SME April 2020

PLUS

LogMeIn’s GoToMeeting Helps Enable Easier Remote Work /06 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business VOLUME 11 | ISSUE 02 | PAGES 40 | APRIL 2020 | RS. 20/-

CASE STUDY / 31

“Matrix Time-Attendance Solution for Sterling and Wilson Collects Attendance Data of Remote Sites Using Wireless Connectivity”

SME CHAT / 32

Poly “Collaboration solutions the new trend for Indian Market”

SME CHAT / 34

Dell “We will continue our focus on delivering a “customer first” approach”- Dell Technologies”

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COVID PANDEMIC SPECIAL This issue is dedicated to the Covid 19 Victims and Super Heros.

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Amid coronavirus, Tally Solutions extends its support to businesses Pg: 11 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business CASE STUDY

SME CHAT

MATRIX / 31

“Matrix Time-Attendance Solution for Sterling and Wilson Collects Attendance Data of Remote Sites Using Wireless Connectivity”

SME CHAT POLY / 32

“Collaboration solutions the new trend for Indian Market”

DELL / 34

“We will continue our focus on delivering a “customer first” approach”- Dell Technologies”

MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL

WORK ON ENHANCING SKILLSETS

SANJAY MOHAPATRA

sanjay@smechannels.com

Dear Friends Covid 19 Pandemic has brought every one on their knees. Every business house is locked down and every individual is under virtual house arrest by the order of the government.

No airlines is operating, railways have come to a grinding halt. There is no manufacturing and no trading. Essential goods including good and vegetables are available at are higher price – at least in the urban areas. Many medicines are out of stock. Even mask and sanitizers are not available in every outlet. In this situation, IT business have come to a standstill. Employees of many large companies have been asked to go on unpaid leave and many have been ordered to sit on the bench.

The focus of the government and companies to stop spread of Corona Virus but there is no sign of abatement of the situation. Every day the number is growing. The global infection number has touched three million plus, and death count has reached two hundred though plus. In this situation what to do. The global think thank are trying to create a balance between containment of virus and economy growth, which does not look to be good at the moment. People in many countries have come out to the road and demanding governments to let them free.

In this situation, IT companies in India are also divided when some jumped into opening their offices during the relaxation period, some are cautious about it – more concern about their employees’ health.

Secondly, in the partial lockdown who is going to come to their offices to do any business? the retail stores are far from being buying the option of opening their outlets and also the it companies in the business clusters in Nehru Place, Lamington Road and SP Road.

So, what is left is work from home and containment with whatever opportunity is coming their way.

Customers are obviously not in position to spend on technology except fixing work from home security and network. Besides, what they are concerned about is collaboration solutions. These are the three – four things going on with the customers.

So, advice for the partners is that the situation will never be like before in the future too – even after the lockdown is over. They have to attend relevant trainings and webinars, and enhance their skillsets around cloud, security, analytics, BI, collaboration, UC, etc. – depending on their core strength and customer segment. Try to remain lean and agile.

Do not be panic and be positive!

Hikvision LED Display Product Line Hikvision full range of LED displays provides seamless, high-definition and colorful imaging. Developed and manufactured internally, Hikvision’s LED displays offer indoor fine pitch LED, indoor fixed LED, outdoor LED, and transparent LED technologies to cover a wide range of customization needs.

Hikvision has years of experience in providing monitoring screen displays for surveillance centers, and launching the new LED display product line also marks the entry of Hikvision into the global, commercial digital signage market, and yet another milestone in the company’s continuous expansion from the security field into new business areas.

The new LED displays from Hikvision are designed specifically to meet the growing market demand from enterprise and public safety organizations, advertising companies, and the entertainment industry.

SPECIFICATION: ONE-CLICK COLORTEMPERATURE MODE-SWITCHING: SUPPORT FOR ONE-CLICK SWITCHING AMONG MULTIPLE COLOR-TEMPERATURE MODES CHANGES THE PICTURE TO SUIT VIRTUALLY ANY APPLICATION FINAL WORDING: The new LED displays are engineered to become the ideal option for monitoring centers, meeting rooms, indoor and outdoor advertising screens, live spectator events, and a host of other scenarios.

SME CHANNELS APRIL 2020

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contents

Trusted Advisor of Channel Business

VOLUME 11 ISSUE 02

2020

APR r tne Par er n Cor

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Sub Editor: Nidhi Shail, Pooja Jain Designer: Shadab Khan Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi 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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Ingram Micro leads the way in essential services technology fulfilment during lockdown /17

smechannels.com

The global supply chain is among the worst hit, leading to a direct impact on the distribution business .Reflecting upon the state of the supply chain, Ingram Micro’s Director of Purchase & Materials, Blasé D’Souza remarked that he had never seen such widespread disruption in trade, freight transportation and supply chain.

Ph. No. +91 88618 21044 E-Mail info@

Bangalore #28/1, 3rd Floor, Sri Lakshmi Krupa, Near Shamanna Park, Model House Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore - 560004 accentinfomedia.com

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CASE STUDY MATRIX / 31

“Matrix Time-Attendance Solution for Sterling and Wilson Collects Attendance Data of Remote Sites Using Wireless Connectivity” Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra

SME CHAT

Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya

POLY / 32

“Collaboration solutions the new trend for Indian Market”

SME CHAT

Park, Hauz Khas

more inside

New Delhi-110016

Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458 Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi

DELL / 34

“We will continue our focus on delivering a “customer first” approach”- Dell Technologies”

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Video

SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | CONSULTING | SERVICES

for more log on to smechannels.com

Cisco Expands Small Business Product Portfolio Cisco is doubling down its focus on serving small businesses by offering customers and partners a simple, secure, and flexible portfolio with new solutions tailored to small businesses.

Collected under the Cisco Designed brand, the newly launched portfolio comprises new offerings that have been curated for small businesses, and address their networking, security, collaboration, cloud, and internet connectivity needs.

“Small businesses are the bedrock of India’s economy. In this dynamic macroeconomic environment, Cisco is committed

LogMeIn’s GoToMeeting Helps Enable Easier Remote Work LogMeIn updates to its GoToMeeting product with new integrations, including one with Microsoft Teams, updates to the desktop and mobile experience, audio enhancements and overall improvements to ensure business continuity during a time when remote work is at an unprecedented all-time high.

GoTo has also added a new integration with Docebo, a Learning Management

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Solution (LMS) for businesses. With Docebo and GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar or GoToTraining businesses can combine the tools to provide enterprise learning and development experiences with the ease and simplicity of GoTo’s video conferencing, webinar or training platforms. Admins now have the option to enable GoTo products for running training and learning sessions through their LMS.

to helping these businesses stay safe while ensuring business continuity by giving them access to top-notch, easy-to-use technology solutions. Our goal is to enable MSMEs in India to navigate these uncharted waters effectively by leveraging the power of technology,” said Panish PK, Managing Director, SMB, Cisco India and SAARC. The Cisco Designed portfolio brings together the power of machine learning, AI, and clouddriven solutions, and will help make buying, installation, and maintenance simple.

SNIPPETS

IBM Offers “Watson Assistant for Citizens” to COVID-19 Questions IBM is helping government agencies, healthcare organizations and academic institutions throughout the world use AI to put trusted data and information into the hands of their citizens. Available for no charge for at least 90 days and available to our client’s citizens online, IBM Watson Assistant for Citizens on the IBM public cloud, brings together Watson Assistant, Natural Language Processing capabilities from IBM Research, and state-of-art enterprise AI search capabilities with Watson Discovery, to understand and respond to common questions about COVID-19.

BM is offering Watson Assistant for Citizens for no charge for at least 90 days and will assist with initial

set up, which can typically be done in a few days. The initial solution is available in English and is being tailored to include Indian languages as well such as Hindi, so you can ask questions such as “dksjksuk ds y{k.k D;k gS”, or “xkft;kckn esa bldk fdruk laØe.k ?”, and “D;k ekLd dksjksuk ls cpk ldrk gS” . The offer includes access to 15 pre-trained COVID-19 “intents” or queries.

“Intents” are purposes or goals that are expressed in a customer’s input, such as answering a question. By recognizing the intent expressed in a customer’s input, the Watson Assistant service can choose the correct dialog flow for responding to it.

HP Announces variety of Relief Initiatives HP will deliver a variety of relief initiatives aimed at arming its global channel partner community to effectively navigate the operational and financial challenges associated with COVID-19. In addition to providing a variety of financing and leasing options for end customers, the company will offer short-term, market and country-specific incentives for channel partners. Offers will vary by geography and are dependent on partner eligibility.In addition, HP has implemented a more predictable, flat-rate incentive program and relaxed compensation models to allow for more partner flexibility with linearity while extending deadlines for submission of proof of performance and reporting1. The specific changes will be communicated to channel partners by HP market and country teams this week.

“As a global company, we understand the importance of acting globally while executing at the local level. Rather than taking a one-size fits all approach, we are taking a customized approach specific to the unique and evolving dynamics at the market and country level, depending on a variety of factors,” said Christoph Schell, Chief Commercial Officer, HP Inc.

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Organizations Choose VMware Digital Workspace Solutions VMware showcased how organizations – including Brisbane Catholic Education, BN Vital, Cofense, Nebraska Medicine, Preferred Mutual, and Tyler Independent School District – are leveraging its digital workspace platform, VMware Workspace ONE, to meet rapidly evolving business continuity needs while providing a productive, engaging digital employee experience.

The company also announced the general availability of several Workspace ONE capabilities aimed at addressing critical employee experience use cases – accelerating successful onboarding, building new ways of working for all, and supporting a remote-first workforce.

“At a time when business is far from usual, companies are leaning on our digital workspace solutions to enable their employees to work remotely, maintain productivity, increase connectivity, and provide more secure access to applications regardless of the endpoint .And, we’re constantly evolving our solutions to improve all aspects of an employee’s digital experience – from recruitment to retirement – to help companies win and keep the best talent,” ,” said Shankar Iyer, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware.

MY POINT

“LIKE MANY OF YOU, THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES OVER THE PAST WEEKS WHERE IT HAS FELT OVERWHELMING AND ALL-ENCOMPASSING FOR ME. I WORRY ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF MY FAMILY, MY CO-WORKERS, AND FRIENDS” SATYA NADELA, CEO, MICROSOFT

Stellar ‘Remote Data Recovery’ in India Stellar brings ‘Remote Data Recovery’ service in India with a purpose to resolve data loss crisis in the present global exigency caused by COVID19. This new service is a continuation of the company’s commitment to most efficient data care services, Remote data recovery; a superior technology in which lost files and other data can be retrieved through Internet ensuring the availability of lost data at customer’s doorstep in current lock-down situation.

Stellar’s ‘remote data recovery’ service enables its customers to avail data recovery service at a real- time basis. This will only require a working computer/ laptop along-with an internet connection at users’ end to recover lost data. Company’s data care experts will ensure necessary precautions while working remotely by using secured internet connection, Stellar’s proprietary recovery software to ensure data confidentiality, data security and data safety. This will recover data from the scenarios related to logical corruption in storage systems such as deleted user data, deleted or corrupted logical disks or partitions, formatted logical drive, corruption of data (files, videos, photos, database, e-mails of PST etc.), missing data, missing files and folders, deleted LUN and partial overwrite in the data space.

SNIPPETS

Verizon Business steps up to keep global enterprises running Verizon Business is stepping up its efforts around the globe to help keep its enterprise customers and critical infrastructure providers operational during the COVID-19 pandemic. As companies are looking to transform their operations and, in many cases, their focus, to better serve their customers and their communities, the Verizon team is stepping in to assist.

“We are talking every day with companies all around the globe that are feeling the full force of this immense disruption,” said Tami Erwin, CEO, Verizon Business. “They’re worried about how to keep their business going during this crisis, and how to set themselves up for the future once the pandemic is over. We have been able to help many organizations take simple steps to update their digital infrastructure and get better use of the technology they have today.”

In addition, Verizon’s Virtual Network Services (VNS) product suite can help meet the need for secure and reliable remote access from home offices, mobile devices, and Internet hotspots, wherever workers may be. Verizon’s Hosted Internet Breakout solutions bundle and VNS Secure Gateway have built-in support for thousands of remote clients.

Trend Micro secures BRAC Bank Ltd against advanced threats across networks and endpoints Trend Micro is now providing a comprehensive suite of cybersecurity solutions to BRAC Bank Ltd, Bangladesh’s leading bank for small and medium-sized businesses.

Consisting of Trend Micro Apex One, Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector and Trend Micro Deep Discovery Analyzer, the deployment provides BRAC Bank with automatic shielding from vulnerabilities, malware, and ransomware attacks. It also helps the bank with real-time threat monitoring and protection, elevated security posture for endpoints and networks.

With banking sector being a top target for cyberattacks, BRAC Bank Ltd primarily needed an all-inclusive solution which would protect them against advanced persistent threats such as malware infections, targeted attacks, zero-day, vulnerability exploits, and low-level phishing via email, SMS, etc.

Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Declined 12% in 2019

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT

Intel Reclaimed Top Spot in Global Semiconductor Market; Samsung Moved to No. 2

Zscaler appointed Sudip Banerjee as the Director of Transformation Strategy Asia Pacific and Japan.

