protection services are a foundational aspect of our service offering, supporting mission critical data for legal, healthcare, financial services, and other important

industries. To deliver best-in-class capabilities requires storage solutions built to meet these demanding workloads,” said Nathan Golden, Owner, Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Solutions, Managecast Technologies, Inc. “We are very pleased with TrueNAS Open Storage and with the new TruePartner Program as it reinforces the efforts of both our sales and customer service teams to ensure industry-leading compensation and rock-solid support.”

The RevMatch reciprocal revenue multiplier is a highly unique iXsystems’ channel program feature that empowers partners to close a registered opportunity and gain matching fulfillment revenue provided by iXsystems. Benefits are straightaway correlated to the amount of business which is generated through this program. RevMatch is so well designed that is levels the competitive playing field for partners by providing dollar-fordollar revenue matching on new deals generated.

This innovatively designed program has the ability to nearly triple earning potential while also introducing net-new customers to partners who can then attach other solutions and services in due course.

“As a US-based IT infrastructure and security partner focused on a wide-range of industries, iXsystems’ enterprise-grade, feature rich, and expandable storage solutions backed by stellar technical support have been key to our success,” said Chris Poer, Director, Cloud Infrastructure and Services for TechGardens. “When matched with their exceptional TruePartner program which provides superior sales and engineering support, RevMatch opportunities, and clear customer focus truly enable Techgardens to excel in the market.”

“TrueNAS Open Storage has always been a reli-

MATT FINNEY

VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES IXSYSTEMS

“OUR COMMUNITY CREATES DEMAND, YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE ALREADY LIKELY USING TRUENAS TODAY, AND WE ARE HERE TO HELP ACCELERATE YOUR GO TO MARKET.” able platform for businesses seeking mature, highperformance storage solutions for data intensive environments,” said Jon Manley, GHA Technologies, Inc. “The TruePartner Program augments TrueNAS deployment efforts with fantastic engineer-level support and enhanced revenue matching that is much more compelling than traditional spiffs. We look forward to participating in the new program and to our mutual success.”

“TrueNAS Enterprise is fundamental to the growth of our channel with unmatched freedom and value well beyond what is possible from other system providers,” said Matt Finney, Vice President of Sales for iXsystems. “Our community creates demand, your customers are already likely using TrueNAS today, and we are here to help accelerate your go to market.”

SME CHANNELS 13 MAY 2022

COLLABORATION

EMPOWERING WORKFORCE, TRANSFORMING WORKSPACES Cisco foresees a massive opportunity for Webex, as collaboration without compromise continues to facilitate critical functions like governance, citizen services, banking, and more

T

he Collaboration Technology industry witnessed a significant uptick in the demand due to the massive digital adoption triggered by the pandemic.

Two years into the global pandemic, video conferencing has not only become part of our daily routines, but it has also become the way we do business, how we learn, and the way we stay connected. It has gone from being a useful tool to becoming mission-critical, as it ensures everyone has equal access to the global economy regardless of geography or language.

At this backdrop, technology major Cisco had been at the forefront in empowering workforces and transforming workspaces world over. During the pandemic, Cisco Webex has been instrumental in keeping people safe and connected while ensuring business continuity across sectors.

Globally, Webex had around 600M monthly participants since the onset of the crisis and was one of the few platforms with the global scale to empower the digital workforce.

India consistently continues to record the second-highest usage outside of the US. Even with people moving back to the office, the numbers reveal that Webex meetings in March 2022 were over 25% higher than in March 2020. “Therefore, we foresee a massive opportunity for Webex in this digital-first world, as collaboration without compromise is key, especially as these platforms continue to facilitate critical functions like governance, citizen services, banking, and more. It can enable a shift away from the reliance on inperson interactions and geography-based hiring, opening the global economy and giving everyone a seat at the table—no matter where the table is,” says Minhaj Zia, Director for Collaboration Sales, Cisco India & SAARC. Emerging Trends in Collaboration Market There are certain key mega trends that are emerging in the Collaboration Technology Solutions market. “The trends that I foresee are - firstly, as businesses come to grips with the realities of a

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hybrid workforce, the demand for secure collaboration platforms that provide end-to-end data security from device to device, in transit, at rest, and when stored will continue to grow. Secondly, employee well-being and inclusivity will be a priority. We have a unique opportunity to embed inclusion into our collaboration platform, marked by well-being and ensuring every voice is heard and valued. Thirdly, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality will make their way into collaboration tools. It will make digital interactions more engaging and the experience more immersive.

Virtual meetings over video conferencing platforms will slowly shift to the usage of AR headsets and immersive 3D photorealistic holograms,” predicts Zia He further adds, “Webex has been updated with over 1000 new features and a selection of new devices to give users an uninterrupted, immersive, and intelligent experience whether they’re at home, at work, or on the go. Our AI-powered gestures capture body language and let participants interact more naturally. We have also introduced AI-powered Noise removal and speech enhancement technology.”

Benefitting Partners Collaboration techs should provide the platform to connect with external partners, customers, and vendors through seamless and high-impact communication. How has this been benefitting Cisco’s clients and partners?

“Our innovations ensure our customers and partners achieve their highest potential as they move from the old remote work world to the new hybrid work world. Through a combination of hardware and software, we create tools that connect people, teams, ideas, and workflows with a single click, gesture, or simply our voice,” says Zia. “From supporting Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) in conducting largescale online training of health professionals and helping deliver 5000 hours of lectures across the top 40+ institutes (including 18 IITs) to enabling

MINHAJ ZIA,

DIRECTOR FOR COLLABORATION SALES, CISCO INDIA & SAARC

“CISCO WEBEX HAS BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN KEEPING PEOPLE SAFE AND CONNECTED WHILE ENSURING BUSINESS CONTINUITY ACROSS SECTORS.” business continuity for over 200 government organizations across 26 state and central government entities and supporting over 100 high courts to conduct proceedings seamlessly and safely. Webex represents Cisco’s commitment to connecting people, places, ideas, and things,” he affirms.

He further adds, “We are helping automobile manufacturer - Maruti Suzuki augment their offerings and reach a broader customer base across India. We are providing Maruti customers a virtual tour of their showroom and a rich audio-video interaction with the ability to share the screen and co-create the car customizations through the 3D rendering of the cars.”

Click the link to read more: https://www.smechannels.com

GUEST ARTICLE

AI IN 2022 – WHAT TRENDS IS THE VERTICAL LOOKING FORWARD TO AND WHY? Every year, improved aspects of AI are brought into focus by industry experts. This article serves as a guidance system for enterprises that want to adopt AI

VISHAL SINGHAL Co-Founder & AI Evangelist CellStrat PROFILE Author, marketer, giver, passionate networker, Vishal is an avowed AI Evangelist. He currently involved in the expansion of the global market reach of CellStrathub, an AI Platform As A Service that helps in faster, cheaper and better end to end AI product development for SMBs in all sectors and verticals.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables operations to be more efficient. Enterprises should try to reap the benefits of commercial AI applications that help improve their IT infrastructure and data management. But enterprises should be aware that not every AI model can be beneficial to businesses and suitable for performance monitoring. In general, AI helps in revenue generation when used in inventory and parts optimization, pricing and promotion, customer-service analytics, sales, and demand forecasting among others. This will only be magnified in the next few years, as almost every sector is seeking to transform its core processes and business models to take advantage of artificial intelligence.

Every year, new and improved aspects of AI are brought into focus by industry experts and this serves as a guidance system for enterprises that want to adopt AI. This allows enterprises to have an upper hand in the industry in comparison to their competitors and stay relevant as per emerging trends, policies in their geographical locations and verticals.

FOR 2022, EXPERTS BELIEVE THESE ARE THE AI TRENDS THAT THE INDUSTRY WILL SEE: Low-code and no-code AI Low-code and no-code solutions seek to provide simple interfaces that can be used to build increasingly complex AI systems. After a decade of AI coming into existence its traditional set-up had made it less popular for easy adoption. But now with low-code and no-code AI being a trend, it is breaking the barriers and helping in bridging up the gap and making way for more innovative solutions and applications to be created. This also enables cost savings while helping management focus on important problems and faster adoption of technology.

Language modeling With augmented workforce and technology aiding them in all aspects of day to day business operations, language modeling has been one of the most

sought after solutions by organizations. Today, with the development and simplification of AI, language modeling has progressed to the next level where it is being used for speech recognition, machine translation, handwritten character recognition, question answering, information retrieval and even produce creative fiction, create computer code and compose introspective business letters.

AI in cybersecurity Increasing threat numbers and the sophistication level used for attacks by threat actors has led to an increased use of AI in cybersecurity. It analyses the network traffic and learns to recognize patterns which suggest despicable intentions, smart algorithms that are playing a role by keeping the businesses safe from crime. Many traditional systems are incapable of monitoring cloud data, whereas modern AI-assisted cybersecurity is built specifically for cloud environments. Hybrid cybersecurity solutions with artificial intelligence (AI) can monitor and analyse data across multiple environments.

The Augmented Workforce One of the most effective approaches for businesses is to transition from a labour force equipped with traditional systems to a workforce empowered by technology and talent. They assist the workforce by providing predictive maintenance, informing ahead of time when machines will require servicing or repair. By integrating the existing workforce with AI, companies will be able to increase productivity while increasing safety and reducing equipment downtime.

AI and the Metaverse Metaverse undoubtedly involves AI. It will aid in the creation of online environments in which humans will feel at ease having their creative impulses nurtured.

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

SME CHANNELS 15 MAY 2022

COVER STORY

CONNECTED

BY MANASH RANJAN DEBATA manas@accentinfomedia.com

Collaboration Solutions have transitioned from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ and are expected to register a double digit growth through 2022.

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COVER STORY

SME CHANNELS 17 MAY 2022

COVER STORY

“WE PROVIDE STREAMLINED AND CONVENIENT TRAINING OPTIONS ALIGNED WITH KEY VENDORS, BUT ALSO WORK DIRECTLY WITH SOLUTION PROVIDERS TO MAP BUSINESS AND INDIVIDUAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES THAT DELIVER A COMPETITIVE EDGE.” NAVNEET SINGH BINDRA, SR. V.P AND COUNTRY CHIEF EXECUTIVE, INGRAM MICRO INDIA

T

he Collaboration Technology industry witnessed a significant uptick in demand due to the massive digital adoption triggered by the pandemic. The adoption of these Collaboration technologies has been hastened by the rising wave of remote working and distributed workforces across the globe. Companies are increasingly deploying various types of collaborative tools to cater to the demands of a hybrid workforce, while continuing to drive innovation to remain relevant, and to resolve issues more efficiently in order to meet evolving consumer expectations, maintain market share, and gain competitive advantage.

Even as some workers start returning to their offices, the pandemic seems to have brought in a permanent change in workforce structure that requires additional investment in technologies to facilitate, capture and organize open conversations and information sharing.

The pandemic has forced bent the long-term curve of the social software and collaboration market upward, with double-digit growth projected through 2022.

As part of our effort to gain actionable insights into the Collaboration technology market, SME Channels embarks upon making an incisive analysis of the Collaboration Technology landscape.

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Uptick in Demand There has been a significant uptick in the demand for Collaboration Technology Solutions triggered by massive digital adoption due to the Pandemic.

According to Valuates Reports, the global Enterprise Collaboration market size is projected to reach USD 36140 million by 2026, from USD 25220 million in 2019, at a CAGR of 5.2% during 2021-2026.

“Enterprises are increasingly becoming digitally agile to simplify, secure and enhance their customer experiences to drive business growth. Business communications went into full-digital mode, owing to the pandemic. The situation necessitated innovation in communication and collaboration solutions that are scalable, robust, secure, reliable and serve as a proxy for real-life interactions,” says Joyjeet Bose, Sr. Vice-President, Tata Teleservices.

In view of the surge in demand, how are major collaboration players been leveraging the opportunity thrown on their way?

“Videoconferencing always felt that in-room systems were never easy enough to use. But Collaboration Technology Solution’s as-a-service delivery model with a simple and safe interface has changed that narrative. Considering the situation, Ingram Micro leveraged these demands with the help of their professional team who dedicatedly provided reliable and dynamic solutions to main-

tain productivity and stay connected as well as competitive during the pandemic. It was becoming the norm for technology companies to use these collaboration technologies, and we are typically the early provider of great products to our customers and partners across the country,” says Navneet Singh Bindra , Senior Vice President and Country Chief Executive, Ingram Micro India.

“Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) as one of India’s leading and trusted technology enablers for SMBs ensured that our customers had uninterrupted services and provided them with innovative solutions that helped them to maintain business continuity during the pandemic. We have the most comprehensive portfolio for Cloud, SaaS and IaaS solutions. Our collaboration solution such as unified communication solutions that we offer in partnership with Zoom, webcasting services, International Bridging services help businesses stay hyperconnected and collaborate more efficiently,” states Bose.

“At Cisco, we are committed to using technology to empower a workforce and transform workspaces. During the pandemic, Cisco Webex has been instrumental in keeping people safe and connected while ensuring business continuity across sectors. Globally, Webex had around 600M monthly participants since the onset of the crisis and was one of the few platforms with the global scale to empower the digital workforce,” says Minhaj Zia, Director for Collaboration Sales, Cisco India & SAARC. The India Collaboration Solutions market has been consistently performing well these years.

“India consistently continues to record the second-highest usage outside of the US. Even with people moving back to the office, the numbers reveal that Webex meetings in March 2022 were over 25% higher than in March 2020. Therefore, we foresee a massive opportunity for Webex in this digital-first world, as collaboration without compromise is key, especially as these platforms continue to facilitate critical functions like governance, citizen services, banking, and more. It can enable a shift away from the reliance on in-person interactions and geography-based hiring, opening the global economy and giving everyone a seat at the table—no matter where the table is,” adds Zia. Powering Hybrid Workforce Collaboration players have been empowering users to maximize their most precious resource – time. “We, at Cisco, are continually re-investing in our platform to align with changing customer

COVER STORY

“CISCO WEBEX HAS BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN KEEPING PEOPLE SAFE AND CONNECTED WHILE ENSURING BUSINESS CONTINUITY ACROSS SECTORS.” MINHAJ ZIA, DIRECTOR FOR COLLABORATION SALES, CISCO INDIA & SAARC

needs to power hybrid work, enable a safe return to the office, and make their Webex experience 10x better than in-person interactions,” says Zia. “Cisco Webex features span advancements for the hybrid workforce, workplace, events, and IT teams. Our Webex innovations mark a significant step forward in helping our customers unlock the potential of their hybrid workforces – enabling them to collaborate in new ways and drive an inclusive experience.”

Collaboration Turns Mission-Critical Two years into the global pandemic, video conferencing has not only become part of our daily routines, but it has also become the way we do business, how we learn, and the way we stay connected. “It has gone from being a useful tool to becoming mission-critical, as it ensures everyone has equal access to the global economy regardless of geography or language,” says Minhaj Zia, Director for Collaboration Sales, Cisco India & SAARC. “The surge in the global coronavirus pandemic has given us the unprecedented opportunity and real challenge to figure out how to provide IT support to our associates and partners across India when they all started working from home. To continue providing that same degree of support to a distributed workforce, Solution providers came across the collaboration and Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) systems like Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex by bundling in additional services,” says Bindra.

What Drives the Growth

So what major factors are driving the growth the collaboration market? Well, after the pandemic struck, businesses are laying more emphasis on increasing collaboration and communication among several stakeholders across multiple geographies. Thus, the necessity to unite internal and external collaboration in a single platform is expected to drive the enterprise collaboration software market.

Likewise, the adoption of enterprise collaboration software has also got a shot in the arm due to the COVID outbreak. Enterprise collaboration software (ECS) enables teams to work together, communicate, and share information across the organization.

The use of enterprise collaboration tools is helping companies to reduce overheads for IT equipment. This also helps cut costs on travel and nullify the requirements for face-to-face meetings with enterprise collaboration software.

Surge in Enterprise Collaboration Market Growing demand for real-time and remote collaboration tools is expected to drive the collaboration software market. Organizations benefit from enterprise collaboration technologies because they enable seamless communication amongst employees. This results in increased staff operational efficiency and productivity, helping businesses to meet their business objectives. Data synchronization and collaboration solutions are provided by enterprise collaboration platforms, which include capabilities such as monitoring

official emails, calendars, and contacts. Moreover, video conferencing allows employees to communicate and exchange ideas in a more engaging manner.

In addition, in order to improve collaboration capabilities, advanced technologies such as AI and ML are also being integrated into workplace collaboration systems. Employee activity and shared content can be tracked using AI-based workplace collaboration technologies. This helps employees with anticipated business information and to assist them complete tasks more quickly.

By combining visual analytics with production checkpoints, businesses too can gain insights into a variety of business applications, such as consumer behavior, employee retention, office utilization, and performance optimization. Hence, the integration of AI and ML is expected to further provide lucrative growth opportunities for the enterprise collaboration market.

Double-Digit Growth Through 2022 Remote Work and Enterprise Application Partnerships are expected to drive duble-digit growth through 2022, predicts Gartner. The worldwide social software and collaboration market is forecast to maintain strong growth momentum. The need to support remote work during COVID-19, as well as social software integrations within other enterprise applications, is driving significant growth.

“Many of the existing use cases propelling the social and collaboration market, such as coordinating a distributed workforce and providing a ‘virtual water cooler,’ got a sudden jolt from the pandemic,” said Craig Roth, research vice president at Gartner. “Social and collaboration tools went from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ within a matter of weeks.”

Another key trend driving market growth is the integration of social software as an embedded capability in other applications and platforms.

Gartner predicts that by 2025, nearly 65% of enterprise application software providers will have included some form of social software and collaboration functionality in their software product portfolios.

Providers of packaged business applications, such as ERP and CRM software, have previously offered basic social and collaboration functionality. However, they are now facing heightened expectations about the seamless inclusion of nonroutine tasks, such as conversations and marking up content, within their process-oriented

SME CHANNELS 19 MAY 2022

COVER STORY

“WE WILL CONTINUE TO STRENGTHEN OUR SERVICES IN AREAS LIKE CLOUD, SAAS, IAAS, ALONG WITH ENHANCING OUR NETWORK AND SALES REACH TO COVER AS MUCH SMB FOOTPRINT AS POSSIBLE.” JOYJEET BOSE, SR. VICE PRESIDENT, TATA TELESERVICES

products.

Similarly, partnerships between software providers will acquire more importance, as a close relationship is required for tight integration of disparate application functions.

What’s Trending Now A closer look at the collaboration market reveals some key mega trends that will go on to define the industry in the days ahead.

First, as businesses come to grips with the realities of a hybrid workforce, the demand for secure collaboration platforms that provide end-to-end data security from device to device, in transit, at rest, and when stored will continue to grow.

Second, employee well-being and inclusivity will be a priority. It presents vendors with a unique opportunity to embed inclusion into their collaboration platforms, marked by well-being and ensuring every voice is heard and valued.

Third, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality will make their way into collaboration tools. It will make digital interactions more engaging and the experience more immersive.

Virtual meetings over video conferencing platforms will slowly shift to the usage of AR headsets and immersive 3D photorealistic holograms. For example, Cisco’s Webex has been updated with over 1000 new features and a selection of new devices to give users an uninterrupted, immersive, and intelligent experience whether they’re at

20 SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

home, at work, or on the go.

“Our AI-powered gestures capture body language and let participants interact more naturally.

We have also introduced AI-powered Noise removal and speech enhancement technology,” informs Zia. Driving Benefits to Partners Collaboration techs should provide the platform to connect with external partners, customers, and vendors through seamless and high-impact communication. Those have been benefitting clients as well as partners alike.

“Our innovations represent our commitment to helping our customers and partners achieve their highest potential as they move from the old remote work world to the new hybrid work world.

Through a combination of hardware and software, we create tools that connect people, teams, ideas, and workflows with a single click, gesture, or simply our voice,” says Zia Zia further adds, “Most importantly, we understand that to be successful in the era of hybrid work, organizations need to make sure their solutions are flexible, inclusive, supportive, secure, and easily managed on the backend by IT, and the allnew Webex is all about simplicity.”

“We assist SME businesses in crafting sales pitches for their clients, as well as educating engineers and obtaining certification. We assist in the creation of solutions that meet the project’s needs.

POC/Demo is another important area where we

contribute to business growth,” says Bindra.

“TTBS has teamed up with Zoom Video Communications to offer an intuitive, scalable, and secure communications solution to enterprises and individual customers. We have leveraged Zoom’s robust and secure platform to address the growing collaboration requirements of Enterprises for seamless unified communications.

We offer Zoom’s world-class communications platform on our high-capacity network. These services include Zoom Meetings, Zoom Webinars among others to businesses across industry segments particularly education, healthcare, BFSI enabling them to collaborate effectively within their teams and partners in India and globally,” says Bose.

“Also, in order to address the continuous shift in modern workplace, where employees expect more openness, collaboration and flexibility in how they stay connected, we offer a host of plug and play collaboration solutions, such as web conferencing solutions, hosted IVR, and international bridging services,” Bose adds.

“We are continuing this momentum and helping the automobile manufacturer - Maruti Suzuki augment their offerings and reach a broader customer base across India. Maruti customers can come to their website and request a virtual tour of the showroom and the car they wish to explore from the comfort of their homes. It allows them to have a rich audio-video interaction with the ability to share the screen and co-create the car customizations through the 3D rendering of the cars,” adds Zia. Strategic Association with Partners Striking strategic association with the partners, collaboration players are changing the collaboration landscape. “In the modern channel ecosystem with the strategic association of partners, we serve our customers as a solution provider where we offer a large pool of comprehensive portfolios that help us to advance on our digital transformation journey,” says Bindra.

“We aim to be at the forefront of technology evolution, where we continuously innovate. Our go-to-market closely surrounds our four main transformation pillars: IT, Security, Digital and Workforce. It is also our mission to provide support to our partners to join us in this journey,” he adds.

Differentiating With Technology Clear, easy to understand, user-friendly End-User

COVER STORY

“SOCIAL AND COLLABORATION TOOLS WENT FROM A ‘NICE TO HAVE’ TO A ‘MUST HAVE’ WITHIN A MATTER OF WEEKS. THE PANDEMIC BENT THE LONG-TERM CURVE OF THE SOCIAL SOFTWARE AND COLLABORATION MARKET UPWARD, WITH DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH PROJECTED THROUGH 2022.”

CRAIG ROTH, RESEARCH VICE PRESIDENT, GARTNER

Interface is pivotal for the success of any Collaboration Solution. Collaboration Solution vendors are trying to bring product differentiation onto the table to ensure greater traction for channel partners.

Minhaj Zia, Director for Collaboration Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, says, “I believe our biggest differentiator is, firstly, flexibility. Webex is adaptable for any workstyle, role, or device, so you can choose when, where, and how you work. Webex’s People Insights feature aligns with the goals people set personally for their meetings, work-life integration, connections, and focus time, helping people work smarter and combat burnout. Secondly, it is inclusive – our vision with Webex is to empower digital workers on the planet to participate equally in a global economy, regardless of their geography or language preference or personality type, or tech proficiency level. Eliminating language barriers is key to enabling a truly global, hybrid workforce.

Through our real-time translation feature, Webex customers can preview translations from Hindi into 100+ languages. Thirdly, it is secure by design and private by default to defend against threats no matter where you’re working. Our Webex portfolio is at the center of our customers’ strategies for securely empowering teams and increasing productivity.

Fourthly, Webex simplifies communications

via robust calling, meeting, and messaging features integrated into the apps we frequently use. It integrates with hundreds of industry-leading apps and tools so you can get more done seamlessly without toggling between applications. Lastly, our capabilities for virtual event execution can support up to 100,000 participants, coupled with the industry’s first audience engagement solution that can make meetings more engaging in the form of polling, quizzes, etc.”

“We have introduced ‘Customer Experience Platform (CEP)’ industry’s first highly engaging, innovative, and integrated platform to bring the product experience closer to the customers, based on their availability and comfort anytime anywhere. Customer Experience Portal lets customers understand and experience how our products and solutions can enable them to build digital capabilities. It serves as a one-stop digital guide for customers to better experience TTBS products and make speedy and informed decisions,” says Bose from Tata Teleservices.

“Channel partner network has been an important contributor to our business growth. We have, perhaps, the largest channel network which is available at hand to meet the requirements of our customers in over 60 cities across the country. We have the right mix of partners who address various industrial segments. We have pure telecom

partners, system integrators, data security experts, software selling partners and even non-ICT partners who have better reach across industry segments,” he informs.

“Ingram Micro India e-commerce has many facets to it – the first one is the IMEcom B2B selfservice portal for our partners, where we offer a huge range of technology products with the ease of doing business, partners can log in to the portal and check the product details, availability and pricing on a real-time basis and place their orders.