Table 1. Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by Revenue, Worldwide, 2019 (Millions of US Dollars)

2019 Rank

2018 Rank

Vendor

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 15

Intel Samsung Electronics SK hynix Micron Technology Broadcom Qualcomm Texas Instruments ST Microelectronics NXP Semiconductors Apple Others (outside top 10)

Total Market

2019 Revenue

2019 Market Share (%)

2018 Revenue

2018-2019 Growth (%)

67,754 52,191 22,297 20,254 15,322 13,613 13,364 9,451 8,758 8,569 187,575 419,148

16.2 12.5 5.3 4.8 3.7 3.2 3.2 2.3 2.1 2.0 44.8 100.0

66,290 73,708 36,240 29,742 16,261 15,375 14,592 9,579 9,022 7,646 197,696 476,151

2.2 -29.2 -38.5 -31.9 -5.8 -11.5 -8.4 -1.3 -2.9 12.1 -5.1 -12.0

Rahul Arora joins McAfee India as Sales Director, India and SAARC Digital Transformation Leader, Vipul Anand joins Praxis Advisory Network

Acuver Consulting, appointed Manjunath B S as new Chief Technology Officer.

Source: Gartner (April 2020)

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SNIPPETS

GoDaddy acquires Neustar’s Registry Business GoDaddy is acquiring Neustar Inc’s Registry business.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close in Q2 2020.

The Neustar Registry business features a high-performance backend registry technology platform and enhanced domain security systems that enable people and brands to seamlessly connect and transact online with speed, security and reliability.

“GoDaddy is committed to helping everyday entrepreneurs bring their ideas online with the best possible domain name choices,” said GoDaddy Chief Operating Officer Andrew Low Ah Kee. “Neustar’s registry platform enables us to accelerate that commitment and provides enhanced scalability for future growth. For more than two decades, GoDaddy has used its consumer insight to drive innovation in the domain industry and we’ll continue to do so by creating more choice and value for consumers.”

Koch Industries Completes Acquisition of Infor Koch Industries has completed the acquisition of the remaining portion of Infor from Golden Gate Capital. Infor, a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry, has been a key component of Koch’s technological transformation. Koch companies have made more than $26 billion in technology-related investments in the past six years, transforming a global portfolio of businesses spanning multiple industries. In addition to being an investor since 2017, Koch has been a key customer, implementing Infor solutions across its businesses in areas like enterprise resource planning, human resources, supply chain, asset management and finance.

The acquisition brings new key capabilities to Koch to accelerate digital transformation, while providing Infor with resources and industry knowledge to continue growing its expertise in mission critical software for industries like manufacturing, retail and distribution, among others.

Sennheiser Announces New Distribution Partnership with AUDAC Sennheiser announced its exclusive distribution agreement with AUDAC to expand its presence in India market. With this partnership, Sennheiser will manage the complete sales, distribution and services of the comprehensive range of innovative audio products and solutions by AUDAC. On this occasion, Mr. Vipin Pungalia, Director, Professional Segment, Sennheiser Electronics India said, “The partnership with AUDAC comes as a great delight to us and will further help us grow and strengthen our presence in the market. We always aim to provide our customers with best class products and services and this partnership will effectively and efficiently help us in reaching our customers and reinforce our footprint in India. Sennheiser has one of the largest sales, service and support system in India. This also gives us the opportunity to offer the wide-ranging products and solution range across the professional ecosystem to make our customers integration easy and efficient. We believe that together, Sennheiser and AUDAC will provide a great portfolio to serve the growing audio market.

Cynet Expands North American Sales Operations with New Leadership and Business Offices Cynet officially opens the company’s North American sales operations in Boston. The new office follows the recent appointment of Mr. Avi Mileguir as vice president of sales for the cybersecurity innovator. In conjunction with this announcement, the company is also announcing a hiring initiative to staff the new location with an expert team of sales engineers, channel managers and inside sales professionals.

“Security is one of the highest priorities in IT, requiring company executives and the technology providers that support them to monitor the effectiveness of their cybersecurity strategies and processes,” said Eyal Gruner, Founder and CEO of Cynet.

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Lark Makes Its NextGeneration Digital Collaboration Platform Available For Free In India Lark made its digital collaboration suite, Lark, available for free in India. Lark is an all-in-one platform for collaboration that brings together a multitude of essential work tools, including Messenger, Online Docs and Sheets, Cloud Storage, Calendar, and Video Conferencing.

As businesses around the world are rapidly responding to the COVID-19 outbreak with initiatives ranging from travel restrictions, mandatory work from home and remote learning policies, Lark bridges the gap as a robust, easyto-use collaborative tool that helps people stay connected.

The service is also extended for free to Educational Institutes including, Schools, Colleges and Coaching Classes across India, enabling remote working between teachers and students that will effectively and rapidly manage workflow.

Beyond supporting remote work, UNESCO has also recognized Lark as a platform that can help students, parents, and teachers facilitate learning and provide social interactions during periods of school closures.

SNIPPETS

Notable decline in fixed broadband speed in India in March As of March, the Index ranks India 130th for mobile, 2 spots down compared to February 2020. India also dropped two spots on fixed broadband and is now ranked 71st globally in that category.

According to Ookla’s March Speedtest Global Index, UAE is in first position for mobile broadband speed with a mean download of 83.52 Mbps. Singapore still holds the top spot for fixed broadband speed with a mean download of 197.26 MbpsIn India, there was a slight dip in mean mobile download speed, from 11.83 Mbps in February to 10.15 Mbps in March 2020.

Similarly, mean download speeds on fixed broadband have decreased from 39.65 Mbps in February to 35.98 Mbps in March.

The mean fixed broadband speed in India has been declining since the beginning of 2020 - from 41.48 Mbps in January to 35.98 Mbps in March, a drop by 5.5 Mbps.

“When networks are under usage strain, like they are in this unprecedented time of lockdown in India due to COVID-19, it is natural that they experience some level of slowdown,” said Doug Suttles, CEO of Ookla.

Amid coronavirus, Tally Solutions extends its support to businesses

Avast launches all-new mobile browser with complete data encryption Avast released an Android version of Avast Secure Browser to extend its platform support beyond Windows and Mac on desktop to mobile. The introduction of a multi-platform browser is part of Avast’s ongoing focus to converge security and privacy services to enable a safer, more private and faster browsing experience across devices and operating systems.

Avast Secure Browser for Android was developed following Avast’s 2019 acquisition of Tenta, a private browser backed by Blockchain pioneers ConsenSys, and has been built from the ground up by privacy and cybersecurity engineers focused on total encryption. At its core is strong encryption including AES-256, ChaCha 256-bit, and the latest TLS/SSL cryptographic protocols for the data transport layer. To ensure that user DNS requests are kept private and secure, Avast Secure Browser for Android supports multiple DNS options straight out of the box, such as DNS over TLS, DNSSEC and decentralized DNS support.

COVID 19 has brought the country and almost the entire world to a standstill. Several businesses, especially the small and medium ones are directly impacted across the globe. To help them transition through these difficult times, Tally extended its support to businesses through several initiatives.

Tally has introduced a free of cost 30 days license of its flagship product- Tally.ERP 9 to businesses across the globe. Businesses simply need to register on www.tallysolutions.com and avail this benefit. The support extended on April 01st is being extremely well received with over 10,000 businesses having already signed up till date. For existing customers whose annual Tally Software Services (TSS) subscription stands expired as on March and April 2020, the company has extended it by 30 days. This extension has benefitted over 1.3 Lakh small and medium businesses who can now access a bouquet of connected services and latest product updates that comes with it without being financially burdened in these difficult times.

World’s largest independent cloud provider sees 100% surge in demand for data

Cisco Continues Commitment to Customers and Partners with $2.5B in Financing to Support

Lockdown, social distancing, quarantine, and remote working are the buzzwords today that have collectively led to an increased pressure on the Cloud.

While cloud providers are experiencing at least 20-40% surge in demand for data, cloud and co-location services. Linode, is experiencing a 100% increase in demand from existing customers and new customers. Basis this, Mr. Ashwin Kumar, Director, Data Centre and Cloud Operations, Linode India would like to share insights on how he sees this current trend picking up.

Please feel free to use the quote below in your stories or get in touch with us, if you need any other details.

“During the first two weeks of lockdown, we saw demand spike almost 100%. That spike has settled to a roughly 75% rise in utilization. We suspect this increased demand will continue as companies look to alternative providers like us to better manage their cloud computing costs and strengthen their multi-cloud and business continuity implementations.”

Cisco is continuing its global commitment to help customers and partners navigate an evolving landscape with the introduction of a new Business Resiliency Program. Offered through Cisco Capital, the vendor financing business within Cisco, and designed to help mitigate financial challenges resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, this program includes $2.5 billion in financing to provide organizations with access to the solutions they need to keep their businesses running and productive, their employees safe and support their communities during these unprecedented times.

“Cisco’s customers and partners are under enormous pressure to keep their businesses connected while remaining productive and secure,” said Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO of Cisco. “Whether it’s technology, financing or helping those most in need, Cisco is committed to working together to fight this pandemic on every front.”

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SNIPPETS

Veeam Cloud & Service Provider Program Celebrates 10 Years of Success Veeam celebrated its 10-year anniversary of the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) program with the release of program discounts and updates, and the release of NEW Veeam Service Provider Console v4. Veeam Service Provider Console v4 includes new capabilities that make it easier for service providers to remotely manage and monitor their customers’ Veeam environments and is offered FREE to VCSP partners.

Launched in March 2010, the VCSP program enables service providers to leverage Veeam software to offer reliable, revenue-generating Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) offerings. Driven by more than 25,000 Cloud & Service Provider partners, the VCSP program reported an annual recurring revenue (ARR) increase of 33 percent year-over-year (YoY) for Q4’19.

McAfee supports encryption enhancements in Microsoft Teams McAfee MVISION Cloud now supports encryption enhancements in Microsoft Teams, including encrypted webhooks and encrypted payloads. This enables organizations to improve productivity of their employees by letting them use Teams as a collaboration platform, participate in conversations and calls and upload and share documents while ensuring customer data remains secure with encryption when evaluated by McAfee MVISION Cloud. By staying abreast of the enhancements in Teams, McAfee MVISION Cloud remains one of the only Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) that is Certified for Microsoft Teams.

Working from home has become a new reality for many as more and more companies are requesting that their staff work remotely. Teams, the hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365, integrates the people, content and tools employees need to be more engaged and effective. Microsoft has seen an unprecedented spike in Teams usage with more than 44 million daily users1—a figure that has grown by 12 million in just seven days.

Intuit QuickBooks and Milaap to support SMBs Intuit QuickBooks launched small Business Relief Initiative, in collaboration with Milaap, to help small and micro businesses in India to raise money to tackle the challenges arising from the COVID-19 lockdown. Intuit’s QuickBooks Online is the world’s leading financial management solution for small businesses and accountants.

The Small Business Relief Initiative aims to raise funds for small and micro-businesses that are facing difficulties in paying employee salaries and in covering business expenses due to COVID-19.

As the COVID-19 induced lockdown continues, most of the small and micro businesses in the country are struggling to survive mainly due to cash flow problems. The Small Business Relief Initiative brings together Milaap’s crowdfunding platform with Intuit QuickBooks’ expertise, to provide local businesses with the resources and tools they require to start a crowdfunding campaign in a few clicks, via the Milaap platform where qualifying businesses that have been impacted by COVID-19 can raise micro-grants to meet essential business expenses.

VIAVI Augments Support to Service Providers and Network Equipment Manufacturers Viavi Solutions augmented worldwide support for field instruments used by fiber, cable and mobile service providers, as well as for lab and production test systems used by network equipment manufacturers. In the current global environment, communications networks have been deemed essential businesses, enabling subscribers to work or learn remotely. These customers need to be ready to install, upgrade, maintain or troubleshoot subscriber services while being socially responsible and safeguarding the health of their employees.

To minimize the time service provider technicians and contractors need to spend in the field, VIAVI is also providing complimentary remote access on supported instruments through at least June 30.

Smart Access Anywhere – available on PC, iOS and Android – can reduce time spent on customer premises and prevent return visits. Supported instrument families include VIAVI OTDR, OneExpert (CATV and DSL), and T-BERD®/MTS.

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DIGEST PORTSHIFT SELECTED AS A TOP 100 EUROPE AWARD FINALIST FOR 2020 PORTSHIFT, SELECTED AS A FINALIST IN THE RED HERRING EUROPEAN 100 AWARDS. THE EUROPEAN 100 RECOGNIZES THE MOST PROMISING COMPANIES IN THE REGION FOR THE INNOVATIONS, TECHNOLOGIES AND BUSINESS MODELS THEY ARE UTILIZING TO BECOME LEADERS IN THEIR RESPECTIVE INDUSTRIES. FOR THE EUROPEAN 100 AWARDS, THE RED HERRING EDITORIAL STAFF EVALUATES THE COMPANIES ON BOTH QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE CRITERIA, SUCH AS FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE, TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION, MANAGEMENT QUALITY, STRATEGY, AND MARKET PENETRATION.