Over 13,000 partners are already onboarded on this portal purchasing directly from this portal.

It eliminates a need to conduct business through physical mode or email for order placement, Query handling, all operational support about Delivery Status Information, Account statements Order status, etc.,” says Bindra.

Overcoming Hurdles While the collaboration tech industry is witnessing an encouraging growth phase, there are also certain factors that are impacting the growth of the sector. Apart from other factors, cannibalization of revenue has also emerged as a major challenge for the industry.

“Yes, Cannibalization can be a challenge in the modern world, for impacting the growth of the Collaboration tech sector. Market cannibalization can occur when a new product is similar to an existing product, and both share the same customer base. But as long as one provides differentiation to the solutions, there is room for growth.

Collaboration Tech sectors focusing on disruptive technologies or nascent markets do better in the form of joint ventures or smart investments, as such forms insulate experimental activities from complex processes or resource cannibalization that can occur when larger firms evaluate risky ventures based on their existing core business,” says Bindra.

Bindra further adds, “Moving to new business models requires a cultural change that makes innovation the focus of the business strategy.

Concerns on cannibalization of existing businesses need to be addressed by concentrating on overall consumer demand.”

“Fragmented communication and the resultant loss of productivity are problems most enterprises are facing with extended periods of remote working and time away from the office. Work-fromanywhere and flexible working are becoming commonplace and simple yet powerful solutions like, unified video conferencing solutions are now

SME CHANNELS 21 MAY 2022

COVER STORY

an integral part to support the hybrid culture of mobility and collaboration for today’s anytime, anywhere and any device workforce,” says Bose.

Bose further adds, “Most of the modern businesses that are successfully moving their operations on the digital side are embracing asset light models which are affordable and highly flexible.

And one solution does not fit everyone. Each business has specific requirements, and we offer them bespoke solutions which can be integrated easily in their existing infra. This presents us with tremendous opportunity to offer our solutions to the burgeoning market of SMBS and Start-Ups across their entire value-chains.”

Upskilling Partners Collaboration Solutions business is highly techintensive. Therefore upskilling partners becomes pivotal for vendors when it comes to tapping into the market opportunities.

“Ingram Micro intended to provide a path to increased expertise and a broader core focus, as well as the background required to maximize full solution implementation. Ingram Micro offers industry-leading vendor training to meet every business need. We provide streamlined and convenient training options aligned with key vendors, but also work directly with solution providers to map business and individual professional development strategies that deliver a competitive edge,” says Bindra.

Joydeep Bose of Tata Teleservices says, “Emerging technologies provide a competitive advantage by opening up new revenue streams and reshaping business strategy, but they also function as a catalyst in increasing industry skill gaps. Companies that invest in adaptable teams get a competitive advantage by being able to turn more quickly.

Learning management systems are an efficient technique to improve transferable skills and introduce new technical concepts through trainingboost visibility and reduce friction.”

“We continue to enhance our channel partner network in every part of the addressable market.

We are continually empowering and upskilling our partners under our ‘Certified Solution Partner’ program which is at par with industry certification to enhance their capabilities as an ICT solution provider. This is significant because it provides them with opportunities to learn new skills and earn credentials, especially as they reskill and upskill more frequently to address the customers’ demands in the competitive market,” Bose adds.

“Through our Professional Services we provide

22 SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

top training courses from 65+ Industry Leaders to fit every business need on your schedule with our training and education services. We also conducting monthly Webinars for Enterprise, Cloud Partners and end customers, and run Partner Incentive Programs for partners to win exciting rewards apart from supporting lead generation activities. For Elite Partners, we have Pinnacle Program. We also provide Proactive Credit support to meet large deal execution and manage business peak cycles,” says Bindra.

Expanding Channel Footprints In order to gain a lion’s share of the market pie, collaboration players are leaving no stone unturned whether it’s about expansion of channel footprints or planning or making major investments in terms of channel expansions or product development.

“We have grown to be a one-stop digital solution provider for businesses in domestic market with our most comprehensive suite of enterprise grade solutions that are flexible, easy to deploy, and are available in an asset/capex light model --say in a plug n play mode,” says Bose. “We are continually investing in developing all our partners as a digital solution provider for SMB segment. We have a large fibre network of around 1,25,000 route kms that runs through the length and breadth of the country. We have connected perhaps the highest number of business clusters, over 1 lakh buildings which house the businesses we serve, and this number is increasing daily. All our Channel partners and large field team, leverage these connected buildings, interact with the customers directly, make them aware of our services and generate demand that then translates into an order that is fulfilled and serviced efficiently.”

“We will continue to strengthen services in the areas of Cloud, SaaS, IaaS and while at the same time enhancing our network and sales reach to cover as much SMB footprint as possible,” affirms Bose.

“We plan to expand the portfolio and work with a variety of brands to bring them on board in the areas of business adjacencies, which we will continue to accomplish as part of the business development project. We’re working hard to develop the company while also generating new long-term revenue streams,” says Bindra of Ingram Micro.

Minhaj Zia, Director for Collaboration Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, says, “Successfully leading customers through a digital transformation requires that partners continually transform themselves by investing in emerging technolo-

gies and expertise that reinforce their status as a trusted digital advisor. No matter how customers evolve or how the market landscape changes, we are committed to supporting our partners to meet their customer needs through training and certification programs.”

“We have our Partner Experience Platform (PXP), Cisco’s first digital platform designed for partners for all the resources they need to perform and transform. PXP gives our partners easy access to critical insights and helps them be agile and add value to their customer relationships. All in one place, from tracking their performance, incentives and gaining a deeper knowledge of their customer to other events, training, support options, and connecting with subject matter experts. At Cisco, we believe our partner ecosystem is our biggest asset. We want to give our partners more freedom to differentiate and transform across the dimensions of their Cisco business,” adds Zia. Conclusion As the pandemic has orchestrated and the lingering demands of a Hybrid workforce have resounded, building a collaborative environment fit for the next-gen workforce is the only way going forward for organizations. Improving collaboration efforts can be as simple as providing employees with a private room for brainstorming.

Or, it could also be as complex as using augmented reality for project visualization. However, using new communication platforms and technologies to unify distributed teams would be the norm, going ahead.

To sum up, companies that can make the most out of their collaborative efforts would stay ahead in the game in fulfilling the evolving needs of their Hybrid workforce.

GUEST ARTICLE

HOW AI IS RESHAPING STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES AI isn’t just being used to optimize storage systems and technologies, it is changing the very nature of storage technologies, albeit in a roundabout way.

SOMENATH NAG Vice President - Marketing & Corporate Strategy, Calsoft Inc. PROFILE An experienced and result-oriented business leader with the ability to develop and execute go-tomarket strategies, Somenath is a true technology evangelist. Proficient at incubating and growing new practices, he has helped product companies in Telecom, Healthcare, and ISV domains in their strategic outsourcing initiatives by setting up and managing large and offshore teams.

Storage operates the same way it did decades ago.

Storage vendors have, for years, been creating solutions that often rely on firmware-based operating systems in hardware devices, which are inefficient and costly. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play. AI capabilities are reshaping how storage technology behaves and works.

How exactly does AI help with this, though?

Artificial Intelligence has been described as the way to imbue machines with human-level intelligence.

While true AI is a long way away, its current form is still capable of vast improvements to the systems we have in place.

However, AI isn’t just being used to optimize storage systems and technologies, it is changing the very nature of storage technologies, albeit in a roundabout way.

It is safe to say that data is the lifeblood of AI, as it needs to be trained on large datasets. These datasets need to be comprehensive and accurate, as any errors will compound, leading the AI to make incorrect analyses. Acquiring and structuring data in this manner is a complicated task, as businesses need to identify the data they generate, note its usefulness, eliminate unwanted data, understand its lifespan, and organize it correctly. They also need to perform compliance checks, data optimization, data cataloguing, and data governance.

On top of that, storing all this data with minimal corruption requires massive amounts of storage.

Given this laundry list of tasks, handling AIrelevant data becomes a full-time job. This is where the first advantage of AI comes in, via AI-enabled storage.

Legacy data storage solutions are no longer up to the task – they need to be transformed into smarter storage solutions with capabilities like deep learning and GPU processors to be able to drive real-time insights.

AI-enabled storage provides real-time continuous updates from enterprise data sources, optimizes it, and performs the intelligent work needed to make it usable. It does all this without human intervention, too! Let’s take a look at the advantages that AI-enabled storage provides.

Advantages Of AI-Enabled Storage 1. Scalability: AI systems need to be able to process vast amounts of data in a limited period. This volume of data drives significant storage demands.

Managing these datasets requires a storage system that can scale intelligently as per the requirements, which can be done easily with AI-enabled Cloud storage.

2. Shared Data Stores: Shared data is valuable for AI, as the more data available, the better the analysis will be. AI systems learn from experience, and when experience is recorded in the form of data, AI algorithms will be able to predict and classify outcomes with greater ease, and even improve themselves.

3. Data Insights: AI-enabled storage uses a variety of analytics tools and processes that deliver ultrafast, high-performance insights about billions of stored objects and files. Major business decisions become much easier when assisted by accurate, data-driven predictions.

4. Reporting and Alerting: AI-enabled storage helps build reports on the data functions and insights delivered. By setting up alerting systems, enterprises can tackle problems like data storage failure or data anomalies as and when they crop up.

Intelligent reporting systems help regulate the storage of specific types of data and help avoid major issues.

5. Failure Prediction: Storage failures have major consequences. Data lost in these situations is not easy to recover, but AI-enabled storage can detect failures before they happen and can restore it from the point of failure.

6. Cost-effectiveness: Not all data generated by enterprises is useful, and AI-enabled storage can identify the usable parts. It can also note the patterns in which the data is used, allowing enterprises to optimize their data storage systems.

How AI Helps Datacenters While AI has a vast number of business applications, it is also heavily used in data centers. Let’s take a look at some of the ways it helps.

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

SME CHANNELS 23 MAY 2022

SECURITY

HARSHIL DOSHI DIRECTOR SALES (INDIA AND SAARC), SECURONIX

“WE PROVIDE OUR PARTNERS WITH 360DEGREE SUPPORT, FROM IMPROVED THREAT DETECTION VIA UEBA TO PROVIDING A FULLY MANAGED SAAS PLATFORM THAT HELPS BUILD AND DEPLOY THEIR OWN ANALYTICS, WHILE SUPPORTING THEIR DATA MASKING AND GDPR PRIVACY REQUIREMENTS.”

T

he Pandemic has forced businesses to shift to online operations and there has been a massive adoption of remote working culture. and online learning, resulting in digitalisation on an unprecedented scale. Along with the shift to online has also come an unacceptable rise in cybersecurity issues.

With rising ransomware cyberattacks on IT infrastructure, businesses have realized the

24 SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

importance of embracing zero tolerance for gaps in their security strategy. They are increasingly investing on strengthening their cybersecurity to secure their crown jewels and their valuable data.

This has thrown open a big opportunity for cybersecurity players.

As the India market remains in the eye of a major digital transformation buoyed by a techcentred Union Budget, SME Channels embarks

upon recording the voices of the who’s who of the Cybersecurity landscape.

In a special interaction with SME Channels, Harshil Doshi, Director Sales (India and SAARC), Securonix reveals his organization’s strategy to address growing need for security solutions from customers, his predictions for the cybersecurity industry in 2022 and his vision and plans for the channel community. Edited excerpts…

SECURITY

TOWARD NEXT-GEN SECURITY Providing threat detection and response solutions powered by advanced analytics and built on a scalable, flexible cloud-native architecture, Securonix effectively takes care of cyberscecurity needs.

incident response, providing high fidelity alerts with analytics that pioneered the UEBA category.

We work to provide our partners with 360-degree support in all aspects, from improved threat detection via UEBA to providing them with a fully managed SaaS platform that enables them to build and deploy their own analytics while also supporting their data masking and GDPR privacy requirements.

What major trends are you forecasting in the channel market?

Channel partners will assist organisations in expanding geographical coverage and acquiring new customers. The cyber security landscape is constantly changing, and partners are reforming to keep up. Today, we find that our traditional partners are shifting toward managed services, focusing on service offerings in addition to products. Customers are increasingly adopting the managed services model due to a lack of qualified management resources and large investments in infrastructure. To assist customers, our partners represent both models ( Reseller & MSSP ). We are collaborating with partners to drive 75-80 percent of our business through them.

Please give a brief introduction of your company.

Securonix is a leading company in next-gen Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). The company provides threat detection and response solutions powered by the most advanced analytics and built on a scalable, flexible cloud-native architecture. Securonix Next-Gen SIEM and XDR enable fast, precise

Which areas are you focusing on in the channel – skillsets, sales and marketing, vertical and technology practice development, service capability, etc.?

We strive to make providing solutions, implementing them, and managing customers as easy as possible for our partners. We ensure that our partners have comprehensive knowledge of our products and can effectively guide their customers through custom training programs and extensive professional service resource support. Securonix will help partners solve complex customer chal-

lenges by designing products that are fast, agile, scalable, insightful, regulated compliant, and collaborative. To maximize opportunities, our marketing team collaborates with partners to create customer-centric events. We assist partners in establishing Securonix Centers of Excellence, which will allow them to demonstrate the value of the solutions to prospective customers.

What percentage of budget growth are you expecting for channel development?

We anticipate a significant increase in business as a result of promoting regional partners. Increasing the number of MSSPs and Reseller partners will broaden the company’s reach to enterprise customers. Developing a strong partner strategy has assisted us in achieving 2X revenue growth for the current year.

Are you planning any new product additions for the channel market?

Securonix’s MSSP offering is a key driver for channel-led business worldwide. We have added some of the largest MSSPs as our partners in the last couple of years and continue to do so. Whenever we go ahead with a new component, we by default make it multitenant to suit the MSSP business. For example, our recent SOAR offering is also built in a multi-tenant model.

What’s your geospread? Is there any channel expansion plan in terms of numbers in 2022?

We have a global channel reach, and have 100s of partners both resellers, MSSPs, distributors, and technology partners. In India specifically, we have about 25 partners working with us and counting.

Channel is a key part of our go-to-market strategy and business.

SME CHANNELS 25 MAY 2022

PARTNER CORNER

GRASSROOTS CHANNELS LAUNCHES A MULTICITY SURVEILLANCE ECOSYSTEM EVENT

G

rassroots Channels announce the launch of “Surveillance Unmasked” program with unique initiative of upskilling CCTV installers and bringing video Surveillance Ecosystem under one roof.

The program is supported and sponsored by world’s Leading Hard disk Manufacturer and other leading brands of Video Surveillance Ecosystems. The program is also endorsed by Industry association Like MAIT, ELCINA. “Video Surveillance is need of the hour.

This segment is rapidly growing, and there is need to continuous update latest technologies and products to our field technician, partner and customer alike. With this vision, we are bringing complete ecosystem under one roof and plan to spread this program across India.” Said, Sharad Srivastava, Chief Strategy Officer, Grassroots Channels and Founder & CEO of ReStor Lab. This Multi-City program is a day-long event where in daytime, Grassroots Channels is organizing a Certificate Refresher Course for CCTV installers (Field Technicians) which is accredited and evaluated by ESSCI (Electronics Sector Skills Council of India) covering all the major sub-assemblies of the Surveillance Infrastructure.

The evening program is the Ecosystem Partners informal meeting where various prominent sub-assembly brands meet the Key System Integrator, and key decision makers & Consultants from Government, PSU and corporates.

26 SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

ZEBRONICS LAUNCHES ‘UNLEASH THE CHAMPION’ CAMPAIGN WITH ACE CRICKETERS

C

elebrating its ongoing 25th anniversary, Zebronics has launched its new campaign “Unleash the Champion”. Featuring ace cricketers, the campaign resonates with the brand’s message of motivation, overcoming challenges, and the courage to beat the odds, which is what the brand has been doing with its ‘Always Ahead’ ideology.

Zebronics recently released four videos featuring ace cricketers, and 2 more will follow as part of their campaign titled “Unleash the Champion” with multiple cricketers like Kuldeep Yadav, Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Robin Uthappa,& Dinesh Kartik to connect and further strengthen the brand’s appeal among the newage audience. The collaboration has been aiming to promote Zebronics product portfolio featuring wearables, audio, and grooming solutions that are specifically designed to meet the requirements of our wide audience.

Zebronics, which earlier offered only IT peripherals & sound solutions, now offers an extensive range of ‘Premium for masses’ products like Soundbar, Smart wearables, Personal grooming, Personal audio, and more.

Reflecting on the innovative campaign Yash Doshi, Director, Zebronics, said “The brand is tapping into the pulse of the audience with a sport that is celebrated as an emotion rather than a mere game. And with this campaign ‘Unleash the Champion’, we’re taking it beyond the field by sharing inspirational stories about courage, hope, determination, and the message of celebrating every moment to the masses.”

INGRAM MICRO INKS DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH SUBMER

I

ngram Micro India has entered into a distribution agreement with Submer, a leading player in advanced immersion cooling solutions for Datacenters and Cloud and Edge computing. As part of the agreement, Ingram Micro will deploy Submer’s high-tech sustainable immersion cooling solutions in India.

Currently, Datacentre industries are witnessing strong growth in India. To reduce environmental impact and improve the possibilities of heat reuse, Submer aims to offer solutions that balanced business needs and sustainability. Submer’s cutting-edge solutions designed for Datacenters and, Cloud and Edge computing are purpose-built highdensity compute, that harnesses the power of Immersion Cooling. The solutions also address challenges like heat-reuse, zero water and site selection. The adoption of Immersion cooling technologies enables infrastructure to perform high-powered computing seamlessly.

On the partnership, Navdeep Narula, Executive Director, Mobility, Compute and IoT at Ingram Micro India said, “We’re very excited to team with Submer – known for its core next-generation Immersion Cooling solutions. Submer will help us deliver modular immersion cooling solutions to offer Smart Datacenter to make a difference for customers with sustainable and renewable technologies to reduce the environmental impact of the datacenter industry. It will address some urgent issues like energy saving, carbon footprint and water-saving technology for accelerating expansion.”

“India has seen strong growth in Datacenters over recent years and is a key market within our global strategy.

GUEST ARTICLE

7 BEST PRACTICES TO MAKE CLOUD LOGIN MORE SECURE The article succinctly presents some of the Cloud Application Security Best Practices that must be followed by every user and organization for a more secure login into the cloud.

PUNIT THAKKAR CEO & MD, Shivaami Cloud Solution PROFILE A purpose-driven entrepreneur, proven business leader, mentor, change enabler, Punit is CEO & MD of Shivaami Cloud Services Pvt Ltd. He has developed a special knack of meeting the specific needs of a varied canvas of clients and is a passionate believer in the power of internet and marketing for business growth.

Understanding cloud security tools and their builtin protections can help ensure the cloud journey is secure and effective. To successfully protect an organization’s data in the cloud, it’s important to first secure users’ identities. Cloud must help block brute force attacks by employing sophisticated risk models built-in the products to assess whether a login event is legitimate or not. If the risk engine determines that an attempt is suspicious then it must ask the user for additional proof to ensure the right user is logging in.

The proof reading shall be done by offering a set of login challenges to the user and asking them to confirm their identity from a trusted phone or in the way of answering a security question.

Cyber criminals launched a wave of cyber-attacks that were not only well-coordinated, but also significantly more advanced than before. Simple endpoint attacks evolved into multi-stage operations. Ransomware attacks have affected both small and large businesses. Cryptomining attacks gave cyber attackers an easy way into enterprise networks. There were a lot of big data leaks, costly ransomware payouts; a broad, new and confusing threat landscape. To assure a more secure login into the cloud, two-factor authentication (2FA) or two-step verification (2SV) were given more emphasis.

Here’s some of the Cloud Application Security Best Practices that must be followed by every user and organization for a more secure login into the cloud: 1. Build application security skills within your development teams: Security teams will be better equipped to ensure application security with highquality training and competencies. Users can detect if information is being handled improperly by internal users by monitoring user behaviour.

2. Pick the right cloud security provider: A cloud security solutions provider must be knowledgeable about current and emerging security threats. To ensure maximum coverage, they must be able to provide the appropriate tools and security strategies.

3. Don’t stop with due diligence: Don’t take cloud security for granted, and don’t connect tools

and apps without thinking about the security implications.

4. Audit and optimize: Regular security audits enable you to detect new vulnerabilities and continuously improve user security infrastructure and posture. Audits will reveal where vulnerabilities have emerged, allowing rules and policies to be modified.

5. Follow password best practices: Cloud application security starts at the perimeter, and strong passwords provide the first line of defence. To ensure that employees use strong passwords, users must establish well-defined policies and standards such as password lengths, special characters, and password expiration. Use multi-factor authentication as well, which requires employees to enter another authentication code after entering their password.

6. Eliminate vulnerabilities at the development stage: Building security into practices, processes and tools during the development stage is one way to protect a cloud application. Cloud application developers can view the results of security tests in real-time as they write their code using tools like IDE (Integrated Development Environment) plugins.

7. Focus on architecture, design, and opensource and third-party elements: It’s not enough to limit security scans to bugs in the code or penetration tests against the system. Expand the scope of security testing to include all potential application flaws.

Many organisations employ third-party cloudbased or legacy on-premises SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)-based identity providers for primary user authentication. Security teams will be better suited to ensure application security if they receive high-quality training and competencies. Shivaami, an award-winning Google partnered company, also provides risk-based login challenges and the 2SV stack with your own IdP (Identity Provider).

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

SME CHANNELS 27 MAY 2022

GUEST ARTICLE

HOW TO GET HOLISTIC ABOUT HIRING AFTER ‘THE GREAT RESIGNATION’ To make the best cybersecurity products possible, and tackle new and evolving threats, we need to bring fresh and diverse perspectives and experiences to the table.

NIRAV SHAH VP and CTO, Forcepoint India Innovation Center PROFILE A highly energetic and dynamic product management leader, Nirav focuses on network and cloud security initiatives that help accelerate digital transformation of distributed enterprises.

To make the best cybersecurity products possible, and tackle new and evolving threats, we need to bring fresh and diverse perspectives and experiences to the table Hiring not just new employees, but the right ones, is incredibly challenging. Hugely resource-intensive, recruitment is far more than filtering through resumes and organising interviews. Many times, organisations fail to deliver the right information to potential prospects, and everyone loses out.

What’s more is that the pandemic has also changed the relationship many have with work. For example, Fifty-two percent 52% of workers found the pandemic made them question the purpose of their day-to-day job, with half changing expectations towards their employer, according to research

by Gartner covering over 3,000 employees globally.

And, 65% of the respondents said the situation caused them to shift their attitude towards the value of the aspects of their life outside work. Workforces around the world have developed a new sense of self-awareness and ideas about what they want from their careers, and employers must be willing to accommodate these.

Employees are looking for opportunities where they’ll be able to make a real difference and have a tangible impact. They want flexibility and ways of working that fit around their lifestyles and goals. The cybersecurity and technology industry is extremely well placed to provide that, but first we must break down some preconceptions.

IT has often been represented as something you need strong technical qualifications and a computing or mathematical background to get into. But the reality is there is space for those from much more diverse backgrounds than you might think. To make the best cybersecurity products possible, and tackle new and evolving threats, we need to bring equally fresh and diverse perspectives and experiences to the table.

Rethink How You Hire If we only recruit from the same small pool of people, or in the likeness of those already in senior positions, we are putting ourselves at a huge dis-

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advantage. With our products impacting broader society, we need to make sure that we have full representation from across society in the development process. Building effective cybersecurity products takes interdisciplinary teams, pulling in experts not just from security, but counter-intelligence, IT and behavioural sciences too. This is the only way we will be able to effectively tackle the endless game of cat-and-mouse between cybercriminals and the security industry, and neutralise threats before they escalate.

But despite incidents every day highlighting how we need better protection against cyberattacks, it is a sector with a huge talent gap. Some 2.72m positions are currently vacant globally, according to figures from (ISC)2’s Cybersecurity Workforce Study. Competition is extremely strong for the best candidates.

Changing Things for the Better Attracting and retaining that talent means companies need to build the kind of culture and ethos that top employees can picture themselves settling into. Individual team leaders and managers play an important role in developing this, through their management styles and how they provide support and guidance. Ultimately employees not only have to believe in what the company is doing and what they stand for, but also in management’s methods and vision.

Within the cybersecurity industry, we have a clear mission that truly has global impact. Digital infrastructure powers almost every aspect of our society today, which means cyberattacks can have catastrophic consequences. What we develop makes a huge difference in not just protecting businesses, but people’s lives.

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SECURITY

PROOFPOINT SHOWCASES UNIQUE PEOPLECENTRIC CYBERSECURITY INNOVATION Driven by the accelerated adoption of work-from-anywhere practices, Proofpoint’s Information Protection and Cloud Security Platform is now deployed to over 25 million users worldwide.