SIGRA RANKED NUMBER ONE CLOUD BACKUP ENABLER FOR MSPS ASIGRA RANKED NUMBER ONE IN A LIST OF THE TOP 25 CLOUD BACKUP ENABLERS. STORAGE NEWSLETTER HIGHLIGHTS THE BEST CLOUD BACKUP SERVICE PROVIDERS AND TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS IN WHAT HAS BECOME RECOGNIZED AS THE AUTHORITATIVE LIST OF CLOUD BACKUP SOLUTION PROVIDERS GLOBALLY. THE GUIDE HELPS MANAGED SERVICE PROVIDERS (MSPS) TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF CUSTOMERS THAT RELY ON MANAGED DATA PROTECTION SERVICES. ASIGRA CLOUD BACKUP CONVERGES DATA PROTECTION AND CYBERSECURITY FOR RANSOMWARE/MALWARE DETECTION AND MITIGATION TO ENSURE SECURE AND RELIABLE BACKUP AND DATA RECOVERY. THE CONVERGED SOLUTION INCLUDES THE INDUSTRY’S FIRST ZERO-DAY RANSOMWARE ATTACK-LOOP™ PREVENTATIVE TECHNOLOGY USING BI-DIRECTIONAL DETECTION, ZERO-DAY EXPLOIT PROTECTION, VARIABLE REPOSITORY NAMING, AND TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION (2FA) FOR A FULL DEFENSIVE SUITE AGAINST ADVANCED CYBER-ATTACKS ON BACKUP DATA.

MICRON FOUNDATION DONATES 7.5 CRORE RUPEES IN BATTLE AGAINST COVID-19 MICRON FOUNDATION DONATED 7.5 CRORE RUPEES (NEARLY $1 MILLION) FOR COVID-19 RELIEF FUND TO ASSIST THE NATION IN BATTLING THE SPREAD OF COVID-19. INDIA IS ONE OF FIVE COUNTRIES PRIORITIZED TO RECEIVE GRANTS FROM MICRON FOUNDATION’S GLOBAL RELIEF FUND. MICRON HAS ACTIVATED A GLOBAL NETWORK OF COMMUNITY PARTNERS TO ENSURE ITS RESOURCES ARE APPLIED QUICKLY AND EFFECTIVELY IN INDIA. “MICRON IS COMMITTED TO THE HEALTH, SAFETY AND WELL-BEING OF OUR TEAM MEMBERS, FRONT-LINE HEALTH CARE WORKERS AND THE COMMUNITIES IN WHICH WE OPERATE,” SAID ANAND RAMAMOORTHY, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF MICRON INDIA. “GIVEN THE SCALE AND ENORMITY OF THE TASK, WE ARE IMMEDIATELY ACCELERATING OUR EFFORTS TO PROVIDE FUNDING, RESOURCES AND SUPPORT TO THOSE MOST AFFECTED BY THIS HEALTH CRISIS.”

SNIPPETS

Dassault Systèmes and Aden Group Collaborate in Fight against COVID-19 Dassault Systèmes and Aden Group collaborate on the development of a turnkey, ready-to-use infectious disease hospital solution, Akila Care, that could be quickly deployed and easily maintained in countries severely impacted by COVID-19 and urgently in need of high quality medical facilities. This new initiative comes in light of the successful world premiere Wuhan hospital experience set up in a few days.

The two companies are working together to develop new hospital engineering, construction and operations processes by leveraging Dassault Systèmes’ 3D EXPERIENCE platform and Aden Group’s Akila Care smart and connected hospital concept. The solution relies on a virtual collaborative environment for the design, simulation and development of hospitals that can be built and operational within 100 days and remain operational for many years, as well as for optimizing their operations and maintenance throughout their entire lifecycle.

Hitachi Vantara Virtual Storage Platform for Midsize Enterprises Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E990, the company’s new storage platform for midsize enterprise customers.

The E990’s high performance and low latency supercharge business applications, and industry-leading data de-duplication guarantees storage cost reductions. Hitachi Ops Center’s powerful artificial intelligence (AI)-driven management software can also dramatically simplify storage provisioning for AI, machine learning (ML) and containerized applications. The E990 with Hitachi Ops Center provides an NVMe all-flash option for Hitachi Vantara’s family of solutions for midsize enterprises, adding to a broad portfolio of powerful infrastructure solutions that feature best-in-class performance and include Hitachi’s signature 100% data availability guarantee for businesses of all sizes.

The company also unveiled EverFlex from Hitachi Vantara, a program that provides simple, elastic and comprehensive acquisition choices for the E990 and the entire Hitachi Vantara portfolio. EverFlex adds consumption-based pricing models that range from basic utility pricing, to custom outcome-based services, to Storage as a Service. It will align IT spend with business use for midsize enterprises, enabling effective ways to lower cost, avoid wasting capacity and eliminate disruption.

Over 2000 People attend RP tech India’s first ever Virtual Awards Night 2020 Over 2000 people across the country attended RP tech India’s first ever Awards Night 2020 on Sunday, April 20. The much awaited award ceremony, packed with incredible performances was held on Zoom video conferencing platform and witnessed super enthusiastic participation from employees and their families.RP tech India is the first distributor to execute the virtual award ceremony in India. The event was simultaneously telecast on Facebook Live.

RP tech India Awards Night is the most promising event that recognizes top performers of the year. There were total 22 awards spread in three categories namely: Platinum, Gold and Silver. The branches, branch heads, branch managers and product managers were recognized for their contribution in the growth and expansion of the Company. Apart from that top performers in the services and finance division were also felicitated in the event.

Rajesh Goenka, Director, Sales & Marketing, RP tech India, said, “ The current lockdown has brought everything on a standstill but not the spirit of RP tech India family. Though we could not meet physically this year, we decided to explore virtual platform and also invited family members of employees in the award ceremony.”

Nutanix Commits to Support Partners Nutanix Special Financial Assistance Program (NSFAP) to demonstrate its commitment to support partners worldwide as they work to sustain business operations amidst rapidly changing macroeconomic conditions. The NSFAP program will provide participating partners with extended payment terms to give them increased financial flexibility for their businesses.

“We recognize the immense pressure businesses face today and we are happy to be able to offer immediate support to our partners by alleviating cash flow concerns and increasing financing flexibility,” said Chris Kaddaras, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Nutanix. “Our commitment to our partners has never been stronger. We will continue to evaluate the needs of our community to ensure our partners and customers have the resources they need to be successful in the current environment.”

Fujitsu Received Supercomputer Order from JAXA, Further Enhancing Global Competitiveness in Aerospace Research Fujitsu received an order for a supercomputer system from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as the organization plans to expand its use in the HPC field in addition to conventional numerical simulations.

Scheduled to start operation in October 2020, the new computing system for large-scale numerical simulation, composed of Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000(1), is expected to have a theoretical computational performance of 19.4 petaflops(2), which is approximately 5.5 times that of the current system. At the same time, Fujitsu will implement 465 nodes of x86 servers Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY series for generalpurpose systems that can handle diverse computing needs.

The system will contribute in improving the international competitiveness of aerospace research, as it will be widely used as the basis for JAXA’s highperformance computing (HPC). It is also expected to be used for various applications, including a large-scale data analysis platform for satellite observation and an AI calculation processing platform for joint research.

SME CHANNELS 13 APRIL 2020

PARTNER CORNER

COVID 19 PANDEMIC: VOICE OF THE PARTNERS Covid 19 has taken down business and shot down the markets.

Everybody is locked up. Except the bare minimum products, nothing is available freely. The essential services companies like IT & ITeS companies are operating from homes in restricted manner with truncated employees’ strength & productivity. Amid this, there is growing expectation from the business owners about stimulus package from the government and renegotiation on pricing with their IT vendors and partners.

IT partners, who are backbone of Indian IT system, dependent upon the market on the one side and OEMs on the other side, are various types. Some are hardware dependent; some are software dependent and some have presence in both categories. So, although the impact is there, but the degree of impact will certain be different.

But good news is although they are apprehensive about it, they have not lost their hopes.

Kavita Singhal - Director - Kamtron Systems Pvt. Ltd., says, “We are not yet hearing about renegotiation of pricing or AMC form the customers and my cash flow is okay though a bit slow. We have talked to the employees and managed the situation.”

“No one does business with loss, at the end of the year, people do earn. This is the time that we should use that surplus money… what is the issue?

We started our business from zero and we should be ready to support our extended family (our employees),” she added.

She maintained, “If we go with positivity, we can overcome the situation. My entire team is working from home. Personally, I think, if we support our customers and create a relation with them, this will help us in a long run. Besides human tend to forget everything gradually. But if we want to adopt, we need to find out ways and means.”

Kamtron Systems is hugely into information security and cloud business and its major customer base revolves around education segment

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though the company has a sizable customer in various other segments too.

Manasi Saha, Director, Macaws Infotech, “As far as Macaws Infotech is concerned, I am worried about the outstanding in the market and aftermath of the pandemic. How it pans out will be a deciding factor for my organization’s growth.”

“At present the customers are not ready to pay though we are supporting the customers on the advice of the OEMs for extension of renewals.

Three months - from March to May - are not at all productive from the business perspective. This is a concern for a lot of other people also,” Manasi added.

“We have not been paid by the customers during these days, though they are of opinion that they would pay after the lockdown is over. I have customers in every segment in this region. If the overall business is down, then the impact will be worst,” she maintained.

There is also news in the market that the customers are asking for renegotiation of pricing.

Jitesh T Dave, Director, SYSTECH Technocraft Services Pvt. Ltd., says, “It is so far so good for us.

We have not come to a stage where customers are asking us for renegotiation but yes, I am hearing a lot from others about price model and specially around support and service contracts.”

“But I think it is too early for us to paint the situation with a single brush. Therefore, I do not think every customer would do the same thing. This is

a passing phase. Things would be clearer by the mid of next month when businesses start opening.

The question would be how fast would we adapt to change,” he maintained.

“People should understand if you are operating a company with 20-25 people, you would take at least 2-3 days to come out with any decision, think about government of India,” he added.

As per Jitesh, by and large companies would certainly do a lot of investment around security which are ease to access. People will have to keep in mind that considering the mindset of the CISOs and CIOs that they will not go ahead and invest in technologies for stop-gap arrangement, they will have to look at the long-term effect. They will look at the future similar situation if at all it occurs and what all add on benefits they will get. So whatever knowledge session they take they would certainly take the guidelines from their top management as to what are the technology they need to invest considering all their business are impacted no matter what industry they are in. So, the top management would validate any investment they do whether it is on IT or non-IT. The CIOs, CTOs or CISOs have this challenging task ahead that they must convince their management that whatever projection they had in terms of technology investment in last quarter have to redefined now.

IT is an enabler. Top management would like to see if the preparedness is there till the last mile

PARTNER CORNER

JITESH T DAVE DIRECTOR, SYSTECH TECHNOCRAFT SERVICES PVT. LTD.

KAVITA SINGHAL DIRECTOR - KAMTRON SYSTEMS PVT. LTD.

MANASI SAHA DIRECTOR, MACAWS INFOTECH

“WE HAVE TO WAIT AND WATCH WHAT CUSTOMERS ARE GOING TO DEMAND IN NEXT 15 DAYS.”

“IF WE GO WITH POSITIVITY, WE CAN OVERCOME THE SITUATION.”

“LET’S BE POSITIVE AND THINK POSITIVE.”

of the company. If their data is secure? Are they investing in technology which would help them acquire more customers? Are they investing in technology which enables them for a shorter customer acquisition cycle? Are they able to do any value addition to their customers? They would not want to lose any customers.

As per Jitesh, those solutions can be around three aspects.

1. Ease to use: The solutions should be such that it would give no resistance in terms of user experience.

2. It should be secure: They would not want to compromise on data security.

3. It should be scalable. It means as the company overcomes the crisis, they can scale up the solution easily without any hassles.

Further, the customers would not like to put

all their eggs in a single basket. Industry will take a call based on their experience from vendor to vendor perspective. People will now go full blown towards adopting newer ways of technology. Time is essence: no customer can afford to spend much time in evaluating a single vendor. They must take quick decisions and move ahead. Otherwise, their competition would surpass them and take an edge.

Every business has been impacted. The revenue, cash flow and orders have been impacted. In fact, the lockdown Version 1.0 had not have much impact as we had only 11 official days to work as rest were some sort of holiday, but Version 2.0 of lockdown is going to decide the magnitude of impact. Thank god govt. has relaxed some of the industries to operation post 20th looking at their role in the situation.

Systech has been focusing on the BFSI sector

being a security provider. The company has real healthy clientele. So also, the company has the pharma and academics. The company wishes to add more and more customers and keep supporting the customers.

Finally…

Jitesh concludes, “We all would have to wait and watch what customers are going to demand in next fifteen days to a month’s time.

Manashi says, “Are we ready for the remote work or remote education. We do not even have proper infrastructure. She concludes: “Let’s be positive and think positive.”

Kavita concludes, “We are not thinking that the country is in problem rather people are keen to open their offices as IT services are under lockdown relaxation terms.”

SME CHANNELS 15 APRIL 2020

GUEST ARTICLE

KEEPING YOU CONNECTED DURING COVID – 19 In this tough times that none have confronted before, Airtel is making sure that the people stay connected with their loved ones and are also able to work effectively from home.

GOPAL VITTAL, CEO Airtel

A lot has changed over the past few days. We are now in the middle of a nation-wide lock-down.

This is a situation that none of us have confronted before. Large swathes of the country are now at a stand-still. Our own lives have been turned upside down - our social interactions, our physical contact, even our walking around - simple things that we take for granted have changed. At the same time, so many millions have been displaced and their livelihoods shattered. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. We also want to salute all those who are putting themselves at risk and going above and beyond in the current crisis to serve the nation at large. You inspire us.

At Airtel, we know that we have a critical part to play in this incredibly difficult time. The onus is on us to make sure that you stay connected with your loved ones and are also able to work effectively from home. I am grateful that despite the lock-down, we continue to serve your connectivity needs. I want to assure you that even in the current time of crisis, we are determined to do everything we can, in order to ensure that you continue to enjoy a seamless and brilliant network experience. To that effect, I wanted to share with you some of the steps we have taken and how you can help.

1) Network Experience: We have been working relentlessly to ensure uninterrupted mobile and broadband services for all our Retail and Enterprise customers. Our network operating centers and data centers are totally operational to ensure smooth functioning of the network. Our field staff is still on the road to ensure speedy provisioning of new connections and quick fixing of faults. Further, we have advanced investments and have added capacities to meet the surge in data demand.

2) Digital Recharges: We highly recommend that you stay safe and use our digital medium

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to recharge. You can also help, do your bit, and recharge for those around you, who do not have access to a digital channel. You can recharge at www. airtel.in or through the Airtel Thanks app.

3) Alternate Channels: We also recognize that there is a large population which isn’t online and is unable to recharge at their regular retailers. To address that, we have activated several new channels - bank ATMs, pharmacies as well as grocery stores. We also want to thank our partners – HDFC, ICICI, Apollo and Big Bazaar - who have helped us enable this in a span of days.

4) Self-care: While we try our best, we recognize that there may be some problems or issues that you may face. We urge you to use our digital medium to raise your query/concern because our call centers are running at reduced capacity. We have strengthened our IVR, which can now address 98% of all your concerns. In case the IVR can’t resolve it, we have enabled a functionality that allows you to create a ticket on the IVR itself. Or better still you can raise your issue through the Airtel Thanks app.

Rest assured, once raised digitally, we will address it on priority.

5) Help the under-privileged: We recognize that there are millions of migrant workers and daily wage earners who have been impacted due to the nationwide lock-down. To support them and to make sure that they remain connected, we have extended validity for over 80 million customers and have also credited talk-time in their accounts so that they can make critical calls/SMS. In addition, to support government efforts, Bharti Enterprises has pledged a sum of over Rs. 100 crore for India’s fight against COVID-19.

PARTNER CORNER

INGRAM MICRO LEADS THE WAY IN ESSENTIAL SERVICES TECHNOLOGY FULFILMENT DURING LOCKDOWN The global supply chain is among the worst hit, leading to a direct impact on the distribution business .Reflecting upon the state of the supply chain, Ingram Micro’s Director of Purchase & Materials, Blasé D’Souza remarked that he had never seen such widespread disruption in trade, freight transportation and supply chain.

The sudden and rapid outbreak of the coronavirus has affected virtually every sector of the economy to varying degrees. The global supply chain is among the worst hit, leading to a direct impact on the distribution business. Manufacturers are struggling to get goods out of their factories.

With air and seaports barely functioning, cargo is piling up at origin supply points and ports in India. Restrictions on the movement of people and vehicles have impacted local air and surface freight movements. To cope with the increased demand, some airlines have taken the unusual step of converting their idle passenger aircraft into cargo-only charters. Reflecting upon the state of the supply chain, Ingram Micro’s Director of Purchase & Materials, Blasé D’Souza remarked that he had never seen such widespread disruption in trade, freight transportation and supply chain.

As different countries adopt different strategies to fight the spread of the virus, some have taken the extreme step of imposing a total lockdown.

While this is bitter medicine, it has been effective in slowing down the rate of infections. But the same measure that saves lives affects livelihoods.

To keep the wheels of the economy turning, the Indian government has classified specific sectors as essential services that are permitted to operate during the lockdown. As the largest distributor

of technology products and services with warehouses and offices across India, Ingram Micro is well-positioned to support essential service providers with their IT and mobility requirements.

The entire Ingram Micro team continues to work tirelessly – either from home or warehouses – to fulfill essential services orders. Harish Laddha, Sales head, Ingram Micro (India), says, “There have been numerous instances where timely fulfillment of technology requirements

by Ingram Micro through its partners during the lockdown has made a real impact, like storage for DR for a large PSU, laptops, desktops & UPS to marquee banks & IT/ITES companies, interactive displays for the meteorological department, and many more such critical requirements.”

Ingram Micro continues to process and execute orders across the country in full compliance with the local regulations.

To help channel partners tide over financial challenges resulting from the slowdown in economic activity, Ingram Micro also rolled out an array of working capital measures under the Ingram Micro Financial Solutions umbrella. This would help partners execute capital-intensive orders without blocking their credit lines. He added, “We are humbled to have the trust of our partners who relied upon us to deliver critical

HARISH LADDHA SALES HEAD, INGRAM MICRO (INDIA)

“OUR IMFS BOUQUET OF WORKING CAPITAL SOLUTIONS BRINGS TO THE MARKET A UNIQUE SET OF OFFERINGS INCLUDING SALELEASEBACK OF ASSETS PURCHASED IN THE LAST 90 DAYS.”

orders even when the nation was under total lockdown. Our IMFS bouquet of working capital solutions brings to the market a unique set of offerings including sale-leaseback of assets purchased in the last 90 days. I urge all partners to connect with us to see how we can help their business during these trying times.”

Ingram Micro is committed to helping the nation tide over this pandemic. We continue to work closely with our vendors, the administration and our nationwide network of channel partners to provide the technology that powers our economy and help us emerge from this crisis stronger.

SME CHANNELS 17 APRIL 2020

PARTNER CORNER

AMID COVID 19, A PARTNER’S SUGGESTION ON HOW TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON When most of the business except the essential service businesses is only open and hopes are nearly shattered, here is a partner – named Manish R.Goenka, CEO & Founder, ICONS Infocom, gives some valid suggestions.

Manish R.Goenka, CEO & Founder, ICONS Infocom, says, “We are going thru the most tough times. However, to stay afloat is the need of the hour. People are talking of cutting staff, not paying staff but I beg to differ, any organisation Small or BIG one of the biggest assets they have is their teammates (Staff).”

Some Suggestions and Practices: Firstly, I would request people to refrain cutting down staff or their salaries, in fact empower them with tools to work from home. Get your HR build confidence in your staff remember we are business owners, we have savings, we have security but what about them? Even they must be feeling insecure about their job, even they have fixed cost, EMIs so let the communication go to them straight and clear, we are going through tough times, but we care. A scared team will never be able to perform, and this situation is new for all of us, so we need to stay together and fight. This will make your business more resilient and your team stronger than ever before.

Talk to your debtors, speak to your suppliers to give some payment leverage and then look at the cash reserves and cash flows, your investments (remember you have made it from this business) and other contingencies, break it for 6 months and plan your future expense, remember the lockdown also saves cost of high electric cost, phones+ internet, office tiffin, travel costs as most meetings we happen virtual, Rental cost (if on rent speak to the owner, ask them to pass some benefits) and only if it still requires salaries to stay afloat which as per me is the last resort, first start from your own salary, cut it by 50% (It’s a good gesture to

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show your team without even telling them anything and they will be prepared for what’s coming) Communication Communicate with all stakeholders. Staff, Clients, suppliers and financiers or banker should be a top priority for your business. Once you’ve established your approach, make use of your website, social media channels and company newsletter to get the message out. Inform staff of any new business processes as soon as possible and know the appropriate communication channels with management for queries and concerns, or who to notify when they fall ill, for example.

Support Remember the tough times are also for your customers, so back them with good support as they will always value you.

Work from Home One should ensure that employees who are able to work from home do so. Businesses. Communicate clear, firm expectations and consequences upfront. Regular contact with your team is important for making the transition as smooth as possible – make use of tools like WebEx, Teamviewer, Zoom, Skype and Microsoft Teams.

Inventory Get rid of large inventories against cash discounts, technology chances rapidly. Minimise your inventory, make sure feed yourself hand to mouth (order back to back) and sit on cash Revenue Make new plans, Marketing ideas, revisit OPEX & CAPEX – Remember next few months will be very challenging. update cashflow, make sure your recovery team is in constant tough with your

MANISH R.GOENKA CEO & FOUNDER, ICONS INFOCOM

“SINCE THIS SITUATION IS NEW TO ALL OF US THERE IS NO SPECIFIC RULE TO DEAL WITH THE SAME, ITS CHANGE, ADAPT, CHANGE BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY BE STRONG, BE WISE, BE HONEST AND ABOVE ALL BE KIND…. THIS WILL PASS SOON.” debtors and ask them to give a firm payment plan.

Work on accounts which offer better payments and margins.

Innovate and change We are in ever changing environment hence we need to always innovate new mode of business, add new tools, have a business continuity plan to for your organisation but also be in touch with your suppliers, buyers constantly cause at times their change in mode of doing business may have serious impact on your business as well. Take your business online Action Don’t lose hope. The current crisis will not persist indefinitely. Remember the golden words ‘When going gets tough, the tough gets going.’

GUEST ARTICLE

TRANSITIONING TO A MASS REMOTE WORKFORCE : Eoin Carroll, Principal Engineer, Sr. Security Researcher, Advanced Threat Research, McAfee speaks about the threats to enterprises and SMBs through this increased remote workforce and how to mitigate the risk.

EOIN CARROLL, Principal Engineer, Sr. Security Researcher, Advanced Threat Research, McAfee

While not a new practice, the sheer volume of people required to adhere to social distancing best practices means we now have a mass workforce working remotely. Most enterprises and SMBs can support working remotely today but many IT departments are not equipped to scale to the numbers currently required. In this blog we discuss the threats to enterprises and SMBs through this increased remote workforce and how to mitigate the risk.

Cybercriminals seek opportunities to achieve their goals and will follow the path of least resistance. The initial access vectors enumerated in MITRE ATT&CK typically used by cyber criminals are phishing or exploitation of vulnerabilities to gain access to an organization, and are used to act on their malicious objectives. Now that employees have migrated to their homes to work remotely, cybercriminals will target the insecurities of consumer systems and networks to gain access to corporations. Targeted ransomware attacks are fueling the increased demand in the underground for compromised corporate networks. If employees access corporate networks from pre-infected unmanaged machines without adequate security measures, it creates a much larger attack surface for cybercriminals. This increases the risk of an organization falling victim to a potential breach and ransomware lockdown.

COVID-19 social distancing restrictions came into effect very rapidly, giving organizations little time to prepare for securely managing their workforce remotely. It is important that organizations continue to do business during this tough time, but they must also do it securely to prevent an attack such as ransomware. To protect organizations in this current climate we must approach this from two perspectives: 1. Know your environment and users 2. Know your business and real threats To understand the threats of telecommuting at scale, we must understand the technologies typically used by remote workers to execute their

work and access the organization.

Know Your Environment and Users Per figure 1 below, it is important to understand the architecture and technologies being used by your employees within your business environment. This gives you visibility into your potential exposure based on vulnerabilities being actively exploited by threat actors so that you can protect your remote workers and business infrastructure/ assets.

Trust boundaries, common technologies and use cases in telecommuter deployments Know Your Business and Real Threats Adversary Opportunities Adversaries need an initial access vector to gain a foothold within an organization. They will typically seek out corporate usernames and passwords using techniques enumerated in MITRE ATT&CK, such as phishing or remote exploitation of software vulnerabilities. The telecommuter technology increases the attack surface significantly and is being exploited/researched as evident below: • In 2019, vulnerabilities in Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Pulse Secure, and Citrix VPN servers were targeted • Proof-of-concept exploits have been developed for Citrix NetScaler/Application Delivery Controller (ADC), Cisco VPN routers and the Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central • Fox-IT discovered bypassing of a VPN two-factor authentication • Proof-of-Concept exploits have been developed for vulnerabilities in Telecommuter Applications such as Zoom, Confluence and Slack • There have been vulnerabilities recently disclosed in Android and iOS free VPNs • RDP vulnerabilities have been disclosed over the last year such as Dejablue, Bluegate and a proof-of-concept exploit in the case of Bluekeep (wormable)

To read the complete article, log on to www.smechannels.com

SME CHANNELS 19 APRIL 2020

SECURITY CHECKPOINT

T

he struggle against the coronavirus pandemic continues to make an impact globally. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, - longtime director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the emerging face of American leadership in the fight against the virus - it is estimated that the U.S. may see between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus.

And in cybersecurity, the numbers too continue to increase. As we have previously reported, while retailers and other non-essential businesses are closing their doors, hackers are opening up for business, with the number of coronavirus-related cyber-attacks on the rise.Based on ThreatCloud, Check Point's industry-leading threat intelligence engine, our researchers found that though cyberattacks in general have decreased somewhat since the outbreak and economic downturn, coronavirus-related attacks have increased significantly.