ASHAN WILLY CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER PROOFPOINT’S

“OUR UNMATCHED AI-POWERED DATA INTELLIGENCE AND ONGOING COMMITMENT TO INNOVATION ARE WHY 75% OF THE FORTUNE 100 TRUST PROOFPOINT AS THEIR CYBERSECURITY PARTNER.”

C

ybersecurity leader delivers strong momentum and enhanced capabilities across its Threat Protection, Information Protection and Cloud Security, and Compliance Platforms Proofpoint, Inc., a leading cybersecurity and compliance company, announced today at its annual Protect 2022 conference a host of peoplecentric innovations across its entire product line, meeting customer demand for solutions that address the security and compliance needs

of today’s increasingly cloud-reliant, distributed workforce. These enhancements empower companies worldwide to stay ahead of a continually evolving threat landscape and better protect their most important asset—their people—from attacks and compliance risks related to email, cloud, data and collaboration tools.

“We are focused on developing security innovations that protect people—wherever they may work—and defend their data from today’s most harmful risks. To stay ahead of the threat actors, we invest hundreds of millions annually into our products and rely on the most advanced AI/ML technologies to defend our customers,” said Ashan Willy, Proofpoint’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our unmatched AI-powered data intelligence and ongoing commitment to innovation are why 75% of the Fortune 100 trust Proofpoint as their cybersecurity partner.”

Every day, Proofpoint analyzes an incredible data set of more than 2.6 billion email messages, 49 billion URLs, 1.9 billion attachments, 28.2 million cloud accounts and over 500 million events associated with potential data loss. This gives us and our customers unmatched visibility into the threat landscape.

“Driven by the accelerated adoption of work-from-anywhere practices, our Information Protection and Cloud Security Platform is now deployed to over 25 million users worldwide,” continued Willy. “Over the past 12 months, we have become the most utilized insider threat solution in the market, and our DLP solution is trusted by some of the world’s biggest brands. This speaks to our ability to solve the most complex information protection challenges faced by organizations today.”

Proofpoint reinvests twenty percent of its

annual revenue into R&D, one of the highest percentages in the industry. The following peoplecentric enhancements benefit from that research and address critical areas for organizations, including cloud application security, information protection across cloud, web, endpoint and email, insider threat, deep threat intelligence, compliance, email authentication, and employee security awareness.

Proofpoint Threat Protection Platform leverages over 26 different layers of detection to uncover sophisticated email fraud attacks, including BEC, account compromise, and ransomware. With Proofpoint’s leadership in innovation, we migrated over 2.7 million enterprise seats to Proofpoint over the last year, and now protect over 200,000 small businesses with Proofpoint Essentials.

■ Advanced Business Email Compromise Behavioral Analysis Defense Protection, Powered by New Supernova Behavioral Engine: Launched a year ago, Proofpoint’s Supernova detection platform has delivered a 2x improvement in BEC detection with higher fidelity and lower false positives, stopping over 5 million BEC attack attempts per month. Starting in Q3, a new engine in Supernova will provide advanced behavioral analysis that identifies anomalous communication patterns for an organization’s employees, improving detection efficacy for BEC, supplier risk, third-party account compromise, phishing, and ransomware threats. The new engine will be provided as a free detection stack upgrade to enterprises using Proofpoint email security.

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SME CHANNELS 29 MAY 2022

INTERVIEW

OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM SHOULD BE OUTCOME-BASED In a recent interaction with the CEO of IIT BombayWashington University in St Louis Joint venture, Gopal Shukla, we heard about how EMBA of IIT Bombay – WashU is trying to create change agents and how our education system should be outcome-based to produce more and more entrepreneurs and change agents. An Excerpt.

What is the rationale behind IIT Bombay and Washington University joint venture?

IIT Bombay and Washington University in St. Louis are two large and very established and prestigious universities.

Washington University and IITB have worked together since 2009. The institutions are members of the McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environment Partnership, a consortium of sustainability-minded universities and corporations; McDonnell International Scholars Academy; and IITB-WUSTL Corporate Alliance, an affiliation that develops the next generation of global leaders. Their rich partnership history facilitates the collaborative delivery of the joint Executive MBA program in Mumbai.

CEO of the Joint Venture, Gopal Shukla says, We are now running the7th cohort and we have produced successful leaders and start-up founders who joined this program from various industries and functional backgrounds.

My objective from the JV is to create worldclass leaders and I call these leaders “change agents”. These leaders are expected to go out to their respective industries, markets, or the public sector enterprises, wherever they can contribute, they become ‘Change Agents’ as they change the society, re-design the business models, embark on changing the mindset and psychology con-

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tributing to the economic growth, social welfare, and social growth. Hence, I must tell you that at IIT Bombay- Washington University in St Louis, we are building a pool of ‘Change Agents’. While everybody is focused on building leaders, we are building the ‘Change Agents’ through our EMBA program.

What is your vision of creating academic reach deeper and widespread?

This programme is unique and as far as the reach is concerned, I see, two types of reach. One is reaching out to audiences in India and Other countries to educate them about the existence of this unique program. Another is the deep academic reach in the form of module delivery in the classroom. We have the ability and combined experience of both the Universities to deeply impact the participants with structured modules and delivery style.

So, IIT Bombay-WashU is able to create a unique place in India among the senior executives and leaders from corporates, large enterprises, family-owned businesses, defense, public sector, and so on. So, we have a diverse set of participants enrolling in the program.

My vision is to achieve a deeper reach to these segments to create more ‘Strategic Change Agents’ at the top level. These change agents will further influence and fuel economic growth and

sustainability. In addition to where we are able to make an impact through this EMBA, my effort and desire are to invite more and more distinguished participants from Public Sector, Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, and Defence to foster rich learning and networking experience. Imagine such cohorts where we have participants from Indian Administrative Service, Public Service, police service, and the corporate world. When these two sets along with the entrepreneurs, who are building large enterprises and family-owned businesses, come together, they

INTERVIEW

GOPAL SHUKLA CEO, IIT BOMBAY – WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

“WHILE EVERYBODY IS FOCUSED, ON BUILDING LEADERS, WE ARE BUILDING THE CHANGE AGENTS THROUGH EMBA OFFERED

BY IIT BOMBAY – WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ST LOUIS.”

Imagine if, through our EMBA program, we are able to create this kind of a learning ecosystem and infrastructure, where everybody tries to understand the challenges of each other(Public/ Private/Start-ups), what would be the level of learning and academic reach can be created in the classroom. So, that is where my vision is to reach out deeply in terms of making it geo widespread and learn from each other and shape the future of economies and society.

will be instrumental in shaping the future industries, and society, and fuel the economic growth.

Let’s imagine the whole of India comes together to learn from each other as to how they do business, how they could empower people, empower the society and empower their businesses. The individuals from the public sector who are not fully exposed to the mechanisms of the private sector or enterprises, will now get connected, gain insights into strategic thinking, market dynamics, and will be well equipped with understanding and new perspectives to work together.

Is there any number you are looking at?

We are not looking at any number but yes, we are looking at contributing as much as possible and as fast as possible. We plan to enroll 200+ leaders to be trained as ‘Change Agents’ every year and go to their respective places and take the right decisions for the benefit of society and their respective businesses.

How do you see technology enabling the growth of education?

Education is one sector that has been a key ben-

eficiary of technology. We are the fastest adaptors of technology. The classroom experience is a very different experience than online, but technology plays a very critical role. Ed-Tech industry is growing at 16-17 percent and I assume it would grow at 40% CAGR in the years to come just because of the technology influence. We have adopted a hybrid delivery model. This programme particularly is delivered in a restrictive classroom mode where the leaders come and get the back-to-school experience at the IIT Bombay campus. But during the pandemic, we opted for a hybrid technology model where some of the students were in the class and some of them were online. Lately, when the pandemic began to wane away, we started offline classroom sessions, but technology, otherwise, plays a very critical role.

Technology is just not delivering the classes on zoom or a hybrid. We have a high-tech classroom, which is built a year or two ago. We have a fantastic classroom infused with high-end tools and technologies to deliver a unique learning experience. I am one of the Pro-technology CEOs, who is trying to make education delivered as efficiently, productively, and uniquely as possible.

What is your vision of creating an ecosystem of creating innovation and fostering entrepreneurship?

All the IITs are very well placed in building that kind of ecosystem. As far as IIT Bombay is concerned, our current director – Mr. Subhashis Chaudhary has a laser-sharp focus on building an innovative, agile, and problem-solving ecosystem combined with robust tools, technologies, and infrastructure where everybody can perform to the best. As far as the overall unicorn or start-up ecosystem is concerned, last year India replaced the UK in a pure number of unicorns perspective. While I know that we still need to speed up, academic institutions especially such as IITs and IIMs need to play a very important role. Schools need to play a very critical role in creating the mindset of entrepreneurship within the students starting from seventh and eighth grade. So, when they go to any IITs or IIMs or anywhere else, they can be supported through IIT/IIM incubation programs.

Speaking specifically about IIT Bombay, we have our incubator “Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE)”, which works aggressively in building an entrepreneurial ecosystem and all the IIT Bombay students, whoever want to create something unique or have an idea to pitch.

SINE encourages that endeavor and whenever

SME CHANNELS 31 MAY 2022

INTERVIEW

“WE SHOULD HAVE AN ECOSYSTEM TO SUPPORT THE NEXT IDEA AND MAKE IT AN EASY ENTRY TO PRESENT THAT BILLION-DOLLAR IDEA.”

requires to pitch in and help, it does the needful to support the incubation of the particular start-up.

As far as IIT Bombay and Washington University JV is concerned, as you know 20-30% of the class comprises entrepreneurs. And the rest of the class participants come to learn the various aspects of the business. They get influenced by the entrepreneurs and co-participants and come up with a lot of unique ideas, which further pushes them to go to SINE in IIT Bombay and they end up creating unique products and services for the society and people. So, we have a complete ecosystem within IITB right from learning to knowledge to creating a company to running it further – and, of course, generating employment and contributing to the economy.

Can the IITs or Premium institutions in India create passion among the students to participate in the Make in India initiative?

The contribution of IITs in creating entrepreneurship is nothing but Make in India initiative. You learn through academia, and you have an ecosystem to implement your ideas to get success, which contributes to the vision of Make in India. In my view, not only IITs but all the institutions should draw a road map of governance in line with the best global practices.

Once you have your road map of governance ready in line with the global practices, more global companies get attracted and try to come to India for collaborations. And, then the Make in India initiative looks successful together.

Institutes must set up an industry Advisory Board with an objective to establish a strong industry connection – conduct multiple workshops, create a bond with each other, and develop a plan, along with objectives and outcomes.

I think academia should also focus on crossfunctional learnings with the transformative developmental experience. Intellectual growth with the deep practical knowledge with sound judgment, institution should also focus on the mindset of change for its own students.

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Higher education is just not getting a degree and landing to a great job, but you learn and develop as an overall person. Putting all the industry and academia together and having an industry body with academia as an advisory would benefit immensely the Make in India initiative. All those practices which we just mentioned are followed within IIT Bombay.

But can we ever make companies like Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Oracle, WhatsApp, Etc.?

Sanjay it is a very good point, but I would want to make a little correction. I think you forgot that India has also created reputed companies globally, for example, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, etc. TCS and Infosys and lot many Indian companies which have achieved global presence and global respect are born in India, but yes, how many numbers is my question.

Besides, you will be surprised to note that many founders of Indian startups that turned a unicorn in 2021 were an alumnus of IIT. It will be interesting to note that 65 of the 153 unicorn founders in India are from IITs. This apart, I think India has created valuable global companies and we are certainly on the path to creating more, looking at the entrepreneurship or the number of unicorns produced in India every year. But the fact is that 73 to 74% of innovative start-ups/Unicorns are being incubated/ produced and run in USA and China. However, to match the growth and build more and more valuable global companies, we must focus on skill-based learning and the New Education Policy (NEP) provisions that for us.

So, skill-based training is important. We need more investment into R&D from the government and companies. We also need to provide an ecosystem that could support the innovation. Today, we need to listen to young and innovative talent from rural India, ideas from there have to be heard.

And we should have an ecosystem to support the next idea and make it an easy entry to present that idea. This can only help in creating the companies

like Google, Microsoft, or Tesla-like companies in India but for the great start-up ecosystem to flourish, companies should put themselves in the market the way Tata Sons did with Big Basket and 1mg, etc. So, companies need to invest in unique start-ups, listen to them and allow them to grow.