From January to March, we witnessed a drop of 17% monthly in the overall number of cyber threat activities in organizational networks worldwide.However, since mid-February, we have seen an escalation in the number of coronavirus-related cyber-attacks, and in the past 2 weeks alone, the numbers have increased dramatically from a few hundred daily to as high as over 5,000 on March 28. On average, there have been over 2,600 attacks daily.

We define coronavirus-related attacks as those that involve - websites with “corona”/”covid” in its domain - files with “Corona” related file names - files that have been distributed with coronavirus-related subjects in their email The graph represents all coronavirus-related attacks that have been detected by Check Point's different Threat Prevention technologies across networks, endpoints and mobile devices.

84% of the events were triggered by phishing websites. Approximately 2% of the events involved the victim accessing the malicious website using his/her mobile device.

In the past two weeks, since our last update, more than 30,103 new coronavirus-related domains were registered, of which 0.4% (131) were malicious and 9% (2,777) were suspicious and under investigation. This means over 51,000 of coronavirus-related domains in total have been registered since January 2020.

Netflix-related websites While it is not surprising that the pandemic has

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IN THE CYBER WORLD, THE GRAPH HAS YET TO FLATTEN According to the Check Point Research, the article speaks about that though cyber-attacks in general have decreased since the outbreak but coronavirus-related attacks have increased significantly. resulted in Netflix’s subscriber growth, the brand has been used as part of various web-based fraud schemes. In recent weeks in particular, we have observed a substantial 2x growth in the number of phishing attacks by websites posing as Netflix sites. Most of these sites were registered in recent months, including domains that use the virus's official name given by the World Health Organization (netflixcovid19s.com).

Some of these websites offer payment options, in attempt to fraudulently get user details and their payment means.

Here's an example: Staying protected So how can you avoid falling victim to these scam attempts? Our recommendations for safe online behavior are: 1. Beware of lookalike domains, spelling errors in emails or websites, and unfamiliar email senders.

2. Be cautious with files received via email from unknown senders, especially if they prompt for a certain action you would not usually do.

3. Ensure you are ordering goods from an authentic source. One way to do this is NOT to click on promotional links in emails, and instead, Google your desired retailer and click the link from the Google results page.

4. Beware of “special” offers. “An exclusive cure for Coronavirus for $150” is usually not a reliable or trustworthy purchase opportunity. At this point of time there is no cure for the coronavirus and even if there was, it definitely would not be offered to you via an email.

5. Make sure you do not reuse passwords between different applications and accounts. 6.

Organizations should prevent zero-day attacks with an end to end cyber architecture, to block deceptive phishing sites and provide alerts on password reuse in real time.

SECURITY CHECKPOINT

O

ver the past month, many articles have been published recommending that we keep our mobile phones clean to reduce the risk of Coronavirus infection. While there’s still some debate over whether it’s necessary to clean your phone case and screen to get rid of possible germs, it’s a good idea to watch out for internal infections that your phone could pick up. Skilled threat actors are exploiting peoples’ concerns about Coronavirus to spread mobile malware, including Mobile Remote Access Trojans (MRATs), Banker Trojans, and Premium Diallers, via apps which claim to offer Coronavirus-related information and help for users.

Check Point’s researchers discovered 16 different malicious apps, all masquerading as legitimate Coronavirus apps, which contained a range of malware aimed at stealing users’ sensitive information or generating fraudulent revenues from premium-rate services.

It’s important to note that none of the malicious apps were available on an official app store.

They were offered from new Coronavirus-related domains, which researchers believe had been created specifically with the aim of deceiving users. As we reported recently, more than 30,103 new coronavirus-related domains were registered in the past two weeks, of which 0.4% (131) was malicious and 9% (2,777) were suspicious and under investigation. Over 51,000 of coronavirusrelated domains in total have been registered since January 2020.

How to protect yourself?

It is important that users only download apps

KEEP YOUR MOBILE PHONE FREE OF CORONAVIRUS, BOTH INSIDE & OUTSIDE : Enterprises need to protect all their employees’ corporate devices against sophisticated mobile cyberattacks with solutions such as Check Point SandBlast Mobile. from legitimate app stores such as Google Play and Apple’s AppStore.

If you suspect you may have one of these infected apps on your device, here’s what you should do: • Uninstall the infected application from the device • Update your device Operation System and Applications to the latest version • For your personal device, we recommend using a mobile-specific security solution such as ZoneAlarm Mobile Security to check that all the apps on your phone are legitimate and not

malicious.

Some tips to keep your mobile devices healthy and prevent data breaches • Don’t Connect to Public Wi-Fi networks • Enable remote lock and data wipe for mobile devices • Avoid answering unsolicited calls, or even block them • When you surf the web, make sure you only use websites secured with SSL, also on mobile • Download applications only from the official app stores.

SME CHANNELS 21 APRIL 2020

LENOVO STORY

LENOVO PARTNER PORTAL: POWERFUL ENOUGH TO ENABLE CHANNEL Lenovo DCG was spun off as a separate entity on 1st April 2017. Ashish Taneja Channel Lead, Lenovo DCG, says, “We do not have any intention, any direction and no inclination to do direct business. We have an account management model backed by our partners. For any size and shape of business, we are not changing our strategy as some competitors have.”

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

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hannel Strategy This Year Channel is developing constantly.

The way OEMs are addressing the customers, the consumption models, go-to-market strategies, everything is changing.

A lot of consolidation is happening in the channel business.

Ashish mentioned, “A decade back, the top line was a big driver but now profitability has become a driving factor. New solutions including security, IoT, Cloud, etc. are coming big way.

Market dynamics are changing along with demographics. Few years ago, BYOD was a big story, but we have gone beyond that. Edge devices are becoming smarter.

Lenovo DCG is aiming at transforming the channel experience with new digital capabilities that include smarter workspace, smarter pricing, smarter co-selling and smarter processes.

Lenovo had launched a server in India called SE350, which is an edge server and available for the partners. It’s compact and can easily be compared to the size of a laptop. The server can be installed on a wall like a router. It comes with WiFi and LTE capabilities and can work in 50 – 55 degree temperature. In a factory environment, where there is no requirement of wires, our server can activate WiFi and provides intranet connection for sharing files and folders. It is secure and

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scalable. So, in a nutshell, Lenovo is product ready.

Ashish mentioned, “For the size and scale of company that we are, the channel dependence and focus is very high. Our vested interest makes the channel more enabled, more focused, deeply rooted, and more automated, as much possible.”

Digital Campaign Studio “The Power of Zero” Lenovo DCG’s self-service digital marketing tool empowers our channel partners to create & publish Digital Marketing Campaigns remotely. Our business partners can create co-marketing assets, in a matter of minutes for their marketing efforts with a single sing on to Lenovo Partner Portal (LPP). Together, Lenovo and our partners can create and benefit from the best co-branded leadgenerating & CRM campaigns, with an objective to speed up our partner’s go-to-market activities with customers.

Pre-sales and Certification: The Lenovo Partner Engage Program provides the partners with tools and resources they need, ranging from marketing support to sales tools or product demos, on the Lenovo Partner Portal. Lenovo also has an exclusive Lenovo Expert Achievers Program (LEAP) which is exclusive to Data

Center Program Partners; helps them quickly boost their knowledge on Lenovo Data Center solutions while earning points. These professionals help to create a pool of pre-sales professionals in our partner organization. Besides, the portal offers tools about how to train themselves in the language they should use while interacting with the customers and independently make decisions in terms of sizing and pricing of the product while creating BOM for the customers. It also has a deal registration option. So, everything comes within the partner portal tools including rebate and calculation, etc.

Products Lenovo DCG has two product lines i.e. ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile. While the former are the Data Centre building blocks, the latter is the Software Defined Portfolio that brings in flexibility, scale and ease of management.

In fact, Lenovo DCG is the biggest partner for Nutanix. Ashish Taneja Channel Lead, Lenovo DCG says, “We contribute substantially to Nutanix business in APJ. In Asia, we lead the pack. This is one of the strongest and aggressive partnerships in the world. It is synonymous with HCI for us as a story.”

From a sales point of view, within the channel practice of Lenovo, the company has two motions

LENOVO STORY

ASHISH TANEJA, CHANNEL LEAD,LENOVO DCG

“WE DO NOT HAVE ANY INTENTION, ANY DIRECTION AND NO INCLINATION TO DO DIRECT BUSINESS.”

i.e. volume motion and value motion. We have an in-depth engagement model in both the motions.

For the size and stage of that our business is in, we have been very selective with our choice of partners. In the value business, Lenovo has a new structure where Channel and SMB markets fall under one bracket. In the SMB segment, particularly in a non-named account, Lenovo’s Partner Account Manager (PAM) helps the channel to scale their business.

Finally…

In response to the global COVID-19 situation,

Lenovo has responded to COVID-19 by empowering local leaders to act with the well-being of our teams as their top priority. In a fast-changing situation, flexibility is important, and we have leveraged our global teams to support one another and maintain consistent business operations. As offices outside China ask employees who can to work remotely, offices and factories in China have reopened. Thus, we’ve been able to minimize the impact on our business as much as possible.

We pride ourselves on our global manufacturing footprint and distribution networks, meaning at a time like this we can leverage the full strength

of our 30+ factory operations around the world as we ramp up production. In addition, we are working around the clock with our logistics providers to move freight as fast as possible while adhering to all government regulations. We are still able to move freight across borders, but with the reduction of shipping capacity, transportation times are often taking longer. Our focus continues to be to minimize potential customer impact and you have my commitment that we are doing everything we can within our power to mitigate any potential effect to your business and our valued relationship.

SME CHANNELS 23 APRIL 2020

SECURITY SOPHOS

SOPHOS EMPHASIZES ON NEXT 90 DAYS PLAN COVID 19 has influenced every business. Lockdown was forced upon us. No one was really prepared – even not the OEMs. The common questions coming from the CIOs and CISOs are extension of renewal due date or slashing of AMC pricing or even renegotiation of pricing. The channel partners are in a tight spot how to tackle this situation amid debilitating business demands.

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

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unil Sharma, Managing DirectorSales, Sophos, said, “Our team was always on the road and prepared to work from anywhere with our laptop and phone in our hands. Every application of ours is in cloud so that we can access any application.

Five years back, our company became proactive in launching cloud first initiative – that decision of our CEO is yielding good results now.”

Sophos products are available in both private and public cloud. For example, Sophos Firewall is available in AWS. Product like Sophos Central Intercept X Advanced is also available on Azure and AWS. Sunil said, “No one has ever seen this nor ever talked about this earlier. But we are getting prepared and ready for this. If you ask me about my daily schedule, I am getting ready either at 8:30 or 9:00 as my meeting starts at this time of time. I do meetings with my partners and their sales reps.”

Sophos has been conducting webinars with its partners to make them aware of its products and the plan around next 90 days. He added, “I tell my partners to get ready for next 90 days. After 90 days if there is any plan that can be changed but

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the next 90 days is very challenging from business perspective.”

The company is relaunching the products virtually which were launched during Jan – Feb 2020.

Partners are taking interest in it as 1000s of people are attending Sophos each day.

Sunil maintained, “We have to be prepared for the worst. We are doing reviews continuously, enabling the partners and their sales and technical people. We are also getting our internal sales and technical team enabled and certified.”

Sophos is educating customers on latest hacking and its patterns by running an online event called ‘Break a Hackers’ Heart’. This is a virtual series where the company invites the customers and trains them for two hours. It followed by quiz in order to make the event interactive.

Apart from this, Sophos is also helping the customers who were not really prepared for the situation and could not gather their official computing platform. Sunil said, “Those customers who wanted to use their personal computer/laptop, we provided them Sophos Home Premium free. Similarly, customers who wanted Firewalls and other hardware-based security appliances, we enabled

them with virtual products free for 90 days.”

Besides, Sophos is also continuing to do license renewals through its partners and offering solutions to the customers to replace other brands remotely.

Understanding the personal situation of the partners, another unique program Sophos is running called ‘Happiness Engineering Program’.

Sunil added, “We have already run five series of this webinar for our partners. we understand that people are under stress and have different working atmosphere.”

If that is not enough, Sophos is also organizing events for its partners’ sales resources to train them on how they should speak to the customers in terms of being supportive.

Finally…

Sunil is of opinion that for most of the customers there would be a major change in technology adoption patter post Covid 19. There would be unprecedented jump in the demand for Cloud infra and Cloud security. He concluded: “During tough times, our motto is to help our customers and partners.”

SECURITY SOPHOS

SUNIL SHARMA, MANAGINGDIRECTORSALES,SOPHOS

“DURING TOUGH TIMES, OUR MOTTO IS TO HELP OUR CUSTOMERS AND PARTNERS..”

SME CHANNELS 25 APRIL 2020

SME CHAT

PRADEEP AGARWAL, SENIOR DIRECTOR, ERP CLOUD, ORACLE INDIA

ORACLE PROVIDES ORGANIZATIONS A COMPLETE HCM CLOUD SOLUTION SME Channels spoke to Pradeep Agarwal, Senior Director, ERP Cloud, Oracle India on SaaS market growth

What is the landscape of SaaS market in India and how it is growing?

A SaaS dominated technology market has never been more real. With customer expectations continuing to outpace experiences, the SaaS market is being shaped by a few top players who can support the digital transformation of enterprises with customer centricity at the helm. According to a recent NASSCOM report, the Indian SaaS market is estimated to hit $3.3–3.4 billion by 2022.

India has been at the helm of this progress with our SaaS business having grown by about 31-32 per cent year-on-year. Our core SaaS solution, Oracle Fusion ERP has witnessed more than 50 per cent YoY growth in the 1H. We are growing 3-4x times the market in SaaS apps, which is a clear indicator that we are taking share from competitors. We are outpacing the market and we want to be the #1 SaaS provider in India. The Indian cloud business is really booming. We are supporting some of the largest transformational deals in India – Taj hotels, Hindalco, Indian Oil, SBI, Adani, Reliance, AU Finance, Transworld, SBI, Bajaj Electricals. We are seeing most traction for Oracle SaaS from companies representing the government, manufacturing, financial services

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and education sectors.

What we’re seeing is a lot of interest in the cloud shown by both customers and prospects in India.

Customers are starting their cloud journeys now.

Since we have multiple deployment models to offer in the public cloud, customers can take full advantage of it. We cater to almost any type of data sovereignty issues that might arise, so we are very bullish on the Indian market.

Which are the vertical markets embracing SaaS aggressively?

In India and globally, the number of companies choosing Oracle SaaS solutions over the competition is increasing. These customers are a mix of large firms, mid-size SMBs and Cloud natives. We have customers from sectors like manufacturing, retail, hospitality, social welfare, engineering and construction, logistics, oil and gas, among others.

We have helped large and older firms like Indian Oil, Hindalco, Indian Hotels, SBI Card, Genpact and Sandhar Automotive in their digital transformation. At the same time, we have Cloud-native disruptors like Oyo Rooms, Rivigo Systems and KLAY Prep Schools in our customers’ list. Oracle has understanding and dexterity to support cus-

tomers of any size, with every thinkable requirement from any sector.

What are Oracle’s SaaS offerings in India?

Oracle continues to add ground-breaking innovations to its comprehensive suite of applications developed for businesses of all sizes and industries. Recent product innovations include machine learning updates to Oracle ERP Cloud to enable organizations of all sizes to quickly and easily take advantage of innovations in artificial intelligence, digital assistants, natural language processing, and the Internet of Things. Oracle HCM Cloud enables HR professionals to make work more human by improving the entire workplace experience for employees, candidates and HR professionals. Oracle provides organizations a complete HCM cloud solution that drives digital transformation and improves business agility while meeting both current and future business requirements. Oracle CX is an integrated set of applications across marketing, sales, service and commerce. The latest updates to Oracle CX include enhancements to Oracle CX Unity, Oracle’s enterprise-class customer data management platform.

SME CHAT

implementation costs. Since, all the variables are controlled by the service provider, SaaS implementation abolishes the unpredictable costs of managing, patching, and updating software and hardware and thus turning capital expenses into operational expenses. There is another business benefit is the almost negligible down time as these solutions can be deployed and run in matters of hours instead of months. Every growing business needs scalable applications to handle the inevitable increases in data and transactions and SaaS can provide this scalability.

How do you see the competitive landscape in this space?

Investment in Software-as-a-Service brings in a strong advantage for firms to bring in great opportunities. It deepens the understanding of how IT can enable agility by sensing innovation and capturing market opportunities for competitive action. The ability to produce the desired results in a turbulent environment and aligning the processes sum up to justify the competitive landscape.

Our biggest differentiator is that we are the only one in the cloud market that can provide pre-integrated solutions. Today, we are the only complete ‘Cloud Suite vendor’ in the market

offering a judicious blend of cloud applications, pre-embedded with the latest technologies and upgrades. This gives Oracle customers an unprecedented advantage of saving hugely on integration in-turn driving business optimization through connected intelligence.

What is the economic ramification behind SaaS? The SaaS model was designed to deliver a core set of business benefits. The implementation of SaaS solutions lowers the overall front cost as it eliminates the need for additional hardware and middleware. It also reduces installation and

What is Oracle’s broad SaaS go to market programme and its evolution over the years?

Oracle is actively building advanced technology into the Oracle Cloud. We are including Artificial intelligence applications, Chatbots or conversational interfaces, Advanced predictive analytics and Machine learning (ML) in our ERP cloud. We are updating our offerings to help our customers achieve targets faster and in a smarter way. We support our existing on-prem customers through their transition journey to Oracle cloud and we have a game-changer offering called – The Soar Program. Oracle Soar to the cloud is the world’s first automated cloud migration offering that enables Oracle customers to save time, cut costs and stay focused on business. The data in the on-premises application is automatically extracted, transformed, and loaded into the cloud application.

Soar 2.0 comes with an approach that is being termed as an industry first- an experience of using cloud before buying cloud. A future-ready showcase of how a customer’s future would look and feel like on cloud, exactly the way it would span out when they implement. Our program supports our customers with experience before buying to help them embrace change, promote innovation and challenge the status-quo in upgrading to the cloud.

The program ensures that this is the last upgrade you will ever do because all your future upgrades will be managed by Oracle.

What is your plan for 2020 from market access point of view?

Our vision/ ambition is to dominate the India SaaS market and with that goal, we went live with SaaS on our Gen 2 Data center in India. Our clear target is to be the #1 cloud applications company globally and in India now equipped with a SaaS Datacenter, we are a step closer to acquiring that position. We have innovation and a strategy; our competitors can’t match.

SME CHANNELS 27 APRIL 2020

COLLABERATION

SECURITY IS A PROCESS, NOT A ONE-TIME PROJECT There is no question that digitalisation has brought newfound opportunity to businesses; however, as we are all painfully aware, it has also made them more vulnerable to security risks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the human factor which is increasingly the weakest link in the security chain.

Whether it’s the rise of remote working with people choosing where they work, or the blending of personal and professional devices as networks are opened to large volumes of unsanctioned devices.

Last year was touted as the year of the data breach, with the number of breaches resulting in exposed records rising by 54% for the first half of the year. To mitigate potential risks, businesses would do well to implement a universal security culture to stay secure. Here are five key tips to help businesses develop and maintain security awareness among their employees: Security thinking knows no hierarchical levels Implementing effective security programmes requires every member of staff to be involved.

Security awareness is by no means a one way street. Rather, it requires a joint effort on the part of every member of staff, regardless of seniority – everybody must put in their fair share to make the company more secure. Every member of staff

28 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2020

must adhere to and understand a business’s security goals and guidelines, meaning upper management must set a good example and ensure that security is sustainable.

And although we often focus on how to secure your online devices, it is also worth remembering that people can access information through on-premises infrastructure also. It is important to be aware of your physical environment, take note of unrecognised individuals and don’t let people without appropriate accreditation into secure areas.

When it comes to team structures, IT teams are in a unique position in that they communicate with every member of staff – this opportunity should be taken advantage of by ensuring that security awareness spans across hierarchical levels.

Security teams must speak the language of the employees Every change and improvement should be communicated to staff openly and transparently, explaining why a certain solution has been imple-

mented and the impact it will have on their work.

The alternative encourages a lack of understanding for which security teams will only have themselves to blame.

Security teams can often be seen as a world apart from other teams, serving to control what people can and cannot do at work. To remedy this, they would do well to regularly communicate with employees face-to-face, making it clear how changes to an organisation’s security infrastructure benefit employees, rather than restrict their work.

COLLABERATION

GERALD BEUCHELT CISO, LogMeIn

It’s no secret that humour and repetition sticks.

Click-through computer-based training does not remotely fulfil these requirements and ultimately only scares employees away from learning about security. By hosting regular education sessions, businesses can ensure that security awareness is ingrained within an organisation as part of its culture. However, information overload can be a dangerous thing and there are best practices to get your organisation’s security messaging across.

For example, Security teams should tell their security stories in the form of short films depicting specific threat scenarios – this could then be amplified with short tests to ensure employees have absorbed the necessary information. Additionally, escape-the-room setups are modern, playful ways of testing security knowledge. Here, employees are confronted with security gaps which can only be filled by resolving the issue.

This is something that’s been very successful at LogMeIn and many other companies.

Security is not a one-time event No matter how memorable or detailed, a one-off security course will never have a lasting impact.

Organisations should think of their security culture as a living organism, constantly evolving in line with emerging threats. Education and training on current and future threats should be ongoing– it’s time businesses begin treating this as a rule, rather than an exception.

This is particularly important with changes to the daily workflow – such as multi-factor authentication – that can often feel like a hinderance especially in the rare case where someone is locked out. Implementing quick and reliable process to remedy this is key to keeping employees onside.

The multi-generational workforce There are now up to four generations working and collaborating under the same roof. Each one of these learns differently; for example, some are more receptive to audio or visual content, while

others prefer more practical approaches.

Despite these differences, it’s clear that providing consistent communication is the key to generating strong awareness among team members.

Businesses should provide all training and materials across appropriate channels for every type of learner within the workforce. Not only this, but it should begin at an early stage if they are to yield the most impactful results.

Communicating security in a playful way

Stay secure for the year ahead Everyone is ultimately at risk when it comes to security breaches – hackers do not distinguish between seniority levels and everybody is at risk, particularly in the digital era where data is a valuable asset. IT and security teams must make an effort to ensure an organisation’s security protocols are clearly conveyed to each member of staff on an ongoing basis.

Not only this, but it must be done on the appropriate channels so that every employee, regardless of their age, can benefit equally. Employees are too used to undertaking training to simply check a box, and this needs to change. Security teams must revisit the way they amplify security messaging across an organisation and ensure that it sticks, whether that means creating short films, quizzes or collaborative workshops. Tailoring the message to the respective audience is – as always – the key to success.

SME CHANNELS 29 APRIL 2020

COVID 19

HOW CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK IS AFFECTING THE INDIAN ECONOMY AND HOW CAN WE OVERCOME THESE EFFECTS? The impact of Coronavirus has created turbulence in the overall global economy as well as Indian businesses. This article speaks about spreading awareness on how people can keep the effect of Coronavirus at bay might help to survive this downturn.

C

oronavirus is a human tragedy which has affected thousands of people globally. It ranges from the common cold to more severe diseases like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARSCoV). WHO is working closely with global experts, governments, and other health organisations to provide advice about precautionary and preventive measures to the world? However, it is still unknown when this will get in control and the situation will limp back to normalcy.

Owing to this, its impact has created turbulence in the overall global economy as well as Indian businesses. Since, COVID-19 or Coronavirus has been declared pandemic by WHO, an uneasy calm is prevailing across businesses in India. From numerous exports from India include organic chemicals, cotton, ores, plastic items, salts and so on. Imports range from electrical machinery, nuclear machinery, optical and medical instruments, vehicles and accessories to iron and steel.

China is India’s second largest trading partner.

The country accounted for 13.7% of India’s total imports in 2018-19 while 5.1% of India’s total exports went there, according to ministry of commerce data. Apart from these, a whole lot of sectors such as toys, furniture, computers, cars and white goods are dependent on China. A supply crunch in smartphones, TVs and electronics will impact e-commerce sales dearly. Well, the realization dawns that the outbreak has the potential to affect trade worth #87 billion approximately as China exports around $70 billion worth of goods to India.

As odds of a global downturn rise, governments and central banks around the world are racing to fend off the economic damage from

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the spread of the coronavirus. Emergency interest rate cuts can be one of the steps that could be taken to keep the wobbly economy on track. To curb the effects, various companies and mainly IT firms have started giving ‘work from home’ to their employees. On the other hand, IT firms that require travel, Unified Communications has been a major help where they can have video and audio conferencing on a single platform. Matrix SPARSH VP710 is a Smart Video IP Deskphone built for business professionals to offer enhanced audio and video communication quality. The new touch screen IP Video Phone is the next step towards Unified Communication that delivers good quality audio calls along with video collaboration. This paves way for communication convenience and augmented productivity.

In addition to this, spreading awareness on how people can keep the effect of Coronavirus at bay might help to survive this downturn. But the effects of survival largely depend upon how long Coronavirus will last. The uncertainty of this has sent the stock market to a tumultuous roller coaster ride with turbulent drops and wild swings. Tourism and travel has had a hard hit due flight cancellations that bans essential employee travel. Although, digital connectivity has been a major help through which different firms and companies are trying to stay afloat. Matrix takes mobility experience a notch higher with Matrix VARTA ADR100/AMP100 – the UC Client. The softphone enables users to access all the facilities of their desk phones from their Android or iOSbased smartphones or tablets.

Well, the horse is out of the barn and containment alone can’t work in this scenario. Due to this we do not have a cease count or as a matter of fact, know where the virus is spreading. Accord-

ing to WHO reports, there are more than 100, 000 positive cases of COVID-19 across the globe and more than 3400 deaths. It is evident that without an effective vaccine this is impossible to end before millions are affected. There’s still a lot communities can do to slow the spread, save lives, and buy crucial time for either a cure or a vaccine to be developed. There are many forking paths on the way from outbreak to endemic. Lives can still be saved, and the worst-case scenario can still be avoided.

The tragic spate of death and illness has put the entire global economy at a high risk. In this state, the best advice is to wait till everything limps back to normalcy. If the Government initiates emergency interest rate cuts, then it is sure that the situation can be controlled when it comes to recession and major setbacks in terms of the economy of India. Obviously, there will be a situation where your company might hit the negative financial hit in the first quarter as a result of the epidemic. A few of the well-known brands are running under ‘reduced hours’ while taking mitigating actions and precautionary steps to ensure the wellbeing and safety of their employees. Resellers should be in constant touch with their suppliers and continue making contingency plans to ensure minimal impact to their supply chain.