As far as the education system in India is concerned, do you have any suggestions?

Our education policy, has been recently modified.

It is very progressive and outcome-based. I am a big supporter of outcome-based learning. We need to develop our course plans with an objective of outcomes and the focus on developing conceptual skills to identify, formulate and solve problems innovatively. The students must undertake case studies and simulation exercises irrespective of which education Institute they are in so that it can help them succeed in a far better manner than today.

INTERVIEW

JAMES BROWN CEO, SMART COMMUNICATIONS

“OUR MULTI- TENANT CLOUD ARCHITECTURE IS A VERY STRONG ATTRACTION FOR THE CIO THAT WE ARE TALKING TO.”

GOAL IS TO DRIVE

GREAT CUSTOMER

EXPERIENCE

It is no secret that customer experience transformation is a very important piece in the digital transformation strategy for any organization. In the entire puzzle, customer communication is very important. Today, organizations are strongly pursuing the path of innovation to drive great customer experience. We spoke to James Brown, CEO, Smart Communications to understand his strategy. An excerpt.

What is the role of communication in the entire piece of Digital Transformation?

Communications are really the backbone of a great customer experience. We believe at Smart Communications that what lies behind a great experience is a great conversation. So traditionally these perhaps would have been one-way communications between a bank or an insurance company and their customers but now what we’re seeing is those one-way communications are becoming two-way digital on demand and Omni channel conversations. They can be initiated by the customer they responded to by the institution.

We genuinely look to establish a true conversation between the company and their consumers. So, it

is a huge change in the way that companies interact with their customers.

How communication has changed amid this pandemic?

We have heard it many times that the pandemic has really driven digital transformation – really by necessity now. Communications that may have been static one way in the past have now become digital and on demand. They are very interactive.

I think customers are comparing the experience they get with a bank or an insurer with the experience they may get from an online retailer. So, I think our customer experience has become the battleground for differentiation for brands. So, we have seen a huge adoption of our cloud based

conversational communications. They are really trying to drive great customer experience.

What is the competitive advantage of Smart Communications?

What is your strategy of growth?

We see ourselves unique. We really are evolving beyond communications into conversations.

We have created a platform called Conversation Cloud. Conversation Cloud allows companies to collect information about their consumers through interactive two-way interview type forms of transformation to communicate in very robust personalized ways to collaborate on platform and to coordinate the entire conversation within our Conversation Cloud platform. So, we have got these key capabilities that we are building out within the platform. Interestingly, we have seen an enormous shift to cloud, and we are the only multi-tenant cloud platform in this category. We have been really at the forefront of driving these conversational communications in the cloud.

So, it is a very exciting place to be in terms of our longer-term growth strategy. We are very focused on continuing our growth organically.

We are focused on key regulated industries. So, industries like insurance, financial services and healthcare are most focussed categories. Globally, we recently made the acquisition of Swiss- based company called Assentis Technologies having expertise in customer communications management area. That has expanded our footprint and also given us a deeper financial services expertise as well. So, it’s a combination of really emphasizing the Conversation Cloud being very specific about the vertical industries that were focused on and expanding geographically as well. In fact, in Australia today we have a large installed-base, and it is just part of our wider Asia Pacific growth strategy.

What was the rationale behind acquiring Intelledox in Australia?

Intelledox acquisitions was very important to us as it gave us capability to transform static formsbased processes into genuinely two-way interview like interactions, which is very personalized interactions with consumers. It allows companies to collect data about their consumers. So Intelledox acquisition gave us the great collect capability.

We now call that SmartIQ. It sits alongside our SmartCOMM communications platform. It is a very powerful part of the conversation cloud.

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SME CHANNELS 33 MAY 2022

INTERVIEW

ORANGE TO

FOCUS ON SDX, DC AND CLOUD THIS YEAR Orange Business Services is a leading service provider having presence in various global locations. They are closing monitoring the technology evolution and partaking in the journey of the customers. We spoke to Chalapathi Rao, Country General Manager - India at Orange Business Services, to know his perspective. An excerpt.

How do you read into the post pandemic market growth?

Many enterprises were hesitant or holding back their digital transformation strategy, but the pandemic had advanced it. It is a positive impact of the pandemic. Post pandemic, there is a surge of activities that the enterprises are seen, especially in India. It has coincided with the make in India programs of India. There is a surge of activities happening in the ICT sector as well. There are also a lot of disruptive technologies available, which is making good solutions available in the market giving opportunities to the industry to innovate.

How do visualize the market opportunity for Orange Business Services?

In terms of the Orange portfolio, it is very rich as it is a global organization. Traditionally connectivity services was the basis on which many telcos have been built and we are no exception. The adaptation to the upcoming technologies and transition to the next generation services with the strength of the connectivity services is what Orange has done very effectively.

In terms of the enterprise part of it, which we call ‘Orange Business Services’ is almost a 30,000 people organization spread across multiple countries. While connectivity services is still there, we are reinventing the connectivity services into the

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next generation connectivity services which are Flexi SD-WAN solution, Flexi Lan solutions, etc.

We believe that these are the technologies going to be the future. And there are other solutions including cloud, security and IoT. We have good success stories in the rest of the world. Obviously, in some of these solutions implementations, there has been a bit of lag in India, where my focus would lie for next couple of quarters.

How do you see the evolution of CIOs in digital transformation?

CIO is not a designation it is just a roll. Today, if I take CIO as a function, the issue is that there are many roles or functions in the organizations which have got many IT components as mixed. Today, if I go to a manufacturing of auto industry, if I just look at the marketing function, I don’t think for any of their promotions, they go to a CIO. They have an embedded and integrated system within that function, which is almost like a semi-CIO to take care of. So, the digital part of it, if only associated with the CIO, is probably fading away. There are many functions but each of those functions have got a flavor - the proportion can be varying but there’s a flavor of a digital transformation.

They all would be behaving like a CXO, so if today I don’t tap into those things, then probably there’s a good possibility that the bigger pie will be

missing.

The conventional CIO might be reduced to the infrastructure management, which is critical and at the same time, that throws good opportunities for organization like Orange in terms of managing that piece and leaving the rest of the things of the core components of that system to the right functions.

As far as the Digital Transformation is concerned, where have the enterprises reached now?

I think it’s fair to say that the journey has begun. I don’t think anybody would claim that the goal is the end goal. They’re at different levels of maturity, but people are talking that by 2023, there would be a reasonable awareness and there would be a reasonable manner of digital transformation by 60% of the enterprises in different flavors.

The challenging part of it is digital transformation and technology are probably inseparable. As one starts a journey and goes through the process, there are technological changes which are bound to happen, and those changes would probably dictate the outcome. There has to be some core correction, which the enterprises need to be cognizant about.

At Orange, we give right technical advice in terms of implementation of solutions and then stay with the enterprises in their journey of trans-

INTERVIEW

CHALAPATHI RAO COUNTRY GENERAL MANAGER - INDIA, ORANGE BUSINESS SERVICES

“TODAY CUSTOMER VIEWS YOU NOT JUST FOR A PRODUCT BUT WHAT YOU OFFER AS A PACKAGE. THAT IS WHERE CUSTOMER WOULD DIFFERENTIATE AND SELECT.”

formation to adapt to any changes.

From Orange Business Services perspective, where do you want to invest more?

This financial year, our focus would be on SDx, data centers and cloud as more and more opportunities around these technologies would be available to us with minimal disruption. We have many success stories on the areas on a Global scale. As far as 5G is concerned, we are still looking at implications of the licenses because there are testing going on still having no commercial role out.

How many tech partners do you have?

We are almost working with 50 plus established partnerships including some of the startups and we have acquired one of cyber security companies. So, partnership is not an issue. However, for us the strength is integration. We would be working with the customer in perfectly designing solutions and getting these partners and ensuring that the solution works, is what our strength and USP. We have got successful integration case studies for various customers including government, large enterprises, public sector organizations, etc.

This is a very rich experience as far telco like us is concern and there might not be many in India with similar experience.

Do you also offer cybersecurity as a service?

Yes, we do have capability of completely running the SOC and the entire life cycle of the SOC can be managed by us. We have done it for some of our global customers and some of the services we are running out of India as well as India is one of the large delivery centers for Orange.

How are you present in India from resources availability point of view?

We have close to 4000 full time employees spread across multiple cities, but the concentration is of course in Gurgaon and Mumbai. Probably 80% of them would be in these two cities. However, we have presence in close to around 100 odd cities in India. We do not own DCs in India, we manage many DCs for the enterprises.

What do you stand against the competition?

Today customer views you for not just a product but what you offer is a package. That is where customer would differentiate and select. That much of maturity the customer has these days. It is no longer a brand or a product engagement. Today, there are telcos which we complete. The same telcos we do borrow connectivity services and sometimes vice versa. So, the industry term for that is ‘coaptation’. That has been accepted.

Today we have 100 plus network interfaces in the country. If I want to seamlessly provision on somebody’s network, it happens quickly. From the feasibility part, if something does not fall under our network, we can look at from others network and do the needful seamlessly without taking the traditional rout of lengthy procedure.

What is your real challenge?

The organizations’ strategy is to convert the acquired customers to consume deep services from us. For example, a customer we have is taking basic services which we want to convert into a managed services customer. So, matching the requirement of the customers with the service capability of Orange is a real challenge. Of course, acquiring new customers is a challenge too.

What is your goal for this year?

My firm belief is that from a product portfolio perspective what we have and what we are offering in India market, there is huge gap.

My first attempt would be to get that into India market. If I do that, I believe I can drive a 2X growth.

I am also watching 5G evolution and role out in India. There are some conditions on which 5G needs to happen. I would be building some plans around that.

ORANGE BUSINESS SERVICES: IN SHORT A global network-native digital services company, Orange Business Services, which is the business services arm of Orange S.A., is a global integrator of communications products and services for multinational corporations. For many years, Orange Business Services has pursued an ambitious acquisition policy, in line with its strategy as a global player in digital transformation.

Number of Employees: 28,500 staff in 100 countries & territories CEO: Aliette Mousnier-Lompré (Interim CEO) after Helmut Reisinger left after 14 yrs at Orange Revenue: 740 crore EUR (2017) Headquarters: Paris, France Founded: 1 June 2006 Subsidiaries: Orange, Business & Decision, etc.

Parent organization: Orange S.A.

What is your advice to the customers?

See one to advise the customers is that some of the enterprise relationships definitely need to be a long term. Currently there are there are some challenges which all of us face. So that understanding all of us need to have and should help each other. Digital transformation is a journey which requires a decent amount of time as it must be properly mapped. We would definitely partake in the journey of the enterprises.

SME CHANNELS 35 MAY 2022

SME CHAT

C. SUKUMARAN, SENIOR DIRECTOR - CONSUMER SYSTEMS PRODUCTS AND IMAGING COMMUNICATION BUSINESS, CANON INDIA

JUGGLING WITH

FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGIES Constantly innovating to keep up with the evolving tech landscape, Canon’s focus areas and marketing strategies always remain in line with industry trends and new consumption patterns Leading printing and imaging solutions major Canon India has been redefining the equations in the Indian market. In a special interaction with SME Channels, C. Sukumaran, Senior Director Consumer Systems Products and Imaging Communication Business, Canon India, reveals his organization’s strategy to address growing demand for printing and imaging solutions from customers, his predictions for the printing industry in 2022 and his vision and plans for the channel community. Edited excerpts…

In view of the pandemic and the current scenarios, what are the major market trends you would like to forecast for the running year?

The pandemic has brought about a fundamental change in customers’ usage patterns and has led to structural changes in the consumer purchasing journey. We, at Canon, believe it is imperative to constantly keep innovating to keep up with this evolving landscape. Our focus areas and marketing strategies are always in line with upcoming industry trends and new consumption patterns.

As the country has now opened with ease in COVID-19 relaxations, we have also resumed our retail expansion spree in the country to be available for our customers across all touchpoints.

We recently opened one of our largest PIXMA Zones in Pune this month which offers specialized solutions and addresses varied printing needs.

Additionally, we also opened the futuristic and experiential Image Square 4.0 in Jaipur, a one stop store for all kinds of photography needs, with a more curated approach of exhibiting the full lineup strategy and exclusive technical support for professional photographers.

When it comes to the printing segment, we

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continue to witness demand for home printers further proliferate the adoption of connected and cloud-enabled multifunction printers that are cost-effective and offer an all-in-one solution.