For the wellbeing and safety of our employees, we have kept sanitizers at the entrances. Our Palm Vein Recognition system (Access Control and Time-Attendance) had a handguide which has been removed for safety purposes and contactless biometrics have taken over the entire organization. COSEC APTA is a mobile application which enables employees to mark their attendance via bluetooth and QR code. Also, the attendance can be marked through APTA via location and face recognition features. We have asked our employees about their recent travel and have encouraged them to opt for paid leaves for overall safety. Also, we have instructed and educated our employees to maintain a hygienic environment at the premises as well as at their homes.

CASE STUDY

MATRIX TIME-ATTENDANCE SOLUTION FOR STERLING AND WILSON COLLECTS ATTENDANCE DATA OF REMOTE SITES USING WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY all employees at a central location.

• Accurate in/out time of each employee is acquired.

• Monthly salary and overtime are paid only when fingerprint-based in/out time for each working day of every employee is obtained.

• Any delay in projects due to employee attendance gets easily identified.

Products and Solutions Offered

Industry Construction Customer Name Sterling and Wilson Users 10,000+ Devices 587+ Access Control and Time-Attendance Devices Location 155 Across India, Srilanka, Qatar and KSA.

Company Profile Sterling and Wilson, established since 1927, is currently having its corporate office in Mumbai, India. It is one of the leading turnkey MEP (Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing) Services Company with 60% of its business coming from electro-mechanical projects. Just as the company has been instrumental in pioneering MEP services in India, it has also executed several prestigious MEP projects internationally. Sterling and Wilson is expanding with approximately 10,000 employees located at various regional and branch offices and project sites.

Challenges It was a herculean task for corporate HR to process staff salary and overtime from manually recorded attendance collected from all project sites. Managing attendance of 10,000 employees distributed among regional/ branch offices and remote sites from a central location was a tedious

task. Replacement of existing manual attendance mechanism with automatic attendance marking functionality was the major requirement.

Additionally, they wanted a wireless connectivity solution for managing remote project sites for error-free tracking and management of employee attendance.

Solution Matrix comprehensive solution offered centralized Time-Attendance solution to Sterling and Wilson connected all project sites with regional and branch offices and these offices to corporate head office. Matrix offered solution provides wireless connectivity option to the server through 3G Internet Dongle to prevent loss of data from remote locations. This ensures efficient data management in case of emergency like, internet connectivity failure during which all the events are stored in the device.

Hence, the events can be restored easily as soon as it recovers its connection back to the server. The solution from Matrix offered integration with third-party resource planning software-SAP to the client.

• COSEC CENTRA ACM o Access Control Software Module.

• COSEC CENTRA TAM o Time-Attendance Software Module.

• COSEC PANEL LITE o An All-in-one Site Controller for Every Building or Location that manages up to 255 Doors.

• COSEC DOOR FOT o Standard Optical Fingerprint and RFID Card based Door Controller.

• COSEC PATH DCFE o Standard Optical Fingerprint and RFID Card based Door Controller.

About Matrix Established in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Security and Telecom solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. As an innovative, technologydriven and customer-focused organization, the company is committed to keeping pace with the revolutions in the Security and Telecom industries. With around 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like Video Surveillance Systems - Video Management System, Network Video Recorder and IP Camera, Access Control and Time-Attendance systems as well as Telecom solutions such as Unified Communications, IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, VoIP and GSM Gateways and Communication Endpoints.

Results • Buddy punching or fraudulent time-keeping is eliminated.

• Capturing biometric attendance of all employees has smoothened HR’s task.

• Corporate HR can get real-time attendance of

For further information, please contact: 394-GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara-390010, India, Toll Free -1800-258-7747 E-Mail: inquiry@matrixcomsec.com https://www.matrixaccesscontrol.com/

SME CHANNELS 31 APRIL 2020

SME CHAT

MR. ANKUR GOEL, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR POLY INDIA.

COLLABORATION SOLUTIONS THE NEW TREND FOR INDIAN MARKET SME Channels spoke to Ankur Goel, on Collaboration market in India and the latest trends.

Collaboration market in India & trends?

The need to communicate and collaborate anytime and anywhere, regardless of the device and platforms used, is driving demand for collaboration solutions in India. We see a few trends • Organizations moving from on-premises to the cloud - The move from on-premises systems to cloud-based communications is accelerating regardless of organizational size. An overwhelming 82 percent of global businesses surveyed recently by Frost and Sullivan reported they have moved or plan to move part or all of their enterprise telephony solutions to the cloud.

• Focus on human centered collaboration - Going forward, every communication and collaboration will focus around user experience, not just the room or the space. Imagine a person being able to place video and audio calls securely and privately wherever they are, using just voice commands to start and stop any connection.

• Managing distractions in open offices – Office cubicles have been replaced by open offices as it fosters greater collaboration among employees. However, while there has been a rise in open offices, companies are tasked with managing the disruption and noise created in these open spaces. Given this scenario, businesses will have to address workers’ need for some disruption-free

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time and space. Huddle rooms, phone booths, and “hybrid offices” will grow.

• Remote or anywhere working - The millennial mindset is giving rise to a new workplace culture as organizations and recruiters are beginning to realise that the ways to attract and retain this generation of workforce need to be different.

According to industry reports, millennials value flexible work arrangement as the most important aspect while choosing an employer. Therefore, it is critical that if companies want to hire and retain the best talent, they need to encourage anywhere/ remote working culture. They have to empower employees with the right technologies and tool such as video conferencing to support this.

nity through solutions such as Poly Studio.

• Engagement with alliance partners like Zoom, Microsoft – We want to be the solution of choice whenever and wherever collaboration clouds reach people. We work closely with industry leaders like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Zoom and take an open-architecture approach that ensures users of all the best technologies can seamlessly connect.

• Government sector –There is a need for critical need for collaboration technologies to be adopted by the government sector so that mission critical government services, is provided to all citizens. Poly is in a good position to support the government’s effort in enabling digitisation of the country through our collaboration solutions.

Poly’s plans for India market?

India is a very important market for Poly.

Many sectors – from the government, to the healthcare are huge adopters of our technology.

Some of our plans for the market include – • Huddle room market – Physical workplaces are moving towards accommodating an increasing mobile workforce through open office layouts while making huddle rooms available to catalyze spontaneous, ad hoc and private collaborations.

Huddle rooms are quickly gaining momentum in India and Poly plans on leveraging this opportu-

Details about Poly’s new partner program?

Recently, we launched a new Poly partner program - we’ve reimagined our program to encourage participation from a broad range of partners and made it more beneficial to partner with Poly.

The new program, which brings together more than 15,000 partners around the world between Plantronics and Polycom, is designed so partners of all sizes can more easily deliver the most compelling and customized solutions to their customers.

SME CHAT

The Poly partner program shifts the evaluation of partner levels from a focus on revenue to an emphasis on involvement with Poly to support innovation and mutual growth. The model is built around three categories: • Capabilities, ensuring a deep knowledge base through training and enablement; • Commitment, a demonstrated focus and investment in Poly; and • Contribution, which expands beyond just revenue and provides opportunities for bonuses for our partners. Additional benefits include a single instance of deal registration, performance dashboards, and a real-time scorecard to make it easier to track partner standing.

Additional features of the Poly partner program include: • A new Poly partner portal launching on April 10 which will replace Polycom Partner Connect and Plantronics Plantro.net. The portal offers an interactive and collaborative space to easily connect partners to Poly, support technical expertise, sales, marketing, and continuous real-time learning.

• The Poly partner portal will also provide a comprehensive library of images, marketing assets

and co-brandable templates so partners can effectively and efficiently market to customers.

• Poly University provides a full suite of curriculum by specialty to help partners satisfy certification and specialization requirements as well as elective learning. A robust certification program provides individual sales and pre-sales training in various product and service categories.

• Sales tools offer customer testimonials, videos, promotions and a demo discount program to help drive business.

Poly’s new partner program offers new tools, business opportunities and a refreshing business mindset for the Polycom and Plantronics partners, Poly products?

1. Poly Studio - Bringing premium performance to huddle spaces everywhere, Studio delivers business-class audio and video capabilities in an easy-to-use USB video bar. With Studio, teams can experience a new level of meeting engagement, with automatic camera tracking that zooms in on the conference participant who is speaking. This easy-to-use USB video bar takes the frustration out of the typical huddle room video conference and replaces it with user-friendly

experiences 2. Powerful and Simple Poly Studio X30 and Poly Studio X50 Studio X family is purpose built all-in-one video bars and it does not require an external PC or Mac to drive the meeting room experience. It is simple to use with support for leading cloud video services such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams natively built right in. The Studio X family also features new Poly MeetingAI capabilities for breakthrough audio and video experiences built on machine learning and artificial intelligence. a. The Poly Studio X30, ideal for small offices or huddle rooms, supports 4K UHD video and built-in wireless content sharing capabilities, all in a compact design. The Poly Studio X30 supports the full range of Poly MeetingAI capabilities, so it packs a boardroom experience into a small box (which is a beautifully desgined bar). Seamless content collaboration is enabled wirelessly. The video bar’s premium audio engineering offers plenty of pickup power. b.The Poly Studio X50, the larger of the two new solutions, boasts even greater pickup range and high-quality speakers to suit the needs of mid-size conference rooms. In addition to the new Poly MeetingAI features it also supports 4K UHD video, 5x zoom, wireless content sharing, audio input/output and a room-thundering stereo speaker system.

These are really the key differentiators from the number and quality perspective vs. any competitor offering video bars currently – none of them match the quality and richness of Poly!!!!

3. Poly G7500 • Poly G7500 is designed on Poly’s next-gen codec for audio and video as if you’re in the room, even if you’re not.

• It minimizes background noise with advanced audio technology including Polycom Acoustic Fence and Polycom NoiseBlock technology so that the focus stays on the meeting.

• Poly G7500 is designed for mid- to large-sized conference rooms.

4. Poly Lens Poly Lens is a new cloud-based insights and management service that adds more enterprise “cred” to radically simple endpoints.

• Many businesses have a blind spot when it comes to how their collaboration and communications tools are adopted and used by their workforce.

• With Poly Lens, IT is able to understand how Poly devices are actually being used for greater control and simplicity of device updates and deployment.

• Poly Lens aggregates data on device and room use and offers customers a unique overview that turns insights into actions.

SME CHANNELS 33 APRIL 2020

SME CHAT

SURAJIT SEN CHIEF OF STAFF, MODERN DATA CENTRE – APJ, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

WE WILL CONTINUE OUR FOCUS ON DELIVERING A “CUSTOMER FIRST” APPROACH”- DELL TECHNOLOGIES SME Channels spoke to Surajit Senon , on Dell Technologies Multi-Cloud focus and about its new set of cloud infrastructure solutions for 2020.

What are the global trends in Cloud? What is Dell Technologies Multi-Cloud focus for 2020?

2019 was a big year for Dell Technologies Cloud, with more exciting updates on the horizon in 2020. We look forward to sharing more in the coming months. We will continue our focus on delivering a “customer first” approach that enables them to have ultimate control over their data and applications, having these reside wherever it makes most sense to them, while also reducing overall cloud deployment and management complexity. Dell Technologies will continue to be the leading IT provider to enable organizations solve for the multi-cloud challenge.

Brief us about your new set of cloud infrastructure solutions?

Dell Technologies recently announced a host of advancements and new options that allow organizations to benefit from Dell Technologies Cloud for both traditional applications and cloud-native environments. More than half of organizations formulating hybrid cloud strategies have cited seamless compatibility with their on-premises infrastructure as the most important consideration, according to new research from analyst firm ESG. Dell Technologies Cloud, from the No.

34 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2020

1 provider of cloud infrastructure, combines the power of VMware cloud software and Dell EMC infrastructure to remove cloud complexity by offering consistent infrastructure and operations across private clouds, public clouds and the edge.

Dell Technologies Cloud Platforms, are a set of solutions that offer customers a consistent infrastructure and experience across all types of cloud through a common management and orchestration software layer, powered by VMware Cloud Foundation. Customers can deploy platforms on multiple underlying Dell EMC infrastructure options—from hyper-converged and converged infrastructure, including VxRail and VxBlock 1000, to Dell Technologies validated storage, compute and networking options.

Organizations have a variety of options for Dell Technologies Cloud environments: • Dell Technologies Cloud Platforms – The combination of VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged systems offers the easiest and fastest path to a consistent hybrid cloud, complete with automated lifecycle management • Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs – Now available today, these integrate VMware Cloud Foundation with Dell EMC servers, storage arrays and networking, delivered as pre-tested

infrastructure with deployment guidance, offering additional options to meet a diverse set of workloads and customer needs.

• Dell Technologies Cloud Data Center-as-aService – Offered as VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, this delivers a fully-managed hybrid cloud service for on-premises data centers and edge deployments • Dell Technologies Cloud Partner Clouds – Extending the consistent cloud experience to the public cloud, with support for VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solutions, as well as the recently announced VMware for Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud and more than 4,200 VMware Cloud Provider Program providers globally As diverse cloud landscape is resulting in an enormous amount of IT complexity, how is Dell Technologies more qualified or capable to solve this challenge?