The pandemic has also boosted new trends and an interesting correlation has emerged between social media filters and the resurgence of printed photographs. Thus, we foresee immense scope in the growth of photo printing with people picking it up as a hobby while spending more time at home.

On the camera front, we continue to see positive demand from OTT, Cinema, Preaching and Education segments, for high-end premium imaging products. To further strengthen our presence in the Cinema segment, we recently introduced an industry first ‘Cinema Excellence Suite’, launched in Mumbai. The suite will feature Canon’s extensive range of cinema imaging technology directly to cinematographers, DOPs, filmmakers, and production houses.

How is Canon empowering its partners to capitalize on the opportunities associated with its product portfolio?

Channel partners have always played a critical role in Canon’s success story. As one of our key stakeholders, they have enabled us to strengthen our foothold in the industry and reach out to a diverse range of customers. We have invested significantly through the years to develop a sound partner ecosystem that is spread across geographies.

At Canon, we believe in consistently working towards helping our channel partners build both scale and competencies in new technologies. We actively review the distribution and retail structure and provide channel partners with personalized

retail coverage and customized campaign support to help expand their business. While we are ensuring easy and quick access to the latest Canon products and services for our consumers, we are also mindful of our channel partners’ profitability and long-term sustenance in the market. Therefore, we actively explore new business opportunities that help our channel partners expand their product portfolio.

The Canon Partner ecosystem has been infused with strong fundamentals and over the years, we have consistently nurtured the partner program which has grown to a strong network of 120+ distributors and 3500+ channel partners.

As Hybrid working takes over and as businesses adapt to the new market landscape, what should partners do to sustain growth? Which areas are you focusing on in the channel – skillsets, sales and marketing, vertical and technology practice development, service capability, etc.?

As businesses adapt to the new market landscape and customer requirements, channel partners and retailers must also address the conditions of the new world order. The key is to bridge the gap between online and offline sales channels which means retailers will have to adopt an ‘omnichannel approach’, combining both online and offline platforms while maintaining sustained customer connections to thrive in an extensively competitive landscape.

We have invested significantly in developing a sound partner ecosystem spread across geographies. Training sessions are organized for partners from time to time to help them better understand changing industry trends as well as to adapt to new

SME CHAT

“WE ACTIVELY REVIEW THE DISTRIBUTION AND RETAIL STRUCTURE AND PROVIDE CHANNEL PARTNERS WITH PERSONALIZED RETAIL COVERAGE AND CUSTOMIZED CAMPAIGN SUPPORT TO HELP EXPAND THEIR BUSINESS.”

realities. Engagements with our channel partners, both online and offline, help us understand their challenges and accordingly help devise solutions to address each of their challenges. For instance, we are helping partners set up Google Business Profiles accounts starting with Canon PIXMA Zones. This will help our partners have a digital identity and help consumers discover their products and services.

Please brief us on your flagship product/solutions which have good traction in the India market?

Small and medium businesses form the backbone of the Indian economy, and the pandemic has led them to invest in smart digital solutions to gain a competitive edge. We at Canon, understand the needs of small businesses and home offices and are constantly bringing forth innovative products that meet their changing needs. Our flagship PIXMA G-series printers are touted to be cost-efficient and come with reliable ink tank technology making them ideal for home and small businesses in India.

Last year, we introduced PIXMA G570, PIXMA G670, imagePROGRAF PRO-300 and PIXMA PRO-200 with an objective to promote the photo printing culture in India.

On the camera front, our mirrorless segment has been doing exceptionally well in the Indian market equipped with the best-in-class technology. The game changers for this segment are the EOS R5 which comes with 8K video recording and the EOS R6, which is designed to give one optimum performance for low-light photography.

Other than this, we most recently introduced the EOS R5 C, a mirrorless hybrid camera with the capabilities of Cinema EOS and the EOS R system and we are already witnessing great traction for it. Lastly, our special vlogging camera, the EOS M50 Mark II enabled with in-camera YouTube live streaming for real-time video engagement has really attracted the Indian audience as well. Hence, it is our continuous endeavor to keep divulging into new segments while introducing qualitydriven products to delight our customers.

What’s your Channel Strategy for 2022? Any new channel initiative to pump fresh energy into the partner ecosystem?

India is a dynamic market with vast opportunities across regions. In order to consistently reach out to our customers across the length and breadth of the country, it is imperative to leverage every possible medium to market ourselves.

This year we will focus on expanding our partner ecosystem further with a special emphasis on micro-distribution and regional outreach. Our primary objective is to increase the availability of Canon products and genuine consumables across India in the foreseeable future with the help of our valued channel partners. Moving forward, we will ensure our presence on all platforms where our customers are present, aligning with our corporate motto of always ‘delighting our customers’.

Is there any channel expansion plan into Tier-III & IV cities to ensure better reach of your products and services?

In the next two years, regional penetration is one of our core focus areas as we want to make our products and services available in every corner of the country. So far, we have expanded our regional presence by opening 295+ Canon PIXMA Concept stores and 1500+ OIC Signature Stores across the country. We are actively working towards building a stronger base in Tier III and IV markets by expanding and strengthening our channel partner ecosystem to ensure hassle-free availability of our products and services for our customers.

SME CHANNELS 37 MAY 2022

INTERVIEW

CUSTOMER OBSESSION

HAS LED TO THE STRONG GROWTH STORY OF DE-CIX With the exponential growth in digital application and content consumption by the consumer, the role of the Internet Exchange and Cloud Exchange is very important. The lowest latency in access is always deterministic factor for the growth of the ISPs. Enterprise IT World spoke to Sudhir Kunder, Country Director, DE-CIX India about how IX plays in India. An Excerpt.

What is the role of Internet exchange?

An IXP is a very simple Infrastructure and physical location where ISPs and the CDN networks connect to each other. This is the location where all other set ups are available for the customers in terms of accessing the capacity in their regional locations. As a result of which the bandwidth that we use for any transaction is available without latency Suppose somebody wants to do a Google search, the data would typically use a transit bandwidth and go to the Californian server of Google, bring it back. Therefore, the latency becomes high and there is a cost involved in doing the search.

But these challenges today are mitigated using a single platform. On one side, you have DE-CIX as a service provider, on the other side you have Google, Facebook and Akamai like service providers and the top 45 CDNs providers. As a result of this we are able to help companies get better control on their traffic and have offloading to the extent of 92% when it comes to India and also get full redundancy depending on how they are structured themselves. These are the few things IX does for them. And in our case, there are a couple of steps more because we also provide multiple services across a single access port, thereby giving the ISPs an opportunity to be at a great advantage where not only are they going to save money and

38 SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

have better funds available for their own organization, but also earn via our DE-CIX direct Cloud Model wherein they would be able to serve his SME and Enterprise customers.

Who are the beneficiaries of IX? Is it the consumers or the B2B customers?

The beneficiaries are spread across the spectrum.

The first beneficiary is the ISP because they are able to have CAPEX saving to the extent of 92% in Bombay, 80- 85% in Delhi and about 75-80% in Chennai. As a result of which one great beneficiaries, obviously the ISP’s, but since he gets traffic locally, the customers who are connected to that ISP are also beneficiaries because they get everything at the speed of thought. Today it looks like very simple, everything is fine, but if you go back in time and see how things were when the pandemic struck there was so much of uncertainty!

We were all in our homes for a prolonged period where a lot of people could manage their financial health because of proper connectivity at the same time, we also contributed to the mental wellbeing of the people. Imagine if you are going to browse a particular ecommerce channel - Amazon or Netflix or anything of your choice and you face buffering as you don’t have right Internet connectivity, you are going to be in bad shape. So that

time everyone in the ecosystem supported the consumers including the CDNs, ISPs, OTT players and even the Telcos. So, when it came to beneficiaries everyone benefited including the CDNs, ISPs, OTTs and the Telco. As there was a boom.

One of the major things that we wanted to bring to the fore is that we help customers connect up to us coming in from various parts of India. So, the Telcos via their point-to-point network also grew and so did the social media networks.

On the other side enterprises were able to use our Direct Cloud Services in such a manner that today across a single access port, if somebody wants access Azure or AWS, Telco goes ahead and gives it as a plug & play mechanism. From a time when the Telcos thought that it’s not a great idea to be collaborating with an IX, our follow up with them and our relationship that we carried through the years has helped them also understand and appreciate the fact that this is something that benefits both the sides of the spectrum. Today a large telco in India in the month of October launched a white labeled service and DE-CIX Direct Cloud is now being sold as their service also.

We have been able to upgrade to the extent of 2600 Gig from June to December 2021, which tells clearly about how we help ISPs to serve their customers. We offer plug and play solutions and cutting-edge technology that is available globally.

INTERVIEW

SUDHIR KUNDER COUNTRY DIRECTOR DE-CIX INDIA

“I WANT TO SEE DE-CIX CONTINUES TO BE THE CONDUIT FOR BRINGING DIGITAL EVERYWHERE FOR EVERYONE.”

Readiness has never been a challenge to us. Therefore, uptime has never been a challenge to us.

What is your business model?

The model that we adopt globally is of an enabler. We do not have last mile connectivity.

Today we have 206000+ villages connected over broadband in India, but we need to have all 60000 villages connected. So the headroom is so large that we need to have multiple solution providers.

But there are challenges that an ISP would face is that it would go to a Telco for raw internet bandwidth and if you have a company line DE-CIX who offloads 90% of that cost – meaning, Rs.27 lacs out of Rs.30 lac, and ISP is saving out of coming onboard with DE-CIX, the ISP creates an ability to spend that money in the right placed of network to grow his business in that area. So, the consumer would never ask for our service but eventually as we grow and the information spreads, people would eventually know that the seamless service they use from their ISP or Telco, they would come to know about our position in the entire scheme of things. The net result is immense - example, 2018, we had only one OTT player in India via Reliance, today we in the month of December, we have 52 odd OTT players in the market.

How do you see the relevance of IXs in the Edge Computing?

It is such a critical infrastructural component that today data needs to be as close to the source as much possible. If there is something happening in Kolhapur or Mizoram, why does that data need to come all the way to Kolkata or Mumbai. That is where the Edge Data Center story will evolve where you have the consumers on one side and players like us on the other part, whereby content

applications, and services available in that particular location. Today the connected cars use AI and other similar services may be using 5G and IoT. All these have to have a hub where the technologies can intermingle and get the best bang for the buck in terms of your investments. That is how Edge DCs will happen to be one of the most important and critical factors in the digital acceleration of many organizations. Organizations have already started adopting the new-gen technologies. There are use cases abroad where we see 5G being used extensively at edge locations. We see along with IOT and AI, it is going to create a digital triangle.

What is DE-CIX’ strategy now in India amid DC boom and data explosion?

I want to see DE-CIX continues to be the conduit for bringing digital everywhere for everyone. In the near future, while are clearcut objective is going to be data centers, as you can probably see from an announcement that how we think out of the box and look at leveraging all ecosystem players as one and ensure that we get larger reach.

Traditionally, DE-CIX was only available via data centers because we are the only legal exchange in India and everything and anything that we do is as per the norms of the Indian government. We don’t give handoffs outside. We invest tremendous amount of CAPEX into keeping our infrastructure robust and future ready. By virtue of that, we are available only in chosen 16 data centers across India in these four metros. Recently we had an alliance with Lightstorm, which helped us immediately to have extended access to a lot of customers who are sitting at non- DE-CIX POP, thereby extending our reach by another 23 data centers where we are going to be available.

Similarly, very soon we will make some alliance with local edge players. It is our clear-cut strategy that we have to go far and deep. You will see that the push for fast, resilient and secure networks. It will keep on growing and they have to be ultimately fulfilled by interconnecting with an exchange like ours which will give your ability to have Internet exchange and cloud exchange. This will open the gates for more cloud service providers to also increase their presence within the Indian landscape. For example, the magnanimity of the country or the largeness of it, only comes to our mind when we look at it from a different viewing glass today. If you look at Uttar Pradesh, it would have been the 5th largest country in the world. So that’s the kind of geographic reach available and there is going to be development. We are playing a clearcut role where solutions which come become more cutting edge from our side with more affordability, scalability, reliability and

robust for the adopters.

What’s the competitive advantage you’re offering to the customere?