There are many companies trying to solve many of these challenges. Hyper-scalers want to make it easier to move to the cloud, Cloud Systems Management providers, DevOps, and Container Management companies are trying to help organizations keep applications portable and running

SME CHAT

focus your future investments with them, which ultimately limits choice and portability. Secondly, there’s the hardware and integrated solutions.

Public cloud companies have done a great job providing service models that scale, and its part of why we are partnering with them to deliver a better cloud experience. Yet, running at hyperscale requires a different mindset than that of most organizations. Their methods don’t always translate into the enterprise or edge locations.

When we talk with customers, server density and data center footprint are always top of mind. For instance, it’s a lot different operating a data center in Hyderabad than a giant warehouse full of racks or shipping containers deployed in a rural setting. While a hyper-scaler might buy hundreds or thousands of white boxes and simply let them fail and do a rip and replace, our customers would be hard pressed to do the same. This gets even more challenging out on the edge where they might only have a single closet to stick racks into.

In the data center and the edge, there is a larger need for reliable hardware that won’t breakdown and create service levels. We are one of the most trusted infrastructure companies on the planet, and we’re able to deliver a comprehensive set of technologies, services and financing all from one Dell Technologies.

efficiently, and, of course, every infrastructure company is looking into this, as well.

What makes Dell Technologies Cloud Platforms unique is how we’re bringing all this together under one roof and with truly industryleading technology and services. We’re allowing organizations to bring cloud capabilities into their data center. They also are getting to extend their security and management best practices into the cloud, eliminating the need to completely rework how they deliver IT, and then we’re bringing that innovation to the edge. When you look at what it takes to deliver innovation anywhere, it takes a company that has the types of solutions Dell

Technologies has from industry leading infrastructure to cloud management, to security solutions, and this presents a huge opportunity for our customers.

How is Dell Technologies through its cloud solutions transforming the IT industry?

There’re really two things that make us unique.

From a software perspective we’re going to be the vendor that will offer the most flexibility to take your workloads and move across clouds. When you buy a solution from one hyper-scaler you’re going to be making a commitment to largely

Dell Technologies being the most powerful B2B Company around the globe, how it has maintained its market leadership?

Dell Technologies is focused on helping our customers solve complex business problems, and deliver compelling business outcomes, by combining the power of technologies within our comprehensive product portfolio, which includes the industry’s leading server platform, the best storage technology and cloud software (VMware).

We are backed by a culture of innovation, and bolstered by a global supply chain, which enables us to deliver the best value to our customers.

What is your strategy to enable your partners with adequate technology and skillsets?

Partners are integral to Dell Technologies’ GTM. The Dell Technologies Partner Program takes a holistic approach towards enabling its partners on the right technologies and skills based on their priorities, and prevailing dynamics in their respective markets. We have a dedicated partner enablement organization whose only focus it to ensure that Partners have access to the right enablement platforms and tools.

SME CHANNELS 35 APRIL 2020

PARTNER CORNER

DEALING WITH SPIRALLING BUSINESS CHALLENGES AMID COVID 19 Among many markets, Indian ICT channel market is really disturbed due to the pandemic. We have tried to collate their opinions and find the ways and means to the solutions.

“WHAT I THINK IS THAT GETTING BUSINESS WILL NOT BE A PROBLEM, AS THE DEMAND IN THE MARKET WILL STILL BE THERE. THE PAYMENT CYCLE LOOKS TO BE A PROBLEM AS DUE TO NO BUSINESS DURING LOCKDOWN THE FIXED EXPENDITURES HAVE EATEN OUR RESERVES.”

DEVANG JASANI CEO, MERIDIAN INFOTECH

“OPINION THAT THE ORDERS BELONG TO Q4 FOR WHICH DELIVERIES GOT AFFECTED DUE TO COVID19, ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS ARE IMPOSING FORCE MEASURE. THEY DEFER THE DELIVERY DATES AND ASKING FOR EXTENDED CREDIT PERIOD FOR THE DUE PAYMENT ALSO. AS PER THEM DUE TO LOCKDOWN, THE MANUFACTURING AND SCM GOT DISTURBED AND IT HAS MAJOR EFFECT ON CASH FLOW..”

BHAVESH SHETH DIRECTOR, POWER SOLUTIONS

VIPUL DATTA CEO, FUTURESOFT SOLUTIONS

“ADVICES TO WORK WITH BETTER MARGINS AND DON’T DO NEGATIVE DEALS AT ALL.”

The global pandemic - COVID 19 has not only put everyone locked down in their respective homes but also kept all the businesses shot down.

This has reasoned for sluggish business environment. On the one side when there has been no abetment of technology consumption, on the other side, there has been growth in consummate delayed payments although work from home has enhanced the demand for end computing devices and security platforms. Although from the vertical market point of view, many sectors

36 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2020

RAKESH GUPTA PROP SI COMPANY MAINLY IN GOVT BUSINESS

have contracted their operations and sales. Even some including automotive, aviation, hospitality, tours and travels among many have stopped their operations due to non- availability of buyers.

On top of it there is no signs of relaxation as the cases of COVID 19 victims are growing in India and no one in the global scale are ready to work with China although China is believed to have opened their operations in major cities including Wuhan.

Rakesh added: “The effect of payment delay will be on all businesses, specifically on B2B business. Monetary Govt help to us is least expected.

What we can do is to shorten the payment cycle by controlling it at the level of B2C business.

“VERY TRUE. CUSTOMERS ARE NOW ASKING MORE AND MORE CREDITS AND IF THE CURRENT VENDOR REFUSE THEN THEY ARE SAYING OTHER VENDORS ARE PROVIDING MORE CREDIT. SO, WE ARE LOSING THE BUSINESS. NOW IT’S A TIME OF OUR UNITY SO CORPORATES WILL NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SITUATION.” GANESAN VELUSAMY DIRECTOR, INDSYS INFOTECH SERVICES INDIA

“CUSTOMERS MOSTLY BUY FROM ONE VENDOR, THEN IF HE INSISTS ON PAYMENT, HE WILL GO TO OTHER VENDOR AND REFUSE TO PAY THE FIRST ONE. THERE SHOULD BE UNITED EFFORT TO CONTROL THIS. WE SHOULD HAVE A COMMON METHOD TO ASSESS THE CREDIBILITY OF THE CUSTOMER. A CENTRAL DATABASE WHERE WE CAN PUT THE DEFAULT CUSTOMER. IT WILL BE MUCH USEFULLY FOR VENDOR COMMUNITY.” The customer also will try to take advantage of the situation. In my opinion we should create a common data bank of customers (both corporate and Govt) who intentionally delay payments and should try to put collective pressure by way of not providing him services/ products.”

REVIEW

PRODUCT

DIGISOL INDUSTRIAL ETHERNET SWITCH DG-IS4512E

THE NETGEAR ORBI MESH WIFI SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS:

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA

info@smechannels.com

IDEAL FOR HOME NETWORK, NETGEAR’S latest offering comes with a brand new design which features a diminutive cube-like base router and satellites with a diamond-like pattern on top. The Mesh system also comes in two modules; RBK12 which provides reliable coverage of up to 120 square meters and RBK13 which provides coverage upto 200 square meters. These new models are much more discreet and can be left more easily on a corner of the shelf or desk.

The main router and the satellites form a square about 5 cm and weigh around 250g.

• Dual-Band Mesh System • Pack of 3 (RBK13) includes a WiFi router (RBR10) and two satellites (RBS10) to provide reliable coverage of up to 200 square meters • Pack of 2 (RBK12) includes a WiFi router (RBR10) and a satellite (RBS10) to provide reliable coverage of up to 120 square meters • Unique network name (SSID) • Combined speed up to 1.2 Gbps to meet the family’s streaming, gaming and browsing needs • Management through the Orbi App available from iOS, Android desktops, smartphones and tablets • Compatible with all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) • Two (2) Gigabit Ethernet ports (1 WAN + 1 LAN) available on the router.

• Compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant • Guest WiFi Network: Allows friends and family to access the Internet without sharing your personal network password

DIGISOL’s Industrial Grade switch - DGIS4512E is an 8 port L2 Managed Din-Rail Industrial Gigabit Switch. This is designed with 8 10/100/1000M ports & 4 1000M SFP ports which provides abundant and flexible connection. The robust DIN rail switch is tailored to special requirements in industrial environments.

The DG-IS4512E Industrial Ethernet switch provides 8 100Mbps RJ5 Gigabit ports with x 4 1000 mbps Uplink SFP Port. For work-group and departments requiring cost-effective Layer 2 Switch and gigabit capability, DG-IS4512E L2 switch supports fast ring and can connect 30 switches in a cascade syste.

Additionally, its Self-healing in 20ms minutes, makes it an ideal Industrial solution The DG-IS4512E switch is engineered to perform in harsh outdoor and industrial manufacturing environments. Featuring wavy metal shell with heat dissipation design, the switch meets the requirements in extreme environments. The switch can operate under wide temperature range from -40° to 75° C, it can be placed in almost any difficult environment. The smart managed switch features 6KV surge protection. Even in thunderstorm, the switch effectively protects itself from being damaged and provides reliable and stable connectivity. In order to withstand harsh environments the switch also features IP30-rated metal enclosure.

This compact switch is designed to offers a diversity of mounting options, whether on a DIN rail or on a wall, enabling users to make the most of the limited cabinet space.

PRICING: MRP INR 11,000 TO MRP INR

PRICING: INR 85, 000/-

16,000

WARRANTY: LIMITED LIFETIME

WARRANTY: ON REQUEST

CONTACT: WWW.DIGISOL.COM

CONTACT: WWW.NETGEAR.COM

SME CHANNELS 37 APRIL 2020

PRODUCT

JABRA

JABRA PIONEERS The range consists of the Evolve2 85, Evolve2 65, and Evolve2 40 and is engineered to transform concentration, collaboration and flexibility in the workplace. By blocking out more noise, providing better voice clarity, bringing distributed teams together, giving people the power to work from anywhere, and monitoring data to enable intelligent decision-making, the Evolve2 is the new standard to elevate office productivity to new heights. The headsets work with all leading UC platforms as well as pending certification for Microsoft Teams.

The Evolve2 range includes three headsets: • The Evolve2 85 offers Digital Hybrid ANC and ten microphones in total, including two microphones in the fully integrated boom-arm and eight in the ear cups. Users can enjoy up to 37 hours wireless battery life, 40MM speakers for immersive music, and an integrated busy light with 360-degree view on both ear cups.

• The Evolve2 65 has three microphones of which two are located in the boomarm and one in the right ear cup. The headset offers up to 37 hours of battery life and three times better real wireless range than the existing Evolve 65.

• The Evolve2 40 is a corded variant and offers the same comfort, durability and user experience as the Evolve2 65. n Price: MRP INR 15,831 to MRP INR 55,101, Warranty: On Request Contact: https://www.jabra.in/

MATRIX

MATRIX COSEC READER PATH Matrix COSEC range of Access Control solution supports comprehensive three-dimensional Access Control policies, which takes care of all combinations of who, where and when. Further, it offers 25+ enterprise-grade access control features meeting all industry-specific access control and compliance needs. Dual enrolment options (reader and web) and web-based configuration eliminate the need for a PC, server or special software. Matrix COSEC also offers instant SMS and Email notifications and plethora of industry-standard reports. Finally, open APIs for integration with Matrix and other third-party solutions such as time-attendance, payroll, video surveillance; BMS, fire alarms, etc. make Matrix COSEC, one of most advanced solutions in the industry.

Benefits • Enhanced Flexibility • Seamless Working with Single Source • Eliminates Need of Multiple Panels • Enhanced Reliability and Scalability • Higher Operational Abilities • Interoperability • Simplified Installation • Integration with Fire Alarm and Other Devices • Secures Sensitive Areas with Advanced Access Control Features • Cost Effective n Price: INR 6, 999, Warranty: On request, Contact: https://www.cadyce.com/where-to-buy/#

SOCOMEC

SOCOMEC RACK MOUNTABLE UPS SOCOMEC, rack mountable UPS solution – Masterys GP4 RK for edge computing applications. The latest single and three phase UPS available from 10 to 40 kVA that specifically designed to easily mount in 19” cabinet with the height of 7U space, having a smallest footprint in the market. The UPS solution can be parallel up to 6 units and could also be used in Banking, Telecom and media infrastructures.

Accompanied by cooling capability and a server, Masterys GP4 RK UPS perfectly suits the edge computing application, thanks to the ultra-high reliability, considerable power density and a front access rackmounted structural design. The UPS offers 96.5% highest efficiency on the market using a VFI double conversion mode and up to 99% efficiency in “ECO” mode. The UPS performance is tested and verified

by TÜV SÜD.

38 SME CHANNELS APRIL 2020

n Price: On Request, Warranty: On request, Contact:

RNI NO: DEL ENG/ 2010/ 31962 Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4145/16-18 Licensed to Post without pre-payment U(SW)/19/2017-18

Date of Publication: 13 of Every Month Date of Posting: 15 & 16 of Every Month