People normally look at this business with a little bit of a different viewing glass. It is not what you have that matters. It is what you do with what you have that matters. So, for last five years, what we are able to orchestrate by putting together all the critical elements in place do really matter. In last two and half years, we have been able to make this organization a successful one. We have a unique set of services which we have been able to put to the right set of stakeholders in the right perspective. Multiple services across a single access port happens to be one of the most critical elements where Internet exchange, cloud exchange and a couple of other services come across as a single access port service. Cloud exchange typically would allow you to access four large cloud players today on a direct basis, counter winning the entire open Internet today used to reach to them. This means AWS. Azure, Google and Oracle - these are the four CSPs which you will have direct connect as a result of accelerating your digital transformation journey. As an enterprise, if you are taking a very heavy bandwidth from the telcos, substantial amount of that, CAPEX optimization can also be done by offloading that traffic on to DE-CIX. So, the investment for an enterprise is only one after which he creates multiple service layers on the same platform. Very soon, we are launching Microsoft Azure Peering Services, which is very unique to us and this service was developed jointly between US and the Microsoft team. This helps one across the entire O365 dynamics and the entire Microsoft services in such a manner that one is able to have full control on traffic and bring down latencies to the extent of 90%. There is also a case study of this service by Hochtief, which is the fifth largest construction company headquartered out of Germany. This company has brought down latency from 51 milliseconds to five milliseconds. Not only did they have better experience for themselves and their staff, but they were also able to have 50% less troubled tickets. This is the cutting-edge technology that we bring to the table.

Reliability, robustness, scalability, compliance, measured SLA, etc. all the features DE-CIX offers.

Not only do we offer a single access port across, but we also offer a secure connection that bypasses Internet in a matter where you have fully protection against DDoS attacks, guaranteed SLA’s, measurable quality, stable packet routes.

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

SME CHANNELS 39 MAY 2022

INTERVIEW

PIYUSH SHARMA VP OF ENGINEERING TENABLE

“CHANNEL PARTNERS NEED TO RECOGNIZE THAT THE MARKET FOR MANAGED SERVICES ISN’T DIMINISHED WITH THE NEW APPROACH TO SECURITY.”

SECURING

CLOUD RESOURCES Providing a robust cloud-native application protection platform, Tenable helps to secure cloud resources, container images and cloud assets In a special interaction with SME Channels, Piyush Sharma, VP of Engineering, Tenable, sheds light on the cloud industry, the benefits of Infrastructure-as-Code, solutions from Tenable’s stable to address business pain points, and, last but not the least, opportunities for the channel partners. Edited excerpts…

What is Infrastructure-as-Code?

IaC is an IT practice that codifies and manages underlying IT infrastructure. It is a strategic approach for DevOps teams that want to maintain their infrastructure with the trouble of manual provisioning. Managing IT infrastructure is a time-consuming process and requires IT teams to physically put the servers in place, configure them and then deploy the application. This often results in discrepancies, hampers agility and is also expensive.

IaC resolves this cumbersome process by using software tools to automate specific tasks through a

40 SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

version control system. This means that IT infrastructure can be written and described in code, and this code can be executed to make changes to the infrastructure. IaC offers speed and scalability to efficiently meet customers’ needs in a timely and seamless manner. But there is another larger problem at hand. The speed at which DevOps teams are rapidly pushing out new products and features is outpacing security. Therefore, it is critical that CISOs adopt security solutions that enable DevOps teams to continue production while applying security practices at the time of writing the code — a shift left approach.

What is the market size for the cloud in India?

The cloud market in India witnessed massive growth since 2020 with an annual growth rate of 24%. The public cloud market in India alone is expected to reach $10.9 bn by 2025. In India, the need for improved infrastructure, the economic

benefits of cloud computing, and the government’s efforts to promote digital India and IT infrastructure are propelling the market growth.

Innovative technologies such as AI, deep learning, advanced analytics, and immersive media in the IT ecosystem are contributing to the need of IaC which also increases the importance of involving security from the onset as infrastructure is being developed.

Who are the ideal customers for IaC security?

Any organization with hosting infrastructure on public cloud and teams developing in-house apps or using the cloud-native technologies.

What is the offer from Tenable?

Tenable.cs is our cloud-native application protection platform designed to help organizations secure cloud resources, container images and cloud assets. It provides end-to-end security from code to cloud to workload. With Tenable.cs, organizations can programmatically detect and fix cloud infrastructure misconfigurations in the design, build and runtime phases of the software development lifecycle. This prevents unresolved insecure configurations or exploitable vulnerabilities from reaching production.

Tenable.cs secures IaC) before deployment and maintains a secure posture in runtime. It enables IaC to remain secure by eliminating the need for complex and manual processes. Our solution also offers continuous visibility to assess cloud hosts and container images for vulnerabilities without having to manage scan schedules, credentials, or agents.

What are the opportunities for the channel partners?

Organizations need to reduce cloud security complexity with solutions that support both developer and security workflows — both in development and in runtime. IaC needs to be born secure so that there is a single source of truth. From there, run-time needs to be continuously monitored for changes to the infrastructure against the same set of policies. This developer-first approach enables cyber resilience through self-healing as organizations embrace cloud-native infrastructure.

Channel partners need to recognize that the market for managed services isn’t diminished with this new approach to security. It requires more consulting and services to build developerfriendly, self-healing processes as it is critical to understand the culture and requirements. This creates stronger relationships with clients; delivers more value, and builds an added layer of security.

REVIEW

PRODUCT

KODAK ALARIS’ ENHANCED I4000 SERIES SCANNERS

TENDA CP3 FULL HD 360° AI CAMERA

BY MANAS RANJAN info@smechannels.com

THE NEW TENDA CP3 FULL HD 1080P Smart AI Security Camera marks an extension of its present product portfolio and targets the SOHO category in India.

The Tenda CP3 is a highly intelligent, AI-driven security camera system that features a Full HD 1080p image sensor. It can rotate, pan and tilt to cover a total 360° in areas such as homes, small businesses, and small offices. The security camera is also equipped with a 2-way full-duplex audio communication system, apart from smart motion detection and tracking.

The Tenda CP3 can have multiple use. It’s a versatile product that can be installed in homes, offices, classrooms, shops and other small areas that need 24x7 remote surveillance.

The camera is capable of Auto Targeting and Tracking. Thanks to the inbuilt AI mechanism, CP3 can automatically track movement of everything that passes by.

The CP3 features a flashing light and a loud alarm too which kicks into action the moment there’s any type of movement in the surveillance area.

The moment motion or intrusion is detected, the sound and light alarms go off, and you simultaneously receive a notification alert on your smartphone.

The Tenda CP3 is equipped with S-motion

Detection. The device has a unique artificial intelligence (AI) mechanism that accurately helps to detect and identify human body shapes and movement. It detects suspicious movement automatically, triggers an alarm, and sends notifications on your mobile in real-time.

The camera has 360° coverage. With a pan/ tilt design that enables flexible rotation in all directions, the Tenda CP3 covers the area 360° horizontally and 155° vertically (90° up, 65° down) leaving no blind spots.

It can also switch to Instant Privacy Mode.

The moment you want it, just simply tap on the app and the camera rotates downward, allowing you full privacy.

It also provides Free Cloud Subscription to the user. Get instant access to all your recorded videos which are safely and securely stored on the cloud from any remote location. Avail a 3 month free cloud subscription on every Tenda CP3 to store 24x7 recordings on the cloud.

A smart and easy-to-use security camera, Tenda CP3 is ideal for those who look for a smart security camera system for their home or small office on a tight budget.

KODAK ALARIS HAS ENHANCED ITS KODAK I4000 SERIES SCANNERS. THE KODAK I4650 AND KODAK I4850 PRODUCTION SCANNERS NOW DELIVER FASTER SCANNING SPEEDS OF UP TO 160 PAGES PER MINUTE (PPM).

KODAK I4000 SERIES SCANNERS ARE IDEAL FOR BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCERS (BPOS), SERVICE BUREAUS, BUSY CORPORATE MAILROOMS, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, AND OTHER PAPER-INTENSIVE ORGANIZATIONS THAT REQUIRE FAST SCANNING, SUPERIOR IMAGE QUALITY, AND CONSISTENT DATA ACCURACY TO MAXIMIZE PRODUCTIVITY. THE KODAK I4650 AND KODAK I4850 SCANNERS ARE PACKED WITH FEATURES THAT HELP SCANNING PROFESSIONALS PROCESS DOCUMENTS MORE EFFICIENTLY AND REDUCE OPERATING COSTS. A 500-SHEET INPUT ELEVATOR DELIVERS CONTINUOUS DOCUMENT FEEDING WITH A STRAIGHT-THROUGH PAPER PATH FOR MATERIALS SUCH AS CARDSTOCK, FILE FOLDERS, AND LONG DOCUMENTS—ALL WITH FASTER THROUGHPUT. THE NEW KODAK I4650 SCANS UP TO 145 PPM AND THE KODAK I4850 SCANS UP TO 160 PPM. THE KODAK I4000 SERIES ALSO HAS FOUR LAYERS OF DOCUMENT PROTECTION TO SAFEGUARD IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS. LENGTH DETECTION PROTECTS PAPERS FROM GETTING OVERLAPPED AND APPEARING AS ONE LONG DOCUMENT.

WARRANTY: On request PRICE: On request CONTACT: https://www.kodakalaris.com/ company/contact-us

SME CHANNELS 41 MAY 2022

PRODUCT PRODUCT

STORONE

STORONE AND SEAGATE BACKUP STORAGE WITH IMPROVED RANSOMWARE PROTECTION StorONE’s new solution with Seagate’s Exos AP BV-1 promises to extend the hybrid storage use case while dramatically lowering the cost of production, archive and backup storage.

The new solution combines updated versions of StorONE and Seagate’s successful hybrid storage solutions based on StorONE’s Enterprise Storage Platform software and Seagate’s Next-Gen Application Platform (AP), the Exos AP BV-1. The Seagate Exos AP BV-1 is the 2nd GEN AMD EPYC server module. It supports Seagate’s existing family of compatible system enclosures, including the Exos AP 2U12, Exos AP 2U24, and Exos AP 5U84, providing a range of storage enclosures for 12 to 84 drives, ideally suited to StorONE’s Enterprise Storage Platform.

The StorONE Enterprise Storage Platform with the Seagate Exos AP BV-1 is the first backup storage solution with intelligent flash-first storage.

All backups are first received on a flash tier to improve backup performance, enabling IT to increase protection frequency. Then the StorONE S1:Backup software uses a new predictive tiering algorithm, moving old backup data to the hard disk tier during less busy times, eliminating the concerns of forced migration when receiving a new backup job. n Warranty: On Request, Price: On request, Contact: https://www. storone.com/support/

MATRIX

MATRIX 2MP TURRET SERIES IP CAMERA Matrix Turret Series IP Cameras are designed for large enterprises. The ball and socket design results in ease while installing the camera. In particular, the axis adjustment becomes easier. Furthermore, minimum screws are used while installing the camera amplifies the IR sensor’s result.

Next, the back-illuminated sensors deliver crystal clear images in lowlight conditions. Likewise, image enhancing technologies ensure that images are evenly balanced. Finally, intelligent video analytics bring out proactive responses and help deter miscreants. Not only the camera stands out in terms of performance but also it is designed using superior components. The camera has the capability to withstand harsh weather conditions due to ingress protection.

The other highlights of the Matrix 2MP Turret Series IP Camera has been its Superior Image Clarity - 0.01 Lux. It has a Signal-to-Noise Ratio of 73dB, Image Clarity with WDR of 120dB, H.265 Video Compression. It’s capable of Adaptive Streaming and Smart Streaming. It has Edge Storage of 512GB and is capable of motion, intrusion and tripwire detection and ingress protection.

LEXAR

LEXAR ARES DDR5 MEMORY The Lexar ARES DDR5 OC Desktop Memory is designed for PC enthusiasts, gamers, over clockers while optimized on the latest Intel Core processor.

The ARES DDR5 OC leverages next-gen DDR5 technology designed for the latest Intel Core processors platform and supports Intel XMP 3.0.

With speeds of 5200, the Lexar ARES DDR5 OC Desktop Memory provides more than 1.63x the bandwidth than that of DDR4. So be it for speeddemanding video games, video editing software, or intensive workloads, the Lexar ARES DDR5 OC

Memory will help you to experience superior DDR5 performance.

Lexar ARES DDR5 Desktop Memory is designed with a sleek aluminum heat spreader to keep your system running cool. Built with an on-die ECC, it leverages real-time data error correction for

increased stability and reliability while you push the limits. And, with built-in Power Management IC (PMIC), it provides better power control and power delivery while operating at a low voltage of 1.25V (XMP Profile), further lower your power consumption.

42 SME CHANNELS MAY 2022

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